Environmental tobacco smoke exposure and smoking habits in a secondary school

O conhecimento de que o tabagismo activo tem efeitos nefastos na saúde não é novidade, mas a investigação têm-se voltado igualmente para o estudo do impacto da exposição ao Fumo de Tabaco Ambiental (FTA). No presente estudo descritivo de painel procura-se sensibilizar para a importância de promover a escola como um local livre de tabaco, procurando-se estudar os hábitos tabágicos, a exposição ao FTA, o incómodo resultante dessa exposição, a percepção de nocividade do fumo de tabaco e o grau de concordância com políticas preventivas, de professores, funcionários e alunos de uma escola secundária. Os dados revelam uma percentagem significativa de fumadores dentro do espaço escola, e uma exposição diária pela maior parte dos professores, funcionários e alunos ao FTA, quer em espaços interiores e exteriores, sendo notável o incómodo provocado por esta exposição. Verifica-se também que a maioria concorda com as políticas de prevenção e restrição do tabagismo dentro da escola. Posto isto, discute-se a necessidade e a viabilidade de implementar esses políticas do consumo de tabaco neste contexto escolar

Robustness of the European power grids under intentional attack

The power grid defines one of the most important technological networks of our times and sustains our complex society. It has evolved for more than a century into an extremely huge and seemingly robust and well understood system. But it becomes extremely fragile as well, when unexpected, usually minimal, failures turn into unknown dynamical behaviours leading, for example, to sudden and massive blackouts. Here we explore the fragility of the European power grid under the effect of selective node removal. A mean field analysis of fragility against attacks is presented together with the observed patterns. Deviations from the theoretical conditions for network percolation (and fragmentation) under attacks are analysed and correlated with non topological reliability measures.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Mamíferos encontrados em dois castanhais localizados ao sudoeste do Estado do Acre, Brasil.

bitstream/CPAF-AC-2010/22928/1/publicacao113.pd

Educação rodoviária: estudo de caso

A sinistralidade rodoviária transformou-se numa doença social, das principais causas de morte, internamentos, tratamentos prolongados e incapacidades permanentes. Com os programas de segurança rodoviária a sinistralidade rodoviária tem diminuído. Em que medida estes programas incluem a educação rodoviária? Na escolaridade obrigatória é (ou não) abordada a educação rodoviária? O que pensam os professores sobre esta temática nos currículos escolares? Usa-se o método comparativo na análise das orientações e programas internacionais sobre segurança rodoviária. Analisa-se em estudo de caso as representações de professores sobre a educação rodoviária nas escolas. A educação rodoviária constitui uma necessidade básica de aprendizagem para todos

Temperature affects the morphology and calcification of Emiliania huxleyi strains

The global warming debate has sparked an unprecedented interest in temperature effects on coccolithophores. The calcification response to temperature changes reported in the literature, however, is ambiguous. The two main sources of this ambiguity are putatively differences in experimental setup and strain specificity. In this study we therefore compare three strains isolated in the North Pacific under identical experimental conditions. Three strains of Emiliania huxleyi type A were grown under non-limiting nutrient and light conditions, at 10, 15, 20 and 25 °C. All three strains displayed similar growth rate versus temperature relationships, with an optimum at 20–25 °C. Elemental production (particulate inorganic carbon (PIC), particulate organic carbon (POC), total particulate nitrogen (TPN)), coccolith mass, coccolith size, and width of the tube element cycle were positively correlated with temperature over the sub-optimum to optimum temperature range. The correlation between PIC production and coccolith mass/size supports the notion that coccolith mass can be used as a proxy for PIC production in sediment samples. Increasing PIC production was significantly positively correlated with the percentage of incomplete coccoliths in one strain only. Generally, coccoliths were heavier when PIC production was higher. This shows that incompleteness of coccoliths is not due to time shortage at high PIC production. Sub-optimal growth temperatures lead to an increase in the percentage of malformed coccoliths in a strain-specific fashion. Since in total only six strains have been tested thus far, it is presently difficult to say whether sub-optimal temperature is an important factor causing malformations in the field. The most important parameter in biogeochemical terms, the PIC : POC ratio, shows a minimum at optimum growth temperature in all investigated strains. This clarifies the ambiguous picture featuring in the literature, i.e. discrepancies between PIC : POC–temperature relationships reported in different studies using different strains and different experimental setups. In summary, global warming might cause a decline in coccolithophore's PIC contribution to the rain ratio, as well as improved fitness in some genotypes due to fewer coccolith malformations

Coherent-State Approach to Two-dimensional Electron Magnetism

We study in this paper the possible occurrence of orbital magnetim for two-dimensional electrons confined by a harmonic potential in various regimes of temperature and magnetic field. Standard coherent state families are used for calculating symbols of various involved observables like thermodynamical potential, magnetic moment, or spatialdistribution of current. Their expressions are given in a closed form and the resulting Berezin-Lieb inequalities provide a straightforward way to study magnetism in various limit regimes. In particular, we predict a paramagnetic behaviour in the thermodynamical limit as well as in the quasiclassical limit under a weak field. Eventually, we obtain an exact expression for the magnetic moment which yields a full description of the phase diagram of the magnetization.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, submitted to PR

Nonparametric and Semiparametric Analysis of Current Status Data Subject to Outcome Misclassification

In this article, we present nonparametric and semiparametric methods to analyze current status data subject to outcome misclassification. Our methods use nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation (NPMLE) to estimate the distribution function of the failure time when sensitivity and specificity may vary among subgroups. A nonparametric test is proposed for the two sample hypothesis testing. In regression analysis, we apply the Cox proportional hazard model and likelihood ratio based confidence intervals for the regression coefficients are proposed. Our methods are motivated and demonstrated by data collected from an infectious disease study in Seattle, WA

An Analysis of Genetic Changes during the Divergence of Drosophila Species

It has been long appreciated that speciation involves changes in body plans and establishes genetic, reproductive, developmental and behavioral incompatibilities between populations. However, little is still known about the genetic components involved in these changes or the sequence and scale of events that lead to the differentiation of species.. Some of these genes were previously implicated in the genetics of reproduction and behavior while the biological functions of others are not yet clear.Together these results identify different classes of genes that might have participated in the beginning of segregation of these species millions of years ago in Africa