Factors Associated With The Vulnerability Of Older People Living With Hiv/aids In Belo Horizonte (mg), Brazil

The objective of this article was to identify the factors associated with the vulnerability of the elderly aged 60 years or older to HIV/AIDS, based on the perspective of older people living with the virus. Interviews were conducted with 20 participants, including 12 women and eight men, who were patients from a public hospital in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The elderly interviewed had a low education level and low income, were currently or previously in a marital union, had perceptions and behaviors grounded in structural gender relations with power asymmetry and had a low capacity to respond to vulnerability. Most of the elderly interviewed were sexually active, but few reported protecting themselves by using condoms, and the lack of information reached all levels of vulnerability studied. The picture revealed by this article is worrying, underscoring the need to demystify the sexual invisibility of the elderly, ensuring them their right to a healthy and continuous sexual life. © 2016, Associacao Brasileira de Pos - Graduacao em Saude Coletiva. All rights reserved.211133313338FAPEMIG, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerai

Use Of Different Electrical Stimulations For Treating Pain In Women With Temporomandibular Disorders [utilização De Diferentes Estimulações Elétricas Para O Tratamento Da Dor Em Mulheres Com Disfunção Temporomandibular]

Objective: To analyze pain intensity in individuals with temporomandibular disorder (TMD) who were treated with ten sessions of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) or high voltage electrical stimulation (HVES). Methods: Twenty-four women (22.98±1.86 years old) with a diagnosis of TMD in accordance with the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD) were selected. Sixty percent of the participants had a diagnosis of TMD classified as group Ia and 40% as Ia and IIa. They were divided into two groups named TENS group (TG) and high-voltage group (HVG). Each participant received ten applications of either TENS (10Hz, modulated at 50%, 200μs and motor threshold intensity) or HVES (10Hz, twin pulses of 20μs each at intervals of 100μs between the twin pulses, 100volts and positive pole) twice a week for 30 minutes. To measure the pain intensity, a visual analog scale (VAS) was used. Statistical analyses were performed using t test and simple linear regression. Results: Comparison of the pre- and post-TENS conditions showed diminished pain intensity (p<0.05) in most sessions except for sessions 6, 7 and 8. In contrast, HVES reduced the pain intensity in all sessions (p<0.05). Evaluation of the pre-application values showed that both treatments decreased the pain intensity uniformly over the ten sessions (p<0.05). Conclusions: TENS and HVES both promoted reductions in pain intensity in women with TMD. HVES is a therapeutic resource recommended for such patients. © 2009 Revista Brasileira de Fisioterapia.126476481Tvrdy, P., Methods of imaging in the diagnosis of temporomandibular joint disorders (2007) Biomed Pap Med Fac Univ Palacky Olomouc Czech Repub, 151 (1), pp. 133-6Magnusson, T., Egermark, I., Carlsson, G.E., A longitudinal epidemiologic study of signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders from 15 to 35 years of age (2000) J Orofac Pain, 14 (4), pp. 310-9Oliveira, A.S., Bermudez, C.C., Souza, R.A., Souza, C.M.F., Dias, E.M., Castro, C.E.S., Impacto da dor na vida de portadores de disfunção temporomandibular (2003) J Appl Oral Sci, 11 (2), pp. 138-43Furto, E.S., Cleland, J.A., Whitman, J.M., Olson, K.A., Manual physical therapy interventions and exercise for patients with temporomandibular disorders (2006) Cranio, 24 (4), pp. 283-91Cappelini, V.K., Souza, G.S., Faria, C.R.S., Massage therapy in the management of myogenic TMD: a pilot study (2006) J Apllied Oral Sci, 14 (1), pp. 21-6Kato, M.T., Kogawa, E.M., Santos, C.N., Conti, P.C.R., Tens and low-level laser therapy in the Management of temporomandibular Disorders (2006) J Appl Oral Sci, 14 (2), pp. 130-5Alvarez-Arenal, A., Junquera, L.M., Fernandez, J.P., Gonzalez, I., Olay, S., Effect of occlusal splint and transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation on the signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders in patients with bruxism (2002) J Oral Rehabil, 29 (9), pp. 858-63Rodrigues, D., Siriani, A.O., Bérzin, F., Effect of conventional TENS on pain and eletromyographic activity of masticatory muscles in TMD patients (2004) Braz Oral Res, 18 (4), pp. 290-5Windt, D.A., Heijden, G.J., Berg, S.G., Riet, G., Winter, A.F., Bouter, L.M., Ultrasound therapy for musculoskeletal disorders: a systematic review (1999) Pain, 81 (3), pp. 257-71Gonçalves, R.N., Ordenes, I.E.U., Rodrigues-Bigaton, D., Efeito indireto da TENS sobre os músculos cervicais em portadores de DTM (2007) Fisioter Mov, 20 (2), pp. 83-90Linde, C., Isacsson, G., Jonsson, B.G., Outcome of 6-week treatment with transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation compared with splint on symptomatic temporomandibular joint disk displacement without reduction (1995) Acta Odontol Scand, 53 (2), pp. 92-8Stralka, S.W., Jackson, J.A., Lewis, A.R., Treatment of hand and wrist pain: A randomized clinical trial of high voltage pulsed, direct current built into a wrist splint (1998) AAOHN Journal, 46 (5), pp. 233-6Holcomb, W.R., A practical Guide to Electrical Therapy (1997) J Sport Rehabil, 6, pp. 272-82Nelson, R.M., Hayes, K.W., Currier, D.P., (2003) Eletroterapia Clínica, , 3a ed. Barueri: ManoleAlon, G., Os princípios da estimulação elétrica (2003) Eletroterapia Clínica, pp. 55-139. , In. Nelson RM, Hayes KW, Currier DP. 3a ed. Barueri: ManoleIdo, C., Rothenbuhler, R., Janz, L., Eletroestimulação nervosa trancutânea de baixa freqüência nos "tender points" dos pacientes fibromioálgicos juvenis (2003) Rev Fisioter Univ São Paulo, 10 (1), pp. 1-6Larsson, S.E., Bodegard, L., Henriksson, K.G., Oberg, P.A., Chronic trapezius myalgia. Morphology and blood flow studied in 17 patients (1990) Acta Orthop Scand, 61 (5), pp. 394-8Tullberg, M., Alstergren, P.J., Ernberg, M.M., Effects of low-power laser exposure on masseter muscle pain and microcirculation (2003) Pain, 105 (1-2), pp. 89-96Okada, K., Yamaguchi, T., Minowa, K., Inoue, N., The influence of hot pack therapy on the blood flow in masseter muscles (2005) J Oral Rehabil, 32 (7), pp. 480-6Wieselmann-Penkner, K., Janda, M., Lorenzoni, M., Polansky, R., A comparison of the muscular relaxation effects of TENS and EMG-biofeedback in patients with bruxism (2001) J Oral Rehabil, 28 (9), pp. 849-53Cramp, A.F.L., Gilsenan, C., Lowe, A.S., Walsh, D.M., The effect of high- and low-frequency transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation upon cutaneous blood flow and skin temperature in healthy subjects (2000) Clin Physiol, 20 (2), pp. 150-7Goldman, R., Brewley, B., Zhou, L., Golden, M., Electrotherapy reverses inframalleolar ischemia: A retrospective, observational study (2003) Advances in Skin & Wound care, 16 (2), pp. 79-89Goldman, R., Rosen, M., Brewley, B., Golden, M., Electrotherapy promotes healing and microcirculation of infrapopliteal ischemic wounds: a prospective pilot study (2004) Adv Skin Wound Care, 17 (6), pp. 284-94Robinson, A.J., Snyder, M.L., (2001) Eletrofisiologia Clínica: eletroterapia e teste eletrofisiológico, , 2a ed. Porto Alegre: Artme

Levantamento das patologias e monitorização do Arco-Cruzeiro da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro

O estado de conservação das construções tradicionais motiva para um crescente interesse na recuperação e manutenção do património construído. Antes de mais, é importante obter uma visão geral da evolução temporal das construções permitindo assim a caracterização dos diversos aspectos estruturais e construtivos. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido com o objectivo de estudar as patologias associadas à nave principal da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro e em particular as patologias associadas ao Arco-Cruzeiro que se encontra no interior desta, com o intuito de se estabelecer a melhor estratégia de monitorização dos danos estruturais a aplicar. Como resultado desta análise foi proposto e implementado um plano de monitorização, com o desenvolvimento de meios de instrumentação, que permitem monitorizar o comportamento estrutural do arco, de forma não intrusiva, garantindo a reversibilidade e a eventual futura extensão da instrumentação. Foi ainda desenvolvido um modelo numérico em elementos finitos que serviu de apoio à interpretação das causas dos danos estruturais encontrados

Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) maintains follicular ultrastructure and stimulates preantral follicle growth in caprine ovarian tissue cultured in vitro

O objetivo desse estudo foi investigar se o TGF-β afeta a sobrevivência, ativação e crescimento de folículos primordiais caprinos inclusos no córtex ovariano após o cultivo in vitro. Ovários de cabras foram coletados em abatedouro e fragmentos de tecido ovariano foram cultivados por um e sete dias em meio essencial mínimo alfa (α-MEM+) sozinho ou suplementado com TGF-β (1, 5, 10 ou 50ng/mL). Fragmentos ovarianos não cultivados e cultivados foram processados para análise histológica e ultraestrutural. Os resultados mostraram que, comparado ao controle fresco, houve diminuição no percentual de folículos morfologicamente normais em todos os tratamentos somente após sete dias de cultivo. O TGF-β não afetou a ativação folicular independente da concentração testada, contudo, o diâmetro folicular foi superior (P<0.05) no tratamento com 10ng/mL de TGF-β quando comparado ao controle fresco e aos demais tratamentos. Além disso, essa mesma concentração manteve a ultraestrutura normal dos folículos após sete dias de cultivo. Em conclusão, o TGF-β apresentou efeito adicional no crescimento folicular e na manutenção da integridade ultraestrutural de folículos pré-antrais caprinos inclusos no tecido ovariano quando utilizado na concentração de 10ng/mL durante sete dias de cultivo.The objectives of this study were to investigate whether TGF-β affect the survival, activation and further growth of goat primordial follicles enclosed in ovarian cortex after in vitro culture. Goat ovaries were collected from an abattoir and pieces of ovarian tissues were cultured for one or seven days in a supplemented alpha Minimum Essential Medium, alone or containing TGF-β (1, 5, 10 or 50ng/mL). Ovarian tissues from the fresh control as well as those cultured were processed for histological and ultrastructural studies. The results showed that when compared with fresh control, there was decrease in the percentages of histologically normal follicles in all treatments only after seven days culture. TGF-β did not affect the activation of preantral follicles regardless of its concentration, however, larger follicles diameter (P<0.05) was observed using 10ng/mL TGF-β than in the fresh control and other treatments. Moreover, this concentration maintained the normal ultrastructure after seven days of culture. In conclusion, TGF-β showed additional effect on the follicle growth and the maintenance of ultrastructural integrity of goat preantral follicles enclosed in ovarian tissue when used at 10ng/mL during seven days of culture

Security Evaluation of Support Vector Machines in Adversarial Environments

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are among the most popular classification techniques adopted in security applications like malware detection, intrusion detection, and spam filtering. However, if SVMs are to be incorporated in real-world security systems, they must be able to cope with attack patterns that can either mislead the learning algorithm (poisoning), evade detection (evasion), or gain information about their internal parameters (privacy breaches). The main contributions of this chapter are twofold. First, we introduce a formal general framework for the empirical evaluation of the security of machine-learning systems. Second, according to our framework, we demonstrate the feasibility of evasion, poisoning and privacy attacks against SVMs in real-world security problems. For each attack technique, we evaluate its impact and discuss whether (and how) it can be countered through an adversary-aware design of SVMs. Our experiments are easily reproducible thanks to open-source code that we have made available, together with all the employed datasets, on a public repository.Comment: 47 pages, 9 figures; chapter accepted into book 'Support Vector Machine Applications

Predictive biometrics: A review and analysis of predicting personal characteristics from biometric data

Interest in the exploitation of soft biometrics information has continued to develop over the last decade or so. In comparison with traditional biometrics, which focuses principally on person identification, the idea of soft biometrics processing is to study the utilisation of more general information regarding a system user, which is not necessarily unique. There are increasing indications that this type of data will have great value in providing complementary information for user authentication. However, the authors have also seen a growing interest in broadening the predictive capabilities of biometric data, encompassing both easily definable characteristics such as subject age and, most recently, `higher level' characteristics such as emotional or mental states. This study will present a selective review of the predictive capabilities, in the widest sense, of biometric data processing, providing an analysis of the key issues still adequately to be addressed if this concept of predictive biometrics is to be fully exploited in the future

Papilomavírus humano e anormalidades cervicais em mulheres do sistema de saúde privado e público no Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

This article reports the HPV status and cervical cytological abnormalities in patients attended at public and private gynecological services from Rio de Janeiro State. It also comments the performance of each HPV DNA tests used. A set of 454 women from private health clinics was tested by routine Capture Hybrid II HPV DNA assay. Among these, 58.4% presented HPV and nearly 90% of them were infected by high risk HPV types. However, this group presented few premalignant cervical lesions and no invasive cervical cancer was registered. We also studied 220 women from low income class attended at public health system. They were HPV tested by polymerase chain reaction using My09/11 primers followed by HPV typing with E6 specific primers. The overall HPV prevalence was 77.3%. They also showed a high percentage of high squamous intraepithelial lesion-HSIL (26.3%), and invasive cervical carcinoma (16.3%). HPV infection was found in 93.1% and 94.4% of them, respectively. The mean ages in both groups were 31.5 and 38 years, respectively. In series 1, HPV prevalence declined with age, data consistent with viral transient infection. In series 2, HPV prevalence did not decline, independent of age interval, supporting not only the idea of viral persistence into this group, but also regional epidemiological variations in the same geographic area. Significant cytological differences were seen between both groups. Normal and benign cases were the most prevalent cytological findings in series 1 while pre-malignant lesions were the most common diagnosis in the series 2. HPV prevalence in normal cases were statistically higher than those from series 1 (p < 0.001), indicating a higher exposure to HPV infection. Women from both samples were referred for previous abnormal cytology. However, socio-demographic evidence shows that women from series 1 have access to treatment more easily and faster than women from series 2 before the development of pre-malignant lesions. These data provides baseline support for the role of social inequalities linked to high risk HPV infection leading to cervical cancer. Broadly screening programs and the development of safe and effective vaccines against HPV would diminish the toll of this disease that affect mainly poor women.Este artigo analisa a infecção por HPV e anormalidades citológicas cervicais encontradas em pacientes atendidas em serviços ginecológicos dos sistemas de saúde público e privado do estado do Rio de Janeiro. O trabalho também avalia os testes utilizados para detecção de DNA do HPV em cada população estudada. Um grupo de 454 mulheres oriundas de serviços da rede privada de saúde foi testado por Captura do Híbrido II. Destas, 58,4% apresentaram infecção por HPV e cerca de 90% delas estavam infectadas por HPV de alto risco. Este grupo, entretanto, apresentava poucos casos de lesões cervicais pré-malígnas e nenhum caso de câncer. Estudamos, também, 220 mulheres de baixo nível econômico atendidas no serviço de saúde pública que foram testadas para HPV pela reação da polimerase em cadeia utilizando-se os oligonucleotídeos My09/My11. A identificação dos tipos foi efetuada por amplificação com oligonucleotídeos específicos para a região E6 do genoma viral. A prevalência de HPV nesta população foi de 77.3%, observando-se uma alta porcentagem de casos de neoplasias intraepiteliais cervicais de alto grau (26,3%) e de carcinoma cervical invasivo (16,3%). A infecção por HPV foi achada em, respectivamente, 93,1% e 94,4% destes casos. A média de idade em ambos os grupos era de 31,5 e 38 anos, respectivamente. Na série 1, a prevalência da infecção por HPV decresce com a idade, enquanto na série 2 ela não desaparece, dando suporte não só à idéia de persistência viral neste grupo, mas também a variações epidemiológicas na mesma área geográfica. Diferenças significativas foram vistas nos dois grupos. Casos normais e benignos foram incidentes na série 1, enquanto as lesões malígnas predominaram na série 2. Ao contrário, casos normais infectados por HPV eram prevalentes na série 2 (p < 0.001), indicando maior exposição ao vírus. Embora as mulheres de ambos os grupos tenham sido incluídas no estudo por apresentarem citologia anormal, evidências sócio-demográficas demonstram que mulheres da série 1 tem acesso mais fácil e rápido ao tratamento do que as mulheres da série 2 antes que as lesões pré-malígnas se desenvolvam. Estes resultados fornecem dados sobre o papel das desigualdades sociais associadas à infecção por HPV de alto risco na progressão do câncer cervical. Programas de prevenção abrangentes e o desenvolvimento de vacinas eficazes e seguras contra o HPV poderiam reduzir o tributo desta doença que afeta principalmente mulheres pobres

The seesaw mechanism at TeV scale in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos

We implement the seesaw mechanism in the 3-3-1 model with right-handed neutrinos. This is accomplished by the introduction of a scalar sextet into the model and the spontaneous violation of the lepton number. We identify the Majoron as a singlet under $SU_L(2)\otimes U_Y(1)$ symmetry, which makes it safe under the current bounds imposed by electroweak data. The main result of this work is that the seesaw mechanism works already at TeV scale with the outcome that the right-handed neutrino masses lie in the electroweak scale, in the range from MeV to tens of GeV. This window provides a great opportunity to test their appearance at current detectors, though when we contrast our results with some previous analysis concerning detection sensitivity at LHC, we conclude that further work is needed in order to validate this search.Comment: about 13 pages, no figure

The influence of casein and urea as nitrogen sources on in vitro equine caecal fermentation

To access the fermentative response of equine caecal microbial population to nitrogen availability, an in vitro study was conducted using caecal contents provided with adequate energy sources and nitrogen as limiting nutrient. Two nitrogen (N) sources were provided, protein (casein) and non-protein (urea). Caecal fluid, taken from three cannulated horses receiving a hay–concentrate diet, was mixed with a N-free buffer–mineral solution. The influence of four N levels (3.7, 6.3, 12.5 or 25 mg of N in casein or urea) was studied using the gas production technique. Total volatile fatty acids (VFA), NH3-N and gas production were measured after a 24-h incubation period. Microbial biomass was estimated using adenine and guanine bases as internal markers, and ATP production was estimated stoichiometrically. Microbial growth efficiency (YATP) and gas efficiency (Egas) were estimated. Fermentation with casein as the sole N source was generally characterized by lower total VFA, NH3-N, total gas production and higher acetate : propionate (A : P) ratio and YATP than with urea. Results herein presented indicate that, under these in vitro conditions, caecal microbial population does in fact use urea N, but less efficiently than casein in terms of microbial growt