Automatic nurse allocation based on a population algorithm for home health care

The provision of home health care services is becoming an important research area, mainly because in Portugal the population is ageing and it is necessary to perform home care services. Home care visits are organized taking into account the medical treatments and general support that elder/sick people need at home. This health service can be provided by nurses teams from Health Units, requiring some logistics for this purpose. Usually, the visits are manually planned and without computational support. The main goal of this work is to carry out the automatic nurse’s allocation of home care visits, of one Bragança Health Unit, in order to minimize the nurse’s workload balancing, spent time in all home care visits and, consequently, reduce the costs involved. The developed methodology was coded in MatLab Software and the problems were efficiently solved by the particle swarm optimization method. The nurse’s allocation solution of home care visits for the presented case study shows a significant improvement and reduction in the maximum time, in the nurse workload balancing, as well as the patients waiting time.This work has been supported by COMPETE:POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the project UID/CEC/00319/2019

A multi-objective approach to the optimization of home care visits scheduling

Due to the increasing of life expectancy in the developed countries, the demand for home health care services is growing dramatically. Usually, home services are planned manually and lead to various optimization problems in their activities. In this sense, health units are confronted with appropriate scheduling which may contain multiple, often conflicting, objectives such as minimizing the costs related to the traveling distance while minimizing the traveling time. In order to analyze and discuss different trade-offs between these objectives, it is proposed a multi-objective approach to home health care scheduling in which the problem is solved using the Tchebycheff method and a Genetic algorithm. Different alternative solutions are presented to the decision maker that taking into account his/her preferences chooses the appropriate solution. A problem with real data from a home health care service is solved. The results highlight the importance of a multi-objective approach to optimize and support decision making in home health care services. Moreover, this approach provides efficient and good solutions in a reasonable time.Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade(POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043

The sustainable home health care process based on multi-criteria decision-dupport

The increase in life expectancy has led to a growing demand for Home Health Care (HHC) services. However, some problems can arise in the management of these services, leading to high computational complexity and time-consuming to obtain an exact and/or optimal solution. This study intends to contribute to an automatic multi-criteria decision-support system that allows the optimization of several objective functions simultaneously, which are often conflicting, such as costs related to travel (distance and/or time) and available resources (health professionals and vehicles) to visit the patients. In this work, the HHC scheduling and routing problem is formulated as a multi objective approach, aiming to minimize the travel distance, the travel time and the number of vehicles, taking into account specific constraints, such as the needs of patients, allocation variables, the health professionals and the transport availability. Thus, the multi-objective genetic algorithm, based on the NSGA-II, is applied to a real-world problem of HHC visits from a Health Unit in Bragança (Portugal), to identify and examine the different compromises between the objectives using a Pareto-based approach to operational planning. Moreover, this work provides several efficient end-user solutions, which were standardized and evaluated in terms of the proposed policy and compared with current practice. The outcomes demonstrate the significance of a multi-criteria approach to HHC services.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020), SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021) and ALGORITMI Research Centre / LASI (UIDB/00319/2020). Filipe Alves thanks the FCT for supporting its research with the Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/143745/2019.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A human centred hybrid MAS and meta-heuristics based system for simultaneously supporting scheduling and plant layout adjustment

Manufacturing activities and production control are constantly growing. Despite this, it is necessary to improve the increasing variety of scheduling and layout adjustments for dynamic and flexible responses in volatile environments with disruptions or failures. Faced with the lack of realistic and practical manufacturing scenarios, this approach allows simulating and solving the problem of job shop scheduling on a production system by taking advantage of genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm combined with the flexibility and robustness of a multi-agent system and dynamic rescheduling alternatives. Therefore, this hybrid decision support system intends to obtain optimized solutions and enable humans to interact with the system to properly adjust priorities or refine setups or solutions, in an interactive and user-friendly way. The system allows to evaluate the optimization performance of each one of the algorithms proposed, as well as to obtain decentralization in responsiveness and dynamic decisions for rescheduling due to the occurance of unexpected events.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

The tolerance of eucalyptus globulus to soil contamination with arsenic

UID/FIS/04559/2020The contamination of abandoned mining areas is a problem worldwide that needs urgent attention. Phytoremediation emerges as a successful method to extract different contaminants from the soil. In this context, Eucalyptus globulus plants growing in soils artificial contaminated with arsenic (As) were used to access its phytoremediation capabilities. The effects of As on photosynthetic performance were monitored through different physiological parameters, whereas the uptake and translocation of As and the putative effects on calcium, iron, potassium, and zinc levels on plants were evaluated by X-ray fluorescence analysis. Root system is the major accumulator organ, while the translocation to the above-ground organs is poor. In the end of the experiment, the root biomass of plants treated with 200 μg As mL−1 is 27% and 49.7% lower than equivalent biomass from plants treated with 100 μg As mL−1 and control plants, respectively. Each plant can accumulate 8.19 and 8.91 mg As after a 6-month period, when submitted to 100 As and 200 As, respectively. It seems to exist an antagonistic effect of As on Zn root uptake by E. globulus. In general, the tested concentrations do not influence negatively plant metabolism, indicating that this species is suitable for plantation in contaminated areas.publishersversionpublishe

Periodic vehicle routing problem in a health unit

In logistics of home health care services in the Health Units, the managers and nurses need to carry out the schedule and the vehicles routes for the provision of care at the patients' homes. Currently, in Portugal, these services are increasingly used but the problem is still, usually, solved manually and without computational resources. The increased demand for home health care due to the boost of the elderly people number entails a high associated cost which, sometimes, does not guarantee the quality of the service. In this sense, the periodic vehicle routing problem is a generalization of the classical vehicle routing problem in which routes are determined for a time horizon of several days. In this work, it is provided a periodic vehicle routing problem applied in the Health Unit in Bragança. An integer linear programming formulation for the real database, allowed to solve the problem in an efficient and optimized way using the CPLEXR software.Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade(POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043

Elemental composition of algae-based supplements by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence

The aim of this study is to evaluate the elemental composition of fifteen algae-based supplements commonly sold in the Portuguese market, by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. Despite the fact that the majority of Kelp samples were a good source of iodine, the levels observed might well contribute to an excess in the human body, which can cause dysfunction of the thyroid gland. Furthermore, the presence of lead in Sea spaghetti, Arame, Hijiki and Wakame caused a considerable risk to public health vis a vis possible ingestion of a high daily dose. Regarding arsenic, great variability was observed in all the samples with concentrations equal to or above 60 μg/g in the case of Arame, KelpJ and Hijiki. Although algae mainly accumulate organic arsenic, some also contain high levels of its inorganic form, as is commonly pointed out for Hijiki. Thus, regular ingestion of these supplements must also take into account the mentioned facts. There is no doubt that these supplements are also good sources of other nutrients, but the lack of accurate regulations and control should alert consumers to avoid indiscriminate use of these types of productsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

New benzo[a]phenoxazines bearing the (4,6-dichloro-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)amino group: synthesis and photophysical properties

Synthesis of new benzo[a]phenoxazinium chlorides possessing the (4,6-dichloro-1,3,5- triazin-2-yl)amino at 5-amino function of the heterocycles is described. The preliminary photophysical properties of these compounds in anhydrous ethanol when acidified with TFA or basified with TEAH is also investigated, as well as their response in aqueous media. These benzo[a]phenoxazinium chlorides exhibited fluorescence with maximum emission wavelengths between 628 and 676 nm, in anhydrous ethanol and water.Thanks are due to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) for financial support to the NMR portuguese network (PTNMR, Bruker Avance III 400-Univ. Minho), FCT and FEDER (European Fund for Regional Development)-COMPETE-QREN-EU for financial support to the Research Centres CFUM [PEst-C/FIS/UI0607/2011 (F-COMP-01-0124-FEDER-022711)] and CQ/UM [PEst-C/QUI/UI0686/2013(FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-022716)]. A post-doctoral grant to B. R. Raju (SFRH/BPD/62881/2009) is also acknowledged to FCT, POPH-QREN, FSE.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fatal cases of Theileria annulata infection in calves in Portugal associated with neoplastic-like lymphoid cell proliferation

The authors describe 15 cases of acute lethal infection of calves (≤ 4 months of age) by the protozoan parasite Theileria annulata in the south of Portugal. Calves developed multifocal to coalescent nodular skin lesions, similar to multicentric malignant lymphoma. Infestation with ticks (genus Hyalomma) was intense. Theileria was seen in blood and lymph node smears, and Theileria annulata infection was confirmed by isolation of schizont-transformed cells and sequencing of hypervariable region 4 of the 18S rRNA gene. At necropsy, hemorrhagic nodules or nodules with a hemorrhagic halo were seen, particularly in the skin, subcutaneous tissue, skeletal and cardiac muscle, pharynx, trachea and intestinal serosa. Histologically nodules were formed by large, round, lymphoblastoid neoplastic-like cells. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) identified these cells as mostly CD3 positive T lymphocytes and MAC387 positive macrophages. A marker for B lymphocytes (CD79αcy) labelled very few cells. Theileria annulata infected cells in these nodules were also identified by IHC, through the use of two monoclonal antibodies (1C7 and 1C12) diagnostic for the parasite. It was concluded that the pathological changes observed in the different organs and tissues were caused by proliferation of schizont-infected macrophages, which subsequently stimulate a severe uncontrolled proliferation of uninfected T lymphocytes

The role of land use and land cover change in climate change vulnerability assessments of biodiversity: a systematic review

Context For many organisms, responses to climate change (CC) will be affected by land-use and land-cover changes (LULCC). However, the extent to which LULCC is concurrently considered in climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) is unclear. Objectives We identify trends in inclusion of LULCC and CC in vulnerability assessments of species and the direction and magnitude of their combined effect on biodiversity. Further, we examine the effect size of LULCC and CC in driving changes in “currencies” of response to CC, such as distribution, abundance and survival. Methods We conducted a systematic literature review of articles published in the last 30 years that focused on CCVA and accounted for impacts of both CC and LULCC. Results Across 116 studies, 34% assumed CC and LULCC would act additively, while 66% allowed for interactive effects. The majority of CCVAs reported similar effect sizes for CC and LULCC, although they affected different CCVA currencies. Only 14% of the studies showed larger effects of CC than of LULCC. Another 14% showed larger effects of LULCC than CC, specifically for dispersal, population viability, and reproduction, which tend to be strongly affected by fragmentation and disturbance. Although most studies found that LULCC and CC had negative effects on species currencies, in some cases effects were neutral or even positive. Conclusions CCVAs that incorporate LULCC provided a better account of drivers of vulnerability, and highlight aspects of drivers that are generally more amenable to on-the-ground management intervention than CCVAs that focus on CC alone