Morfologia do relevo da porção sul do megaleque fluvial do Taquari, Pantanal da Nhecolândia, Brasil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Influence of data structure on the estimation of the additive genetic direct and maternal covariance for early growth traits in Nellore cattle

The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of data structure on estimated genetic parameters and predicted breeding values of direct and maternal genetic effects for weaning weight (WW) and weight gain from birth to weaning (BWG), including or not the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects. Records of 97,490 Nellore animals born between 1993 and 2006, from the Jacarezinho cattle raising farm, were used. Two different data sets were analyzed: DI_all, which included all available progenies of dams without their own performance; DII_all, which included DI_all + 20% of recorded progenies with maternal phenotypes. Two subsets were obtained from each data set (DI_all and DII_all): DI_1 and DII_1, which included only dams with three or fewer progenies; DI_5 and DII_5, which included only dams with five or more progenies. (Co)variance components and heritabilities were estimated by Bayesian inference through Gibbs sampling using univariate animal models. In general, for the population and traits studied, the proportion of dams with known phenotypic information and the number of progenies per dam influenced direct and maternal heritabilities, as well as the contribution of maternal permanent environmental variance to phenotypic variance. Only small differences were observed in the genetic and environmental parameters when the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects was set to zero in the data sets studied. Thus, the inclusion or not of the genetic covariance between direct and maternal effects had little effect on the ranking of animals according to their breeding values for WW and BWG. Accurate estimation of genetic correlations between direct and maternal genetic effects depends on the data structure. Thus, this covariance should be set to zero in Nellore data sets in which the proportion of dams with phenotypic information is low, the number of progenies per dam is small, and pedigree relationships are poorly known. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The contribution of 700,000 ORF sequence tags to the definition of the human transcriptome

open reading frame expressed sequences tags (ORESTES) differ from conventional ESTs by providing sequence data from the central protein coding portion of transcripts. We generated a total of 696,745 ORESTES sequences from 24 human tissues and used a subset of the data that correspond to a set of 15,095 full-length mRNAs as a means of assessing the efficiency of the strategy and its potential contribution to the definition of the human transcriptome. We estimate that ORESTES sampled over 80% of all highly and moderately expressed, and between 40% and 50% of rarely expressed, human genes. In our most thoroughly sequenced tissue, the breast, the 130,000 ORESTES generated are derived from transcripts from an estimated 70% of all genes expressed in that tissue, with an equally efficient representation of both highly and poorly expressed genes. In this respect, we find that the capacity of the ORESTES strategy both for gene discovery and shotgun transcript sequence generation significantly exceeds that of conventional ESTs. The distribution of ORESTES is such that many human transcripts are now represented by a scaffold of partial sequences distributed along the length of each gene product. The experimental joining of the scaffold components, by reverse transcription-PCR, represents a direct route to transcript finishing that may represent a useful alternative to full-length cDNA cloning.

Domain wall contribution to dielectric and piezoelectric responses in 0.65Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)-0.35PbTiO(3) ferroelectric ceramics

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

Optic Flow Contribution to Locomotion Adjustments in Obstacle Avoidance

Locomotion generates a visual movement pattern characterized as optic flow. To explore how the locomotor adjustments are affected by this pattern, an experimental paradigm was developed to eliminate optic flow during obstacle avoidance. The aim was to investigate the contribution of optic flow in obstacle avoidance by using a stroboscopic lamp. Ten young adults walked on an 8m pathway and stepped over obstacles at two heights. Visual sampling was determined by a stroboscopic lamp (static and dynamic visual sampling). Three-dimensional kinematics data showed that the visual information about self-motion provided by the optic flow was crucial for estimating the distance from and the height of the obstacle. Participants presented conservative behavior for obstacle avoidance under experimental visual sampling conditions, which suggests that optic flow favors the coupling of vision to adaptive behavior for obstacle avoidance.

Self-consistent equilibrium calculation through a direct variational technique in tokamak plasmas

A self-consistent equilibrium calculation, valid for arbitrary aspect ratio tokamaks, is obtained through a direct variational technique that reduces the equilibrium solution, in general obtained from the 2D Grad-Shafranov equation, to a 1D problem in the radial flux coordinate rho. The plasma current profile is supposed to have contributions of the diamagnetic, Pfirsch-Schluter and the neoclassical ohmic and bootstrap currents. An iterative procedure is introduced into our code until the flux surface averaged toroidal current density (J(T)), converges to within a specified tolerance for a given pressure profile and prescribed boundary conditions. The convergence criterion is applied between the (J(T)) profile used to calculate the equilibrium through the variational procedure and the one that results from the equilibrium and given by the sum of all current components. The ohmic contribution is calculated from the neoclassical conductivity and from the self-consistently determined loop voltage in order to give the prescribed value of the total plasma current. The bootstrap current is estimated through the full matrix Hirshman-Sigmar model with the viscosity coefficients as proposed by Shaing, which are valid in all plasma collisionality regimes and arbitrary aspect ratios. The results of the self-consistent calculation are presented for the low aspect ratio tokamak Experimento Tokamak Esferico. A comparison among different models for the bootstrap current estimate is also performed and their possible Limitations to the self-consistent calculation is analysed.