Equilibration of Isolated Systems: investigating the role of coarse-graining on the initial state magnetization

Many theoretical and experimental results show that even isolated quantum systems evolving unitarily may equilibrate, since the evolution of some observables may be around an equilibrium value with negligible fluctuations most of the time. There are rigorous theorems giving the conditions for such equilibration to happen. In particular, initial states prepared with a lack of resolution in the energy will equilibrate. We investigate how equilibration may be affected by a lack of resolution, or coarse-graining, in the magnetization of the initial state. In particular, for a chaotic spin chain and using exact diagonalization, we show that an initial state with a coarse, not well-defined magnetization in the z direction show a greater tendency to equilibrate when compared with an initial state with well-defined magnetization. And this tendency will depend on the degree of coarse-graining. We also analyze the time for the system to reach equilibrium, showing good agreement with theoretical estimates and with some evidence that less resolution leads to faster equilibration. Our study highlights the crucial role of initial state preparation in the equilibration dynamics of quantum systems and provides new insights into the fundamental nature of equilibration in closed systems

The Role of Coagulation-flocculation in the Pretreatment of Reverse Osmosis in Power Plant

The objective of this work is to simulate pretreatment steps on a laboratory scale with the purpose of producing a higher quality permeate for feed reverse osmosis process. Pretreatment steps involved in this work are a combination of physical and chemical processes, such as coagulation-flocculation, sand filtration, and microfiltration. Samples of seawater next to Itaqui thermoelectric power plant in Maranhão, State of Brazil, powered by coal, were collected and characterized. The characterization indicated high levels of turbidity, which is unusual for seawater, indicating the need of pretreatment to reverse osmosis. The combination of polyaluminum chloride dosages of 30 mg/L and 0.3 mg/L of Nalclear 8,173 anionic polymer allowed the reduction of turbidity values to below 1 Nephelometric Turbidity Unit (NTU). The use of coagulation and microfiltration membranes provided values of silt density index next to 3, while with sand filter, the silt density index values were higher than 4

Effects of immunosuppression with tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil on renal histology and function in single kidney rats submitted to ischemia and reperfusion

To evaluate renal histological changes and renal function in single kidney rats submitted to renal ischemia-reperfusion and to immunosuppression with tacrolimus and mycophenolate-mofetil. Experimental study with 80 Wistar rats distributed into control, Sham and six other groups treated with immunosuppressive drugs. Animals undergoing surgery, right nephrectomy and left renal clamping, killed on the 14th day and analyzed for renal histology, urea and creatinine. The group receiving tacrolimus at higher doses (T3) showed renal histological lesions indicative of early nephrotoxicity, and significant increase in urea and creatinine. The group M (mycophenolate-mofetil alone) and the group M2 (mycophenolate-mofetil combined with half the usual dose of tacrolimus) presented a slight rise in serum urea. The groups using mycophenolate-mofetil alone or combined with tacrolimus showed creatinine levels similar to that of the group T3. Histologically, the association of injury by ischemia-reperfusion with the use of tacrolimus or mycophenolatemofetil alone demonstrated a higher rate of renal changes typical of early nephrotoxicity. In laboratory, the combination of injury by ischemia-reperfusion with tacrolimus at higher doses proved to be nephrotoxic30212713

Stages of health behavior change and factors associated with physical activity in patients with intermittent claudication

OBJECTIVE: To analyze, in people with intermittent claudication, the frequency of individuals who are in each of stages of health behavior change to practice physical activity, and analyze the association of these stages with the walking capacity. METHODS: We recruited 150 patients with intermittent claudication treated at a tertiary center, being included those > 30-year-old-individuals and who had ankle-arm index < 0.90. We obtained socio-demographic information, presence of comorbidities and cardiovascular risk factors and stages of health behavior change to practice physical activity through a questionnaire, they being pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. Moreover, the walking capacity was measured in a treadmill test (Gardner protocol). RESULTS: Most individuals were in the maintenance stage (42.7%), however, when the stages of health behavior change were categorized into active (action and maintenance) and inactive (pre-contemplation, contemplation and preparation), 51.3% of the individuals were classified as inactive behavior. There was no association between stages of health behavior change, sociodemographic factors and cardiovascular risk factors. However, patients with intermittent claudication who had lower total walking distance were three times more likely to have inactive behavior. CONCLUSION: Most patients with intermittent claudication showed an inactive behavior and, in this population, lower walking capacity was associated with this behavior

Immersive training weeks in doctoral education

Ph.D. training worldwide, including Doctoral education in Marketing or Engineering fields, has been in trouble for some time. These last turbulent times (pandemic, energy, inflation, and war crises) have only increased the problems previously reported by the 3rd cycle students and early career researchers, including chronic lack of support and poor-quality supervision, with senior researchers rarely trained in mentorship. It is also reported that Ph.D. candidates are inadequately prepared for the cross-disciplinary working and large teams that characterize cutting-edge science today. In the last two decades, opposite decisions took place in Europe concerning the curricula of Doctoral programs. In the 2010s, a large number of classes was added to the Ph.D.s, contributing to almost residual time for thesis research in the first year of the programs. However, ten years later, an abrupt change took place and almost all classes were removed from the Ph.D. curricula, creating a void in (hard and soft skills) training and leaving all the responsibility of training to the supervisor. Ph.D. students reported guidance and isolation issues in the first year. Moreover, today’s little Ph.D. training is fully dedicated to the obtention of their Ph.D. and not to their role in society after the Ph.D. defense. This work discusses a new approach to doctoral education which started first at a professional doctorate implemented at University of Aveiro, Portugal, where few classes take place. This approach considers a novel Ph.D. training, both hard and soft skills development, through special intensive weeks, called Immersive Weeks. In these, distributed during the first year, Ph.D. students exclusively participate in several workshops, acquiring the tools for accomplishing both a successful Ph.D. and a future job. Pilots of this approach took place at the University of Aveiro with large success, while some improvement suggestions have also been pointed out by students.publishe

VITASENIOR-MT: A distributed and scalable cloud-based telehealth solution

VITASENIOR-MT is a telehealth platform that allows to remotely monitor biometric and environmental data in a domestic environment, designed specifically to the elderly population. This paper proposes a highly scalable and efficient architecture to transport, process, store and visualize the data collected by devices of an Internet of Things (IoT) scenario. The cloud infrastructure follows a microservices architecture to provide computational scalability, better fault isolation, easy integration and automatic deployment. This solution is complemented with a pre-processing and validation of the collected data at the edge of the Internet by using the Fog Computing concept, allowing a better computing distribution. The presented approach provides personal data security and a simplified way to collect and present the data to the different actors, allowing a dynamic and intuitive management of patients and equipment to caregivers. The presented load tests proved that this solution is more efficient than a monolithic approach, promoting better access and control in the data flowing from heterogeneous equipment.This work has been financially supported by the IC&DT project VITASENIOR-MT CENTRO-01-0145- FEDER-023659 with FEDER funding through programs CENTRO2020 and FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Physical Activity Levels in Peripheral Artery Disease Patients

BACKGROUND: Increases in daily physical activity levels is recommended for patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD). However, despite this recommendation, little is known about the physical activity patterns of PAD patients. OBJECTIVE: To describe the physical activity patterns of patients with symptomatic peripheral artery (PAD) disease. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 174 PAD patients with intermittent claudication symptoms. Patients were submitted to clinical, hemodynamic and functional evaluations. Physical activity was objectively measured by an accelerometer, and the time spent in sedentary, low-light, high-light and moderate-vigorous physical activities (MVPA) were obtained. Descriptive analysis was performed to summarize patient data and binary logistic regression was used to test the crude and adjusted associations between adherence to physical activity recommendation and sociodemographic and clinical factors. For all the statistical analyses, significance was accepted at p < 0.05. RESULTS: Patients spent in average of 640 ± 121 min/day, 269 ± 94 min/day, 36 ± 27 min/day and 15 ± 16 min/day in sedentary, low-light, high-light and MVPA, respectively. The prevalence of patients who achieved physical activity recommendations was 3.4%. After adjustment for confounders, a significant inverse association was observed between adherence to physical activity recommendation and age (OR = 0.925; p = 0.004), while time of disease, ankle brachial index and total walking distance were not associated with this adherence criteria (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The patterns of physical activity of PAD patients are characterized by a large amount of time spent in sedentary behaviors and a low engagement in MVPA. Younger patients, regardless of the clinical and functional factors, were more likely to meet the current physical activity recommendations