Osteoma Osteóide Cervical - Radiofrequência ou a Clássica Curetagem?

Os Osteomas Osteóides são tumores benignos, osteoblásticos, cuja incidência ronda os 3% do total de todos os tumores. Ocorrem mais frequentemente no fémur e tíbia, e o esqueleto axial é afetado em apenas 10% dos casos, maioritariamente ao nível da coluna lombar (56,1%), sendo a coluna cervical afetada em apenas 26,8% dos casos. O clássico tratamento cirúrgico está a ser substituído por técnicas ablativas mini-invasivas, como a termoablação por radiofrequência por via percutânea. No entanto, na coluna cervical, torna-se difícil prever o efeito do calor quando aplicado na proximidade de estruturas nervosas e vasculares. Apresenta-se o caso clínico de uma doente do sexo feminino de 24 anos, observada por cervicalgia persistente, cuja tomografia computorizada realizada demonstrou um Osteoma Osteóide localizado a nível do pedículo esquerdo da 6ª vértebra cervical. A doente foi submetida a tratamento cirúrgico, através de curetagem transpedicular guiada por fluoroscopia, tendo sido obtida uma resolução imediata, completa e sustentada da dor

Is it more than employability?: Revisiting employers’ perception of graduates’ attributes

Higher education is confronted with two broad missions, either prepare graduates for the world of work, or prepare well-rounded students that combine broad-spectrum qualities of citizenship, responsibility, and professional expertise. The employability skills have been widely studied, while the attributes related to holistic education are still scarcely investigated. This paper examines the skills and other attributes that employers seek when hiring graduates. It confronts the perceptions of employers regarding the skills associated with employability and the abilities and characteristics linked to holistic education. This is an exploratory research based on original and qualitative data collected in 2020 through interviews with employers (n=8) from different sectors in Portugal. Empirical findings indicate that all employers prioritise employability skills, such as communication, teamwork, and learning abilities. We found more dispersion regarding the attributes of holistic education and a large consensus was found for interdisciplinarity, self-reflection, and personal and social responsibility. The data show that the attributes that help to address society’s problems and challenges still seem to be regarded as quite irrelevant in the recruitment process.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The beliefs and attitudes of UK registered osteopaths towards chronic pain and the management of chronic pain sufferers - A cross-sectional questionnaire based survey

Objectives This study investigated the beliefs and attitudes of UK registered osteopaths towards chronic pain and the management of chronic pain sufferers. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire based survey of UK registered osteopaths was performed to test the hypothesis that osteopaths have a more biopsychosocial approach to treating and managing chronic pain patients than other healthcare professionals. Sociodemographic determinants of the participants were explored and the original HC-PAIRS and the PABS-PT used as measurement tools. They assess practitioners' attitudes and beliefs towards perceived harmfulness of physical activities for patients with cLBP and participants' knowledge of pain. International meta-analyses were performed with both measurement tools to allow comparison with other healthcare professionals. Results UK registered osteopaths (n = 216) had mean PABS-PT subscale scores of 31.37 ± 6.26 [CI95% 30.53–32.21] (biomedical) and 32.72 ± 4.29 [CI95% 32.14–33.29] (biopsychosocial). The mean HC-PAIRS total score was 45.45 ± 10.05 [CI95% 44.11–46.8]. These indicate a wide spread of beliefs and knowledge towards chronic pain with a tendency to agree that physical activity is not necessarily harmful for patients with cLBP. Post-graduate education had a significant positive effect on questionnaire results. Meta-analyses revealed that UK registered osteopaths have significantly better HC-PAIRS scores than most physiotherapy students, nurses and pharmacists, and had similar PABS-PT scores to most other healthcare professionals. Conclusions The hypothesis of UK registered osteopaths having a more biopsychosocial approach to treating and managing chronic pain patients in comparison to other healthcare providers has been rejected. This seems in contrast to the typically claimed unique concepts of osteopathy. Nevertheless, this study supports their ability to engage with psychosocial factors of the patients' pain experience, but shows that it can be improved. This paper suggests that training is needed to increase osteopaths' expertise in knowledge of chronic pain, and their attitudes towards the management of chronic pain sufferers

Deep learning for BER prediction in optical connections impaired by inter-core crosstalk

Four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) signals transmission in short-haul intensity modulation-direct detection datacenters connections supported by homogeneous weakly-coupled multicore fibers is seen as a promising technology to meet the future challenge of providing enough bandwidth and achieve high data capacity in datacenter links. However, in multicore fibers, inter-core crosstalk (ICXT) limits significantly the performance of such short-reach connections by causing large bit error rate (BER) fluctuations. In this work, a convolutional neural network (CNN) is proposed for eye-pattern analysis and BER prediction in PAM4 inter-datacenter optical connections impaired by ICXT, with the aim of optical performance monitoring. The performance of the CNN is assessed by estimation of the root mean square error (RMSE) using a synthetic dataset created with Monte Carlo simulation. Considering PAM4 interdatacenter connections with one interfering core and for different skew-symbol rate products, extinction ratios and crosstalk levels, the obtained results show that the implemented CNN is able to predict the BER without surpassing a RMSE limit of 0.1.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Voltammetric study and electrochemical degradation of reactive dyes

The aim of this study was, in a first stage, to investigate the voltammetric behavior of two reactive dyes, C.I.Reactive Orange 16 and C.I.Reactive Blue 19. Cyclic voltammetry technique (CV), on a glassy carbon electrode, was used for this purpose in order to identify the electrochemical activity of the chromophore group in each case, in the present experimental conditions. A second part of the study was to investigate the electrochemical degradation of the dyes, in the presence of hydrogen peroxide and copper ions. The reaction between the two species leads to the generation of hydroxyl radicals, which causes the oxidation and degradation of the organic compounds. The efficiency of dye degradation and ecolorization were evaluated by color removal and COD values. Depending on electrolysis time, applied potential, hydrogen peroxide concentration and dye concentration, different stages of color removal were attained

PHM overview on battery models approaches

The Battery Management Systems (BMS) brought a new impetus to the battery energy management which lead to an increase in battery life. But the BMS fails when the State of Charge (SoC), State of Health (SoH), State of Life (SoL) or Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prognostics systems do not provide the required accuracy. Despite the increase of complexity and accuracy of battery models, the poor performance with floating temperature and load profiles persists. With the development of innovative products on wide-ranging applications, the battery materials, technologies, reliability and safety are being pressed to their limits. Therefore, a huge amount of work is still necessary, not only on the development of new battery technologies but also on the BMS, battery models and metrics accuracy improvements. The paper gives a comprehensive overview of the applicability, accuracy, weaknesses and advantages of the most recent battery models. The paper will also discuss how the Prognostics Health Management (PHM) can support a technologic impetus on battery affairs with battery models and metrics accuracy improvements.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lepton flavor violation in SUSY left-right symmetric theories

The seesaw mechanism is the most popular explanation for the smallness of neutrino masses. However, its high scale makes direct tests impossible and only indirect signals at low energies are reachable for collider experiments. One of these indirect links with the high scale is lepton flavor violation (LFV). We discuss LFV decays of sleptons in the context of a SUSY left-right symmetric model that naturally incorporates the seesaw mechanism. This non-minimal embedding of the seesaw leads to observable LFV effects in the right-handed sleptons sector, contrary to minimal models where these are found to be totally negligible. Therefore, LFV observables can be used as a powerful tool to study physics right below the GUT scale.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of PASCOS 2010, the 16th International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology, Valencia, Spai