Extended depth from focus reconstruction using NIH ImageJ plugins: Quality and resolution of elevation maps

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

Quantitative variation in the tropical maize population, ESALQ-PB1

A boa produtividade e os valores intermediários para altura da planta e altura da espiga caracterizam a população de milho ESALQ-PB1 como agronomicamente promissora. São relatadas estimativas de parâmetros para 13 caracteres: altura da planta (PH), altura da espiga (EH), posição relativa da espiga (EP), comprimento do pendão (TL), peso do pendão (TW), número de ramificações do pendão (TB), peso de espigas (EW), peso de grãos (GW), comprimento da espiga (EL), diâmetro da espiga (ED), número de fileiras de grãos (RN), número de grãos por fileira (KR) e prolificidade (PR). Os resultados se referem a um único ambiente (um local e um ano). Foi detectada variação genética para todos os caracteres, e são apresentadas estimativas da variância genética aditiva. Os coeficientes de herdabilidade (indivíduos) variaram de 0,14 a 0,72 e foram considerados altos para PH, EH e TB; intermediários para EP, TL, TW, EL e ED, e baixos para EW, GW, KR e PR. O coeficiente de herdabilidade para médias de progênies mostrou aproximadamente a mesma tendência, variando de 0,40 a 0,75. O maior ganho esperado por seleção foi para TB (27% por ciclo) sob seleção massal e para TW (16,4%) por seleção entre progênies; o menor ganho esperado foi para ED, tanto por seleção massal (1,9%) como por seleção entre progênies (2,9%). Coeficientes de correlação aditiva (rA) 0.5

Spatial distribution of trachoma cases in the City of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil, detected in 2006: defining key areas for improvement of health resources

Introduction: The objective of this study was to analyze the spatial behavior of the occurrence of trachoma cases detected in the City of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2006 in order to use the information collected to set priority areas for optimization of health resources. Methods: the trachoma cases identified in 2006 were georeferenced. The data evaluated were: schools where the trachoma cases studied, data from the 2000 Census, census tract, type of housing, water supply conditions, distribution of income and levels of education of household heads. In the Google Earth® software and TerraView® were made descriptive spatial analysis and estimates of the Kernel. Each area was studied by interpolation of the density surfaces exposing events to facilitate to recognize the clusters. Results: of the 66 cases detected, only one (1.5%) was not a resident of the city's outskirts. A positive association was detected of trachoma cases and the percentage of heads of household with income below three minimum wages and schooling under eight years of education. Conclusions: The recognition of the spatial distribution of trachoma cases coincided with the areas of greatest social inequality in Bauru City. The micro-areas identified are those that should be prioritized in the rationalization of health resources. There is the possibility of using the trachoma cases detected as an indicator of performance of micro priority health programs.

Bromatological evaluation of eleven corn cultivars harvested at two cutting heights

The objective of this study was to evaluate the chemical composition and dry matter in vitro digestibility of stem, leaf, straw, cob and kernel fractions of eleven corn (Zea mays) cultivars, harvested at two cutting heights. The experiment was designed as randomized blocks, with three replicates, in a 2 × 11 factorial arrangement (eleven cultivars and two cutting heights). The corn cultivars evaluated were D 766, D 657, D 1000, P 3021, P 3041, C 805, C 333, AG 5011, FOR 01, CO 9621 and BR 205, harvested at a low cutting height (5 cm above ground) and a high cutting height (5 cm below the first ear insertion). Cutting height influenced the dry matter content of the stem fraction, which was lower (23.95%) in plants harvested at the low, than in plants harvested at the high cutting height (26.28%). The kernel fraction had the highest dry matter in vitro digestibility (85.13%), while cultivars did not differ between each other. Cob and straw were the fractions with the highest level of neutral detergent fiber (80.74 and 79.77%, respectively) and the lowest level of crude protein (3.84% and 3.69%, respectively). The leaf fraction had the highest crude protein content, both for plants of low and high cuttings (15.55% and 16.20%, respectively). The increase in the plant cutting height enhanced the dry matter content and dry matter in vitro digestibility of stem fraction, but did not affect the DM content of the leaf fraction.

How to not inflate population estimates? Spatial density distribution of white-lipped peccaries in a continuous Atlantic forest

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

Generating Birth and Death Processes

Associated with an ordered sequence of an even number 2N of positive real numbers is a birth and death process (BDP) on {0, 1, 2,..., N} having these real numbers as its birth and death rates. We generate another birth and death process from this BDP on {0, 1, 2,..., 2N}. This can be further iterated. We illustrate with an example from tan(kz). In BDP, the decay parameter, viz., the largest non-zero eigenvalue is important in the study of convergence to stationarity. In this article, the smallest eigenvalue is found to be useful.

Fatty acids and bioactive compounds of the pulps and kernels of Brazilian palm species, guariroba (Syagrus oleraces), jeriva (Syagrus romanzoffiana) and macauba (Acrocomia aculeata)

BACKGROUND: Bioactive compounds are capable of providing health benefits, reducing disease incidence or favoring body functioning. There is a growing search for vegetable oils containing such compounds. This study aimed to characterize the pulp and kernel oils of the Brazilian palm species guariroba (Syagrus oleracea), jeriva (Syagrus romanzoffiana) and macauba (Acrocomia aculeata), aiming at possible uses in several industries.RESULTS: Fatty acid composition, phenolic and carotenoid contents, tocopherol composition were evaluated. The majority of the fatty acids in pulps were oleic and linoleic; macauba pulp contained 526 g kg(-1) of oleic acid. Lauric acid was detected in the kernels of all three species as the major saturated fatty acid, in amounts ranging from 325.8 to 424.3 g kg(-1). The jeriva pulp contained carotenoids and tocopherols on average of 1219 mu g g(-1) and 323.50 mg kg(-1), respectively.CONCLUSION: The pulps contained more unsaturated fatty acids than the kernels, mainly oleic and linoleic. Moreover, the pulps showed higher carotenoid and tocopherol contents. The kernels showed a predominance of saturated fatty acids, especially lauric acid. The fatty acid profiles of the kernels suggest that these oils may be better suited for the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries than for use in foods. (C) 2011 Society of Chemical Industry

HACCP plan proposal for a typical Brazilian peanut processing company

Peanuts are likely to be infested by fungi with consequent contamination by aflatoxin in post-harvest industries. A hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) plan is proposed for a typical Brazilian post-harvest industry from raw in-shell reception to the unpeeled peanuts transportation. Codex Alimentarius Commission guidelines were followed, with four critical control points (CCP) for aflatoxin being identified. The process steps with highest probability of aflatoxin occurrence (risk) are the in-shell reception, the dried in-shell storage, and the unpeeled kernel storage. During the storage steps there is a lack of control of air moisture and temperature. Therefore, there is no option but to keep rigid monitoring and control over each CCP, and detour lots with high aflatoxin levels to either oil or seed production. Attempts to correlate the aflatoxin levels with the rainfall showed an irregular trend of the toxin level. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recursive renormalization of the singlet one-pion-exchange plus point-like interactions

The subtracted kernel approach is shown to be a powerful method to be implemented recursively in scattering equations with regular plus point-like interactions. The advantages of the method allows one to recursively renormalize the potentials, with higher derivatives of the Dirac-delta, improving previous results. The applicability of the method is verified in the calculation of the 1 So nucleon-nucleon phase-shifts, when considering a potential with one-pion-exchange plus a contact interaction and its derivatives. The S-1(0) renormalization parameters are fitted to the data. The method can in principle be extended to any derivative order of the contact interaction, to higher partial waves and to coupled channels. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Quantitative aspects of entanglement in the driven Jaynes-Cummings model

Adopting the framework of the Jaynes-Cummings model with an external quantum field, we obtain exact analytical expressions of the normally ordered moments for any kind of cavity and driving fields. Such analytical results are expressed in the integral form, with their integrands having a commom term that describes the product of the Glauber-Sudarshan quasiprobability distribution functions for each field, and a kernel responsible for the entanglement. Considering a specific initial state of the tripartite system, the normally ordered moments are then applied to investigate not only the squeezing effect and the nonlocal correlation measure based on the total variance of a pair of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen type operators for continuous variable systems, but also the Shchukin-Vogel criterion. This kind of numerical investigation constitutes the first quantitative characterization of the entanglement properties for the driven Jaynes-Cummings model.

An exact equation for the free surface of a fluid in a porous medium

We study the problem of the evolution of the free surface of a fluid in a saturated porous medium, bounded from below by a. at impermeable bottom, and described by the Laplace equation with moving-boundary conditions. By making use of a convenient conformal transformation, we show that the solution to this problem is equivalent to the solution of the Laplace equation on a fixed domain, with new variable coefficients, the boundary conditions. We use a kernel of the Laplace equation which allows us to write the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator, and in this way we are able to find an exact differential-integral equation for the evolution of the free surface in one space dimension. Although not amenable to direct analytical solutions, this equation turns out to allow an easy numerical implementation. We give an explicit illustrative case at the end of the article.

Subtractive renormalization of the next-to-leading order NN interaction

The subtracted kernel method is implemented recursively to solve scattering equations for the S-1(0) phase-shifts considering the leading and the next-to-leading order NN interaction.

Renormalization group invariance of quantum mechanics

We propose a framework to renormalize the nonrelativistic quantum mechanics with arbitrary singular interactions. The scattering equation is written to have one or more subtraction in the kernel at a given energy scale. The scattering amplitude is the solution of a nth order derivative equation in respect to the renormalization scale, which is the nonrelativistic counterpart of the Callan-Symanzik formalism, Scaled running potentials for the subtracted equations keep the physics invariant fur a sliding subtraction point. An example of a singular potential, that requires more than one subtraction to renormalize the theory is shown. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier B.V. B.V. All rights reserved.

Antiparticle Contribution in the Cross Ladder Diagram for Bethe-Salpeter Equation in the Light-Front

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

Integrodifference model for blowfly invasion

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)