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COVID-19 and obesity are two pandemic diseases that the world is currently facing. Both activate the immune system and mediate inflammation. A sequence of disease phases in patients with severe COVID-19 results in a cytokine storm, which amplifies the subclinical inflammation that already exists in patients with obesity. Pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemotactic factors increase insulin resistance in obesity. Therefore, a greater systemic inflammatory response is establishe, along with an increased risk of thrombotic phenomena and hyperglycemic conditions. These changes further impair pulmonary, cardiac, hepatic, and renal functions, in addition to hindering glycemic control in people with diabetes and pre-diabetes. This review explains the pathophysiological mechanisms of these two pandemic diseases, provides a deeper understanding of this harmful interaction and lists possible therapeutic strategies for this risk group.

Competency Questions (CQs) play an important role in ontology development lifecycles as they represent functional ontology requirements. One of the main problems that hamper their proper use lies in the lack of tools that assist users to check if CQs are being fulfilled by the ontology being defined, particularly when these ontologies are defined in OWL (Ontology Web Language) under Description Logic formalism. Recently there has been a trend in checking CQs against ontologies using the RDF query engine SPARQL. Naturally, this language, being created for the formalism of Semantic Networks, is clearly not expressive enough, and, thus, inadequate to check the fulfillment of OWL CQs. As SPARQL queries can be performed only at the assertional level (instances), or at most the schema level, they are not shaped to entail an answer which may be deduced by the ontology using a subsumption not explicit in the ontology. The tool takes advantage of the WordNet lexical to deal with synonyms and adjectives stated in the CQs. In some cases, the tool shows an explanation of why the CQ being treated is considered valid with regard to the ontology. We present the tool's architecture, capabilities and test examples against a number of controlled natural language CQs.

School dropout in Brazilian public education is a huge problem. One in four Brazilians leave school prematurely, before completing high school. This work deals with part of the problem, analyzing school dropout in the last year of Middle School on public schools of Pernambuco/Brazil, with data collected from the official National School Census, between 2011 and 2012. Decision Trees, Rules Induction and Logistic Regression were the Knowledge extraction techniques applied to identify the profile of a dropout student and estimate the propensity for that. Results show that age, classes' shift and geographic region strongly influence dropout. Resumo. A evasão escolar na educação pública brasileira é um problema de grandes proporções. Um em cada quatro brasileiros deixa a escola prematuramente, antes de terminar o ensino médio. Este trabalho faz um recorte do problema, ao analisar a evasão escolar no último ano do ensino fundamental nas escolas públicas estaduais e municipais do estado de Pernambuco, com base nos dados dos Censos Escolares 2011 e 2012. Árvore de Decisão, Indução de Regras e Regressão Logística foram as técnicas para extração de conhecimento aplicadas visando a identificar o perfil do aluno evasor e estimar a propensão à evasão. Os resultados mostraram que fatores como idade, turno das aulas e região geográfica das escolas influenciam fortemente a evasão.

Umuarama, v. 19, n. 4, p. 247-251, out./dez. 2016. RESUMO:Curcuma longa é uma espécie asiática perene e rizomatosa com grandes propriedades medicinais, alimentícias e ornamentais. No processo micropropagativo carece de muitas informações dentre a faixa espectral mais adequada ao seu desenvolvimento. Sendo assim, o objetivo desse trabalho foi avaliar diferentes filmes espectrais no desenvolvimento de plântulas de C. longa cultivadas in vitro. Para tanto, brotações de C. longa foram inoculadas em meio Murashig e Skoog e suplementado com 30 g/L de sacarose, 6,5 g/L de ágar 4, 44 μM/L de Benzil aminopurina (BAP) e 1,08 μM/L ácido naftaleno acético (ANA). O pH do meio foi ajustado para 5,8. Os brotos foram submetidos a diferentes intensidades e qualidade espectral de luz: branco, vermelho, amarelo, azul e verde. As plântulas foram mantidas em sala de crescimento em luz constante de 25C° e fotoperíodo de 24 horas por 145 dias. Foram avaliadas características morfológicas e anatômicas. Os resultados obtidos demonstraram que as diferenças espectraris propiciaram diferenças no desenvolvimento das plântulas de C. longa e também na contaminação in vitro. O diâmetro da base das plântulas, a massa seca e fresca da parte área e raiz foram influenciadas pelas diferentes faixas espectrais, sendo que de modo geral os filmes, amarelo e branco foram os que propiciaram maiores valores para essas características. Já o filme verde foi o que menos favoreceu o ganho de massa das plântulas, além disso, alta taxa de contaminação foi observada na presença desse filme. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Açafrão-da-terra. Filmes coloridos. Micropropagação. Morfologia. LUMINOUS SPECTRUM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF IN-VITRO Curcuma longa SEEDLINGSABSTRACT: Curcuma longa is a perennial Asiatic rhizomelic species with important medicinal, food and ornamental properties. However, its micro-propagation process lacks information regarding the most adequate spectral range for its development. Thus, this work aimed to evaluate different spectrum films in the development of in vitro C. longa seedlings. In order to do this, C. longa sprouts were inoculated in Murashig and Skoog media supplemented with 30 g/L of sucrose, 6.5 g/L of agar 4, 44 μM/L of benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 1.08 μM/L naphthalene acetic acid (ANA). The pH was adjusted to 5.8. Sprouts were put under different light spectrum intensity and quality: white, red, yellow, blue and green. The seedlings were maintained in a growth room with constant light at 25 ºC and a 24-hours photoperiod for 145 days. Morphological and anatomical characteristics were analyzed. The results demonstrated that spectral differences propitiated differences in the development of C. longa seedlings, and also in the in vitro contamination. The seedling base diameter, aerial and root dry and fresh mass were influenced by the different spectral ranges, with the yellow and white ranges being those that resulting the highest values for each characteristic. The green spectrum was the least favorable for the seedling regarding mass gain, as we...