Avaliação da qualidade posicional de mapas de orientação produzidos no Brasil /

Orientador : Luis Augusto Koenig VeigaDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciencias da Terra, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciencias Geodésicas. Defesa: Curitiba, 2006Inclui bibliografi

Prevalence and characteristics of chronic pain among patients in Portuguese primary care units

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.Introduction: Chronic pain (CP) negatively impacts the lives of almost 2 billion people worldwide, including approximately 37% of adults in Portugal. As most of these patients are followed by a general practitioner, identifying the prevalence and characterizing the pain of patients who visit primary care units will provide valuable insights into the CP landscape in Portugal. Methods: To achieve this goal, an observational, cross-sectional study was conducted in 58 primary care units of mainland Portugal between June 2017 and March 2018. Interviews were conducted with 8445 patients, and 578 CP patients were characterized. Results: We observed that one third of patients suffered from CP, and of these, approximately one third felt that their pain management was insufficient. Most of the population was 55 years old or older, retired, and had more than three comorbidities. However, age and the number and type of comorbidities were not predictors of pain intensity. Additionally, most of the population had pain or discomfort that hindered their mobility and the performance of their everyday activities. This decrease in the quality of life led to feelings of anxiety and depression, which were associated with pain intensity. Conclusion: Given the high prevalence of CP, strategies to improve the quality of life of these patients and decrease the negative impacts, as well as awareness campaigns to increase the populations' knowledge of this condition, are essential for the suitable and timely treatment of CP.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Desenvolvimento de sistema de levantamentos semi-autônomo empregando estação total robotizada e veículo terrestre não tripulado

Resumo: Este trabalho lida com automacao topografica e apresenta o desenvolvimento de um sistema de levantamento semi-autonomo composto por uma estacao total robotizada Leica TCRA 1205 R100, um veiculo terrestre nao tripulado desenvolvido especialmente para esta aplicacao, um prisma de reflexao total em 360o e sistemas subsidiarios para medicao de inclinacao, comunicacao de dados e controle do veiculo. A area a ser levantada e delimitada por um poligono simples e a densidade do levantamento pode ser especificada por um parametro denominado medida da celula de referencia. O controle do sistema e feito em tempo real por um programa em ambiente Matlab que, simultaneamente, monitora a posicao do veiculo atraves da estacao total, comanda os seus movimentos e coleta as coordenadas dos pontos medidos. No interior da area em levantamento, o sistema procura posicionar o veiculo para coletar uma serie de pontos regularmente espacados. A eficiencia do sistema em realizar esta tarefa foi avaliada atraves de levantamentos experimentais. Sao apresentados os resultados e os indicadores estatisticos da qualidade do posicionamento obtido

Ohmic heating as an innovative approach for the production of keratin films

Ohmic heating is a thermal processing method based on the application of electric fields directly into a semi-conductive medium. In this study, we explored for the first time the use of ohmic heating to obtain keratin films. The properties of the films prepared by ohmic heating and conventional heating were evaluated and compared under similar thermal profiles. A lower increase in free thiols' concentration was obtained for the keratin solutions and keratin films submitted to ohmic heating (16% increase for the keratin solution extracted from virgin hair, pHâ¯9, submitted to ohmic heating and 23% when submitted to conventional heating). Significant differences in the swelling results were observed for the films prepared with keratin extracted from virgin hair, with a swelling decrease in about 55% for the films prepared by ohmic heating. Generally, the keratin films obtained by ohmic heating showed distinct properties comparatively to the films produced by conventional methods. The application of a fusion protein on the keratin films demonstrated their capacity to be used as substitutes to hair fibers when evaluating the potential of new cosmetic products. This work suggests that ohmic heating show potential to tailor keratin films properties depending on an intended application or functionality.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 unit and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Ana Tinoco and Rui M. Rodrigues thanks FCT for funding the scholarships with the references SFRH/BD/114035/2015 and SFRH/BD/110723/2015, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sequencing batch airlift reactors (SBAR): a suitable technology for treatment and valorization of mineral oil wastewaters towards lipids production

Produced water (PW) and spent oil-based wastewaters are some of the largest mineral oil wastewaters produced. Due to the high toxicity of hydrocarbons, several countries set stringent discharge limits and its treatment is compulsory before discharge. In this work, biological treatment of mineral oil wastewaters coupled with the production of bacterial lipids is demonstrated in sequential batch airlift reactors (SBAR). Two SBAR (2 L working volume) were used for treatment of PW and lubricant-based wastewater (LW), inoculated with Alcanivorax borkumensis SK2 (SBARAb+PW) and Rhodococcus opacus B4 (SBARR.o+LW), respectively. A total petroleum hydrocarbon removal (TPH) efficiency up to 96% and 80% were achieved for SBARAb+PW and SBARR.o+LW, respectively. Intracellular lipids production in SBARAb+PW increased when lower TPH/N ratios and higher feast stage duration were applied (up to 0.74 g g-1 cell dry weight (CDW)), whereas in SBARR.o+LW higher lipids production was observed for higher TPH/N ratios (0.94 g g-1 in CDW). Triacylglycerols (TAG) were the main intracellular lipid accumulated in both SBARAb+PW and SBARR.o+LW operations, while wax ester (WE) production was only observed extracellularly in the SBARAb+PW.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) under the scope of project SaltOil+ (POCI-01-0145-FEDER030180); the strategic programmes UIDB/04469/2020, UID/BIA/4050/ 2013 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007569) and UID/BIA/04050/2019; and by the BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Research of Rita M. Silva was supported by PhD grant SFRH/BD/116154/2016, funded by FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biological saline produced water treatment, a sustainable process towards lipids production

Oil and gas industry is responsible for the generation of large volumes of oil-contaminated wastewaters, such as saline produced water (PW), that without proper treatment can cause environmental contamination. Alcanivorax borkumensis SK2 is a biosurfactant producer capable of degrading and converting hydrocarbons into bacterial lipids under nutrient limiting conditions (e.g. nitrogen and/or oxygen). Recently, the industrial interest in biosurfactants and bacterial lipids for biotechnological applications (e.g. bioremediation or biofuels production) is increasing. Pursuing the interest of treating and simultaneously valorizing PW, a sequencing batch airlift reactor (SBAR) strategy consisting of sequential cycles of feast and famine stages was developed. A. borkumensis SK2 was used as bioreactor inoculum and the effect of cycle duration, total petroleum hydrocarbon to nitrogen ratio (TPH/N) and dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration (7-8 mg L-1 and 2-3 mg L-1 (famine and feast stage); and 7-8/1-2 mg L-1 (famine/feast stage)) were investigated. The system provided an efficient PW treatment, achieving TPH removal efficiencies in a narrow range from 90 ± 2.1 to 96 ± 1.8 %. Intracellular lipid production increased from 0.48 to 0.74 g g-1 of cellular dry weight (CDW) with the application of higher feast stage duration and lower TPH/N ratios suggesting that nitrogen availability is the most relevant factor to promote accumulation. Under 2-3 mg L-1 and 7-8/1-2 mg L-1 of oxygen, lipid accumulation dropped to 0.50 g g-1 of CDW. Intracellular lipid profile changed according to the DO concentration. Triacylglycerols (TAG) and wax esters (WE) were accumulated under maximum and limiting DO concentrations, while polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) accumulation was triggered by the application of alternated DO conditions, indicating that the type of intracellular compound can be selected by manipulating the oxygen concentration in the SBAR. Extracellular lipid production (TAG and WE) was not significantly affected by none of the operational conditions applied (0.06 g L-1). Moreover, the production of a cell-bound and an extracellular glycolipid biosurfactant capable of reducing the medium surface tension from 65 to approximately 41 mN m-1 was observed. The proposed strategy showed that biological PW treatment in a SBAR can be a sustainable process through the production of added-value compounds contributing to a circular economy model.This research was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT I.P.) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under the scope of project SaltOil+ (POCI-01- 0145- FEDER-030180) (Portugal 2020, COMPETE 2020); Rita M. Silva PhD grant (SFRH/BD/116154/2016) was funded by FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Constraining Born-Infeld models of dark energy with CMB anisotropies

We study the CMB constraints on two Dark Energy models described by scalar fields with different Lagrangians, namely a Klein-Gordon and a Born-Infeld field. The speed of sound of field fluctuations are different in these two theories, and therefore the predictions for CMB and structure formation are different. Employing the WMAP data on CMB, we make a likelihood analysis on a grid of theoretical models. We constrain the parameters of the models and compute the probability distribution functions for the equation of state. We show that the effect of the different sound speeds affects the low multipoles of CMB anisotropies, but is at most marginal for the class of models studied here.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, uses revtex

Searching for planar signatures in WMAP

We search for planar deviations of statistical isotropy in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data by applying a recently introduced angular-planar statistics both to full-sky and to masked temperature maps, including in our analysis the effect of the residual foreground contamination and systematics in the foreground removing process as sources of error. We confirm earlier findings that full-sky maps exhibit anomalies at the planar ($l$) and angular ($\ell$) scales $(l,\ell)=(2,5),(4,7),$ and $(6,8)$, which seem to be due to unremoved foregrounds since this features are present in the full-sky map but not in the masked maps. On the other hand, our test detects slightly anomalous results at the scales $(l,\ell)=(10,8)$ and $(2,9)$ in the masked maps but not in the full-sky one, indicating that the foreground cleaning procedure (used to generate the full-sky map) could not only be creating false anomalies but also hiding existing ones. We also find a significant trace of an anomaly in the full-sky map at the scale $(l,\ell)=(10,5)$, which is still present when we consider galactic cuts of 18.3% and 28.4%. As regards the quadrupole ($\ell=2$), we find a coherent over-modulation over the whole celestial sphere, for all full-sky and cut-sky maps. Overall, our results seem to indicate that current CMB maps derived from WMAP data do not show significant signs of anisotropies, as measured by our angular-planar estimator. However, we have detected a curious coherence of planar modulations at angular scales of the order of the galaxy's plane, which may be an indication of residual contaminations in the full- and cut-sky maps.Comment: 15 pages with pdf figure

Uso da realidade aumentada em auxílio à Educação

O crescente uso da Realidade Aumentada (RA) na Educação é um fato positivo. Assim, o objetivo desta pesquisa é buscar melhorar o processo de ensino-aprendizagem dos discentes. Acredita-se que a absorção do conteúdo se tornará mais fácil quando existir a possibilidade de visualização da informação que se pretende transmitir, por meio do uso de técnicas de visão computacional. A metodologia empregada no projeto foi constituída por uma consulta bibliográfica que ofereceu o suporte teórico necessário para a elaboração de uma aplicação RA para web, denominada RAINFOR. Observou-se inicialmente que os alunos se demonstraram motivados com a possibilidade de interatividade e com a facilidade de uso dessa ferramenta

Mineralization of Sialoliths Investigated by Ex Vivo and In Vivo X-ray Computed Tomography

The fraction of organic matter present affects the fragmentation behavior of sialoliths; thus, pretherapeutic information on the degree of mineralization is relevant for a correct selection of lithotripsy procedures. This work proposes a methodology for in vivo characterization of salivary calculi in the pretherapeutic context. Sialoliths were characterized in detail by X-ray computed microtomography (μCT) in combination with atomic emission spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. Correlative analysis of the same specimens was performed by in vivo and ex vivo helical computed tomography (HCT) and ex vivo μCT. The mineral matter in the sialoliths consisted essentially of apatite (89 vol%) and whitlockite (11 vol%) with average density of 1.8 g/cm3. In hydrated conditions, the mineral mass prevailed with 53 ± 13 wt%, whereas the organic matter, with a density of 1.2 g/cm3, occupied 65 ± 10% of the sialoliths' volume. A quantitative relation between sialoliths mineral density and X-ray attenuation is proposed for both HCT and μCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio