A game theoretical approach to the evolution of structured communication codes

Structured meaning-signal mappings, i.e., mappings that preserve neighborhood relationships by associating similar signals with similar meanings, are advantageous in an environment where signals are corrupted by noise and sub-optimal meaning inferences are rewarded as well. The evolution of these mappings, however, cannot be explained within a traditional language evolutionary game scenario in which individuals meet randomly because the evolutionary dynamics is trapped in local maxima that do not reflect the structure of the meaning and signal spaces. Here we use a simple game theoretical model to show analytically that when individuals adopting the same communication code meet more frequently than individuals using different codes-a result of the spatial organization of the population-then advantageous linguistic innovations can spread and take over the population. In addition, we report results of simulations in which an individual can communicate only with its K nearest neighbors and show that the probability that the lineage of a mutant that uses a more efficient communication code becomes fixed decreases exponentially with increasing K. These findings support the mother tongue hypothesis that human language evolved as a communication system used among kin, especially between mothers and offspring.

Directed Differentiation of Neural Progenitors into Neurons Is Accompanied by Altered Expression of P2X Purinergic Receptors

Neural differentiation has been extensively studied in vitro in a model termed neurospheres, which consists of aggregates of neural progenitor cells. Previous studies suggest that they have a great potential for the treatment of neurological disorders. One of the major challenges for scientists is to control cell fate and develop ideal culture conditions for neurosphere expansion in vitro, without altering their features. Similar to human neural progenitors, rat neurospheres cultured in the absence of epidermal and fibroblast growth factors for a short period increased the levels of beta-3 tubulin and decreased the expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein and nestin, compared to neurospheres cultured in the presence of these factors. In this work, we show that rat neurospheres cultured in suspension under mitogen-free condition presented significant higher expression of P2X2 and P2X6 receptor subunits, when compared to cells cultured in the presence of growth factors, suggesting a direct relationship between P2X2/6 receptor expression and induction of neuronal differentiation in mitogen-free cultured rat neurospheres.

Proteome analysis of human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using shotgun mass spectrometry

The prefrontal cortex executes important functions such as differentiation of conflicting thoughts, correct social behavior and personality expression, and is directly implicated in different neurodegenerative diseases. We performed a shotgun proteome analysis that included IEF fractionation, RP-LC, and MALDI-TOF/TOF mass spectrometric analysis of tryptic digests from a pool of seven human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex protein extracts. In this report, we present a catalog of 387 proteins expressed in these samples, identified by two or more peptides and high confidence search scores. These proteins are involved in different biological processes such as cell growth and/or maintenance, metabolism/energy pathways, cell communication/signal trarisduction, protein metabolism, transport, regulation of nucleobase, nucleoside, nucleotide and nucleic acid metabolism, and immune response. This analysis contributes to the knowledge of the human brain proteome by adding sample diversity and protein expression data from an alternative technical approach. It will also aid comparative studies of different brain areas and medical conditions, with future applications in basic and clinical research.

Processes of feelings in a society with a violent past : A qualitative study of the communication for Societal healing in the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Sri Lanka and Ghana between 2002-2011

The research investigates in what extent and how communication for meeting feelings is provided in Truth Commission work. It examines if and in what way feelings are addressed in the communication officially published by the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Ghana and Sri Lanka, occurring between 2002-2011. The research is also looking at the healing processes in a time perspective to find out if there is a communication for Societal healing to be continued in a longer term. My conclusion is that two cases of three in my research, the TRCs in Ghana and East Timor, have communication clearly directed to meet feelings caused by the war. One of the three cases (East Timor) has a communication with a clear ambition to heal over a longer period, to continue after the existence of the Truth Commission. The research suggests that communication with a clear ambition to reach out widely in the society, a communication directed to meet and process feelings over a longer period, can make Societal healing more effective. It also concludes that, in the future, Societal healing, as a field in conflict resolution, will be more based on representational media than today, provided through web communication.

Ideais formativos de homem da emissora de Educação Rural de Caicó (Rio Grande do Norte, 1963-1978)

Under the aegis of the third diocese bishop of Caicó, Dom Manuel Tavares de Araújo, the Broadcasting Station of Rural Education of that city was founded, in May 1 s" 1963 with the ideal of being then an educational city, preferentially for youths and adults, rural meu and women of the arca of Seridó in Rio Grande do Norte state. In the year of its 40th birthday (2003), we began the investigation of that radio station choosing as study object its educational and formative programming, in the inc1usion of the first fifteen years of its existence (1963-1978), period that reaches the official inauguration of the Radio Station and the end of the bishopric of its fOllllder as Bishop of Caicó. Elucidating and showing Man's formative ideaIs longed by that Catholic educational broadcasting station, underlying to its radiophonic programming, such as the idealization for it reached, is the objective of this Doctorate work. It was considered pertinent to discover the guidelines that historically have permeated the Social Doçtrine of the Catholic Church addressing its aggiornamento, especially in what concerns to the employment of the modern ways of communication for the distance with the aim of evangelizing and educating. In arder to understand the ideaIs of the investigated educational Radio, we have delimited the research to the thematic Catholic Church, means of social communication and base education. In face of the study object and the aim to be reached it was appealed, methodologically, to the notion of cultural action present in Certeau (1995), and to the understanding of educational formation backgrounded fIam the modern thinkers that discuss it. Such frame references have allowed us to analyze in a wider spectrum tl)e programming broadcasted on the air by the sound wavys of that educ(itional Çatholic Radio, as well as, the very acts of cultural idealizations that has orientated it in its foundations. The thesis here defended is that. the Radio, at procJaiming itself as a broadcasting station of rural education directed preferably to the rural sertanejo countrymen, without neglecting its admitted ends, has surpassed them in its overall range. It was identified an articulate approach of its programmatic modules with the guid,elines emanateq from the Catholic Teaching about the use of the. means of social communication. At conceiving, establishin,g and executing an ec1ectic programmatic and div,ersified grating, the Rural Radio of Caicó has transcended to a strict human-Christian formation to request the development of the human, spiritual and cQrporaldimensions, jointly. With suchprogramming, it addressed to the seridoenses as real meu and women inserted in the "sertanej.o" environment with effective structural and existential problems of alI types, induding the hunger, the thirst, the syndical organization, the cQoperativism, the colIective modero work and the absence of universalizing school education. Its radiophonic transmissions, I}lled by the demands of an enlarged, open, dialogic and responsible communication, wheneIllbracing dedicated modules to religious and catechetical emissions, to the entertainment, to the radiojoumalism, to the country root culture, and to the school education of b se for the modality of the School and of the radiophonic classes, subsumed to ideaIs that longed for the formation of a multifaceted and pluridimensional sertanejo Man; of men and women that, without abjuring the Catholicism, were able to understand, to dialogued and to live together with the general demands of a society in progressive mutation, whose economical, social, cultural and educational demands it IDade themselves to be felt through the sertão potiguar of the Serido region, equal way of the intemationalized world

Construtivismo de marco teórico-pedagógico a grife: um estudo a partir das mensagens veiculadas na internet

This thesis is resulted of a research on propagated the social representations of constructivism in the Internet, which as had estimated basic the idea of Moscovici (1961) of that the media it has determinative paper in the popularization of the scientific theories, in formation e propagation of the social representations and in the construction of behaviors human beings. Understanding the Internet as latest space of circulation of social communications, therefore, privileged field (and still not explored) for studies of social representations, we choose this half midiático as investigative field of our research, it if it constitutes in the "great ocean of the new informational planet" (LEVY, 2000, p. 126), besides making possible the interaction with different forms of images, different individuals, different ' world ', configuring itself as important space of symbolic production e of analysis of the representational process in the world contemporary. Based in these questions, we trace as objective to analyze the circulating speech propagated on-line on the constructivism, searching to apprehend the social representations shared the respect. This objective was constructed in face of the insertion of the theory constructivist in the educational way has two decades more than, as well as of its consolidation as reference in different social contexts, mainly in midiático. The question that directed the research was: as this theory obtains to penetrate in some layers of our society, to influence the world readings e the behaviors of different people? That modifications it suffers in this trajectory and which the paper of the Internet in this process? The corpus of the research was constituted of the substances on the theory found in the Internet, in pages in Portuguese of Google, in the period of 27 of July of 2004 the 17 of August of 2004. The data they had been analyzed on the basis of the project of analysis of content elaborated for Moscovici (1961) and in the estimated theoreticians of the social communication, in special of the hypermedia. The results had disclosed that the Internet participates of determinative form in the process of popularization of the constructivism theory, not only spreading out its estimated theoretician- methodological for the domain public (diffusion), but propagating positive beliefs and images of its postulates (propagation) and using them it service of interests politicians e financiers (propaganda). The popularization of the constructivism in the Internet and social representations of this theory propagated configure one process in which the theory passes of pedagogical theoretical landmark for grief, assuming a commercial character extremely and the status of solution for problems of the education and the society, stirring up attitudes and behaviors in public, most general possible, that comes to take care of to the interests politicians e marketing. Recognizing the diversity, the permanent renewal of information and the negotiation of directions gifts in the Internet, as well as the innumerable ones forms of access to the information found by it, we consider results of the research as fruits of the inherent characteristics to this way midiático, to the time where we call the attention for relativity these results, for the plasticity of knowing them and sensible propagated on-line e for the great challenge that the hypermedia imposes to the study of communication phenomena, of the social representations and in educational quarrels and for the necessity of new research that they investigate the forms of socialization of the information and communication propitiated by hypermedia and its implications in the construction of the symbolic universes and in practical social

Human face verification based on multidimensional Polynomial Powers of Sigmoid (PPS)

In this paper, we described how a multidimensional wavelet neural networks based on Polynomial Powers of Sigmoid (PPS) can be constructed, trained and applied in image processing tasks. In this sense, a novel and uniform framework for face verification is presented. The framework is based on a family of PPS wavelets,generated from linear combination of the sigmoid functions, and can be considered appearance based in that features are extracted from the face image. The feature vectors are then subjected to subspace projection of PPS-wavelet. The design of PPS-wavelet neural networks is also discussed, which is seldom reported in the literature. The Stirling Universitys face database were used to generate the results. Our method has achieved 92 % of correct detection and 5 % of false detection rate on the database.

Conditional reasoning: A key to assessing computer-based knowledge-building communication processes

This article describes a methodological approach to conditional reasoning in online asynchronous learning environments such as Virtual-U VGroups, developed by SFU, BC, Canada, consistent with the notion of meaning implication: If part of a meaning C is embedded in B and a part of a meaning B is embedded in A, then A implies C in terms of meaning [Piaget 91]. A new transcript analysis technique was developed to assess the flows of conditional meaning implications and to identify the occurrence of hypotheses and connections among them in two human science graduate mixed-mode online courses offered in the summer/spring session of 1997 by SFU. Flows of conditional meaning implications were confronted with Virtual-U VGroups threads and results of the two courses were compared. Findings suggest that Virtual-U VGroups is a knowledge-building environment although the tree-like Virtual-U VGroups threads should be transformed into neuronal-like threads. Findings also suggest that formulating hypotheses together triggers a collaboratively problem-solving process that scaffolds knowledge-building in asynchronous learning environments: A pedagogical technique and an built-in tool for formulating hypotheses together are proposed. © Springer Pub. Co.

Consumption of bottled water by children in the city of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil - A brief communication

Objectives: To determine the consumption of bottled water by children in the city of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil. Methods: A stratified sample of the 17 areas established by the city plan was used to identify a total of 1,000 homes for visitation. Information was collected using a questionnaire concerning the type of water consumed and population demographics. Results: Overall, around 30 percent of all residences used bottled water. Among all households where bottled water was consumed, about 26 percent had children residing. For those with children and bottled water, 81 percent reported to use bottled water for the preparation of the children's foods and beverages. Conclusions: An important percentage of children consume bottled water in the city of Bauru, State of São Paulo, Brazil. Considering previous studies showing that fluoride concentrations vary in bottled water, public health measures should be implemented in order to guarantee adequate levels of fluoride in commercialized water. © 2007, American Association of Public Health Dentistry.

Analysis of agonist and antagonist effects on thyroid hormone receptor conformation by hydrogen/deuterium exchange

Thyroid hormone receptors (TRs) are ligand-gated transcription factors with critical roles in development and metabolism. Although x-ray structures of TR ligand-binding domains (LBDs) with agonists are available, comparable structures without ligand (apo-TR) or with antagonists are not. It remains important to understand apo-LBD conformation and the way that it rearranges with ligands to develop better TR pharmaceuticals. In this study, we conducted hydrogen/deuterium exchange on TR LBDs with or without agonist (T 3) or antagonist (NH3). Both ligands reduce deuterium incorporation into LBD amide hydrogens, implying tighter overall folding of the domain. As predicted, mass spectroscopic analysis of individual proteolytic peptides after hydrogen/ deuterium exchange reveals that ligand increases the degree of solvent protection of regions close to the buried ligand-binding pocket. However, there is also extensive ligand protection of other regions, including the dimer surface at H10-H11, providing evidence for allosteric communication between the ligand-binding pocket and distant interaction surfaces. Surprisingly, Cterminal activation helix H12, which is known to alter position with ligand, remains relatively protected from solvent in all conditions suggesting that it is packed against the LBD irrespective of the presence or type of ligand. T 3, but not NH3, increases accessibility of the upper part of H3-H5 to solvent, and we propose that TR H12 interacts with this region in apo-TR and that this interaction is blocked by T 3 but not NH3.Wepresent data from site-directed mutagenesis experiments and molecular dynamics simulations that lend support to this structural model of apo-TR and its ligand-dependent conformational changes. (Molecular Endocrinology 25: 15-31, 2011). Copyright © 2011 by The Endocrine Society.

Building sustainable values in organizations with the support of human resource management: Evidence from one firm considered as the 'best place to work' in Brazil

Researchers and other professionals unanimously agree that companies should become more sustainable, but this will not happen without the support of human resource management. Paradoxically, there is a lack of information on the support human resource management offers to organizational sustainability applied to real cases. Therefore, this research presents a case study on this topic that was carried out in a leading Brazilian company, which is considered as a model and has been selected as 'the best place to work in the country'. The results provide practical examples of how this family company has been working to guarantee an increasingly sustainable performance with the support of human resources, highlighting the achievements and challenges the company has faced. One of the main results indicates that companies seeking to achieve sustainability need the assistance of the human resource field in order to design a communication system which bridges the gap between practices and sustainable values. © 2012 Management Centre for Human Values.

Alcohol Impairs Predation Risk Response and Communication in Zebrafish

The effects of ethanol exposure on Danio rerio have been studied from the perspectives of developmental biology and behavior. However, little is known about the effects of ethanol on the prey-predator relationship and chemical communication of predation risk. Here, we showed that visual contact with a predator triggers stress axis activation in zebrafish. We also observed a typical stress response in zebrafish receiving water from these conspecifics, indicating that these fish chemically communicate predation risk. Our work is the first to demonstrate how alcohol effects this prey-predator interaction. We showed for the first time that alcohol exposure completely blocks stress axis activation in both fish seeing the predator and in fish that come in indirect contact with a predator by receiving water from these conspecifics. Together with other research results and with the translational relevance of this fish species, our data points to zebrafish as a promising animal model to study human alcoholism. © 2013 Oliveira et al.

Desenvolvimento de uma base de dados para fatores de transcrição de seres humanos e suas redes de interação: Human Transcriptional Regulation Interaction Database (HTRIDB 2.0)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Information and communication technologies for disaster risk management in the Caribbean

Includes bibliography.

A indústria cultural e a estética da crueldade em Rubem Fonseca: uma análise dos contos o Cobrador, Pierrô da Caverna e Onze de maio

Na literatura, a chamada fase do pós-modernismo mostra os processos de desumanização e de coisificação dos indivíduos. Estes se tornaram o foco de debates graças ao desenvolvimento intensivo da sociedade de massa, diretamente vinculada às influências dos meios de comunicação e ao desenvolvimento da indústria cultural. Rubem Fonseca é um dos grandes nomes da literatura desta época e compôs muitos textos que manifestam as angústias do homem imerso no contexto do consumismo exacerbado, mola propulsora do capitalismo tardio. O cobrador, coletânea de contos publicada em 1979, possui narrativas que permitem o diálogo entre as teorias sociológicas que exaltam os conceitos dos meios de comunicação de massa, sociedade do consumo e indústria cultural, objetivo primordial desta pesquisa. A pretensão do presente estudo é compreender as expressões desse período nos contos "O Cobrador", "Pirrô da Caverna" e "Onze de Maio" desta obra, focalizando as interferências que a sociedade de massa e a indústria cultural operaram para que as criações literárias passassem a apresentar novas características. O método empregado consiste na análise dos contos, dando especial foco aos conceitos de indústria cultural, sociedade de massa e sociedade de consumo. Para análise dos contos, foi de fundamental importância o aparato teórico de Antônio Cândido, Lucien Goldmann, e Luiz Costa Lima, como teóricos que defendem a relação entre áreas como sociologia e literatura, além dos postulados de estudiosos como Theodor Adorno, David Lyon, Steven Connor, Jean-François Lyotard, Frederic Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Marshall Berman, entre outro sociólogos que provem debates sobre as mudanças culturais que o contexto pós-moderno suscita.Concomitantemente, a pesquisa está direcionada para o campo das teorias da Comunicação de caráterneo-marxista e suas relações com a literatura, evidenciando o tema da ascensão da sociedade de massa e a interferência dos meios de comunicação de massa para configuração das artes e de outras manifestações humanas. É possível estabelecer um diálogo entre os contos e as teorias que explicam os processos de massificação da sociedade, reconhecendo a preponderância das leis do consumo nos procedimentos dos indivíduos submetidos a essa condição, seja na violência de alguns, seja superficialidade de outros, fundamentados na chamada estética da crueldade para as obras fictícias.