PEDAGOGICAL CONCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF YOUTH AND ADULT EDUCATION TEACHERS IN THE INCLUSION OF STUDENTS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

Background: Youth and Adult Education (YAE) is a teaching modality in Brazil aimed at people who have not had access to mainstream school or not completed their schooling. Objective of the study was to characterise the pedagogical practices of teachers in the mainstream classroom and special education, working with students with intellectual disabilities at YAE. Method: Qualitative descriptive approach. Observations in classrooms and interviews with teachers. Data consolidated by content analysis and arranged in themes. Results: Teachers have difficulty meeting the student’s specific needs and developing pedagogical resources and strategies to promote access to knowledge. Conclusions: Need exists for greater collaboration between regular and special education teachers to organize the pedagogical planning enabling more assertive pedagogical practices. Article visualizations

The incidence of healthcare use, ill health and mortality in adults with intellectual disabilities and mealtime support needs

This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jir.12167/full.Background\ud Adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) experience a wide range of eating, drinking and/or swallowing (EDS) problems, for which they receive diverse mealtime support interventions. Previous research has estimated that dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) affects 8% of all adults with ID and that 15% require some form of mealtime support. People with ID (whether they require mealtime support or not) also experience a greater burden of ill-health and die younger than their peers in the general population with no ID.\ud \ud Methods\ud Using an exploratory, population-based cohort study design, we set out to explore health-related outcomes in adults with ID who receive mealtime support for any eating, drinking or swallowing problem, by establishing the annual incidence of healthcare use, EDS-related ill-health, and all-cause mortality. This study was conducted in two counties in the East of England.\ud \ud Results\ud In 2009, 142 adults with mild to profound ID and a need for any type of mealtime support were recruited for a baseline survey. At follow-up one year later, 127 individuals were alive; eight had died; and seven could not be contacted. Almost all participants had one or more GP consultations each year (85-95%) and, in the first year, 20% reportedly had one or more emergency hospitalisations. Although their annual number of GP visits was broadly comparable to that of the general population, one-fifth of this population?s primary healthcare use was directly attributable to EDS-related ill-health. Respiratory infections were the most common cause of morbidity, and the immediate cause of all eight deaths, while concerns about nutrition and dehydration were surprisingly minor. Our participants had a high annual incidence of death (5%) and, with a standardised mortality ratio of 267, their observed mortality was more than twice that expected in the general population of adults with ID (not selected because of mealtime support for EDS problems).\ud \ud Conclusions\ud All Annual Health Checks now offered to adults with ID should include questions about respiratory infections and EDS functioning, in order to focus attention on EDS problems in this population. This has the potential to reduce life-threatening illness

A New Species of Zornia (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae) from Northeastern Brazil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Zornia grandiflora Fort.-Perez & A. M. G. Azevedo (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae), a new species from Bahia and Pernambuco states in northeastern Brazil, is described and illustrated. The new species is assigned to section Anisophylla Mohlenbr. of subgenus Zornia J. F. Gmel. Zornia grandiflora is similar to Z. sericea Moric., sharing erect stems and ovate to elliptic bracteoles. It can be distinguished from Z. sericea and from other species within Zornia sect. Anisophylla by the large standard (13-17 mm long).2013537Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundacao dui Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Silo Paulo [06/6164-8-4]Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)CNPq [141324/2005-8]Fundacao dui Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Silo Paulo [06/6164-8-4

A Study of Archiving Strategies in Multi-Objective PSO for Molecular Docking

Molecular docking is a complex optimization problem aimed at predicting the position of a ligand molecule in the active site of a receptor with the lowest binding energy. This problem can be formulated as a bi-objective optimization problem by minimizing the binding energy and the Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) difference in the coordinates of ligands. In this context, the SMPSO multi-objective swarm-intelligence algorithm has shown a remarkable performance. SMPSO is characterized by having an external archive used to store the non-dominated solutions and also as the basis of the leader selection strategy. In this paper, we analyze several SMPSO variants based on different archiving strategies in the scope of a benchmark of molecular docking instances. Our study reveals that the SMPSOhv, which uses an hypervolume contribution based archive, shows the overall best performance.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Retinal blood vessels extraction using probabilistic modelling

© 2014 Kaba et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The analysis of retinal blood vessels plays an important role in detecting and treating retinal diseases. In this review, we present an automated method to segment blood vessels of fundus retinal image. The proposed method could be used to support a non-intrusive diagnosis in modern ophthalmology for early detection of retinal diseases, treatment evaluation or clinical study. This study combines the bias correction and an adaptive histogram equalisation to enhance the appearance of the blood vessels. Then the blood vessels are extracted using probabilistic modelling that is optimised by the expectation maximisation algorithm. The method is evaluated on fundus retinal images of STARE and DRIVE datasets. The experimental results are compared with some recently published methods of retinal blood vessels segmentation. The experimental results show that our method achieved the best overall performance and it is comparable to the performance of human experts.The Department of Information Systems, Computing and Mathematics, Brunel University

INTERFACE ENTRE A EJA E EDUCAÇÃO ESPECIAL: O PROFESSOR E A INCLUSÃO DE JOVENS E ADULTOS COM DEFICIÊNCIA INTELECTUAL

This study aimed to understand the scope of teaching practices and working conditions of an adult education teacher of students with intellectual disabilities enrolled in evening special education programs at the elementary schools.  The study was qualitative in nature, with characteristics of case study methodology. Data for the study were derived from semi-structured interviews, which respond adequately to our research goals. Results of the analysis point to the precarious work conditions of teachers of adult education and how this instability involves the organization and planning of curricula for students, including those with intellectual disabilities.Este estudio tuvo como propósito comprender las prácticas de enseñanza y las condiciones de trabajo del profesor de la EJA, junto a los estudiantes con discapacidad intelectual, matriculados en esta modalidad de enseñanza, en el periodo nocturno y en enseñanza fundamental. Se trata de una investigación de naturaleza cualitativa, con características de estudio de caso. Como procedimiento de recolecta de datos para la realización del estudio, se optó por utilizar la entrevista semiestructurada, la cual respondió adecuadamente a nuestros objetivos de investigación. Los resultados de los análisis, evidencian la precariedad de las condiciones de trabajo del profesor de la EJA, y como esta precariedad implica en la organización y planeamiento de los contenidos curriculares destinados a los estudiantes, inclusive aquellos que presentan discapacidad intelectual. Este estudo teve como escopo compreender as práticas de ensino e as condições de trabalho do professor da EJA junto aos estudantes com deficiência intelectual matriculados nesta modalidade de ensino, no período noturno, e ensino fundamental.  Trata-se de uma pesquisa de natureza qualitativa, com características de estudo de caso. Como procedimento de coleta de dados para a realização da pesquisa, optou-se por utilizar a entrevista semiestruturada, a qual respondeu adequadamente aos nossos objetivos de investigação. Os resultados das análises evidenciam a precariedade das condições de trabalho do professor da EJA e como esta precariedade implica na organização e planejamento dos conteúdos curriculares destinados aos alunos, inclusive aqueles que apresentam deficiência intelectual

The fidelity of synaptonemal complex assembly is regulated by a signaling mechanism that controls early meiotic progression

© 2014 Elsevier Inc.Proper chromosome segregation during meiosis requires the assembly of the synaptonemal complex (SC) between homologous chromosomes. However, the SC structure itself is indifferent to homology, andpoorly understood mechanisms that depend on conserved HORMA-domain proteins prevent ectopic SC assembly. Although HORMA-domain proteins are thought to regulate SC assembly as intrinsic components of meiotic chromosomes, here we uncover a key role for nuclear soluble HORMA-domain protein HTP-1 in the quality control of SC assembly. We show that a mutant form of HTP-1 impaired in chromosome loading provides functionality of an HTP-1-dependent checkpoint that delays exit from homology search-competent stages until all homolog pairs are linked by the SC. Bypassing of this regulatory mechanism results in premature meiotic progression and licensing of homology-independent SC assembly. These findings identify nuclear soluble HTP-1 as a regulator of early meiotic progression, suggesting parallels with the mode of action of Mad2 in the spindle assembly checkpoint

Stratification of adolescents across mental phenomena emphasizes the importance of transdiagnostic distress: a replication in two general population cohorts

Characterizing patterns of mental phenomena in epidemiological studies of adolescents can provide insight into the latent organization of psychiatric disorders. This avoids the biases of chronicity and selection inherent in clinical samples, guides models of shared aetiology within psychiatric disorders and informs the development and implementation of interventions. We applied Gaussian mixture modelling to measures of mental phenomena from two general population cohorts: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC, n=3,018) and the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network (NSPN, n=2,023). We defined classes according to their patterns of both positive (e.g. wellbeing and self-esteem) and negative (e.g. depression, anxiety, psychotic experiences) phenomena. Subsequently, we characterized classes by considering the distribution of diagnoses and sex split across classes. Four well-separated classes were identified within each cohort. Classes primarily differed by overall severity of transdiagnostic distress rather than particular patterns of phenomena akin to diagnoses. Further, as overall severity of distress increased, so did within-class variability, the proportion of individuals with operational psychiatric diagnoses. These results suggest that classes of mental phenomena in the general population of adolescents may not be the same as those found in clinical samples. Classes differentiated only by overall severity support the existence of a general, transdiagnostic mental distress factor and have important implications for intervention

What Are You Looking At? Team Fight Prediction Through Player Camera

Esport is a large and still growing industry with vast audiences. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs), a sub-genre of esports, possess a very complex environment, which often leads to experts missing important coverage while broadcasting live competitions. One common game event that holds significant importance for broadcasting is referred to as a team fight engagement. Professional player's own knowledge and understanding of the game may provide a solution to this problem. This paper suggests a model that predicts and detects ongoing team fights in a live scenario. This approach outlines a novel technique of deriving representations of a complex game environment by relying on player knowledge. This is done by analysing the positions of the in-game characters and their associated cameras, utilising this data to train a neural network. The proposed model is able to both assist in the production of live esport coverage as well as provide a live, expert-derived, analysis of the game without the need of relying on outside sources