Evaluating a sensor of skin conductance to assess dental anxiety

Tese de mestrado, Bioinformática e Biologia Computacional (Bioinformática), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2015The anxiety related problems that adult population experience, are a common issue in Dental Practice. To overcome these problems it would be helpful to have an objective measure of the current anxiety of the patient. With this information, it should be possible to link the measured anxiety to an automated system that could distract the patient by altering the surrounding environment, i.e. Ambient Intelligence. This project consisted in measuring the skin conductance signal and correlating the responses related with documented dental stressful procedures. This was executed in a real clinical environment. Dental anxiety was assessed in over 70 patients with a 3 question survey using the Likert scale. Each answer was registered together with the level of skin conductance measured with a sensor placed in the patient fingers. The results showed a significant association between the dental anxiety score on two of the questions and the quantified skin electrodermal response. These findings aim to help design a future system based on ambient intelligence to distract and reduce dental anxiety during treatment.Uma parte significativa da população adulta tem problemas provocados pela ansiedade originada com a ida à consulta de Medicina Dentária. Seria vantajoso existir uma avaliação objetiva do nível de ansiedade do paciente durante a consulta para se ultrapassar estes problemas. Com esta informação seria possível alterar o ambiente envolvente através da ligação a um sistema automatizado inteligente para a distração do paciente durante a consulta. Este projeto consistiu na medição do sinal de condutividade da pele e correlação desta com as respostas a um questionário relacionado com atos dentários reconhecidos como causadores de grande ansiedade dentária. A ansiedade dentária foi avaliada em cerca de setenta pacientes por um questionário de três perguntas utilizando uma escala de Likert. Simultaneamente foi medida a condutividade da pele por um sensor colocado nos dedos da mão. Os resultados mostram uma associação significativa entre o nível de ansiedade obtido em duas das questões e a alteração da condutividade da pele. Estes resultados visam fornecer uma base para desenhar um futuro sistema de Ambiente Inteligente para distração da ansiedade dentária

Switched Reluctance Motor Fault Tolerant Operation

In recent years, with the development of micro and power electronics, the switched reluctance machine has been gaining popularity. This type of machine is attractive because it has a cheap and easy construction, having absence of rotor windings and permanent magnets. It has also an inherent fault tolerance ability. Due to this fault tolerance it has gained the attention of industries and applications that require safe and reliable operation. However, the machine is only fault tolerant to a point and, with the aim of improving its already high fault tolerance, multiple studies were conducted on the subject. In this dissertation a new passive fault tolerant method, comprising on simple modifications in the windings, converter and control method will be presented. Worth notice that one of the modifications is already discussed in the cited literature. This method is aimed principally at open circuit faults in the windings with the machine working as a motor in the low speed zone. The effectiveness of this method will be studied by comparison of a regular SRM with one with the solution through simulation of winding fault conditions, namely open and short circuits faults. In order to do this, first finite element analysis was performed, with the software Flux2D®, in order to obtain the magnetic and torque characteristics of the machines. This was followed by dynamic simulations in Matlab-simulink®. It will be shown that the method is very effective for open circuit faults but will only have negligible improvements in case of winding short circuits

Digitally augmenting the physical ground space with timed visual cues for crutch-assisted walking

This late-breaking work presents initial results regarding a novel mobile-projection system, aimed at helping people to learn how to walk with crutches. The existing projection-based solutions for gait training disorders are based on walking over a fixed surface (usually a treadmill). In contrast, our solution projects visual cues (footprints and crutch icons) directly into the floor, augmenting the physical space surrounding the crutches, in a portable way. Walking with crutches is a learning skill that requires continuous repetition and constant attention to detail to make sure they are being used correctly, avoiding negative consequences, such as falls or injuries. We conducted expert consultation sessions, and we identified the main issues that patients face when walking with crutches. This informed the design of Augmented Crutches. We performed a qualitative evaluation and conclude with design implications: the importance of timing, self-assurance and awareness.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Herbivorous amphipods and algae interactions : does the host macroalgae identity influences on genetic and morphological diversity of herbivore populations?

Orientador: Fosca Pedini Pereira LeiteDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de BiologiaResumo: A interação entre plantas e seus herbívoros no ambiente marinho representam um sistema interessante para realizar estudos em múltipla escala, os quais podem ajudar a compreender as relações ecológicas que ali ocorrem. Em costões rochosos, anfípodes se destacam entre os crustáceos, sendo os anfípodes ampitoídeos um dos grupos de herbívoros mais frequentes. Esses animais possuem hábito de vida tubícola, são sedentários e possuem desenvolvimento direto (i.e. não possuem estágio larval), provavelmente apresentando limitada capacidade de dispersão, usando macroalgas como alimento e habitat. Uma vez que macroalgas hospedeiras afetam a aptidão desses animais, espera-se que as diferentes hospedeiras variem quanto a sua contribuição para a sobrevivência e encontro de parceiros sexuais dos anfípodes. Nesse trabalho, a espécie Cymadusa filosa Savigny,1816 e suas algas hospedeiras foram utilizadas como modelos para testar a hipótese de que esses animais, em escala local, são estruturados geneticamente de acordo com a hospedeira e apresentam variação morfológica devido as diferentes características entre as algas. Além disso, foi investigado se as populações de diferentes costões rochosos são diferentes entre si devido à baixa dispersão dos animais. Para responder essas questões, foram utilizados marcadores microssatélites para acessar a diversidade genética, e morfometria geométrica para acessar a diversidade morfológica. Como resultados gerais, foi observado que tanto as algas como as diferentes localidades geográficas não são fatores estruturadores da população. Indivíduos aparentam ser altamente móveis localmente ou possuírem uma dispersão baseada nos juvenis, além de serem capazes de se dispersar entre localidades por rafting. Apesar das indicações de fluxo gênico, a ocorrência de grupos morfológicos distintos provavelmente ocorre devido condições ambientais de cada local, caracterizando uma metapopulação com divergência fenotípicaAbstract: Marine plant-herbivore interactions represent an interesting natural system to perform multiple scales approaches in order to have a better comprehension of their ecological interactions. Amphipods are an abundant group of crustaceans in rocky shore environments, and the ampithoid amphipods are one of the most frequent herbivores. These animals are tubicolous and sedentary, they are direct developers (i.e. they do not have a larval phase), probably presenting a limited dispersion capability, and they use macroalgae as food and shelter. Macroalgae can affect the fitness of these animals, so it is expected that different macroalgae species vary in how they contribute to survival and mate encounter of amphipods. Here, the species Cymadusa filosa Savigny,1816 and its host macroalgae were used as models to test the hypothesis that amphipods are genetically and morphologically structured in fine scales because of differences in host traits. Furthermore, it was tested if there are differences among populations from distinct rocky shores because of limited dispersion in amphipods. Microsatellites were the molecular markers used to access the genetic diversity, along with geometric morphometric analyses to access morphological diversity. Our results indicate that host macroalgae or locations are a factor that has a role on the genetic diversity. Individuals seem to be highly mobile in local scales or to have a juvenile based dispersal, and they seem capable to disperse among shores by rafting. Even though there are indication of intense gene flow, the occurrence of distinct morphological groups occurs probably because of environmental conditions of each location, characterizing a metapopulation structure with phenotypic divergenceMestradoEcologiaMestre em Ecologia2014/15614-7FAPES

Inferring explicit weighted consensus networks to represent alternative evolutionary histories

Background: The advent of molecular biology techniques and constant increase in availability of genetic material have triggered the development of many phylogenetic tree inference methods. However, several reticulate evolution processes, such as horizontal gene transfer and hybridization, have been shown to blur the species\ud evolutionary history by causing discordance among phylogenies inferred from different genes.\ud Methods: To tackle this problem, we hereby describe a new method for inferring and representing alternative(reticulate) evolutionary histories of species as an explicit weighted consensus network which can be constructed from a collection of gene trees with or without prior knowledge of the species phylogeny.\ud Results: We provide a way of building a weighted phylogenetic network for each of the following reticulation\ud mechanisms: diploid hybridization, intragenic recombination and complete or partial horizontal gene transfer. We successfully tested our method on some synthetic and real datasets to infer the above-mentioned evolutionary events which may have influenced the evolution of many species.\ud Conclusions: Our weighted consensus network inference method allows one to infer, visualize and validate statistically major conflicting signals induced by the mechanisms of reticulate evolution. The results provided by the new method can be used to represent the inferred conflicting signals by means of explicit and easy-to-interpret phylogenetic networks

The Impact of Mobile Phone Reminders on Perceived Self-Care Levels of Informal Caregivers

: Informal caregivers play a fundamental role in caring for people that need assistance and provide an effective service in managing their loved ones’ health. Because of this, they have little time to attend to themselves and perform self-care practices. Some of these practices can improve mental health. By snowball sampling, we recruited 15 informal caregivers, 12 females and three males. Using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, we analyzed the impact of the reminders on a self-care scale. We used the Mindful Self-Care Scale, comparing the same population without reminders and with reminders. Results indicated that total self-care scores with reminders increased statistically significantly, T = 13, Z = −2.481, p ≤ 0.013, with a large effect size (r = 0.64). This study shows a significant self-care increase in informal caregivers after using reminders. Future development of a reminders-based approach could focus on increasing self-care and the time caregivers take for themselves, empowering them to take a more active role in meeting their own needs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio