Estudos genéticos e morfológicos de biótipos resistentes e susceptíveis de Euphorbia heterophylla L. (amendoim-bravo)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Abordagens multivariadas no estudo da dinâmica de comunidades de macrófitas aquáticas

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Arcabouço para aprovisionamento de QoS e QoE em redes sem fio heterogêneas WiMAX/Wi-Fi com garantia de equidade entre vazões

Recentemente a sociedade está vivendo em meio a um aglomerado de dispositivos móveis com múltiplas interfaces sem fio que permitem que clientes móveis domésticos e corporativos solucionem problemas rotineiros no menor espaço de tempo e em diversas localizações. Por outro lado, a disponibilidade de diversas tecnologias de acesso sem fio como: Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity), WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) e LTE (Long Term Evolution), proporcionam um cenário heterogêneo com diversas oportunidades de conectividade para o usuário de dispositivos com múltiplas interfaces. Alguns dos desafios atuais no contexto da concepção da então denominada NGN (Next Generation Networks) são o desenvolvimento de arcabouços e mecanismos que viabilizem tanto o suporte adequado à Qualidade de Serviço (QoS – Quality of Service) e à Qualidade de Experiência (QoE – Quality of Experience) para aplicações multimídia, quanto a garantia de equidade entre vazões de diferentes aplicações em ambiente heterogêneo. Esta dissertação propõe um arcabouço para o aprovisionamento de QoS e QoE em redes sem fio heterogêneas formada por redes WiMAX e Wi-Fi. Especificamente, nossa solução provê mapeamento estático de QoS entre as classes de serviços WiMAX e categorias de acesso Wi-Fi. Além disso, nossa proposta também combina funcionalidades de equidade entre vazões com a solução de mapeamento, a fim de alcançar um bom compromisso tanto para o operador da rede, quanto para o usuário, através de uma nova metodologia de coleta e calculo de vazão agregada e algoritmo de decisão de handover vertical. A avaliação quantitativa da proposta foi realizada através de modelos de simulação no ns-2 (Network Simulator). Os resultados de desempenho demonstram a eficiência da arquitetura em termos de métricas de QoS (vazão, vazão média e atraso) e QoE (PSRN - Peak Signal to Noise Ratio, SSIM - Structural Similarity Index e VQM - Video Quality Metric).

Variabilidade genética e fitoquímica de Casearia sylvestris em populações do cerrado e Mata Atlântica do Estado de São Paulo

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Horticultura) - FCA

Extractivismo de Palmas por la etnia shuar y su influencia en la transformacion sócio-ambiental, en el alto Nangaritza, Amazonia ecuatoriana

O estudo atual foi feito no setor sul oriental da Amazônia equatoriana, na floresta protetora da bacia elevada do rio Nangaritza, em três centros indígenas Shuar: Shaime, Yayu e Napints, pertencentes à jurisdição Politico-Administrativa de Zurmi, do canto de Nangaritza, província de Zamora Chinchipe. São organizados e representados na associação Shuar Tayunts, além dos seus “Diretivas” e “Clubes centrais”. Trata-se de um esforço para apresentar a dinâmica sócio-ambiental do povo Shuar no extrativismo das palmas, para o qual se faz uma análise sócio-histórica destes três Centros Shuar; se estuda sua composição florística e a estrutura das palmeiras. Em cada um dos Centros se fez a amostragem em 0,3 ha e foram recenseados todos os indivíduos com CAP ≥ 10 cm, Shaime apresentou 4 espécies, Yayu 5 e Napints 3 espécies. No total foram 7 espécies registradas em 5 gêneros com 164 indivíduos. As palmeiras com maior área basal são Wettinia maynensis, Oenocarpus bataua e Prestoea schultzeana; e as de maior importância ecológica são Wettinia maynensis e Oenocarpus bataua. A regeneração natural é considerada aceitável, especialmente de Oenocarpus bataua, Wettinia maynensis, e Socratea exorrhiza. O índice de diversidade Shannon-Wiener de todas as espécies tem um valor de 1,34; a similaridade de Sorensen apresenta Napints e Shaime como os de maior similaridade com 85,71%, a apresenta também a Prestoea acuminata e a Wettinia maynensis como espécies compartilhadas entre os três Centros Shuar. São 9 as Etnocategorias de uso, as famílias Shuar dão maior valor total às etnocategorias de alimentação humana, construção, alimentação para animais de caça e pesca e de artesanato.

Caracterização da vegetação arbórea e atributos do solo da Reserva Biológica de Pindorama, SP

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Ciclo de vida e estrutura de uma assembléia de peixes teleósteos em um manguezal da Raposa, Maranhão, Brasil

Pós-graduação em Ciências Biológicas (Zoologia) - IBRC

Intraspecific, interspecific, and seasonal differences in the diet of three mid-sized carnivores in a large neotropical wetland

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Regeneração natural de mata ciliar em ecossistema de floresta estacional semidecidual: chuva de sementes e banco de sementes do solo

The knowledge of the dynamics of soil seed bank and seed rain is fundamental to understand the forest succession process, as well as for its conservation and restoration. This paper aimed at studying the role of the soil seed bank and seed rain in the dynamics of a riparian tropical seasonal forest fragment located on the hinterland of São Paulo State. The seed rain was studied by 30 litter traps installed at 50 cm from the floor, with an area of 50 cm x 50 cm. Between November of 2008 and October of 2009, 11364 seeds of 82 species belonging to 33 different families were collected. The deposition density of seeds was 126.27 individuals.m². With the data obtained from this research, the two seasons couldn’t be differed from each other hence 2009 was an atypical year considering the precipitation, which was constantly elevated. For the soil seed bank, fifty superficial soil samples will be taken at the end of both the rainy and dry seasons. The germination method was applied for the data analysis. It was observed a predominance of herbaceous habit species, with an average of 71% of the germinations in both seasons. The Sφrensen similarity index between the seasons was low (0,27). The density and species diversity were higher after the rainy season, unlike other published researches

Homogamy preferences for cognitive sex-typicality in women

Homogamy has been suggested as crucial for human mate preferences and mate choice. People are attracted to and choose romantic partners that are similar to them in socio-demographic, physical, and psychological traits. However, only a few studies have shown homogamy in preferences for evolved sex-typical traits. Here, we have investigated male and female preferences for the level of cognitive masculinity-femininity (MF). We tested whether self-reported MF positively correlates with preferences for MF. One hundred men and one hundred women from Brazil filled in questionnaires on their own level of cognitive MF and preferred level of cognitive MF in their ideal partner. Half of the respondents were asked to indicate their preferences for long-term, and the other half for short-term relationships. We found a positive correlation between self-ascribed and preferred level of cognitive MF in women (P = 0.002), but no significant correlation in men (P = 0.309). There was no significant effect of the temporal context of the relationship, but there was a positive correlation between self-ascribed and preferred level of cognitive MF only in women answering about long-term partner. By subtracting the preferred from the selfascribed level of cognitive MF, we created a self-similarity index. We found that women desire potential mates more self-similar and more masculine than men (P < 0.001) and that in men there is greater variation in the self-similarity index than in women. Our results thus add to previous evidence on the role of homogamy in human mating, by showing preferences for self-similarity also in cognitive MF for women, especially for long-term partner preferences. Future studies should cross-culturally test whether the higher self-similar preference found in women is universal.

Epifitismo vascular em duas fisionomias vegetais, floresta paludosa e floresta estacional semidecidual no município de Botucatu, estado de São Paulo, Brasil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Applying enhancement filters in the pre-processing of images of lymphoma

Lymphoma is a type of cancer that affects the immune system, and is classified as Hodgkin or non-Hodgkin. It is one of the ten types of cancer that are the most common on earth. Among all malignant neoplasms diagnosed in the world, lymphoma ranges from three to four percent of them. Our work presents a study of some filters devoted to enhancing images of lymphoma at the pre-processing step. Here the enhancement is useful for removing noise from the digital images. We have analysed the noise caused by different sources like room vibration, scraps and defocusing, and in the following classes of lymphoma: follicular, mantle cell and B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The filters Gaussian, Median and Mean-Shift were applied to different colour models (RGB, Lab and HSV). Afterwards, we performed a quantitative analysis of the images by means of the Structural Similarity Index. This was done in order to evaluate the similarity between the images. In all cases we have obtained a certainty of at least 75%, which rises to 99% if one considers only HSV. Namely, we have concluded that HSV is an important choice of colour model at pre-processing histological images of lymphoma, because in this case the resulting image will get the best enhancement.

Using complex networks concepts to assess approaches for citations in scientific papers

The number of citations received by authors in scientific journals has become a major parameter to assess individual researchers and the journals themselves through the impact factor. A fair assessment therefore requires that the criteria for selecting references in a given manuscript should be unbiased with regard to the authors or journals cited. In this paper, we assess approaches for citations considering two recommendations for authors to follow while preparing a manuscript: (i) consider similarity of contents with the topics investigated, lest related work should be reproduced or ignored; (ii) perform a systematic search over the network of citations including seminal or very related papers. We use formalisms of complex networks for two datasets of papers from the arXiv and the Web of Science repositories to show that neither of these two criteria is fulfilled in practice. By representing the texts as complex networks we estimated a similarity index between pieces of texts and found that the list of references did not contain the most similar papers in the dataset. This was quantified by calculating a consistency index, whose maximum value is one if the references in a given paper are the most similar in the dataset. For the areas of "complex networks" and "graphenes", the consistency index was only 0.11-0.23 and 0.10-0.25, respectively. To simulate a systematic search in the citation network, we employed a traditional random walk search (i.e. diffusion) and a random walk whose probabilities of transition are proportional to the number of the ingoing edges of the neighbours. The frequency of visits to the nodes (papers) in the network had a very small correlation with either the actual list of references in the papers or with the number of downloads from the arXiv repository. Therefore, apparently the authors and users of the repository did not follow the criterion related to a systematic search over the network of citations. Based on these results, we propose an approach that we believe is fairer for evaluating and complementing citations of a given author, effectively leading to a virtual scientometry.

Symmetric inverse consistent nonlinear registration driven by mutual information.

A nonlinear viscoelastic image registration algorithm based on the demons paradigm and incorporating inverse consistent constraint (ICC) is implemented. An inverse consistent and symmetric cost function using mutual information (MI) as a similarity measure is employed. The cost function also includes regularization of transformation and inverse consistent error (ICE). The uncertainties in balancing various terms in the cost function are avoided by alternatively minimizing the similarity measure, the regularization of the transformation, and the ICE terms. The diffeomorphism of registration for preventing folding and/or tearing in the deformation is achieved by the composition scheme. The quality of image registration is first demonstrated by constructing brain atlas from 20 adult brains (age range 30-60). It is shown that with this registration technique: (1) the Jacobian determinant is positive for all voxels and (2) the average ICE is around 0.004 voxels with a maximum value below 0.1 voxels. Further, the deformation-based segmentation on Internet Brain Segmentation Repository, a publicly available dataset, has yielded high Dice similarity index (DSI) of 94.7% for the cerebellum and 74.7% for the hippocampus, attesting to the quality of our registration method.

Genetic diversity of bovine Neospora caninum determined by microsatellite markers

Neospora caninum is one of the most significant parasitic organisms causing bovine abortion worldwide. Despite the economic impact of this infection, relatively little is known about the genetic diversity of this parasite. In this study, using Nc5 and ITS1 nested PCR, N. caninum has been detected in 12 brain samples of aborted fetuses from 298 seropositive dairy cattle collected from four different regions in Tehran, Iran. These specimen (Nc-Iran) were genotyped in multilocus using 9 different microsatellite markers previously described (MS4, MS5, MS6A, MS6B, MS7, MS8, MS10, MS12 and MS21). Microsatellite amplification was completely feasible in 2 samples, semi-completely in 8 samples, and failed in 2 samples. Within the two completely performed allelic profiles of Nc-Iran strains, unique multilocus profiles were obtained for both and novel allelic patterns were found in the MS8 and MS10 microsatellite markers. The Jaccard's similarity index showed significant difference between these two strains and from other standard isolates derived from GenBank such as Nc-Liv, Nc-SweB1, Nc-GER1, KBA1, and KBA2. All samples originating from the same area showed identical allelic numbers and a correlation between the number of repeats and geographic districts was observed.