Basic-self disorders beyond schizophrenia : ultra-high-risk states and panic disorder

Tese de doutoramento, Medicina (Psiquiatria e Saúde Mental), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2017This thesis investigates Anomalous Self-Experiences (ASE) testing new ways of their symbolization (e.g. Truman Symptoms), extending the detail of their subsets (e.g. abnormal bodily experiences) in Ultra-High-Risk (UHR) and further isolating them in new settings, such as anxiety disorders. The first aim was to study Truman Symptoms (TS) including their presence in UHR, their clinical implications and their relation with ASE. The second aim was to study the Abnormal Bodily Phenomena subset of ASE in UHR and to determine their clinical implications. The third aim was to identify if ASE occurred in Panic Disorder, to characterize their profile in this category considering possible differences from schizophrenia. Anomalous Self-Experiences are the most important contemporary conceptual and empirical research topic in the field of Schizophrenia. The set of these subjective phenomena constitutes particular traits of schizophrenic subjects which are present in the 1st episode of psychosis, in prodromal and in Ultra-High-Risk states. Outstandingly, such enquiries have raised the standard of the psychopathological examination as they’ve endorsed reconsidering subjective phenomena to increase validity of a psychiatric category without sacrificing reliability. This constituted the first step to sanction a new set of enquiries which contemplate other subjective phenomena in schizophrenia and also recognize the possible role of psychopathology of subjectivity in other disorders. This thesis stands upon the latter phenomenological entreaties in three separate approaches. It starts by taking on Truman Symptoms, a contemporary way of symbolizing depersonalization/derealization experiences, to identify their relevance in UHR and considering their relation with ASE. TS seem to represent a fresh cultural symbolization of the initial phase of psychosis and yet no empirical enquiry has set their bearing in the risk of psychosis, found possible analogies to ASE or a relation with other clinical measures. It continues by addressing the subset of bodily ASE, of which the relevance in a schizophrenic sample has been recently reconsidered. Deploying a new instrument – the Abnormal Bodily Phenomena Questionnaire – it examines the UHR states drawing the relation of these unique subjective elements with established ASE and other clinical measures. Lastly it probes the presence of ASE in a well-established, almost archetypal, nosological category of anxiety – Panic Disorder – aiming to contribute to the characterization of the psychopathological forms of their subjectivity. Such enquiry seems fundamental to the use of ASE in UHR populations where anxious settings are extant and therefore identifying particular clusters which could be representative of more severe disturbances of “basic-self” as crucial for their clinical relevance.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, SFRH/SINTD/95675/2013

Refinement by interpretation in {\pi}-institutions

The paper discusses the role of interpretations, understood as multifunctions that preserve and reflect logical consequence, as refinement witnesses in the general setting of pi-institutions. This leads to a smooth generalization of the refinement-by-interpretation approach, recently introduced by the authors in more specific contexts. As a second, yet related contribution a basis is provided to build up a refinement calculus of structured specifications in and across arbitrary pi-institutions.Comment: In Proceedings Refine 2011, arXiv:1106.348

A machine learning approach for indirect human presence detection using IOT devices

This paper describes the construction of a system that uses information from several home automation devices, to detect the presence of a person in the space where the devices are located. The detection however doesn't rely on the information of devices that explicitly detect human presence, like motion detectors or smart cameras. The information used is the one available in the Muzzley system, which is a mobile application that allows the monitoring and control of several types of devices from a single program. The provided information was anonymized at the source. The first step was to extract adequate features for this problem. A labeling step is introduced using a combination of heuristics to assert the likelihood of anyone being home at a given time, based on all information available, including, but not limited to, direct presence detectors. The solution rests mainly on the use of supervised learning algorithms to train models that detect the presence without any information based on direct presence detectors. The model should be able to detect patterns of usage when the owner is at home rather than rely only on direct sensors. Results show that detection in this context is difficult, but we believe these results shed some light on possible paths to improve the system's accuracy.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Olive Mill Wastewater Valorization through Steam Reforming Using Multifunctional Reactors: Challenges of the Process Intensification

Olive oil mill wastewater (OMW) is a polluting stream derived from the production of olive oil and is a source of environmental pollution; this is relevant in many countries around the world, but particularly in all the Mediterranean region where major producers are located. In this effluent, several pollutants are present-namely, sugars, fatty acids, and polyphenols, among others. Nowadays, to reduce the pollutant load, several treatment techniques are applied, but these technologies have numerous cost and efficiency problems. For this reason, the steam reforming of the OMW (OMWSR) presents as a good alternative, because this process decreases the pollutant load of the OMW and simultaneously valorizes the waste with the production of green H-2, which is consistent with the perspective of the circular economy. Currently, the OMWSR is an innovative treatment alternative in the scientific field and with high potential. In the last few years, some groups have studied the OMWSR and used innovative reactor configurations, aiming to improve the process' effectiveness. In this review, the OMW treatment/valorization processes, the last developments on catalysis for OMWSR (or steam reforming of similar species present in the effluent), as well as the last advances on OMWSR performed in multi-functional reactors are addressed

The role of logical interpretations on program development

Stepwise refinement of algebraic specifications is a well known formal methodology for program development. However, traditional notions of refinement based on signature morphisms are often too rigid to capture a number of relevant transformations in the context of software design, reuse, and adaptation. This paper proposes a new approach to refinement in which signature morphisms are replaced by logical interpretations as a means to witness refinements. The approach is first presented in the context of equational logic, and later generalised to deductive systems of arbitrary dimension. This allows, for example, refining sentential into equational specifications and the latter into modal ones.The authors express their gratitude to the anonymous referees who raised a number of pertinent questions entailing a more precise characterisation of the paper's contributions and a clarification of their scope. This work was funded by HRDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028923 (Nasoni) and the project PEst-C/MAT/UI4106/2011 with COMPETE number FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022690 (CIDMA-UA). The first author also acknowledges the financial assistance by the projects GetFun, reference FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES, and NOCIONES IDE COMPLETUD, reference FFI2009-09345 (MICINN - Spain). A. Madeira was supported by the FCT within the project NORTE-01-0124-FEDER-000060

Machine learning and natural language processing for prediction of human factors in aviation incident reports

In the aviation sector, human factors are the primary cause of safety incidents. Intelligent prediction systems, which are capable of evaluating human state and managing risk, have been developed over the years to identify and prevent human factors. However, the lack of large useful labelled data has often been a drawback to the development of these systems. This study presents a methodology to identify and classify human factor categories from aviation incident reports. For feature extraction, a text pre-processing and Natural Language Processing (NLP) pipeline is developed. For data modelling, semi-supervised Label Spreading (LS) and supervised Support Vector Machine (SVM) techniques are considered. Random search and Bayesian optimization methods are applied for hyper-parameter analysis and the improvement of model performance, as measured by the Micro F1 score. The best predictive models achieved a Micro F1 score of 0.900, 0.779, and 0.875, for each level of the taxonomic framework, respectively. The results of the proposed method indicate that favourable predicting performances can be achieved for the classification of human factors based on text data. Notwithstanding, a larger data set would be recommended in future research

Catalytic Steam Reforming of Biomass-Derived Oxygenates for H2 Production: A Review on Ni-Based Catalysts

The steam reforming of ethanol, methanol, and other oxygenates (e.g., bio-oil and olive mill wastewater) using Ni-based catalysts have been studied by the scientific community in the last few years. This process is already well studied over the last years, being the critical point, at this moment, the choice of a suitable catalyst. The utilization of these oxygenates for the production of green H2 is an interesting alternative to fuel fossils. For this application, Ni-based catalysts have been extensively studied since they are highly active and cheaper than noble metal-based materials. In this review, a comparison of several Ni-based catalysts reported in the literature for the different above-mentioned reactions is carried out. This study aims to understand if such catalysts demonstrate enough catalytic activity/stability for application in steam reforming of the oxygenated compounds and which preparation methods are most adequate to obtain these materials. In summary, it aims to provide insights into the performances reached and point out the best way to get better and improved catalysts for such applications (which depends on the feedstock used)

Análise do Desempenho de um Call Center com recurso ao Controlo Estatístico de Processos

A competitividade entre empresas aumenta todos os dias, levando-as a sub-contratar determinados serviços que não são nucleares a outras empresas espe-cializadas em prestá-los. Em determinados serviços, como o caso dos call centers, a empresa subcontratada acaba por “dar a cara” pela empresa a quem presta ser-viços junto dos seus clientes. De forma a assegurar a qualidade do serviço pres-tado, é normal que entre as empresas, nos contratos de prestação de serviços, existam cláusulas para o nível de serviço que se pretende que seja satisfeito. Atualmente, os modelos existentes para avaliar a qualidade dos serviços com mais aceitação na comunidade científica são o SERVQUAL e o SERVPERF. Por outro lado, o controlo estatístico de processos (SPC) bastante utilizado e di-vulgado na indústria dos bens, tem ainda pouca aceitação e exemplos concretos de implementação na indústria dos serviços, apesar dos benefícios associados e dos incentivos para a sua implementação. Uma das ferramentas mais conhecidas associadas ao SPC é a carta controlo, dado o seu poder de monitorização sobre o processo e sinalização de situações de fora de controlo que indicam que é neces-sário intervir no processo. Adicionalmente, com o processo sob controlo estatís-tico, é possível calcular a capacidade do processo relativamente a especificações que é necessário respeitar. A presente dissertação de mestrado propõe-se a avaliar e monitorizar a acessibilidade de um call-center aos clientes da Financeira, através da implemen-tação da carta de controlo de atributos para controlar a proporção de unidades não conformes – Carta p, e estabelecer um paralelismo dos índices de capacidade aplicados à realidade do processo de atendimentos de chamadas de um call center para avaliar a capacidade de cumprir com os níveis de serviço contratados

Comparison of Nanosized Gold-Based and Copper-Based Catalysts for the Low-Temperature Water-Gas Shift Reaction

In this paper the catalytic performances for the low-temperature water-gas shift reaction of Au/TiO(2) type A (from World Gold Council), Au/CeO(2) (developed at UPV-CSIC), CuO/Al(2)O(3) (from BASF), and CuO/ZnO/ Al(2)O(3) (from REB Research & Consulting) have been compared. The catalysts were characterized by different techniques such as Raman spectroscopy, BET surface area measurements, temperature-programmed reduction, and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, which gave additional information on the redox properties and textural and morphological structure of the investigated samples. The performances of these catalysts were evaluated in a wide range of operating conditions in a micro packed-bed reactor. It was observed that the presence of reaction products in the feed (CO(2) and H(2)), as well as CO and H(2)O feed concentrations, have significant effects on the catalytic performances. With a typical reformate feed the Au/CeO(2) catalyst reveals the highest CO conversion at the lowest temperature investigated (150 degrees C). However, while in the long tests performed the CuO/ZnO/Al(2)O(3) catalyst showed a good stability for the entire range of temperatures tested (150-300 degrees C), the Au/CeO(2) sample clearly showed two distinct behaviors: a progressive deactivation at lower temperatures and a good stability at higher ones. The selection of the best catalytic system is therefore clearly dependent upon the range of temperatures used

Competências comunicativas do professor

[Resumo] Estudo de natureza estritamente exploratória onde se apresentam os resultados de urna investigação sobre competencias comunicativas do professor efectuado na área Educativa de Castelo Branco, especificamente a estudantes do 2° e 3° ciclo e do nível secundário, em duas escolas situadas na cidade da Covilha. De forma a obter-se urna imagem próxima das expectativas que os alunos detem acerca dos requisitos comunicativos exigidos ao professor no exercício directo da docencia, foram avaliados directamente 137 sujeitos, durante o primeiro trimestre de 2002. Procurámos com este estudo reflectir acerca de e avaliar algumas questões relacionadas com os seguintes considerandos: Será que os alunos privilegiam mais as competencias comunicativas do professor do que outras, tais como as sociais e as cognitivas? Será que os alunos, confrontados com urna situação concreta, esperam que o professor aja de urna forma assertiva? Será que um bom desempenho comunicativo do docente contribui para o bom relacionamento aluno / professor? AIgumas das conclusões centrais retiradas deste estudo remetem para os alunos tenderem a associar o comportamento comunicacional do professor aos seus interesses e sentimentos, sugerindo estes resultados que aos olhos dos principais avaliadores da "prática docente" o estilo comunicacional do professor traduz um espelho das suas reais expectativas relativamente a sua praxis pedagógica. Os dados recolhidos nesta investiga~ao permitiram reforçar ainda, a partir de um suporte credível, a necessidade de urna comunicação educacional bilateral, e consequentemente, os desafios exigidos aos profissionais de educação no campo das competencias comunicativas[Resumé] Étude de nature strictement exploratoire ou sont présentés les résultats d'une recherche sur les compétences communicatives du professeur effectuée dans l' Académie de Castelo Branco, spécifiquement sur des étudiants de deuxieme et troisieme cycle et du niveau secondaire, dans deux écoles de la ville de Covilha. De forme aavoir une image proche des expectatives que les éleves ont apropos des qualités communicatives essentielles exigées au professeur dans l' exercice direct de l'enseignement, 137 individus ont été directement évalués, pendant le premier trimestre de 2002. Gn a essayé, avec cette étude, de réfléchir sur et d' évaluer certaines questions liées aux considérants suivants : Est-ce que les éleves privilégient plus les compétences communicatives du professeur que les autres, telles que les compétences sociales et les cognitives ? Est-ce que les éleves, confrontés avec une situation concrete, esperent que le professeur agira d'une forme assertive ? Est-ce qu'une bonne capacité communicative de la part de l' enseignant contribue afomenter une bonne relation entre l'éleve et le professeur ? Certaines des conclusions centrales retirées de cette étude renvoient au fait que les éleves ont tendance aassocier le comportement communicationnel du professeur ases intérets et sentiments, suggérant ces résultats que, aux yeux des principaux avaliseurs de la« pratique pédagogique », le style communicatif du professeur traduit une image de leurs réelles expectations relativement asa praxis pédagogique. Les données recueillies au long de cette recherche ont permis de renforcer encore plus, apartir d'un point de parti donné, le besoin d'une communication éducative bilatérale et, conséquemment, les défis exigés aux profes- sionnels de l' éducation dans le domaine des compétences communicative