Hydro-climatic and ecological behaviour of the drought of Amazonia in 2005

In 2005, southwestern Amazonia experienced the effects of an intense drought that affected life and biodiversity. Several major tributaries as well as parts of the main river itself contained only a fraction of their normal volumes of water, and lakes were drying up. The consequences for local people, animals and the forest itself are impossible to estimate now, but they are likely to be serious. The analyses indicate that the drought was manifested as weak peak river season during autumn to winter as a consequence of a weak summertime season in southwestern Amazonia; the winter season was also accompanied by rainfall that sometimes reached 25% of the climatic value, being anomalously warm and dry and helping in the propagation of fires. Analyses of climatic and hydrological records in Amazonia suggest a broad consensus that the 2005 drought was linked not to El Niño as with most previous droughts in the Amazon, but to warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean

Can we rely on iFR for avoiding FFR? Conclusions of a 5-year experience

Published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. © The Author 2017Background: Recently, the instantaneous wave free ratio (iFR), has been proposed an alternative or complementary method to fractional flow reserve (FFR). This new method does not require the use of adenosine and may expedite the speed of functional assessment. The iFR “hybrid strategy” relies on values 0,93 as definitive results which would not require the use of FFR. However, this strategy is much less consensual than FFR alone. Purpose: We aimed to assess the concordance of FFR and iFR results using the principle of the “hybrid strategy”, based on the 5-year experience of a single center. We also aimed to analyse the effect of iFR in the operator's decision to proceed to FFR, and its impact on procedure duration and radiation time/dosage. Methods: Single-center registry of all patients undergoing functional coronary lesion assessment during 5 years. FFR was used as a gold standard (with a cut-off point for intervention ≤0,80) for assessing the diagnostic accuracy of iFR in every patient who underwent measurements with both techniques. For analysis purposes, an iFR value 0,93 was considered negative (i.e. defer intervention). Values in between were deemed inconclusive. For statistical analysis we used the T student and Chi-Square tests. Results: Functional testing was undertaken in 326 patients (67±11 years, 65,6% male), encompassing 402 lesions. 154 lesions underwent assessment with both techniques, 222 by FFR only and 26 cases iFR only. The average iFR was 0,9±0,1. 60 lesions had an iFR >0,93 and 21 an iFR <0,86. An iFR value between 0,86 and 0,93 was strongly associated with the decision to proceed to FFR (χ2=30,1; p0,93 (71,4% vs 68%; p=0,792). In these cases, there was a statistically significant concordance of 87% between the iFR and FFR results (χ2=22,43; p<0,001). Notwithstanding, there were 4 out of 13 cases (30,7%) of positive iFR with negative FFR and 3 out of 42 (7,1%) cases of negative iFR and positive FFR. This difference was statistically significant (p=0,026). Regarding procedural time, radiation time and radiation dose, there were no statistically significant differences between patients who only underwent iFR, FFR only, or both techniques. Conclusions: The iFR results were inconclusive (i.e. between 0,86 and 0,93) in most cases. There was a high degree of concordance between the iFR and FFR values. However, a significant proportion of patients, particularly in cases of positive iFR (<0,86), were classified as negative by FFR. The use of iFR had no impact on procedural time, radiation time and radiation dose.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of Nonperfused Retinal Vessels in Ischemic Retinopathy

Purpose: Retinal ischemia has been traditionally assessed by fluorescein angiography, visualizing perfused vessels. However, this method does not provide any information about nonperfused vessels, and although it is often assumed that vessels in ischemic areas regress, we know little about how nonperfused retinal vessels change over time. Here, we aim to learn more about the long-term fate of nonperfused vessels in the retinal vasculature. Methods: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to visualize perfusion as well as structural properties of the retinal vasculature in patients suffering from retinal vascular occlusions. In addition, postmortem tissue from a patient with long standing (6 years) central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) was investigated, using immunohistochemistry on whole-mount retina and paraffin sections to visualize blood vessel components. Results: Comparing OCT angiography with enface OCT images revealed that in ischemic areas of the retina, nonperfused, larger vessels could be detected as hyperreflective structures in enface OCT images. Furthermore, analysis of a postmortem tissue sample from a CRVO patient with a large nonperfused region in the macula, revealed preservation of the basement membrane from all retinal vessels, including nonperfused, acellular vessels of all calibers. Conclusions: Our data suggests long-term preservation of vascular basement membrane in ischemic retina. This has implications for therapeutic approaches aiming to alleviate retinal ischemia via the regeneration of damaged vessels

Assessment of red blood cell deformability in type 2 diabetes mellitus and diabetic retinopathy by dual optical tweezers stretching technique

A pilot cross sectional study was conducted to investigate the role of red blood cells (RBC) deformability in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) without and with diabetic retinopathy (DR) using a dual optical tweezers stretching technique. A dual optical tweezers was made by splitting and recombining a single Nd:YAG laser beam. RBCs were trapped directly (i.e., without microbead handles) in the dual optical tweezers where they were observed to adopt a "side-on" orientation. RBC initial and final lengths after stretching were measured by digital video microscopy, and a Deformability index (DI) calculated. Blood from 8 healthy controls, 5 T2DM and 7 DR patients with respective mean age of 52.4yrs, 51.6 yrs and 52 yrs was analysed. Initial average length of RBCs for control group was 8.45 ± 0.25 μm, 8.68 ± 0.49 μm for DM RBCs and 8.82 ± 0.32 μm for DR RBCs (p < 0.001). The DI for control group was 0.0698 ± 0.0224, and that for DM RBCs was 0.0645 ± 0.03 and 0.0635 ± 0.028 (p < 0.001) for DR group. DI was inversely related to basal length of RBCs (p = 0.02). DI of RBC from DM and DR patients was significantly lower in comparison with normal healthy controls. A dual optical tweezers method can hence be reliably used to assess RBC deformability

Tecnologias sociais: as organizações não governamentais no enfrentamento das mudanças climáticas e na promoção de desenvolvimento humano

De acordo com o quarto relatório do Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as regiões semiáridas do mundo estarão entre as mais afetadas pelos impactos das mudanças climáticas globais. Estudos realizados pelo Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA), em 2007, confirmam que, no Nordeste brasileiro, não apenas choverá menos e mais irregularmente, mas, também, haverá mais secas, devido ao aquecimento da temperatura. Diante dos diversos impactos sociais, ambientais e econômicos possíveis nesses cenários, é de fundamental importância a verificação de alternativas sustentáveis para o semiárido brasileiro. Este artigo tem por objetivo avaliar o potencial de algumas das tecnologias sociais (TS) de convivência com o semiárido, desenvolvidas por diversas organizações, para a mitigação das mudanças climáticas e a promoção de desenvolvimento humano. Constata-se que as TS tem grande potencial para auxiliar na mitigação e na adaptação das mudanças climáticas, ao mesmo tempo que promovem melhorias na qualidade de vida das localidades onde estão sendo desenvolvidas

Score CTo-aBCDE : um novo score preditor de sucesso nas CTOs

© 2020 Sociedade Portuguesa de Cardiologia. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Introduction: Patient selection for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in chronic total occlusions (CTOs) is crucial to procedural success. Our aim was to identify independent predictors of success in CTO PCI in order to create an accurate score. Methods: In a single-center observational registry of CTO PCI, demographic and clinical data and anatomical characteristics of coronary lesions were recorded. Linear and logistic regression analysis were used to identify predictors of success. A score to predict success was created and its accuracy was measured by receiver operating curve analysis. Results: A total of 377 interventions were performed (334 patients, age 68±11 years, 75% male). The success rate was 65% per patient and 60% per procedure. Predictors of success in univariate analysis were absence of active smoking (OR 2.02, 95% CI 1.243-3.29; p=0.005), presence of tapered stump (OR 5.2, 95% CI 2.7-10.2; p8 with high probability (95%). Conclusion: In our sample only anatomical characteristics were predictors of success. The creation of a score to predict success, with good accuracy, may enable selection of cases that can be treated by any operator, those in which a dedicated operator will be desirable, and those with an extremely low probability of success, which should be considered individually for conservative management, surgical revascularization or PCI by a team experienced in CTO.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Intentional Binding Is Driven by the Mere Presence of an Action and Not by Motor Prediction

Intentional binding refers to the fact that when a voluntary action produces a sensory outcome, action and outcome are perceived as being closer together in time. This phenomenon is often attributed, at least partially, to predictive motor mechanisms. However, previous studies failed to unequivocally attribute intentional binding to these mechanisms, since the contrasts that have been used to demonstrate intentional binding covered not only one but two processes: temporal control and motor identity prediction. In the present study we aimed to isolate the respective role of each of these processes in the emergence of intentional binding of action-effects. The results show that motor identity prediction does not modulate intentional binding of action-effects. Our findings cast doubts on the assumption that intentional binding of action effects is linked to internal forward predictive process

Perspectives of Portuguese People with Physical Disabilities Regarding Their Sexual Health: A Focus Group Study

The World Health Organization has considered sexual health as a major dimension of global health and a sexual right. However, the sexual health of people with physical disabilities is still poorly addressed by health and social care professionals, and it is very stigmatized by society. This study aimed to assess the perspectives of Portuguese people living with physical disabilities regarding issues affecting their sexual health. Nine women and 17 men with different physical disabilities participated in the study. Participants were recruited from a professional rehabilitation facility located in the North of Portugal and were assigned to four groups in one-hour sessions. Three main categories emerged from the content analysis: (1) meanings and beliefs regarding sexuality; (2) experiences of sexuality; (3) necessary changes. Despite the positive social changes towards sexuality, participants expressed that their sexual rights are still unfulfilled, as they live in a context that perpetuates their dependency. They pointed out low self-esteem, prejudice and social isolation, poor architectural accessibility and scarcity of financial support as some of the barriers to their lives and their sexual health. Finally, participants identified the main needs regarding their sexual health, such as: access to specialized information; training for health professionals. This study gives voice to people with physical disabilities and sheds light into both individual and contextual factors affecting their sexual health. Of utmost importance, this study draws attention to the need for reinforcing sexuality of people with disabilities in the social agenda and brings implications for future research and practice.This study was supported by a Grant attributed to the first author by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/112168/2015)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Optimal perceived timing: integrating sensory information with dynamically updated expectations

The environment has a temporal structure, and knowing when a stimulus will appear translates into increased perceptual performance. Here we investigated how the human brain exploits temporal regularity in stimulus sequences for perception. We find that the timing of stimuli that occasionally deviate from a regularly paced sequence is perceptually distorted. Stimuli presented earlier than expected are perceptually delayed, whereas stimuli presented on time and later than expected are perceptually accelerated. This result suggests that the brain regularizes slightly deviant stimuli with an asymmetry that leads to the perceptual acceleration of expected stimuli. We present a Bayesian model for the combination of dynamically-updated expectations, in the form of a priori probability of encountering future stimuli, with incoming sensory information. The asymmetries in the results are accounted for by the asymmetries in the distributions involved in the computational process