Modeling Relationships Between Negative Symptoms, Neurocognition and Social Cognition

Introduction Negative symptoms have been associated with functional outcome of patients with schizophrenia by a large body of literature. However, in previous studies negative symptoms were regarded as a unitary construct, while recent literature data suggest that they include at least two factors, 'Avolition" and 'Poor Emotional Expression" (EE), that might show different relationships to functional outcome; moreover, the inter-relationships of negative symptoms, neurocognition, social cognition and real-life functioning are poorly understood. Objectives A large multicenter study was carried out by the Italian Network for Research on Psychoses to model relationship between the negative symptom domains and real-life functioning, taking into account the role of other psychopathological dimensions including depression, neurocognition, functional capacity and social cognition. Methods A structural equation model was used to investigate direct and indirect effects of the 2 negative symptoms domains, other psychopathological dimensions, including depression, and neurocognition on real-life functioning. Social cognition and functional capacity were modeled as mediators. Results In 921 patients with schizophrenia we found that the considered variables explained about 50% of real-life functioning variance. Avolition and functional capacity were the strongest independent predictors, followed by positive and disorganization dimensions, neurocognition and social cognition. EE had only a modest indirect effect on functioning. Neurocognition strongly predicted functional capacity and social cognition, which mediated its effects on functioning. Conclusion Our results support the heterogeneity of the two negative symptom domains. Only avolition is a strong predictor of functioning in real-life of patients with schizophrenia independent of social cognition, neurocognition and functional capacity. Acknowledgements The study was carried out within the project 'Multicenter study on factors influencing real-life social functioning of people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia" of the Italian Network for Research on Psychoses

A PRÁTICA AVALIATIVA DE PROFESSORES DAS SÉRIES INICIAIS DE UMA ESCOLA PÚBLICA DO SUL DE SANTA CATARINA

Resumo: A presente pesquisa trata de discutir a temática da avaliação da aprendizagem e tem como objetivo analisar a prática avaliativa de professores nos anos iniciais no Ensino Fundamental. O processo de análise decorreu por meio de um questionário com questões abertas e fechadas, aplicadas aos professores que atuam no 1º ao 5º ano de uma escola Estadual do município do Sul de Santa-Catarina. Para aprofundar a discussão, também foi realizada uma análise do Projeto Político Pedagógico - PPP da escola investigada, com objetivo de articular com as respostas das professoras. Os resultados evidenciam que ainda persistem dúvidas, por parte dos professores investigados, sobre o processo de avaliação e percebeu-se também que o documento norteador da escola apresenta algumas fragilidades com relação a concepção de avaliação e as orientações pedagógicas para o trabalho avaliativo. Palavras-chave: Concepções de avaliação. Ensino e aprendizagem. Projeto Político Pedagógico. Práticas Avaliativas

Microbial eukaryotes in the suboxic chemosynthetic ecosystem of Movile Cave, Romania

International audienceMovile Cave is a small system of partially inundated galleries in limestone settings close to the Black Sea in Southeast Romania. Isolated from the surface for 6 million years, its sulfidic, methane and ammoniarich waters harbour unique chemosynthetic prokaryotic communities that include sulphur and ammonium-metabolizing chemolithotrophs, methanogens, methanotrophs and methylotrophs. The cave also harbours cave-dwelling invertebrates and fungi, but the diversity of other microbial eukaryotes remained completely unknown. Here, we apply an 18S rRNA gene-based metabarcoding approach to study the composition of protist communities in floating microbial mats and plankton from a wellpreserved oxygen-depleted cave chamber. Our results reveal a wide protist diversity with, as dominant groups, ciliates (Alveolata), Stramenopiles, especially bicosoecids, and jakobids (Excavata). Ciliate sequences dominated both, microbial mats and plankton, followed by either Stramenopiles or excavates. Stramenopiles were more prominent in microbial mats, whereas jakobids dominated the plankton fraction of the oxygen-depleted water column. Mats cultured in the laboratory were enriched in Cercozoa. Consistent with local low oxygen levels, Movile Cave protists are most likely anaerobic or microaerophilic. Several newly detected OTU clades were very divergent from cultured species or environmental sequences in databases and represent phylogenetic novelty, notably within jakobids. Movile Cave protists likely cover a variety of ecological roles in this ecosystem including predation, parasitism, saprotrophy and possibly diverse prokaryote-protist syntrophies

Modeling of application- and middleware-layer interaction protocols

The CONNECT Integrated Project aims at enabling continuous composition of networked systems to respond to the evolution of functionalities provided to and required from the networked environment. CONNECT aims at dropping the interoperability barrier by adopting a revolutionary approach to the seamless networking of digital systems, that is, synthesizing on-the-fly the connectors via which networked systems communicate. The resulting emergent connectors are effectively synthesized according to the behavioral semantics of application- down to middleware-layer protocols run by the interacting parties. The role of work package WP3 is to devise automated and compositional approaches to connector synthesis, which can be performed at run-time. Given the respective interaction behavior of networked systems, we want to synthesize the behavior of the connector(s) needed for them to interact. These connectors serve as mediators of the networked systems' interaction at both application and middleware layers. In this deliverable, we set the scene for a formal theory of the automated synthesis of application- and middleware-layer protocol mediators. We formally characterize mediating connectors between mismatching application-layer protocols by rigorously defining the necessary conditions that must hold for protocols to be mediated. The outcome of this formalization is the definition of two relationships between heterogenous protocols: matching and mapping. The former is concerned with checking whether a mediator letting two protocols interoperate exists or not. The latter concerns the algorithm that should be executed to synthesize the required mediator. Furthermore, we analyze the different dimensions of interoperability at the middleware layer and exploit this analysis to formalize existing solutions to middleware-layer interoperability. Since the work on application-layer mediator synthesis is based on the assumption that a model of the interaction protocol for a networked system is dynamically discovered, we finally present an approach, based on data-flow analysis and testing, for the automated elicitation of application-layer protocols from software implementations. This approach presents similarities, but also several differences, with the work of work package WP4 (protocol learning). Furthermore, it allowed us to proceed in parallel with the work of WP4 and to state the requirements that the learning approaches have to satisfy to enable mediator synthesis. For this reason, we keep this work separate from the work on protocol learning and discuss it in this deliverable. All the approaches mentioned above are applied to several examples and scenarios

PLASTIC: Providing lightweight & adaptable service technology for pervasive information & communication

International audienceThe PLASTIC project adopts and revisits serviceoriented computing for Beyond 3rd Generation (B3G) networks, in particular aiming at assisting the development of services targeted at mobile devices. Specifically, PLASTIC introduces the PLASTIC platform to enable robust distributed lightweight services in B3G networking environments through: • A development environment for the thorough development of SLA- and resource-aware services, which may be deployed on the various networked nodes, including handheld devices; • A service-oriented middleware leveraging multiradio devices and multi-network environments for applications and services deployed on mobile devices, further enabling context-aware and secure discovery and access to such services; • A validation framework enabling off-line and online validation of networked services regarding functional and non-functional properties

Insight in cognitive impairment assessed with the Cognitive Assessment Interview in a large sample of patients with schizophrenia

The Cognitive Assessment Interview (CAI) is an interview-based scale measuring cognitive impairment and its impact on functioning in subjects with schizophrenia (SCZ). The present study aimed at assessing, in a large sample of SCZ (n = 601), the agreement between patients and their informants on CAI ratings, to explore patients' insight in their cognitive deficits and its relationships with clinical and functional indices. Agreement between patient- and informant-based ratings was assessed by the Gwet's agreement coefficient. Predictors of insight in cognitive deficits were explored by stepwise multiple regression analyses. Patients reported lower severity of cognitive impairment vs. informants. A substantial to almost perfect agreement was observed between patients' and informants' ratings. Lower insight in cognitive deficits was associated to greater severity of neurocognitive impairment and positive symptoms, lower severity of depressive symptoms, and older age. Worse real-life functioning was associated to lower insight in cognitive deficit, worse neurocognitive performance, and worse functional capacity. Our findings indicate that the CAI is a valid co-primary measure with the interview to patients providing a reliable assessment of their cognitive deficits. In the absence of informants with good knowledge of the subject, the interview to the patient may represent a valid alternative