Life Cycle of Products and Cycles

The aim of this paper is to examine whether the development of waste recycling activities can be a source of economic fluctuation. We assume that the recycling sector has four fundamental characteristics. (i) The production factors are restricted by the production of the last period. (ii) These production factors are waste for which the price determination is non-competitive. (iii) It produces a recycled good, which is a perfect substitute to th primary good. (iv) It reduces waste stream. We consider the simplest economy with an infinitely lived agent and a life cycle hypothesis for the goods. We show that the equilibrium is unique and is always determinate. In spite of the lack of indeterminacy, however, our system can display cyclical behavior, depending on some usual conditions on parameters. Namely, the steady-state may undergo a Flip and a Hopf bifurcation.Cycles, recycling, waste.

Osteopenia da prematuridade

Trabalho Final do Curso de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 2019A osteopenia é uma das comorbilidades inerentes à prematuridade, consistindo na diminuição da massa óssea total associada a disrupção do metabolismo mineral. Surge frequentemente 6 a 16 semanas após o nascimento e permanece assintomática na grande maioria dos casos. Existem múltiplos fatores que aumentam o risco de desenvolver esta doença, como por exemplo insuficiência placentária, diminuição da idade gestacional e do peso à nascença, restrição de fluidos, imobilização e certos fármacos. No entanto, o principal fator etiológico são as reservas ósseas reduzidas de fósforo e/ou cálcio. Apesar de não haver normas de orientação clínica universais relativamente ao diagnóstico, este baseia-se atualmente na evidência bioquímica de hipofosfatémia e hiperfosfatásia e evidência radiológica de osteopenia e/ou fratura. Poderíamos optar por um algoritmo diagnóstico mais complexo e abrangente, tendo também em consideração características clínicas e hormonais e outros parâmetros bioquímicos e ferramentas imagiológicas. Esta é uma doença autolimitada, mas com consequências a curto e a longo prazo que devem ser evitadas. Para tal, é essencial a prevenção, proporcionando o aporte de cálcio, fósforo e vitamina D adequado para promover o crescimento ósseo normal, preferivelmente por via entérica através de fórmulas pré-termo ou leite humano fortificado. A estratégia de tratamento é semelhante.Osteopenia is one of the inherent comorbidities of prematurity, consisting of a decrease in the total bone mass associated with the disruption of mineral metabolism. It often appears 6 to 16 weeks after birth and remains asymptomatic in the vast majority of the cases. There are multiple factors that increase the risk of developing this disease, such as placental insufficiency, reduction in gestational period, very low birth weight, fluid restriction, immobilization and certain drugs. However, the main etiological factor are the reduced bone stores of phosphorus and/or calcium. Although there are no universal guidelines for diagnosis, this is currently based on biochemical evidence of hypophosphatemia and hyperphosphatasia and radiological evidence of osteopenia and/or fracture. We could opt for a more complex and overarching diagnostic algorithm, also considering the clinical and hormonal characteristics and other biochemical parameters and imaging tools. This is a self-limiting disease, but with short- and long-term consequences that must be avoided. To this end, prevention is essential, providing adequate calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D supply to promote normal bone growth, preferably enterally using preterm formulas or fortified human milk. The treatment strategy is similar

A personalized and platform-independent behavior control system for social robots in therapy: Development and applications

Social robots have been proven beneficial in different types of healthcare interventions. An ongoing trend is to develop (semi-)autonomous socially assistive robotic systems in healthcare context to improve the level of autonomy and reduce human workload. This paper presents a behavior control system for social robots in therapies with a focus on personalization and platform-independence. This system architecture provides the robot an ability to behave as a personable character, which behaviors are adapted to user profiles and responses during the human-robot interaction. Robot behaviors are designed at abstract levels and can be transferred to different social robot platforms. We adopt the component-based software engineering approach to implement our proposed architecture to allow for the replaceability and reusability of the developed components. We introduce three different experimental scenarios to validate the usability of our system. Results show that the system is potentially applicable to different therapies and social robots. With the component-based approach, the system can serve as a basic framework for researchers to customize and expand the system for their targeted healthcare applications

The subpopulation pattern of eel sperm is affected by post-activation time, hormonal treatment and thermal regime

[EN] There has been a marked reduction in natural stocks of eels (genus Anguilla) over the past 60 years, and the culture of eels is still based on the capture of very large quantities of juveniles. It is necessary to close the life cycle in captivity in order to ease the pressure on wild populations. The aims of the present study were to evaluate sperm subpopulations (through cluster analysis of computer-aided sperm analysis data) in the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) and to assess the effects of motility acquisition time after activation (i.e. at 30, 60 and 90 s), the thermal regimen (i.e. 10 degrees C (T10) or 15 degrees C (T15) and up to 20 degrees C, or constant at 20 degrees C (T20)) and hormonal treatments (i.e. human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), recombinant (r) hCG or pregnant mare serum gonadotropin (PMSG)) on these subpopulations. In all cases, we obtained three subpopulations of spermatozoa: low velocity and linear (S1); high velocity with low linearity (S2); and high velocity and linear (S3; considered high quality). Total motility and S1 were affected by acquisition time; thus, 30 s is recommended as the standard time for motility acquisition. When eels were kept at 20 degrees C (T20), motility data fitted quadratic models, with the highest motility and proportion of S3 between Weeks 8 and 12 after the first injection. Lower temperatures (T10, T15) delayed spermiation and the obtaining of high-quality spermatozoa (S3), but did not seem to alter the spermiation process (similar subpopulation pattern). Conversely, the hormonal treatments altered both the dynamics of the subpopulation pattern and the onset of spermiation (with PMSG delaying it). Total motility and the yield of S3 with the widely used hCG treatment varied throughout the spermiation period. However, using rhCG allowed us to obtain high-quality and constant motility for most of the study (Weeks 7-20), and the S3 yield was also higher overall (61.8 +/- 1.3%; mean +/- s.e.m.) and more stable over time than the other hormonal treatments (averaging 53.0 +/- 1.4%). Using T20 and rhCG would be more economical and practical, allowing us to obtain a higher number of S3 spermatozoa over an extended time.This study was funded by the European Community's 7th Framework Program under the Theme 2 'Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Bio-technology', grant agreement no. 245257 (PRO-EEL) and Generalitat Valenciana (ACOMP/2012/086). VG and MCV have predoctoral grants from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (AGL2010-16009) and Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) PAID Program (2011-S2-02-6521), respectively. DSP was supported by a contract cofinanced by Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) and UPV (PTA2011-4948-I). FM-P was supported by the Ramon y Cajal program (MICINN, RYC-2008-02560).Gallego Albiach, V.; Vilchez Olivencia, MC.; Peñaranda, D.; Pérez Igualada, LM.; Herraez, MP.; Asturiano Nemesio, JF.; Martinez-Pastor, F. (2015). The subpopulation pattern of eel sperm is affected by post-activation time, hormonal treatment and thermal regime. Reproduction, Fertility and Development. 27(3):529-543. https://doi.org/10.1071/RD13198S52954327

Residential radon and cancer mortality in Galicia, Spain

Residential radon exposure is a serious public health concern, and as such appears in the recommendations of European Code Against Cancer. The objective of this study was to assess the association between residential radon levels and mortality due to different types of cancer, using misaligned data analysis techniques. Mortality data (observed cases) for each of the 313 Galician municipalities were drawn from the records of the National Statistics Institute for the study period (1999?2008). Expected cases were computed using Galician mortality rates for 14 types of malignant tumors as reference, with a total of 56,385 deaths due to the tumors analyzed. The effect estimates of indoor radon (3371 sampling points) were adjusted for sociodemographic variables, altitude, and arsenic topsoil levels (1069 sampling points), using spatial/geostatistical models fitted with stochastic partial differential equations and integrated nested Laplace approximations. Thesemodels are capable of processing misaligned data. The results showed a statistical association between indoor radon and lung, stomach and brain cancer inwomen in Galicia. Apart fromlung cancer (relative risk (RR)=1.09), inwhich a twofold increase in radon exposure led to a 9% rise inmortality, the association was particularly relevant in stomach (RR=1.17) and brain cancer (RR=1.28). Further analytical epidemiologic studies are needed to confirm these results, and an assessment should be made of the advisability of implementing interventions targeting such exposure in higher-risk areas.The studywas partially supported by research grants fromthe Carlos III Health Institute (PI4CIII/50) and Spanish Health Research Fund (FIS PI11/00871).Mortality data were supplied by the Spanish National Statistics Institute in accordance with a specific confidentiality protocol

How to build a supervised autonomous system for robot-enhanced therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder

Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) through remote control of the robot in so-called Wizard of Oz (WoZ) paradigms.However, there is a need to increase the autonomy of the robot both to lighten the burden on human therapists (who have to remain in control and, importantly, supervise the robot) and to provide a consistent therapeutic experience. This paper seeks to provide insight into increasing the autonomy level of social robots in therapy to move beyond WoZ. With the final aim of improved human-human social interaction for the children, this multidisciplinary research seeks to facilitate the use of social robots as tools in clinical situations by addressing the challenge of increasing robot autonomy.We introduce the clinical framework in which the developments are tested, alongside initial data obtained from patients in a first phase of the project using a WoZ set-up mimicking the targeted supervised-autonomy behaviour. We further describe the implemented system architecture capable of providing the robot with supervised autonomy

Second primary cancers after radiation for prostate cancer: a review of data from planning studies

A review of planning studies was undertaken to evaluate estimated risks of radiation induced second primary cancers (RISPC) associated with different prostate radiotherapy techniques for localised prostate cancer. A total of 83 publications were identified which employed a variety of methods to estimate RISPC risk. Of these, the 16 planning studies which specifically addressed absolute or relative second cancer risk using dose–response models were selected for inclusion within this review. There are uncertainties and limitations related to all the different methods for estimating RISPC risk. Whether or not dose models include the effects of the primary radiation beam, as well as out-of-field regions, influences estimated risks. Regarding the impact of IMRT compared to 3D-CRT, at equivalent energies, several studies suggest an increase in risk related to increased leakage contributing to out-of-field RISPC risk, although in absolute terms this increase in risk may be very small. IMRT also results in increased low dose normal tissue irradiation, but the extent to which this has been estimated to contribute to RISPC risk is variable, and may also be very small. IMRT is often delivered using 6MV photons while conventional radiotherapy often requires higher energies to achieve adequate tissue penetration, and so comparisons between IMRT and older techniques should not be restricted to equivalent energies. Proton and brachytherapy planning studies suggest very low RISPC risks associated with these techniques. Until there is sufficient clinical evidence regarding RISPC risks associated with modern irradiation techniques, the data produced from planning studies is relevant when considering which patients to irradiate, and which technique to employ