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Background Aim Methods & Procedures Outcomes & Results Conclusions & Implications WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject What this paper adds to existing knowledge What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Speech and language therapists (SLTs) play an important role in assessing and rehabilitating communication disorders in people with dementia, but there is evidence to suggest that they do not receive appropriate training to provide management and support during their training.To investigate the level of awareness and knowledge that practising SLTs from Brazil have about dementia and their role in the care of dementia through an online survey.An online survey tool was developed to collect information from practising Brazilian SLTs regarding their knowledge about dementia, awareness about their role in the care of people with dementia, and opinions on how SLTs may be better prepared to work in the dementia field. The survey was disseminated via social media, websites, and e‐mail lists of researchers and stakeholders.A total of 227 SLTs completed the survey. Participants showed good knowledge of dementia in general, while their answers were less accurate on primary progressive aphasia. Regarding the awareness by SLTs of their role in the care of people with dementia, most agreed or strongly agreed that SLTs could help people in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of dementia (> 80%). However, fewer participants agreed or strongly agreed that they felt confident in contributing to the treatment and diagnosis process of dementia (about 50%). To improve the training of SLTs in Brazil, most participants believed that it would be necessary to improve the teaching of dementia at the undergraduate speech and language therapy curriculum level and to develop recommendations or guidelines about speech and language therapy practice in dementia.The results of this survey point to a need for improvement in the knowledge and confidence of Brazilian SLTs about dementia. To reach this goal, targeted training courses and applied practice opportunities should be embedded within university curricula and training programmes. Many studies confirm the importance of speech and language therapy in the non‐pharmacological treatment of people with dementia. However, other evidence suggests to a possible lack of training for Brazilian SLTs, especially in the curriculum of undergraduate courses. This study reveals that Brazilian SLTs have substantial knowledge of dementia and recognize the significance of their role in treating people with dementia. However, a minority expressed confidence in their ability to assess and treat people with dementia. The findings of this research demonstrate that Brazilian SLTs have good knowledge of dementia and endorse their professional role in dementia care; however, they lack confidence in their own skills and expertise in diagnostic assessment and treatment of dementia. Interventions aimed at boosting the SLT's confidence level could lead to improved patients outcomes and overall quality of care within clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This paper presents updated prevalence estimates of awareness, ever‐use, and current use of nicotine vaping products (NVPs) from 14 International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project) countries that have varying regulations governing NVP sales and marketing. Design, Setting, Participants and Measurements: A cross‐sectional analysis of adult (≥ 18 years) current smokers and ex‐smokers from 14 countries participating in the ITC Project. Data from the most recent survey questionnaire for each country were included, which spanned the period 2013–17. Countries were categorized into four groups based on regulations governing NVP sales and marketing (allowable or not), and level of enforcement (strict or weak where NVPs are not permitted to be sold): (1) most restrictive policies (MRPs), not legal to be sold or marketed with strict enforcement: Australia, Brazil, Uruguay; (2) restrictive policies (RPs), not approved for sale or marketing with weak enforcement: Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand; (3) less restrictive policies (LRPs), legal to be sold and marketed with regulations: England, the Netherlands, Republic of Korea, United States; and (4) no regulatory policies (NRPs), Bangladesh, China, Zambia. Countries were also grouped by World Bank Income Classifications. Country‐specific weighted logistic regression models estimated adjusted NVP prevalence estimates for: awareness, ever/current use, and frequency of use (daily versus non‐daily). Findings NVP awareness and use were lowest in NRP countries. Generally, ever‐ and current use of NVPs were lower in MRP countries (ever‐use = 7.1–48.9%; current use = 0.3–3.5%) relative to LRP countries (ever‐use = 38.9–66.6%; current use = 5.5–17.2%) and RP countries (ever‐use = 10.0–62.4%; current use = 1.4–15.5%). NVP use was highest among high‐income countries, followed by upper–middle‐income countries, and then by lower–middle‐income countries. Conclusions: With a few exceptions, awareness and use of nicotine vaping products varied by the strength of national regulations governing nicotine vaping product sales/marketing, and by country income. In countries with no regulatory policies, use rates were very low, suggesting that there was little availability, marketing and/or interest in nicotine vaping products in these countries where smoking populations are predominantly poorer. The higher awareness and use of nicotine vaping products in high income countries with moderately (e.g. Canada, New Zealand) and less (e.g. England, United States) restrictive policies, is likely due to the greater availability and affordability of nicotine vaping products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal hydrometeorological series may present variations over time. The awareness of these characteristics is important to improve the monitoring of changes that these series may suffer along time. In this regard, the present paper aims to identify the existence of precipitation trends for the east portion of Paraná state, in Brazil, and also investigate the changes in the observed rates over the last 70 years. The statistical tests of Mann-Kendall and Pettitt, and also the Theil-Sen estimator, are applied for series of precipitation from 13 pluviometric stations of eastern Paraná state, Brazil, with 70 years of data records. By the results it was identified long-term linear positive trend for 11 of the precipitation series and also detected medium-term patterns in precipitation over 10 stations, characterizing the Joseph effect. These series have presented a behavior with higher rates in the most recent years in comparison from the first years of the historical data, sectioning the complete series into two shorter stationary periods, and presenting an abrupt change point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of spirituality is influenced by culture and the values and mores of Brazil, and though not directly linked to religion it actually grows from the same roots. This paper examines spirituality in education from the perspective of a humanistic psychology framework expressed as an ideal of the adequate personality or healthy personality. An exploratory study conducted by the Potential and Talent Devenlopment Center (CEDET) is discussed in which students responded to two major themes: idea of God; and where is the Soul? The idea-units of the students were grouped as themes and sub-themes around the definition of spiritual intelligence of Sisk and Torrance and humanistic psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a democratized account of heterodoxy that draws attention to how heterodoxical discourses may implicitly arise through social interaction. The analysis is based on one rural Brazilian woman's claim that it tastes better to eat beans and rice by using one's fingers. Formerly common in Brazil prior to the 20th century—across identities, regions, and classes—the practice of "eating by hand" was gradually erased from public life, and reconstituted as a mark of non-whiteness, through what Norbert Elias described as a "civilizing process." The woman's claim registers as a heterodoxical response to hierarchized and racialized notions of taste arising from this process of historical erasure. The analysis draws on Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory to situate the woman's claim within a wider field of taste, while engaging with Hannah Arendt's suggestion that aesthetic judgments may implicitly disclose shared and more equal worlds. Whereas Bourdieu's famous account of heterodoxy focuses on leaders, experts, and spokespersons of the dominated skilled in the "work of making explicit," the contribution draws on scholarship in analytic philosophy to argue that critical historical awareness may emerge in what philosophers of language and linguistic anthropologists call pragmatic presuppositions. The heterodoxical pragmatic presuppositions implicit in the woman's claim conjure a notion of semiotic equality, which is disclosed as a defeasible presupposition of the ethnographic situation in which she makes her claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) are key to preventing sexual transmission of HIV, whose sexual partners are at high risk of acquiring HIV. We aimed to determine the factors associated with PrEP and PEP's knowledge as secondary prevention among people living with HIV/AIDS.Method: Cross-sectional analytical study carried out among people living with HIV/AIDS treated at five specialized services in the city of Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil. Data were collected from July 2016 to July 2017. Individual interviews were conducted. We used multivariable logistic regression to determine factors associated with knowing PrEP and PEP.Results: Of the 397 participants, 140 (35.26%) were heterosexual women aged 40 to 49 years (36.2%).Participants with less than 11 years of study (adjusted odds: 0.29; 95% CI: 0.13-0.60); who did not have a low viral load or did not know their viral load (adjusted odds: 0.29; 95% CI: 0.09-0.83) and those with casual partners (adjusted odds: 0.29; 95% CI: 0.09-0.83) were less likely to know about the PrEP. MSM (adjusted odds: 2.88; 95% CI: 1.59-5.3) and those who used alcohol during sexual intercourse (adjusted odds: 1.7; 95% CI: 1.0-2.8) were more likely to know about the PEP.Conclusions: The knowledge about PEP and PrEP is low in Brazil. This may undermine secondary prevention efforts. Educational interventions to raise awareness of these prevention methods are needed among people living with HIV and who have HIV-negative sexual partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To cross-culturally adapt the Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire (PVAQ) to the Brazilian Portuguese language, to evaluate its psychometric properties when applied to Brazilian pain-free adults and to adults with different pain profiles, and to compare the PVAQ factor scores of different groups using a new method for calculating the overall scores for vigilance, attention to pain, and awareness of changes in pain. Methods: A total of 1,143 adults (79% women; mean ± standard deviation [SD] age of 38.56 ± 10.73 years) participated. Face validity and content validity of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the PVAQ were tested. The fit of four PVAQ models was evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and the invariance of the model with the best fit was estimated across two independent samples (test sample: n = 732; validity sample: n = 411). The overall scores of the factors pain vigilance, attention to pain, and awareness of changes in pain were calculated by using the regression weight matrix obtained in the CFA. The overall scores between the four pain groups (no pain, n = 334; pain < 3 months, n = 386; recurrent pain ≥ 3 months, n = 244; continuous pain ≥ 3 months, n = 179) were compared. Results: The refined two-factor model of the PVAQ fit best to the sample (χ²/degrees of freedom = 6.095; comparative fit index = 0.926; goodness of fit index = 0.928; root mean square error of approximation = 0.083; average variance extracted > 0.45; composite reliability and Cronbach's alpha > 0.85) and presented strong invariance in independent samples. Individuals with pain presented higher scores on PVAQ factors, and the highest scores were found among individuals with continuous pain. Conclusion: The Brazilian Portuguese version of the PVAQ was found to be adequate and reliable when applied to the sample. The methodologic considerations presented could improve research on pain vigilance and help clinicians assess PVAQ factors among patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is recommended to prevent HIV infection among high-risk men who have sex with men (MSM) though not available in Brazil where the HIV epidemic persists unabated in this group. This cross-sectional study describes PrEP awareness and willingness and associated factors among MSM and transvestite/transgender women (trans women) pre-screened for the PrEP Brasil study. Awareness was reported by 61.3 % of the participants and was associated with age, education, site, study period and prior HIV testing. Most participants (82.1 %) were willing to use PrEP, which was associated with site, study period, number of male condomless anal sexual partners and anal sex with HIV positive/unknown partners. PrEP information is need among young and less educated individuals. Willingness to use PrEP was high and future studies should be conducted to confirm PrEP acceptability and the characteristics of the population who chose to adopt this intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language disorders are considered part of the symptoms of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) since the first descriptions by Kanner. Providing language therapy services to children with ASD is a challenge in countries such as Brazil, where besides geographic and social-cultural diversity there is a lack of enough professionals with adequate training. Therefore university-related services have a fundamental role in filling this gap. This presentation will describe the various initiatives by such a service is São Paulo, one of the world's largest metropolitan areas. This specialized service provides language assessment, diagnosis and weekly therapy to children with ASD since 1986. During this period ASD's complexity became clear and demanded the inclusion of other activities such as: multiprofessional colaboration; interdisciplinary research; out-reaching and mentoring of teachers with children and adolescents with ASD in their classes; systematic meetings with parents; use of tele-health resources to increase the number of services provided to this population; editing and distribution of brochures to improve the awareness about ASD and development of assessment tools adapted to the Brazilian reality. These initiatives were conducted whithin the context of scientific research, therefore providing elements to evidence-based-practice. Many of the researches were associated to 37 Master and Doctorate projetcs and were published in scientific journals (115 papers). Also, during this period many professionals had their specialized training and are now teaching in other universities. Today 80 children and adolescents attend to weekly language therapy sessions and 12 undergraduate, 8 graduate students, 3 post-doctorate and 2 researches comprise the team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High blood pressure (HBP) is the leading risk factor for years of life lost in Brazil. Factors associated with HBP awareness, treatment and control need to be understood better. Our aim is to estimate prevalence, awareness, and types of anti-hypertensive treatment and to investigate the association of HBP control with social position. Data of 15,103 (54% female) civil servants in six Brazilian state capitals collected at the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil) baseline (2008-2010) were used to estimate prevalence and cross-sectional association of HBP control with education, per capita family income and self-reported race, using multiple logistic regression. Blood pressure was measured by the oscillometric method. 35.8% were classified as presenting HBP; 76.8% of these used anti-hypertensive medication. Women were more aware than men (84.8% v. 75.8%) and more often using medication (83.1% v. 70.7%). Adjusted HBP prevalence was, in ascending order, Whites (30.3%), Browns (38.2%) and Blacks (49.3%). The therapeutic schemes most used were angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, in isolation (12.4%) or combined with diuretics (13.3%). Among those in drug treatment, controlled blood pressure was more likely in the (postgraduate) higher education group than among participants with less than secondary school education (PR = 1.21; 95% CI: 1.14–1.28), and among Asian (PR = 1.21; 95% CI: 1.12–1.32) and ‘Whites (PR = 1.19; 95% CI: 1.12–1.26) compared to Blacks. Socioeconomic and racial inequality—as measured by different indicators—are strongly associated with HBP control, beyond the expected influence of health services access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the prospects for a large-scale implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes in the Brazilian Pantanal wetland. Despite increasing environmental threats associated with development pressures and the growing interest of public and private organizations, no PES schemes are currently in place in the Pantanal. Through an exploratory scenario analysis, this article determines the prospects for PES in the area. The findings suggest that a large-scale implementation is unlikely, as this would require much higher levels of environmental awareness among local decision makers and low substitution rates of ecosystem services by technology. Furthermore, strong socioeconomic inequality between inhabitants of the Pantanal lowlands and wealthy farmers of the neighboring uplands means that potential suppliers of ecosystem services would face very high opportunity costs to participate in PES schemes. The research findings are also relevant to other environmentally sensitive regions experiencing rapid economic growth and weak environmental regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]