On saturation control of a non-ideal vibrating portal frame foundation type shear-building

In this paper, we examine the nonlinear control method based on the saturation phenomenon and of systems coupled with quadratic nonlinear ties applied to a shear-building portal plane frame foundation that supports an unbalanced direct cut-rent with limited power supply (non-ideal system). We analyze the equations of motion by using the method of averaging and numerical simulation. The interaction of the non-ideal structure with the saturation controller may lead to the occurrence of interesting phenomena during the forward passage through the several resonance states of the systems. Special attention is focused on passage through resonance when the non-ideal excitation frequency is near the portal frame natural frequency and when the non-ideal system frequency is approximately twice the controller frequency (two-to-one internal resonance).

Tuberculosis diagnosis after bleach processing for early stage tuberculosis laboratory capacity building

The diagnosis of tuberculosis is seriously hampered in the absence of standard biosafety laboratory facilities for specimen concentration and Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture. Within a laboratory twinning arrangement, heat-fixed direct smear and sediment from 74 bleach-processed and 20 non-processed specimens from Cumura Hospital, Guinea-Bissau, were sent to Lisbon for molecular evaluation of rifampicin resistance. Sequence analysis of a 369 base-pair ppoB locus detected 3.2% (3/94) resistant specimens. To our knowledge, this represents the first report on the molecular analysis of M. tuberculosis from bleach-processed sputum, an alternative to current diagnostic practice in low-resource settings.

New physics from warped compact extra dimensions: from model building to colliders signals

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)