Elevated neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio is associated with high rates of ICU mortality, length of stay, and invasive mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients with COVID-19 : NRL and severe COVID-19.

Neutrophil and lymphocyte ratio (NLR) has emerged as a complementary marker in intensive care. This study aimed to associate high NLR values with mortality as the primary outcome, and length of stay and need for invasive mechanical ventilation as secondary outcomes, in critically ill patients with COVID-19. A cross-sectional study encompassing 189 critically ill patients with COVID-19 was performed. The receiver operating characteristic curve was used to identify the best NLR cutoff value for ICU mortality (≥ 10.6). An NLR ≥ 10.6, compared with an NLR < 10.6, was associated with higher odds of ICU mortality (odds ratio [OR], 2.77; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.24-6.18), ICU length of stay ≥ 14 days (OR, 3.56; 95% CI, 1.01-12.5), and need for invasive mechanical ventilation (OR, 5.39; 95% CI, 1.96-14.81) in the fully adjusted model (age, sex, kidney dysfunction, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, deep vein thrombosis, antibiotics, anticoagulants, antivirals, corticoids, neuromuscular blockers, and vasoactive drugs). In conclusion, elevated NLR is associated with high rates of mortality, length of stay, and need for invasive mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients with COVID-19.

Genetic Ablation of the Inducible Form of Nitric Oxide in Male Mice Disrupts Immature Neuron Survival in the Adult Dentate Gyrus.

Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) is an enzyme upregulated in the brain during neuroimmune stimuli which is associated with an oxidative and pro-inflammatory environment in several brain regions, including the hippocampal formation and the prefrontal cortex. The dentate gyrus of the hippocampal formation is the site of a process known as adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN). Although many endogenous and extrinsic factors can modulate AHN, the exact participation of specific proinflammatory mediators such as iNOS in these processes remains to be fully elucidated. Here, we investigated how the total genetic ablation of iNOS impacts the hippocampal neurogenic niche and microglial phenotype and if these changes are correlated to the behavioral alterations observed in iNOS knockout (K.O.) mice submitted or not to the chronic unpredictable stress model (CUS - 21 days protocol). Contrary to our initial hypothesis, at control conditions, iNOS K.O. mice displayed no abnormalities on microglial activation in the dentate gyrus. However, they did exhibit impaired newborn cells and immature neuron survival, which was not affected by CUS. The reduction of AHN in iNOS K.O. mice was accompanied by an increased positive coping response in the tail suspension test and facilitation of anxiety-like behaviors in the novelty suppressed feeding. Next, we investigated whether a pro-neurogenic stimulus would rescue the neurogenic capacity of iNOS K.O. mice by administering in control and CUS groups the antidepressant escitalopram (ESC). The chronic treatment with ESC could not rescue the neurogenic capacity or the behavioral changes observed in iNOS K.O. mice. Besides, in the ventromedial prefrontal (vmPFC) cortex there was no change in the expression or the chronic activation of PV neurons (evaluated by double labeling PV with FOSB) in the prelimbic (PrL) or infralimbic subregions. FOSB expression, however, increased in the PrL of iNOS K.O. mice. Our results suggest that iNOS seems essential for the survival of newborn cells and immature neurons in the hippocampus and seem to partially explain the anxiogenic-like behavior observed in iNOS K.O. mice. On the other hand, the iNOS ablation appears to result in increased activity of the PrL which could explain the antidepressant-like behaviors of iNOS K.O mice.

Understanding and improving the quality and reproducibility of Jupyter notebooks.

Jupyter Notebooks have been widely adopted by many different communities, both in science and industry. They support the creation of literate programming documents that combine code, text, and execution results with visualizations and other rich media. The self-documenting aspects and the ability to reproduce results have been touted as significant benefits of notebooks. At the same time, there has been growing criticism that the way in which notebooks are being used leads to unexpected behavior, encourages poor coding practices, and makes it hard to reproduce its results. To better understand good and bad practices used in the development of real notebooks, in prior work we studied 1.4 million notebooks from GitHub. We presented a detailed analysis of their characteristics that impact reproducibility, proposed best practices that can improve the reproducibility, and discussed open challenges that require further research and development. In this paper, we extended the analysis in four different ways to validate the hypothesis uncovered in our original study. First, we separated a group of popular notebooks to check whether notebooks that get more attention have more quality and reproducibility capabilities. Second, we sampled notebooks from the full dataset for an in-depth qualitative analysis of what constitutes the dataset and which features they have. Third, we conducted a more detailed analysis by isolating library dependencies and testing different execution orders. We report how these factors impact the reproducibility rates. Finally, we mined association rules from the notebooks. We discuss patterns we discovered, which provide additional insights into notebook reproducibility. Based on our findings and best practices we proposed, we designed Julynter, a Jupyter Lab extension that identifies potential issues in notebooks and suggests modifications that improve their reproducibility. We evaluate Julynter with a remote user experiment with the goal of assessing Julynter recommendations and usability.

PipelineProfiler: A Visual Analytics Tool for the Exploration of AutoML Pipelines.

In recent years, a wide variety of automated machine learning (AutoML) methods have been proposed to generate end-to-end ML pipelines. While these techniques facilitate the creation of models, given their black-box nature, the complexity of the underlying algorithms, and the large number of pipelines they derive, they are difficult for developers to debug. It is also challenging for machine learning experts to select an AutoML system that is well suited for a given problem. In this paper, we present the Pipeline Profiler, an interactive visualization tool that allows the exploration and comparison of the solution space of machine learning (ML) pipelines produced by AutoML systems. PipelineProfiler is integrated with Jupyter Notebook and can be combined with common data science tools to enable a rich set of analyses of the ML pipelines, providing users a better understanding of the algorithms that generated them as well as insights into how they can be improved. We demonstrate the utility of our tool through use cases where PipelineProfiler is used to better understand and improve a real-world AutoML system. Furthermore, we validate our approach by presenting a detailed analysis of a think-aloud experiment with six data scientists who develop and evaluate AutoML tools.

Exploring Reproducibility in Visualization.

The American National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has recently released the report "Reproducibility and Replicability in Science." The report has prompted discussions within many disciplines about the extent of the current adoption of reproducibility and replicability, the challenges involved in publishing reproducible results as well as strategies for improving. We organized a panel at the IEEE VIS conference 2019 to start a discussion on the reproducibility challenges faced by the visualization community and how those challenges might be addressed. In this viewpoint, we summarize key findings of the NASEM report, the panel discussion, and outline a set of recommendations for the visualization community.

Nutritional assay Pereskia spp.: unconventional vegetable.

Pereskia grandifolia Haworth (PGH) and Pereskia aculeata Miller (PAM) are recognized sources of proteins; dietary fiber; vitamins and minerals make this plant leaves, raw, cooked, and braised, an important ally against protein and micronutrient deficiencies. One of the main problems is the presence of antinutritional factors that may interfere in the digestibility and bioavailability of some nutrients. The objective was to evaluate the amino acid profile and the chemical score of the raw leaves and the effects of heating media and time on the total dietary fiber, minerals, trypsin inhibition, oxalic acid and tannins of leaves of PGH and PAM. The samples had similar amino acid profiles and total dietary fiber. With regard to antinutritional compounds, heating the leaves of PGH led to a decrease in trypsin inhibition, primarily after the first minutes of wet cooking. Oxalic acid and tannins predominated in both species. Considering the interaction with time, the variables related to iron and zinc minimized the tannin responses in PGH and PAM, respectively. Heating media and times interfered with the chemical components present in the leaves of Pereskia species and led to high antinutrient retention after heat treatment.

Enzymes modulation by dried grape pomace from the manufacture of wines and juices

The processing of grapes for the manufacture of juices and wines, generates large quantities of by-products rich in metabolites with antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and cicatrizing activities. The high homology between human enzymes and snake venoms makes the latter valuable laboratory tools for the study of pathophysiological processes. Proteases and phospholipases A2 act in processes related to hemostasis and inflammatory response. Thus, in this work, dried pomace obtained from grape (Isabel, Niagara, Bordô, BRS Violeta and Blend cultivars) processing were evaluated on phospholipase, proteolytic, hemolytic and thrombolytic activities induced by snakes venoms and the content of phenolic compounds and minerals was evaluated. The dried pomace exerted inhibitory and potentiating actions in all analyzed activities. The enzymatic modulators present in the evaluated dried pomace have potential for therapeutic use, although their broad characterization is still necessary, in order to define adequate amounts and formulations to obtain efficacy and safety in their use.

Curriculum and pedagogical practice of physical education in the daily school life: a review in Brazilian journals / Currículo y práctica pedagógica en el cotidiano escolar de la educación física: una revisión en periódicos brasileños / Currículo e prática pedagógica no cotidiano escolar da educação física: uma revisão em periódicos nacionais

Abstract: This article analyzes relations between Physical Education curricula and teacher practice in Brazilian Primary Education. We conducted a systematic review of Brazilian Physical Education journals and selected 13 articles published between 2008 and 2017. We found that the National Curriculum Parameters, state and municipal curricula, and political-pedagogical projects inform educational planning and practice without interfering with teachers' autonomy. The studies point to content systematization as a predominant element to legitimize Physical Education. The design and analysis of teaching proposals highlighted the hegemony of sports as teaching content, but attempts were found to broaden the view of sports as a cultural phenomenon. We suggest conducting joint research between schools and universities on educational school practice that informs curriculum review and production in teacher's degrees and continuing education.

Resumen: Nuestro objetivo fue analizar relaciones entre plan de estudios y la educación física cotidiana en la Educación Primaria Brasileña. Así, realizamos una revisión sistemática en periódicos del campo de la educación físicabrasileña, resultando em una selección de 13 artículos publicados entre 2008 y 2017. Concluimos que los Parámetros Curriculares Nacionales, los currículos en los estados y ciudades, y los proyectos político-pedagógicos contribuyen con el plano y la práctica pedagógica, sin herir la autonomía del profesor. Los estudios presentados indican la organización de los contenidos como preponderante para legitimación de la educación física. Las publicaciones sobre las propuestas de enseñanza muestran la hegemonía del deporte, pero percibimos la tentativa de una ampliación de su comprensión como fenómeno cultural. Sugerimos investigaciones que problematizan la practica pedagógica cotidiana, que contribuyan con las reformulaciones y producciones curriculares en la formación inicial y continuada de maestros, en colaboración entre la escuela y la universidad.

Resumo: No presente artigo analisamos as articulações entre currículo e prática pedagógica da Educação Física no cotidiano escolar do Ensino Fundamental. Para tanto, realizamos um estudo de revisão sistemática em periódicos do campo da Educação Física brasileira, resultando numa seleção de 13 artigos entre 2008 e 2017. Concluímos que os Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais, os currículos dos estados e municípios e os projetos político-pedagógicos subsidiam o planejamento e a prática pedagógica, sem interferir na autonomia do professor. Os estudos apresentados indicam a sistematização dos conteúdos como elemento preponderante para a legitimação da Educação Física. As elaborações e análises de propostas de ensino repercutiram a hegemonia do esporte como conteúdo, porém percebemos a tentativa de ampliação do seu entendimento como fenômeno cultural. Sugerimos pesquisas que problematizem a prática pedagógica no cotidiano escolar, que subsidiem reformulações e produções curriculares na formação inicial e continuada, em colaboração entre escola e universidade.

Spatio-Temporal Urban Data Analysis: A Visual Analytics Perspective.

Visual analytics systems can greatly help in the analysis of urban data allowing domain experts from academia and city governments to better understand cities, and thus enable better operations, informed planning and policies. Effectively designing these systems is challenging and requires bringing together methods from different domains. In this paper, we discuss the challenges involved in designing a visual analytics system to interactively explore large spatio-temporal data sets and give an overview of our research that combines visualization and data management to tackle these challenges.

ARIES: Enabling Visual Exploration and Organization of Art Image Collections.

Art historians have traditionally used physical light boxes to prepare exhibits or curate collections. On a light box, they can place slides or printed images, move the images around at will, group them as desired, and visual-ly compare them. The transition to digital images has rendered this workflow obsolete. Now, art historians lack well-designed, unified interactive software tools that effectively support the operations they perform with physi-cal light boxes. To address this problem, we designed ARIES (ARt Image Exploration Space), an interactive image manipulation system that enables the exploration and organization of fine digital art. The system allows images to be compared in multiple ways, offering dynamic overlays analogous to a physical light box, and sup-porting advanced image comparisons and feature-matching functions, available through computational image processing. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system to support art historians tasks through real use cases.

Linguagens e culturas infantis em pauta / Children's languages and cultures in question / Lenguas y culturas en la agenda de los niños

O texto apresenta a resenha da obra Linguagens e culturas infantis, na qual a autora revela o mundo infantil, a partir da leitura e interpretação da voz das crianças e destaca a importância do adulto observar e escutar a criança, para compreender sua mensagem.

The paper presents the review of the work languages and children's cultures, in which the author reveals the children's world, from the reading and interpretation of the voice of children and highlights the importance of adult watch and listen to the child, to understand your message.

En el documento se presenta la revisión de las lenguas y culturas de trabajo de los niños, en los que el autor revela mundo de los niños, a partir de la lectura e interpretación de la voz de los niños y pone de relieve la importancia de reloj de adultos y escuchar al niño para entender su mensaje.

Visually Exploring Transportation Schedules.

Public transportation schedules are designed by agencies to optimize service quality under multiple constraints. However, real service usually deviates from the plan. Therefore, transportation analysts need to identify, compare and explain both eventual and systemic performance issues that must be addressed so that better timetables can be created. The purely statistical tools commonly used by analysts pose many difficulties due to the large number of attributes at trip- and station-level for planned and real service. Also challenging is the need for models at multiple scales to search for patterns at different times and stations, since analysts do not know exactly where or when relevant patterns might emerge and need to compute statistical summaries for multiple attributes at different granularities. To aid in this analysis, we worked in close collaboration with a transportation expert to design TR-EX, a visual exploration tool developed to identify, inspect and compare spatio-temporal patterns for planned and real transportation service. TR-EX combines two new visual encodings inspired by Marey's Train Schedule: Trips Explorer for trip-level analysis of frequency, deviation and speed; and Stops Explorer for station-level study of delay, wait time, reliability and performance deficiencies such as bunching. To tackle overplotting and to provide a robust representation for a large numbers of trips and stops at multiple scales, the system supports variable kernel bandwidths to achieve the level of detail required by users for different tasks. We justify our design decisions based on specific analysis needs of transportation analysts. We provide anecdotal evidence of the efficacy of TR-EX through a series of case studies that explore NYC subway service, which illustrate how TR-EX can be used to confirm hypotheses and derive new insights through visual exploration.

Structured Open Urban Data: Understanding the Landscape.

A growing number of cities are now making urban data freely available to the public. Besides promoting transparency, these data can have a transformative effect in social science research as well as in how citizens participate in governance. These initiatives, however, are fairly recent and the landscape of open urban data is not well known. In this study, we try to shed some light on this through a detailed study of over 9,000 open data sets from 20 cities in North America. We start by presenting general statistics about the content, size, nature, and popularity of the different data sets, and then examine in more detail structured data sets that contain tabular data. Since a key benefit of having a large number of data sets available is the ability to fuse information, we investigate opportunities for data integration. We also study data quality issues and time-related aspects, namely, recency and change frequency. Our findings are encouraging in that most of the data are structured and published in standard formats that are easy to parse; there is ample opportunity to integrate different data sets; and the volume of data is increasing steadily. But they also uncovered a number of challenges that need to be addressed to enable these data to be fully leveraged. We discuss both our findings and issues involved in using open urban data.

Analysis of HFE genes C282Y, H63D, and S65D in patients with hyperferritinemia from northeastern Brazil.

BACKGROUND: Hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is a genetic disease caused by the high absorption and deposition of iron in several organs. This accumulation results in several clinical complications such as cirrhosis, arthritis, cardiopathies, diabetes, sexual disorders, and skin darkening. The H63D and C282Y mutations are well defined in the HH etiology. The objective of this article is identification of the H63D and C282Y mutations in the HFE protein gene and the frequency assessment of these mutations in patients with persistent increase of serum ferritin in patients from Natal City from state of Rio Grande do Norte, located in northeastern Brazil. RESULTS: Of the 299 patients studied for C282Y and H63D, 48.49% showed absence of mutation and 51.51% showed some sort of mutation: heterozygous C282Y mutation in 4.35% patients, homozygous C282Y mutation in 2.67% patients, heterozygous H63D mutation in 31.44% patients, homozygous H63D mutation in 8.03% patients, and heterozygous for the mutation in both genes (C282Y/H63D) in 5.02% patients. The S65C mutation was studied in 112 patients and heterozygous mutation (S65D/WT) in 2.67% of patients and double mutation (H63D/S65C) in 1.78% of patients were observed. CONCLUSION: Due to the high prevalence of hemochromatosis, its genetic diagnosis has become a challenge, especially in the high-risk group.

Evaluation of the protective effect of guava fruits and leaves on oxidative stress / Avaliação do efeito protetor de folhas e frutos da goiabeira no estresse oxidativo

Oxidative stress is an imbalance between reactive oxygen species and antioxidant capacity of action. Thus, research, alternative to mitigate the damaging effects of oxidative stress, improving the body´s antioxidant capacity, prevented the disease and its complicatons. The leaves and fruits of guava are rich in the antioxidants. This work aimed to study the effect of flour and ethanolic/acetone extracts leaves and fruits of guava on lipid oxidation in rats with hypercholesterolemic. The flour and extracts decreased leves of triglycerides and non ­ HDL cholesterol and increased in the HDL. Cholesterol levels decreased only leaves and fruits. The activity of GPx decreased in samples serum in all treatments and the SOD only the extracts were effective. There was no difference in levels the MDA in relation hypercholesterolemic control. For the samples of liver, there was no difference in activity SOD. In relation of activity GPx, only the flour was effective. There were differences in levels the MDA of the hypercholesterolemic animals treated with flour and extracts with the animals of the hypercholesterolemic control.

O estresse oxidativo é um desequilíbrio entre as espécies reativas de oxigênio e capacidade antioxidante de ação. Dessa forma, pesquisas buscam alternativas para amenizar os efeitos prejudiciais do estresse oxidativo, melhorando a capacidade antioxidante do organismo, prevenido as enfermidades e suas complicações. As folhas e frutos de goiaba são ricos em antioxidantes. Este trabalho teve como objetivo estudar o efeito da farinha e folhas etanólicos/acetona extratos e frutos de goiabeira na oxidação lipídica em ratos com hipercolesterolemia. A farinha e extratos de folhas diminuiu de triglicérides e colesterol não - HDL e aumento do HDL. Os níveis de colesterol diminuiram apenas folhas e frutas. A actividade da GPx diminuiu em amostras de soro, em todos os tratamentos e a SOD apenas os extratos foram eficazes. Não houve nenhuma diferença nos níveis de MDA no controle da hipercolesterolemia relação. Para as amostras de fígado, não houve diferença na atividade da SOD. Na relação de GPx atividade, apenas a farinha foi eficaz. Houve diferenças nos níveis do MDA dos animais hipercolesterolêmicos tratados com farinha e extratos com os animais do controle hipercolesterolêmica.

Using Topological Analysis to Support Event-Guided Exploration in Urban Data.

The explosion in the volume of data about urban environments has opened up opportunities to inform both policy and administration and thereby help governments improve the lives of their citizens, increase the efficiency of public services, and reduce the environmental harms of development. However, cities are complex systems and exploring the data they generate is challenging. The interaction between the various components in a city creates complex dynamics where interesting facts occur at multiple scales, requiring users to inspect a large number of data slices over time and space. Manual exploration of these slices is ineffective, time consuming, and in many cases impractical. In this paper, we propose a technique that supports event-guided exploration of large, spatio-temporal urban data. We model the data as time-varying scalar functions and use computational topology to automatically identify events in different data slices. To handle a potentially large number of events, we develop an algorithm to group and index them, thus allowing users to interactively explore and query event patterns on the fly. A visual exploration interface helps guide users towards data slices that display interesting events and trends. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique on two different data sets from New York City (NYC): data about taxi trips and subway service. We also report on the feedback we received from analysts at different NYC agencies.

Quantificação de compostos fenólicos e ácido ascórbico em frutos e polpas congeladas de acerola, caju, goiaba e morango / Quantification of phenolic compounds and ascorbic acid in fruits and frozen pulp of acerola, cashew, strawberry and guava

O crescente interesse da população pela promoção da saúde vem despertando a atenção dos consumidores por alimentos ricos em antioxidantes, combinado com a praticidade do consumo de sucos de frutos processados. O presente trabalho objetivou quantificar e avaliar a capacidade antioxidante de compostos fenólicos e ácido ascórbico em frutas in natura e polpas congeladas. As frutas in natura e polpas congeladas obtidas na região de Lavras - MG foram submetidas à quantificação de compostos fenólicos e ácido ascórbico e os respectivos extratos acetônico-etanólico e acetônico-metanólico. Foram determinadas suas atividades antioxidantes pelos métodos radicalares DPPH e ABTS. O extrato acetônico-metanólico foi mais efetivo para extrair os compostos antioxidantes das amostras. Apenas as polpas congeladas de acerola apresentaram uma redução do teor de compostos fenólicos em relação ao fruto. Para o teor de ácido ascórbico, houve uma redução nas polpas congeladas de acerola e goiaba. As amostras de acerola apresentaram os maiores teores de compostos fenólicos, ácido ascórbico e atividade antioxidante em relação aos demais frutos analisados.

The growing public interest in health- promotion, has called the attention of consumers for foods rich in antioxidants, combined with the practicality of the consumption of processed fruit juices. Therefore, this study aimed to quantify and evaluate the antioxidant capacity of phenolic compounds and ascorbic acid in fruits "in natura" and frozen pulps. The fruits "in natura" and frozen pulps from region of Lavras-MG, underwent quantification of phenolic compounds, ascorbic acid and the corresponding extracts acetonic-ethanolic and acetonic-methanolic. Their antioxidant activities were evaluated by DPPH and ABTS radical methods. The extract acetonic-methanolic was more effective to extract the antioxidant compounds from samples. Only frozen acerola pulps showed lower content of phenolic compounds in relation to fruit. For ascorbic acid, there was a reduction in the frozen pulp of acerola and guava. Acerola samples showed higher content of phenolic compounds, ascorbic acid and antioxidant activity compared to other fruits analyzed.

Visual exploration of big spatio-temporal urban data: a study of New York City taxi trips.

As increasing volumes of urban data are captured and become available, new opportunities arise for data-driven analysis that can lead to improvements in the lives of citizens through evidence-based decision making and policies. In this paper, we focus on a particularly important urban data set: taxi trips. Taxis are valuable sensors and information associated with taxi trips can provide unprecedented insight into many different aspects of city life, from economic activity and human behavior to mobility patterns. But analyzing these data presents many challenges. The data are complex, containing geographical and temporal components in addition to multiple variables associated with each trip. Consequently, it is hard to specify exploratory queries and to perform comparative analyses (e.g., compare different regions over time). This problem is compounded due to the size of the data-there are on average 500,000 taxi trips each day in NYC. We propose a new model that allows users to visually query taxi trips. Besides standard analytics queries, the model supports origin-destination queries that enable the study of mobility across the city. We show that this model is able to express a wide range of spatio-temporal queries, and it is also flexible in that not only can queries be composed but also different aggregations and visual representations can be applied, allowing users to explore and compare results. We have built a scalable system that implements this model which supports interactive response times; makes use of an adaptive level-of-detail rendering strategy to generate clutter-free visualization for large results; and shows hidden details to the users in a summary through the use of overlay heat maps. We present a series of case studies motivated by traffic engineers and economists that show how our model and system enable domain experts to perform tasks that were previously unattainable for them.