An application to improve emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia de Eletrónica Industrial e ComputadoresThis dissertation presents a project developed with the aim of promoting emotional skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The project involves a serious game and a playware object, which is a physical component that acts as the game controller and allows the user to interactively play the serious game. The playware object has six pressure buttons, each one showing an emoji with a specific facial expression and communicates wirelessly via Bluetooth with the serious game app installed in an Android device. The facial expressions used are: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and neutral/normal. They were applied to the three game activities (imitation, recognition and storytelling). The chain of tests started with an online questionnaire to validate the avatars created to represent the previously mentioned facial expressions in the game (with 114 answers and a mean success rate of 96.2%), which was followed by a usability test of the application (serious game and playware object) with six typically developing children (with 94.4% answer accuracy). Finally, the three game activities were tested with six children with ASD in three/four sessions. Due to the small group test and the short number of sessions, the goal was to test the acceptance of the game rather than the users´ improvement in the activity. It is worth referring that both the serious game and the playware object had a high level of approval from the children and they expressed their interest during the activities. With this project it was intended to contribute to the development of pedagogical resources to be used by professionals and families in the support of children with ASD.Esta dissertação apresenta um projeto desenvolvido com o objetivo de promover capacidades emocionais em crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo. Este projeto envolve um jogo sério e um objeto playware, que é um componente físico que funciona como controlador de jogo e permite que o utilizador jogue o jogo sério de uma forma interativa. O objeto playware tem seis botões de pressão, cada um com um emoji com uma expressão facial específica, e comunica sem fios por Bluetooth com a aplicação do jogo sério instalada no dispositivo Android. As expressões faciais usadas são: felicidade, tristeza, medo, raiva, surpresa e neutro/normal. Estas foram aplicadas às três diferentes atividades de jogo (imitar, reconhecer e contar histórias). A cadeia de testes começou com um questionário online para validar os avatares criados para representar as expressões faciais previamente mencionadas no jogo (com 114 submissões e uma taxa média de sucesso de 96,2%), seguido de um teste de usabilidade da aplicação (jogo sério e objeto playware) com seis crianças tipicamente desenvolvidas (com 94,4% de respostas corretas). Por fim, as três atividades de jogo foram testadas com seis crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo durante 3 a 4 sessões. Devido à pequena dimensão do grupo de teste e ao baixo número de sessões, o objetivo foi testar a aceitação do jogo em vez da evolução das capacidades dos utilizadores na atividade. É importante referir que tanto o jogo sério como o objeto playware tiveram um alto nível de aprovação por parte das crianças que expressaram o seu interesse durante as atividades. Este projeto pretende contribuir para o desenvolvimento de recursos pedagógicos a serem usados por profissionais e famílias no apoio a crianças com Perturbação do Espectro do Autismo

Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms related to work in dental surgeons: a wide review of current medical literature

Introduction: Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WMSD) are considered a public health problem because of their high prevalence in various professions, including dental professionals. Because of poor posture and organization at work, for example, dental surgeons occupy the top spot on sick leave due to temporary or permanent disability, accounting for approximately 30% of the causes of premature abandonment between medical activities.Objectives: To identify the prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms and their relationship with dentist activity and to evaluate the relationship between symptomatology and laboratory test results.Methodology: A scan was performed, but Scopus, Web of Sciences and Google Scholar indexing databases were used to unite musculoskeletal disorders, dental surgeons, prevalence, laboratory tests. We found 15,000 articles, of which 56 were selected based on the best h index score or Qualis rating on the Sucupira platform.Conclusion: The relationship between musculoskeletal pain and dentist activity is strong and in some cases, these disorders can be detected on laboratory tests

PCH: a preservação do patrimônio cultural e natural como política regional e urbana

TThis paper analyzes the roots of the Historical Cities Program (PCH), its creation in 1973, and deactivation in early 1980s. The program was rooted in the insertion of IPHAN in international cooperation network, the ideas of its articulator, Arch. Renato Soeiro, and military government objectives, which included the Northeast development through cultural tourism. The presence of northeastern and northerners people in ministries and higher ranks of the military government has contributed to its creation. After 36 years, Recife replace the leadership of Rio de Janeiro on heritage policy, strengthening local groups and setting off a struggle for control within IPHAN. Without support from the Secretariat of Planning and General Coordination of the Presidency of the Republic, the PCH started to be dismounted by the government of General João Figueiredo in 1979, after a new cultural policy to create a popular base for the "gradual and controlled opening policy." Alongside this ideological shift, the regionalist dispute between groups of Recife and Rio de Janeiro was intensified and the PCH progressively dismounted.Este texto analisa as raízes do Programa das Cidades Históricas, sua criação em 1973 e sua desativação no início da década de 1980. Suas raízes estariam na inserção do Iphan na rede de cooperação internacional, no ideário de seu principal articulador, o arquiteto Renato Soeiro, e no objetivo do governo militar de promover o desenvolvimento da região Nordeste. Para sua criação, teria contribuído a presença de nordestinos e nortistas em ministérios e altos postos do governo militar. Após 36 anos da criação do Sphan, o protagonismo das ações sobre o patrimônio seria transferido do Rio de Janeiro para o Recife, fortalecendo grupos locais e dando início a uma disputa pelo controle do Iphan. Sem contar mais com o apoio da Secretaria de Planejamento e Coordenação Geral da Presidência da República, o PCH começa a ser desativado em 1979, no governo do Gal. João Figueiredo, com uma nova política cultural destinada a criar uma base popular para a "abertura política gradual e controlada". Paralelamente a essa mudança ideológica, se acirra a disputa entre os grupos do Recife e do Rio de Janeiro e se dá a progressiva desativação do PCH

Identification of clusters of asthma control: A preliminary analysis of the inspirers studies

This work was funded by ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the operations: POCI- -01-0145-FEDER-029130 (“mINSPIRERS—mHealth to measure and improve adherence to medication in chronic obstructive respiratory diseases - generalisation and evaluation of gamification, peer support and advanced image processing technologies”) co-funded by the COMPETE2020 (Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização), Portugal 2020 and by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).© 2020, Sociedade Portuguesa de Alergologia e Imunologia Clinica. All rights reserved. Aims: To identify distinct asthma control clusters based on Control of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma Test (CARAT) and to compare patients’ characteristics among these clusters. Methods: Adults and adolescents (≥13 years) with persistent asthma were recruited at 29 Portuguese hospital outpatient clinics, in the context of two observational studies of the INSPIRERS project. Demographic and clinical characteristics, adherence to inhaled medication, beliefs about inhaled medication, anxiety and depression, quality of life, and asthma control (CARAT, >24 good control) were collected. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using CARAT total score (CARAT-T). Results: 410 patients (68% adults), with a median (percentile 25–percentile 75) age of 28 (16-46) years, were analysed. Three clusters were identified [mean CARAT-T (min-max)]: cluster 1 [27(24-30)], cluster 2 [19(14-23)] and cluster 3 [10(2-13)]. Patients in cluster 1 (34%) were characterised by better asthma control, better quality of life, higher inhaler adherence and use of a single inhaler. Patients in clusters 2 (50%) and 3 (16%) had uncontrolled asthma, lower inhaler adherence, more symptoms of anxiety and depression and more than half had at least one exacerbation in the previous year. Further-more, patients in cluster 3 were predominantly female, had more unscheduled medical visits and more anxiety symp-toms, perceived a higher necessity of their prescribed inhalers but also higher levels of concern about taking these inhalers. There were no differences in age, body mass index, lung function, smoking status, hospital admissions or specialist physician follow-up time among the three clusters. Conclusion: An unsupervised method based on CARAT--T, identified 3 clusters of patients with distinct, clinically meaningful characteristics. The cluster with better asthma control had a cut-off similar to the established in the validation study of CARAT and an additional cut-off seems to distinguish more severe disease. Further research is necessary to validate the asthma control clusters identified.publishersversionpublishe

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries(1,2). However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world(3) and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health(4,5). However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol-which is a marker of cardiovascular riskchanged from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million-4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.Peer reviewe

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost