Cortisol and Anxiety Response to a Relaxing Intervention on Pregnant Women Awaiting Amniocentesis

Background: Stress and anxiety during pregnancy have been associated with premature and low birth weight babies, presumably through fetus over exposion to glucocorticoids. Antenatal stress also seems to have long-term effects upon infant development and adult health. However, medication for stress may carry risks to the expectant mother, therefore the efficacy of nonpharmacological interventions should be investigated. Methods: Pregnant women (n = 154) awaiting amniocentesis, were randomly assigned in the morning and the afternoon to three groups for 30 min: (1) listening to relaxing music, (2) sitting and reading magazines, and (3) sitting in the waiting-room. Before and after that period, they completed the Spielberger’s State and Trait anxiety inventory and provided blood samples for cortisol. The groups were then compared regarding change in cortisol levels and anxiety. Results: Maternal cortisol and state anxiety were correlated (r = 0.25, p = 0.04) in the afternoon, but not in the morning. The larger decreases in cortisol occurred in the music group ( 61.8 nmol/L, ANOVA: p = 0.01), followed by magazine, being differences among groups more pronounced in the morning. Women in the music group also exhibited the greater decreases in state anxiety ( p < 0.001). Younger mothers with less gestational age were on average the most anxious, and also the ones with greater decreases in cortisol and anxiety levels after relaxation. Conclusion: A relaxing intervention as short as 30 min, especially listening to music, decreases plasma cortisol and self-reported state anxiety score. Pregnant women might benefit from the routine practice of relaxation in the imminence of clinical stressful events

Enantioselective Synthesis of the Cyclopentyl Core of the Axinellamines

Axinellamines A−D (1−4) are novel bis-guanidine alkaloids isolated from the marine sponge Axinella sp. of which Axinellamines B−D (2−4) have been shown to possess bactericidal activity against Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium implicated in pepticular and gastric cancer.1 These natural products are noteworthy for the structural complexity of the polycyclic framework incorporating fused and spirocyclic ring systems. Moreover, embedded within these structures is a stereochemically complex and densely functionalized cyclopentyl core that presents a daunting synthetic challenge. A similarly substituted cyclopentane core can be found in palau'amine 5 which critically differs from that of 1−4 in the relative stereochemical relationships of the pendant functionality.2 Palau'amine 5 has attracted considerable attention due to its potent antibiotic, immunosuppressive, and cytotoxic properties (Chart 1)

Co‐existing monophasic teratoma and uterine adenocarcinoma in a female dog

Ovarian teratomas are occasionally reported in dogs; the rarest type is the monophasic teratoma,composed of tissues originating from only one germ layer. Canine endometrial adenocarcinomas are also rare in dogs and mainly affect geriatric females. This report describes case of co-existing ovarian teratoma and uterine adenocarcinoma in a 10-year old nulliparous female Boxer presented with lethargy, anorexia and purulent vaginal discharge. Abdominal ultrasonography evidenced pyometra and a mass in the left ovary. This was composed of a uniform whitish tissue with multiple cystic structures. The histology revealed an atrophy of the ovarian parenchyma, compressed by a proliferation of well-differentiated nervous tissue staining positively to vimentin, S100 and neuronal specific enolase (NSE), and negatively to keratin and inhibin. The left uterine horn, whose diameter was markedly increased, showed foci of endometrial cellular atypia, evident nucleoli and mitoses, at light microscopy. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of a coexisting ovarian monophasic teratoma and endometrial adenocarcinoma, two rare reproductive neoplasia in dogs

Understanding students' future intention to engage in sustainability accounting: the case of Malaysia and the Philippines

Purpose: The study investigates whether the level of sustainability concerns of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Malaysia and the Philippines is positively associated with accounting students' intentions to engage in sustainability accounting through its effect on students' attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control regarding environmental sustainability practices. Design/methodology/approach: This empirical study relies on a structural equation model computed using data collected through a questionnaire and data collected from the HEIs websites. Findings: The findings show that the willingness to engage in sustainability accounting is determined by students' subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, but it is not determined by attitude regarding environmental sustainability practices. The authors also found that the greater the concern with sustainability of the HEI in which a student is enrolled, the greater his/her attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control towards environmental sustainability, and, indirectly, the greater his/her intention to engage in sustainability accounting. Originality/value: These findings add to the literature on higher education and sustainability accounting by high-lighting the importance of the HEIs sector in promoting sustainability policies and practices, in acting as role models regarding sustainability issues, and in preparing students for building a sustainable society.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Seed, Expand and Constrain: Three Principles for Weakly-Supervised Image Segmentation

We introduce a new loss function for the weakly-supervised training of semantic image segmentation models based on three guiding principles: to seed with weak localization cues, to expand objects based on the information about which classes can occur in an image, and to constrain the segmentations to coincide with object boundaries. We show experimentally that training a deep convolutional neural network using the proposed loss function leads to substantially better segmentations than previous state-of-the-art methods on the challenging PASCAL VOC 2012 dataset. We furthermore give insight into the working mechanism of our method by a detailed experimental study that illustrates how the segmentation quality is affected by each term of the proposed loss function as well as their combinations.Comment: ECCV 201

Percursos de empregabilidade dos licenciados: perspectivas europeias e nacional

No presente trabalho apresentamos uma reflexão em torno da empregabilidade dos diplomados do Ensino Superior. Considerando a pertinência e actualidade do tema, é nossa intenção uma melhor compreensão em relação às questões decorrentes de um mundo cada vez mais globalizado e outras, inerentes à problemática da convergência europeia quanto à formação e qualificação de nível superior. Fizemos o exame de alguns aspectos que remetem para as questões da globalização, sendo apresentados alguns indicadores comparativos nos países da União Europeia. Neste âmbito são destacados factores relativos aos diversos sistemas de ensino, às qualificações académicas e às competências profissionais. São também tecidas algumas considerações sobre os factores de empregabilidade dos diplomados em Portugal, tendo como pano de fundo Bolonha e Praga, bem como as novas exigências do mercado de trabalho no quadro de um novo paradigma de aprendizagem e de formação. Para uma melhor compreensão do fenómeno, os dados de alguns estudos realizados no nosso País serão alvo de uma meta-análise.In this work we present a reflection concerning employability of higher education graduates. Considering the pertinence and actuality of the subject, we intent to better comprehend the globalisation phenomenon. Aspects related to formation and qualification of the graduates will also be addressed. We present some comparative indicators regarding educational systems, academic qualifications and professional competences in the European Union countries. Some considerations related to the factors of employability of higher education graduates will also be carried out. On the basis of Bologna and Prague, we suggest new demands of the market world in the chart of a new learning and formation paradigm. For a better comprehension of the phenomenon, we also present a meta-analysis of some studies conducted in Portugal

Statistically Motivated Second Order Pooling

Second-order pooling, a.k.a.~bilinear pooling, has proven effective for deep learning based visual recognition. However, the resulting second-order networks yield a final representation that is orders of magnitude larger than that of standard, first-order ones, making them memory-intensive and cumbersome to deploy. Here, we introduce a general, parametric compression strategy that can produce more compact representations than existing compression techniques, yet outperform both compressed and uncompressed second-order models. Our approach is motivated by a statistical analysis of the network's activations, relying on operations that lead to a Gaussian-distributed final representation, as inherently used by first-order deep networks. As evidenced by our experiments, this lets us outperform the state-of-the-art first-order and second-order models on several benchmark recognition datasets.Comment: Accepted to ECCV 2018. Camera ready version. 14 page, 5 figures, 3 table

A Novel Biomanufacturing System to Produce Multi-Material Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering: Concept and Preliminary Results

This research work aims to validate a new system that enables the fabrication of multimaterial 3D structures using poly(e-caprolactone) and sodium alginate for potential use in Tissue Engineering applications. To produce multi-material scaffolds for Tissue Engineering, accurate techniques are needed to obtain three-dimensional constructs with clinically appropriate size and structural integrity. This paper presents a novel biomanufacturing system which can fabricate 3D scaffolds with precise shape and porosity, through the control of all fabrication modules by an integrated computational platform. The incorporation of a clean flow unit and a camera makes it possible to produce scaffolds in a clean environment and provides a monitoring tool to analyse constructs during the production, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Artificial substrates as sampling devices for marine epibenthic fauna: A quest for standardization

In temperate regions, macroalgae are naturally abundant habitat builders for many organisms of ecological and economic importance. Hence, macroalgae are good targets for monitoring studies based on colonization processes as, through them, it is possible to sample the epifauna that uses them as habitat. Nevertheless, macroalgae collection may not be sustainable, can compromise the survival of the target macroalgae populations and destroy fragile or threatened communities.The search for an adequate procedure that can overcome the problems related to destructive quantitative sampling of the epifauna associated with macroalgae and the development of a methodology that can be used for comparative macrofauna monitoring, regardless of the location, were the motivations for this study. The evaluation of the mobile epifauna associated with Artificial Substrates (AS) with different degrees of complexity and natural subtidal macroalgae was implemented, as a means to evaluate the viability of AS as an alternative approach for epifauna monitoring.Cystoseira baccata and Halidrys siliquosa were chosen as natural macroalgae. The hypotheses tested were (1) macroalgae and AS with similar structure will support similar assemblages of mobile epifauna; (2) different complexity AS will shelter different assemblages of mobile epifauna. The results obtained after 3 and 6 months showed that AS and macroalgae, both with similar structure, supported different assemblages of mobile epifauna, differing also when the time factor is considered. Moreover, different complexity AS supported different epifaunal assemblages. Our results also show that a period of colonization of 3 months was enough to accurately discriminate locations but the 3 additional months reinforce these differences and provide more coherent results with the species colonizing natural macroalgae in both locations studied. Hence, AS could be used as a valid, replicable, standard and representative alternative tool for monitoring studies.The present study was cofinanced by NextSea: Next generation monitoring of coastal ecosystems in a scenario of global change (operation NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000032) and by FSE: Fundo Social Europeu, Portugal through NORTE 2020. Diego CarreiraFlores was supported by a PhD Fellowship (BD/Do*Mar/1010/2016) do Programa de Ciencia, Tecnologia e Gestao Marinha (Do*Mar), Portugal, operation number NORTE-08-5369-FSE-000039. This work was also supported by the strategic programme UID/BIA/04050/2019 funded by national funds through the FCT I.P, Portugal