Salivary oxytocin after play with parents predicts behavioural problems in preschool children

Background: Oxytocin (OXT) has attracted research interest for its potential involvement in many of the behavioural problems observed in childhood. Due to its logistical advantages, saliva is an attractive fluid to quantify neuropeptides in children. Salivary OXT has been suggested as a potential biomarker for psychopathology during childhood. However, several questions still remain about the extent to which, and under what conditions, concentrations of OXT in saliva can be reliably measured and are related to behavioural problems in preschool age children. Methods: Seven samples of saliva from 30 preschool children (17 girls) were collected in five different days at their homes. Three of the samples were collected by the children’s parents at baseline daily routine conditions, and four of the samples were collected by researchers during two home-visits: before and after two 15-minute dyadic play sessions (one with mothers and one fathers) between each individual parent and the child. Oxytocin concentrations were quantified by Radioimmunoassay with prior extraction. Children’s behavioural problems were assessed by the Caregiver-Teacher Report Form (C-TRF) questionnaire, completed by the child’s’ preschool teacher. Results: Salivary OXT measured in baseline samples could not predict any of the behavioural problems measured by the C-TRF. However, when measured after playing with parents salivary OXT showed a stronger pattern of negative correlations, specially with the depression and opposition scales of the C-TRF. Furthermore, salivary OXT was unlikely to be reliably measured using single sampling, but acceptable reliabilities were achieved when averaging several samples. Finally, the single measures of salivary OXT evoked after an episode of play with parents showed better reliabilities than collected at baseline. Conclusion: Measurements of OXT evoked after positive affect interactions with parents seem to capture aspects of the OXT system in young children that might be relevant for understanding the role of this system in children’s social behaviour.Fundação BIAL, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologiainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Examining the Factorial Structure of the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale in a Portuguese Sample

The increase in women's labor market participation emphasizes the importance of understanding maternal separation anxiety, that is, the unpleasant maternal emotional state, due to the actual or anticipated short-term separation from the child. Drawing on the insights of the attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives, the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale (MSAS) was developed to overcome existing measurement gaps. However, prior research did not replicate its original three-factor structure in the contemporary context and in other cultural settings, using large samples composed of mothers of preschool children. This study aimed to examine the factorial structure of the MSAS in a sample of 597 Portuguese mothers of children aged 5-84 months who completed the questionnaire. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted in subsample 1 revealed a four-factor structure: Maternal Negative Feelings, Beliefs about Exclusive Maternal Care, Need of Proximity, and Perceptions of Separation Benefits for Children. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted in subsample 2 revealed that the original three-factor structure revealed a poor fit, whereas the four-factor solution (obtained in the EFA) revealed an acceptable fit. As in previous studies, our findings report deviations from the original three-factor structure of the MSAS. Three of the newly identified factors seem to reflect specific sub-dimensions that originally guided item development in the MSAS, namely, maternal negative feelings, maternal attitudes about the value of exclusive maternal care, and the need of proximity with the child. The last factor appears to represent a refinement of original items pertaining to perceptions about separation effects for children.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

BRAZILIAN ARCHIVES OF BIOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY A N I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L Late Holocene Vegetation History and Early Evidence of Araucaria angustifolia in Caçapava do Sul in the Lowland Region of Rio Grande do Sul State, Southern Brazil

ABSTRACT Little is known about the southernmost occurrence of small areas with Araucaria angustifolia populations in Caçapava do Sul in low elevated areas of Rio Grande d

SCFS: A Shared Cloud-backed File System

Despite of their rising popularity, current cloud storage services and cloud-backed storage systems still have some limitations related to reliability, durability assurances and inefficient file sharing. We present SCFS, a cloud-backed file system that addresses these issues and provides strong consistency and near-POSIX semantics on top of eventually-consistent cloud storage services. SCFS provides a pluggable backplane that allows it to work with various storage clouds or a cloud-of-clouds (for added dependability). It also exploits some design opportunities inherent in the current cloud services through a set of novel ideas for cloud-backed file systems: always write and avoid reading, modular coordination, private name spaces and consistency anchors.

JITeR: Just-in-time application-layer routing

The paper addresses the problem of providing message latency and reliability assurances for control traf- fic in wide-area IP networks. This is an important problem for cloud services and other geo-distributed information infrastructures that entail inter-datacenter real-time communication. We present the design and validation of JITeR ( Just-In-Time Routing ), an algorithm that timely routes messages at application- layer using overlay networking and multihoming, leveraging the natural redundancy of wide-area IP net- works. We implemented a prototype of JITeR that we evaluated experimentally by placing nodes in sev- eral regions of Amazon EC2. We also present a scenario-based (geo-distributed utility network) evalua- tion comparing JITeR with alternative overlay/multihoming routing algorithms that shows that it provides better timeliness and reliability guarantees

Experimental Validation of Architectural Solutions

In this deliverable the experimental results carried out in four different contexts are reported. The first contribution concerns an experimental campaign performed using the AJECT (Attack inJECTion) tool able to emulate different types of attackers behaviour and to collect information on the effect of such attacks on the target system performance. This tool is also used to perform some of the experiments described in the fourth part of the deliverable. The second contribution concerns a complementary approach using honeypots to cap- ture traces of attacker behaviours, to then study and characterize them. Different kinds of honeypots were deployed in the described experiments: low-interaction and high-interaction ones, exposing different kinds of services and protocols (general purpose network services as well as SCADA specific ones). The third and fourth contribution refer to experiments conducted on some com- ponents of the CRUTIAL architecture, namely FOSEL (Filtering with the help of Overlay Security Layer), the CIS-CS (Communication Service) and the CIS-PS (Protection Service). The experiments have been performed with the aim of evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed components from the point of view of the dependability improvement they bring, as well as the performance overhead introduced by their implementation.Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006

Necessidades, Recursos e Desafios

Introduction: The demographic and professional characteristics of specialists in Obstetrics and Gynecology registered in Portugal are presented and current and future needs assessed. Material and Methods: An analysis of the data from Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Ordem dos Médicos and a survey sent to the directors of the departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Portuguese hospitals was perfomed. In order to calculate the necessary number of specialists, established indicators of the activity of the specialty were used. Results: In 2018, there were 1 437 441 consultations of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 89 110 major gynecologic surgeries and 85 604 deliveries. For that, 1065 Obstetrics and Gynecology physicians, working 40 hours per week, with no more than 40% aged 55 years of age and older or including 30 residents per year, are deemed necessary. According to the National Institute of Statistics, in the same year there were 1143 specialists in Portuguese hospitals, of which 234 worked in private hospitals. On the other hand, 1772 specialists were registered with the Ordem dos Médicos: 1163 (66%) were aged 55 years old or above and 84% of specialists under the age of 40 were females. In 2020, there were 864 specialists, 46% of which aged years of age and older working in 39 out of the 41 public or public-private departments that answered the survey. In 2035, an increase of 7% in the required number of specialists is expected. Conclusion: In Portugal, there is not lack of Obstetrics and Gynecology specialists in absolute numbers, but the large number of specialists aged 55 years of age and older, who are exempt from shifts in emergency department work, and the existence of regional asymmetries contribute to the perpetuation of some shortages of these healthcare professionals in several departments, namely in public hospitals.publishersversionpublishe

Challenges in designing seamless-learning scenarios: affective and emotional effects on external representations

In this paper, we revisit different theoretical and conceptual issues that have been influencing the design of educational technology artefacts. In particular, we take into consideration recent perspectives in cognitive science that acknowledge the important effects of external representations (ERs) in learning and discuss the challenges regarding the applicability of these ideas in connection to seamless-learning environments. Extending the previous work revised here, this paper suggests that in order to further understand the nature of learning in these novel contexts, research needs to investigate how socioaffective factors come to the fore and influence the co-construction and use of ERs ‘in the wild’