Covariance structure in the skull of Catarrhini: a case of pattern stasis and magnitude evolution

The study of the genetic variance/covariance matrix (G-matrix) is a recent and fruitful approach in evolutionary biology, providing a window of investigating for the evolution of complex characters. Although G-matrix studies were originally conducted for microevolutionary timescales, they could be extrapolated to macroevolution as long as the G-matrix remains relatively constant, or proportional, along the period of interest. A promising approach to investigating the constancy of G-matrices is to compare their phenotypic counterparts (P-matrices) in a large group of related species; if significant similarity is found among several taxa, it is very likely that the underlying G-matrices are also equivalent. Here we study the similarity of covariance and correlation structure in a broad sample of Old World monkeys and apes (Catarrhini). We made phylogenetically structured comparisons of correlation and covariance matrices derived from 39 skull traits, ranging from between species to the superfamily level. We also compared the overall magnitude of integration between skull traits (r(2)) for all Catarrhim genera. Our results show that P-matrices were not strictly constant among catarrhines, but the amount of divergence observed among taxa was generally low. There was significant and positive correlation between the amount of divergence in correlation and covariance patterns among the 30 genera and their phylogenetic distances derived from a recently proposed phylogenetic hypothesis. Our data demonstrate that the P-matrices remained relatively similar along the evolutionary history of catarrhines, and comparisons with the G-matrix available for a New World monkey genus (Saguinus) suggests that the same holds for all anthropoids. The magnitude of integration, in contrast, varied considerably among genera, indicating that evolution of the magnitude, rather than the pattern of inter-trait correlations, might have played an important role in the diversification of the catarrhine skull. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Determination of dental decay rates with optical coherence tomography

We report the use of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to detect and quantify demineralization process induced by S. mutans biofilm in third molars human teeth. Artificial lesions were induced by a S. mutans microbiological culture and the samples (N = 50) were divided into groups according to the demineralization time: 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11days. The OCT system was implemented using a light source delivering an average power of 96 mu W in the sample arm, and spectral characteristics allowing 23 mu m of axial resolution. The images were produced with lateral scans step of 10 pan and analyzed individually. As a result of the evaluation of theses images, lesion depth was calculated as function of demineralization time. The depth of the lesion in the root dentine increased from 70 pm to 230,urn (corrected by the enamel refraction index, 1.62 @ 856 nm), depending of exposure time. The lesion depth in root dentine was correlated to demineralization time, showing that it follows a geometrical progression like a bacteria growth law. [GRAPHICS] Progression of lesion depth in root dentine as function of exposure time, showing that it follows a geometrical progression like a bacteria growth law(C) 2009 by Astro Ltd. Published exclusively by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA

Coherence dynamics of two-mode condensates in asymmetric potentials

Detection of weak forces with an accuracy beyond the standard quantum limit holds promise both for fundamental research and for technological applications. Schemes involving ultracold atoms for such measurements are now considered to be prime candidates for increased sensitivity. In this paper we use a combination of analytical and numerical techniques to investigate the possible subshot-noise estimation of applied force fields through detection of coherence dynamics of Bose-condensed atoms in asymmetric double-well traps. Following a semiclassical description of the system dynamics and fringe visibility, we present numerical simulations of the full quantum dynamics that demonstrate the dynamical production of phase squeezing beyond the standard quantum limit. Nonlinear interactions are found to limit the achievable amount to a finite value determined by the external weak force.

Are schools able to bring sense into pupils' lives? - an experiment to use Antonovsky's concept sense of coherence from a school perspective. : Paper presented at the ENIRDEM conference in Kilkenny, Ireland 26th-29th September, 2002

Young people now spend a longer and longer period of their lives at school then ever before. Not always because that they want to, but because society has nothing else to offer. The situation in many schools may also, in different aspects, be seen as highly problematic. Andersson (2001) has, for example, found in a large longitudinal study - The Life Project – that schools seem to be adapted to the needs of only a minority of the students - around 30%. On the other hand school is badly adjusted to the requirements of another 30 %. This group of students often find school meaningless, uninteresting and boring. For these students school is mostly a waste of time. In such circumstances, it seems natural that society has a responsibility to offer young people a meaningful time at school, both here and now and to prepare them for a future live as adults, not only as a part of the work force.As a part of departure I briefly describe the model that Antonovsky has developed and try to use it in a school context instead. I have here, of course, no possibility to make a deeper analysis of a complex problem such as this.In Antonovsky’s spirit, using a salutogenic perspective, instead of asking ourselves why do pupils fail or perhaps also not like being at school we have to ask, instead: What it is that makes pupils successful? From this background the purpose of this paper is to discuss some aspects of how pupils may use different strategies to handle their school situation in a proper way.

Integrating a sense of coherence into the neonatal environment

Background: Family centred care (FCC) is currently a valued philosophy within neonatal care; an approach that places the parents at the heart of all decision-making and engagement in the care of their infant. However, to date, there is a lack of clarity regarding the definition of FCC and limited evidence of FCCs effectiveness in relation to parental, infant or staff outcomes. Discussion: In this paper we present a new perspective to neonatal care based on Aaron Antonovksy's Sense of Coherence (SOC) theory of well-being and positive health. Whilst the SOC was originally conceptualised as a psychological-based construct, the SOCs three underpinning concepts of comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness provide a theoretical lens through which to consider and reflect upon meaningful care provision in this particular care environment. By drawing on available FCC research, we consider how the SOC concepts considered from both a parental and professional perspective need to be addressed. The debate offered in this paper is not presented to reduce the importance or significance of FCC within neonatal care, but, rather, how consideration of the SOC offers the basis through which meaningful and effective FCC may be delivered. Practice based implications contextualised within the SOC constructs are also detailed. Summary: Consideration of the SOC constructs from both a parental and professional perspective need to be addressed in FCC provision. Service delivery and care practices need to be comprehensible, meaningful and manageable in order to achieve and promote positive well-being and health for all concerned.

Compositional Model Repositories via Dynamic Constraint Satisfaction with Order-of-Magnitude Preferences

The predominant knowledge-based approach to automated model construction, compositional modelling, employs a set of models of particular functional components. Its inference mechanism takes a scenario describing the constituent interacting components of a system and translates it into a useful mathematical model. This paper presents a novel compositional modelling approach aimed at building model repositories. It furthers the field in two respects. Firstly, it expands the application domain of compositional modelling to systems that can not be easily described in terms of interacting functional components, such as ecological systems. Secondly, it enables the incorporation of user preferences into the model selection process. These features are achieved by casting the compositional modelling problem as an activity-based dynamic preference constraint satisfaction problem, where the dynamic constraints describe the restrictions imposed over the composition of partial models and the preferences correspond to those of the user of the automated modeller. In addition, the preference levels are represented through the use of symbolic values that differ in orders of magnitude.

Análise de diagramas cor-magnitude de 5 aglomerados ricos da LMC

Apresentamos a análise de diagramas cor-magnitude (CMDs) profundos para 5 aglomerados ricos da Grande Nuvem de Magalhães (LMC). Os dados fazem parte do projeto HST G07307, entitulado "Formação e Evolução de Aglomerados Estelares Ricos da LMC", e foram obtidos através do HST/WFPC2 nos filtros F555W (~ V) e F814W (~ I), alcançando V555~25. A amostra de aglomerados é composta por NGC 1805 e NGC 1818, os mais jovens (r < 100 Myr), NGC 1831e NGC 1868,de idades intermediárias (400 < r < 1000Myr), e Hodge 14, o mais velho (r > 1200Myr). Discutimos e apresentamos um método de correção dos CMDs para incompleteza da amostra e contaminação por estrelas de campo. O uso eficiente das informações contidas nos CMDs foi feito por meio de comparações entre os CMDs observados e CMDs modelados. O processo de modelamento de CMDs gera uma Seqüência Principal (MS) sintética, que utiliza como entrada do modelo a informação sobre idade (r), metalicidade (Z), Função de Massa do Presente (PDMF), fração de binárias não resolvidas, distância e extinção da luz. As incertezas fotométricas foram empiricamente determinadas a partir dos dados e incorporadas no modelamento. Técnicas estatísticas de comparação entre CMDs em 1D e 2D são apresentadas e aplicadas como métodos objetivos capazes de determinar a compatibilidade entre modelo e observação. Modelando os CMDs da região central dos aglomerados podemos inferir a metalicidade (Z), o módulo de distância intrínseco ((V - Mv)o) e o avermelhamento (E(B-V)) para cada aglomerado. Também determinamos as idades para os 3 aglomerados mais velhos de nossa amostra. Continuação) Através da comparação em 2D os valores encontrados foram os seguintes: para NGC 1805, Z = 0.007:1+-0.003, (V - Mv)o = 18.50:1+- 0.10, E(B - V) = 0.03:1+-0.01; para NGC 1818,Z = 0.005:1+-0.002, (V - Mv)o = 18.50:1+-0.15, E(B - V)~0.00; para NGC 1831, Z = 0.012:1+-0.002, log(r /yr) = 8.70 :I+-0.05, (V - Mv)o = 18.70:1+- 0.05, E(B - V)~ 0.00; para NGC 1868, Z = 0.008:1+-0.002,log(r/yr) =8.95:1+-0.05, (V - Mv)o = 18.70:1+- 0.05, E(B - V) ~0.00; para Hodge 14, Z = 0.008+-0.004, log(r/yr) = 9.23+-0.10, (V - Mv)o = 18.50+-0.15, E(B - V) = 0.02+- 0.02. Estes valores estão de acordo, dentro das incertezas, com os valores obtidos através da análise de linhas fiduciais (lD), o que agrega confiabilidade a estas determinações. Através da análise de CMDs em regiões concêntricas determinamos a dependência espacial da inclinação da PDMF (a) nos aglomerados mais ricos. Para tanto empregamos duas abordagens distintas para a determinação de a: 1) método tradicional em 1D via conversão direta de V555em massa; 2) método em 2D via modelmento de CMDs. Independente do método de análise, todos os aglomerados analisados demonstram claramente o efeito de segregação em massa. Além disso, NGC 1818, NGC 1831 e NGC 1868 apresentam uma possível perda seletiva de estrelas de baixa massa nas suas regiões mais externas.

Diabetes mellitus : magnitude das hospitalizações na rede pública do Brasil, 1999-2001

Contexto: O diabetes mellitus (DM) é uma causa importante de morbimortalidade nas sociedades ocidentais devido à carga de sofrimento, incapacidade, perda de produtividade e morte prematura que provoca. No Brasil, seu impacto econômico é desconhecido. Objetivos: Dimensionar a participação do DM nas hospitalizações da rede pública brasileira (1999-2001), colaborando na avaliação dos custos diretos. Especificamente, analisar as hospitalizações (327.800) e os óbitos hospitalares (17.760) por DM como diagnóstico principal (CID-10 E10-E14 e procedimento realizado) e estimar as hospitalizações atribuíveis ao DM, incluindo as anteriores e aquelas por complicações crônicas (CC) e condições médicas gerais (CMG). Métodos: A partir de dados do Sistema de Informação Hospitalar do Sistema Único de Saúde (SIH/SUS) (37 milhões de hospitalizações), foram calculados indicadores por região de residência do paciente e sexo (ajustados por idade pelo método direto, com intervalos de confiança de 95%), faixas etárias, médias de permanência e de gastos por internação e populacional em US$. Realizou-se regressão logística múltipla para o desfecho óbito. As prevalências de DM foram combinadas aos riscos relativos de hospitalização por CC e CMG (metodologia do risco atribuível) e somadas às internações por DM como diagnóstico principal. Utilizou-se análise de sensibilidade para diferentes prevalências e riscos relativos. Resultados: Os coeficientes de hospitalizações e de óbitos hospitalares e a letalidade por DM como diagnóstico principal atingiram respectivamente 6,4/104hab., 34,9/106hab. e 5,4%. As mulheres apresentaram os coeficientes mais elevados, porém os homens predominaram na letalidade em todas as regiões. O gasto médio (US$ 150,59) diferiu significativamente entre as internações com e sem óbito, mas a média de permanência (6,4 dias) foi semelhante. O gasto populacional equivaleu a US$ 969,09/104hab. As razões de chances de óbito foram maiores para homens, pacientes ≥75 anos, e habitantes das regiões Nordeste e Sudeste. As hospitalizações atribuíveis ao DM foram estimadas em 836,3 mil/ano (49,3/104hab.), atingindo US$ 243,9 milhões/ano (US$ 14,4 mil/104hab.). DM como diagnóstico principal (13,1%), CC (41,5%) e CMG (45,4%) responderam por 6,7%, 51,4% e 41,9% respectivamente dos gastos. O valor médio das internações atribuíveis (US$ 292) situou-se 36% acima das não-atribuíveis. As doenças vasculares periféricas apresentaram a maior diferença no valor médio entre hospitalizações atribuíveis e não-atribuíveis (24%), porém as cardiovasculares destacaram-se em quantidade (27%) e envolveram os maiores gastos (37%). Os homens internaram menos (48%) que as mulheres, porém com gasto total maior (53%). As internações de pacientes entre 45-64 anos constituíram o maior grupo (45%) e gastos (48%) enquanto os pacientes com ≥75, os maiores coeficientes de hospitalização (350/104hab.) e de despesa (US$ 93,4 mil/104hab.). As regiões mais desenvolvidas gastaram o dobro (/104hab.) em relação às demais. Considerações Finais e Recomendações: As configurações no consumo de serviços hospitalares foram semelhantes às de países mais desenvolvidos, com importantes desigualdades regionais e de sexo. O gasto governamental exclusivamente com hospitalizações atribuíveis ao DM foi expressivo (2,2% do orçamento do Ministério da Saúde). A ampliação de atividades preventivas poderia diminuir a incidência do DM, reduzir a necessidade de internações, minimizar as complicações e minorar a severidade de outras condições médicas mais gerais.

Falta de qualidade da educação brasileira: qual a magnitude do problema?

In this paper we investigate how several national educational policies and practices influence both students' average reading achievement and the social distributioll of achievement within schools and countries. Data come fJ:om the 2000/2001 administration of PISA (programme for International Student Assessment) by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developrnent (OECD). They include observations from 212,880 lS-year-old students attending 8,038 secondary schools, which are located in 39 countries. We analyze these data with three-level Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM), with students nested in schools, which are nested within countries. Results focus on the role played by three country-level educational policies: (1) retention/repetition; (2) the mix of students in schools based on socioeconomic status (school social mix); and vocational education. We explore how these policies influence the social distribution of achievemer.t between schools within countries. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Efeitos individuais e interativos da diversidade de detritos, contexto e variabilidade ambiental sobre a magnitude e estabilidade do processo de decomposição

Studies on the effects of changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning have been a central theme in ecology over the past two decades. Several studies have showed that the diversity of plant debris differently affects the decomposition process in aquatic and terrestrial environments, but we know very about the effects of detritus diversity on decomposition under fluctuating environmental conditions. We tested whether and how the environmental contexts, as well as the dynamic of their alternation, influence the effects of detritus diversity on the decomposition process. We performed a field experiment where we manipulate the litter diversity of 8 species of terrestrial plants decomposing (litterbags) in single and in mixture containing the eight species together in three different environmental contexts: the terrestrial environment (T), aquatic (A) and interface (I) - experimental treatment that simulates variation in flooding regime. We measured the rate of decomposition through the loss of mass of the community and each individual detritus in monocultures and mixtures. Species richness and environmental variability had no effects on the magnitude and stability of the decomposition process. However, there were significant diversity effects on the decomposition of an individual alien species, F. benjamina. Environmental context had significant effects on the magnitude and variability of decomposition. Detritus decomposition was faster and more variable on aquatic, interface and terrestrial conditions, respectively. Our results demonstrate that the diversity of plant detritus has minor effects to the decomposition across disparate environmental conditions and suggest that it is necessary to consider the potential of other abiotic factors in affect the magnitude and variability of the decomposition processes

Educação - Corporeidade - Lazer: saber da experiência cultural em prelúdio

In the passage of life, the labyrinth of songs and corners are propitious ways for a better comprehension, perception and incorporation of learnings that emerge from our subjectiveness in a magic caught by senses. Eyesight, taste, hearing, touch and smell in communication with the world, put us in front of cultural diversities. The ludicity accumulated by experiences promote the flow of hilarious and concrete discoveries that express themselves in work and leisure demonstrations. Such reflections emerge indicators to the problematic construction centralized in the incorporation of cultural experience knowledge to the formation process and professional interventions in this rule and area. From this significant problematic, aiming to deepen studies, we favored leisure as field of investigative production in full expansion. This, for sure, was an exercise of qualification that guided us through meander of education and made us dip into studies about the corporeity. A research in which the scenery was painted and constructed with the complicity of the culture lived with shine, colors, rhythm and drummings of one of the most present cultural cycles: carnival. Recognized as a stimulant for beauty, participation, socialization, and helped us to enter in the essence of gestures and expressions of corporeity, to think, elaborate and socialize a critic-scientific knowledge which, appropriating from the rhythm of colors, of sounds, of tonalities, of senses and of meanings impregnated in the web of life. All these things seduced the researcher, making imagination flow amid ludic-creative dialogues with the imaginary of researchers creation and production in the rule and area of leisure, education and corporeity. Option that made us outline as objective to investigate and interpret how leisure teachers-researchers, from their studies, researches and interventions, locate and incorporate the knowledge from cultural experience to the formation process and intervention of professionals in this rule and in this area, emphasizing the contributions from this knowledge to fence and qualify this praxis. So, as living each cultural scenery, each epistemological contribution was feeding the production with images of the different versions of the Brazilian breedings, creating and raising expectations and new discoveries and newcomers. With the seriousness of a scientific study, we lived an xxiii academic experience with complex intensity, rigor and coherence, eliminating, step by step, the risks and limitations always present in a work of this magnitude. However, we weren t, even for one moment, alone. Our epistemic regard always maintained mediated by the principles of a methodological approach - the Etnomethodology, that while central guide provided us clues to unveil the lived world by our people-playful , in a universe of 15 members, that allowed themselves to comprehend, comment, analyze. This way, grasping the object in interactions arised and provoked by narrative interview, it was systematically dialected by (re) interpretation of images and formulations of people-playful, enriched by their beliefs, myths, conceptions and rituals inherent to knowledge from cultural experience, which each one attuned with Brazilian and international history, in a mixture of senses echoed from songs and tales. Inspired in drummings and percussions, clothing and choreographies of gestures and expressions, in mixtures produced in unit interactions in the multiplicity shown as necessary requests to the totality of life, with ludicity the rescue of the past, the conquest of present and the construction of future was the axle guide. This rich process of scientific creation made us realize that is possible qualify and empower the praxis in the rule and area of leisure incorporating the knowledge from cultural experience. What also becomes possible is the recuperation of objective revolutionaries and changing conditions of praxis itself with the view of strengthening and triggerment of vital elements in the rule and area of leisure. We also reaffirm that from this praxis emerge elements necessary to human formation in plenitude, by the appropriation of knowledge that guide the facing of challenges of a complex and plural world that valorize education, corporeity and leisure