Controllability of control systems on complex simple lie groups and the topology of flag manifolds

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

TRPV4 activates autonomic and behavioural warmth-defence responses in Wistar rats

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Artificial immune networks Copt-aiNet and Opt-aiNet applied to the reconfiguration problem of radial electrical distribution systems

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Impact of functional training on cardiac autonomic modulation, cardiopulmonary parameters and quality of life in healthy women

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamentode Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Impact of obesity on autonomic modulation, heart rate and blood pressure in obese young people

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Socio-eco-efficiency of integrated and non-integrated systems of crop, forestry and livestock in the Ipameri city, at brazilian Cerrado

Pós-graduação em Ciências Ambientais - Sorocaba

Co-simulation tools for networked control systems: revision and utilization

Networked control systems (NCSs) are distributed control systems in which the sensors, actuators, and controllers are physically separated and connected through an industrial network. The main challenge related to the development of NCSs is the degenerative effects caused by the inclusion of this communication network in the closed loop control. In order to mitigate these effects, co-simulation tools for NCS have been developed to study the network influence in the NCS. This paper presents a revision about co-simulation tools for NCS and the application of two of these tools for the design and evaluation of NCSs. The TrueTime and Jitterbug tools were used together to evaluate the main configuration parameter that affects the performance of CAN-based NCS and to verify the NCS quality of control under various timing conditions including different transmission period of messages and network delays. Therefore, the simulation results led to the conclusion that despite the transmission period of messages is the most significant factor among the analyzed in the design of NCS, its influence is related to the kind of system with greater effects in NCSs with fast dynamics.

Comparative study of bone repair in mandibular body osteotomy between metallic and absorbable 2.0 mm internal fixation systems. Histological and histometric analysis in dogs: a pilot study

The objective of this study was to compare the bone repair along a mandibular body osteotomy stabilized with 2.0 mm absorbable and metallic systems. 12 male, adult mongrel dogs were divided into two groups (metallic and absorbable) and subjected to unilateral osteotomy between the mandibular third and fourth premolars, which was stabilized by applying two 4-hole plates. At 2 and 18 weeks, three dogs from each group were killed and the osteotomy sites were removed and divided equally into three parts: the upper part was labelled the tension third (TT), the lower part the compression third (CT), and the part between the TT and CT the intermediary third (IT). Regardless of the treatment system, union between the fragments was observed at 18 weeks and the CT showed more advanced stages of bone repair than the TT. Histometric analysis did not reveal any significant differences among the 3 parts or systems in the distance between bone fragments at 2 weeks. Although at 18 weeks the proportions of newly formed bone did not differ among TT, IT and CT, significantly enhanced bone formation was observed in all sections for the metallic group. The patterns of repair were distinct between treatments.

An online data access prediction and optimization approach for distributed systems

Current scientific applications have been producing large amounts of data. The processing, handling and analysis of such data require large-scale computing infrastructures such as clusters and grids. In this area, studies aim at improving the performance of data-intensive applications by optimizing data accesses. In order to achieve this goal, distributed storage systems have been considering techniques of data replication, migration, distribution, and access parallelism. However, the main drawback of those studies is that they do not take into account application behavior to perform data access optimization. This limitation motivated this paper which applies strategies to support the online prediction of application behavior in order to optimize data access operations on distributed systems, without requiring any information on past executions. In order to accomplish such a goal, this approach organizes application behaviors as time series and, then, analyzes and classifies those series according to their properties. By knowing properties, the approach selects modeling techniques to represent series and perform predictions, which are, later on, used to optimize data access operations. This new approach was implemented and evaluated using the OptorSim simulator, sponsored by the LHC-CERN project and widely employed by the scientific community. Experiments confirm this new approach reduces application execution time in about 50 percent, specially when handling large amounts of data.

Metal biosorption onto dry biomass of Arthrospira (Spirulina) platensis and Chlorella vulgaris: Multi-metal systems

Binary and ternary systems of Ni2+, Zn2+, and Pb2+ were investigated at initial metal concentrations of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mM as competitive adsorbates using Arthrospira platensis and Chlorella vulgaris as biosorbents. The experimental results were evaluated in terms of equilibrium sorption capacity and metal removal efficiency and fitted to the multi-component Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The pseudo second order model of Ho and McKay described well the adsorption kinetics, and the FT-IR spectroscopy confirmed metal binding to both biomasses. Ni2+ and Zn2+ interference on Pb2+ sorption was lower than the contrary, likely due to biosorbent preference to Pb. In general, the higher the total initial metal concentration, the lower the adsorption capacity. The results of this study demonstrated that dry biomass of C. vulgaris behaved as better biosorbent than A. platensis and suggest its use as an effective alternative sorbent for metal removal from wastewater. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Type Systems for Distributed Programs: Components and Sessions

Modern software systems, in particular distributed ones, are everywhere around us and are at the basis of our everyday activities. Hence, guaranteeing their cor- rectness, consistency and safety is of paramount importance. Their complexity makes the verification of such properties a very challenging task. It is natural to expect that these systems are reliable and above all usable. i) In order to be reliable, compositional models of software systems need to account for consistent dynamic reconfiguration, i.e., changing at runtime the communication patterns of a program. ii) In order to be useful, compositional models of software systems need to account for interaction, which can be seen as communication patterns among components which collaborate together to achieve a common task. The aim of the Ph.D. was to develop powerful techniques based on formal methods for the verification of correctness, consistency and safety properties related to dynamic reconfiguration and communication in complex distributed systems. In particular, static analysis techniques based on types and type systems appeared to be an adequate methodology, considering their success in guaranteeing not only basic safety properties, but also more sophisticated ones like, deadlock or livelock freedom in a concurrent setting. The main contributions of this dissertation are twofold. i) On the components side: we design types and a type system for a concurrent object-oriented calculus to statically ensure consistency of dynamic reconfigurations related to modifications of communication patterns in a program during execution time. ii) On the communication side: we study advanced safety properties related to communication in complex distributed systems like deadlock-freedom, livelock- freedom and progress. Most importantly, we exploit an encoding of types and terms of a typical distributed language, session π-calculus, into the standard typed π- calculus, in order to understand their expressive power.

Systems medicine and integrated care to combat chronic noncommunicable diseases

We propose an innovative, integrated, cost-effective health system to combat major non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular, chronic respiratory, metabolic, rheumatologic and neurologic disorders and cancers, which together are the predominant health problem of the 21st century. This proposed holistic strategy involves comprehensive patient-centered integrated care and multi-scale, multi-modal and multi-level systems approaches to tackle NCDs as a common group of diseases. Rather than studying each disease individually, it will take into account their intertwined gene-environment, socio-economic interactions and co-morbidities that lead to individual-specific complex phenotypes. It will implement a road map for predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory (P4) medicine based on a robust and extensive knowledge management infrastructure that contains individual patient information. It will be supported by strategic partnerships involving all stakeholders, including general practitioners associated with patient-centered care. This systems medicine strategy, which will take a holistic approach to disease, is designed to allow the results to be used globally, taking into account the needs and specificities of local economies and health systems.

Farming Systems and Resilience Building in a Changing Climate On-Farm Comparisons of Organic and Conventional Cocoa Cultivation in Alto Beni, Bolivia

Resilience research has been applied to socioeconomic as well as for agroecological studies in the last 20 years. It provides a conceptual and methodological approach for a better understanding of interrelations between the performance of ecological and social systems. In the research area Alto Beni, Bolivia, the production of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.), is one of the main sources of income. Farmers in the region have formed producers’ associations to enhance organic cocoa cultivation and obtain fair prices since the 1980s. In cooperation with the long-term system comparisons by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Alto Beni, aspects of the field trial are applied for the use in on-farm research: a comparison of soil fertility, biomass and crop diversity is combined with qualitative interviews and participatory observation methods. Fieldwork is carried out together with Bolivian students through the Swiss KFPE-programme Echanges Universitaires. For the system comparisons, four different land-use types were classified according to their ecological complexity during a preliminary study in 2009: successional agroforestry systems, simple agroforestry systems (both organically managed and certified), traditional systems and conventional monocultures. The study focuses on interrelations between different ways of cocoa cultivation, livelihoods and the related socio-cultural rationales behind them. In particular this second aspect is innovative as it allows to broaden the biophysical perspective to a more comprehensive evaluation with socio-ecological aspects thereby increasing the relevance of the agronomic field studies for development policy and practice. Moreover, such a socio-ecological baseline allows to assess the potential of organic agriculture regarding resilience-building face to socio-environmental stress factors. Among others, the results of the pre-study illustrate local farmers’ perceptions of climate change and the consequences for the different crop-systems: all interviewees mentioned rising temperatures and/or an extended dry season as negative impacts more with regard to their own working conditions than to their crops. This was the case in particular for conventional monocultures and in plots where slash-and-burn cultivation was practised whereas for organic agroforestry systems the advantage of working in the shade was stressed indicating that their relevance rises in the context of climate change.

Direct adipotropic actions of atorvastatin: differentiation state-dependent induction of apoptosis, modulation of endocrine function, and inhibition of glucose uptake

Statins exert anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic actions. The mechanisms responsible for these effects remain only partially elucidated. Diabetes and obesity are characterized by low-grade inflammation. Metabolic and endocrine adipocyte dysfunction is known to play a crucial role in the development of these disorders and the related cardiovascular complications. Thus, direct modulation of adipocyte function may represent a mechanism of pleiotropic statin actions. We investigated effects of atorvastatin on apoptosis, differentiation, endocrine, and metabolic functions in murine white and brown adipocyte lines. Direct exposure of differentiating preadipocytes to atorvastatin strongly reduced lipid accumulation and diminished protein expression of the differentiation marker CCAAT/enhancer binding protein-beta (CEBP-beta). In fully differentiated adipocytes, however, lipid accumulation remained unchanged after chronic atorvastatin treatment. Furthermore, cell viability was reduced in response to atorvastatin treatment in proliferating and differentiating preadipocytes, but not in differentiated cells. Moreover, atorvastatin induced apoptosis and inhibited protein kinase B (AKT) phosphorylation in proliferating and differentiating preadipocytes, but not in differentiated adipocytes. On the endocrine level, direct atorvastatin treatment of differentiated white adipocytes enhanced expression of the pro-inflammatory adipokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), and downregulated expression of the insulin-mimetic and anti-inflammatory adipokines visfatin and adiponectin. Finally, these direct adipotropic endocrine effects of atorvastatin were paralleled by the acute inhibition of insulin-induced glucose uptake in differentiated white adipocytes, while protein expression of the thermogenic uncoupling protein-1 (UCP-1) in brown adipocytes remained unchanged. Taken together, our data for the first time demonstrate direct differentiation state-dependent effects of atorvastatin including apoptosis, modulation of pro-inflammatory and glucostatic adipokine expression, and insulin resistance in adipose cells. These differential interactions may explain variable clinical observations.

Regulation of fetal growth: consequences and impact of being born small

The first trimester of pregnancy is the time during which organogenesis takes place and tissue patterns and organ systems are established. In the second trimester the fetus undergoes major cellular adaptation and an increase in body size, and in the third trimester organ systems mature ready for extrauterine life. In addition, during that very last period of intrauterine life there is a significant increase in body weight. In contrast to the postnatal endocrine control of growth, where the principal hormones directly influencing growth are growth hormone (GH) and the insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) via the GH-IGF axis, fetal growth throughout gestation is constrained by maternal factors and placental function and is coordinated by growth factors. In general, growth disorders only become apparent postnatally, but they may well be related to fetal life. Thus, fetal growth always needs to be considered in the overall picture of human growth as well as in its metabolic development.