"Downhill" varices. A rare cause of esophageal hemorrhage

"Downhill" varices or upper esophageal varices are a rare cause of proximal digestive tract hemorrhage with only 16 cases described in the literature. In our series, hemorrhage due to "downhill" varices represents 0.1% of all acute esophageal variceal bleeding. Their etiology differs from that of the usual "uphill" varices secondary to portal hypertension, and the clinical management should be directed to vascular obstruction if present. We report a case of an 89-year-old male with hemorrhagic "downhill" varices not associated, as usually, with superior vena cava obstruction or compression, but with severe pulmonary hypertension and drug-related hemorrhagic risk factors, whose removal proved sufficient to prevent rebleeding

Aspectos e reflexões conceituais sobre informação, sistemas e teoria de sistemas

Os conceitos de subordinação, emergência e autonomia afirmam-se nas ciências, após os anos 50. O mundo atual interconecta-se em “redes”, que se relacionam, direta ou indiretamente, aos sistemas, subsistemas e supersistemas. Este artigo aborda aspectos e reflexões conceituais sobre informação e sistemas de informação. Algumas visões dadas pelas teorias da complexidade e de sistemas, e pela semiótica, são usadas como referencias teóricos. O objetivo é visitar uma fração da literatura correspondente ao tema. A perspectiva de abordagem é a pesquisa bibliográfica. As conclusões principais são: a) o fenômeno “informação” suscita discussões e confusões, no que tange aos “conceitos” e “significados”; b) organização, articulação entre partes e hierarquização são os aspectos mais relevantes dos sistemas; c) instituições e serviços de informação desempenham papéis que particularizam e definem sua ação, consoante perspectivas, tendo em conta: subordinação, emergência e autonomia

Theoretical approaches in subject information organization: an analysis of the presence of subject cataloguing and indexing matters in ISKO-Spain literature

[Resumo] O Tratamento Temático da Informação ? TTI, na Biblioteconomia e Documentação, possui natureza mediadora, pois propicia interlocução dos contextos de produção e de uso da informação por meio da análise, descrição e representação do conteúdo dos documentos para armazenamento e recuperação da informação em cujo âmbito se desenvolvem processos, instrumentos e produtos. Essa área de estudos se apresenta, teoricamente, sob três vertentes: catalogação de assunto, de matriz norte-americana, e indexação, de matriz inglesa, mais centradas nos instrumentos e produtos de TTI, e análise documental, de matriz francesa, mais voltada para os procedimentos envolvidos no TTI. Nesse contexto, e considerando que o capítulo espanhol da ISKO atua como um importante e consolidado espaço científico de discussões acadêmicas sobre o TTI, notadamente no âmbito ibero-americano, procede-se a uma análise de domínio das correntes teóricas de matriz anglo-saxônica ? Indexação e Catalogação de Assunto ? nas comunicações apresentadas nos nove congressos de ISKO-España até então realizados, para identificar sua presença, sua articulação e seus referentes teóricos como subsídio aos estudos epistemológicos em organização do conhecimento.[Abstract] Subject information organization has a capital position in the Library and Documentation field since it promotes a dialogical dimension (or sometimes a bridge) between the information production and the information use by means of set of special activities like subject analysis, description and representation in order to promote information retrieval. Such branch of studies presents can be presented by means of different theoretical approaches. In this sense, the anglo-saxon approaches ? subject cataloguing and indexing ? are more devoted to the development of indexing languages and catalogues while the French-oriented approach - analyse documentaire - denotes a bigger concern on the procedures involved. Considering that the Spanish chapter of ISKO has been acting as an important scientific in knowledge organization matters (including subject information organization) specially in the Ibero-American countries, it carries out an analysis of the presence of the mentioned Anglo-saxon approaches - subject cataloguing and indexing ? in the papers presented at the ISKO-Spain congresses already occurred in order to identify the scientific articulation degree among their theoretical referents as a subsidy to the epistemological studies in knowledge organization in Spain

A strategy to increase and assess vaccine coverage in the north of Portugal

In the Northern Health Region of Portugal, vaccine coverage is measured by checking and studying individual vaccination records in health centres. Each year from 2001-2004, birth cohorts who were over 2, 6 and 14 years of age were selected for assessment. Data collection occurred on January the following year and meetings with district immunisation coordinators took place every March. For all vaccines and birth cohorts considered, vaccine coverage values observed in the north of Portugal were excellent. In this paper, we make comparisons with published international data on vaccine coverage and discuss validity issues; we believe that no serious biases have affected the validity of our vaccine coverage data but comparisons with international data must be addressed with caution; the methods we used have been useful in increasing vaccination coverage

Probiotic ingestion, obesity, and metabolic-related disorders: Results from NHANES, 1999–2014

Gut microbiota dysbiosis has been recognized as having key importance in obesity- and metabolic-related diseases. Although there is increasing evidence of the potential benefits induced by probiotics in metabolic disturbances, there is a lack of large cross-sectional studies to assess population-based prevalence of probiotic intake and metabolic diseases. Our aim was to evaluate the association of probiotic ingestion with obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia. A cross-sectional study was designed using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 1999–2014. Probiotic ingestion was considered when a subject reported consumption of yogurt or a probiotic supplement during the 24-hour dietary recall or during the Dietary Supplement Use 30-Day questionnaire. We included 38,802 adults and 13.1% reported probiotic ingestion. The prevalence of obesity and hypertension was lower in the probiotic group (obesity-adjusted Odds Ratio (OR): 0.84, 95% CI 0.76–0.92, p < 0.001; hypertension-adjusted OR: 0.79, 95% CI 0.71–0.88, p < 0.001). Accordingly, even after analytic adjustments, body mass index (BMI) was significantly lower in the probiotic group, as were systolic and diastolic blood pressure and triglycerides; high-density lipoprotein (HDL) was significantly higher in the probiotic group for the adjusted model. In this large-scale study, ingestion of probiotic supplements or yogurt was associated with a lower prevalence of obesity and hypertension

Impact of temperature during beer storage on beer chemical profile

LA/P/0140/2020Aiming to gain insights into the impact of storage conditions on the chemical profile of beer samples, changes on the relative amount of several chemical classes of compounds was monitored. The influence of storage conditions was statistically discerned using the hierarchical cluster analysis complemented by heatmap date visualization. Aldehydes, furanic compounds and esters showed a clear role in beers stored at 37 ± 1 °C (contribution >1, as obtained in the heatmap data visualization). The reaction rate constant and temperature dependence was well described by the Arrhenius equation for these compound classes, for which the reaction rate increased with increasing temperatures. The rate of development of furanic compounds, aldehydes and esters showed to be almost 140, 90 and 20 times higher in beers stored at higher temperatures (37 ± 1 °C) when compared to beers stored at 4 ± 1 °C, respectively. These results indicate that temperature was the main parameter contributing to the major changes in beer chemical profile. Through olfactometric analysis, the major difference was found in aged beers, both naturally and forced aged, where the prevalence of sweet and papery aroma notes were noticed, linked to the development of β-damascenone and E-2-nonenal, respectively.publishersversionpublishe

Blackbody temperature of 200+ stellar flares observed with the CoRoT satellite

We estimated blackbody temperature for 209 flares observed at 69 F-K stars, significantly increasing the number of flare temperature determinations. We used the Blue and Red channels obtained by the 27 cm telescope of the CoRoT satellite at high cadence and long duration. The wavelength limits of the channels were estimated using spectra from the Pickles library for the spectral type and luminosity class of each star, provided by the Exodat Database. The temperatures were obtained from the flare energy Blue-to-Red ratio, using the flare equivalent duration and stellar flux in both channels. The expected value of the analyzed flares is equal to 6,400 K with a standard deviation of 2,800 K, where the mean stellar spectral type, weighted by the number of flares in each spectral subclass, is equal to G6. Contrary to our results, a stellar white-light flare is often assumed to emit as a blackbody with a temperature of 9,000 K or 10,000 K. Our estimates agree, however, with values obtained for solar flares. The GAIA G-band transmissivity is comparable to that of the CoRoT White channel, which allows us to calibrate the flares to the Gaia photometric system. The energy in the G band of the analyzed flares varies between $10^{32}$ and $10^{37}$ erg and the flare area ranges from 30$\mu$sh to 3 sh (solar hemisphere). The energy release per area in a flare is proportional to $T_{\rm flare}^{2.6}$, at least up to 10,000 K.Comment: Accepted Astronomical Journa