Crescimento de gramíneas e leguminosas forrageiras tropicais sob sombreamento.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o efeito de níveis de sombreamento artificial (0%, 30%, 50% e 70%) nas taxas de acúmulo de matéria seca de quatro gramíneas (Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu, B. humidicola cv. Quicuio-da-amazônia, Panicum maximum cv. Massai e Paspalum notatum cv. Pensacola) e três leguminosas forrageiras (Arachis pintoi cv. Belmonte, A. pintoi BRA-031143 e Pueraria phaseoloides), em Rio Branco, Acre. No período de novembro de 1999 a abril de 2001, foram realizados nove cortes para medição das taxas de acúmulo de matéria seca. Os capins marandu e massai tiveram o melhor desempenho entre as gramíneas, aliando boa tolerância ao sombreamento e alta capacidade produtiva, constituindo opções importantes na composição de sistemas silvipastoris em áreas com solos bem drenados. O quicuio-da-amazônia apresentou menor tolerância ao sombreamento, podendo ser usado em sistemas silvipastoris com baixa densidade arbórea, em áreas com chuvas bem distribuídas ou com solos mal drenados. O capim-pensacola apresentou alta tolerância ao sombreamento, mas baixa capacidade produtiva, não sendo recomendado para a região. O Arachis pintoi cv. Belmonte demonstrou maior capacidade produtiva e tolerância ao sombreamento que as demais leguminosas

Quercetin-loaded lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles for functional food applications

This study aimed at the encapsulation of quercetin into lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles using the electrostatic self-assembly technique, followed by evaluation of their functionality (antioxidant activity) and stability at different environmental conditions. These nanoparticles were characterized in terms of: average size, morphology, zeta potential, encapsulation efficiency, loading, and spectroscopic characteristics. Quercetin has been successfully encapsulated in lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles with an efficiency of 96.13 ± 0.44 %. Nanoparticles presented a spherical morphology with an average size of 168.58 ± 20.94 nm and a zeta potential of 56.46 ± 1.94 mV. Stability studies showed that nanoparticles are stable to temperatures ranging between 5 and 70 °C and a pH variation from 3.3 to 5.0. Moreover, encapsulated quercetin showed improved antioxidant properties when compared to free-quercetin. Our results suggest that quercetin-loaded lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles can be used in the manufacture of functional foods.Author Marthyna Pessoa de Souza thanks Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES/PDEE-Brazil) and Fundacao de Amparo a Ciencia e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco (FACEPE, Brazil) for granting her scholarships. Miguel A. Cerqueira is recipient of a fellowship from the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/72753/2010, FCT, POPH-QREN, and FSE Portugal). This research was financially supported by research grants and fellowships from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq), as well as the Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES) and Fundacao de Amparo a Ciencia e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco (FACEPE).The support of EU Cost Actions FA0904 and FA1001 is gratefully acknowledged

Broadening Risk Factor or Disease Definition as a Driver for Overdiagnosis: A Narrative Review

Medical overuse-defined as the provision of health services for which potential harms exceed potential benefits-constitutes a paradigm of low-value care and is seen as a threat to the quality of care. Value in healthcare implies a precise definition of disease. However, defining a disease may not be straightforward since clinical data do not show discrete boundaries, calling for some clinical judgment. And, if in time a redefinition of disease is needed, it is important to recognize that it can induce overdiagnosis, the identification of medical conditions that would, otherwise, never cause any significant symptoms or lead to clinical harm. A classic example is the impact of recommendations from professional societies in the late 1990s, lowering the threshold for abnormal total cholesterol from 240 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl. Due to these changes in risk factor definition, literally overnight there were 42 million new cases eligible for treatment in the United States. The same happened with hypertension-using either the 2019 NICE guidelines or the 2018 ESC/ECC guidelines criteria for arterial hypertension, the proportion of people overdiagnosed with hypertension was calculated to be between 14% and 33%. In this review, we will start by discussing resource overuse. We then present the basis for disease definition and its conceptual problems. Finally, we will discuss the impact of changing risk factor/disease definitions in the prevalence of disease and its consequences in overdiagnosis and overtreatment (a problem particularly relevant when definitions are widened to include earlier or milder disease).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Influence of thickness and coatings morphology in the antimicrobial performance of zinc oxide coatings

"Author's copy"In this research work, the production of undoped and silver (Ag) doped zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films for food-packaging applications were developed. The main goal was to determine the influence of coatings morphology and thickness on the antimicrobial performance of the produced samples. The ZnO based thin films were deposited on PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) substrates by means of DC reactive magnetron sputtering. The thin films were characterized by optical spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The antimicrobial performance of the undoped and Ag-doped ZnO thin films was also evaluated. The results attained have shown that all the deposited zinc oxide and Ag-doped ZnO coatings present columnar morphology with V-shaped columns. The increase of ZnO coatings thickness until 200 nm increases the active surface area of the columns. The thinner samples (50 and 100 nm) present a less pronounced antibacterial activity than the thickest ones (200–600 nm). Regarding Ag-doped ZnO thin films, it was verified that increasing the silver content decreases the growth rate of Escherichia coli and decreases the amount of bacteria cells present at the end of the experiment.The work described in this paper was supported by project NANOPACKSAFER: NANO-engineered PACKaging systems for improving quality, SAFEty and health characteristics of foods, Portugal-Spain International Nanotechnology Laboratory Nanotechnology Projects Call; and also by the FEDER funding through the COMPETE program and FCT PEst-C/BIA/UI4050/2011 project

Usando Redes Aleatorias na Analise de Mobilidade

National audienceThe constant advancement of information systems has allowed more data to be generated and stored from the most diverse situations. It is fascinating that, behind these records, we see the reflection of the environment itself, since every record represents a decision made by some entity. In this work, we modeled real-world scenarios of mobility from using temporal complex networks. The analysis assumes that these systems are composed of entities able to interact in a rational manner, reflecting their interests and activity dynamic. In this direction, we propose a technique for analyzing mobility scenarios from random graphs. This technique examines how the real system would evolve if the agents' decisions were random, and from there, you can check, for example, which edges are random and which are derived from social relationships, such as friendship or professional.O avanco constante de sistemas de informacao tempermitido que mais dados sejam gerados e armazenados a partir das mais diversas situacoes. E fascinante que, por tras de cada registro, seja possıvel ver o reflexo do ambiente em si, ou seja, alguma decisao tomada por alguma entidade. Neste trabalho, sao estudados cenarios reais de mobilidade a partir de uma modelagem usando redes complexas temporais. A analise parte do pressuposto que esses sistemas sao compostos de entidades capazes de interagir entre si de uma maneira racional, refletindo seus interesses e dinamica de atividade. Nessa direcao, e proposta uma tecnica para analisar cenarios de mobilidade a partir de grafos aleatorios. Essa tecnica verifica como o sistema real evoluiria caso as decisoes dos seus agentes fossem aleat'orias e, a partir dela, pode-se verificar, por exemplo, quais arestas s˜ao aleat'orias e quais s˜ao provenientes de relac¸ ˜oes sociais, tais como relac¸ ˜oes de amizade ou profissionais

Broadening Risk Factor or Disease Definition as a Driver for Overdiagnosis: A Narrative Review

Medical overuse-defined as the provision of health services for which potential harms exceed potential benefits-constitutes a paradigm of low-value care and is seen as a threat to the quality of care. Value in healthcare implies a precise definition of disease. However, defining a disease may not be straightforward since clinical data do not show discrete boundaries, calling for some clinical judgment. And, if in time a redefinition of disease is needed, it is important to recognize that it can induce overdiagnosis, the identification of medical conditions that would, otherwise, never cause any significant symptoms or lead to clinical harm. A classic example is the impact of recommendations from professional societies in the late 1990s, lowering the threshold for abnormal total cholesterol from 240 mg/dl to 200 mg/dl. Due to these changes in risk factor definition, literally overnight there were 42 million new cases eligible for treatment in the United States. The same happened with hypertension-using either the 2019 NICE guidelines or the 2018 ESC/ECC guidelines criteria for arterial hypertension, the proportion of people overdiagnosed with hypertension was calculated to be between 14% and 33%. In this review, we will start by discussing resource overuse. We then present the basis for disease definition and its conceptual problems. Finally, we will discuss the impact of changing risk factor/disease definitions in the prevalence of disease and its consequences in overdiagnosis and overtreatment (a problem particularly relevant when definitions are widened to include earlier or milder disease).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

RECAST: Telling Apart Social and Random Relationships in Dynamic Networks

International audienceIn this paper, we argue that the ability to accurately spot random and social relationships in dynamic networks is essential to net- work applications that rely on human routines, such as, e.g., op- portunistic routing. We thus propose a strategy to analyze users' interactions in mobile networks where users act according to their interests and activity dynamics. Our strategy, named Random rElationship ClASsifier sTrategy (RECAST), allows classifying users' wireless interactions, separating random interactions from differ- ent kinds of social ties. To that end, RECAST observes how the real system differs from an equivalent one where entities' decisions are completely random. We evaluate the effectiveness of the RECAST classification on real-world user contact datasets collected in diverse networking contexts. Our analysis unveils significant dif- ferences among the dynamics of users' wireless interactions in the datasets, which we leverage to unveil the impact of social ties on opportunistic routing

Analysis of the Cochrane Review: Pregabalin for Pain in Fibromyalgia in Adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2016;9:CD011790 and 2016;4:CD009002

Fibromyalgia can be clinically defined by widespread pain lasting for longer than 3 months with tenderness on palpation in 11 or more of 18 specified tender points. Many people with fibromyalgia are significantly disabled, and experience moderate to severe pain for many years, for which conventional analgesics are usually not effective. For these patients treatment options generally include antidepressants like tricyclic agents, serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors, or anticonvulsants like pregabalin or gabapentin. Pregabalin is a drug licensed for the treatment of fibromyalgia in the United States of America, with a mechanism of action similar to gabapentin. This mode of action confers antiepileptic, analgesic, and anxiolytic effects. This Cochrane systematic review included 8 randomized, placebo-controlled trials with low risk of bias, which studied the effect of a daily dose of pregabalin for the treatment of moderate to severe pain in adult patients suffering from fibromyalgia. Of the main results of this systematic review we highlight the major effect that a daily dose of 300 to 600 mg of pregabalin had in the reduction of pain intensity over a follow-up period of 12 to 26 weeks, with tolerable adverse effects, for a minority of people with moderate to severe pain due to fibromyalgia. This paper aims to summarize and discuss the main results and conclusions of this systematic review, as well as its implications for the daily clinical practice.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio