A mortality & longevity study : the portuguese case

Mestrado em Actuarial ScienceEste trabalho foi desenvolvido com três objetivos principais: (i) fazer o survey da situação atual, no que diz respeito à mortalidade/longevidade no nosso país; (ii) desenvolver um estudo breve sobre os progressos registados na mortalidade em Portugal, com base num projeto semelhante apresentado por Assia Billing, no encontro da Primavera do Mortality Working Group da International Actuarial Association (Berlim, 2018) - grupo que se dedica ao estudo da mortalidade a nível mundial, dando particular atenção ao impacto que esta tem sobre o sector segurador, nomeadamente o ramo de Vida e Pensões; (iii) servir como suporte ao primeiro Country Report português, a ser divulgado pelo Mortality Working Group. No decorrer do trabalho, e tendo em vista os três objetivos estabelecidos, irão ser primeiramente analisados indicadores demográficos, como a evolução da população residente portuguesa, a sua pirâmide populacional, o índice de envelhecimento e a esperança de vida. Numa segunda parte, o foco incidirá sobre o sector segurador português, com a análise de indicadores como a produção ou a composição dos portfolios de investimento. Seguidamente, faz-se a análise dos produtos mais vendidos em Portugal, por tipo de contrato. No que diz respeito às tábuas de mortalidade, merecem destaque as que são publicadas anualmente pelo INE, bem como as que são mais utilizadas nas seguradoras que operam no território nacional. Finalmente, desenvolver-se-á a análise dos progressos registados mais recentemente a nível da mortalidade no país, na senda de estudos similares desenvolvidos para outros países.This work was developed with three main objectives: (i) to survey the current situation, regarding mortality/longevity in Portugal; (ii) to develop a brief study on the progress of mortality in the country, based on a similar project presented by Assia Billing in the Spring Meeting (Berlin 2018) of the International Actuary Association Mortality Working Group ? a group that is dedicated to the study of mortality worldwide, paying particular attention to the impact it has on the insurance sector, namely on Life and Pensions ; (iii) to serve as support for the first Portuguese Country Report to be released by the Mortality Working Group,. In the course of the study, demographic indicators, such as the evolution of the Portuguese resident population, the population pyramid, the aging index and the life expectancy, will be analyzed first. Then, the focus will be set on the Portuguese insurance sector, with the analysis of indicators such as the production or the composition of investment portfolios. Next, we analyze Portugal?s mostly sold insurance products, by type of contract. Regarding the mortality tables, it is worth mentioning those published annually by INE, as well as those that are most used by insurers operating in the national territory. Finally, an analysis of the most recent progress in mortality in the country will be performed, following similar studies developed for other countries.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Predictors of cardiac involvement in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies

Copyright © 2023 Bandeira, Dourado, Melo, Martins, Fraga, Ferraro, Saraiva, Sousa, Parente, Soares, Correia, Almeida, Dinis, Pinto, Oliveira Pinheiro, Rato, Beirão, Samões, Santos, Mazeda, Chícharo, Faria, Neto, Lourenço, Brites, Rodrigues, Silva-Dinis, Dias, Araújo, Martins, Couto, Valido, Santos, Barreira, Fonseca and Campanilho-Marques. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Objectives: Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a group of rare disorders that can affect the heart. This work aimed to find predictors of cardiac involvement in IIM. Methods: Multicenter, open cohort study, including patients registered in the IIM module of the Rheumatic Diseases Portuguese Register (Reuma.pt/Myositis) until January 2022. Patients without cardiac involvement information were excluded. Myo(peri)carditis, dilated cardiomyopathy, conduction abnormalities, and/or premature coronary artery disease were considered. Results: 230 patients were included, 163 (70.9%) of whom were females. Thirteen patients (5.7%) had cardiac involvement. Compared with IIM patients without cardiac involvement, these patients had a lower bilateral manual muscle testing score (MMT) at the peak of muscle weakness [108.0 ± 55.0 vs 147.5 ± 22.0, p=0.008] and more frequently had oesophageal [6/12 (50.0%) vs 33/207 (15.9%), p=0.009] and lung [10/13 (76.9%) vs 68/216 (31.5%), p=0.001] involvements. Anti-SRP antibodies were more commonly identified in patients with cardiac involvement [3/11 (27.3%) vs 9/174 (5.2%), p=0.026]. In the multivariate analysis, positivity for anti-SRP antibodies (OR 104.3, 95% CI: 2.5-4277.8, p=0.014) was a predictor of cardiac involvement, regardless of sex, ethnicity, age at diagnosis, and lung involvement. Sensitivity analysis confirmed these results. Conclusion: Anti-SRP antibodies were predictors of cardiac involvement in our cohort of IIM patients, irrespective of demographical characteristics and lung involvement. We suggest considering frequent screening for heart involvement in anti-SRP-positive IIM patients.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Adjustment of intrastromal corneal ring segments after unsuccessful implantation in keratoconic eyes

To evaluate visual, refractive, and corneal topography outcomes in eyes with keratoconus that have undergone exchange/adjustment surgery with a new intrastromal corneal ring segment (ICRS) combination after unsuccessful visual and/or refractive outcomes after primary ICRS surgery.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Geotechnical prediction on the mechanical behaviour of a shallow foundation in a physical model

Comunicação publicada na monografia - CORREIA, António Gomes [et. al.], eds. - "Geotecnia e Desenvolvimento Sustentável : actas do 12º Congresso Nacional de Geotecnia". Coimbra : Almedina, 2010. ISBN 978-972-40-4214-5.Estimar, por métodos analíticos e/ou numéricos: 1º) a relação força-assentamento e/ou 2º) a capacidade de carga associada a um determinado nível de deformação de uma fundação superficial submetida a um carregamento axial centrado. A avaliação de cada um destes tópicos será independente e alvo de concurso próprio.Departamento de Engenharia Civil da Universidade do Minho (DEC-UM

Predictability of tunnel depth for intrastromal corneal ring segments implantation between manual and Femtosecond laser techniques

To compare the predictability of intrastromal tunnel depth creation for intrastromal corneal ring segments (ICRS) implantation between manual dissection and femtosecond laser using a high-resolution anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT). PURPOSE: To compare the predictability of intrastromal tunnel depth creation for intrastromal corneal ring segments (ICRS) implantation between manual dissection and femtosecond laser using a high-resolution anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT). METHODS: This multicenter study included patients with keratoconus who had Ferrara-type ICRS implantation at Hospital de Braga using manual dissection and at the Fernandez-Vega Ophthalmological Institute using the femtosecond laser technique. The intended depth of implantation was compared to the achieved postoperative ICRS depth of each case, measured using a swept-source AS-OCT (CASIA SS-1000; Tomey Corporation, Nagoya, Japan) at three points (proximal, central, and distal end of the implant). RESULTS: The study included 105 eyes in the manual group and 53 eyes in the femtosecond laser group. The differences of the intended versus the achieved depth were statistically higher in the manual group for all positions measured (Wilcoxon ranked-sum, P < .001). In the manual group, there were significant differences between the mean values of intended and achieved depth after surgery for the three locations measured (Wilcoxon signed-rank, P < .05), whereas there were no significant differences in the femtosecond laser group. In the manual group, the proximal part of the stromal tunnel was significantly shallower (−40.87 ± 69.03 μm) than the central (−25.54 ± 71.00 μm) and distal (−26.52 ± 73.22 μm) parts (Friedman test, P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: ICRS implantation assisted by a femtosecond laser provides a more precise procedure considering dissection depth when compared with the manual dissection technique. Such an advantage may provide more predictable clinical results and safer procedures with the femtosecond laser

ELIXIR Portugal - for BOD17.pdf

We provide an update on the implementation of the ELIXIR infrastructure and in particular <br>in its Portuguese Node (​ http://elixir-portugal.org​ ). ELIXIR is organized into five <br>platforms that support the bioinformatics community across Europe<br>(​ http://elixir-europe.org/platforms​ ): Tools, Data, Compute, Interoperability and Training.<br>Additionally four use cases are currently supported by those platforms (​ http://www.elixir-europe.org/use-cases​ ): Human data, Rare diseases, Marine Metagenomics and Plant Sciences.<br>The Portuguese Node contributes actively to three of ELIXIR’s platforms (Tools, Interoperability and Training) and two of its use cases (Plant Sciences and Marine Metagenomics). The Portuguese Node service delivery plan for 2017, includes six initial services (​ http://elixir-portugal.org/nodeservices​ ): Computing Services, CorkOakDB, YEASTRACT, Plant sRNA Portal, Plant Experimental Assay Ontology (PEAO) and the Gulbenkian Training Programme in BioInformatics. The service delivery plan is to be updated periodically to include those services that are deemed relevant to the BioInformatics community. The Portuguese Node of ELIXIR is deployed on a cloud computing infrastructure provided by the INCD (Infraestrutura Nacional de Computação Distribuída), as well as commercial cloud services providers.<br>One of the active developments is implementing a Breeding API (BrAPI, https://github.com/plantbreeding/API ) endpoint. The BrAPI is a RESTful API that provides a standard programmatic access to data from a plant phenotyping and genotyping databases in  a language agnostic way. BrAPI is an open source project that can be joined by anyone allowing<br>data providers to improve calls that will enhance their data supply. Our endpoint implementation is intended to support access to the Portuguese community’s curated datasets in the woody plants domain.<br>In addition to describing the current development status, we will discuss strategies to incorporate new services and extend the services offered to the Portuguese Bioinformatics community.<br

Characterisation of microbial attack on archaeological bone

As part of an EU funded project to investigate the factors influencing bone preservation in the archaeological record, more than 250 bones from 41 archaeological sites in five countries spanning four climatic regions were studied for diagenetic alteration. Sites were selected to cover a range of environmental conditions and archaeological contexts. Microscopic and physical (mercury intrusion porosimetry) analyses of these bones revealed that the majority (68%) had suffered microbial attack. Furthermore, significant differences were found between animal and human bone in both the state of preservation and the type of microbial attack present. These differences in preservation might result from differences in early taphonomy of the bones. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved