Homeopatia e fitoterapia: crenças e consumo dos estudantes da Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa

Medicinas complementares e alternativas (MCA): cada vez mais utilizadas, em paralelo com a medicina convencional (MC) e 80% das pessoas no mundo já usaram alguma terapia das MCA. Insatisfação relativa à MC: preço elevado da assistência médica privada; alto custo dos medicamentos; precariedade da assistência prestada pelos serviços públicos. Crenças positivas sobre MCA: tão eficazes como a MC; se correctamente utilizadas, não ocasionam efeitos colaterais prejudiciais; mais compatíveis com valores pessoais e filosofias religiosas do que MC. Utilização das MCA: mais utilizadas (homeopatia e fitoterapia); tratamento e controlo de doenças crónicas. Objectivo do estudo: caracterizar as crenças sobre homeopatia e fitoterapia e os comportamentos de consumo dos estudantes da ESTeSL, enquanto consumidores e futuros profissionais de saúde

Evaluation of the Impact of Social Collaborations on Sexual and Reproductive Health Knowledge

Introduction: Developments in technology, such as the popularity of mobile devices and social media outlets, have enhanced the ability of individuals to communicate. Currently, search engines allow for easy exploration of information related to every topic of interest. Our study purpose was to evaluate the impact of technological and social collaborations on sexual and reproductive health knowledge (SRHK). Methods: A 50-item survey instrument, integrating factors of sociodemographics, number/type of social collaborations, technological communication use, and SRHK, was developed to assess familiarity with sexual and reproductive health perceptions. The survey was provided to consenting patients in an ambulatory, primary care setting. Data was coded and analyzed using IBM-SPSS. Statistical analysis included: Pearson correlation, t and Chi-squared tests. Statistical significance was established at p \u3c .05. Results: A total of 75 patients completed the study, mean age 57.4 + 15.2 years, 87.7% female, 79.5% African American, 97.2% had an education level of High School or above, and 68.5% had incomes \u3c $ 50,000. The study group had a mean SRHK score of 9.0 + 4.3 on a scale of 0-18. The quantity of technological communications (p \u3c .001), as well as number of social collaborations (as measured by weekly visits with relatives, neighbors and friends), both, were positively associated with SRHK. Conclusions: Our study indicates that amplified technological communications, together with increased social collaborations, may have a significant beneficial impact on SRHK, thereby enabling an improved awareness of sexual health among the participants. More research studies to advance these results are merited

Handgrip strength and its dialysis determinants in hemodialysis patients

AbstractObjectiveTo evaluate muscle function (MF) of patients on hemodialysis (HD) and to investigate the dialysis determinants of maximal voluntary handgrip strength (HGS).MethodsForty-three patients on HD (25 men, six diabetics, 54.5 ± 12.2 y of age, 62.2 ± 51.4 mo on dialysis) were studied. HGS was measured three times with a mechanical dynamometer (Jamar) before and after HD sessions on the non-fistula side and the highest value was used for analysis. HGS values lower than the 10th percentile of an age-, gender-, and region-specific reference were considered MF loss. Biochemical and dialysis variables (ultrafiltration, interdialytic body weight gain, urea clearance, urea before and after HD, systolic and diastolic blood pressures before and after HD, and difference in systolic and diastolic blood pressures) were also examined.ResultsThe HGS values before and after HD values were significantly higher in men but were not statistically different before and after the HD sessions (29.8 ± 10.3 and 30.2 ± 9.9 kg for men, 14.1 ± 7.0 and 14.5 ± 6.3 kg for women). MF loss was observed in 24 patients (55.8%), 12 women and 12 men. Dialysis variables were not different between patients with and without MF loss and did not correlate with HGS measured before or after an HD session.ConclusionsPatients using HD presented a high prevalence of MF loss as assessed by HGS, and it was not influenced by dialysis variables. HGS may be used as a reliable nutritional marker in HD, measured before or after HD sessions

Faster Homomorphic Encryption over GPGPUs via hierarchical DGT

Privacy guarantees are still insufficient for outsourced data processing in the cloud. While employing encryption is feasible for data at rest or in transit, it is not for computation without remarkable performance slowdown. Thus, handling data in plaintext during processing is still required, which creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malicious entities. Homomorphic encryption (HE) schemes are natural candidates for computation in the cloud since they enable processing of ciphertexts without any knowledge about the related plaintexts or the decryption key. This work focuses on the challenge of developing an efficient implementation of the BFV HE scheme on CUDA. This is done by combining and adapting different approaches from the literature, namely the double-CRT representation and the Discrete Galois Transform. Moreover, we propose and implement an improved formulation of the DGT inspired by classical algorithms, which computes the transform up to $2.6$ times faster than the state-of-the-art. By using these approaches, we obtain up to $3.6$ times faster homomorphic multiplication

Performance of Hierarchical Transforms in Homomorphic Encryption: A case study on Logistic Regression inference

Recent works challenged the Number-Theoretic Transform (NTT) as the most efficient method for polynomial multiplication in GPU implementations of Fully Homomorphic Encryption schemes such as CKKS and BFV. In particular, these works argue that the Discrete Galois Transform (DGT) is a better candidate for this particular case. However, these claims were never rigorously validated, and only intuition was used to argue in favor of each transform. This work brings some light on the dis- cussion by developing similar CUDA implementations of the CKKS cryptosystem, differing only in the underlying transform and related data structure. We ran several experiments and collected perfor- mance metrics in different contexts, ranging from the basic direct comparison between the transforms to measuring the impact of each one on the inference phase of the logistic regression algorithm. Our observations suggest that, despite some specific polynomial ring configurations, the DGT in a stan- dalone implementation does not offer the same performance as the NTT. However, when we consider the entire cryptosystem, we noticed that the effects of the higher arithmetic density of the DGT on other parts of the implementation is substantial, implying a considerable performance improvement of up to 15% on the homomorphic multiplication. Furthermore, this speedup is consistent when we consider a more complex application, indicating that the DGT suits better the target architecture

Deformulation of a solid pharmaceutical form using computed tomography and X-ray fluorescence

Deformulation of medicines is of undeniable importance, since it can be utilized both to unravel the chemical composition of the excipients integrating a pharmaceutical formulation of a specific medicine and as an important tool to conduct morphometric studies of the formulation under study. Such strategy may be utilized in analytical studies aiming at quantifying the components of reference drugs, or in the identification of putative counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Deformulation makes use of physicochemical analysis tools to characterize, from the chemical point of view, the components integrating medicine pharmaceutical formulations and from the physical point of view, the morphological part of the pharmaceutical formulation. The techniques of computer tomography (SkyScan 1174 - Bruker microCT) and X-ray fluorescence analyses (using an X-ray source with W-anode from Hammatsu Photonics and Silicon Drift detector from Amptek) were successfully used in performing a process of deformulation of a solid pharmaceutical formulation of tablets, utilized herein as a model medicine for controlled drug release. The analytical methods used in this work, proved their effectiveness for the main goal of this study, which aimed to characterize a pharmaceutical formulation via its deconstruction.Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, São Paulo, Brasil) (FAPESP Ref. No. 2012/15651-4, Tomógrafo para Aplicações na Área das Ciências Farmacêutica; FAPESP Ref. No. 2013/03181-6, Project PneumoPhageKill; FAPESP Ref. No. 2012/15651-4 and FAPESP Ref. No. 2013/19300-4, Auxílio à Pesquisa - Reserva Técnica para Infra-estrutura Institucional de Pesquisa) and by FINEP – Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) (FINEP Ref. No. 01.13.0286.00

High Verdet Constant Ga:s:la:o Chalcogenide Glasses For Magneto-optical Devices

The magneto-optical rotation at room temperature was measured for three Ga:S:La:O chalcogenide glasses at several laser lines in the visible. The first sample was a binary system constituted by 70 mol % Ga2S3 and 30 mol % La2O3, whereas in the second and third ones the lanthanum oxide was partially substituted by lanthanum sulfide, keeping the amount of gallium sulfide fixed. A pulsed magnetic field between 50 and 80 kG was used for the Faraday rotation measurements. The Verdet constant for one of the ternary samples was found to be as high as 0.205 min G-1 cm-1 at 543 nm, indicating that these chalcogenide glasses are very promising for magneto-optical applications. The data for each sample were fitted using the expected analytical expression for the magneto-optical dispersion. Measurements of the refractive index of the glasses at 632.8 nm are also reported. Data on the magneto-optical properties of two high Verdet constant, heavy-metal oxide diamagnetic glasses are also included for comparison. © 1999 Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers.382214219Schweizer, T., Hewark, D.W., Payne, D.N., Jensen, T., Huber, G., Rare-earth doped chalcogenide glass laser (1996) Electron. Lett., 32 (7), pp. 666-667Hewark, D.W., Samson, B.N., Medeiros Neto, J.A., Laming, R.I., Payne, D.N., Emission at 1.3 μm from dysprosium-doped GaLaS glass (1994) Electron. Lett., 30 (12), pp. 968-970Kumta, P.N., Risbud, S.H., Rare-earth chalcogenides - An emerging class of optical materials (1994) J. Mater. Sci., 29 (5), pp. 1135-1157De Araujo, M.T., Vermelho, M.V.D., Gouveia Neto, A.S., Sombra, A.S., Medeiros Neto, J.A., Efficient second harmonic generation in praseodymium doped Ga:La:S glass for 1.3 μm optical fiber amplifiers (1996) IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett., 8 (6), pp. 821-823Schulz, P.A., Wavelength independent Faraday isolator (1989) Appl. 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Preparation and characterisation of high refractive index PhO-TiO2-TeO2 glass systems

We describe the predaration and characterisation of high refractive index PbO-TiO2-TeO2 glass systems. Highly homogeneous glasses were obtained by agitating the oxide mixture during the melting process in an alumina crucible. The characterisation was performed by X-ray diffraction, density, dilatometry, Raman scattering, light absorption and linear refractive index measurements. The results show a change in the glass structure as the PbO content increases: the TeO4 trigonal bipyramids characteristic of TeO4 glasses transform into TeO, trigonal pyramids. However, the measured refractive indices are almost independent of the glass composition. We show that third-order non-linear optical susceptibilities calculated from the measured refractive indices using Lines' theoretical model are also independent of the glass composition.6111811181