Observatory of Educational Policies of the region of Odemira – An innovative tool in the research and definition of local educational policies and practices

Because of its territorial dispersion (1721Km2) and low population density (15.10 inhab/km2 | 26036 inhab. total), Odemira is seen as a low density region. Grounded in an involved and team work, and having this in mind, the Local Education Plan (PEL) was built as the anchor to the research, planning and concretion of the educational policy in Odemira. Featuring distinctive guidelines and built on scientific basis, the PEL quickly stood out being the “most innovative in the country”, according to Professor António Rochete (University of Coimbra). Connecting these levels of innovation with the great effort that the City put on studying seriously the conditions that contribute to the existence of certain local educational indicators (some of which lower than the Portuguese average), it was possible to draw a path involving all actors of the educational community in the way of change and social innovation in the definition of an educational policy. Under the PEL and within a straight partnership with TAIPA and University of Évora, Odemira started the implementation of an “Observatory of Educational Policies of the Region of Odemira” (OPECO). This pioneering tool aims to define a methodology of data collection and analysis which is expected to promote a better monitoring of the academic course of students in this region, from pre-school to the conclusion of higher education. It will also contribute to support the definition and implementation of public policies that promote the development and improvement of indicators of education and training in the region. OPECO will consist in two related digital media: the new PEL (Odemira: Território Educativo - 2014- 2016) website and a tool for data collection, analysis and for granting public access to them (with different levels of access). Both website and OPECO tool are developed by Portugal Telecom, one of the most important Portuguese enterprises in this field, and this project was first page of one of the most important Portuguese daily paper (Jornal Público) in march, and Odemira, with this project, was considered in November the second best Portuguese municipality to study in “Future Education” Prizes. This communication’s seek to present the foundations, features and the potential of the OPECO as an innovative element in the management of local educational policies

O envolvimento das/os estudantes na Escola como pilar para a gestão educativa autárquica – Odemira 2020, Odemira Território Educativo

Respondendo aos desígnios do documento de desenvolvimento estratégico (Odemira 2020) e a uma relação estruturante com os planos de desenvolvimento económico e social, o Município de Odemira iniciou um processo de construção da sua nova Carta Educativa (Carta Educativa “3G”) que incorporará no seu seio os Planos Educativos Locais (2014-2016 e 2017-2019) e o Observatório das Políticas Educativas do Concelho de Odemira. Estes recursos têm como principais objetivos a definição de metodologias de recolha e análise de dados (indicadores e resultados de variáveis) que permitirão um melhor acompanhamento do percurso da população escolar do concelho desde o ensino pré-escolar até à conclusão do ensino superior e a elaboração de documentação que possa suportar a definição e implementação de políticas públicas que potenciem o desenvolvimento e a melhoria dos indicadores de educação e formação do concelho. Sendo o conceito e os modelos conceptuais do envolvimento das/os estudantes na Escola um dos principais indicadores para o estudo dos fatores que concorrem para a baixa participação das/os estudantes na escola, o seu baixo desempenho académico e o abandono escolar precoce, entende o Município de Odemira realizar um estudo aprofundado sobre este conceito nas/os estudantes do concelho de Odemira enquanto fator chave de desenvolvimento das referidas ferramentas. A presente comunicação pretende discutir os fundamentos que estão na base da definição da política educativa municipal do concelho de Odemira e o papel do estudo do envolvimento das/os estudantes na mesma

A verticalidade no trabalho de parto e o controlo da dor

A Organização Mundial de Saúde, com o intuito de orientar a conduta dos profissionais, em 1996, divulga um modelo assistencial “Care in normal birth”, no qual (segundo a utilidade, a eficácia e o risco) classificou as práticas na assistência ao parto normal em quatro categorias. A primeira, considerada como a que reúne as práticas demonstradas como úteis e que deveriam ser estimuladas, incluiu a liberdade de movimentos e o estímulo para a adoção de posições verticais durante o trabalho de parto e realça a sua importância como estratégias não farmacológicas para o alívio da dor durante o trabalho de parto. No percurso desenvolvido, a promoção da adoção de posições verticais no primeiro estádio de trabalho de parto como estratégia não farmacológica para o controlo da dor foi selecionada como o foco da aprendizagem e a Teoria do Cuidado Humano de Jean Watson foi eleita como referencial teórico. O relatório que apresento surge como instrumento de descrição, análise, e reflexão, do percurso de aquisição e desenvolvimento de competências específicas do Enfermeiro Especialista em Enfermagem de Saúde Materna e Obstetrícia que decorreu no âmbito do desenvolvimento da unidade curricular, estágio com relatório do 6º Curso de Mestrado em Enfermagem de Saúde Materna e Obstétrica da Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Lisboa. Como estratégia para a identificação e mobilização da evidência científica sobre o tema, realizei uma revisão de literatura, tendo como ponto de partida uma questão elaborada segundo a mnemónica PICO do Joanna Briggs Institute: “Qual a efetividade da adoção de posições verticais, como estratégia de controlo da dor da parturiente durante o primeiro estádio do trabalho de parto?”. A revisão efetuada realça que o fato das parturientes se manterem em posições verticais, movendo-se e mudando de posição durante o primeiro estádio do trabalho de parto, contribui significativamente para uma redução dos níveis de dor

Influence of the electrolyte salt concentration on DNA detection with graphene transistors

Liquid-gated Graphene Field-Effect Transistors (GFET) are ultrasensitive bio-detection platforms carrying out the graphene’s exceptional intrinsic functionalities. Buffer and dilution factor are prevalent strategies towards the optimum performance of the GFETs. However, beyond the Debye length (λD), the role of the graphene-electrolytes’ ionic species interactions on the DNA behavior at the nanoscale interface is complicated. We studied the characteristics of the GFETs under different ionic strength, pH, and electrolyte type, e.g., phosphate buffer (PB), and phosphate buffer saline (PBS), in an automatic portable built-in system. The electrostatic gating and charge transfer phenomena were inferred from the field-effect measurements of the Dirac point position in single-layer graphene (SLG) transistors transfer curves. Results denote that λD is not the main factor governing the effective nanoscale screening environment. We observed that the longer λD was not the determining characteristic for sensitivity increment and limit of detection (LoD) as demonstrated by different types and ionic strengths of measuring buffers. In the DNA hybridization study, our findings show the role of the additional salts present in PBS, as compared to PB, in increasing graphene electron mobility, electrostatic shielding, intermolecular forces and DNA adsorption kinetics leading to an improved sensitivity.This research is supported by PORTGRAPHE-Control of Port and DouroWines authenticity using graphene DNA sensors project co-funded by FCT (PTDC/BIA-MOL/31069/2017) and the ERDF through COMPETE2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-031069)

REMAS: Greenhouse gas emissions risk management in forest fires

Trabajo presentado en World Forestry Congress, celebrado en Seúl (Corea del Sur) del 02 al 06 de mayo de 2022.REMAS is an Interreg SUDOE project, an innovative project, both in terms of subject matter and territorial approach. Through transnational cooperation, REMAS addresses the risk management of emitting carbon contained in forest ecosystems into the atmosphere due to forest fires, with a multidisciplinary and integrative character. REMAS proposes prevention and post-fire measures to minimise damage and accelerate the recovery of carbon stocks. The project also works to ensure that this emission risk is included in the design of prevention plans and in taking measures to restore sinks in soil and vegetation at a transnational level. Therefore, through transnational cooperation, REMAS is fostering strong partnerships in which regional and local authorities, academia, NGOs and forest sector companies work together to address the transboundary risk of greenhouse gas emissions from forest fires in the SUDOE territory, whose forest ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. REMAS is a project co-financed by the Interreg Sudoe Program through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) which involves 8 partners and 9 associated partners

Predicting progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia using neuropsychological data: a supervised learning approach using time windows

Background: Predicting progression from a stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment to dementia is a major pursuit in current research. It is broadly accepted that cognition declines with a continuum between MCI and dementia. As such, cohorts of MCI patients are usually heterogeneous, containing patients at different stages of the neurodegenerative process. This hampers the prognostic task. Nevertheless, when learning prognostic models, most studies use the entire cohort of MCI patients regardless of their disease stages. In this paper, we propose a Time Windows approach to predict conversion to dementia, learning with patients stratified using time windows, thus fine-tuning the prognosis regarding the time to conversion. Methods: In the proposed Time Windows approach, we grouped patients based on the clinical information of whether they converted (converter MCI) or remained MCI (stable MCI) within a specific time window. We tested time windows of 2, 3, 4 and 5 years. We developed a prognostic model for each time window using clinical and neuropsychological data and compared this approach with the commonly used in the literature, where all patients are used to learn the models, named as First Last approach. This enables to move from the traditional question "Will a MCI patient convert to dementia somewhere in the future" to the question "Will a MCI patient convert to dementia in a specific time window". Results: The proposed Time Windows approach outperformed the First Last approach. The results showed that we can predict conversion to dementia as early as 5 years before the event with an AUC of 0.88 in the cross-validation set and 0.76 in an independent validation set. Conclusions: Prognostic models using time windows have higher performance when predicting progression from MCI to dementia, when compared to the prognostic approach commonly used in the literature. Furthermore, the proposed Time Windows approach is more relevant from a clinical point of view, predicting conversion within a temporal interval rather than sometime in the future and allowing clinicians to timely adjust treatments and clinical appointments.FCT under the Neuroclinomics2 project [PTDC/EEI-SII/1937/2014, SFRH/BD/95846/2013]; INESC-ID plurianual [UID/CEC/50021/2013]; LASIGE Research Unit [UID/CEC/00408/2013

Neuropsychological predictors of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease: a feature selection ensemble combining stability and predictability

Background Predicting progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is an utmost open issue in AD-related research. Neuropsychological assessment has proven to be useful in identifying MCI patients who are likely to convert to dementia. However, the large battery of neuropsychological tests (NPTs) performed in clinical practice and the limited number of training examples are challenge to machine learning when learning prognostic models. In this context, it is paramount to pursue approaches that effectively seek for reduced sets of relevant features. Subsets of NPTs from which prognostic models can be learnt should not only be good predictors, but also stable, promoting generalizable and explainable models. Methods We propose a feature selection (FS) ensemble combining stability and predictability to choose the most relevant NPTs for prognostic prediction in AD. First, we combine the outcome of multiple (filter and embedded) FS methods. Then, we use a wrapper-based approach optimizing both stability and predictability to compute the number of selected features. We use two large prospective studies (ADNI and the Portuguese Cognitive Complaints Cohort, CCC) to evaluate the approach and assess the predictive value of a large number of NPTs. Results The best subsets of features include approximately 30 and 20 (from the original 79 and 40) features, for ADNI and CCC data, respectively, yielding stability above 0.89 and 0.95, and AUC above 0.87 and 0.82. Most NPTs learnt using the proposed feature selection ensemble have been identified in the literature as strong predictors of conversion from MCI to AD. Conclusions The FS ensemble approach was able to 1) identify subsets of stable and relevant predictors from a consensus of multiple FS methods using baseline NPTs and 2) learn reliable prognostic models of conversion from MCI to AD using these subsets of features. The machine learning models learnt from these features outperformed the models trained without FS and achieved competitive results when compared to commonly used FS algorithms. Furthermore, the selected features are derived from a consensus of methods thus being more robust, while releasing users from choosing the most appropriate FS method to be used in their classification task.PTDC/EEI-SII/1937/2014; SFRH/BD/95846/2013; SFRH/BD/118872/2016info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

FEDERALISMO E POLÍTICA EDUCACIONAL: UM ESTUDO SOBRE O REGIME DE COLABORAÇÃO NO ESATDO DO PARÁ

Este estudo tem como objetivo analisar as relações intergovernamentais da federação brasileira e suas conseqüências para definir políticas de educação pública no Brasil e de modo especial no Estado do Pará nos anos de 1990. A pergunta que motivou este estudo é sobre como se instituem as relações intergovernamentais equal sua influência na definição de políticas sociais

Classification of primary progressive aphasia: do unsupervised data mining methods support a logopenic variant?

© 2015 Informa HealthcareOur objective was to test whether data mining techniques, through an unsupervised learning approach, support the three-group diagnostic model of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) versus the existence of two main/classic groups. A series of 155 PPA patients observed in a clinical setting and subjected to at least one neuropsychological/language assessment was studied. Several demographic, clinical and neuropsychological attributes, grouped in distinct sets, were introduced in unsupervised learning methods (Expectation Maximization, K-Means, X-Means, Hierarchical Clustering and Consensus Clustering). Results demonstrated that unsupervised learning methods revealed two main groups consistently obtained throughout all the analyses (with different algorithms and different set of attributes). One group included most of the agrammatic/non-fluent and some logopenic cases while the other was mainly composed of semantic and logopenic cases. Clustering the patients in a larger number of groups (k > 2) revealed some clusters composed mostly of non-fluent or of semantic cases. However, we could not evidence any group chiefly composed of logopenic cases. In conclusion, unsupervised data mining approaches do not support a clear distinction of logopenic PPA as a separate variant.CM and TP are supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) PhD Fellowships (SFRH/BD/75710/2011 and SFRH/BD/95846/2013, respectively). AdM and MG also receive funding from FCT. TP and SM receive funding from NEURO- CLINOMICS (PTDC/EIA/111239/2009) and UID/CEC/50021/2013, also funded by FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio