Association of GH and IGF-1 polymorphisms with growth traits in a synthetic beef cattle breed

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

Estimativas de parâmetros genéticos e fenotípicos e análise de componentes principais para características de crescimento na raça Canchim

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

Avaliação do peso à desmama e do ganho médio de peso de bezerros cruzados, no estado do Mato Grosso do Sul

O objetivo deste trabalho foi comparar o desempenho de bezerros mestiços de diferentes grupos genéticos até a desmama. Informações de 3631 bezerros F1 filhos de vacas Nelore com touros Aberdeen Angus, Brangus, Brangus (pelagem vermelha), Canchim, Gelbvieh, Nelore e Simental foram usadas (Grupo 1). Foram usadas também informações de 1896 bezerros de fêmeas Nelore com touros das raças supracitadas e de fêmeas F1 retrocruzadas com touros Gelbvieh e Nelore (Grupo 2). Os pesos à desmama foram ajustados aos 230 dias (PD230) e aos 240 dias (PD240), para os grupos 1 e 2, respectivamente, e o ganho médio diário até a desmama (GMD), para ambos os grupos, foi determinado. O modelo matemático usado nas análises pelo método de quadrados mínimos incluiu os efeitos fixos de grupo contemporâneo (GC), grupo genético do bezerro (GG) e idade do bezerro e idade da vaca. GC e GG influenciaram as características estudadas em ambos os grupos. A idade do bezerro não influiu significativamente no PD230 e GMD no Grupo 1, mas no Grupo 2 foi significativa para PD240 e GMD. A idade da vaca ao parto influenciou as características estudadas tanto no Grupo 1 como no Grupo 2. Os animais cruzados foram superiores aos puros Nelore em ambos os grupos. Foi obtido, a partir do Grupo 2, um terceiro conjunto de dados, Grupo 3, contendo os produtos do retrocruzamento de fêmeas F1, Nelore-Gelbvieh, com touros Gelbvieh e Nelore, contendo 722 informações de PD240 e GMD. Nesse arquivo foram estimados os efeitos aditivos direto e materno e heterótico individual. Apenas o efeito heterótico individual foi significativo.

The application of interpolating MLS approximations to the analysis of MHD flows

The element-free Galerkin method (EFGM) is a very attractive technique for solutions of partial differential equations, since it makes use of nodal point configurations which do not require a mesh. Therefore, it differs from FEM-like approaches by avoiding the need of meshing, a very demanding task for complicated geometry problems. However, the imposition of boundary conditions is not straightforward, since the EFGM is based on moving-least-squares (MLS) approximations which are not necessarily interpolants. This feature requires, for instance, the introduction of modified functionals with additional unknown parameters such as Lagrange multipliers, a serious drawback which leads to poor conditionings of the matrix equations. In this paper, an interpolatory formulation for MLS approximants is presented: it allows the direct introduction of boundary conditions, reducing the processing time and improving the condition numbers. The formulation is applied to the study of two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic flow problems, and the computed results confirm the accuracy and correctness of the proposed formulation. (C) 2002 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The STATFLUX code: a statistical method for calculation of flow and set of parameters, based on the Multiple-Compartment Biokinetical Model

The code STATFLUX, implementing a new and simple statistical procedure for the calculation of transfer coefficients in radionuclide transport to animals and plants, is proposed. The method is based on the general multiple-compartment model, which uses a system of linear equations involving geometrical volume considerations. Flow parameters were estimated by employing two different least-squares procedures: Derivative and Gauss-Marquardt methods, with the available experimental data of radionuclide concentrations as the input functions of time. The solution of the inverse problem, which relates a given set of flow parameter with the time evolution of concentration functions, is achieved via a Monte Carlo Simulation procedure.Program summaryTitle of program: STATFLUXCatalogue identifier: ADYS_v1_0Program summary URL: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/ADYS_v1_0Program obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen's University of Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: noneComputer for which the program is designed and others on which it has been tested: Micro-computer with Intel Pentium III, 3.0 GHzInstallation: Laboratory of Linear Accelerator, Department of Experimental Physics, University of São Paulo, BrazilOperating system: Windows 2000 and Windows XPProgramming language used: Fortran-77 as implemented in Microsoft Fortran 4.0. NOTE: Microsoft Fortran includes non-standard features which are used in this program. Standard Fortran compilers such as, g77, f77, ifort and NAG95, are not able to compile the code and therefore it has not been possible for the CPC Program Library to test the program.Memory, required to execute with typical data: 8 Mbytes of RAM memory and 100 MB of Hard disk memoryNo. of bits in a word: 16No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 6912No. of bytes in distributed Program, including test data, etc.: 229 541Distribution format: tar.gzNature of the physical problem: the investigation of transport mechanisms for radioactive substances, through environmental pathways, is very important for radiological protection of populations. One such pathway, associated with the food chain, is the grass-animal-man sequence. The distribution of trace elements in humans and laboratory animals has been intensively studied over the past 60 years [R.C. Pendlenton, C.W. Mays, R.D. Lloyd, A.L. Brooks, Differential accumulation of iodine-131 from local fallout in people and milk, Health Phys. 9 (1963) 1253-1262]. In addition, investigations on the incidence of cancer in humans, and a possible causal relationship to radioactive fallout, have been undertaken [E.S. Weiss, M.L. Rallison, W.T. London, W.T. Carlyle Thompson, Thyroid nodularity in southwestern Utah school children exposed to fallout radiation, Amer. J. Public Health 61 (1971) 241-249; M.L. Rallison, B.M. Dobyns, F.R. Keating, J.E. Rall, F.H. Tyler, Thyroid diseases in children, Amer. J. Med. 56 (1974) 457-463; J.L. Lyon, M.R. Klauber, J.W. Gardner, K.S. Udall, Childhood leukemia associated with fallout from nuclear testing, N. Engl. J. Med. 300 (1979) 397-402]. From the pathways of entry of radionuclides in the human (or animal) body, ingestion is the most important because it is closely related to life-long alimentary (or dietary) habits. Those radionuclides which are able to enter the living cells by either metabolic or other processes give rise to localized doses which can be very high. The evaluation of these internally localized doses is of paramount importance for the assessment of radiobiological risks and radiological protection. The time behavior of trace concentration in organs is the principal input for prediction of internal doses after acute or chronic exposure. The General Multiple-Compartment Model (GMCM) is the powerful and more accepted method for biokinetical studies, which allows the calculation of concentration of trace elements in organs as a function of time, when the flow parameters of the model are known. However, few biokinetics data exist in the literature, and the determination of flow and transfer parameters by statistical fitting for each system is an open problem.Restriction on the complexity of the problem: This version of the code works with the constant volume approximation, which is valid for many situations where the biological half-live of a trace is lower than the volume rise time. Another restriction is related to the central flux model. The model considered in the code assumes that exist one central compartment (e.g., blood), that connect the flow with all compartments, and the flow between other compartments is not included.Typical running time: Depends on the choice for calculations. Using the Derivative Method the time is very short (a few minutes) for any number of compartments considered. When the Gauss-Marquardt iterative method is used the calculation time can be approximately 5-6 hours when similar to 15 compartments are considered. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A combined wavelet-element free Galerkin method for numerical calculations of electromagnetic fields

A combined wavelet-element free Galerkin (EFG) method is proposed for solving electromagnetic EM) field problems. The bridging scales are used to preserve the consistency and linear independence properties of the entire bases. A detailed description of the development of the discrete model and its numerical implementations is given to facilitate the reader to. understand the proposed algorithm. A numerical example to validate the proposed method is also reported.

Chemical evolution in the Asteraceae. The Oxidation-Reduction mechanism and production of secondary metabolites

This work describes the application of partial least squares (PLS) regression to variables that represent the oxidation data of several types of secondary metabolite isolated from the family Asteraceae. The oxidation states were calculated for each carbon atom of the involved compounds after these had been matched with their biogenetic precursor. The states of oxidation variations were named oxidation steps. This methodology represents a new approach to inspect the oxidative changes in taxa. Partial least square (PLS) regression was used to inspect the relationships among terpenoids, cournarins, polyacetylenes, and flavonoids from a data base containing approximately 27,000 botanical entries. The results show an interdependence between the average oxidation states of each class of secondary metabolite at tribe and sub tribe levels.

Escherichia coli phylogenetic group determination and its application in the identification of the major animal source of fecal contamination

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

Using cubic splines to mitigate systematic errors in GPS relative positioning

Systematic errors can have a significant effect on GPS observable. In medium and long baselines the major systematic error source are the ionosphere and troposphere refraction and the GPS satellites orbit errors. But, in short baselines, the multipath is more relevant. These errors degrade the accuracy of the positioning accomplished by GPS. So, this is a critical problem for high precision GPS positioning applications. Recently, a method has been suggested to mitigate these errors: the semiparametric model and the penalised least squares technique. It uses a natural cubic spline to model the errors as a function which varies smoothly in time. The systematic errors functions, ambiguities and station coordinates, are estimated simultaneously. As a result, the ambiguities and the station coordinates are estimated with better reliability and accuracy than the conventional least square method.

Effects of CSN3 and LGB gene polymorphisms on production traits in beef cattle

The objective of the present study was to estimate the allele and genotype frequencies of the CSN3/Hinfl and LGB/HaeIII gene polymorphisms in beef cattle belonging to different genetic groups, and to determine the effects of these polymorphisms on growth and carcass traits in these animals, which are submitted to an intensive production model. Genotyping was performed on 79 Nelore, 30 Canchim (5/8 Charolais + 3/8 Zebu) and 275 crossbred cattle originating from the crosses of Simmental (n = 30) and Angus (n = 245) sires with Nelore females. Body weight, weight gain, dressing percentage, longissimus dorsi area and backfat thickness were fitted using the GLM procedure, and least square means of the genotypes were compared by the F test. The results showed that the CSN3/Hinfl and LGB/HaeIII polymorphisms did not have any effect on growth or carcass traits (p > 0.05). Copyright by the Brazilian Society of genetics.

Modifying the stochastic model to mitigate GPS systematic errors in relative positioning

The GPS observables are subject to several errors. Among them, the systematic ones have great impact, because they degrade the accuracy of the accomplished positioning. These errors are those related, mainly, to GPS satellites orbits, multipath and atmospheric effects. Lately, a method has been suggested to mitigate these errors: the semiparametric model and the penalised least squares technique (PLS). In this method, the errors are modeled as functions varying smoothly in time. It is like to change the stochastic model, in which the errors functions are incorporated, the results obtained are similar to those in which the functional model is changed. As a result, the ambiguities and the station coordinates are estimated with better reliability and accuracy than the conventional least square method (CLS). In general, the solution requires a shorter data interval, minimizing costs. The method performance was analyzed in two experiments, using data from single frequency receivers. The first one was accomplished with a short baseline, where the main error was the multipath. In the second experiment, a baseline of 102 km was used. In this case, the predominant errors were due to the ionosphere and troposphere refraction. In the first experiment, using 5 minutes of data collection, the largest coordinates discrepancies in relation to the ground truth reached 1.6 cm and 3.3 cm in h coordinate for PLS and the CLS, respectively, in the second one, also using 5 minutes of data, the discrepancies were 27 cm in h for the PLS and 175 cm in h for the CLS. In these tests, it was also possible to verify a considerable improvement in the ambiguities resolution using the PLS in relation to the CLS, with a reduced data collection time interval. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.

Análise de séries temporais de coordenadas estimadas com gps: Uma proposta metodológica para detecção, remoção e recuperação de efeitos sazonais

GPS active networks are more and more used in geodetic surveying and scientific experiments, as water vapor monitoring in the atmosphere and lithosphere plate movement. Among the methods of GPS positioning, Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has provided very good results. A characteristic of PPP is related to the modeling and / or estimation of the errors involved in this method. The accuracy obtained for the coordinates can reach few millimeters. Seasonal effects can affect such accuracy if they are not consistent treated during the data processing. Coordinates time series analyses have been realized using Fourier or Harmonics spectral analyses, wavelets, least squares estimation among others. An approach is presented in this paper aiming to investigate the seasonal effects included in the stations coordinates time series. Experiments were carried out using data from stations Manaus (NAUS) and Fortaleza (BRFT) which belong to the Brazilian Continuous GPS Network (RBMC). The coordinates of these stations were estimated daily using PPP and were analyzed through wavelets for identification of the periods of the seasonal effects (annual and semi-annual) in each time series. These effects were removed by means of a filtering process applied in the series via the least squares adjustment (LSQ) of a periodic function. The results showed that the combination of these two mathematical tools, wavelets and LSQ, is an interesting and efficient technique for removal of seasonal effects in time series.

Adaptive filter feature identification for structural health monitoring in aeronautical panel

This paper presents an approach for structural health monitoring (SHM) by using adaptive filters. The experimental signals from different structural conditions provided by piezoelectric actuators/sensors bonded in the test structure are modeled by a discrete-time recursive least square (RLS) filter. The biggest advantage to use a RLS filter is the clear possibility to perform an online SHM procedure since that the identification is also valid for non-stationary linear systems. An online damage-sensitive index feature is computed based on autoregressive (AR) portion of coefficients normalized by the square root of the sum of the square of them. The proposed method is then utilized in a laboratory test involving an aeronautical panel coupled with piezoelectric sensors/actuators (PZTs) in different positions. A hypothesis test employing the t-test is used to obtain the damage decision. The proposed algorithm was able to identify and localize the damages simulated in the structure. The results have shown the applicability and drawbacks the method and the paper concludes with suggestions to improve it. ©2010 Society for Experimental Mechanics Inc.

The influence of subpixel measurement on digital camera calibration

The aim of this work is to evaluate the influence of point measurements in images, with subpixel accuracy, and its contribution in the calibration of digital cameras. Also, the effect of subpixel measurements in 3D coordinates of check points in the object space will be evaluated. With this purpose, an algorithm that allows subpixel accuracy was implemented for semi-automatic determination of points of interest, based on Fõrstner operator. Experiments were accomplished with a block of images acquired with the multispectral camera DuncanTech MS3100-CIR. The influence of subpixel measurements in the adjustment by Least Square Method (LSM) was evaluated by the comparison of estimated standard deviation of parameters in both situations, with manual measurement (pixel accuracy) and with subpixel estimation. Additionally, the influence of subpixel measurements in the 3D reconstruction was also analyzed. Based on the obtained results, i.e., on the quantification of the standard deviation reduction in the Inner Orientation Parameters (IOP) and also in the relative error of the 3D reconstruction, it was shown that measurements with subpixel accuracy are relevant for some tasks in Photogrammetry, mainly for those in which the metric quality is of great relevance, as Camera Calibration.

Determination of disease biomarkers in Eucalyptus by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography and multivariate data analysis

In this paper is reported the use of the chromatographic profiles of volatiles to determine disease markers in plants - in this case, leaves of Eucalyptus globulus contaminated by the necrotroph fungus Teratosphaeria nubilosa. The volatile fraction was isolated by headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analyzed by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-fast quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC. ×. GC-qMS). For the correlation between the metabolic profile described by the chromatograms and the presence of the infection, unfolded-partial least squares discriminant analysis (U-PLS-DA) with orthogonal signal correction (OSC) were employed. The proposed method was checked to be independent of factors such as the age of the harvested plants. The manipulation of the mathematical model obtained also resulted in graphic representations similar to real chromatograms, which allowed the tentative identification of more than 40 compounds potentially useful as disease biomarkers for this plant/pathogen pair. The proposed methodology can be considered as highly reliable, since the diagnosis is based on the whole chromatographic profile rather than in the detection of a single analyte. © 2013 Elsevier B.V..