Análise da estrutura de interação do web documentário One Millionth Tower: um estudo semiótico

Pós-graduação em Televisão Digital: Informação e Conhecimento - FAAC

Magnetically separable polymer (Mag-MIP) for selective analysis of biotin in food samples

This work presents an efficient method for the preparation of magnetic nanoparticles modified with molecularly imprinted polymers (Mag-MIP) through core-shell method for the determination of biotin in milk food samples. The functional monomer acrylic acid was selected from molecular modeling, EGDMA was used as cross-linking monomer and AIBN as radical initiator. The Mag-MIP and Mag-NIP were characterized by FTIR, magnetic hysteresis, XRD, SEM and N2-sorption measurements. The capacity of Mag-MIP for biotin adsorption, its kinetics and selectivity were studied in detail. The adsorption data was well described by Freundlich isotherm model with adsorption equilibrium constant (KF) of 1.46 mL g(-1). The selectivity experiments revealed that prepared Mag-MIP had higher selectivity toward biotin compared to other molecules with different chemical structure. The material was successfully applied for the determination of biotin in diverse milk samples using HPLC for quantification of the analyte, obtaining the mean value of 87.4% recovery.

DiffServer: Application Level Differentiated Services for Web Servers

Web content hosting, in which a Web server stores and provides Web access to documents for different customers, is becoming increasingly common. For example, a web server can host webpages for several different companies and individuals. Traditionally, Web Service Providers (WSPs) provide all customers with the same level of performance (best-effort service). Most service differentiation has been in the pricing structure (individual vs. business rates) or the connectivity type (dial-up access vs. leased line, etc.). This report presents DiffServer, a program that implements two simple, server-side, application-level mechanisms (server-centric and client-centric) to provide different levels of web service. The results of the experiments show that there is not much overhead due to the addition of this additional layer of abstraction between the client and the Apache web server under light load conditions. Also, the average waiting time for high priority requests decreases significantly after they are assigned priorities as compared to a FIFO approach.

Food Competition in a Semi-Free-Ranging Cebus apella Group

The competitive regime faced by individuals is fundamental to modelling the evolution of social organization. In this paper, we assess the relative importance of contest and scramble food competition on the social dynamics of a provisioned semi-free-ranging Cebus apella group (n=18). Individuals competed directly for provisioned and clumped foods. Effects of indirect competition were apparent with individuals foraging in different areas and with increased group dispersion during periods of low food abundance. We suggest that both forms of competition can act simultaneously and to some extent synergistically in their influence on social dynamics; the combination of social and ecological opportunities for competition and how those opportunities are exploited both influence the nature of the relationships within social groups of primates and underlie the evolved social structure. Copyright (c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Population structure of the lancelet Branchiostoma caribaeum (Cephalochordata: Branchiostomidae) in the Baia de Guanabara, Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil

Population structure of the lancelet Branchiostoma caribaeum Sandevall, 1853 was studied in four surveys, corresponding to austral seasons, in a tropical bay, southeast of Brazil. Abundance was higher in the spring and was positively correlated to coarse sediments, limiting its occurrence to some sectors of the sampling area. Body length and biomass differed seasonally but not between sexes. Sexually mature individuals occurred in all seasons, suggesting continuous breeding that is typical of tropical species. Variation in the frequency of small specimens indicates temporal differences in the intensity of breeding. The body length of recruits differed from other population of lancelets and the small length which B. caribaeum attained sexual maturity in Guanabara Bay may be related to local environmental stress or the great availability of food.

Structure-semantics interplay in complex networks and its effects on the predictability of similarity in texts

The classification of texts has become a major endeavor with so much electronic material available, for it is an essential task in several applications, including search engines and information retrieval. There are different ways to define similarity for grouping similar texts into clusters, as the concept of similarity may depend on the purpose of the task. For instance, in topic extraction similar texts mean those within the same semantic field, whereas in author recognition stylistic features should be considered. In this study, we introduce ways to classify texts employing concepts of complex networks, which may be able to capture syntactic, semantic and even pragmatic features. The interplay between various metrics of the complex networks is analyzed with three applications, namely identification of machine translation (MT) systems, evaluation of quality of machine translated texts and authorship recognition. We shall show that topological features of the networks representing texts can enhance the ability to identify MT systems in particular cases. For evaluating the quality of MT texts, on the other hand, high correlation was obtained with methods capable of capturing the semantics. This was expected because the golden standards used are themselves based on word co-occurrence. Notwithstanding, the Katz similarity, which involves semantic and structure in the comparison of texts, achieved the highest correlation with the NIST measurement, indicating that in some cases the combination of both approaches can improve the ability to quantify quality in MT. In authorship recognition, again the topological features were relevant in some contexts, though for the books and authors analyzed good results were obtained with semantic features as well. Because hybrid approaches encompassing semantic and topological features have not been extensively used, we believe that the methodology proposed here may be useful to enhance text classification considerably, as it combines well-established strategies. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A novel XML document structure comparison framework based-on sub-tree commonalities and label semantics

XML similarity evaluation has become a central issue in the database and information communities, its applications ranging over document clustering, version control, data integration and ranked retrieval. Various algorithms for comparing hierarchically structured data, XML documents in particular, have been proposed in the literature. Most of them make use of techniques for finding the edit distance between tree structures, XML documents being commonly modeled as Ordered Labeled Trees. Yet, a thorough investigation of current approaches led us to identify several similarity aspects, i.e., sub-tree related structural and semantic similarities, which are not sufficiently addressed while comparing XML documents. In this paper, we provide an integrated and fine-grained comparison framework to deal with both structural and semantic similarities in XML documents (detecting the occurrences and repetitions of structurally and semantically similar sub-trees), and to allow the end-user to adjust the comparison process according to her requirements. Our framework consists of four main modules for (i) discovering the structural commonalities between sub-trees, (ii) identifying sub-tree semantic resemblances, (iii) computing tree-based edit operations costs, and (iv) computing tree edit distance. Experimental results demonstrate higher comparison accuracy with respect to alternative methods, while timing experiments reflect the impact of semantic similarity on overall system performance.

Genotoxic and mutagenic effects of erythrosine B, a xanthene food dye, on HepG2 cells

Erythrosine (ErB) is a xanthene and an US Food and Drug Administration approved dye used in foods, drugs and cosmetics. Although its utilization is permitted, ErB is described as inhibitor of enzymes and protein-protein interactions and is toxic to pituitary and spermatogenesis processes. However, the genotoxicity and mutagenicity of ErB is inconclusive in the literature. This study aimed to analyze the genotoxicity of this dye using the alkaline comet assay and is the first investigation to evaluate ErB mutagenicity using the cytokinesis block micronucleus cytome (CBMN-Cyt) assay in HepG2 cells. These cells were chosen because they produce phase I and phase II enzymes that can mimic in vivo metabolism. The cells were treated with seven concentrations (0.1-70.0 mu g mL(-1)) of ErB, and the results showed genotoxicity at the two highest concentrations and mutagenicity at six concentrations. Furthermore, as micronuclei result from clastogenic and aneugenic processes, while comet assay is often considered more sensitive and detects DNA single strain breaks, we suggest that an aneugenic is responsible for the observed damage. Although ErB is approved for use in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, it must be used carefully because it damages the DNA structure. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Qualifying instrument for evaluation of food and nutritional care in hospital

Establishing criteria for hospital nutrition care ensures that quality care is delivered to patients. The responsibility of the Hospital Food and Nutrition Service (HFNS) is not always well defined, despite efforts to establish guidelines for patient clinical nutrition practice. This study describes the elaboration of an Instrument for Evaluation of Food and Nutritional Care (IEFNC) aimed at directing the actions of the Hospital Food and Nutrition Service. This instrument was qualified by means of a comparative analysis of the categories related to hospital food and nutritional care, published in the literature. Elaboration of the IEFNC comprised the following stages: (a) a survey of databases and documents for selection of the categories to be used in nutrition care evaluation, (b) a study of the institutional procedures for nutrition practice at two Brazilian hospitals, in order to provide a description of the sequence of actions that should be taken by the HFNS as well as other services participating in nutrition care, (c) design of the IEFNC based on the categories published in the literature, adapted to the sequence of actions observed in the routines of the hospitals under study, (d) application of the questionnaire at two different hospitals that was mentioned in the item (b), in order to assess the time spent on its application, the difficulties in phrasing the questions, and the coverage of the instrument, and (e) finalization of the instrument. The IEFNC consists of 50 open and closed questions on two areas of food and nutritional care in hospital: inpatient nutritional care and food service quality. It deals with the characterization and structure of hospitals and their HFNS, the actions concerning the patients' nutritional evaluation and monitoring, the meal production system, and the hospital diets. "This questionnaire is a tool that can be seen as a portrait of the structure and characteristics of the HFNS and its performance in clinical and meal management dietitian activities." (Nutr Hosp. 2012;27:1170-1177) DOI:10.3305/nh.2012.27.4.5868

Population structure and distribution of UCA ( Brachyura: Ocypodidae) influenced by abiotic factors in a tropical estuary

Uca populations have an important functional and structural role in many estuarine ecosystems. These crabs exhibit distinct physiological tolerance to salinity gradients, which may partially explain their heterogeneous distribution. In order to investigate the population structure and distribution of Uca spp. in a tropical estuary, we sampled Uca crabs in replicated 0.75 m2 quadrats at six muddy plain areas during monthly intervals between July and November 2012 in spring tidal conditions. Environmental factors including water temperature, salinity, sediment total organic matter, chlorophyll-a, and granulometry were analyzed. We sampled a total of 2919 individuals distributed in three Uca species (U. uruguayensis, U. thayeri and U. maracoani), from which U. uruguayensis was dominant. The density and biomass of individuals were spatially and temporally heterogeneous. During October and November we found higher Uca spp. densities (71.3 ± 47.3 to 77.6 ± 44,5 ind. 0.75 m-²) and biomass (1.8 ± 1.1 to 2.1 ± 1.0 g 0.75 m-2 AFDW) if compared to the previous months, density (July 55,5± 44,1 August 52,5± 34,9 and September 47,7 ± 25,6 ind. 0,75m-²) and biomass in others months (July 1,0± 0,94 August 1,1 ± 0,72 and September 1,3±0,93 g 0.75 m-2 AFDW ). The same pattern was found for other variables, such as salinity (32 and 34), organic matter (30 and 67%) and chlorophyll-a (89 and 46 μg g-1). In two study areas we found this pattern which suggests that higher Uca productivity and food availability are related. A principal component analysis (PCA) suggests that salinity and granulometry (silt) can influence (60% correspondence) the distribution of U. maracoani. For U. uruguayensis and U. thayeri the PCA suggests chlorophyll-a was important, which is a good indicator for labile organic matter. Our study suggests that the population structure and distribution of Uca species may be regulated by food availability, supporting their utility as biological models for ecosystem monitoring.

Aplicación web cuaderno de campo

[ES] El cuaderno de campo agrícola es un documento donde los productores agrariosregistran determinadas operaciones llevadas a cabo en su explotación. Esta herramienta debe ser supervisada por un técnico agrícola y sintetizar todos los requerimientos existentes en la legislación europea, nacional y autonómica en las siguientes materias: seguridad alimentaria; trazabilidad; seguridad en la aplicación de productos fitosanitarios; protección de aguas y suelos frente a la contaminación; protección de hábitats naturales; salud pública; condicionalidad. De esta manera, se garantiza que se llevan a cabo buenas prácticas agrícolas en laproducción hortofrutícola, respetando el medio ambiente y aportando confianza a los consumidores finales. Los modelos de cuaderno de campo agrícola existentes consisten en varias hojas con diferentes tablas que se cumplimentan en papel, con la dificultad que implica tanto para el agricultor en el registro de operaciones como para ser supervisado por los técnicos. El objetivo del presente trabajo es realizar una aplicación web que facilite al agricultor y a los técnicos agrícolas la gestión y supervisión del cuaderno de campo.

MWRegEx : monitor web de expresiones regulares

[ES] El Trabajo de Fin de Grado, Monitor Web de Expresiones Regulares (MWRegEx), es una herramienta basada en tecnologías web, desarrollada usando el entorno Visual Studio. El objetivo principal de la aplicación es dar apoyo a la docencia de expresiones regulares, en el marco de la enseñanza del manejo de ristras de caracteres en las asignaturas de programación del Grado en Ingeniería Informática.  La aplicación permite obtener el dibujo de un autómata de una expresión regular, facilitando su comprensión; además, permite aplicar la expresión a diferentes ristras de caracteres, mostrando las coincidencias encontradas, y ofrece una versión de la expresión adaptada a su uso en literales string de lenguajes como Java y otros. La herramienta se ha implementado en dos partes: un servicio web, escrito en C#, donde se realizan todos los análisis de las expresiones regulares y las ristras a contrastar; y un cliente web, implementado usando tecnología asp.net, con JavaScript y JQuery, que gestiona la interfaz de usuario y muestra los resultados. Esta separación permite que el servicio web pueda ser reutilizado con otras aplicaciones cliente. El autómata que representa una expresión regular esta dibujado usando la librería Raphaël JavaScript que permite manejar los elementos SVG. Cada elemento de la expresión regular tiene un dibujo diferente y único para así diferenciarlo. Toda la interfaz gráfica de usuario está internacionalizada de manera tal que pueda adaptarse a diferentes idiomas y regiones sin la necesidad de realizar cambios de ingeniería ni en el código. Tanto el servicio web como la parte cliente están estructurados para que se puedan agregar nuevas modificaciones sin que esto genere una onda expansiva a lo largo de las diversas clases existentes.

Aplicación web para Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria : [Parte A]

[ES] Este Trabajo de Fin de Grado es un servicio basado en tecnologías web (PHP, HTML5, CSS, JQUERY y AJAX). El objetivo principal es ofrecer un servicio de creación y gestión de actas para el Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Para ello, consta de dos módulos principales, uno para “crear actas” y otro para “editar actas”. La aplicación consta de dos partes. Una primera parte desarrollada por mí, que consiste en primer lugar en todas las reuniones que fueron necesarias con el personal del Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria para entender sus necesidades y cómo poder afrontarlas como desarrollador. Y en segundo lugar, me he encargado de la elaboración y la estructura de la página web, mediante la generación de los distintos ficheros con contenido  HTML, en la interconexión de estos ficheros y en el paso de parámetros entre dichos ficheros mediante las distintas herramientas (JQUERY, AJAX), así como también he dotado a la web de todo el contenido JavaScript necesario. En este apartado también se encuentra la tarea de realizar un módulo de búsqueda y un módulo para mostrar las actas ya acabadas. El de búsqueda contiene un formulario con un campo de búsqueda y busca las coincidencias dentro de todos los ficheros que se han generado con la aplicación. También muestra un link para abrir ese fichero desde el navegador. Como aportación adicional también me he encargado de la configuración y generación de las tablas necesarias de la base de datos para el funcionamiento de la aplicación.

Determination of bioactive and potentially toxic compounds in food: raw material analysis and shelf life evaluation

"Bioactive compounds" are extranutritional constituents that typically occur in small quantities in food. They are being intensively studied to evaluate their effects on health. Bioactive compounds include both water soluble compounds, such as phenolics, and lipidic substances such as n-3 fatty acids, tocopherols and sterols. Phenolic compounds, tocopherols and sterols are present in all plants and have been studied extensively in cereals, nuts and oil. n-3 fatty acids are present in fish and all around the vegetable kingdom. The aim of the present work was the determination of bioactive and potentially toxic compounds in cereal based foods and nuts. The first section of this study was focused on the determination of bioactive compounds in cereals. Because of that the different forms of phytosterols were investigated in hexaploid and tetraploid wheats. Hexaploid cultivars were the best source of esterified sterols (40.7% and 37.3% of total sterols for Triticum aestivum and Triticum spelta, respectively). Significant amounts of free sterols (65.5% and 60.7% of total sterols for Triticum durum and Triticum dicoccon, respectively) were found in the tetraploid cultivars. Then, free and bound phenolic compounds were identified in barley flours. HPLCESI/ MSD analysis in negative and positive ion mode established that barley free flavan-3- ols and proanthocyanidins were four dimers and four trimers having (epi)catechin and/or (epi)gallocatechin (C and/or GC) subunits. Hydroxycinnamic acids and their derivatives were the main bound phenols in barley flours. The results obtained demonstrated that barley flours were rich in phenolic compounds that showed high antioxidant activity. The study also examined the relationships between phenolic compounds and lipid oxidation of bakery. To this purpose, the investigated barley flours were used in the bakery production. The formulated oven products presented an interesting content of phenolic compounds, but they were not able to contain the lipid oxidation. Furthermore, the influence of conventional packaging on lipid oxidation of pasta was evaluated in n-3 enriched spaghetti and egg spaghetti. The results proved that conventional packaging was not appropriated to preserve pasta from lipid oxidation; in fact, pasta that was exposed to light showed a high content of potentially toxic compounds derived from lipid oxidation (such as peroxide, oxidized fatty acids and COPs). In the second section, the content of sterols, phenolic compounds, n-3 fatty acids and tocopherols in walnuts were reported. Rapid analytical techniques were used to analyze the lipid fraction and to characterize phenolic compounds in walnuts. Total lipid chromatogram was used for the simultaneous determination of the profile of sterols and tocopherols. Linoleic and linolenic acids were the most representative n-6 and n-3 essential dietary fatty acids present in these nuts. Walnuts contained substantial amounts of γ- and δ-tocopherol, which explained their antioxidant properties. Sitosterol, Δ5-avenasterol and campesterol were the major free sterols found. Capillary electrophoresis coupled to DAD and microTOF was utilized to determine phenolic content of walnut. A new compound in walnut ((2E,4E)- 8-hydroxy-2,7-dimethyl-2,4-decadiene-1,10-dioic acid 6-O-β-D-glucopiranosyl ester, [M−H]− 403.161m/z) with a structure similar to glansreginins was also identified. Phenolic compounds corresponded to 14–28% of total polar compounds quantified. Aglycone and glycosylated ellagic acid represented the principal components and account for 64–75% of total phenols in walnuts. However, the sum of glansreginins A, B and ((2E,4E)-8-hydroxy- 2,7-dimethyl-2,4-decadiene-1,10-dioic acid 6-O-β-D-glucopiranosyl ester was in the range of 72–86% of total quantified compounds.

La città di Bologna e la sua storia: diffusione e condivisione delle conoscenze attraverso Webgis open source e Web Mapping

To understand a city and its urban structure it is necessary to study its history. This is feasible through GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and its by-products on the web. Starting from a cartographic view they allow an initial understanding of, and a comparison between, present and past data together with an easy and intuitive access to database information. The research done led to the creation of a GIS for the city of Bologna. It is based on varied data such as historical map, vector and alphanumeric historical data, etc.. After providing information about GIS we thought of spreading and sharing the collected data on the Web after studying two solutions available on the market: Web Mapping and WebGIS. In this study we discuss the stages, beginning with the development of Historical GIS of Bologna, which led to the making of a WebGIS Open Source (MapServer and Chameleon) and the Web Mapping services (Google Earth, Google Maps and OpenLayers).