Aspects for Graph Grammars

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is an extension to the object oriented paradigm that aims to provide better modularity for code that is usually scattered across an object-oriented system such as logging, authentication and distributed object handling. Aspect weaving is a novel way to compose systems, focusing on the integration of system-wide policies through pattern-action rules. While there are several semantic proposals for representing aspects over source code and programs, aspect weaving for visual models such as graph rewriting systems is still not fully established. In this work, we propose the definition of aspect-oriented graph grammars, an extension to conventional graph grammar where aspects are modeled as transformation rules over the structure of a base graph grammar

Decrease in blood pressure, body mass index and glycemia after aerobic training in elderly women with type 2 diabetes

FUNDAMENTO: O processo de envelhecimento associa-se ao desenvolvimento de várias doenças, que podem ser amenizadas pela prática de atividades físicas. O treinamento aeróbico é um meio efetivo para manter e melhorar as funções cardiovasculares. Além disso, desempenha um papel fundamental na prevenção e tratamento de diversas doenças crônico-degenerativas, em especial o diabete melito. OBJETIVO: Verificar os efeitos de 13 semanas de treinamento aeróbico sobre a pressão arterial, o índice de massa corpórea e a glicemia em idosas com diabete tipo 2. MÉTODOS: Onze mulheres idosas diabéticas (61,0 ± 9,1 anos de idade), sedentárias, realizaram 13 semanas de treinamento aeróbico, compondo o grupo G2. Onze idosas (60,2 ± 6,8 anos de idade) controladas não realizaram exercícios físicos durante a pesquisa, constituindo o grupo-controle (G1). O grupo G1 foi submetido somente a orientações educativas uma vez na semana, e o grupo G2, a caminhadas três vezes na semana. RESULTADOS: Houve redução significativa da glicemia e da pressão arterial diastólica nos dois grupos. Não foram encontradas reduções significativas no IMC após o treinamento aeróbico em ambos os grupos. CONCLUSÃO: Treze semanas de treinamento aeróbico foi suficiente para promover reduções significativas na pressão arterial diastólica e glicemia, portanto, esse tipo de exercício reduz os fatores de risco para doenças cardiovasculares e metabólicas.BACKGROUND: The aging process is associated with the development of several diseases, which can be attenuated by the practice of physical activities. Aerobic training is an effective method to maintain and improve cardiovascular function. Additionally, it has a crucial role in the prevention and treatment of several chronic-degenerative diseases, especially diabetes mellitus. }OBJECTIVE: To verify the effect of a 13-week aerobic training program on blood pressure (BP), body mass index (BMI) and glycemia levels in elderly women with type-2 diabetes mellitus (DM2). METHODS: Eleven sedentary elderly women with DM2, aged 61.0 ± 9.1 years, were submitted a 13-week aerobic training program, constituting group G2. Eleven controlled elderly women (aged 60.2 ± 6.8 years) were not submitted to the aerobic training, constituting the control group (G1). G1 attended educational lectures once a week, whereas G2 walked three times a week. RESULTS: Both groups presented a significant decrease in glycemia and diastolic blood pressure levels. No significant decreases in BMI were observed after the aerobic training in either group. CONCLUSION: The 13-week aerobic training program was enough to promote significant decrease in the diastolic blood pressure and glycemia levels; therefore, this type of exercise training decreases the risk factors for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases

Proof Tactics for Theorem Proving Graph Grammars through Rodin

Graph grammar is a formal language suitable for the specification of distributed and concurrent systems. Theorem proving is a technique that allows the verification of systems with huge (and infinite) state space. One of the disadvantages of theorem proving graph grammars (and theorem proving in general) is the specific mathematical knowledge required from the user for concluding the proofs. Previous works have proposed proof strategies to help the developer in the verification process when adopting such approach, firstly establishing proof tactics for some properties and after proposing a visual representation for them. This paper extends the set of proposed tactics, with the aim of expanding the available strategies and encouraging the use of such a technique

Adherencia a la dieta y a los ejercicios físicos de las personas con diabetes mellitus

Estudo seccional de abordagem quantitativa que objetivou avaliar a adesão de pessoas com Diabetes Mellitus tipo 2 ao autocuidado, no que se refere à dieta e ao exercício físico, bem como a relação com características sociodemográficas e clínicas. A amostra constituiu-se de 162 pessoas com Diabetes Mellitus tipo 2, em seguimento ambulatorial. Para a coleta dos dados, foram utilizadas a versão brasileira do instrumento Summary of Diabetes Self-care Activities Questionnaire e a consulta aos prontuários dos participantes. Obteve-se baixa adesão ao autocuidado. Para um p<0,05, a correlação foi inversamente proporcional à escolaridade, sugerindo menor adesão para maior escolaridade. Não houve correlações estatisticamente significantes entre adesão ao autocuidado e sexo, idade, estado civil, renda per capita mensal, tempo de diagnóstico, tipo de tratamento medicamentoso e presença de complicações/comorbidades. Os resultados corroboram a literatura, na qual variáveis sociodemográficas e clínicas podem não predizer a adesão ao tratamento de pessoas com Diabetes Mellitus.This cross-sectional and quantitative study aimed to evaluate adherence among people with type-2 Diabetes Mellitus to self-care, regarding diet and physical exercises, as well as the relationship to socio-demographic and clinical characteristics. The sample consisted of 162 type-2 Diabetes Mellitus patients under outpatient clinic follow-up. Data was collected using the Brazilian version of the Summary of Diabetes Self-care Activities Questionnaire and patient files. Low adherence to self-care was evidenced in the studied sample. For p<0.05, correlation was inversely proportional to patient educational level, suggesting that the higher the educational level, the lower the adherence. There was no statistically significant correlation between adherence to self-care and gender, age, marital status, monthly per capita income, time of diagnosis, type of medication in treatment, and/or presence of complications/co-morbidities. Results corroborate findings in literature that socio-demographic and clinical variables may not predict adherence to treatment among people with Diabetes Mellitus..Estudio transversal de enfoque cuantitativo que tuvo como objetivo evaluar la adherencia de las personas con Diabetes Mellitus tipo 2 al autocuidado, con respecto a la dieta y a los ejercicios físicos, así como la relación con características sociodemográficas y clínicas. La muestra consistió de 162 personas con Diabetes Mellitus tipo 2, en consulta externa de seguimiento. Para la recolección de datos se utilizó la versión brasileña del instrumento Summary of Diabetes Self-care Activities Questionnaire y consulta a los archivos de los participantes. Fue encontrada baja adherencia al autocuidado. Para p<0,05, la correlación fue inversamente proporcional a la escolaridad, lo que sugiere menor adherencia para mayor escolaridad. No se encontraron correlaciones estadísticamente significantes entre la adherencia al autocuidado y sexo, edad, estado civil, ingreso per cápita mensual, tiempo de diagnóstico, tipo de tratamiento con medicamentos y presencia de complicaciones/comorbilidades. Los resultados corroboran la literatura, en la cual variables sociodemográficas y clínicas pueden no predecir la adhesión al tratamiento de personas con Diabetes Mellitus

A Graph Grammar to Transform a Dataflow Graph into a Multithread Graph and its Application in Task Scheduling

The scheduling of tasks in a parallel program is an NP-complete problem, where scheduling tasks over multiple processing units requires an effective strategy to maximize the exploitation of the parallel hardware. Several studies focus on the scheduling of parallel programs described into DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs). However, this representation does not describe a multithreaded program suitably. This paper shows the structure and semantics of a DCG, an abstraction which describes a multithreaded program, and proposes standards to map structures found in DAGs into segments of a DCG. A graph grammar has been developed to perform the proposed transformation and case studies using DAGs found in the literature validate the transformation process. Besides the automatic translation and precise definition of the mapping, the use of a formal language also allowed the verification of the existence and uniqueness of the out coming model.

Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome using two proposed definitions in a Japanese-Brazilians community

Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is associated with increased risk of morbi-mortality, thus the characterization of the population magnitude of this syndrome is critical for allocating health care. However, prevalence estimates of MetS in the same population could differ depending on the definition used. Therefore, we compared the prevalence of the MetS using definitions proposed by: National Cholesterol Education Panel Revised (NCEP) and International Diabetes Federation (IDF) 2009 in a Japanese-Brazilians community (131 individuals, age 57 ± 16 years, 1st and 2nd generation). All individuals went through a clinical and laboratorial evaluation for assessment of weigh, height, waist circumference, blood pressure, triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol and fasting plasma glucose. The prevalence of MetS was 26.7% (n = 35) and 37.4% (n = 49) under the NCEP and IDF definitions, respectively. Despite higher blood pressure measurements, waist circumference and serum triglyceride levels and lower HDL cholesterol levels (p < 0.01), individuals identified with MetS did not show increased blood glucose levels. IDF definition classified 14 individuals (10.7%) with MetS that were not classified under the NCEP and 35 individuals were identified with MetS by both criteria. We observed, in this group, more severe lipid disorders, compared to individuals identified only under the IDF definition, and the BMI and waist circumference (p = 0.01; p = 0.006, respectively) were lower. In conclusion, the IDF revised criteria, probably because of the ethnic specific values of waist circumference, was able to identify a larger number of individuals with MetS. However, our data suggesting that additional studies are necessary to define best MetS diagnostic criteria in this population.We are grateful to patients participating in this study and to Sebastiao L. Brandao Filho for technical assistance.This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector

Profiles of cognitive impairment in the continuum from normal cognition to Alzheimer's Clinical Syndrome:Contributions of the Short-term Memory Binding tests

Background: Short-term memory binding (STMB) tests assess conjunctive binding, in which participants should remember the integration of features, such as shapes (or objects) and colors, forming a unique representation in memory. In this study, we investigated two STMB paradigms: change detection (CD) and free recall (FR). Objective: To investigate the cognitive profile in the CD and FR tasks of three diagnostic groups: cognitively unimpaired (CU), mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer's clinical syndrome (ACS). In addition, we aimed to calculate and compare the accuracy of the CD and FR tasks to identify MCI and ACS. Methods: Participants were 24 CU, 24 MCI, and 37 ACS. The cognitive scores of the clinical groups were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were carried out to verify the accuracy of the STMB tasks. Results: In the CD task, CU was different from MCI and ACS (CU > MCI = ACS), while in the FR task all groups were different (CU > MCI > ACS). The ROC analyses showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.855 comparing CU with MCI for the CD task and 0.975 for the FR. The AUC comparing CU and ACS was 0.924 for the CD and 0.973 for the FR task. The FR task showed better accuracy to identify MCI patients, and the same accuracy to detect ACS. Conclusion: The present findings indicate that impairments in CD and FR of bound representations are features of the cognitive profiles of MCI and ACS patients

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCE IN THE MICRO-FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN: TASK, GOAL, AND KNOWLEDGE INTERDEPENDENCE

Interdependence is a core concept in organization design, yet one that has remained consistently understudied. Current notions of interdependence remain rooted in seminal works, produced at a time when managers’ near-perfect understanding of the task at hand drove the organization design process. In this context, task interdependence was rightly assumed to be exogenously determined by characteristics of the work and the technology. We no longer live in that world, yet our view of interdependence has remained exceedingly task-centric and our treatment of interdependence overly deterministic. As organizations face increasingly unpredictable workstreams and workers co-design the organization alongside managers, our field requires a more comprehensive toolbox that incorporates aspects of agent-based interdependence. In this paper, we synthesize research in organization design, organizational behavior, and other related literatures to examine three types of interdependence that characterize organizations’ workflows: task, goal, and knowledge interdependence. We offer clear definitions for each construct, analyze how each arises endogenously in the design process, explore their interrelations, and pose questions to guide future research