Technologies that motivates healthy toothbrushing: practices through social translucence

Fifty percent of the European Union’s population suffers from an oral disease. Studies have repeatedly shown that while acquiring healthy toothbrushing practices early on in one’s life is of significance, children and adults often fail to adhere to those. In this thesis we attempt to design and prototype interactive technologies that motivate healthy tooth brushing habits on individuals. Rather than focusing on the technologies’ persuasive power over individuals, we tap on the social mechanisms employed by families. In this sense, we think of these technologies as social translucent rather than persuasive, whose goal is to raise awareness within the family on each other’s habits and that aim at leveraging families’ existing social mechanisms for behavior change, rather than replacing them. More specifically, we aim to gain insights with respect to the following questions: a) What are the drivers and barriers towards adhering to healthy tooth brushing behaviors? b) Can we effectively measure toothbrushing behaviors? c) How can technologies leverage family communication practices in motivating proper toothbrushing behaviors? First, we present two studies about children and adults’ tooth brushing behaviors and how these are influenced by social interactions within the family. Secondly, we present the design and prototyping of two systems that sense toothbrushing practices and provide feedback, using the Social Translucence Framework as a design lens. We conclude with an overview of lessons learnt from the prototyping of these systems supported by an analysis of the strengths and pitfalls of the developed technologies

Small colony variants de Staphylococcus aureus nas infeções respiratórias crónicas de fibrose quística

Trabalho Final do Curso de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 2020Staphylococcus aureus é o agente oportunista mais frequentemente isolado nas secreções respiratórias dos doentes com Fibrose Quística. Esta bactéria persiste durante períodos extensos nas vias aéreas apesar de esquemas antimicrobianos agressivos e repetitivos. Durante a colonização pulmonar crónica, S. aureus é exposto a numerosas pressões seletivas impostas pelo ambiente dinâmico e hostil do pulmão de FQ, levando ao estabelecimento de uma população bacteriana heterogénea fenotípica. Small Colony Variants (SCV) é uma subpopulação bacteriana auxotrófica de crescimento lento que exibe características morfológicas, fisiológicas e metabólicas distintas, que facilitam o desenvolvimento de infeções persistentes, recorrentes e refratárias a terapêutica standard. O diagnóstico laboratorial de SCV de S. aureus representa um desafio para o microbiologista clínico, dado que requere a aplicação de métodos de diagnóstico especiais, não empregados rotineiramente pela maioria dos laboratórios clínicos de FQ. Até a data, poucos laboratórios clínicos reportam a presença de isolados de SCV de S. aureus. Estudos epidemiológicos demonstraram que doentes pediátricos tal como adultos estão frequentemente colonizados por SCV de S. aureus. A idade avançada, exposição prévia a Sulfametoxazol-trimetoprim, coinfecção com Pseudomonas aeruginosa e declínio da função pulmonar constituem fatores de risco independentes para emergência de SCV de S. aureus. São necessários mais estudos para determinar se a presença de SCV de S. aureus representa um marcador de doença pulmonar avançada ou se desempenha um papel patogénico na progressão da doença pulmonar. As implicações diagnósticas e clínicas de SCV de S. aureus enfatizam a importância na monitorização e vigilância deste fenótipo, de forma a aumentar o conhecimento do seu significado clínico na doença pulmonar na FQ.Staphylococcus aureus is the opportunist pathogen most isolated from respiratory secretions of people with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). These bacteria often persists in the airways for extended periods despite aggressive and repetitive antimicrobial regimens. During chronic lung colonization, S. aureus is exposed to numerous selective pressures imposed by the dynamic and hostile environment of the CF lung, leading to the establishment of a phenotypic heterogeneous bacterial population. Small Colony Variants (SCV) constitute a slow-growing auxotrophic bacterial subpopulation that exhibits distinctive morphological, physiological and metabolic characteristics, which facilitates the development of persistent, relapsing infections and refractory to standard antimicrobial therapy. The laboratorial diagnosis of S. aureus SCV represents a challenge for the clinical microbiologist, since it requires special diagnostics methods, not applied in routinely by most of CF clinical laboratories. To date, few clinical laboratories report the presence of S. aureus SCV isolates. Epidemiological studies demonstrated that pediatric and adults patients are commonly colonized by S. aureus SCV. Older age, prior exposition to trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole, coinfection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and worse lung function constitute independent risk factors for the emergency of S. aureus SCV. It is necessary further studies to determinate whether the presence of SCV S. aureus represent a marker of more advanced pulmonary disease or plays a pathogenic role on pulmonary disease progression. The clinical implications of S. aureus SCV underscores the importance of surveillance and monitorization of this phenotype, in order to enhance the understanding of their clinical significance of CF pulmonary disease

Концепції визначення терміну "джерело міжнародного права"

Карабан Я. О. Концепції визначення терміну "джерело міжнародного права" / Я. О. Карабан // Міжнародні читання з міжнародного права пам’яті професора П.Є. Казанського : матер. третьої міжнар. наук. конф. (м. Одеса, 2–3 листопада 2012 р.) / відп. за випуск М. І. Пашковський ; НУ «ОЮА». – Одеса : Фенікс, 2012. – С. 55-57.У процесі підготовки доповіді автором було розкрито різноманітне визначення терміну «джерело міжнародного права». Це перш за все пов’язано з різними поглядами авторів щодо його походження та реалізації даного поняття. Аналізуючи сучасні теоретичні концепції міжнародного права, можна визначити джерелами міжнародного права (у юридичному значенні) – форми, в яких існують норми міжнародного права, створені суб’єктами міжнародного права в результаті узгодження своїх позицій. При цьому мається на увазі, що створення норм міжнародного права – це процес, а джерела міжнародного права це кінцевий результат цього процесу

Hydrogen generation by electrolysis of seawater

The sea waves-generated power and its utilization in situ for the hydrogen generation by seawater electrolysis is a very interesting way. The seawater electrolysis is technically feasible and is a perspective procedure for an environmentally-clean commercial production of hydrogen and associate products The aim of this work is to examine the variation of the tension and energy consumption at electrolysis of natural seawater (Black Sea – Constanta, Romania) comparative with electrolysis of a solution of 15% NaOH, in the same condition

Seawater electrolysis for hydrogen production

A perspective procedure for an environmentally-clean commercial production of hydrogen by seawater as an „in situ” utilisation of marine wave generated power is the seawater electrolysis. In this paper original studies in seawater, using the methods of steady-state polarisation curves and the impedance spectroscopy were made on Ni

CERN experiment points to a cloudier pre-industrial climate VNR

Geneva, 26 May 2016. In two papers published today in the journal Nature, new results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN imply the baseline pristine pre-industrial climate may have been cloudier than presently thought. CLOUD shows that organic vapours emitted by trees produce abundant aerosol particles in the atmosphere in the absence of sulphuric acid. Previously it was thought that sulphuric acid – which largely arises from fossil fuels – was essential to initiate aerosol particle formation. CLOUD finds that these so-called biogenic vapours are also key to the growth of the newly-formed particles up to sizes where they can seed clouds. “These results are the most important so far by the CLOUD experiment at CERN,” said CLOUD spokesperson, Jasper Kirkby. “When the nucleation and growth of pure biogenic aerosol particles is included in climate models, it should sharpen our understanding of the impact of human activities on clouds and climate.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers that the increase in aerosols and clouds since pre-industrial times represents one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate change5. CLOUD is designed to understand how new aerosol particles form and grow in the atmosphere, and their effect on clouds and climate. CLOUD also finds that ions from galactic cosmic rays strongly enhance the production rate of pure biogenic particles – by a factor 10-100 compared with particles without ions. This suggests that cosmic rays may have played a more important role in aerosol and cloud formation in pre- industrial times than in today’s polluted atmosphere. A paper published simultaneously in Science (Bianchi, F., et al. Science, doi 10.1126/ science.aad5456, 2016) describes an observation of pure organic nucleation at the Jungfraujoch observatory by the same mechanism reported by CLOUD. The measurements did not involve CLOUD directly but most of the authors are also members of the CLOUD collaboration. ANIMATIONS (abstract) 5:11 - 5:20 The CLOUD experiment at CERN consists of a large chamber that allows to study the formation of cloud seeds under precisely controlled conditions. The effect of cosmic rays on the formation of tiny cloud condensation nuclei is studied using particle beams from CERN’s accelerators. 5:21 - 5:35 There is a strong link between the cloud cover and the climate. Clouds reflect sunlight and have a strong net cooling effect. The absence of clouds would result in a huge extra heat load on Earth. 5:36-5:47 Cloud formation starts from aerosol particles in the atmosphere, which become the seeds of cloud droplets. 5:48 - 6:08 Before this result was known, it was generally assumed that the presence of sulphuric acid in the atmosphere was essential to form seed particles for clouds. Since most sulphuric acid in the atmosphere comes from human activities, such as burning fossil fuel, it was assumed that the pre-industrial climate was much less cloudy than today. 6:09 - 6:20 The CLOUD experiment has shown that natural processes, namely vapours emitted by trees, are an abundant source of seed particles for clouds. 6:21 - 6:34 The presence of these tree vapours produces clouds without man-made pollution. Therefore, the cloudiness in pre-industrial times was more similar to the present situation than previously thought. 6:35 - 6:43 The CLOUD experiment has shown that these natural (biogenic) vapours form cloud seeds much more rapidly in the presence of ions produced by cosmic rays. 6:44 - 7:03 The CLOUD experiment has also shown that these natural (biogenic) vapours dominate the growth of seed particles in unpolluted environments, from the first few molecules all the way up to sizes near 100 nanometres where the particles seed cloud droplets. 7:04 - 7:13 The experiment has measured the growth rate of the seed particles and has shown that their growth accelerates with their size, starting from the size of a few molecules up to a size of 100 nanometres

Spanish language teacher program

These one-week programmes are held in one of the national languages of CERN Member States. National teacher programmes are also open for teachers from other countries speaking the same language. To follow up after each teacher programme, the lecture material and video recordings of selected lectures are archived to act as unique resources for all physics teachers when introducing particle physics into the classroom. CERN provides all scientific, administrative and technical support for the programme free of charge. This includes the scientific content and provision of national language facilitators, lecturers, and guides. However, costs for travel, accommodation and meals have to be covered individually by the teachers or by official sources, e.g. educational foundations or national authorities