Rio de Janeiro State University

About: Rio de Janeiro State University is a education organization based out in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 16631 authors who have published 30919 publications receiving 465753 citations. The organization is also known as: UERJ & Rio de Janeiro State University.

Reconstruction of Family-Level Phylogenetic Relationships within Demospongiae (Porifera) Using Nuclear Encoded Housekeeping Genes

Abstract: Background: Demosponges are challenging for phylogenetic systematics because of their plastic and relatively simple morphologies and many deep divergences between major clades. To improve understanding of the phylogenetic relationships within Demospongiae, we sequenced and analyzed seven nuclear housekeeping genes involved in a variety of cellular functions from a diverse group of sponges. Methodology/Principal Findings: We generated data from each of the four sponge classes (i.e., Calcarea, Demospongiae, Hexactinellida, and Homoscleromorpha), but focused on family-level relationships within demosponges. With data for 21 newly sampled families, our Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian-based approaches recovered previously phylogenetically defined taxa: Keratosa p , Myxospongiae p , Spongillida p , Haploscleromorpha p (the marine haplosclerids) and Democlavia p .W e found conflicting results concerning the relationships of Keratosa p and Myxospongiae p to the remaining demosponges, but our results strongly supported a clade of Haploscleromorpha p +Spongillida p +Democlavia p . In contrast to hypotheses based on mitochondrial genome and ribosomal data, nuclear housekeeping gene data suggested that freshwater sponges (Spongillida p ) are sister to Haploscleromorpha p rather than part of Democlavia p . Within Keratosa p , we found equivocal results as to the monophyly of Dictyoceratida. Within Myxospongiae p , Chondrosida and Verongida were monophyletic. A wellsupported clade within Democlavia p , Tetractinellida p , composed of all sampled members of Astrophorina and Spirophorina (including the only lithistid in our analysis), was consistently revealed as the sister group to all other members of Democlavia p . Within Tetractinellida p , we did not recover monophyletic Astrophorina or Spirophorina. Our results also reaffirmed the monophyly of order Poecilosclerida (excluding Desmacellidae and Raspailiidae), and polyphyly of Hadromerida and Halichondrida. Conclusions/Significance: These results, using an independent nuclear gene set, confirmed many hypotheses based on ribosomal and/or mitochondrial genes, and they also identified clades with low statistical support or clades that conflicted with traditional morphological classification. Our results will serve as a basis for future exploration of these outstanding questions using more taxon- and gene-rich datasets.

Psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (B-ECOHIS)

Abstract: Background: Oral disorders can have a negative impact on the functional, social and psychological wellbeing of young children and their families and cause pain/discomfort for the child. Oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) has emerged as an important health outcome in clinical trials and healthcare research. The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) is a proxy measure of children’s OHRQoL designed to assess the negative impact of oral disorders on the quality of life of preschool children. The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the ECOHIS (B-ECOHIS). Methods: This investigation was carried out in preliminary and field studies. The preliminary study comprised a cross-sectional study carried out in the city of Petropolis, Brazil. A sample of 150 children from two to five years of age was recruited at a public hospital. In the field study, an epidemiological survey was carried out in public and private preschools of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The B-ECOHIS was answered by 1643 parents/caregivers of five-year-old male and female preschool children. In both phases, oral examinations were performed by a single previously calibrated dentist. Reliability was determined through test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Validity was determined through convergent and discriminant validities. The correlation between the scores obtained on the child and family impact sections was assessed. Results: In the preliminary (P) and field (F) study, test-retest reliability correlation values were 0.98 and 0.99 for the child impact section and 0.97 and 0.99 for the family impact section, respectively. The B-ECOHIS demonstrated internal consistency: child impact section (P: a = 0.74; F: a = 0.80) and family impact section (P: a = 0.59; F: a = 0.76). The correlation between the scores obtained on the child and family impact sections was statistically significant (P: rs = 0.54; F: rs = 0.62; p ≤ 0.001). In both phases of the study, B-ECOHIS scores were significantly associated with the decayed, missing and filled teeth index, decayed teeth and discolored upper anterior teeth (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The B-ECOHIS proved reliable and valid for assessing the negative impact of oral disorders on the quality of life of preschool children.

Dissipation coefficients from scalar and fermion quantum field interactions

Abstract: Dissipation coefficients are calculated in the adiabatic, near thermal equilibrium regime for a large class of renormalizable interaction configurations involving a two-stage mechanism, where a background scalar field is coupled to heavy intermediate scalar or fermion fields which in turn are coupled to light scalar or fermion radiation fields. These interactions are typical of warm inflation microscopic model building. Two perturbative regimes are shown where well defined approximations for the spectral functions apply. One regime is at high temperature, when the masses of both intermediate and radiation fields are less than the temperature scale and where the poles of the spectral functions dominate. The other regime is at low temperature, when the intermediate field masses are much bigger than the temperature and where the low energy and low three-momentum regime dominate the spectral functions. The dissipation coefficients in these two regimes are derived. However, due to resummation issues for the high temperature case, only phenomenological approximate estimates are provided for the dissipation in this regime. In the low temperature case, higher loop contributions are suppressed and so no resummation is necessary. In addition to inflationary cosmology, the application of our results to cosmological phase transitions is also discussed.