Patterns of adult sibling role involvement with brothers and sisters with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Adult siblings of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are increasingly involved in family care, yet, adult siblings consistently report needing more information and support to engage in these roles. Knowing more about which roles siblings are likely to assume may help address this need. Thus, we further examined the most common roles assumed by adult siblings (N = 171), the demographic variables related to an increased likelihood of assuming specific roles, and the potential clusters in patterns of role assumption. We transformed qualitative data from an online survey with four open-ended questions about sibling relationships and roles into quantitative presence data for role-related codes in order to examine relationships between assumed roles and demographic variables. The most common roles assumed by adult siblings were friend, advocate, caregiver, and sibling. Key demographic variables related to role assumption included disability severity, emotional closeness, and age of the brother or sister with IDD. Cluster analyses indicated five potential categories of adult sibling role involvement: Companion, Least Involved, Highly Involved, Needs Focused, and Professional. Implications and future areas of research are shared.Accepted manuscrip

A State-of-the-art Integrated Transportation Simulation Platform

Nowadays, universities and companies have a huge need for simulation and modelling methodologies. In the particular case of traffic and transportation, making physical modifications to the real traffic networks could be highly expensive, dependent on political decisions and could be highly disruptive to the environment. However, while studying a specific domain or problem, analysing a problem through simulation may not be trivial and may need several simulation tools, hence raising interoperability issues. To overcome these problems, we propose an agent-directed transportation simulation platform, through the cloud, by means of services. We intend to use the IEEE standard HLA (High Level Architecture) for simulators interoperability and agents for controlling and coordination. Our motivations are to allow multiresolution analysis of complex domains, to allow experts to collaborate on the analysis of a common problem and to allow co-simulation and synergy of different application domains. This paper will start by presenting some preliminary background concepts to help better understand the scope of this work. After that, the results of a literature review is shown. Finally, the general architecture of a transportation simulation platform is proposed

Densifying the sparse cloud SimSaaS: The need of a synergy among agent-directed simulation, SimSaaS and HLA

Modelling & Simulation (M&S) is broadly used in real scenarios where making physical modifications could be highly expensive. With the so-called Simulation Software-as-a-Service (SimSaaS), researchers could take advantage of the huge amount of resource that cloud computing provides. Even so, studying and analysing a problem through simulation may need several simulation tools, hence raising interoperability issues. Having this in mind, IEEE developed a standard for interoperability among simulators named High Level Architecture (HLA). Moreover, the multi-agent system approach has become recognised as a convenient approach for modelling and simulating complex systems. Despite all the recent works and acceptance of these technologies, there is still a great lack of work regarding synergies among them. This paper shows by means of a literature review this lack of work or, in other words, the sparse Cloud SimSaaS. The literature review and the resulting taxonomy are the main contributions of this paper, as they provide a research agenda illustrating future research opportunities and trends

Parcela, número de repetições e área de experimentos de campo com fruteiras e outras plantas arbóreas.

bitstream/CNPAT-2010/7343/1/Dc-050.pd

Redescription and morphological variability of <i>Darwinula stevensoni</i> (Brady & Robertson, 1870) (Crustacea, Ostracoda)

The species Darwinula stevensoni is extensively redescribed. Morphological variability of both valves and soft parts is assessed in several geographical and climatically distant populations and is found to be minimal or non-existant. Only size significantly varies between populations and this can be attributed to the differences in ambient temperatures during the larval development. Number and shape of muscle scars also vary, but this both within and between populations. Valve shape and chaetotaxy of limbs are remarkably constant. One female from an Italian population has aberrant Mx2-palps, but this specimen is considered a teratological case. Earlier records of males of D. stevensoni and the taxonomic position of the infraorder Darwinulocopina within the suborder Podocopina are briefly rediscussed. A hypothesis on biological strategy of darwinulids is tested using data on morphological variability and taxonomic diversity

Taxonomic revision of the recent and Holocene representatives of the Family Darwinulidae (Crustacea, Ostracoda), with a description of three new genera

The Darwinulidae, the only surviving family of the superfamily Darwinuloidea, are revised and 28 extant species are retained. Twenty-six species (2 of which as yet formally undescribed) are allocated to 5 genera, 3 of which are here described as new; 2 species have an uncertain position within the family because of their insufficient original description are listed here as species inquirendae. New genera are characterised on combinations of soft part and valve characters, but the chaetotaxy of the limbs seems most conservative and most suitable the identification of genera. Darwinula s.s. and Microdarwinula are, with regard to recent species, monospecific.Alicenula nov. gen. is erected to compromise the 3 species of the former serricaudata-group. Vesalenula nov. gen. comprises the 8 species of the pagliolii-boteaigroup, as well as Darwinula danielopoli, which, together with two undescribed species from Cuba and Tunisia, is placed in a special group within this new genus. Penthesilenula nov. gen. comprises two species-groups, with 10 species in total: 7 species in the incae-group, exclusively occurring in the southern Hemisphere, and 3 species in the africana-group. The latter group also contains P.malayica and P. brasiliensis, which occur on at least three continents; the latter species appears to have a higher indicence of morphological variability than the other extant darwinulids. The species-groups in the latter two genera are here used for convenience; no taxonomic value should at present be attached to them. Problems related to clonal taxonomy in general are briefly discussed. It is demonstrated that a systematic revision of an ancient asexual lineage can lead to a taxonomy which at the same time reflects natural phylogeny and is workable, i.e. is based on recognisable taxa

Photocatalytic Approaches to Circular Economy: CO2 Photoreduction to Regenerated Fuels and Chemicals and H2 Production from Wastewater

The photoreduction of CO2 is an unconventional process to regenerate fuels and chemicals storing solar radiation. A new photoreactor has been designed recently to achieve high productivity during the process, i.e. up to 39 mol/h kgcat of HCOOH or 1.4 mol/h kgcat of CH3OH, which are unprecedented results with respect to literature, especially with a very simple commercial TiO2 catalyst. The production of hydrogen through photoreforming of aqueous solutions of organic compounds is also considered as a way to exploit solar energy storage in the form of hydrogen. Different sugars were selected as substrates derived from the hydrolysis of biomass or from wastewater (food or paper industry). A significant amount of H2 was obtained with very simple catalyst formulations, e.g. 14 mol kgcat-1 h-1 were obtained at 4 bar, 80 \u2daC over commercial TiO2 samples, added with 0.1 mol% of Pt and using glucose as substrate. This result is very remarkable with respect to similar research in conventional photoreactors. Both the routes represent a circular way to regenerate valuable products from gaseous or liquid wastes. Our attention was predominantly focused on the development of innovative reactors, possibly operating under unconventional conditions, with fine tuning of the operation parameters. The exploitation potential of these results under solar irradiation is presented