A new wireless biosensor for intra-vaginal temperature monitoring

Wireless Body Sensors for medical purposes offer valuable contributions to improve patients’ healthcare, including diagnosis and/or therapeutics monitoring. Body temperature is a crucial parameter in healthcare diagnosis. In gynecology and obstetrics it is measured at the skin’s surface, which is very influenced by the environment. This paper proposes a new intra-body sensor for long-term intra-vaginal temperature collection. The embedded IEEE 802.15.4 communication module allows the integration of this sensor in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for remote data access and monitoring. We present the sensor architecture, the construction of the corresponding testbed, and its performance evaluation. This sensor may be used in different medical applications, including preterm labor prevention and fertility and ovulation period detection. The features of the constructed testbed were validated in laboratory tests verifying its accuracy and performance

Stability of stationary solutions of the Schrodinger-Langevin equation

The stability properties of a class of dissipative quantum mechanical systems are investigated. The nonlinear stability and asymptotic stability of stationary states (with zero and nonzero dissipation respectively) is investigated by Liapunov's direct method. The results are demonstrated by numerical calculations on the example of the damped harmonic oscillator.Comment: revised, 12 pages, 7 figure

Knowledge of family health program practitioners in Brazil about sickle cell disease: a descriptive, cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Although sickle cell disease is an important public health problem in Brazil, there is a gap in the literature on the level of knowledge of primary health care professionals about the treatment and management of sickle cell disease. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the level of knowledge about sickle cell disease of physicians and nurses who work in the Family Health Program in a region of Brazil with a high prevalence of this disease. METHODS: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study conducted at the municipality of Montes Claros, in the north of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Study participants included 96 physicians and nurses who work at the Family Health Program in an urban area of the city. Data was collected using an original, partially tested questionnaire based on health care check points for children with sickle cell disease established in educational protocols from the State Health Secretary of Minas Gerais and the Ministry of Health. The structured questionnaire contained 47 questions addressing three axes: epidemiology (8 questions); clinical manifestations (13 questions); and management of children with sickle cell disease (26 questions). Knowledge was measured through mean correct responses to proposed questions. Ethical principles were respected and this project was approved by the Committee of Ethics in Research. RESULTS: 59.4% (57) of the study participants were nurses and 40.6% (39) were physicians. The median length of training and median length of service in primary health care were 4.3 (2.8-8.0) years and 4.0 (2.0-7.1) years, respectively. The mean performance in knowledge tests was < 75%, with 5.7/8 (SD = 1.4) for the "epidemiology" questions; 8.6/13 (SD = 2.2) for "clinical manifestations"; and 17.0/26 (SD = 2.9) for "management of children with sickle cell disease" questions; resulting in a mean total of 31.4/47 (SD = 5.10) correct responses. A statistically significant association was found between the number of correct responses and family health care qualifications (p = 0.015). CONCLUSION: There is an urgent need to improve primary health care professional training in the care of children with sickle cell disease

A New Wireless Biosensor for Intra-Vaginal Temperature Monitoring

Wireless Body Sensors for medical purposes offer valuable contributions to improve patients’ healthcare, including diagnosis and/or therapeutics monitoring. Body temperature is a crucial parameter in healthcare diagnosis. In gynecology and obstetrics it is measured at the skin’s surface, which is very influenced by the environment. This paper proposes a new intra-body sensor for long-term intra-vaginal temperature collection. The embedded IEEE 802.15.4 communication module allows the integration of this sensor in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for remote data access and monitoring. We present the sensor architecture, the construction of the corresponding testbed, and its performance evaluation. This sensor may be used in different medical applications, including preterm labor prevention and fertility and ovulation period detection. The features of the constructed testbed were validated in laboratory tests verifying its accuracy and performance

Ponderomotive Control of Quantum Macroscopic Coherence

It is shown that because of the radiation pressure a Schr\"odinger cat state can be generated in a resonator with oscillating wall. The optomechanical control of quantum macroscopic coherence and its detection is taken into account introducing new cat states. The effects due to the environmental couplings with this nonlinear system are considered developing an operator perturbation procedure to solve the master equation for the field mode density operator.Comment: Latex,22 pages,accepted by Phys.Rev.

Clinical practice: Drug desensitization in children

Immediate type allergic reactions to medication are potentially life threatening and can hamper drug therapy of several medical conditions. Exact incidence and prevalence data for these reactions in children are lacking. If no alternative drug treatment is available, a desensitization procedure may secure the continuation of necessary therapy. Desensitization is only appropriate in case of a strong suspicion of an IgE-mediated allergic reaction. It should be performed by trained clinicians (allergy specialists) in a hospital setting where treatment of a potential anaphylactic reaction can be done without any delay. In this article, literature describing desensitization procedures for several antibiotics, antineoplastic agents, and vaccines in children is reviewed. In general, desensitization schemes for children differ only in final dose from schemes for adults. Contradictory data were found regarding the protective effects of premedication with antihistamines and glucocorticoids

Paving (through) Amazonia: Neoliberal Urbanism and the Reperipheralization of Roraima

This paper examines the neoliberal reshaping of infrastructure provision in Brazil's extreme north since the mid-1990s, when roadway investments resulted in unprecedented regional connectivity. The BR-174 upgrade, the era's most important project, marked a transition from resource-based developmentalism to free-market transnationalism. Primarily concerned with urban competitiveness, the federal government funded the trunk roadway's paving to facilitate manufacturing exports from Manaus. While an effort was made to minimize deforestation, planners sidelined development implications in adjacent Roraima. The state's urban system has thus experienced reperipheralization and intensified primacy. Market-led growth now compounds the inheritance of hierarchical centralism and ongoing governmental neglect. Our study shows a vast territory dependent on primate cities for basic goods and services. Travelling with Roraimans from bypassed towns, we detected long-distance passenger transportation and surface logistics with selective routes. Heterogeneous Roraiman (im)mobilities comprise middle-class tourism and heightened consumerism as well as informal mobility tactics and transnational circulations of precarious labor. The paper exhorts neoliberal urbanism research to look beyond both Euro America's metropoles and their Global South counterparts. Urbanization dynamics in Brazil's extreme north demonstrate that market-disciplined investments to globalize cities produce far-reaching spatial effects. These are felt even by functionally-articulated-yet-marginalized peripheries in ostensibly remote locations