O crescimento físico e o desenvolvimento mental de crianças institucionalizadas : o impacto do temperamento e da qualidade dos cuidados numa perspectiva longitudinal

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Psicologia (área de especialização em Psicologia Clínica)A presente investigação longitudinal tem por objetivo principal verificar o impacto da perceção do temperamento dos cuidadores e da qualidade da interação ao nível do crescimento físico e do desenvolvimento mental da criança institucionalizada. Participaram neste estudo 47 crianças com idades entre os 0 e os 30 meses acolhidas em Centros de Acolhimento Temporário (CAT). Houve quatro momentos de avaliação, o primeiro na idade de admissão da criança no CAT e os restantes momentos em intervalos de tempo sucessivos de 3 meses cada. Em todos os momentos procedeu-se à avaliação do crescimento físico (Direção Geral de Saúde, 2002) e do desenvolvimento mental (Bayley, 2006) da criança. Para além disso, realizaram-se filmagens de uma tarefa de interação estruturada (Baptista, Marques, Silva, Soares & Lyons-Ruth, 2008) na instituição para posterior cotação da sensibilidade do cuidador (Ainsworth, Bell & Stayton, 1974). Utilizou-se o Infant Characteristics Questionnarie (ICQ; Pires, 1994, 1997; Martins, 2007; Carneiro et al., 2010) para avaliar a perceção do temperamento das crianças pelos respetivos cuidadores. A qualidade do contexto institucional foi, igualmente, avaliada ao longo de todos os momentos de avaliação (Silva et al., 2010). Os resultados evidenciaram que, em geral o nível do crescimento físico e do desenvolvimento mental eram inferiores aos valores normativos, esperados tendo em conta a idade. Porém, as crianças ao longo dos 9 meses apresentaram ganhos significativos ao nível do peso e do perímetro cefálico, o que não se verificou em relação ao comprimento. Em relação ao desenvolvimento mental das crianças não se constatou ganhos significativos ao longo do tempo. As crianças percecionadas com um temperamento menos difícil apresentavam um desenvolvimento mental significativamente superior às crianças percecionadas com temperamento mais difícil no Momento 3 (M3) de avaliação. Ao longo dos vários momentos de avaliação, verificou-se que o nível de sensibilidade do cuidador, em geral, não estava relacionado com o nível do crescimento físico e do desenvolvimento mental das crianças. No que diz respeito, à qualidade do contexto institucional, as dimensões avaliadas apareceram associadas ao desempenho cognitivo, linguístico e motor das crianças. Estes resultados são discutidos com base no impacto da privação dos cuidados em meio institucional para o desenvolvimento da criança.The present study holds as major purpose to assess the impact of caregivers‟ child temperament perception and of child-caregiver interaction quality on institutionalized children‟s physical growth and mental development. The sample was composed by forty-seven children taken in Temporary Care Centers, ages ranging from 0 to 30 months old. Four assessment moments took place: the first moment coincided with the children‟s age of admission into the institution and the next moments occurred every three months. Children‟s physical growth (Direção Geral de Saúde, 2002) and mental development (Bayley, 2006) were evaluated on every moment and video recordings of a structured interaction task (Baptista, Marques, Silva, Soares & Lyons-Ruth, 2008) were obtained on the institution for later assessment of caregivers´ sensibility (Ainsworth, Bell & Stayton, 1974). Infant Characteristics Questionnarie (ICQ; Pires, 1994, 1997; Martins, 2007; Carneiro et al., 2010) was used in order to assess caregivers´ child temperament perception and institutional context quality was also evaluated on all assessment moments (Silva et al., 2010). Results indicated that physical growth and mental development levels were generally below expected for children‟s age. However, throughout the 9 month period, children presented significant increases on weight and head circumference, yet not on height or mental development measures. On the third assessment moment, children perceived as holding a less difficult temperament presented a significantly higher mental development when compared to children perceived has holding a more difficult temperament. No relationship was found, on every assessment moment, between caregivers´ sensibility and children´s physical growth and mental development. In what concerns institutional context quality, evaluated dimensions were associated with children´s cognitive, linguistic and motor performance. Results are discussed on the basis of the impact of care depriving institutional contexts on child´s development

A relação entre médico e pessoa doente na diálise

Introduction: Despite many technical and scientific advances in haemodialysis, the outcomes in patients with end stage renal disease are far from reaching the desired targets. How can they be improved? The doctor-patient relationship is a key issue in the healthcare provided to patients with end stage chronic kidney disease on dialysis. Patients and Methods: We, therefore, built a patient-centred biopsychosocial personalized approach to enhance patient autonomy and self-care as an alternative to the conventional medical approach to dialysis patients. We compared patient satisfaction achieved in both approaches using a patient satisfaction questionnaire, and we assessed the correlation between satisfaction and social, clinical and biological outcomes. Results and Conclusion: The alternative physician-patient relationship approach achieved better outcomes than the conventional one, and so it must be the choice approach for these patients.Introdução: Apesar de muitos avanços técnicos e científicos no tratamento por hemodialise, os resultados obtidos nas pessoas com doença renal cronica estão longe de atingir os resultados desejados. Como podemos melhorá-los? A relação entre médico e pessoa doente e um fator chave nos cuidados de saúde prestados a esta população. Doentes e Métodos: Construímos um modelo de abordagem da pessoa doente, personalizado, isto e, biopsicossocial e centrado na pessoa, para aumentar a sua autonomia e envolvimento nos autocuidados, como alternativa ao modelo convencional, centrado nos profissionais ou no sistema. Comparamos os resultados obtidos com as duas abordagens, utilizando um inquérito de satisfação das pessoas. Avaliamos a correlação entre a satisfação percebida e os resultados sociais, clínicos e biológicos. Resultados e conclusão: O modelo personalizado obteve melhores resultados que o convencional e por isso deve ser o modelo de escolha para estas pessoas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Time-varying Markov models of school enrolment

This study uses Markov models to develop a general quantitative approach to aid the modelling of school enrolment. The performance of the stationary 1970s to limitations Markov project of the chain model, widely used during the 1960s and school enrolment, has thrown into relief traditional model. Only a few studies early the have thoroughly tested the model over a period of time to determine whether it is really valid for predictive purposes. The present study starts by testing the stationary Markov model using data over a twelve year period for a subsystem of the Portuguese educational system, the model being applied to the whole country and to each district into which the country is administratively divided. Several least squares estimation procedures are performed to produce estimates of the transition probabilities. As expected this model proves to be inappropriate, generating biased and non-efficient estimates for the transition probabilities. Assuming that the non-stationarity of the transition probabilities is due to causal factors, linear behavioural relationships are included in the model. An extended Markov model with time varying transition probabilities is developed and applied to the same Portuguese educational subsystem. Seventeen explanatory variables, divided into supply-side factors and demand-side factors, are used, and stepwise regression and pooled cross-section time-series regression are performed to produce estimates of the time-varying transition probabilities principal components analysis is also applied on supply factors and demand factors and new sets of explanatory variables are used. The results show that the patterns of the time-varying transition probability estimates describe reasonably well the patterns of the corresponding observed point estimates. This suggests that it is appropriate to include a causal structure in the model. Having established the causal relationship influencing the time-varying transition probabilities, an analysis of these relationships suggests both policy implications of this work and areas for future research

Biofouling in tubes: some trends and perspectives

A significant increase in the literature concerning the formation of biological deposits in tubes has been noticed in the last few years. Yet, the scope of the majority of the reports is limited to the study of a single operating parameter. Besides, the operating conditions differ significantly from case to case, renderino difficult the absortion of the available information. In this work, a survey of the most recent publications on the subject of tube biofouling is undertaken, as a means of clarifying further research proprams. Emphasis is placed on the systems used, experimental equipments adopted and, essentially on the parameters studied. Of these, specially attention is qiven to the influence of tube material and roughness, foulant type and concentration, fluid velocity and temperature field

Fast and Efficient Lenslet Image Compression

Light field imaging is characterized by capturing brightness, color, and directional information of light rays in a scene. This leads to image representations with huge amount of data that require efficient coding schemes. In this paper, lenslet images are rendered into sub-aperture images. These images are organized as a pseudo-sequence input for the HEVC video codec. To better exploit redundancy among the neighboring sub-aperture images and consequently decrease the distances between a sub-aperture image and its references used for prediction, sub-aperture images are divided into four smaller groups that are scanned in a serpentine order. The most central sub-aperture image, which has the highest similarity to all the other images, is used as the initial reference image for each of the four regions. Furthermore, a structure is defined that selects spatially adjacent sub-aperture images as prediction references with the highest similarity to the current image. In this way, encoding efficiency increases, and furthermore it leads to a higher similarity among the co-located Coding Three Units (CTUs). The similarities among the co-located CTUs are exploited to predict Coding Unit depths.Moreover, independent encoding of each group division enables parallel processing, that along with the proposed coding unit depth prediction decrease the encoding execution time by almost 80% on average. Simulation results show that Rate-Distortion performance of the proposed method has higher compression gain than the other state-of-the-art lenslet compression methods with lower computational complexity

A model for the interpretation of biofouling

The formation of biofilms on heat exchange surfaces was studied using water with Pseudomonas fluorescens as a contaminant and also a mixture of these bacteria and kaolin particles. In every case increasing the fluid velocity resulted in a decrease in the final amount of deposit and in the deposition rate . The effect of the fluid velocity was interpreted using a mathematical model and it was found that cell adhesion and reproduction were the fundamental processes controlling the deposition rate . The presence of inorganic particles in the deposit enhanced the biofilm growth rate . This result was explained by the differences in the structure of the fouling layers

Biofilm formation by Pseudomonas fluorescens

The formation of biofilms on heat exchange surfaces was studied using water contaminated with Pseudomonas fluorescens. The rate of deposition and the maximum amount of deposit decrease as the fluid velocity increases. The processes occurring at the interface and in the biofilm appear to govern the build-up of the deposit. together with the removal (shear stress) mechanism. Values of the attachment and biological growth rates were calculated from the changes observed in the biofilm thermal resistances after suppressing the addition of nutrients to the flowing water. In both cases there is a decrease for higher velocities.JNICT. Portugal. through Project no. 8750

Moyens du bord: espaces en suspension, temps interstitiels et activités socioculturelles en prison

A dinamização do sector sociocultural é atualmente uma parte integrante da gestão das prisões portuguesas. Neste contexto, reclusos são incentivados a participar ativamente, fazendo uso das suas competências sociais e artísticas, e beneficiando de alívios na pressão disciplinar da prisão. Frequentadores destes “espaços suspensos” onde se organizam atividades lúdicas e artísticas, alguns reclusos tornam-se “prata da casa”, simultaneamente imagem pública da prisão e beneficiários de uma relação próxima com os técnicos. Propomos aqui a análise desta posição ambígua e das formas como a “prata da casa” nos permitem pensar sobre esta modalidade penal em que os reclusos assumem uma parte da administração da sua própria pena.The sociocultural sector has been in recent times an integral part of Portuguese prison management. Inmates are encouraged to proactively engage in these activities, to put their social and artistic skills to use, and to find in them some relief in the prison’s disciplinary pressure. As they participate in these “suspended spaces” wherein ludic and artistic activities are organized, certain inmates become “prata da casa” (homegrown pride), acting as the prison’s public image and benefiting from a close relationship with the prison staff. Drawing from this ambiguous status, we propose an analysis of a penal modality whereby inmates partly take charge of managing their own sentence.Moyens du bord: Espaces en suspension, temps interstitiels et activités socioculturelles en prison La dynamisation du secteur socioculturel fait actuellement partie intégrante de la gestion des prisons portugaises. Dans ce contexte, les détenus sont encouragés à y participer activement, en employant leurs compétences sociales et artistiques et en bénéficiant de soulagements par rapport à la pression disciplinaire de la prison. Dans ces « espaces en suspension », où des activités ludiques et artistiques sont organisées, certains des détenus deviennent « prata da casa » (moyens du bord), en agissant, en même temps, comme l’image publique de la prison et en bénéficiant d’une relation plus étroite avec le personnel. Cet article vise à analyser cette ambiguïté et la manière dont les « moyens du bord » nous permettent de réfléchir sur cette modalité pénale où les détenus prennent à leur compte une partie de l’administration de leurs propres peines.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

In-between identities and hope in the future: experiences and trajectories of cigano secondary students (SI)

Increasing numbers of Cigano people in Portuguese schools show that this is the most educated generation to date. However, according to recent data only 2.6% are enrolled in secondary education. Using an intersectional approach examining gender, ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status to explore the youngsters’ academic trajectories, and focusing on tensions of the interplay between structural constraints and individual agency, enables us to explore identity reconfiguration processes (‘in- between’). The data, based on 32 semi-structured interviews, point to three main dimensions regarding the youngsters’ aspirations for social mobility: the school relevance to achieve jobs differing from traditional activities; school perceived as a means to develop important transversal skills, useful in broader citizenship contexts; school as a privileged space for inter-ethnic socialisation, with impact on the youngsters’ school and professional future. Participant heterogeneity explains variations in their aspirations for upward mobility, as well as differentiations in the construction processes of in-between identities.This project is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology, [PTDC/CED-EDG/30175/ 2017].info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio