A geo-temporal information extraction service for processing descriptive metadata in digital libraries

In the context of digital map libraries, resources are usually described according to metadata records that define the relevant subject, location, time-span, format and keywords. On what concerns locations and time-spans, metadata records are often incomplete or they provide information in a way that is not machine-understandable (e.g. textual descriptions). This paper presents techniques for extracting geotemporal information from text, using relatively simple text mining methods that leverage on a Web gazetteer service. The idea is to go from human-made geotemporal referencing (i.e. using place and period names in textual expressions) into geo-spatial coordinates and time-spans. A prototype system, implementing the proposed methods, is described in detail. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approaches

The DIGMAP geo-temporal web gazetteer service

This paper presents the DIGMAP geo-temporal Web gazetteer service, a system providing access to names of places, historical periods, and associated geo-temporal information. Within the DIGMAP project, this gazetteer serves as the unified repository of geographic and temporal information, assisting in the recognition and disambiguation of geo-temporal expressions over text, as well as in resource searching and indexing. We describe the data integration methodology, the handling of temporal information and some of the applications that use the gazetteer. Initial evaluation results show that the proposed system can adequately support several tasks related to geo-temporal information extraction and retrieval

The celestial child: perambulations between aruanda and the collective unconscious

Tendo em vista que a religião umbandista expressa e explicita etnoteorias psicológicas afro-brasileiras, esta pesquisa visou explicitar os sentidos associados a sua concepção do infantil, mediante o estudo de um dos principais personagens do seu panteão, os espíritos de crianças. Para efeito de contraste e no intuito de auxiliar a organizar as concepções umbandistas, tomou-se como referência a psicologia junguiana. Combinou-se a observação participante com a realização de entrevistas com praticantes da religião e com médiuns em transe de espíritos infantis. Observou-se que esses espíritos revelam-se principalmente por formas não verbais de comunicação. As aproximações no plano da significação entre o arquétipo do puer e a manifestação espiritual de crianças na umbanda devem ser feitas com cuidado e a assimilação destas àquele só pode ser feita mediante uma sobreposição de uma concepção de psíquico a uma etnoteoria diversa.Considering that Umbanda religion expresses and elucidates Afro-Brazilian psychological ethnotheories, the aim of this research was eliciting the meanings connected to its concept of infant by investigating one of its pantheon main characters, the spirits of children. Jungian psychology was taken as reference not only for a contrast effect but also to facilitate Umbanda concepts organization. Both participant observation and interviews with worshippers and mediums in trance receiving children's spirits were performed. It was shown that these spirits reveal themselves by using mainly non-verbal ways of communication. As far as meaning is concerned, drawing the puer archetype near children's spiritual manifestation in Umbanda deserves careful approach, and assimilating these children into the archetype can only be performed by the superposition of a psychic concept on a diverse ethnotheory.CNPqFAPES

Thrombophilia screening: An artificial neural network approach

Thrombotic disorders have severe consequences for the patients and for the society in general, being one of the main causes of death. These facts reveal that it is extremely important to be preventive; being aware of how probable is to have that kind of syndrome. Indeed, this work will focus on the development of a decision support system that will cater for an individual risk evaluation with respect to the surge of thrombotic complaints. The Knowledge Representation and Reasoning procedures used will be based on an extension to the Logic Programming language, allowing the handling of incomplete and/or default data. The computational framework in place will be centered on Artificial Neural Networks.This work is funded by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within projects PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2014 and PEst-OE/QUI/UI0619/2012

Renormalization group trajectories from resonance factorized S-matrices

We propose and investigate a large class of models possessing resonance factorized S-matrices. The associated Casimir energy describes a rich pattern of renormalization group trajectories related to flows in the coset models based on the simply laced Lie Algebras. From a simplest resonance S-matrix, satisfying the ``$\phi^3$-property'', we predict new flows in non-unitary minimal models.Comment: (7 pages) (no figures included

sFlt-1/PIGF no Diagnóstico Preditivo de Pré-eclâmpsia: Estudo de Impacto Económico em Portugal

Overview and Aims: The last decade brought relevant insights into the pathophysiology of preeclampsia (PE), namely the role of the circulating levels of placental growth factor (PlGF) and soluble Fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1). The purpose of this study is to estimate the financial impact of introducing the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio for the evaluation of women with suspicion of PE in the Portuguese National Healthcare System (SNS). Study Design: budget impact study evaluating short-term costs associated with the introduction of the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio from the SNS payer’s perspective. The time horizon for the study is 1 year. Population: The target population consists of women presenting to the healthcare system with signs or symptoms su ggestive of preeclampsia (estimated in 8500 subjects). Methods: A decision-tree model was used to estimate the budget impact of the introduction of the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio in the SNS. The model compares the management costs in the current clinical practice (“no test” scenario) vs. current diagnostic procedures plus the sFlt-1/PlGF ratio (“test” scenario). Clinical inputs have been derived primarily from literature review and, where data was unavailable, expert opinion. Resources and unit costs have been obtained from Portugal-specific sources. Results: In the current standard practice (no test), total costs were estimated to be €9 863 264 (€1160 per patient), with unnecessary admissions representing about €3,5 million. Total costs in the test scenario sum up to €9 781 194 (€1150 per patient), representing a cost saving to the system of €82 070 (€10 per patient), mainly due to a reduction of false positives and related unnecessary hospitalizations of women not developing PE. Conclusions: There is favorable economic evidence about the introduction of the sFlt- 1/PlGF ratio in the SNS. The generated savings appear to offset the costs related to the test.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Vanadium distribution, lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress markers upon decavanadate in vivo administration

The contribution of decameric vanadate species to vanadate toxic effects in cardiac muscle was studied following an intravenous administration of a decavanadate solution (1 mM total vanadium) in Sparus aurata. Although decameric vanadate is unstable in the assay medium, it decomposes with a half-life time of 16 allowing studying its effects not only in vitro but also in vivo. After 1, 6 and 12 h upon decavanadate administration the increase of vanadium in blood plasma, red blood cells and in cardiac mitochondria and cytosol is not affected in comparison to the administration of a metavanadate solution containing labile oxovanadates. Cardiac tissue lipid peroxidation increases up to 20%, 1, 6 and 12 h after metavanadate administration, whilst for decavanadate no effects were observed except 1 h after treatment (+20%). Metavanadate administration clearly differs from decavanadate by enhancing, 12 h after exposure, mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity (+115%) and not affecting catalase (CAT) activity whereas decavanadate increases SOD activity by 20% and decreases ( 55%) mitochondrial CAT activity. At early times of exposure, 1 and 6 h, the only effect observed upon decavanadate administration was the increase by 20% of SOD activity. In conclusion, decavanadate has a different response pattern of lipid peroxidation and oxidative stress markers, in spite of the same vanadium distribution in cardiac cells observed after decavanadate and metavanadate administration. It is suggested that once formed decameric vanadate species has a different reactivity than vanadate, thus, pointing out that the differential contribution of vanadium oligomers should be taken into account to rationalize in vivo vanadate toxicity

Hole-Pairs in a Spin Liquid: Influence of Electrostatic Hole-Hole Repulsion

The stability of hole bound states in the t-J model including short-range Coulomb interactions is analyzed using computational techniques on ladders with up to $2 \times 30$ sites. For a nearest-neighbors (NN) hole-hole repulsion, the two-holes bound state is surprisingly robust and breaks only when the repulsion is several times the exchange $J$. At $\sim 10$ hole doping the pairs break only for a NN-repulsion as large as $V \sim 4J$. Pair-pair correlations remain robust in the regime of hole binding. The results support electronic hole-pairing mechanisms on ladders based on holes moving in spin-liquid backgrounds. Implications in two dimensions are also presented. The need for better estimations of the range and strength of the Coulomb interaction in copper-oxides is remarked.Comment: Revised version with new figures. 4 pages, 5 figure

A comunicação nas práticas de jovens professores de Matemática

Este artigo visa conhecer o modo como jovens professores, de diversos níveis de ensino, recém diplomados por instituições de formação inicial, orientam a comunicação nas suas aulas, a que aspectos tendem a dar atenção, que dificuldades sentem. Na sua base está um trabalho colectivo realizado por formadores de instituições de ensino superior em Portugal, preocupados em melhorar a qualidade da formação inicial dos professores em especial no que se refere à Didáctica da Matemática. A metodologia, de natureza qualitativa e interpretativa, envolveu a realização de 12 estudos de caso. Os resultados mostram que a comunicação é vista pelos jovens professores como um suporte de um ambiente geral que poderá favorecer, em termos globais a aprendizagem. No entanto, são relativamente poucos aqueles que identificam a comunicação como um objectivo curricular importante da disciplina de Matemática e que apontam estratégias consistentes para a promover, tanto na sua vertente oral como na sua vertente escrita. São ainda menos os apontam a comunicação como um processo fundamental para o desenvolvimento de significados matemáticos por parte dos alunos. Estes resultados sugerem que as instituiçõesThis article aims to know the way how new teachers, at several teaching levels, recently graduated by pre-service teacher education institutions view and conduct communication in their classrooms, to which aspects they tend to pay attention and which difficulties they feel. The paper is based on a collective work carried out by teacher educators of teacher education institutions in Portugal that are concerned in improving the quality of the preservice teacher education, especially in what refers to mathematics education. The methodology is qualitative and interpretative and involved the realization of 12 case studies. The results show that communication is seen by the new teachers as a support of a general environment that must favour learning. However, only relatively few teachers point out communication as an important curriculum objective in the discipline of mathematics and indicate consistent strategies to promote it, both in oral and written forms. There are still less teachers who view communication as a basic process for the development of mathematical meanings by students. These results suggest that teacher education institutions may have interest in reflecting about their teaching practices in this regard