Open charm and charmonium production at LHCb

We see copious production of charmed hadrons in the early LHCb data. The status and plans for charm production studies at LHCb are discussed, and preliminary signals are shown.Comment: 4 pages, 10 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the IX International Conference on Hyperons, Charm and Beauty Hadrons (BEACH 2010

Uncertainties in import/export studies and the outwelling theory. An analysis with the support of hydrodynamic modelling

According to the “outwelling theory”, salt marshes are net exporters of primary production. This view has been contested, inducing a considerable interest in the subject. Both theses are based on annual budgets of organic matter exchange across salt marsh boundaries. These budgets are a function of integrated fluxes computed from water discharge and concentration of solutes and suspensates. Inaccuracies can follow from errors in velocity measurement and subsequent flow rate calculations as well as from analytical errors. Furthermore, the oscillatory nature of tidal transport implies that net budgets are at present one order of magnitude lower than total fluxes. Therefore, only rather more accurate methods can lead to safe conclusions on this issue. Moreover, a number of other fundamental uncertainties remain with the processing of organic matter in salt marsh sediments. These questions are discussed within the framework of the results of a European comparative salt marsh study on the Mira estuary in Portugal. Hydrodynamic modelling has been shown to be a useful tool particularly in situations where velocities are most of the time bellow the range of accuracy of commercial current meters (< 5 cm s-1)

The evaluation of student-centredness of teaching and learning: a new mixed-methods approach.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the study was to develop and consider the usefulness of a new mixed-methods approach to evaluate the student-centredness of teaching and learning on undergraduate medical courses. An essential paradigm for the evaluation was the coherence between how teachers conceptualise their practice (espoused theories) and their actual practice (theories-in-use). METHODS: The context was a module within an integrated basic sciences course in an undergraduate medical degree programme. The programme had an explicit intention of providing a student-centred curriculum. A content analysis framework based on Weimer's dimensions of student-centred teaching was used to analyze data collected from individual interviews with seven teachers to identify espoused theories and 34h of classroom observations and one student focus group to identify theories-in-use. The interviewees were identified by purposeful sampling. The findings from the three methods were triangulated to evaluate the student-centredness of teaching and learning on the course. RESULTS: Different, but complementary, perspectives of the student-centredness of teaching and learning were identified by each method. The triangulation of the findings revealed coherence between the teachers' espoused theories and theories-in-use. CONCLUSIONS: A mixed-methods approach that combined classroom observations with interviews from a purposeful sample of teachers and students offered a useful evaluation of the extent of student-centredness of teaching and learning of this basic science course. Our case study suggests that this new approach is applicable to other courses in medical education

Status epilepticus in the childhood. A Review of seven years

Rev Neurol. 2000 Mar 1-15;30(5):414-8. [Status epilepticus in the childhood. A review of seven years] [Article in Spanish] Oliveira D, Oliveira MJ, Alves V, Temudo T. Hospital Geral de Santo António, Porto, Portugal. Abstract INTRODUCTION: Status epilepticus is a neurological emergency that requires early and prompt treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This retrospective study includes 32 children treated for status epilepticus at Hospital Geral de Santo António, from January 1992 to December 1998. We evaluated the clinical features, duration, aetiology and prognostic. RESULTS: Symptomatic or criptogenetic aetiology was present in 53% of children and idiopathic in 47%. 27% of episodes of status epilepticus were induced by fever. The most common neurological sequel was epilepsy (onset of new epilepsy in 20%; aggravated in 25%). Two children (10%) had major neurological sequelae after status epilepticus. CONCLUSION: In our study the duration of status epilepticus and sequelae seems to be related with aetiology. PMID: 10775965 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE

Mosquito surveillance for prevention and control of emerging mosquito-borne diseases in Portugal - 2008-2014

Mosquito surveillance in Europe is essential for early detection of invasive species with public health importance and prevention and control of emerging pathogens. In Portugal, a vector surveillance national program-REVIVE (REde de VIgilância de VEctores)-has been operating since 2008 under the custody of Portuguese Ministry of Health. The REVIVE is responsible for the nationwide surveillance of hematophagous arthropods. Surveillance for West Nile virus (WNV) and other flaviviruses in adult mosquitoes is continuously performed. Adult mosquitoes-collected mainly with Centre for Disease Control light traps baited with CO2-and larvae were systematically collected from a wide range of habitats in 20 subregions (NUTS III). Around 500,000 mosquitoes were trapped in more than 3,000 trap nights and 3,500 positive larvae surveys, in which 24 species were recorded. The viral activity detected in mosquito populations in these years has been limited to insect specific flaviviruses (ISFs) non-pathogenic to humans. Rather than emergency response, REVIVE allows timely detection of changes in abundance and species diversity providing valuable knowledge to health authorities, which may take control measures of vector populations reducing its impact on public health. This work aims to present the REVIVE operation and to expose data regarding mosquito species composition and detected ISFs.This work was partially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) under the project “New arboviruses isolated in Portugal. Risk assessment and public health application” (PTDC/SAU-SAP/119199/2010)

Parent Actions, Dualities and New Weyl-invariant Actions of Bosonic p-branes

By using the systematic approach of parent action method, we derive one Weyl-noninvariant and two Weyl-invariant actions of bosonic $p$-branes ($p\geq 2$) starting from the Nambu-Goto action, and establish the duality symmetries in this set of four actions. Moreover, we discover a new bosonic $p$-brane action (including the string theory) and deduce two corresponding Weyl-invariant formulations by proposing a new special parent action. We find that the same duality symmetries as those mentioned above exist in this new set of actions. The new $p$-brane actions are also briefly analyzed.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures. The first section is modified slightly, and references are adde

European lampreys: new insights on postglacial colonization, gene flow and speciation.

Ice ages are known to be the most dominant palaeoclimatic feature occurring on Earth, producing severe climatic oscillations and consequently shaping the distribution and the population structure of several species. Lampreys constitute excellent models to study the colonization of freshwater systems, as they commonly appear in pairs of closely related species of anadromous versus freshwater resident adults, thus having the ability to colonize new habitats, through the anadromous species, and establish freshwater resident derivates. We used 10 microsatellite loci to investigate the spatial structure, patterns of gene flow and migration routes of Lampetra populations in Europe. We sampled 11 populations including the migratory L. fluviatilis and four resident species, L. planeri, L. alavariensis, L. auremensis and L. lusitanica, the last three endemic to the Iberian Peninsula. In this southern glacial refugium almost all sampled populations represent a distinct genetic cluster, showing high levels of allopatric differentiation, reflecting long periods of isolation. As result of their more recent common ancestor, populations from northern Europe are less divergent among them, they are represented by fewer genetic clusters, and there is evidence of strong recent gene flow among populations. These previously glaciated areas from northern Europe may have been colonized from lampreys expanding out of the Iberian refugia. The pair L. fluviatilis/L. planeri is apparently at different stages of speciation in different locations, showing evidences of high reproductive isolation in the southern refugium, and low differentiation in the north

Dry‐Cured Meat Products According to the Smoking Regime: Process Optimization to Control Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

The manufacturing of dry‐cured meat products usually includes a smoking step. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are potentially carcinogenic chemical compounds that may result from smoking. The aim of the present study was to optimize the smoking regime of traditional dry‐cured meat products in order to minimize the presence of PAHs. Dry‐cured sausages were submitted to different smoking regimes: (A) no smoking; (B) 20 h effective smoking; (C) 60 h effective smoking; (D) effective smoking until reaching 38%–40% weight losses. Three independent batches were produced per smoking regime, and three samples per batch were analyzed. Microbiological, physicochemical, and sensory analyses were performed. The total PAHs content was generally low and did not differ significantly in meat products submitted to the four different smoking regimes. The PAH4 and benzo(α)pyrene levels were below the established legal limits in all analyzed dry‐cured sausages. Nevertheless, non‐smoked sausages always showed lower PAHs values for all PAHs groups