Mudança nos hábitos e práticas de leitura nos alunos do 2º e 3º ciclo do ensino básico

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Psicologia (área de especialização em Psicologia Escolar e da Educação)Enquadrado num projecto de promoção da literacia, Ribeiro e colaboradores (2009) avaliaram em Outubro de 2007, os hábitos e práticas de leitura de alunos do 2.º e 3.º ciclo do ensino básico. Este estudo teve como objectivo comparar os hábitos e práticas de leitura de alunos inscritos no 2.º e 3.º ciclo do ensino básico em dois momentos de avaliação. Nos dois momentos foram avaliados 1804 alunos. Na primeira avaliação 294 alunos frequentavam o 2.º ciclo e 546 alunos o 3.ºciclo. Na segunda avaliação responderam 449 alunos do 2.º e 514 alunos do 3.º ciclo. Os alunos avaliados nos dois momentos frequentavam a mesma escola. Foi usado o mesmo questionário nos dois estudos. Este questionário incluiu cinco dimensões: Atitudes face à leitura, Incentivos à leitura, Acessibilidade a livros e Percepção de competência na compreensão de textos. Para todos os itens do questionário foram comparadas as respostas dadas pelos alunos nos dois momentos de avaliação, comparando as diferenças entre sexos e momentos. Os resultados encontrados indicam diferenças estatisticamente significativas nos itens da dimensão “Atitudes face à leitura”. Na variável “gosto pela leitura”, o número de leitores aumentou no segundo momento de avaliação, embora tenham sido registadas diferenças nos alunos e nas alunas, nestas as diferenças foram superiores. Na dimensão “Incentivos à leitura”, não se encontraram diferenças estatisticamente significativas entre os dois momentos de avaliação no número de livros recebidos. Verificaram-se diferenças estatisticamente significativas na relação entre o gosto pela leitura e a escola, constatando-se diferenças estatisticamente significativas, no grupo de alunas que referem o papel do professor no gosto pela leitura. Na dimensão “Acessibilidade a livros” verificaram-se diferenças significativas entre grupos nos itens, “número de livros existentes em casa”, “n.º de livros comprados”, “livros recebidos” e “consulta de livros em bibliotecas municipais”. Na dimensão práticas de leitura constataram-se diferenças estatisticamente significativas nas variáveis, “leitura de livros/revistas/ jornais “. Verificou-se aumento percentual entre momentos no item “escola” e aumento percentual no sexo feminino no item “casa”e no “tipo de livros”. Na dimensão percepção de competência na compreensão de textos, verificou-se diferenças estatisticamente significativas na variável “dificuldades na compreensão de textos de estudo”, observando-se um aumento percentual entre grupos no segundo momento de avaliação.Within the frame of a project for the promotion of literacy, Ribeiro and colaborators (2009) evaluated in October 2007 the reading habits and practices of junior high school students. This study’s main goal was to compare the reading habits and practices of students currently enrolled in junior high school in two different moments of evaluation. There were 1804 students assessed by the two studies. In the first evaluation, 294 students were enrolled in 2nd cycle and 546 students in 3rd cycle. In the second evaluation, 449 students were enrolled in 2nd cycle and 514 in 3rd cycle.The students who were assessed in both cases attended the same school. The same questionnaire was used in both studies. This questionnaire created included five dimensions: attitudes toward reading, reading incentive, access to books and perception of the competence of comprehension of texts. For all the items of the questionnaire, the answers given by the students were compared in both moments of evaluation, recording the differences between gender and moments. The concluding results indicate statistically relevant differences in the items of the dimension “attitudes towards reading”, in the variable “enjoyment of reading”: the number of readers increased in the second moment of assessment, although there were differences between male and female students, the latter with a higher increase than the former. Within the dimension “reading incentive”, no statistically significant differences were registered in neither of the case studies, under the variable “received incentives”. There were statistically relevant differences registered in the relation between the enjoyment of reading and the role of school, with statistically significant differences within the group of female students who refer the role of the teacher in the enjoyment of reading. In the dimension “accessibility to books” there were relevant differences between the groups within the variables “books existent at home”, “number of bought books”, “received books” and “consulting books at municipal libraries”. In the dimension “reading practices”, statistically significant differences were felt within the following variables: “reading of books/magazines/newspapers in the group of students”. There was a percentage increase between moments in the item “school” and a percentage increase in the group of female students within the item “home” and in the item “book genre”. In the dimension “perception of competence in the comprehension of texts”, there were statistically significant differences regarding the variable “difficulties in the comprehension of study texts”, recording a percentage increase between the groups in the second moment of evaluation

Advances and perspectives in prostate cancer biomarker discovery in the last 5 years through tissue and urine metabolomics

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most diagnosed cancer in men worldwide. For its screening, serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) test has been largely performed over the past decade, despite its lack of accuracy and inability to distinguish indolent from aggressive disease. Metabolomics has been widely applied in cancer biomarker discovery due to the well-known metabolic reprogramming characteristic of cancer cells. Most of the metabolomic studies have reported alterations in urine of PCa patients due its noninvasive collection, but the analysis of prostate tissue metabolome is an ideal approach to disclose specific modifications in PCa development. This review aims to summarize and discuss the most recent findings from tissue and urine metabolomic studies applied to PCa biomarker discovery. Eighteen metabolites were found consistently altered in PCa tissue among different studies, including alanine, arginine, uracil, glutamate, fumarate, and citrate. Urine metabolomic studies also showed consistency in the dysregulation of 15 metabolites and, interestingly, alterations in the levels of valine, taurine, leucine and citrate were found in common between urine and tissue studies. These findings unveil that the impact of PCa development in human metabolome may offer a promising strategy to find novel biomarkers for PCa diagnosis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A panel of urinary volatile biomarkers for differential diagnosis of prostate cancer from other urological cancers

Our group recently developed a urinary 6-biomarker panel for the diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa) which has a higher level of accuracy compared to the serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. Herein, urine from an independent cohort of PCa patients and cancer-free controls was analyzed to further validate the discriminative power of that panel. Additionally, urine from patients diagnosed with bladder cancer (BC) and renal cancer (RC) were included to evaluate the site-specificity of the panel. Results confirmed the ability of the 6-biomarker panel to discriminate PCa patients from controls, but not from other urological cancers. To overcome this limitation, an untargeted approach was performed to unveil discriminant metabolites among the three cancer types. A 10-biomarker panel comprising the original panel plus four new metabolites was established to discriminate PCa from controls, BC, and RC, with 76% sensitivity, 90% specificity, and 92% accuracy. This improved panel also disclosed better accuracy than serum PSA test and provides the basis for a new non-invasive early detection tool for PCa.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GC-MS-based endometabolome analysis differentiates prostate cancer from normal prostate cells

Prostate cancer (PCa) is an important health problem worldwide. Diagnosis and management of PCa is very complex because the detection of serum prostate specific antigen (PSA) has several drawbacks. Metabolomics brings promise for cancer biomarker discovery and for better understanding PCa biochemistry. In this study, a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) based metabolomic profiling of PCa cell lines was performed. The cell lines include 22RV1 and LNCaP from PCa with androgen receptor (AR) expression, DU145 and PC3 (which lack AR expression), and one normal prostate cell line (PNT2). Regarding the metastatic potential, PC3 is from an adenocarcinoma grade IV with high metastatic potential, DU145 has a moderate metastatic potential, and LNCaP has a low metastatic potential. Using multivariate analysis, alterations in levels of several intracellular metabolites were detected, disclosing the capability of the endometabolome to discriminate all PCa cell lines from the normal prostate cell line. Discriminant metabolites included amino acids, fatty acids, steroids, and sugars. Six stood out for the separation of all the studied PCa cell lines from the normal prostate cell line: ethanolamine, lactic acid, β-Alanine, L-valine, L-leucine, and L-tyrosine.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GC-MS metabolomics reveals distinct profiles of low- and high-grade bladder cancer cultured cells

Previous studies have shown that metabolomics can be a useful tool to better understand the mechanisms of carcinogenesis; however, alterations in biochemical pathways that lead to bladder cancer (BC) development have hitherto not been fully investigated. In this study, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomics was applied to unveil the metabolic alterations between low-grade and high-grade BC cultured cell lines. Multivariable analysis revealed a panel of metabolites responsible for the separation between the two tumorigenic cell lines. Significantly lower levels of fatty acids, including myristic, palmitic, and palmitoleic acids, were found in high-grade versus low-grade BC cells. Furthermore, significantly altered levels of some amino acids were observed between low- and high-grade BC, namely glycine, leucine, methionine, valine, and aspartic acid. This study successfully demonstrated the potential of metabolomic analysis to discriminate BC cells according to tumor aggressiveness. Moreover, these findings suggest that bladder tumorigenic cell lines of different grades disclose distinct metabolic profiles, mainly affecting fatty acid biosynthesis and amino acid metabolism to compensate for higher energetic needs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Discrimination between the human prostate normal and cancer cell exometabolome by GC-MS

Serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is currently the most used biomarker in clinical practice for prostate cancer (PCa) detection. However, this biomarker has several drawbacks. In this work, an untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomic profiling of PCa cells was performed to prove the concept that metabolic alterations might differentiate PCa cell lines from normal prostate cell line. For that, we assessed the differences in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) profile in the extracellular medium (exometabolome) of four PCa cell lines and one normal prostate cell line at two pH values (pH 2 and 7) by GC-MS. Multivariate analysis revealed a panel of volatile metabolites that discriminated cancerous from normal prostate cells. The most altered metabolites included ketones, aldehydes and organic acids. Among these, we highlight pentadecane-2-one and decanoic acid, which were significantly increased in PCa compared to normal cells, and cyclohexanone, 4-methylheptan-2-one, 2-methylpentane-1,3-diol, 4-methylbenzaldehyde, 1-(3,5-dimethylfuran-2-yl)ethanone, methyl benzoate and nonanoic acid, which were significantly decreased in PCa cells. The PCa volatilome was markedly influenced by the VOCs extraction pH, though the discriminant capability was similar. Overall, our data suggest that VOCs monitoring has the potential to be used as a PCa screening methodology.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Volatilomics reveals potential biomarkers for identification of renal cell carcinoma: an in vitro approach

The identification of noninvasive biomarkers able to detect renal cell carcinoma (RCC) at an early stage remains an unmet clinical need. The recognition that altered metabolism is a core hallmark of cancer boosted metabolomic studies focused in the search for cancer biomarkers. The present work aims to evaluate the performance of the volatile metabolites present in the extracellular medium to discriminate RCC cell lines with distinct histological subtypes (clear cell and papillary) and metastatic potential from non-tumorigenic renal cells. Hence, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and volatile carbonyl compounds (VCCs) were extracted by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Multivariate and univariate analysis unveiled a panel of metabolites responsible for the separation between groups, mostly belonging to ketones, alcohols, alkanes and aldehydes classes. Some metabolites were found similarly altered for all RCC cell lines compared to non-tumorigenic cells, namely 2-ethylhexanol, tetradecane, formaldehyde, acetone (increased) and cyclohexanone and acetaldehyde (decreased). Furthermore, significantly altered levels of cyclohexanol, decanal, decane, dodecane and 4-methylbenzaldehyde were observed in all metastatic RCC cell lines when compared with the non-metastatic ones. Moreover, some alterations in the volatile composition were also observed between RCC histological subtypes. Overall, our results demonstrate the potential of volatile profiling for identification of noninvasive candidate biomarkers for early RCC diagnosis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Assessment of job satisfaction for designing career management interventions

According to recent suggestions in the career literature (Frietzsche & Parrish, 2005; Savickas, 2002), this study aims at exploring the advantages for career management, of a job-satisfaction comprehensive assessment plan. For measurement purposes it has been used: (i) the Revised Neo-Personality Inventory (NEOPI-R; Costa & Crae, 1992; Lima, 1997) and the 23 Stress Vulnerability Questionnaire (23QVS; Serra, 2004), to assess personality traits and affective dispositions; (ii) the Multi-Moti Scale (MMS; Ferreira, Diogo, Ferreira & Valente, 2006) to assess facet job satisfaction; (iii) and two job-life story episodes, to analyse thematic clusters in job-satisfaction/dissatisfaction narratives (Cunha & Alves, 2004; McAdams, 1985, 2002). This measurement plan was administered to the workers of a public services company, in the north-west of Portugal (N= 57; 33men and 24 women; with age ranging from 19-61 years old, with Mage= 42,1, SDage=10, 06). The referred company requested the services to the local main University. Accordingly, four psychologists of University of Minho Career Counselling Centre administered the work satisfaction battery personally, to each worker, at the company setting. A final report of the results was elaborated and offered to administration and workers. Cluster analysis results (K-Mean clustering) identified three distinct groups of workers, according to their sex, age, personality dispositions, affective states toward job and work, and salience of Agency and Communion related with job satisfaction/dissatisfaction narratives. Implications for career management practices are outlined

Phylogenomic characterization and signs of microevolution in the 2022 multi-country outbreak of monkeypox virus

Erratum: Nat Med. 2022 Oct;28(10):2220-2221. doi: 10.1038/s41591-022-02036-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02036-2The largest monkeypox virus (MPXV) outbreak described so far in non-endemic countries was identified in May 2022 (refs. 1-6). In this study, shotgun metagenomics allowed the rapid reconstruction and phylogenomic characterization of the first MPXV outbreak genome sequences, showing that this MPXV belongs to clade 3 and that the outbreak most likely has a single origin. Although 2022 MPXV (lineage B.1) clustered with 2018-2019 cases linked to an endemic country, it segregates in a divergent phylogenetic branch, likely reflecting continuous accelerated evolution. An in-depth mutational analysis suggests the action of host APOBEC3 in viral evolution as well as signs of potential MPXV human adaptation in ongoing microevolution. Our findings also indicate that genome sequencing may provide resolution to track the spread and transmission of this presumably slow-evolving double-stranded DNA virus.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multíplos hemangiomas hepáticos em lactente jovem: relato de caso / Multiple hepatic hemangiomas in young infants: case report

O fígado é o principal sítio de hemangiomas viscerais, e o hemangioma hepático é o tumor hepático benigno mais comum na infância, apresentando amplo espectro de sintomas clínicos desde assintomáticos até complicações graves. Assim o presente relato  tem como objetivo o estudo sobre um caso de  hemangioma hepático difuso em lactente jovem no município de Marabá, no Estado do Pará. Como conclusão ressalta-se que a utilização do propranolol pela paciente, mostrou-se eficaz e seguro ao longo de 12 meses de tratamento, sem apresentação de efeitos colaterais e com redução significativa dos hemangiomas