World Health Organization (WHO) Recommends Exclusive Breastfeeding in the First Six Months of Life

Objective: To obtain the prevalence of breastfeeding/exclusive breastfeeding until 6 months of life. To assess mothers knowledge about the benefits of breastfeeding and exclusive until six months, the impact of information in the desire to breastfeed and reasons for WHO recommendations failure. Methods: Questionnaires applied to recent given birth women in a tertiary hospital maternity, divided into case-group (providing information about breastfeeding advantages/recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding up to six months) and control-group (not informed by the authors). At six months of age, we call mother's to answer a questionnaire about continuity or not of breastfeeding and if exclusive. For statistical analyses frequency tables and McNemar test were used. Results: Answered to the questionnaire 242 mothers, 239 intended to breastfeed, 54% exclusively until six months. In the 2nd survey, out of 192 respondent mothers 63.5% were breastfeeding. Exclusively until 6 months, 35.4%. In case-group, 56.7% of respondents planned to breastfeed exclusively until 6 months and 39.2% did so; control group, 50.5% planned it and 31.6% did so, p = 0.664. In case-group 89.7% intend to breastfeed the next son. In a control group 52.6%, p < 0.001, out of the 54 mothers who didn't breastfeed exclusively, 46.3% invoked labor laws as the reason for introduction of solid food. 36.0% professional advice. The reason given to abandonment was "agalactia" in 78.6%. Conclusions: WHO recommendations for exclusive breastfeeding was followed by 1 in 3 infants. This prevalence was near to the best results worldwide, but still not enough. There were statistically significant differences in behavioral intention, but not in attitude, between case group and control group. Labor law was the reason to early introduction of solid food in most surveyed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Translating synchronous Petri Nets into PROMELA for verifying behavioural properties

For developing embedded systems, the design process may benefit in some contexts from the usage of formal methods, namely to find critical errors and flaws, before final design and implementation decisions are taken. The Synchronous and Interpreted Petri Net (SIP-net) modelling language is considered in this article to model embedded systems. This model of computation is based on safe Petri nets with guarded transitions and synchronous transitions firing, and also includes enabling and inhibitor arcs. The Spin tool, whose input language is PROMELA, is a verification system based on model checking techniques. This article presents a program to translate SIP-net models into PROMELA code and discusses in detail the adequacy of the created PROMELA specification for verification through model checking techniques.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - bolsa SFRH/BD/19718/200

Validation of reactive software from scenario-based models

This thesis proposal suggests a model-based approach to obtain, from a set of behavioural scenarios of a given reactive software system, a graphical animation for reproducing that set of scenarios for validation purposes. The approach assumes that the requirements of the system are described by a use case diagram, being the behaviour of each use case detailed by a collection of scenario descriptions. These use cases and scenarios are transformed into a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model, which is next complemented with animation-specific elements. By executing the CPN model, it is possible to animate the scenarios in a user-friendly way and thus ensuring an effective involvement of the users in the system’s validation. The CPN model is enforced to be (1) parametric, allowing an easy modification of the initial conditions of the scenarios, (2) environment-descriptive, meaning that it includes the state of the relevant elements of the environment, and (3) animation-separated, implying that the elements related to animation are clearly separated from the other ones. We validate our approach based on its application to two examples of reactive systems

Validation of scenario-based business requirements with Coloured Petri Nets

A scenario can be used to describe a possible instantiation of a given business use case and can be expressed for example as a list of steps written in natural language, or by an interaction diagram. This paper discusses how a collection of scenarios, all expressed as UML2 sequence diagrams, can be described for validation purposes by a single model, written in the Coloured Petri Nets (CPN) modelling language. Due to the support for parallelism given by the CPN language, the obtained CPN model can: (1) simultaneously execute several scenarios; and (2) elegantly represent the parallel activities inside a scenario. This two-level parallelism is crucial during validation, since it allows one to detect problems that are only evident when several scenarios are in simultaneous execution and may affect each other. We exemplify our approach in a system that has a rich set of interactions with its users.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - bolsa SFRH/BD/19718/2004, programa PTDC/EIA/70271/2006 “AMADEUS: Aspects and Compiler Optimizations for Matlab System Development

Translocating the blood-brain barrier using electrostatics

Copyright © 2012 Ribeiro,Domingues, Freire,Santos and Castanho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.Mammalian cell membranes regulate homeostasis, protein activity, and cell signaling. The charge at the membrane surface has been correlated with these key events. Although mammalian cells are known to be slightly anionic, quantitative information on the membrane charge and the importance of electrostatic interactions in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics remain elusive. Recently, we reported for the first time that brain endothelial cells (EC) are more negatively charged than human umbilical cord cells, using zeta-potential measurements by dynamic light scattering. Here, we hypothesize that anionicity is a key feature of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and contributes to select which compounds cross into the brain. For the sake of comparison, we also studied the membrane surface charge of blood components—red blood cells (RBC), platelets, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).To further quantitatively correlate the negative zeta-potential values with membrane charge density, model membranes with different percentages of anionic lipids were also evaluated. From all the cells tested, brain cell membranes are the most anionic and those having their lipids mostly exposed, which explains why lipophilic cationic compounds are more prone to cross the blood-brain barrier.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia — Ministério da Educação e Ciência (FCT-MEC, Portugal) is acknowledged for funding (including fellowships SFRH/BD/42158/2007 to Marta M.B. Ribeiro, SFRH/BD/41750/2007 to Marco M. Domingues and SFRH/BD/70423/2010 to João M. Freire) and project PTDC/QUI-BIQ/119509/2010. Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (European Commission) is also acknowledged for funding (FP7-PEOPLE-2007-3-1-IAPP, Project 230654)

Mechanical properties of PLA specimens obtained by additive manufacturing process reinforced with flax fibers

Abstract Although polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most used materials in additive manufacturing, its mechanical properties are quite limiting for its practical application, therefore, to improve these properties it is frequent to add fibers and, in this way, create a more resistant composite material. In this paper, the authors developed PLA composites reinforced with flax fibers to evaluate the improvement of tensile and flexural strength. The experimental design of experiments was based on the L18 Taguchi array where the control factors were the extruder temperature (three levels), number of strands (three levels), infill percentage of the specimens (three levels), and whether the flax fiber had surface chemical treatment. The tensile and flexural specimens were made on a 3D printing machine and was a mold was developed to fix and align the fiber strands during the printing process. The tensile and flexural experimental tests were performed in agreement with ASTM D638.14 and ISO 14125 standards, respectively. Analyzing the results, it was verified that the surface chemical treatment (NaOH) of the fiber did not show any influence in the mechanical properties of the composites; in contrast, the infill density demonstrated a huge influence for the improvement of mechanical strength. The maximum values of tensile and bending stress were 50 MPa and 73 MPa, respectively. The natural fiber reinforcement can improve the mechanical properties of the PLA composites.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Metacognição : qual o valor incremental no rendimento da formação profissional

A aptidão mental geral é apontada como um preditor estável da aprendizagem (Ree & Earles, 1991). Estudos mais recentes (e.g., Bell & Kozlowski, 2008) atribuem à metacognição capacidade para incrementar a capacidade de previsão do rendimento na formação. Este estudo de validade relativa ao critério foi desenvolvido em contexto real e longitudinalmente, tendo participado 37 militares recém-admitidos à Força Aérea Portuguesa. Foram aplicadas duas provas de aptidão cognitiva, a escala Metacognitive Awareness Inventory e recolhidos os resultados de duas situações de aprendizagem com diferentes durações e programas formativos. Os resultados evidenciam uma maior capacidade preditiva das aptidões cognitivas de g-cristalizado comparativamente com as de g-fluído. Apesar dos oito indicadores metacognitivos considerados não apresentarem uma correlação simples estatisticamente significativa com as duas variáveis critério, a monitorização da aprendizagem incrementa entre 0,08 e 0,13 (R2Aj.) o modelo de regressão linear univariado com as duas provas g-cristalizado.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)Câmara Municipal de BragaMegatrónica InformáticaCaixa Geral de Depósito

Designing tool support for translating use cases and UML 2.0 Sequence Diagrams into a Coloured Petri Net

Using a case study on the specification of an elevator controller, this paper presents an approach that can translate given UML descriptions into a Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model. The UML descriptions must be specified in the form of Use Cases and UML 2.0 Sequence Diagrams. The CPN model constitutes one single, coherent and executable representation of all possible behaviours that are specified by the given UML artefacts. CPNs consitute a formal modelling language that enables construction and analysis of scalable, executable models of behaviour. A combined use of UML and CPN can be useful in several projects. CPN is well supported by CPN Tools and the work we present here is aimed at building a CPN Tools front-end engine that implements the proposed translation.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BSAB/607/200

A versatile method for bladder segmentation in computed tomography two-dimensional images under adverse conditions

This article presents the design and evaluation of an algorithm for urinary bladder segmentation in medical images, from contrastless computed tomography studies of patients suffering from bladder wall tumours. These situations require versatile methods of segmentation, able to adapt to the structural changes the tumours provoke in the bladder wall, reflected as irregularities on the images obtained, creating adversities to the segmentation process. This semi-automatic method uses fuzzy c-means clustering, a Gaussian-curve-based intensity transformation, and active contour models, requiring only the physician's input of a single seed point for each anatomical view, in order to segment the bladder volume in all frames that include it. The performance of the method was evaluated on eight patients of The Cancer Genome Atlas-Urothelial Bladder Carcinoma collection, achieving approximately 79% of successful segmentations for small tumour patients (below 2.0 cm of diameter) and approximately 72% between 2.0 and 2.9 cm. Successful segmentations for small tumour patients presented an average of 3.7 mm Hausdorff distance and 91.0% degree of overlap. The promising performance attained, especially for small tumour patients, revealed a high potential of this method to serve as basis for an effective early-stage bladder wall tumour computer-aided diagnosis system