Detection and genotyping of human sapovirus in clinical and shellfish samples from Galicia

The present doctoral thesis brings novel information on the study of human sapovirus, an emerging enteric virus causing acute gastroenteritis worldwide. This investigation was focused on the prevalence, quantification and genetic diversity observed in Galicia, Spain. With this purpose, collected shellfish samples from harvesting areas in the rías were employed, as well as clinical stool samples of people suffering acute gastroenteritis in the metropolitan area of A Coruña. Results obtained shown a significant presence of this human pathogen in shellfish and among the population. Besides, a novel digital PCR protocol to detect and quantify human sapovirus was developed, in order to improve the actual molecular techniques

The portuguese public hospitals performance evolution before and during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic (2017–2022)

COVID-19 is a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has spread worldwide since the beginning of 2020. Several pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical strategies were proposed to contain the virus, including vaccination and lockdowns. One of the consequences of the pandemic was the denial or delay of access to convenient healthcare services, but also potentially the increase in adverse events within those services, like the number of hospital infections. Therefore, the main question here is about what happened to the performance of Portuguese public hospitals. The main goal of this work was to test if the Portuguese public hospitals' performance has been affected by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We used the Benefit-of-Doubt method integrated with the Malmquist Index to analyze the performance evolution over time. Then, we employed a multiple regression model to test whether some pandemic-related variables could explain the performance results. We considered a database of 40 Portuguese public hospitals evaluated from January 2017 to May 2022. The period 2017 to 2019 corresponds to the baseline (pre-pandemic), against which the remaining period will be compared (during the pandemic). We also considered fourteen variables characterizing hospital quality, divided into three main performance definitions (efficiency and productivity; access; safety and care appropriateness). As potential explanatory variables, we consider seven dimensions, including vaccination rate and the need for intensive care for COVID-19-infected people. The results suggest that COVID-19 pandemic features help explain the drop in access after 2020, but not the evolution of safety and appropriateness of care, which surprisingly increased the whole time.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Irreversible hypersomnolence after bilateral thalamic infarction

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The impact of social influence on baby food consumers´ intentions and attitudes

It is widely known that several factors are involved and impact baby food consumer’s behaviours. Communication (mainly with parents) is a very crucial aspect in Baby Food business, where understanding what really impacts the consumer intentions and attitudes can be a key success factor. In this sense, the present research aims to understand the impact of social influence on consumers’ intentions and attitudes and how Regulatory Focus may moderate this relationship. In this stage, parents are very permeable to social influence coming from different social groups (both ingroup and outgroup). Although it is expected that other parents may have a greater influence (ingroup bias), paediatricians (outgroup) are still a reference that strongly influences parents’ intentions and attitudes towards their baby. This high credibility that came from paediatricians could overlap the strength of ingroup bias and make the outgroup a stronger influencer. Another factor that can impact the communication success is the Regulatory Focus theory, that postulates that same individuals may have the same goals, but they differ in the way they will use to reach them (with promotion or prevention focus). In terms of communication, promotion-focused individuals seek information about desired properties of a product and those that are related to approaching positive outcomes. On the other hand, prevention-focused individuals tend to look for information regarding product’s shortcomings and to product-related features that do or do not help them avoid negative outcomes. This research applied a quantitative research method. An experiment tested the influence of four different baby food communications (ingroup-promotion; ingroup-prevention; outgroup-promotion; outgroup/prevention) on consumers’ intention to recommend, attitude toward brand, and intention to purchase. Results showed that Social influence did not impact intention to recommend. Attitude toward brand and purchase intention were positively impacted by the outgroup (versus ingroup). Relative to the Regulatory Focus as a moderator, there was no impact of the different communications using promotion/prevention on consumers’ intentions and attitudes. Results are discussed for social influence, regulatory focus, and communication effectiveness for baby food consumption in theoretical and managerial levels

Gravitational Waves on Charged Black Hole Backgrounds in Modified Gravity

The stability of Reissner-N\"ordstrom black holes with an extremal mass-charge relation was determined by calculating the propagation speed of gravitational waves on this background in an effective field theory (EFT) of gravity. New results for metric components are shown, along with the corresponding new extremal relation, part of which differs by a global factor of 2 from the past published work. This new relation further develops the existing constraints on EFT parameters. The radial propagation speed for gravitational waves in the Regge-Wheeler gauge was calculated linearly for all perturbations, yielding exact luminality for all dimension-4 operators. The dimension-6 radial speed modifications introduce no constraints on the sign of the modified theory parameters from causality arguments, while the deviation from classical theories vanishes at both horizons. The angular speed was found to be altered for the dimension-4 operators, with possible new constraints on the modified theory being suggested from causality arguments. Results are consistent existing literature on Schwarzschild black hole backgrounds, with some EFT terms becoming active only in non-vacuum spacetimes such as Reissner-N\"ordstrom black holes.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figur