Efficacy and safety of calcium carbonate in normophosphataemic patients with chronic kidney disease Stages 3 and 4

Background: Disordered bone and mineral metabolism are a common complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Phosphate binders are often prescribed in advanced CKD, when hyperphosphataemia develops. Little is known about the role of these drugs in earlier stages, when serum phosphorus levels are kept in the normal range by increased urinary excretion. Methods: A retrospective, controlled observational study was conducted on a cohort of 78 pre-dialysis patients. Subjects had CKD Stage 3 or 4, normal serum phosphorus levels and increased urinary fractional excretion of phosphate. Thirty-eight patients receiving calcium carbonate for 24 months were compared with 40 patients under no phosphate binders, regarding mineral metabolism parameters and vascular calcification scores. Results: Calcium carbonate decreased mean urinary fractional excretion of phosphate and median 24-h urine phosphorus, whereas no significant change was seen in the control group. Mean serum phosphorus and median serum intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) remained stable in treated patients but increased in the control group. Vascular calcification, assessed by Kauppila and Adragão scores, worsened under calcium carbonate with no significant change in the control group. Conclusions: Calcium carbonate reduced urinary phosphate excretion and prevented the rise in phosphorus and iPTH serum levels in a cohort of normophosphataemic pre-dialysis patients. However, treatment was associated with increased vascular calcification, suggesting that calcium-based phosphate binders are not a safe option for CKD patients

Conservação e caracterização de banco ativo de germoplasma de babaçu (Orbignya sp.).

O banco ativo de germoplasma de babacu (BAG) foi implantado em area experimental da Embrapa em 1985 e 1990, possui cerca de 185 acessos, com a finalidade de preservar, caracterizar e avaliar os germoplasmas provenientes de diversas áreas do território nacional e de outros países..

Atomic Focusing by Quantum Fields: Entanglement Properties

The coherent manipulation of the atomic matter waves is of great interest both in science and technology. In order to study how an atom optic device alters the coherence of an atomic beam, we consider the quantum lens proposed by Averbukh et al [1] to show the discrete nature of the electromagnetic field. We extend the analysis of this quantum lens to the study of another essentially quantum property present in the focusing process, i.e., the atom-field entanglement, and show how the initial atomic coherence and purity are affected by the entanglement. The dynamics of this process is obtained in closed form. We calculate the beam quality factor and the trace of the square of the reduced density matrix as a function of the average photon number in order to analyze the coherence and purity of the atomic beam during the focusing process.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Cupuaçuzeiro: nutrição, calagem e adubação.

O cupuaçuzeiro (Theobroma grandiflorum (Willdenow ex Sprengel) Schumann) é uma das mais promissoras fruteiras nativas para exploração racional na Amazônia, onde já existem diversas plantações comerciais consideráveis. É uma espécie que se destaca das demais nativas da região, em virtude das amplas possibilidades de mercado, dado a diversidade de aproveitamento na agroindústria, onde a polpa é utilizada para sorvetes, licores, compotas, néctares, sucos, geléias, biscoitos, e as amêndoas aproveitadas para produção de chocolate e de uma gordura fina semelhante à manteiga de cacau.bitstream/item/29502/1/CirTec43.pd

As tecnologias de videoconferência no ensino superior público português: tendências e boas práticas

Nos últimos anos, o grande desenvolvimento das infra-estruturas de banda larga que ocorreram especialmente nas redes nacionais e internacionais de investigação permitiu um grande desenvolvimento das tecnologias de videoconferência. A proliferação de sistemas de videoconferência em Instituições de Ensino Superior (IES) e a sua integração nas actividades habituais destas instituições exigem uma investigação aprofundada sobre a sua utilização e torna-se pertinente identificar as boas práticas e as tendências de apropriação das tecnologias de videoconferência nas dinâmicas cognitivas e sociais ao nível da formação, da investigação, da gestão e da cooperação com o exterior. Apresentam-se os resultados da investigação que se centrou na utilização das tecnologias de videoconferência nas IES públicas portuguesas e, especialmente, na análise das tendências verificadas ao nível do uso destas tecnologias e respectivas boas práticas, no ensino superior público português. Numa fase inicial, a investigação incluiu uma abordagem a várias IES públicas portuguesas para analisar um conjunto de informações focadas na utilização das infra-estruturas de videoconferência e na exploração do seu potencial. Esta abordagem realizou-se através de uma significativa recolha de dados sobre a frequência e tipos de uso, sobre as tecnologias utilizadas e os métodos de utilização, sobre os objectivos dessa utilização e os objectivos das interacções. Numa segunda fase existiu uma análise da utilização das tecnologias de videoconferência no ambiente de ensino superior com o objectivo de gerar uma compreensão aprofundada sobre os usos, as tendências e as potencialidades destas tecnologias nas IES através da identificação de práticas e percepções dos utilizadores dos sistemas de videoconferência. Nesta fase existiu uma abordagem a professores e estudantes que tiveram uma profunda experiência na utilização da videoconferência. Com esta investigação visou-se traçar o quadro geral do uso das tecnologias de videoconferências nas IES públicas em Portugal e propor um conjunto de recomendações promotoras do uso e da dinamização de boas práticas.Abstract - The enormous development of high-bandwidth infrastructures over the last years, which has occurred especially in the national and international R&D networks, has harnessed the development of the videoconference technologies. The proliferation of videoconference systems in higher education institutions (HEI) and their integration in the everyday activities of these institutions demand a deep research about their usage and it becomes pertinent to identify good practises and trends in this field. This research was focused on the usage of the videoconference technologies in the Portuguese public higher education institutions (HEI), and especially on the trends verified on the usage of these technologies in the Portuguese public higher education and the best practises on the usage of these technologies. Samuel Frazão Martins, Lídia Oliveira 226 Observatorio (OBS*) Journal, (2011) In the initial phase, this research enclosed an approach to all of the Portuguese public higher education institutions and they had been analysed focusing on the exploration of the videoconference infrastructures and the exploration of their potential through a significant collection of data about the frequency and types of usage, the technologies used and the usage methods, the objectives of this usage and the goals of the interactions. In the second phase, there was an analysis of the usage of the videoconference technologies in the higher education environment with the goal of generating a deep understanding about the usages, trends and potentialities of these technologies in the higher education institutions, through the identification of practises and perceptions of the users of the videoconference systems. In this phase there was an approach to teachers and students that have a deep experience on the usage of the videoconference. With this research a set of relevant information about the use of the videoconference technologies was obtained and will provide the possibility to create a set of trends of the usage and of these technologies in the Portuguese Public Higher Education

On the Evaluation of Energy-Efficient Deep Learning Using Stacked Autoencoders on Mobile GPUs

Over the last years, deep learning architectures have gained attention by winning important international detection and classification challenges. However, due to high levels of energy consumption, the need to use low-power devices at acceptable throughput performance is higher than ever. This paper tries to solve this problem by introducing energy efficient deep learning based on local training and using low-power mobile GPU parallel architectures, all conveniently supported by the same high-level description of the deep network. Also, it proposes to discover the maximum dimensions that a particular type of deep learning architecture—the stacked autoencoder—can support by finding the hardware limitations of a representative group of mobile GPUs and platforms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio