An application to improve emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia de Eletrónica Industrial e ComputadoresThis dissertation presents a project developed with the aim of promoting emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The project involves a serious game and a playware object, which is a physical component that acts as the game controller and allows the user to interactively play the serious game. The playware object has six pressure buttons, each one showing an emoji with a specific facial expression and communicates wirelessly via Bluetooth with the serious game app installed in an Android device. The facial expressions used are: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and neutral/normal. They were applied to the three game activities (imitation, recognition and storytelling). The chain of tests started with an online questionnaire to validate the avatars created to represent the previously mentioned facial expressions in the game (with 114 answers and a mean success rate of 96.2%), which was followed by a usability test of the application (serious game and playware object) with six typically developing children (with 94.4% answer accuracy). Finally, the three game activities were tested with six children with ASD in three/four sessions. Due to the small group test and the short number of sessions, the goal was to test the acceptance of the game rather than the users´ improvement in the activity. It is worth referring that both the serious game and the playware object had a high level of approval from the children and they expressed their interest during the activities. With this project it was intended to contribute to the development of pedagogical resources to be used by professionals and families in the support of children with ASD.Esta dissertação apresenta um projeto desenvolvido com o objetivo de promover capacidades emocionais em crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo. Este projeto envolve um jogo sério e um objeto playware, que é um componente físico que funciona como controlador de jogo e permite que o utilizador jogue o jogo sério de uma forma interativa. O objeto playware tem seis botões de pressão, cada um com um emoji com uma expressão facial específica, e comunica sem fios por Bluetooth com a aplicação do jogo sério instalada no dispositivo Android. As expressões faciais usadas são: felicidade, tristeza, medo, raiva, surpresa e neutro/normal. Estas foram aplicadas às três diferentes atividades de jogo (imitar, reconhecer e contar histórias). A cadeia de testes começou com um questionário online para validar os avatares criados para representar as expressões faciais previamente mencionadas no jogo (com 114 submissões e uma taxa média de sucesso de 96,2%), seguido de um teste de usabilidade da aplicação (jogo sério e objeto playware) com seis crianças tipicamente desenvolvidas (com 94,4% de respostas corretas). Por fim, as três atividades de jogo foram testadas com seis crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo durante 3 a 4 sessões. Devido à pequena dimensão do grupo de teste e ao baixo número de sessões, o objetivo foi testar a aceitação do jogo em vez da evolução das capacidades dos utilizadores na atividade. É importante referir que tanto o jogo sério como o objeto playware tiveram um alto nível de aprovação por parte das crianças que expressaram o seu interesse durante as atividades. Este projeto pretende contribuir para o desenvolvimento de recursos pedagógicos a serem usados por profissionais e famílias no apoio a crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo

Serious games assisted by playware as a way to improve socio-emotional skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

This paper presents a project developed with the aim of promoting emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The project involves a serious game and a playware object, which is a physical component that allows the user to interactively play the serious game. The playware object has six buttons, each one showing an emoji with a specific facial expression and communicates via Bluetooth with the serious game app installed in an Android device. The facial expressions used are: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and neutral/normal. They were applied to the three game activities (imitation, recognition and storytelling). The chain of tests started with an online questionnaire to validate the avatars created to represent the previously mentioned facial expressions in the game, which was followed by a usability test of the application (serious game and playware object) with six typically developing children. Finally, the three game activities were tested with six children with ASD in three/four sessions. Due to the small test group and reduced number of sessions, the primary objective was to assess if the target group accepted the application. In fact, it had a high level of approval regarding both the serious game and the playware object. had a high level of approval regarding both the serious game and the playware object.COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT –Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. Vinicius Silva also thanks FCT for the PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/SFRH/BD/133314/2017. The authors thank the teachers and students of the Elementary School of Gualtar (EB1/JI Gualtar) in Braga for the participation in the testsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

collaborative development and implementation of Remote Patient Monitoring pilot initiatives to increase access to follow-up care

Funding Information: This research has been supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) under CardioFollow.AI project (DSAIPA/AI/0094/2020) and Lisboa-05-3559-FSE-000003. Acknowledgments Funding Information: In 2020, in the scope of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação Portuguesa para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCT) launched a tender to support Research and Development (R&D) projects in the areas of data science and artificial intelligence (AI) in Public Administration (). The main objective was to promote projects that could cope with pandemic-imposed challenges, improve public health services, and support citizens in better decision-making concerning health behaviors. FCT required the participation of at least one public administration entity providing health care committed to using the project results and the R&D activities. Another requirement was to provide a Data Management Plan that preserved the use of data ethical and legal aspects, such as privacy and consent issues in citizens’ data access, data sharing across different sources, and transparency of the analysis and utilization. The projects could last 24 to 36 months with a maximum funding limit per project of 240 thousand euros. This tender allocated 3 million euros from a national-based fund budget. Publisher Copyright: 2022 Azevedo, Guede-Fernández, von Hafe, Dias, Lopes, Cardoso, Coelho, Santos, Fragata, Vital, Semedo, Gualdino and Londral.Background: COVID-19 increased the demand for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) services as a rapid solution for safe patient follow-up in a lockdown context. Time and resource constraints resulted in unplanned scaled-up RPM pilot initiatives posing risks to the access and quality of care. Scalability and rapid implementation of RPM services require social change and active collaboration between stakeholders. Therefore, a participatory action research (PAR) approach is needed to support the collaborative development of the technological component while simultaneously implementing and evaluating the RPM service through critical action-reflection cycles. Objective: This study aims to demonstrate how PAR can be used to guide the scalability design of RPM pilot initiatives and the implementation of RPM-based follow-up services. Methods: Using a case study strategy, we described the PAR team’s (nurses, physicians, developers, and researchers) activities within and across the four phases of the research process (problem definition, planning, action, and reflection). Team meetings were analyzed through content analysis and descriptive statistics. The PAR team selected ex-ante pilot initiatives to reflect upon features feedback and participatory level assessment. Pilot initiatives were investigated using semi-structured interviews transcribed and coded into themes following the principles of grounded theory and pilot meetings minutes and reports through content analysis. The PAR team used the MoSCoW prioritization method to define the set of features and descriptive statistics to reflect on the performance of the PAR approach. Results: The approach involved two action-reflection cycles. From the 15 features identified, the team classified 11 as must-haves in the scaled-up version. The participation was similar among researchers (52.9%), developers (47.5%), and physicians (46.7%), who focused on suggesting and planning actions. Nurses with the lowest participation (5.8%) focused on knowledge sharing and generation. The top three meeting outcomes were: improved research and development system (35.0%), socio-technical-economic constraints characterization (25.2%), and understanding of end-user technology utilization (22.0%). Conclusion: The scalability and implementation of RPM services must consider contextual factors, such as individuals’ and organizations’ interests and needs. The PAR approach supports simultaneously designing, developing, testing, and evaluating the RPM technological features, in a real-world context, with the participation of healthcare professionals, developers, and researchers.publishersversionpublishe

Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms related to work in dental surgeons: a wide review of current medical literature

Introduction: Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSD) are considered a public health problem because of their high prevalence in various professions, including dental professionals. Because of poor posture and organization at work, for example, dental surgeons occupy the top spot on sick leave due to temporary or permanent disability, accounting for approximately 30% of the causes of premature abandonment between medical activities.Objectives: To identify the prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms and their relationship with dentist activity and to evaluate the relationship between symptomatology and laboratory test results.Methodology: A scan was performed, but Scopus, Web of Sciences and Google Scholar indexing databases were used to unite musculoskeletal disorders, dental surgeons, prevalence, laboratory tests. We found 15,000 articles, of which 56 were selected based on the best h index score or Qualis rating on the Sucupira platform.Conclusion: The relationship between musculoskeletal pain and dentist activity is strong and in some cases, these disorders can be detected on laboratory tests

Patient-physician discordance in assessment of adherence to inhaled controller medication: a cross-sectional analysis of two cohorts

We aimed to compare patient's and physician's ratings of inhaled medication adherence and to identify predictors of patient-physician discordance.(SFRH/BPD/115169/2016) funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT); ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the operations: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029130 ('mINSPIRERS—mHealth to measure and improve adherence to medication in chronic obstructive respiratory diseases—generalisation and evaluation of gamification, peer support and advanced image processing technologies') cofunded by the COMPETE2020 (Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização), Portugal 2020 and by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Relato de caso: adenocarcinoma retossigmoide com metástase para ovário esquerdo – tumor de krukenberg / Case report: retosigmoid adenocarcinoma with metastasis for left ovary - krukenberg tumor

RESUMOO tumor de krukenberg é um carcinoma metastático ovariano gastrointestinal.  A apresentação é inespecífica com dor abdominal e alterações intestinais. Em média 30% das neoplasias ovarianas são metastáticas, sendo o estômago sua origem mais comum (76%), seguido do colorretal (11%).  O objetivo do estudo foi relatar e revisar na literatura um caso de um paciente de 24 anos diagnosticada com Tumor de Krukenberg após investigação com exames de imagens devido à sintomatologia de dor abdominal e enterorragia, onde se identificou adenocarcinoma de reto e massa anexial esquerda. Foi realizado retossigmoidectomia com anastomose colo-anal, ileostomia em alça de proteção e salpingooforectomia esquerda. O tumor de Krukenberg tem o estômago como principal órgão de origem, seguido de retossigmóide, em baixa proporção. O prognóstico não é favorável; sendo um diagnóstico raro com possibilidade de recorrência após cirurgia citorredutora e muitas vezes seguida de terapia paliativa. Portanto, sendo o relato descrito apenas para um único ovário e sua origem retal, com dificuldade para traçar um prognóstico, torna-se relevante, o que demonstra um caso raro e de menor incidência na literatura. ABSTRACTKrukenberg's tumor is a gastrointestinal ovarian metastatic carcinoma. The presentation is nonspecific with abdominal pain and intestinal changes. On average 30% of ovarian neoplasms are metastatic, with the stomach being its most common origin (76%), followed by colorectal (11%). The aim of the study was to report and review in the literature a case of a 24-year-old patient diagnosed with Krukenberg's Tumor diagnosed after imaging studies due to symptoms of abdominal pain and enterorrhagia, which identified adenocarcinoma of the rectum and left adnexal mass. Rectosigmoidectomy was performed with a coloanal anastomosis protective loop ileostomy and left salpingoophorectomy. The Krukenberg tumor has the stomach as its main organ of origin, followed by a rectosigmoid, in a low proportion. The prognosis is not favorable; being a rare diagnosis with the possibility of recurrence after cytoreductive surgery and often followed by palliative therapy. Therefore, since the report is described only for a single ovary and its rectal origin, with difficulty in drawing a prognosis, it becomes relevant, which shows it is a rare case and of lesser incidence in the literature

PCH: a preservação do patrimônio cultural e natural como política regional e urbana

TThis paper analyzes the roots of the Historical Cities Program (PCH), its creation in 1973, and deactivation in early 1980s. The program was rooted in the insertion of IPHAN in international cooperation network, the ideas of its articulator, Arch. Renato Soeiro, and military government objectives, which included the Northeast development through cultural tourism. The presence of northeastern and northerners people in ministries and higher ranks of the military government has contributed to its creation. After 36 years, Recife replace the leadership of Rio de Janeiro on heritage policy, strengthening local groups and setting off a struggle for control within IPHAN. Without support from the Secretariat of Planning and General Coordination of the Presidency of the Republic, the PCH started to be dismounted by the government of General João Figueiredo in 1979, after a new cultural policy to create a popular base for the "gradual and controlled opening policy." Alongside this ideological shift, the regionalist dispute between groups of Recife and Rio de Janeiro was intensified and the PCH progressively dismounted.Este texto analisa as raízes do Programa das Cidades Históricas, sua criação em 1973 e sua desativação no início da década de 1980. Suas raízes estariam na inserção do Iphan na rede de cooperação internacional, no ideário de seu principal articulador, o arquiteto Renato Soeiro, e no objetivo do governo militar de promover o desenvolvimento da região Nordeste. Para sua criação, teria contribuído a presença de nordestinos e nortistas em ministérios e altos postos do governo militar. Após 36 anos da criação do Sphan, o protagonismo das ações sobre o patrimônio seria transferido do Rio de Janeiro para o Recife, fortalecendo grupos locais e dando início a uma disputa pelo controle do Iphan. Sem contar mais com o apoio da Secretaria de Planejamento e Coordenação Geral da Presidência da República, o PCH começa a ser desativado em 1979, no governo do Gal. João Figueiredo, com uma nova política cultural destinada a criar uma base popular para a "abertura política gradual e controlada". Paralelamente a essa mudança ideológica, se acirra a disputa entre os grupos do Recife e do Rio de Janeiro e se dá a progressiva desativação do PCH

Identification of clusters of asthma control: A preliminary analysis of the inspirers studies

This work was funded by ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the operations: POCI- -01-0145-FEDER-029130 (“mINSPIRERS—mHealth to measure and improve adherence to medication in chronic obstructive respiratory diseases - generalisation and evaluation of gamification, peer support and advanced image processing technologies”) co-funded by the COMPETE2020 (Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização), Portugal 2020 and by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).© 2020, Sociedade Portuguesa de Alergologia e Imunologia Clinica. All rights reserved. Aims: To identify distinct asthma control clusters based on Control of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma Test (CARAT) and to compare patients’ characteristics among these clusters. Methods: Adults and adolescents (≥13 years) with persistent asthma were recruited at 29 Portuguese hospital outpatient clinics, in the context of two observational studies of the INSPIRERS project. Demographic and clinical characteristics, adherence to inhaled medication, beliefs about inhaled medication, anxiety and depression, quality of life, and asthma control (CARAT, >24 good control) were collected. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using CARAT total score (CARAT-T). Results: 410 patients (68% adults), with a median (percentile 25–percentile 75) age of 28 (16-46) years, were analysed. Three clusters were identified [mean CARAT-T (min-max)]: cluster 1 [27(24-30)], cluster 2 [19(14-23)] and cluster 3 [10(2-13)]. Patients in cluster 1 (34%) were characterised by better asthma control, better quality of life, higher inhaler adherence and use of a single inhaler. Patients in clusters 2 (50%) and 3 (16%) had uncontrolled asthma, lower inhaler adherence, more symptoms of anxiety and depression and more than half had at least one exacerbation in the previous year. Further-more, patients in cluster 3 were predominantly female, had more unscheduled medical visits and more anxiety symp-toms, perceived a higher necessity of their prescribed inhalers but also higher levels of concern about taking these inhalers. There were no differences in age, body mass index, lung function, smoking status, hospital admissions or specialist physician follow-up time among the three clusters. Conclusion: An unsupervised method based on CARAT--T, identified 3 clusters of patients with distinct, clinically meaningful characteristics. The cluster with better asthma control had a cut-off similar to the established in the validation study of CARAT and an additional cut-off seems to distinguish more severe disease. Further research is necessary to validate the asthma control clusters identified.publishersversionpublishe

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio