Genetic parameter estimation for pre- and post-weaning traits in Brahman cattle in Brazil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Predicting breeding values for milk yield of Guzera (Bos indicus) cows using random regression models

Given the importance of Guzera breeding programs for milk production in the tropics, the objective of this study was to compare alternative random regression models for estimation of genetic parameters and prediction of breeding values. Test-day milk yields records (TDR) were collected monthly, in a maximum of 10 measurements. The database included 20,524 records of first lactation from 2816 Guzera cows. TDR data were analyzed by random regression models (RRM) considering additive genetic, permanent environmental and residual effects as random and the effects of contemporary group (CG), calving age as a covariate (linear and quadratic effects) and mean lactation curve as fixed. The genetic additive and permanent environmental effects were modeled by RRM using Wilmink, All and Schaeffer and cubic B-spline functions as well as Legendre polynomials. Residual variances were considered as heterogeneous classes, grouped differently according to the model used. Multi-trait analysis using finite-dimensional models (FDM) for testday milk records (TDR) and a single-trait model for 305-days milk yields (default) using the restricted maximum likelihood method were also carried out as further comparisons. Through the statistical criteria adopted, the best RRM was the one that used the cubic B-spline function with five random regression coefficients for the genetic additive and permanent environmental effects. However, the models using the Ali and Schaeffer function or Legendre polynomials with second and fifth order for, respectively, the additive genetic and permanent environmental effects can be adopted, as little variation was observed in the genetic parameter estimates compared to those estimated by models using the B-spline function. Therefore, due to the lower complexity in the (co)variance estimations, the model using Legendre polynomials represented the best option for the genetic evaluation of the Guzera lactation records. An increase of 3.6% in the accuracy of the estimated breeding values was verified when using RRM. The ranks of animals were very close whatever the RRM for the data set used to predict breeding values. Considering P305, results indicated only small to medium difference in the animals' ranking based on breeding values predicted by the conventional model or by RRM. Therefore, the sum of all the RRM-predicted breeding values along the lactation period (RRM305) can be used as a selection criterion for 305-day milk production. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Finishing precocity visual score and genetic associations with growth traits in Angus beef cattle

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Auxílio do geoprocessamento para a geração do mapa de suscetibilidade à erosão: o caso do córrego Mandu, Rio Claro/SP

The mining of sand, currently, is essential for urban growth, by providing input for the building industry. The consequences of this mining activity to environmental triggers may be severe and irreversible. Among the major impacts caused by sand mining the riparian vegetation removal is detached. The riparian vegetation is essential for balance and maintaining the local ecosystem. For all that had been shown, is possible to verify the importance of environmental studies in areas wich there are mining. This study aimed specially to assess environmental impacts triggered by a mining, located near the headwaters of the stream Mandu, situated in Ajapi, District of Rio Claro-SP. For this purpose, we used remote sensing techniques and GIS to produce thematic maps of slope, pedology, geology, land use and occupation of the soil, and riparian vegetation, using the capabilities of GIS / ArcGIS. The slope map was based on data from the Cartographic IGC 1979, scale 1:10,000. For the production of pedological and geological maps were used Semi-Detailed soil survey of the state of São Paulo, 1981 (1:100,000) and the Geological Map of Zaine (1994), scale 1:50,000, respectively. Since the maps of Use and Land Occupation and Riparian Forest were obtained by visual interpretation of the image of CBERS 2010 following the merger between the HRC and CCD images. From these mappings, and through multi-criteria analysis, map of susceptibility to erosion was made, which supported the environmental assessment of the studied area, indicating susceptible and unsuitable areas for the deployment of economic activities and urban sprawl. This study serves as a model can be replicated in other watersheds, assisting in the proper use planning and land use, aiming at the rational use of natural resources

Estudo da interação genótipo ambiente em búfalos leiteiros do Brasil e da Colômbia

Pós-graduação em Zootecnia - FCAV

Validation of a measuring instrument for the perception of oral health in women

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Análise da suscetibilidade a corridas de massa aplicada a dutovias: estudo de caso na bacia do Ribeirão do Roque

This scientific research aimed at to analyse the susceptibility to debris flow of the watershed of Ribeirão do Roque (SP), focusing on the upstream areas of OSBRA pipeline. This is because, mass flow can cause damage to pipes, mainly due to conditioning hydro erosion of the land in the drainage crossings, including the undermining the banks of streams. Firstly, It was conducted a literature review, aiming to identify and understand the principal characteristics and conditions of debris flow. Secondly, the physical and anthropic factors and their respective weights of influence were selected and used to determine the mass flow susceptibility. It was selected the following physical factors: type and thickness of rocks, soil and unconsolidated materials; textural density; amplitude relief; relief slope; shaped valley; and shape of slopes. Such factors are present in the physiographic subdivision map of the study area. In addition, the anthropic attributes correspond to the classes contained in the land use map. Therefore, the physical and anthropic factors were integrated through the multi-criteria analysis in a GIS environment, generating a total susceptibility map of debris flow on the scale 1:50,000. The results showed that a significative part of the study area was classified as average susceptibility. However, it was identified areas with high susceptibility in the region in which the pipe cross the Ribeirão do Roque. Moreover, at which point the river presents a closed valley and a meander shape, without a fluvial plain that would be useful to attenuate the development of the process. Consequently, if a mass flow begins in any of these most susceptible regions located upstream of the pipe, the chances that the process develops by the river and causes the excavations of his bed are quite large. However, the pipelines cross these critical areas directly on the rock (diabase), which provides additional protection against possible ...

Estrutura populacional e parâmetros genéticos da característica classe de tempo em corridas de equinos da raça Quarto de Milha

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Análise multicriterial aplicado na definição de áreas prioritárias ao uso agrícola da terra da bacia do Rio Capivara, Botucatu, SP

The use of geographic information systems (GIS), combined with advanced analysis technique, enables the standardization and data integration, which are usually from different sources, allowing you to conduct a joint evaluation of the same, providing more efficiency and reliability in the decision-making process to promote the adequacy of land use. This study aimed to analyze the priority areas of the basin agricultural use of the Capivara River, Botucatu, SP, through multicriterial analysis, aiming at conservation of water resources. The results showed that the Geographic Information System Idrisi Selva combined with advanced analysis technique and the weighted linear combination method proved to be an effective tool in the combination of different criteria, allowing the determination of the adequacy of agricultural land use less subjective way. Environmental criteria were shown to be suitable for the combination and multi-criteria analysis, allowing the preparation of the statement of suitability classes for agricultural use and can be useful for regional planning and decision-making by public bodies and environmental agents because the method takes into account the rational use of land and allowing the conservation of hydrics resources.

Adequação territorial com abordagem multicriterial pela análise da combinação linear ponderada

From the characterization of biophysical attributes of the watershed (slope, soil types, capacity to land use and land cover), this article, used the multi-criteria analysis method – Weighted Linear Combination, defined priority areas for adaptation to the use of land as to its capacity of use. With this methodological approach, were created for the watershed under study, four classes, formed by different combinations of biophysical attributes (discrete data), representing levels of priorities for agricultural land use. The Multicriteria Evaluation in a GIS is suitable for the mapping of priority areas to the suitability of land use in watersheds. The geospatial information on the biophysical environment, generated from the methodological procedures described in this article, has a high positive potential to guide the rational planning of the use of natural resources and territorial occupation, besides serving as a powerful instrument to guide policies and collective processes of decision on the use and land cover.

Determination of trace elements in bovine semen samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and data mining techniques for identification of bovine class

The reproductive performance of cattle may be influenced by several factors, but mineral imbalances are crucial in terms of direct effects on reproduction. Several studies have shown that elements such as calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, selenium, and zinc are essential for reproduction and can prevent oxidative stress. However, toxic elements such as lead, nickel, and arsenic can have adverse effects on reproduction. In this paper, we applied a simple and fast method of multi-element analysis to bovine semen samples from Zebu and European classes used in reproduction programs and artificial insemination. Samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (ICP-MS) using aqueous medium calibration and the samples were diluted in a proportion of 1:50 in a solution containing 0.01% (vol/vol) Triton X-100 and 0.5% (vol/vol) nitric acid. Rhodium, iridium, and yttrium were used as the internal standards for ICP-MS analysis. To develop a reliable method of tracing the class of bovine semen, we used data mining techniques that make it possible to classify unknown samples after checking the differentiation of known-class samples. Based on the determination of 15 elements in 41 samples of bovine semen, 3 machine-learning tools for classification were applied to determine cattle class. Our results demonstrate the potential of support vector machine (SVM), multilayer perceptron (MLP), and random forest (RF) chemometric tools to identify cattle class. Moreover, the selection tools made it possible to reduce the number of chemical elements needed from 15 to just 8.

Paleolimnologically inferred eutrophication of a shallow, tropical, urban reservoir in southeast Brazil

We studied the eutrophication history of a tropical shallow reservoir in the So Paulo metropolitan region, southeast Brazil. We analyzed grain size, geochemistry, diatom assemblages, and land-use records in a sediment core from the reservoir to infer its trophic state history during the last similar to 110 years (1894-2005). Eighty diatom species were observed in the core and shifts in the relative abundances of planktonic and benthic taxa indicate major limnological changes associated with complex interactions between hydrologic factors and eutrophication. Discostella stelligera was associated with deforestation and water physical changes whereas Aulacoseira granulata, a species abundant throughout the core, was mostly associated with high flux conditions and erosion events, regardless of trophic state. Eutrophication was triggered by construction of the city zoo (1958) and installation of the So Paulo State Department of Agriculture (1975) within the Gar double dagger as watershed, and increasing loads of untreated sewage from these institutions. The data suggest that deterioration in water quality began after similar to 1975 and markedly accelerated after similar to 1990. The reservoir has been hypereutrophic since 1999. Steady increases in geochemical proxies for trophic state, along with a decrease in C/N ratios, indicated higher nutrient concentrations and the prevalence of autochthonous production towards the core top. Appearance of Achnanthidium catenatum similar to 1993 highlighted the onset of a marked eutrophication phase. The subsequent dominance of Planothidium rostratum and Cyclotella meneghiniana suggested a sharp shift to a hypereutrophic state since 1999. Land-use history proved valuable for validating the chronology and interpreting anthropogenic impacts. Multi-proxy analysis of the sediment record provided an effective tool for tracking ecological shifts in the reservoir ecosystem. This study provides the first reconstruction of lake eutrophication history in Brazil and highlights the importance of hydrological/physical changes as drivers of diatom assemblage shifts in reservoirs, which may confound trophic state inferences based on shifts in the planktonic/benthic diatom ratio.

Genotype by environment interaction for birth and weaning weights of composite beef cattle in different regions of Brazil

The objectives of the present study were to characterize and define homogenous production environments of composite beef cattle in Brazil in terms of climatic and geographic variables using multivariate exploratory techniques and to use them to assess the presence of G x E for birth weight (BW) and weaning weight (WW). Data from animals born between 1995 and 2008 on 36 farms located in 27 municipalities of the Brazilian states were used. Fifteen years of climate observations (mean minimum and maximum annual temperature and mean annual rainfall) and geographic (latitude, longitude and altitude) data were obtained for each municipality where the farms were located for characterization of the production environments. Hierarchical and nonhierarchical cluster analysis was used to group farms located in regions with similar environmental variables into clusters. Six clusters of farms were formed. The effect of sire-cluster interaction was tested by single-trait analysis using deviance information criterion (DIC). Genetic parameters were estimated by multi-trait analysis considering the same trait to be different in each cluster. According to the values of DIC, the inclusion of sire-cluster effect did not improve the fit of the genetic evaluation model for BW and WW. Estimates of genetic correlations among clusters ranged from -0.02 to 0.92. The low genetic correlation among the most studied regions permits us to suggest that a separate genetic evaluation for some regions should be undertaken. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Meta-models, environment and layers: agent-oriented engineering of complex systems

Traditional software engineering approaches and metaphors fall short when applied to areas of growing relevance such as electronic commerce, enterprise resource planning, and mobile computing: such areas, in fact, generally call for open architectures that may evolve dynamically over time so as to accommodate new components and meet new requirements. This is probably one of the main reasons that the agent metaphor and the agent-oriented paradigm are gaining momentum in these areas. This thesis deals with the engineering of complex software systems in terms of the agent paradigm. This paradigm is based on the notions of agent and systems of interacting agents as fundamental abstractions for designing, developing and managing at runtime typically distributed software systems. However, today the engineer often works with technologies that do not support the abstractions used in the design of the systems. For this reason the research on methodologies becomes the basic point in the scientific activity. Currently most agent-oriented methodologies are supported by small teams of academic researchers, and as a result, most of them are in an early stage and still in the first context of mostly \academic" approaches for agent-oriented systems development. Moreover, such methodologies are not well documented and very often defined and presented only by focusing on specific aspects of the methodology. The role played by meta- models becomes fundamental for comparing and evaluating the methodologies. In fact a meta-model specifies the concepts, rules and relationships used to define methodologies. Although it is possible to describe a methodology without an explicit meta-model, formalising the underpinning ideas of the methodology in question is valuable when checking its consistency or planning extensions or modifications. A good meta-model must address all the different aspects of a methodology, i.e. the process to be followed, the work products to be generated and those responsible for making all this happen. In turn, specifying the work products that must be developed implies dening the basic modelling building blocks from which they are built. As a building block, the agent abstraction alone is not enough to fully model all the aspects related to multi-agent systems in a natural way. In particular, different perspectives exist on the role that environment plays within agent systems: however, it is clear at least that all non-agent elements of a multi-agent system are typically considered to be part of the multi-agent system environment. The key role of environment as a first-class abstraction in the engineering of multi-agent system is today generally acknowledged in the multi-agent system community, so environment should be explicitly accounted for in the engineering of multi-agent system, working as a new design dimension for agent-oriented methodologies. At least two main ingredients shape the environment: environment abstractions - entities of the environment encapsulating some functions -, and topology abstractions - entities of environment that represent the (either logical or physical) spatial structure. In addition, the engineering of non-trivial multi-agent systems requires principles and mechanisms for supporting the management of the system representation complexity. These principles lead to the adoption of a multi-layered description, which could be used by designers to provide different levels of abstraction over multi-agent systems. The research in these fields has lead to the formulation of a new version of the SODA methodology where environment abstractions and layering principles are exploited for en- gineering multi-agent systems.

Natural patterns and anthropogenic disturbance in north Adriatic marine benthic assemblages: descriptive and methodological studies

Marine soft bottom systems show a high variability across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Both natural and anthropogenic sources of disturbance act together in affecting benthic sedimentary characteristics and species distribution. The description of such spatial variability is required to understand the ecological processes behind them. However, in order to have a better estimate of spatial patterns, methods that take into account the complexity of the sedimentary system are required. This PhD thesis aims to give a significant contribution both in improving the methodological approaches to the study of biological variability in soft bottom habitats and in increasing the knowledge of the effect that different process (both natural and anthropogenic) could have on the benthic communities of a large area in the North Adriatic Sea. Beta diversity is a measure of the variability in species composition, and Whittaker’s index has become the most widely used measure of beta-diversity. However, application of the Whittaker index to soft bottom assemblages of the Adriatic Sea highlighted its sensitivity to rare species (species recorded in a single sample). This over-weighting of rare species induces biased estimates of the heterogeneity, thus it becomes difficult to compare assemblages containing a high proportion of rare species. In benthic communities, the unusual large number of rare species is frequently attributed to a combination of sampling errors and insufficient sampling effort. In order to reduce the influence of rare species on the measure of beta diversity, I have developed an alternative index based on simple probabilistic considerations. It turns out that this probability index is an ordinary Michaelis-Menten transformation of Whittaker's index but behaves more favourably when species heterogeneity increases. The suggested index therefore seems appropriate when comparing patterns of complexity in marine benthic assemblages. Although the new index makes an important contribution to the study of biodiversity in sedimentary environment, it remains to be seen which processes, and at what scales, influence benthic patterns. The ability to predict the effects of ecological phenomena on benthic fauna highly depends on both spatial and temporal scales of variation. Once defined, implicitly or explicitly, these scales influence the questions asked, the methodological approaches and the interpretation of results. Problem often arise when representative samples are not taken and results are over-generalized, as can happen when results from small-scale experiments are used for resource planning and management. Such issues, although globally recognized, are far from been resolved in the North Adriatic Sea. This area is potentially affected by both natural (e.g. river inflow, eutrophication) and anthropogenic (e.g. gas extraction, fish-trawling) sources of disturbance. Although few studies in this area aimed at understanding which of these processes mainly affect macrobenthos, these have been conducted at a small spatial scale, as they were designated to examine local changes in benthic communities or particular species. However, in order to better describe all the putative processes occurring in the entire area, a high sampling effort performed at a large spatial scale is required. The sedimentary environment of the western part of the Adriatic Sea was extensively studied in this thesis. I have described, in detail, spatial patterns both in terms of sedimentary characteristics and macrobenthic organisms and have suggested putative processes (natural or of human origin) that might affect the benthic environment of the entire area. In particular I have examined the effect of off shore gas platforms on benthic diversity and tested their effect over a background of natural spatial variability. The results obtained suggest that natural processes in the North Adriatic such as river outflow and euthrophication show an inter-annual variability that might have important consequences on benthic assemblages, affecting for example their spatial pattern moving away from the coast and along a North to South gradient. Depth-related factors, such as food supply, light, temperature and salinity play an important role in explaining large scale benthic spatial variability (i.e., affecting both the abundance patterns and beta diversity). Nonetheless, more locally, effects probably related to an organic enrichment or pollution from Po river input has been observed. All these processes, together with few human-induced sources of variability (e.g. fishing disturbance), have a higher effect on macrofauna distribution than any effect related to the presence of gas platforms. The main effect of gas platforms is restricted mainly to small spatial scales and related to a change in habitat complexity due to a natural dislodgement or structure cleaning of mussels that colonize their legs. The accumulation of mussels on the sediment reasonably affects benthic infauna composition. All the components of the study presented in this thesis highlight the need to carefully consider methodological aspects related to the study of sedimentary habitats. With particular regards to the North Adriatic Sea, a multi-scale analysis along natural and anthopogenic gradients was useful for detecting the influence of all the processes affecting the sedimentary environment. In the future, applying a similar approach may lead to an unambiguous assessment of the state of the benthic community in the North Adriatic Sea. Such assessment may be useful in understanding if any anthropogenic source of disturbance has a negative effect on the marine environment, and if so, planning sustainable strategies for a proper management of the affected area.