The effect of assistive devices on gait patterns in Parkinson’s disease: preliminary results

Poster presented at the First international Congress of CiiEM “From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research”, 27-28 November 2015, Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal

The effect of assistive devices on gait patterns in Parkinson’s Disease: a pilot study

Poster presented at the 4th World Parkinson Congress. Portland, Oregon, 20-23 September 2016The purpose of the study is to assess the influence of six different assistive devices on gait patterns in people with Parkinson's disease.N/

The effect of assistive devices on gait patterns in Parkinson’s disease : a pilot study

Abstract of poster presented at the 2nd International Congress of CiiEM - Translational Research and Innovation in Human and Health Science. 11-13 June, 2017, Monte de Caparica, Portugalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Association of Drowning Mortality with Preventive Interventions: A Quarter of a Million Deaths Evaluation in Brazil

In 2015, drowning in Brazil was responsible for 6,043 deaths and was the second leading cause of death in children. Although several prevention strategies have been promoted to reduce drowning, most are still based on low levels of evidence. This study evaluated the effectiveness of prevention and water safety interventions in reducing drowning mortality. Data obtained from the National Mortality System for 36 years were split in two time periods to allow the comparison of drowning mortality numbers before and after implementation of SOBRASA’s drowning prevention and water safety programs and to check for any positive effects attributable to such programs. To assess differences between the two periods, a “drowning water safety score” (DSS) was estimated and compared to mortality/100,000 of population. There were 258,834 drowning deaths over 36 years. A significant decrease of 27% in drowning rates (5.2 to 3.8/100,000;

Dynamic targeting enables domain-general inhibitory control over action and thought by the prefrontal cortex.

Over the last two decades, inhibitory control has featured prominently in accounts of how humans and other organisms regulate their behaviour and thought. Previous work on how the brain stops actions and thoughts, however, has emphasised distinct prefrontal regions supporting these functions, suggesting domain-specific mechanisms. Here we show that stopping actions and thoughts recruits common regions in the right dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex to suppress diverse content, via dynamic targeting. Within each region, classifiers trained to distinguish action-stopping from action-execution also identify when people are suppressing their thoughts (and vice versa). Effective connectivity analysis reveals that both prefrontal regions contribute to action and thought stopping by targeting the motor cortex or the hippocampus, depending on the goal, to suppress their task-specific activity. These findings support the existence of a domain-general system that underlies inhibitory control and establish Dynamic Targeting as a mechanism enabling this ability

Particles’ distribution enhancing in aluminum-based composites produced by upward friction stir processing

Funding Information: Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on). CV and TGS acknowledge Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT-MCTES) for its financial support via projects UIDB/00667/2020 and UIDP/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI). PMF also acknowledges FCT-MCTES for its financial support via the PhD scholarship UI/BD/151055/2021. PLI would like to acknowledge FCT-MCTES for its financial support via the PhD scholarship FCT-SFRH /BD/146885/2019. RJCS acknowledges national funds from FCT-MCTES, in the scope of the project UIDB/50025/2020–2023 of the CENIMAT/i3N. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).A new variant of friction stir processing named upward friction stir processing (UFSP) is a promising approach to control particles’ distribution and promote a more uniform distribution over a larger processed area. This variant involves using two sheets with functional particles between them to produce metallic composites. A spacer is used to ensure the desired quantity and uniform distribution of the particles and prevent sputtering. This technique promotes an upward flow to introduce more particles with a uniform distribution in the processed volume, avoiding discrete holes or grooves. This study involved enhancing the particles’ distribution by varying process parameters. The resulting trial with the best particles’ distribution was characterized by means of light microscopy, eddy current testing, microhardness mapping, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The study revealed that UFSP can improve the particles’ distribution in the stir zone of metallic composites, especially when multi-passes are performed towards the retreating side of the plates. The process parameters that produced an improvement in particles’ distribution were six passes with an offset of 1 mm towards the retreating side, the tool rotation and processing speed of 900 rev/min, and 180 mm/min, respectively, and a spacer’s thickness of 0.5 mm. The resulting hardness and electrical conductivity profiles show that the UFSP technique can significantly affect material’s properties, including mechanical strength, particularly when processing with tool offset towards the retreating side. Furthermore, the hardness increased by about 22% in composites produced with the addition of reinforcement particles. However, for some aluminum alloys, the properties decreased under such conditions. These findings highlight the potential of UFSP for producing functionalized materials with tailored properties, while also underscoring the importance of careful parameters selection to optimize the material´s performance. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.].publishersversioninpres

Capacitação dos profissionais de informação visando a gestão no Arca – Repositório Institucional da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz

O texto aborda a importância da realização dos trabalhos de sensibilização e capacitação em palestras e cursos ministrados para os profissionais de informação/Bibliotecários que trabalham na gestão do Arca - Repositório Institucional da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Brasil), visando assim aprimorar as competências internas para a melhoria da eficiência, eficácia e qualidade dos documentos inseridos no RI como também disponibilizar o conteúdo em saúde pública para toda a Sociedade.Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortiu

Development of a sequential injection system for the determination of nitrite and nitrate in waters with different salinity: Application to estuaries in NW Portugal

In this work, a sequential injection methodology for monitoring nitrite and nitrate in estuarine waters without any previous treatment is described. The developed system was applied to the measurement of nitrite and nitrate in estuarine waters of three rivers in the NW Portugal, allowing an automatic, fast (ca 60 h 1) and precise method (relative standard deviation lower than 2%). The procedure was based on the reaction between nitrite, sulfanilamide and N-(1-naphthyl)-ethylenediamine dihydrochloride (N1NED), whereas the determination of nitrate resulted from its reduction to nitrite, using an in-line cadmium column, followed by the same reaction. The samples were collected in three locations for each river (Douro, C avado and Ave) covering the lower, middle and upper section of the estuaries. Despite the presence of a salinity gradient, this parameter showed no interference in the accuracy of the determinations. The results obtained for the described method for nitrite were statistically comparable to those obtained by the reference procedure. For the determination of nitrate, recovery tests confirmed that the sequential injection methodology provided good quality results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Functional and structural impact of 10 ACADM missense mutations on human medium chain acyl-Coa dehydrogenase

Funding Information: This work was supported by FEDER and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia , I. P. through iMed.ULisboa (Projects UIDB/04138/2020 and UIDP/04138/2020 ), iNOVA4Health ( UIDB/04462/2020 , UIDP/04462/2020 ) and LS4FUTURE Associated Laboratory ( LA/P/0087/2020 ) and research project PTDC/BIA-BQM/29570/2017 . Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)Medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency (MCADD) is associated with ACADM gene mutations, leading to an impaired function and/or structure of MCAD. Importantly, after import into the mitochondria, MCAD must incorporate a molecule of flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) per subunit and assemble into tetramers. However, the effect of MCAD amino acid substitutions on FAD incorporation has not been investigated. Herein, the commonest MCAD variant (p.K304E) and 11 additional rare variants (p.Y48C, p.R55G, p.A88P, p.Y133C, p.A140T, p.D143V, p.G224R, p.L238F, p.V264I, p.Y372N, and p.G377V) were functionally and structurally characterized. Half of the studied variants presented a FAD content <65 % compared to the wild-type. Most of them were recovered as tetramers, except the p.Y372N (mainly as dimers). No correlation was found between the levels of tetramers and FAD content. However, a correlation between FAD content and the cofactor's affinity, proteolytic stability, thermostability, and thermal inactivation was established. We showed that the studied amino acid changes in MCAD may alter the substrate chain-length dependence and the interaction with electron-transferring-flavoprotein (ETF) necessary for a proper functioning electron transfer thus adding additional layers of complexity to the pathological effect of ACADM missense mutations. Although the majority of the variant MCADs presented an impaired capacity to retain FAD during their synthesis, some of them were structurally rescued by cofactor supplementation, suggesting that in the mitochondrial environment the levels and activity of those variants may be dependent of FAD's availability thus contributing for the heterogeneity of the MCADD phenotype found in patients presenting the same genotype.publishersversionpublishe