Escola de obstetrícia da Universidade de São Paulo: a história contada no livro de atas (1912-1970)

Throughout the 20th Century, Obstetrics education has undergone innumerous changes which have accompanied changes in the maternal and newborn health care model and conceptions concerning professional nursing education and practice. This qualitative and documentary study aimed to describe and analyze the minutes of the meetings of the São Paulo Obstetrics School. The School was founded in 1912 and was adjacent to the University of São Paulo Medical School until 1970, when it was incorporated into the School of Nursing. The minutes have recorded aspects of the School’s operation such as student selection and performance, examinations, teaching programs, curriculum changes, faculty, school calendar, revalidation of foreign diplomas, financial turnover, and other disciplinary, administrative, and legal matters concerning the course. One can infer that the original purpose of creating the School was “in tune” with the broader project of the medical and social elite of the time

Childbirth care: the oral history of women who gave birth from the 1940s to 1980s

This study's objective was to gain a greater understanding of the changes that took place in the childbirth care model from the experience of women who gave birth in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil from the 1940s to the 1980s. This is a descriptive study conducted with 20 women using the Thematic Oral History method. Data were collected through unstructured interviews. The theme extracted from the interviews was "The experience of childbirth". The results indicate a time and generational demarcation in the 1970s. Childbirths from 1940 to 1960 occurred in a context of transition from home to hospital births. The 1980s represents a turning point in the elements that compose the childbirth care model, such as the type and place of birth and the professional assisting women, with an increased use of technology and obstetric interventions

Pairwise statistical significance of local sequence alignment using multiple parameter sets and empirical justification of parameter set change penalty

Background: Accurate estimation of statistical significance of a pairwise alignment is an important problem in sequence comparison. Recently, a comparative study of pairwise statistical significance with database statistical significance was conducted. In this paper, we extend the earlier work on pairwise statistical significance by incorporating with it the use of multiple parameter sets. Results: Results for a knowledge discovery application of homology detection reveal that using multiple parameter sets for pairwise statistical significance estimates gives better coverage than using a single parameter set, at least at some error levels. Further, the results of pairwise statistical significance using multiple parameter sets are shown to be significantly better than database statistical significance estimates reported by BLAST and PSI-BLAST, and comparable and at times significantly better than SSEARCH. Using non-zero parameter set change penalty values give better performance than zero penalty. Conclusion: The fact that the homology detection performance does not degrade when using multiple parameter sets is a strong evidence for the validity of the assumption that the alignment score distribution follows an extreme value distribution even when using multiple parameter sets. Parameter set change penalty is a useful parameter for alignment using multiple parameter sets. Pairwise statistical significance using multiple parameter sets can be effectively used to determine the relatedness of a (or a few) pair(s) of sequences without performing a time-consuming database search

Parental Monitoring During Early Adolescence Deters Adolescent Sexual Initiation: Discrete-Time Survival Mixture Analysis

We used discrete-time survival mixture modeling to examine 5,305 adolescents from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth regarding the impact of parental monitoring during early adolescence (ages 14–16) on initiation of sexual intercourse and problem behavior engagement (ages 14–23). Four distinctive parental-monitoring groups were identified and labeled as “High,” “Increasing,” “Decreasing,” and “Low”. About 68% of adolescents received a high level of parental monitoring from ages 14 to 16 (High), 6 and 9% respectively exhibited an accelerated (Increasing) and a decelerated trajectory (Decreasing), and 17% had consistently low parental monitoring (Low). Relative to participants in the Low group, adolescents in the High group delayed sexual initiation by 1.5 years. Males, relative to females, were more likely to have had a low trajectory of parental monitoring, and were more likely to initiate sexual intercourse before age 14. In contrast to White Adolescents, Hispanics and Blacks were less likely to receive High parental monitoring, and had a higher rate of early sexual initiation before age 14. The study demonstrates the temporal relationship of parental monitoring with adolescent sexual initiation from a longitudinal perspective. An increase of parental monitoring across ages is accompanied with a decrease of sexual risk. The continual high level of parental monitoring from ages 14 to 16 also mitigated the risk of engagement in substance use and delinquent behaviors from ages 14 to 23

A Unique Radiation Scheme for the Treatment of High-Grade Non-Metastatic Soft Tissue Sarcoma: The Detroit Medical Center Experience

Purpose:This is the initial report on the utilization of combined photon irradiation followed by a neutron boost irradiation for the initial management of patients with high-grade non-metastatic soft tissue sarcoma (STS). We present data on local control, complications, disease-free survival and overall survival in patients at high risk for local relapse

Replication Fork Reactivation in a dnaC2 Mutant at Non-Permissive Temperature in Escherichia coli

Replicative helicases unwind double-stranded DNA in front of the polymerase and ensure the processivity of DNA synthesis. In Escherichia coli, the helicase loader DnaC as well as factors involved in the formation of the open complex during the initiation of replication and primosomal proteins during the reactivation of arrested replication forks are required to recruit and deposit the replicative helicase onto single-stranded DNA prior to the formation of the replisome. dnaC2 is a thermosensitive allele of the gene specifying the helicase loader; at non-permissive temperature replication cannot initiate, but most ongoing rounds of replication continues through to completion (18% of dnaC2 cells fail to complete replication at non-permissive temperature). An assumption, which may be drawn from this observation, is that only a few replication forks are arrested under normal growth conditions. This assumption, however, is at odds with the severe and deleterious phenotypes associated with a null mutant of priA, the gene encoding a helicase implicated in the reactivation of arrested replication forks. We developed an assay that involves an abrupt inactivation of rounds of synchronized replication in a large population of cells, in order to evaluate the ability of dnaC2 cells to reactivate arrested replication forks at non-permissive temperature. We compared the rate at which arrested replication forks accumulated in dnaC2 priA+ and dnaC2 priA2 cells and observed that this rate was lower in dnaC2 priA+ cells. We conclude that while replication cannot initiate in a dnaC2 mutant at non-permissive temperature, a class of arrested replication forks (PriA-dependent and DnaC-independent) are reactivated within these cells

Phase II trial of sequential gefitinib after minor response or partial response to chemotherapy in Chinese patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

BACKGROUND: Basic research of gefitinib (Iressa, ZD1839) has demonstrated the combination effects of gefitinib and chemotherapy were sequence-dependent. To evaluate the efficacy of sequential administration of gefitinib following a minor response or partial response to two to three cycles of chemotherapy, a phase II clinical trial was done in Chinese patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS: Thirty-three consecutive patients with advanced NSCLC that had been pretreated with at least one chemotherapeutic regimen and were responding to chemotherapy following 2 to 3 cycles of treatment, entered the trial from May 2004 to February 2006. Patients received gefitinib at an oral dose of 250 mg once daily for 4 weeks. RESULTS: Thirty-three patients were evaluable for response and toxicity. The objective response rate was 24.2% (8 of 33)(95% CI, 11% to 42%). The symptom improvement rate was 54.5% (18 of 33) (95% CI, 41% to 69%). The median duration of response was 7 months (95%CI, 4.0 to 13.2 months). The median time to disease progression (TTP) was 6.5 months (95%CI, 0.7 to 16.6 months). The median overall survival time (OS) was 9.8 months (range, 2.1 to 18.0 months), and the actuarial 1-year survival was 36.4%. Toxicity was relatively mild and included only one patient (3.0%) with grade 4 diarrhea, 1 (3.0%) with grade 3 rash, 1 (3.0%) with grade 3 nausea, and 1 with grade 3 vomiting (3.0%). CONCLUSION: Preliminary results suggest that sequential administration of gefitinib following a response to chemotherapy may be beneficial for Chinese patients with advanced NSCLC. Further randomized clinical trials are needed