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Restless leg syndrome (RLS) is a sleep disorder with high prevalence among patients on hemodialysis. It has been postulated that high phosphate and high parathyroid hormone may be implicated in its pathogenesis. Standard international criteria and face-to-face interview are not always applied. this was an interventional prospective study in which 19 patients (6 men, aged 48±11 years) with severe hyperparathyroidism were evaluated. RLS diagnosis and rating scale were accessed based on the International RLS Study Group pre- and post-parathyroidectomy. Patients also underwent standard polysomnography. At baseline, RLS was present in 10 patients (52.6%), and pain was the most reported symptom associated with the diagnosis. Patients with RLS had higher serum phosphate (p = 0.008) that remained independently associated with RLS in a logistic regression model, adjusted for hemoglobin, age and gender (HR = 7.28;CI = 1.14-46.3, p = 0.035). After parathyroidectomy, there was a reduction of serum parathyroid hormone, phosphate, calcium and alkaline phosphatase, and an increase of 25(OH)-vitamin D, and Fetuin-A. Parathyroidectomy alleviated RLS (from 52% to 21%; p = 0.04), which was accompanied by a decrease in severity scale, in association with relief of pain and pruritus. Polysomnography in these patients showed an improvement of sleep parameters as measured by sleep efficiency, sleep latency and percentage of REM sleep. RLS is associated with high levels of phosphate in patients with severe secondary hyperparathyroidism on hemodialysis. Pain is most reported complain in these patients. Parathyroidectomy provided an opportunity to relief RLS. Whether the reduction of serum phosphorus or parathyroid hormone contributed to this improvement merits further investigation.

Laborious and time-consuming tests are required for the determination of the soil–water characteristic curve (SWCC), often leading to the adoption of estimation methods. To answer the challenge of SWCC prediction, numerous pedotransfer functions (PTF) have been developed. Yet, previous studies have not considered the special behavior of bimodal tropical soils. These materials present dual porosity that is generally attributed to particle aggregation. This paper presents a novel PTF, specifically designed for bimodal tropical soils and based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). The model was trained and tested utilizing a database that was assembled containing soils from tropical regions of Brazil and featuring data for the grain-size distribution (GSD), consistency limits, and SWCC. Natural and remolded soils were included in the training database, but no distinction between soil conditions was made in the ANN. GSDs in the aggregated and disaggregated states were used to offer information to the ANN regarding the effect of particle aggregation on the water retention. The developed model was able to reproduce the typical SWCC shape of bimodal soils. Predictions for the degree of saturation were moderately correlated with directly measured data, with a coefficient of determination of 0.69. The air-entry value and residual suction of the macropores proved to be the most difficult SWCC attributes to be estimated. The ANN presented superior performance when compared to other PTFs not designed specifically for bimodal tropical soils, such as the Arya-Paris and ROSETTA models. It can be concluded from the obtained results that the developed ANN architecture and general approach showed a high capability to capture the main features of the SWCC.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of different crop arrangements and weed management in integrated crop–forage–forestry systems on weed incidence, yield of maize and forage grass, quality of total harvested and tree development. The experiment was analyzed as split-plot and as randomized complete block design. Whole plots were crop arrangements containing maize, Marandu palisadegrass, Basilisk signalgrass, Piatã palisadegrass, eucalyptus and acacia, and subplots were the weed management (1.5 kg ha−1 of atrazine and 1.5 kg ha−1 of atrazine + 0.006 kg ha−1 of nicosulfuron). Planting was done under no-tillage system and herbicides were applied 22 days after maize emergence. The weeds incidence was not affected by treatments. Applying the mixture of atrazine and nicosulfuron reduced the grasses yield. However, the total dry mass harvested was not affected. The average yield of whole-plant corn in the intercropping systems was 12.9 t ha−1 of dry mass. The simultaneous establishment of the integrated crop–forage–forestry systems does not reduce the productivity and quality of whole-plant corn nor the production of the tree component at the first cultivation year. Despite the reduced grasses yield, the application of nicosulfuron and atrazine does not improve the production and quality of whole-plant corn in relation to the application of atrazine alone.