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In technology education, there has been a paradigmatic shift towards student-centered approaches such as learning by doing, constructionism, and experiential learning. Educational robotics allows students to experiment with building and interacting with their creations while also fostering collaborative work. However, understanding the student's response to these approaches is crucial to adapting them during the teaching-learning process. In this sense, neuroscientific tools such as Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Eye-tracker could be useful, allowing the investigation of relevant states experienced by students. Although they have already been used in educational research, their practical relevance in the teaching-learning process has not been extensively investigated. In this perspective article expressing our position, we bring four examples of learning experiences in a robotics class with children, in which we illustrate the usefulness of these tools., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest We declare no conflict of interest in this publication., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.)

Teacher-student relationships have been found consistently important for student school effectiveness in mathematics in the last three decades. Although this observation is generally made from the teacher's perspective, neuroscience can provide new insights by establishing the neurobiological underpinning of social interactions. This paper further develops this line of research by utilizing graph theory to represent interactions between teachers and students at the neural level. Through hyperscanning with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we collected data from the prefrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction of 24 dyads composed of a teacher and a student. Each dyad used a board game to perform a programming logic class that consisted of three steps: independent activities (control), presentation of concepts, and interactive exercises. Graph theory provides results regarding the strength of teacher-student interaction and the main channels involved in these interactions. We combined graph modularity and bootstrap to measure pair coactivation, thus establishing the strength of teacher-student interaction. Also, graph centrality detects the main brain channels involved during this interaction. In general, the teacher's most relevant nodes rely on the regions related to language and number processing, spatial cognition, and attention. Also, the students' most relevant nodes rely on the regions related to task management., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Peritoneal carcinomatosis is a common pattern of recurrence in gastric cancer and is associated with a poor prognosis. Determining predictive factors for peritoneal recurrence can help the selection of patients suitable for more aggressive treatment strategies., Methods: A retrospective chart review of 162 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer with no peritoneal carcinomatosis and treated at a single institution in Brazil from January 1994 to December 2004 was carried out. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify patient and tumor-related characteristics associated with the development of peritoneal metastasis., Results: Twenty-three (14.2%) patients developed peritoneal carcinomatosis. Three independent factors associated with the development of peritoneal metastasis were identified by multivariate analysis: signet-ring cell histology (odds ratio [OR] = 4.9; P = 0.018), the presence of vascular invasion (OR = 4.8; P = 0.022), and the presence of visceral metastasis at diagnosis (OR = 5.1; P = 0.011). Tumor stages T3 or T4 showed a trend towards significance (P = 0.062)., Conclusions: Patients with gastric cancer presenting with signet-ring histology, vascular invasion, or visceral metastasis appear to be at higher risk for the development of peritoneal carcinomatosis.

Background: Gastric cancer is the second leading cause of death due to cancer worldwide and is particularly prevalent in Brazil. Promising new therapeutic agents have already shown activity in some gastrointestinal malignancies and their role in gastric cancer will need to be evaluated. Determining the prognostic factors of survival for patients with gastric cancer can help in identifying patients with a worse prognosis after treatment with the current chemotherapeutic regimens., Methods: A retrospective chart review of 186 patients diagnosed with gastric cancer and treated at a single institution in Brazil from January 1994 to December 2004 was carried out. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify patient- and tumor-related characteristics associated with peritoneal metastasis at diagnosis and with overall survival., Results: Of the 186 patients, 76 were alive at the time of this analysis. The median survival for all patients was 30.1 months. Two independent factors associated with the presence of peritoneal metastasis at diagnosis were identified by multivariate analysis: signet-ring cell type (odds ratio [OR], 10.8; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.1 to 37.5), and visceral metastasis (OR, 51.8; 95% CI, 12.4 to 215.4). The prognostic factors for poor survival were tumor stage T3 or T4 (hazard ratio [HR], 1.87; 95% CI, 1.09 to 3.22) and visceral metastasis (HR, 4.98; 95% CI, 3.02 to 8.20)., Conclusion: Two factors correlated with peritoneal metastasis and two prognostic factors for survival were identified. These findings may contribute to clinical decision-making, treatment tailoring, and the design of future trials.

Screening tests of 62,814 blood donations carried out between October 85 and October 87 in all five blood banks of Goiânia, Central Brazil, were analysed. The private institutions (3 blood banks) collected 80% of all donations and the remaining were collected by public blood banks. Seroprevalence of HIV, HBsAg, Chagas' disease and syphilis were compared with data obtained in the surveillance system and from previous surveys in an attempt to validate this source of health information. A seroprevalence of 0.07% for AIDS (one ELISA test) was calculated, which may suggest the presence of 1900 infected individuals, in the population of the State of Goiás as a whole. This figure seems reasonably close to the official data obtained by compulsory notification. For Chagas' disease, hepatitis B and syphilis seroprevalence of 3.3%, 1.3% and 4.1% were obtained, respectively. The potential usefulness and the limitations of screening in blood banks as a source of reliable morbidity indicator is discussed.

Twenty haemophilic patients were examined neurologically and found to have varying degrees of muscle atrophy. The pathogenesis of the atrophy was investigated by electromyography, serum muscle enzyme levels, and muscle biopsies. In most cases the EMG showed such abnormalities as reduced numbers of functioning motor units and "myopathic" motor unit potentials. Serum enzyme levels were frequently raised, and type 2 fibre atrophy was found in the three patients who underwent muscle biopsy. These findings suggest the presence of neuromyopathic involvement in haemophilic patients.