Overexpression of Vimentin in Canine Prostatic Carcinoma

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

When Basking Is Not an Option: Thermoregulation of a Viperid Snake Endemic to a Small Island in the South Atlantic of Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Infrared degrees of freedom of Yang-Mills theory in the Schrodinger representation

We set up a new calculational framework for the Yang-Mills vacuum transition amplitude in the Schrodinger representation. After integrating out hard-mode contributions perturbatively and performing a gauge-invariant gradient expansion of the ensuing soft-mode action, a manageable saddle-point expansion for the vacuum overlap can be formulated. In combination with the squeezed approximation to the vacuum wave functional this allows for an essentially analytical treatment of physical amplitudes. Moreover, it leads to the identification of dominant and gauge-invariant classes of gauge field orbits which play the role of gluonic infrared (IR) degrees of freedom. The latter emerge as a diverse set of saddle-point solutions and are represented by unitary matrix fields. We discuss their scale stability, the associated virial theorem and other general properties including topological quantum numbers and action bounds. We then find important saddle-point solutions (most of them solitons) explicitly and examine their physical impact. While some are related to tunneling solutions of the classical Yang-Mills equation, i.e. to instantons and merons, others appear to play unprecedented roles. A remarkable new class of IR degrees of freedom consists of Faddeev-Niemi type link and knot solutions, potentially related to glueballs.

Preparation and thermal study of Mg-diclofenac compound in solid state

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Redox Behavior of molybdenum and tungsten in phosphate glasses

In this work, vitreous samples were prepared in the binary system (100 - x)NaPO3-xMO(3) with M = Mo and W and x varying from 10 to 60. The transmittance properties in the UV, visible, and near-infrared were monitored as a function of MO3 concentration. In both cases, an increase in the amount of transition metal results in an intense and broad absorption band in the visible and near-infrared attributed to metal reduction under synthesis conditions. It was shown that this large absorption can be partially or totally removed using specific oxidizing agents or by improving synthesis parameters such as melting temperature or cooling rate of the melt. In addition, structural investigations by Raman and X-ray absorption spectroscopy suggest that reduction only occurs when the metal cation is in octahedral geometry and that the transmittance improvement is not related with any structural changes. These results were explained in terms of thermodynamic equilibrium of redox species in the melt and allowed to obtain for the first time transparent and chemically stable glasses containing high concentrations of MO3 with transition metals in octahedral geometry inside the glass network.

Crystallization of monoclinic WO3 in tungstate fluorophosphate glasses

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Itaipu reservoir limnology: eutrophication degree and the horizontal distribution of its limnological variables

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Variação espacial e temporal da produtividade primária pelo fitoplâncton na represa de Jurumirim (Rio Paranapanema, SP)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Rheological study of the thermoreversible sol-gel transition of sulfate modified zirconyl chloride aqueous sol

The sols prepared by mixing a ZrOCl2 acidified solution to a hot H2SO4 aqueous solutions were studied in order to clarify the mechanism of thermoreversible sol-gel transition observed in this system. The viscoelastic properties of these suspensions were analyzed during the sol-gel transition by dynamic rheological measurements and quasi-elastic light scattering. The rheological properties were correlated to mass fractal and nearly linear growth models, and percolation theory. The results evidence that the thermoreversible sol-gel transition in this system is due to the formation of a network of physically linked aggregates having fractal structure. The decrease of the SO42- contents in the initial solution leads to the decrease of the fractal dimensionality from 2.3 to 1.8, indicating a change of the kinetic mechanism of aggregate growth. Near the gel point these samples have the typical scaling expected from percolation theory. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Parentage testing in alpacas (Vicugna pacos) using semi-automated fluorescent multiplex PCRs with 10 microsatellite markers

The aim of this study was to assess and apply a microsatellite multiplex system for parentage determination in alpacas. An approach for parentage testing based on 10 microsatellites was evaluated in a population of 329 unrelated alpacas from different geographical zones in Peru. All microsatellite markers, which amplified in two multiplex reactions, were highly polymorphic with a mean of 14.5 alleles per locus (six to 28 alleles per locus) and an average expected heterozygosity (H-E) of 0.8185 (range of 0.698-0.946). The total parentage exclusion probability was 0.999456 for excluding a candidate parent from parentage of an arbitrary offspring, given only the genotype of the offspring, and 0.999991 for excluding a candidate parent from parentage of an arbitrary offspring, given the genotype of the offspring and the other parent. In a case test of parentage assignment, the microsatellite panel assigned 38 (from 45 cases) offspring parentage to 10 sires with LOD scores ranging from 2.19 x 10(+13) to 1.34 x 10(+15) and Delta values ranging from 2.80 x 10(+12) to 1.34 x 10(+15) with an estimated pedigree error rate of 15.5%. The performance of this multiplex panel of markers suggests that it will be useful in parentage testing of alpacas.

INFLUENCE of THE EVAPORATOR POSITION IN STATIC DOMESTIC REFRIGERATORS

The temperature and velocity distributions of the air inside the cabinet of domestic refrigerators affect the quality of food products. If the consumer knows the location of warm and cold zones in the refrigerator, the products can be placed in the right zone. In addition, the knowledge of the thickness of thermal and hydrodynamic boundary layers near the evaporator and the other walls is also important. If the product is too close to the evaporator wall, freezing can occur, and if it is too close to warm walls, the products can be deteriorated. The aim of the present work is to develop a steady state computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for domestic refrigerators working on natural convection regime. The Finite Volume Methodology is chosen as numerical procedure for discretizing the governing equations. The SIMPLE-Semi-Implicit Method for Pressure-Linked Equations algorithm applied to a staggered mesh was used for solving the pressure-velocity coupling problem. The Power-Law scheme is employed as interpolation function for the convective-diffusive terms, and the TDMA-Tri-Diagonal Matrix Algorithm is used to solve the systems of algebraic equations. The model is applied to a commercial static refrigerator, where the cabinet is considered an empty three-dimensional rectangular cavity with one drawer at the bottom of the cabinet, but without shelves. In order to analyze the velocity and temperature fields of the air flow inside the cabinet the evaporator temperature, Te, was varied from -20 degrees C to 0 degrees C, and nine different evaporator positions are evaluated for evaporator temperature of -15 degrees C. The cooling capacity of the evaporator for the steady state regime is also computed for each case. One can conclude that the vertical positioning of the evaporator inside the cabinet plays an important role on the temperature distribution inside the cabinet.

Bifurcations Leading to Nonlinear Oscillations in a 3D Piecewise Linear Memristor Oscillator

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Variação espaço-temporal de atributos ecológicos da ictiofauna de um grande reservatório Neotropical

Pós-graduação em Aquicultura - FCAV

Inverted critical adsorption of polyelectrolytes in confinement

What are the fundamental laws for the adsorption of charged polymers onto oppositely charged surfaces, for convex, planar, and concave geometries? This question is at the heart of surface coating applications, various complex formation phenomena, as well as in the context of cellular and viral biophysics. It has been a long-standing challenge in theoretical polymer physics; for realistic systems the quantitative understanding is however often achievable only by computer simulations. In this study, we present the findings of such extensive Monte-Carlo in silico experiments for polymer-surface adsorption in confined domains. We study the inverted critical adsorption of finite-length polyelectrolytes in three fundamental geometries: planar slit, cylindrical pore, and spherical cavity. The scaling relations extracted from simulations for the critical surface charge density sigma(c)-defining the adsorption-desorption transition-are in excellent agreement with our analytical calculations based on the ground-state analysis of the Edwards equation. In particular, we confirm the magnitude and scaling of sigma(c) for the concave interfaces versus the Debye screening length 1/kappa and the extent of confinement a for these three interfaces for small kappa a values. For large kappa a the critical adsorption condition approaches the known planar limit. The transition between the two regimes takes place when the radius of surface curvature or half of the slit thickness a is of the order of 1/kappa. We also rationalize how sigma(c)(kappa) dependence gets modified for semi-flexible versus flexible chains under external confinement. We examine the implications of the chain length for critical adsorption-the effect often hard to tackle theoretically-putting an emphasis on polymers inside attractive spherical cavities. The applications of our findings to some biological systems are discussed, for instance the adsorption of nucleic acids onto the inner surfaces of cylindrical and spherical viral capsids.

Contamination of port zone sediments by metals from Large Marine Ecosystems of Brazil

Sediment contamination by metals poses risks to coastal ecosystems and is considered to be problematic to dredging operations. In Brazil, there are differences in sedimentology along the Large Marine Ecosystems in relation to the metal distributions. We aimed to assess the extent of Al, Fe, Hg, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn contamination in sediments from port zones in northeast (Mucuripe and Pecem) and southeast (Santos) Brazil through geochemical analyses and sediment quality ratings. The metal concentrations found in these port zones were higher than those observed in the continental shelf or the background values in both regions. In the northeast, metals were associated with carbonate, while in Santos, they were associated with mud. Geochemical analyses showed enrichments in Hg, Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn, and a simple application of international sediment quality guidelines failed to predict their impacts, whereas the use of site-specific values that were derived by geochemical and ecotoxicological approaches seemed to be more appropriate in the management of the dredged sediments. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.