Nuno Gaspar - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Nuno Gaspar

Formal language hierarchy reflects different levels of cognitive complexity

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, Oct 6, 2022

PLOS Global Public Health, 2022

Given constrained funding for HIV, achieving global goals on VMMC scale-up requires that provider... more Given constrained funding for HIV, achieving global goals on VMMC scale-up requires that providers improve service delivery operations and use labor and capital inputs as efficiently as possible to produce as many quality VMMCs as feasible. The Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision Site Capacity and Productivity Assessment Tool (SCPT) is an electronic visual management tool developed to help VMMC service providers to understand and improve their site’s performance. The SCPT allows VMMC providers to: 1) track the most important human resources and capital inputs to VMMC service delivery, 2) strategically plan site capacity and targets, and 3) monitor key site-level VMMC service delivery performance indicators. To illustrate a real-world application of the SCPT, we present selected data from two provinces in Mozambique—Manica and Tete, where the SCPT was piloted We looked at the data prior to the introduction of SCPT (October 2014 to August 2016), and during the period when the tool beg...

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific ... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Fractal a ̀ la Coq

Among all programming paradigms, component-based engineering stands as one of the most followed a... more Among all programming paradigms, component-based engineering stands as one of the most followed approaches for real world software devel-opment. Its emphasis on clean separation of concerns and reusability makes it appealing for both industrial and research purposes. The Grid Component Model (GCM) endorses this approach in the con-text of distributed systems by providing all the means to define, compose and dynamically reconfigure component-based applications. While structural re-configuration is one of the key features of GCM applications, this ability to evolve at runtime poses several challenges w.r.t reliability. In this paper we present Mefresa, a framework for reasoning on the struc-ture of GCM applications. This contribution comes in the form of a formal specification mechanized in the Coq Proof Assistant. Our aim is to demon-strate the benefits of interactive theorem proving for the reasoning on software architectures. We provide a configuration and reconfiguration language ...

BMC Urology, 2021

Background Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is an HIV prevention strategy recommended t... more Background Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is an HIV prevention strategy recommended to partially protect men from heterosexually acquired HIV. From 2015 to 2019, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has supported approximately 14.9 million VMMCs in 15 African countries. Urethrocutaneous fistulas, abnormal openings between the urethra and penile skin through which urine can escape, are rare, severe adverse events (AEs) that can occur with VMMC. This analysis describes fistula cases, identifies possible risks and mechanisms of injury, and offers mitigation actions. Methods Demographic and clinical program data were reviewed from all reported fistula cases during 2015 to 2019, descriptive analyses were performed, and an odds ratio was calculated by patient age group. Results In total, 41 fistula cases were reported. Median patient age for fistula cases was 11 years and 40/41 (98%) occurred in patients aged < 15 years. Fistulas were more often reported ...

Normative data for Verbal Fluency and Object Naming Tests in a sample of European Portuguese adult population

Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, 2021

The purpose of the present study was to calculate the construct validity, internal consistency an... more The purpose of the present study was to calculate the construct validity, internal consistency and normative data of the Phonological Verbal Fluency Test (letters F, A, S, and M), Semantic Verbal Fluency Test (Animals, Fruits and Professions categories), and Boston Naming Test (short and standard version), and to generate normative data for these tests after adjusting for age, education, and sex. A sample of 293 European Portuguese adults participated in the study. Results showed adequate construct validity and internal consistency for all of the tests and the final multiple regression models found that age and education were significantly associated with P-VFT (letters F, A, S, and M), S-VFT (Animals, Fruits and Professions categories), and BNT performance. Sex was only found to have an effect on the fruit category, with women scoring higher than men. The normative data provided in this study will contribute to improving the clinical practice of neuropsychology in Portugal.

Regression-Based Norms for the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised and the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure in a Portuguese Adult Population

Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 2020

Objective The principal goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for European Po... more Objective The principal goal of this study was to produce adjusted normative data for European Portuguese native speakers from Portugal on 2 neuropsychological tests widely used to assess learning and memory: the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) and the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (ROCF). Method The study included 300 individuals aged 18–92 years (M = 50.4, SD = 21.2), who had educational backgrounds ranging from 3 to 25 years (M = 10.4, SD = 5.2). Results Age, education, and sex were significantly associated with HVLT-R and ROCF performance. These demographic variables accounted for 61% of the variance in HVLT-R total recall, 54% in HVLT-R delayed recall, 18% in HVLT-R recognition, 55% in ROCF copy, and 39% in ROCF immediate recall. Conclusions The normative data are presented as regression-based algorithms to adjust direct and derived test scores for age, education, and sex. This study provides a calculator of normative data derived from the results of the regr...

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2020

Normative data for test of Attention and Executive Function in a sample of European Portuguese ad... more Normative data for test of Attention and Executive Function in a sample of European Portuguese adult population Objective: The main goal of this study was to produce normative data for the Portuguese population on five neuropsychological tests frequently used to assess executive functions and attention: the Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (M-WCST), the Stroop Color and Word Test, the Trail Making Test (TMT), the Brief Test of Attention (BTA), and the Symbol Digit Modality Test (SDMT). Method: The study included 300 individuals aged between 18 and 93 years, who had educational backgrounds ranging from 3 to 25 years. Results: The influence of age, education, and sex were explored for each measure, as well as their contribution to explain the performance variance. Conclusions: The normative data are presented as regression-based algorithms to adjust direct and derived test scores for sex, age, and education. This study provides a calculator of normative data, derived from the results of the regression models.

PLOS ONE, 2019

Background The voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) program in Mozambique aimed to increase... more Background The voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) program in Mozambique aimed to increase male circumcision (MC) coverage to 80 percent among males ages 10 to 49 by 2018. Given the difficulty in attracting adult men over age 20 for circumcision, Mozambique became interested in assessing its age-targeting strategy and progress at the provincial level to inform program planning. Methods We examined the impact and cost-effectiveness of circumcising different age groups of men using the Decision Makers' Program Planning Toolkit, Version 2.1 (DMPPT 2). We also applied the model to assess the scale-up efforts through the end of September 2017 and project their impact on HIV incidence through 2030. The DMPPT 2 is a compartmental Excel-based model that analyzes the effects of age at circumcision on program impact and cost-effectiveness. The model tracks changes in age-specific MC coverage due to VMMC program circumcisions. Baseline MC prevalence was based on data from the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey. The DMPPT 2 was populated with HIV incidence projections from Spectrum/Goals under an assumption that Mozambique would reach its national targets for HIV treatment and prevention by 2022. Results We estimate the VMMC program increased MC coverage among males ages 10 to 49 from 27 percent in 2009 to 48 percent by end of September 2017. Coverage increased primarily in males ages 10 to 29. VMMCs conducted in the national program through the end of September 2017 are projected to avert 67,076 HIV infections from 2010 to 2030. Scaling up circumcisions in males ages 20 to 29 will have the most immediate impact on HIV incidence, while the greatest impact over a 15-year period is obtained by circumcising males ages 15 to 24 in the majority of priority provinces. Circumcising 80 percent of males ages 10 to 29 can achieve 77 percent of the impact through 2030 compared with circumcising 80 percent of males ages 10 to 49.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

Architecture Description Languages (ADL) provide descriptions of a software system in terms of it... more Architecture Description Languages (ADL) provide descriptions of a software system in terms of its structure. Such descriptions give a high-level overview and come from the need to cope with arbitrarily complex dependencies arising from software components. In this paper we present Painless, a novel ADL with a declarative trait supporting parametrized specifications and architectural reconfigurations. Moreover, we exhibit its reliable facet on its integration with ProActive-a middleware for distributed programming. This is achieved by building on top of Mefresa, a Coq framework for the reasoning on software architectures. We inherit its strong guarantees by extracting certified code, and subsequently integrating it in our toolchain.

Fractal a la Coq

Component-based Engineering aims at providing a modular means to specify a wide range of applicat... more Component-based Engineering aims at providing a modular means to specify a wide range of applications. The idea is to promote a clean separation of concerns, and thus reusability, in order to ease the burden of software development and maintenance. The specification of such component models however, tends to be informal, leaving their inher-ent ambiguities open to interpretation. In this paper we present our ongoing work towards a formal specification of the Fractal Component Model mechanized in the Coq Proof Assistant. An operational semantics for building component-based architectures is presented, along with its compliance with the Fractal specification.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

The modularity offered by component-based systems made it one of the most employed paradigms in s... more The modularity offered by component-based systems made it one of the most employed paradigms in software engineering. Precise structural specification is a key ingredient that enables their verification and consequently their reliability. This gains special relevance for reconfigurable component-based systems. To this end, the Grid Component Model (GCM) provides all the means to define such reconfigurable component-based applications. In this paper we report our experience on the formal specification and verification of a reconfigurable GCM application as an industrial case study.

International Journal of Parallel Programming, 2013

Análise Psicológica, 2012

A crescente evidência da possibilidade de desempenhos enganosos ou fraudulentos em contexto de ex... more A crescente evidência da possibilidade de desempenhos enganosos ou fraudulentos em contexto de exame neuropsicológico forense, incluindo casos envolvendo adultos idosos (por exemplo, determinação de incapacidade ou pedidos de reforma antecipada), torna imperativa a inclusão de medidas específicas de simulação e esforço insuficiente nos protocolos de avaliação. O Rey 15-Item Memory Test (15-IMT) é um dos testes mais utilizados neste âmbito. Contudo, apesar de se reconhecer que o efeito de tecto subjacente ao desenvolvimento dos testes de esforço insuficiente pode não resultar do mesmo modo em pessoas com doença mental ou demência, grupos de adultos idosos com determinadas condições clínicas, como as perturbações neurodegenerativas, são habitualmente excluídos dos estudos de validação. Pretendemos analisar o desempenho de diferentes grupos de adultos idosos (Saudáveis, com Problemas Cognitivos e com Depressão), contrapondo a um grupo de jovens adultos (Controlo), com o objectivo de ex...