Building the sugarcane genome for biotechnology and identifying evolutionary trends

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

Evolutionary History of the PER3 Variable Number of Tandem Repeats (VNTR): Idiosyncratic Aspect of Primate Molecular Circadian Clock

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

An evolutionary approach to improve connectivity prediction in mobile wireless sensor networks

Connectivity is the basic factor for the proper operation of any wireless network. In a mobile wireless sensor network it is a challenge for applications and protocols to deal with connectivity problems, as links might get up and down frequently. In these scenarios, having knowledge of the node remaining connectivity time could both improve the performance of the protocols (e.g. handoff mechanisms) and save possible scarce nodes resources (CPU, bandwidth, and energy) by preventing unfruitful transmissions. The current paper provides a solution called Genetic Machine Learning Algorithm (GMLA) to forecast the remainder connectivity time in mobile environments. It consists in combining Classifier Systems with a Markov chain model of the RF link quality. The main advantage of using an evolutionary approach is that the Markov model parameters can be discovered on-the-fly, making it possible to cope with unknown environments and mobility patterns. Simulation results show that the proposal is a very suitable solution, as it overcomes the performance obtained by similar approaches.

An Informatics Technical Note on Interaction of DNA - Graphene Chemical Sensor System as Reaction-Diffusion Wave-Based Computing System in Ionised Gaseous environments and their Applications Using Theoretical Studies and Scientific Computation Overview

The physics of plasmas encompasses basic problems from the universe and has assured us of promises in diverse applications to be implemented in a wider range of scientific and engineering domains, linked to most of the evolved and evolving fundamental problems. Substantial part of this domain could be described by R–D mechanisms involving two or more species (reaction–diffusion mechanisms). These could further account for the simultaneous non-linear effects of heating, diffusion and other related losses. We mention here that in laboratory scale experiments, a suitable combination of these processes is of vital importance and very much decisive to investigate and compute the net behaviour of plasmas under consideration. Plasmas are being used in the revolution of information processing, so we considered in this technical note a simple framework to discuss and pave the way for better formalisms and Informatics, dealing with diverse domains of science and technologies. The challenging and fascinating aspects of plasma physics is that it requires a great deal of insight in formulating the relevant design problems, which in turn require ingenuity and flexibility in choosing a particular set of mathematical (and/or experimental) tools to implement them.

Evolutionary trends in Iridaceae: new cytogenetic findings from the New World

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Structure, organization, and expression of the alpha prolamin multigenic family bring new insights into the evolutionary relationships among grasses

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

Genomic signatures of evolutionary transitions from solitary to group living

The evolution of eusociality is one of the major transitions in evolution, but the underlying genomic changes are unknown. We compared the genomes of 10 bee species that vary in social complexity, representing multiple independent transitions in social evolution, and report three major findings. First, many important genes show evidence of neutral evolution as a consequence of relaxed selection with increasing social complexity. Second, there is no single road map to eusociality; independent evolutionary transitions in sociality have independent genetic underpinnings. Third, though clearly independent in detail, these transitions do have similar general features, including an increase in constrained protein evolution accompanied by increases in the potential for gene regulation and decreases in diversity and abundance of transposable elements. Eusociality may arise through different mechanisms each time, but would likely always involve an increase in the complexity of gene networks.

Biology Teachers'Conceptions of the Diversity of Life and the Historical Development of Evolutionary Concepts

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

Extensive computation of albedo contrast between martian dust devil tracks and their neighboring regions

We have developed a method to compute the albedo contrast between dust devil tracks and their surrounding regions on Mars. It is mainly based on Mathematical Morphology operators and uses all the points of the edges of the tracks to compute the values of the albedo contrast. It permits the extraction of more accurate and complete information, when compared to traditional point sampling, not only providing better statistics but also permitting the analysis of local variations along the entirety of the tracks. This measure of contrast, based on relative quantities, is much more adequate to establish comparisons at regional scales and in multi-temporal basis using imagery acquired in rather different environmental and operational conditions. Also, the substantial increase in the details extracted may permit quantifying differential depositions of dust by computing local temporal fading of the tracks with consequences on a better estimation of the thickness of the top most layer of dust and the minimum value needed to create dust devils tracks. The developed tool is tested on 110 HiRISE images depicting regions in the Aeolis, Argyre, Eridania, Noachis and Hellas quadrangles. As a complementary evaluation, we also performed a temporal analysis of the albedo in a region of Russell crater, where high seasonal dust devil activity was already observed before, comprising the years 2007-2012. The mean albedo of the Russell crater is in this case indicative of dust devil tracks presence and, therefore, can be used to quantify dust devil activity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Perception of brazilian citizens about Darwinism and the (Non) Influence of God in the evolutionary process

The current context is unique in relation to the teaching of evolution in Brazil and the population's perception of evolution. On the one hand, it is said often about Darwinism in various media, especially due to the relatively recent commemoration of the two hundred years of the birth of Charles Darwin and one hundred and fifty years of the launch of the book The Origin of Species. On the other hand, it is clear, in recent years, a timid movement, more worryingly, in favor of equitable approach of creationist and evolutionist theories in the classroom. This article is a part of a research whose goal is to raise the design that Brazilian respondents have about the Darwinian view (which disregards the divine influence in the evolution of the species). The instrument used for data collection is a questionnaire, type Likert scale, which consists of a series of statements in which respondents must express their degree of agreement or disagreement with each statement. In this study, we present the results of the statement. "The thought of Darwin, which does not consider God as a participant in the process of evolution, is...". Analysis correlated with data on religion and education of the respondents are also held. The results point to a tendency of respondents not to accept the Darwinian view that disregards God's interference in the evolutionary process. The data also show that respondents' choices are influenced by religion and education. The frequency of responses that tend to accept the Darwinian view (which disregards the divine participation in the evolution of the species) is higher among respondents with higher levels of education. Adherents to religions "evangelical" tend to deny this view more often than followers of other religions. Given the potential risks of inserting creationist approaches in school education, it is necessary a discussion of the possible impacts of this rejection of Darwin's thinking (which does not consider God as a participant in the evolutionary process), indicated here, in the teaching of evolution. This work was supported by FAPEMIG.

Evolutionary optimization applied for fine-tuning parameter estimation in optical flow-based environments

Optical flow methods are accurate algorithms for estimating the displacement and velocity fields of objects in a wide variety of applications, being their performance dependent on the configuration of a set of parameters. Since there is a lack of research that aims to automatically tune such parameters, in this work we have proposed an evolutionary-based framework for such task, thus introducing three techniques for such purpose: Particle Swarm Optimization, Harmony Search and Social-Spider Optimization. The proposed framework has been compared against with the well-known Large Displacement Optical Flow approach, obtaining the best results in three out eight image sequences provided by a public dataset. Additionally, the proposed framework can be used with any other optimization technique.

Geoffroy's side-necked turtle [Phrynops geoffroanus (Schweigger, 1812), Testudines: Chelidae] as a model for evolutionary ecotoxicology: relationship between environmental contamination, conditions and genetic variability

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Diversification events and the effects of mass extinctions on Crocodyliformes evolutionary history

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

Wavelet-galerkin method for computations of electromagnetic fields-computation of connection coefficients

One of the key issues which makes the waveletGalerkin method unsuitable for solving general electromagnetic problems is a lack of exact representations of the connection coefficients. This paper presents the mathematical formulae and computer procedures for computing some common connection coefficients. The characteristic of the present formulae and procedures is that the arbitrary point values of the connection coefficients, rather than the dyadic point values, can be determined. A numerical example is also given to demonstrate the feasibility of using the wavelet-Galerkin method to solve engineering field problems. © 2000 IEEE.

A comparison about evolutionary algorithms for optimum-path forest clustering optimization

In this paper we deal with the problem of boosting the Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) clustering approach using evolutionary-based optimization techniques. As the OPF classifier performs an exhaustive search to find out the size of sample's neighborhood that allows it to reach the minimum graph cut as a quality measure, we compared several optimization techniques that can obtain close graph cut values to the ones obtained by brute force. Experiments in two public datasets in the context of unsupervised network intrusion detection have showed the evolutionary optimization techniques can find suitable values for the neighborhood faster than the exhaustive search. Additionally, we have showed that it is not necessary to employ many agents for such task, since the neighborhood size is defined by discrete values, with constrain the set of possible solution to a few ones.