Como o protocolo de amostragem influência a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos? Um exemplo na Mata Atlântica, Brasil

Small mammals are important elements of tropical forests but there is not a protocol for sampling these animals. In this study, we aimed at evaluating which sampling design maximizes the richness and/or the abundance of small mammals in a given area. We used data available in studies carried out in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. The variables analyzed for each study were number of marsupial species, number of rodent species, number of marsupial individuals and number of rodent individuals (dependent variables), sampling effort (trap-nights), design (grid or transect), number of strata sampled, number of nights and number of trap types used (independent variables). We did an analysis of covariance using the type of forest (evergreen or semideciduous) as the co-factor and factoring out the sampling effort to verify if the patterns of richness and abundance of species changed between these types of forests. The same analysis was done using the design as the cofactor in different forest types. Therefore, we performed analyses of variance in each forest type using the number of strata sampled, number of traps types and number of nights as factors to verify the effects of these factors on richness and abundance of the species. The capture effort was the most important variable to explain the richness and abundance of small mammals. The forest type influenced the abundance of species. Marsupials seemed to be more abundant in the semideciduous forest and rodents in the evergreen forest. Key words: live trap, inventories, sampling design, sampling effort.Os pequenos mamíferos são importantes elementos das florestas tropicais, entretanto não existe um protocolo de como amostrar esses animais. O principal objetivo desse estudo é avaliar qual desenho amostral maximiza a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos em uma dada área. Para isso, utilizamos dados disponíveis na literatura de estudos realizados na Mata Atlântica. As variáveis analisadas de cada estudo foram número de espécies de marsupiais, número de espécies de roedores, número de indivíduos marsupiais e número de indivíduos roedores (variáveis dependentes), esforço de amostragem (armadilhas/ noite), desenho amostral (transecto ou grades), número de estratos amostrados, número de noites, tipos de armadilhas utilizadas e tamanho da área amostrada (variáveis independentes). Para verificar se os padrões de riqueza e abundância das espécies mudam de acordo com o tipo de floresta, foi realizada uma análise de co-variância usando o tipo de floresta como co-fator. A mesma análise foi feita usando o desenho amostral como co-fator nos diferentes tipos de florestas. Depois foram realizadas análises de variância em cada tipo de floresta, usando o número de estratos amostrados, o número de noites e os tipos de armadilhas como fatores para verificar os efeitos desses fatores na riqueza e na abundância das espécies. O esforço de captura foi a variável que mais influenciou a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos. O tipo de floresta também influenciou a riqueza e a abundância das espécies. Os marsupiais parecem ser mais abundantes na floresta semidecidual, e os roedores, na floresta ombrófila densa. Palavras-chave: armadilhas de captura viva, desenho amostral, esforço de captura, inventários

Incerteza na doença e motivação para o tratamento em diabéticos tipo 2

AIMS: To characterize the uncertainty in illness and the motivation for treatment and to evaluate the existing relation between these variables in individuals with type 2 diabetes. METHOD: Descriptive, correlational study, using a sample of 62 individuals in diabetes consultation sessions. The Uncertainty Stress Scale and the Treatment Self-Regulation Questionnaire were used. RESULTS: The individuals with type 2 diabetes present low levels of uncertainty in illness and a high motivation for treatment, with a stronger intrinsic than extrinsic motivation. A negative correlation was verified between the uncertainty in the face of the prognosis and treatment and the intrinsic motivation. DISCUSSION: These individuals are already adapted, acting according to the meanings they attribute to illness. Uncertainty can function as a threat, intervening negatively in the attribution of meaning to the events related to illness and in the process of adaptation and motivation to adhere to treatment. Intrinsic motivation seems to be essential to adhere to treatment.OBJETIVOS: Caracterizar la incertidumbre ante la enfermedad y la motivación para el tratamiento y evaluar la relación existente entre estas variables en diabéticos tipo 2. MÉTODO: Estudio descriptivo, correlacional, en una muestra de 62 diabéticos atendidos en consulta. Usadas la Escala de Incertidumbre ante la Enfermedad y la Escala de Motivación para el Tratamiento. RESULTADOS: Los diabéticos tipo 2 presentan bajos niveles de incertidumbre ante la enfermedad y una elevada motivación para el tratamiento, siendo la motivación intrínseca más elevada que la extrínseca. Se verificó correlación negativa entre la incertidumbre frente al pronóstico y tratamiento y la motivación intrínseca para el tratamiento. DISCUSIÓN: Estos pacientes se encuentran adaptados actuando en conformidad con los significados que atribuyen a la enfermedad. La incertidumbre puede funcionar como amenaza interfiriendo negativamente en la atribución de significados de los acontecimientos relacionados con la enfermedad y con el proceso de adaptación y motivación para adherirse al tratamiento. La motivación intrínseca parece ser un aspecto fundamental en la motivación para el tratamiento.OBJETIVOS: Caracterizar a incerteza na doença e a motivação para o tratamento e avaliar a relação existente entre estas variáveis, em diabéticos tipo 2. MÉTODO: Estudo descritivo, correlacional, numa amostra de 62 diabéticos atendidos em consulta. Aplicadas a Escala de Incerteza na Doença e a Escala de Motivação para o Tratamento. RESULTADOS: Os diabéticos tipo 2 apresentam baixos níveis de incerteza na doença e elevada motivação para o tratamento. A motivação intrínseca é mais elevada do que a extrínseca. Existe uma correlação negativa entre a incerteza face ao prognóstico e tratamento e a motivação intrínseca para o tratamento. DISCUSSÃO: Os resultados sugerem que estes indivíduos se encontram adaptados agindo em conformidade com os significados que atribuem à doença. A incerteza pode funcionar como ameaça interferindo negativamente na atribuição de significados aos acontecimentos relacionados com a doença e com o processo de adaptação e motivação para adesão ao tratamento. A motivação intrínseca parece ser um aspecto fundamental na motivação para o tratamento

Como o protocolo de amostragem influência a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos? Um exemplo na Mata Atlântica, Brasil

Small mammals are important elements of tropical forests but there is not a protocol for sampling these animals. In this study, we aimed at evaluating which sampling design maximizes the richness and/or the abundance of small mammals in a given area. We used data available in studies carried out in the Brazilian Atlantic forest. The variables analyzed for each study were number of marsupial species, number of rodent species, number of marsupial individuals and number of rodent individuals (dependent variables), sampling effort (trap-nights), design (grid or transect), number of strata sampled, number of nights and number of trap types used (independent variables). We did an analysis of covariance using the type of forest (evergreen or semideciduous) as the co-factor and factoring out the sampling effort to verify if the patterns of richness and abundance of species changed between these types of forests. The same analysis was done using the design as the cofactor in different forest types. Therefore, we performed analyses of variance in each forest type using the number of strata sampled, number of traps types and number of nights as factors to verify the effects of these factors on richness and abundance of the species. The capture effort was the most important variable to explain the richness and abundance of small mammals. The forest type influenced the abundance of species. Marsupials seemed to be more abundant in the semideciduous forest and rodents in the evergreen forest. Key words: live trap, inventories, sampling design, sampling effort.Os pequenos mamíferos são importantes elementos das florestas tropicais, entretanto não existe um protocolo de como amostrar esses animais. O principal objetivo desse estudo é avaliar qual desenho amostral maximiza a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos em uma dada área. Para isso, utilizamos dados disponíveis na literatura de estudos realizados na Mata Atlântica. As variáveis analisadas de cada estudo foram número de espécies de marsupiais, número de espécies de roedores, número de indivíduos marsupiais e número de indivíduos roedores (variáveis dependentes), esforço de amostragem (armadilhas/ noite), desenho amostral (transecto ou grades), número de estratos amostrados, número de noites, tipos de armadilhas utilizadas e tamanho da área amostrada (variáveis independentes). Para verificar se os padrões de riqueza e abundância das espécies mudam de acordo com o tipo de floresta, foi realizada uma análise de co-variância usando o tipo de floresta como co-fator. A mesma análise foi feita usando o desenho amostral como co-fator nos diferentes tipos de florestas. Depois foram realizadas análises de variância em cada tipo de floresta, usando o número de estratos amostrados, o número de noites e os tipos de armadilhas como fatores para verificar os efeitos desses fatores na riqueza e na abundância das espécies. O esforço de captura foi a variável que mais influenciou a riqueza e a abundância de pequenos mamíferos. O tipo de floresta também influenciou a riqueza e a abundância das espécies. Os marsupiais parecem ser mais abundantes na floresta semidecidual, e os roedores, na floresta ombrófila densa. Palavras-chave: armadilhas de captura viva, desenho amostral, esforço de captura, inventários

Regular crianças com PEA durante a sua participação nas AVD`s

Introdução: Crianças com PEA são caracterizadas por apresentarem respostas atípicas aos estímulos sensoriais, tendo impacto no envolvimento e na participação funcional. Objetivo: O presente estudo descreve o processo de desenvolvimento de uma app com o intuito de ajudar as famílias a regular as crianças com PEA, entre os 3-6 anos, através da aplicação de estratégias sensoriais, para melhorar a participação da criança nas rotinas diárias, em contexto de casa. Material e Métodos: Para o estudo foi selecionado um focus group composto por quatro terapeutas ocupacionais com vários anos de experiência em trabalhar com crianças com PEA e com formação especializada na área da Integração Sensorial, de forma a desenvolver e a analisar o conteúdo da app. Estabeleceu-se uma colaboração com o Departamento de Engenharia Informática, e através de reuniões quinzenais conjuntas, foi possível desenvolver toda a configuração e programação da app de forma articulada. Resultados: “Regul-A” foi o nome atribuído à app, uma vez que apresenta como principal finalidade ajudar na regulação de crianças com PEA. Os resultados abrangem as diversas estratégias sensoriais selecionadas pelo focus group, assim como, a estrutura da app, desenvolvida em colaboração com o Departamento de Engenharia Informática. Conclusões: Acredita-se que a app “Regul-A” venha a constituir-se uma potencial ferramenta para reunir, analisar e gerir dados da criança relativos ao seu desempenho ocupacional, facilitando a implementação de estratégias e a partilha de informação entre os pais e os terapeutas ocupacionais.Introduction: Children with ASD are characterized by atypical responses to sensory stimuli, which have an impact on involvement and functional participation. Goals: This study describes the several steps of an app development that intends to help families to regulate children with ASD aged 3-6 years old through the application of sensory strategies to improve participation in daily routines in home setting. Material and Methods: To develop and analyze the content of the app, a study was performed by a focus group formed by four occupational therapists with several years of experience in working with children with ASD and with specialized training in Sensory Integration Therapy. A collaboration was established with the Department of Computer Engineering of Polytechnic of Leiria, and through biweekly meetings it was possible to develop the entire configuration and programming of the app. Results: “Regul-A” is the name assigned to the app, since it has the main purpose to help parents regulate children with ASD. The results cover the various sensory strategies selected by the focus group, as well as the structure of the app. Conclusions: It is believed that the “Regul-A” app will become a potential tool to gather, analyze and manage children's data related to their occupational performance facilitating the implementation of strategies and the sharing of information between parents and occupational therapists.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Central coordination as an alternative for local coordination in a multicenter randomized controlled trial: the FAITH trial experience

Contains fulltext : 110505.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)BACKGROUND: Surgeons in the Netherlands, Canada and the US participate in the FAITH trial (Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures). Dutch sites are managed and visited by a financed central trial coordinator, whereas most Canadian and US sites have local study coordinators and receive per patient payment. This study was aimed to assess how these different trial management strategies affected trial performance. METHODS: Details related to obtaining ethics approval, time to trial start-up, inclusion, and percentage completed follow-ups were collected for each trial site and compared. Pre-trial screening data were compared with actual inclusion rates. RESULTS: Median trial start-up ranged from 41 days (P25-P75 10-139) in the Netherlands to 232 days (P25-P75 98-423) in Canada (p = 0.027). The inclusion rate was highest in the Netherlands; median 1.03 patients (P25-P75 0.43-2.21) per site per month, representing 34.4% of the total eligible population. It was lowest in Canada; 0.14 inclusions (P25-P75 0.00-0.28), representing 3.9% of eligible patients (p < 0.001). The percentage completed follow-ups was 83% for Canadian and Dutch sites and 70% for US sites (p = 0.217). CONCLUSIONS: In this trial, a central financed trial coordinator to manage all trial related tasks in participating sites resulted in better trial progression and a similar follow-up. It is therefore a suitable alternative for appointing these tasks to local research assistants. The central coordinator approach can enable smaller regional hospitals to participate in multicenter randomized controlled trials. Circumstances such as available budget, sample size, and geographical area should however be taken into account when choosing a management strategy. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00761813

Character, Incidence, and Predictors of Knee Pain and Activity after Infrapatellar Intramedullary Nailing of an Isolated Tibia Fracture

© Copyright 2015 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. Objective: To study the activity and incidence of knee pain after sustaining an isolated tibia fracture treated with an infrapatellar intramedullary nail at 1 year. Design: Retrospective review of prospective cohort. Setting: Multicenter Academic and Community hospitals. Patients: Four hundred thirty-seven patients with an isolated tibia fracture completed a 12-month assessment on pain and self-reported activity. Intervention: Infrapatellar intramedullary nail. Outcomes: Demographic information, comorbid conditions, injury characteristics, and surgical technique were recorded. Knee pain was defined on a 1-7 scale with 1 being no pain and 7 being a very great deal of pain. Knee pain \u3e4 was considered clinically significant. Patients reported if they were able, able with difficulty, or unable to perform the following activities: kneel, run, climb stairs, and walk prolonged. Variables were tested in multilevel multivariable regression analyses. Results: In knee pain, 11% of patients reported a good deal to a very great deal of pain (\u3e4), and 52% of patients reported no or very little pain at 12 months. In activity at 12 months, 26% and 29% of patients were unable to kneel or run, respectively, and 31% and 35% of patients, respectively, stated they were able with difficulty or unable to use stairs or walk. Conclusions: Clinically significant knee pain (\u3e4/7) was present in 11% of patients 1 year after a tibia fracture. Of note, 31%-71% of patients had difficulty performing or were unable to perform routine daily activities of kneeling, running, and stair climbing, or walking prolonged distances

Effects of Brazil's political crisis on the science needed for biodiversity conservation

The effects of Brazil’s political crisis on science funding necessary for biodiversity conservation are likely to be global. Brazil is not only the world’s most biodiverse nation, it is responsible for the greater part of the Amazon forest, which regulates the climate and provides rain to much of southern South America. Brazil was a world leader in satellite monitoring of land-use change, in-situ biodiversity monitoring, reduction in tropical-forest deforestation, protection of indigenous lands, and a model for other developing nations. Coordinated public responses will be necessary to prevent special-interest groups from using the political crisis to weaken science funding, environmental legislation and law enforcement. Keywords: Brazil, biodiversity, climate change, governance, fundin

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo