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Objectives Healthcare professionals’ high risk of infection and burnout in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic probably hindered their much-needed preparedness to respond. We aimed to inform how individual and institutional factors contributed for the preparedness to respond during the first months of a public health emergency. Study design Cross-sectional study. Methods We surveyed healthcare workers from a Local Health Unit in Portugal, which comprises primary health care centers and hospital services, including public health units and intensive care units, in the second and third months of the COVID-19 epidemic in Portugal. The 460 answers, completed by 252 participants (about 10% of the healthcare workers), were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regressions. We estimated adjusted odds ratios for the readiness and willingness to respond. Results Readiness to respond was associated with the perception of adequate infrastructures (aOR = 4.04, P

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the most severe form of leishmaniasis and is caused by Leishmania infantum in the Americas. Since the use of Milteforam™ was authorized to treat canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) in Brazil in 2017, there has also been fear of the emergence of parasites resistant to this drug and, through cross-resistance mechanisms, to meglumine antimoniate and amphotericin B. Additionally, the literature shows that acquisition of resistance is followed by increased parasite fitness, with higher rates of proliferation, infectivity and metacyclogenesis, which are determining factors for parasite virulence. In this context, this study aims to analyze the impact of treating a dog with Milteforan™ on the generation of parasites resistant to miltefosine, meglumine antimoniate, and amphotericin B. To this end, in vitro susceptibility tests were conducted against these drugs with T0 (parasites isolated from the dog before treatment with Milteforan™), T1 (after one course of treatment), and T2 (after two courses of treatment) isolates. The rates of cell proliferation, infectivity, and metacyclogenesis of the isolates were also evaluated. The results indicate a gradual increase in parasite resistance to miltefosine and amphotericin B with increasing the number of treatment courses. A trend increase in the metacyclogenesis rate of the parasites was also observed as drug resistance increased. Therefore, treatment of CVL with Milteforan™ induces resistance to miltefosine and amphotericin B as well as changes in parasite fitness, and may have an impact on animal and human public health.

Digital agriculture has evolved significantly over the last few years due to the technological developments in automation and computational intelligence applied to the agricultural sector, including vineyards which are a relevant crop in the Mediterranean region. In this work, a study is presented of semantic segmentation for vine detection in real-world vineyards by exploring state-of-the-art deep segmentation networks and conventional unsupervised methods. Camera data have been collected on vineyards using an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) equipped with a dual imaging sensor payload, namely a high-definition RGB camera and a five-band multispectral and thermal camera. Extensive experiments using deep-segmentation networks and unsupervised methods have been performed on multimodal datasets representing four distinct vineyards located in the central region of Portugal. The reported results indicate that SegNet, U-Net, and ModSegNet have equivalent overall performance in vine segmentation. The results also show that multimodality slightly improves the performance of vine segmentation, but the NIR spectrum alone generally is sufficient on most of the datasets. Furthermore, results suggest that high-definition RGB images produce equivalent or higher performance than any lower resolution multispectral band combination. Lastly, Deep Learning (DL) networks have higher overall performance than classical methods. The code and dataset are publicly available on https://github.com/Cybonic/DL_vineyard_segmentation_study.git.

The recent paper by AlShebli et al. (2020) investigates the impact of mentorship in young scientists. Among their conclusions, they state that female prot\'eg\'es benefit more from male than female mentorship. We herein expose a critical flaw in their methodological design that is a common issue in Astronomy, namely "selection biases". An effect that if not treated properly may lead to unwarranted causality claims. In their analysis, selection biases seem to be present in the response rate of their survey (8.35%), the choice of database, success criterion, and the overlook of the numerous drawbacks female researchers face in academia. We discuss these issues and their implications -- one of them being the potential increase in obstacles for women in academia. Finally, we reinforce the dangers of not considering selection bias effects in studies aimed at retrieving causal relations., Comment: Submitted to Nature Communications on Nov. 27 -- comments are welcome

Introduction: Patients experience preoperative anxiety. The objective of this study was to assess patients’ fears concerning anaesthesia and evaluate possible associations with sociodemographic background and previous anaesthesia. Methods: A survey was filled preoperatively, for 6 months, including anaesthesia-related fears, sociodemographic data, previous anaesthesia and surgery, current surgical and anaesthetic procedure, and preferred anaesthesia technique. Descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, Chi-square test, t-test and ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. Results: 153 questionnaires were collected. The mean age was 58 years, 61.4% were female and 59.5% employed. 47.1% had an anaesthesia consultation before. 49.7% were ASA II. 78.4% had been submitted to surgery before, 81.7% to anaesthesia and 14.5% had regional anaesthesia. In 73.5% general anaesthesia preferred. Half of patients with previous regional anaesthesia favoured this technique. The most relevant fears were “being paralysed because of anaesthesia”, “not waking up” and “waking up during surgery”. The least relevant were “fasting incapacity”, “having nightmares” and “speaking of personal matters”. A statistically significant relation was observed between the fear of “feeling pain after surgery” and having a previous anaesthetic experience. Female and unemployed patients were more concerned with general complications, while male patients gave more importance to awareness and paralysis. Conclusion: Paralysis after anaesthesia, intraoperative awareness and death were the main concerns of our inquiries.&nbsp

Poster presented at the 5th Annual Meeting (3-4 of Novembre, 2016; placed in Axis Vermar Conference & Beach Hotal, Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal)

to evaluate the effects of a 12--weeks combined aerobic--resistance exercise therapy on fatigue and isokinetic muscle strength, glycemic control and health--related quality of life (HRQoL) in moderately affected type 2 diabetes (T2DM) patients.a randomized controlled trial design was employed. Forty--three T2DM patients were assigned to an exercise group (n = 22), performing 3 weekly sessions of 60 minutes of combined aerobic--resistance exercise for 12--weeks; or a no exercise control group (n = 21). Both groups were evaluated at a baseline and after 12--weeks of exercise therapy for: 1) muscle strength and fatigue by isokinetic dynamometry; 2) plasma glycated hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C); and 3) HRQoL utilizing the SF--36 questionnaire.the exercise therapy led to improvements in muscle fatigue in knee extensors (--55%) and increased muscle strength in knee flexors and extensors (+15 to +30%), while HbA1C decreased (--18%). In addition, the exercising patients showed sizeable improvements in HRQoL: physical function (+53%), vitality (+21%) and mental health (+40%).12--weeks of combined aerobic--resistance exercise was highly effective to improve muscle strength and fatigue, glycemic control and several aspects of HRQoL in T2DM patients. These data encourage the use of aerobic and resistance exercise in the good clinical care of T2DM.

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The objective of this research is to develop a fuel cell hydrogen vehicle model (FC-RVS) and validate it with existing black-box models and with real on-board data. On-board data for dynamic profile, topography and fuel consumption was collected in the city of Porto in the framework of the hydrogen bus demonstration project CUTE (Clean Urban Transport for Europe). The vehicle used is part of a fleet of 27 urban buses developed and built by Evobus and uses a fuel cell based non-hybrid propulsion system. The data collected in Porto reflects a very demanding drive cycle that resulted in the availability of data for several operating conditions. The fuel cell vehicle is modelled by using efficiency maps of each powertrain component. Trough a backward approach the power requested is transformed in hydrogen consumption. Finally, optimized configurations to achieve the lowest hydrogen consumption possible are analyzed, including hybridization. FC-RVS model predictions were within 4% of measured results.

The Portuguese national programme of vaccination has instituted a two-dose MMR vaccine schedule. The second dose of MMR (measles-mumps-rubella combined vaccine) is given at 11-13 years of age, for both sexes. This study was conducted to evaluate the duration of immunity of the monovalent measles vaccine, and the efficacy of a second dose given as MMR. MMR (Triviraten Berna with the strain Edmonston-Zagreb) was given to the 38 participants. Blood samples were collected before and after vaccination. Thirty-six participants had been vaccinated with measles monovalent vaccine during childhood. To measure anti-measles IgG (mIgG), an enzyme immunoassay was used. Participants were classified as "susceptible" or "immune", using 200 mIU/ml (milli international units per millilitre) as the threshold for "immune". Geometric mean concentration (GMC) of mIgG was 1401 mIU/ml in prevaccination sera (n = 38). Thirty-five (92%) of the adolescents were "immune". Only the two unvaccinated had a positive measles history. GMC in the sera of the 36 vaccinated participants was 1301 mIU/ml. Neither the time since measles vaccination nor age at vaccination were correlated with the levels of mIgG. After receiving MMR, all adolescents became "immune". GMC of mIgG was 2879 mIU/ml in postvaccination sera (n = 38). In 28 (74%) participants, mIgG levels increased after receiving MMR. Mean concentration increase was 1082 mIU/ml. For measles, results support the use of a two-dose MMR vaccine schedule in Portugal.

Submitted by Maria da Luz Antunes (mluz.antunes@estesl.ipl.pt) on 2018-12-30T23:03:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 A reciclagem de resíduos na perspectiva das ciências sociais_revisão bibliográfica das variáveis situacionais.pdf: 1107327 bytes, checksum: 797017ff22032d51892d5f29aad84f55 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-30T23:03:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 A reciclagem de resíduos na perspectiva das ciências sociais_revisão bibliográfica das variáveis situacionais.pdf: 1107327 bytes, checksum: 797017ff22032d51892d5f29aad84f55 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1998 info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The work aholism, defined as addiction at work, increase burnout and negatively affects the psychological well-being. It was developed a quantitative study using self-reported measures. This study aims to evaluate the variables: passion for work, work engagement, engagement for life and job satisfaction as predictors of workaholism and the effects of workaholism on the psychological well-being and burnout. With a sample of 199 workers, the results of multiple linear regression analysis allowed to identify that some of the variables and their dimensions have significant effects on the workaholism and on psychological well-being and burnout.