Relativistic evaluation of the two-photon decay of the metastable {1s}^{2} 2s 2p~^3\mbox{P}_0 state in berylliumlike ions with an active-electron model

The two-photon {1s}^{2} 2s 2p~^3\mbox{P}_0 \rightarrow {1s}^{2} {2s}^2 ^1\mbox{S}_0 transition in berylliumlike ions is theoretically investigated within a full relativistic framework and a second-order perturbation theory. We focus our analysis on how electron correlation, as well as the negative-energy spectrum can affect the forbidden $E1M1$ decay rate. For this purpose we include the electronic correlation by an effective potential and within an active-electron model. Due to its experimental interest, evaluation of decay rates are performed for berylliumlike xenon and uranium. We find that the negative-energy contribution can be neglected in the present decay rate. On the other hand, if contributions of electronic correlation are not carefully taken into account, it may change the lifetime of the metastable state by 20\%. By performing a full-relativistic $jj$-coupling calculation, we found discrepancies for the decay rate of an order of 2 compared to non-relativistic $LS$-coupling calculations, for the selected heavy ions.Comment: 7 pages, 3 page

Innovative architectural and structural design to preserve historical centers

Historical centers are important elements of our cities, representing their history and evolution. Many cities are facing the problem of having several vacant and degraded buildings needing intervention to avoid collapses. Also several examples of unforeseen events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, etc., have severely damaged important historical cities. Beyond the risk of losing built heritage, these buildings represent public danger for citizens. Thus, in post-disaster scenarios it is urgent to protect historical buildings in order to prevent the propagation of damages. This paper presents a first efficiency assessment of using wood based systems in buildings needing urgent consolidation or damaged after disasters. Being light, easy to handle and install, as well as providing the sufficient load carrying to prevent the evolution of the damage and losses, wood and wood-based elements can be associated in different arrangements providing quick construction systems for the consolidation of damaged constructions

The role of spontaneous construction for post-disaster housing

Housing is crucial for living and well-being. Due to its vulnerability, one of the most severe consequences after natural disasters has been the destruction of houses, causing impressive numbers of homeless people. After those situations, it is imperative to start the reconstruction works and the provision of houses is a crucial task, since they can help to restore the livelihoods of the affected people. The urgency to supply housing quickly, has lead the formal construction sector to neglect user’s needs and expectations, and consequently has not conducted to successful solutions. Contrary to that, informal housing solutions have reached successful results in addressing the user’s cultural needs and expectations. Some studies have presented the advantages of spontaneous construction solutions, yet they seem to be ignored and contradicted by the formal construction sector. This study aims to present an assessment of the potentials of spontaneous construction solutions for post-disaster housing development

Step towards progressive web development in obstetrics

The aim of this paper is to develop a Personal Health Record (PHR) for the support of pregnant women. With this goal in mind, concepts such as PHR and their importance in the obstetrics field are overviewed, as well as mobile development strategies. The system was developed with the support of a medical institution and taking into account what pregnant women find useful. The developed app is a Progressive Web App (PWA). This is a recent technology that allows the same app to work on most devices, gives a native feel to it when using on mobile devices and enables offline support. Further testing is necessary to understand the impact that this system may have in the engagement of pregnant women and in birth outcomes.This work has been supported by Compete: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT within the Project ScopeUID/CEC/00319/2013

Smart mobile computing in pregnancy care

Pregnancy is a period of changes. With all the information available and all the questions raised, it may also be an overwhelming period. Mobiles phones might be a solution for pregnant women to follow their pregnancy through Electronic Maternity Records (EMR). Therefore, this paper aims to propose an EMR to help women during their pregnancy. Firstly, the importance of Personal Health Records (PHRs) as well as mHealth is overviewed. Secondly, the types of mobile apps are presented with their pros and cons and the concept of Progressive Web App (PWA) is introduced. In order to understand the features that pregnancy mobile apps are now offering and the ones they are missing, eight apps are analysed. Lastly, the features and architecture of the proposed EMR are described and discussed. Since PWAs are a recent technology and a promising alternative to the three classic types of mobile development, it is also the technology used to develop the proposed EMR.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UID/CEC/00319/2019

Onsite assessment of structural timber members by means of hierarchical models and probabilistic methods

One of the main motivations for hierarchical modelling is to understand how properties, composition and structure at lower scale levels may influence and be used to predict the material properties at macroscopic and structural engineering scales. Structural timber is, in most cases, characterized by three parameters usually designated as reference properties: density, bending modulus of elasticity and bending strength. The present paper addresses a review on different possibilities for obtaining reliable data about the mechanical behaviour of timber elements by collecting information at different levels and by organizing that information into a hierarchy of sequential levels (from lowest to highest). The applicability and limitations of statistic and probabilistic methods on the prediction and inference of timber’s reference material properties are discussed and exemplified

Tuberculosis-HIV coinfection in patients of Pereira, Colombia

Introducción: El Instituto Municipal de Salud de Pereira informó en el año 2003 un aumento en los niveles de tuberculosis. Hipotéticamente se relacionó con la infección por VIH en Pereira. Métodos: Se llevó a cabo un estudio que tomó todos los pacientes con diagnóstico de tuberculosis en la red pública de atención primaria durante un período de 5 meses y se les hizo test de Elisa y Western Blot confirmatorio. Como los registros de los pacientes estaban incompletos fue necesario efectuar visitas domiciliarias para completar la información. Resultados: Hubo 94 pacientes con tuberculosis. Del total de los casos de tuberculosis 58.5% correspondían a hombres; 55.3% ocurrieron entre 16 y 50 años, la edad promedio fue 41.1 años y 90.4% eran formas pulmonares. El método diagnóstico que más se utilizó fue la baciloscopía, 80.9%. De los pacientes 94.7% procedían del área urbana. Se encontraron 7 pacientes con test de Elisa reactivo, pero sólo 3 se confirmaron con Western Blot, lo que da una prevalencia de 3.2% para la coinfección con un intervalo de confianza de 95% 0.7, 9.04. De estos tres pacientes dos eran mujeres y uno de los casos era una tuberculosis meníngea. Conclusiones: Se considera que la prevalencia de la asociación con VIH en el municipio de Pereira es baja, si se compara con la de otras ciudades del país y del mundo. El incremento de la tuberculosis no estuvo relacionado con la coinfección por VIH. Es muy importante realizar evaluaciones de la calidad de los registros de los pacientes. Background: The Instituto Municipal de Salud de Pereira, reported in 2003, an increase of level in tuberculosis (TB). This increase was hypothetically related with AIDS in Pereira. Methods: All of the patients with TB in public hospitals were examined with Elisa test and Western Blot test. This research lasted 5 months. Since patients’ records were incomplete it was necessary visiting patients’ houses in order to obtain more data. Results: Were reported 94 cases of TB disease in Pereira in 5 months; among them 58.5% were males. Median age was 41 years old. Pulmonary TB was present in 90.4% patients; of these 80.9% were highly infectious, with acid-fast bacilli (AFB) identified on sputum smear. Only 7 patients were reactive to the Elisa test, and of them 3 patients were confirmed with Western Blot test. The prevalence of co infection was 3.2% IC95% 0.7, 9.04. Of the three patients two were women and one had tuberculous meningitis. Conclusions: The prevalence of TB and HIV co infection is low if compared with others cities in Colombia. The TB increase wasn’t related to co-infection with HIV. It’s very important to have a quality control of patients’ records

A Psychometrics Approach to Entropy

Today's metrics for women housework work (WHW) operate at a quantitative level, specifically measuring time expended on a task and the totality of tasks women perform, not considering that it is a process that is eminently qualitative in nature. To fill this gap, an innovative framework for representing and thinking about big data or knowledge is presented, borrowing from the field of artificial intelligence the methods and methodologies for problem solving, from logic programming the artifacts to improve practice through theory, and from the laws of thermodynamics the construct of entropy, interpreted as the degree of disorder or unpredictability in a system, a principle that may be used to understand system evolution. Last but not least, it also considers the relationship among the disciplines of psychometrics and psychology or sociology (i.e., how certain psychological and sociological concepts such as cognition, knowledge and personality affect WHW satisfaction)

Programa “Domicílios Livres de Fumo”: passado, presente e futuro

Childhood exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) is associated with serious health problems. Despite the recognised severity of childhood exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), several studies show high prevalence of exposed children in the world and also in Portugal. In order to protect children of this serious health hazard an ETS type preventive programme, “Smoke free-homes”, was developed and tested in Portugal. Its main purpose is to increase the number of parents who do not smoke and / or to reinforce the norm of not allowing smoking at home and in the car, enabling “participant students” to proactively promote parents’ behaviour change and effectively reduce or avoid ETS home exposure. This is a school based programme, to be applied in the classroom by teachers.A exposição das crianças ao Fumo Ambiental do Tabaco (FAT) está associada a graves problemas de saúde. Apesar da evidência científica sobre a gravidade da exposição das crianças ao FAT, muitos estudos mostram que existe uma elevada percentagem de crianças expostas ao FAT no Mundo (aproximadamente 50%) e também em Portugal (40% segundo alguns estudos realizados). Com o objectivo de proteger as crianças desta agressão, foi desenhado em Portugal o programa de prevenção denominado “Domicílios Livres de Fumo”. A sua principal finalidade é aumentar a prevalência de pais e mães que não fumam (e/ou não permitam que se fume) em casa e no carro. O programa foi desenhado para ser aplicado nas salas de aulas, pelos professores.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)Universidade do Minho. Centro de Investigação em Educação (CIEd

Recovering the Graph Underlying Networked Dynamical Systems under Partial Observability: A Deep Learning Approach

We study the problem of graph structure identification, i.e., of recovering the graph of dependencies among time series. We model these time series data as components of the state of linear stochastic networked dynamical systems. We assume partial observability, where the state evolution of only a subset of nodes comprising the network is observed. We devise a new feature vector computed from the observed time series and prove that these features are linearly separable, i.e., there exists a hyperplane that separates the cluster of features associated with connected pairs of nodes from those associated with disconnected pairs. This renders the features amenable to train a variety of classifiers to perform causal inference. In particular, we use these features to train Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The resulting causal inference mechanism outperforms state-of-the-art counterparts w.r.t. sample-complexity. The trained CNNs generalize well over structurally distinct networks (dense or sparse) and noise-level profiles. Remarkably, they also generalize well to real-world networks while trained over a synthetic network (realization of a random graph). Finally, the proposed method consistently reconstructs the graph in a pairwise manner, that is, by deciding if an edge or arrow is present or absent in each pair of nodes, from the corresponding time series of each pair. This fits the framework of large-scale systems, where observation or processing of all nodes in the network is prohibitive.Comment: Accepted at The 37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (main track