Macroecología y ecoinformática: sesgos, errores y predicciones en el modelado de distribuciones

Hoy en día es común estudiar los patrones globales de biodiversidad a partir de las predicciones generadas por diferentes modelos de nicho ecológico. Habitualmente, estos modelos se calibran con datos procedentes de bases de datos de libre acceso (e.g. GBIF). Sin embargo, a pesar de la facilidad de descarga y de la accesibilidad de los datos, la información almacenada sobre las localidades donde están presentes las especies suele tener sesgos y errores. Estos problemas en los datos de calibración pueden modificar drásticamente las predicciones de los modelos y con ello pueden enmascarar los patrones macroecológicos reales. El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar qué métodos producen resultados más precisos cuando los datos de calibración incluyen sesgos y cuáles producen mejores resultados cuando los datos de calibración tienen, además de sesgos, errores. Para ello creado una especie virtual, hemos proyectado su distribución en la península ibérica, hemos muestreado su distribución de manera sesgada y hemos calibrado dos tipos de modelos de distribución (Bioclim y Maxent) con muestras de distintos tamaños. Nuestros resultados indican que cuando los datos sólo están sesgados, los resultados de Bioclim son mejores que los de Maxent. Sin embargo, Bioclim es extremadamente sensible a la presencia de errores en los datos de calibración. En estas situaciones, el comportamiento de Maxent es mucho más robusto y las predicciones que proporciona son más ajustadas.

Mesoporous materials for clean energy technologies

Alternative energy technologies are greatly hindered by significant limitations in materials science. From low activity to poor stability, and from mineral scarcity to high cost, the current materials are not able to cope with the significant challenges of clean energy technologies. However, recent advances in the preparation of nanomaterials, porous solids, and nanostructured solids are providing hope in the race for a better, cleaner energy production. The present contribution critically reviews the development and role of mesoporosity in a wide range of technologies, as this provides for critical improvements in accessibility, the dispersion of the active phase and a higher surface area. Relevant examples of the development of mesoporosity by a wide range of techniques are provided, including the preparation of hierarchical structures with pore systems in different scale ranges. Mesoporosity plays a significant role in catalysis, especially in the most challenging processes where bulky molecules, like those obtained from biomass or highly unreactive species, such as CO2 should be transformed into most valuable products. Furthermore, mesoporous materials also play a significant role as electrodes in fuel and solar cells and in thermoelectric devices, technologies which are benefiting from improved accessibility and a better dispersion of materials with controlled porosity.

Brasília, capital-patrimônio: sinergia para o desenvolvimento

Brasília impõe-se como um interessante caso a ser estudado. Distingue-se de todas as demais cidades do Brasil (e talvez do mundo), mas, ainda assim, reflete a quase totalidade das complexas questões que atingem qualquer grande cidade. A análise de seus processos de patrimonialização e de gestão territorial-patrimonial revela riqueza e singularidade históricas, além de revelar contradições e alta complexidade. O presente ensaio, de cunho teórico-exploratório, propõe-se a analisar o Plano de Preservação do Conjunto Urbanístico de Brasília – PPCUB, projeto de Lei Complementar proposto como política pública de proteção do patrimônio urbano, em busca de relações e conexões entre o contexto sociopolítico de construção da cidade ideal, seu desenvolvimento real e sua consagração como Patrimônio Mundial. Apenas por meio da sinergia de interesses e da ação conjunta dos diversos atores/agentes envolvidos na dinâmica urbana será possível transformar a excepcionalidade e o valor universal em acessibilidade territorial e valor local, dois pilares do desenvolvimento.

Tunisia in turmoil: how should the EU react? CEPS Commentary, 4 March 2013

The assassination of the opposition leader in Tunisia exposed the underlying divisions between members of the ruling classes, between those in and outside of government, between religious groupings and secularists, and between the coastal areas and the hinterland of Tunisia. Since the revolution, tackling social inclusion has become a pressing problem: men versus women, young versus old, opponents versus supporters of the old regime and political forces inside Tunisia versus those in exile. The National Constituent Assembly (NCA)’s inability to address these fault lines and approve the second draft of the constitution has hampered the transition of the country towards the next elections, while all of the above have undermined trust in the political process. Although Tunisians are primarily responsible for the political processes in their country, argue authors Hrant Kostanyan and Elitsa Garnizova, the EU should step up its efforts to deliver on its commitments in the areas of money, market and mobility.

EU Migration Policy in the wake of the Arab Spring. What prospects for EU-Southern Mediterranean Relations? MEDPRO Technical Report No. 15/August 2012

The outbreak of the Arab Spring and the unrest, revolution and war that followed during the course of 2011 have forced the EU to acknowledge the need to radically re-think its policy approach towards the Southern Mediterranean, including in the domain of migration. Migration and mobility now feature as key components of High Representative Catherine Ashton’s new framework for cooperation with the region (Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity), while the EU has declared its intention to strengthen its external migration policy by setting up “mutually beneficial” partnerships with third countries – so-called ‘Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security’ – now placed at the centre of the EU’s renewed Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). However, the success of this approach and its potential to establish genuine cooperative partnerships that will support smooth economic and political transformation in North Africa hinge on the working arrangements and institutional configurations shaping the renewed GAMM at EU level which has long been marked by internal fragmentation, a lack of transparency and a predominance of home affairs and security actors. This paper investigates the development of the Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security with the Southern Mediterranean in a post-Lisbon Treaty institutional setting. It asks to what extent has the application of the Lisbon Treaty and the creation of an “EU Foreign Minister” in High Representative Ashton, supported by a European External Action Service (EEAS), remedied or re-invigorated the ideological and institutional struggles around the implementation of the Global Approach? Who are the principal agents shaping and driving the Dialogues for Migration, Mobility and Security? Who goes abroad to speak on the behalf of the EU in these Dialogues and what impact does this have on the effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability of the Dialogues under the renewed GAMM as well as the wider prospects for the Southern Mediterranean?

Percepção dos usuários sobre o programa de saúde da família : um contributo para a reflexão

A Estratégia Saúde da Família apresenta-se como uma possibilidade de reestruturação da atenção primária, a partir de um conjunto de ações conjugadas em sintonia com os princípios de intersetorialidade, descentralização, equidade, coresponsabilidade e priorização de grupos populacionais com maior risco de adoecerem ou morrerem. Assim, este estudo objetivou caracterizar a percepção dos usuários da Unidade Básica de Saúde da Família (UBSF) sobre o Programa Saúde da Família (PSF). Trata-se de um estudo qualitativo desenvolvido na USF Barra de Sirinhaém, do Estado de Pernanbuco. Para tanto, contou-se com a participação de 54 usuárias do sexo feminino. Estas responderam a um formulário sócio-demográfico e um roteiro de entrevista semi-diretiva. Os discursos foram submetidos a análise de conteúdo à luz da literatura pertinente. Os principais resultados mostraram que a percepção das usuárias acerca do Programa de Saúde Familiar é de que este ainda funciona com abordagem curativa, mas que possuem maior acessibilidade e construíram um vínculo mais efetivo com os profissionais de saúde. Diante do exposto infere-se que a estratégia de saúde da família ainda não se concretiza pela dificuldade das pessoas entenderem a filosofia do programa, ainda polarizarem uma visão hospitalocêntrica da saúde e revelaram um certo alheamento da compreensão do significado do PSF. Palavras-chave: Estratégia Saúde da Família; Percepção; Assistência à Saúde.

Analysis of beach sands.

"A contract between Amphibious Branch, Office of Naval Research, U. S. Naval Photographic Interpretation Center, Monitor [and] School of Civil Engineering, Cornell University. Beach accessibility and trafficability, project no. NR 257 001, contract N6onr, task order # 11. Petrographic analysis by Francisco J. Cordova. D. J. Belcher, director."

Determination of beach conditions by means of aerial photographic interpretation,

"In connection with a contract between: Amphibious Branch, Office of Naval Research [and] School of Civil Engineering, Cornell University; U. S. Naval Photographic Interpretation Center, monitor. Executed by the Cornell Center for Integrated Aerial Photographic Studies. Beach Accessibility and Trafficability, Project no. NR 257 001, Contract N6onr, Task order #11.

Making Space: Feasibility of Urban Manufacturing through Shared Resources

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Identifying optimal lipid raft characteristics required to promote nanoscale protein-protein interactions on the plasma membrane

The dynamic lateral segregation of signaling proteins into microdomains is proposed to facilitate signal transduction, but the constraints on microdomain size, mobility, and diffusion that might realize this function are undefined. Here we interrogate a stochastic spatial model of the plasma membrane to determine how microdomains affect protein dynamics. Taking lipid rafts as representative microdomains, we show that reduced protein mobility in rafts segregates dynamically partitioning proteins, but the equilibrium concentration is largely independent of raft size and mobility. Rafts weakly impede small-scale protein diffusion but more strongly impede long-range protein mobility. The long-range mobility of raft-partitioning and raft-excluded proteins, however, is reduced to a similar extent. Dynamic partitioning into rafts increases specific interprotein collision rates, but to maximize this critical, biologically relevant function, rafts must be small (diameter, 6 to 14 nm) and mobile. Intermolecular collisions can also be favored by the selective capture and exclusion of proteins by rafts, although this mechanism is generally less efficient than simple dynamic partitioning. Generalizing these results, we conclude that microdomains can readily operate as protein concentrators or isolators but there appear to be significant constraints on size and mobility if microdomains are also required to function as reaction chambers that facilitate nanoscale protein-protein interactions. These results may have significant implications for the many signaling cascades that are scaffolded or assembled in plasma membrane microdomains.

Modeling the age of tropical moist forest fragments in heavily-cleared lowland landscapes of Colombia

Increasingly, large areas of native tropical forests are being transformed into a mosaic of human dominated land uses with scattered mature remnants and secondary forests. In general, at the end of the land clearing process, the landscape will have two forest components: a stable component of surviving mature forests, and a dynamic component of secondary forests of different ages. As the proportion of mature forests continues to decline, secondary forests play an increasing role in the conservation and restoration of biodiversity. This paper aims to predict and explain spatial and temporal patterns in the age of remnant mature and secondary forests in lowland Colombian landscapes. We analyse the age distributions of forest fragments, using detailed temporal land cover data derived from aerial photographs. Ordinal logistic regression analysis was applied to model the spatial dynamics of mature and secondary forest patches. In particular, the effect of soil fertility, accessibility and auto-correlated neighbourhood terms on forest age and time of isolation of remnant patches was assessed. In heavily transformed landscapes, forests account for approximately 8% of the total landscape area, of which three quarters are comprised of secondary forests. Secondary forest growth adjacent to mature forest patches increases mean patch size and core area, and therefore plays an important ecological role in maintaining landscape structure. The regression models show that forest age is positively associated with the amount of neighbouring forest, and negatively associated with the amount of neighbouring secondary vegetation, so the older the forest is the less secondary vegetation there is adjacent to it. Accessibility and soil fertility also have a negative but variable influence on the age of forest remnants. The probability of future clearing if current conditions hold is higher for regenerated than mature forests. The challenge of biodiversity conservation and restoration in dynamic and spatially heterogeneous landscape mosaics composed of mature and secondary forests is discussed. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effect of the preparation technique on the catalytic properties of mesoporous V-HMS for the oxidation of toluene

Various mesoporous catalysts with vanadium loadings between 0.5 and 6 V wt.% and surface areas around 1300 m(2)/g were synthesized using the isomorphous substitution (IS) and molecular designed dispersion (MDD) techniques. Their catalytic properties were tested using toluene as a model VOC in a fixed bed reactor at temperatures between 300 and 550 degrees C. It was found that during the oxidation of toluene, over V-HMS synthesized via IS, conversion of toluene mainly results in carbon oxides, benzene, benzaldehyde and water. Total conversion is greatly improved when the vanadium content is increased from around 1.5 to 3.0 wt.%, but an increase in the textural porosity (V-TEX/V-MESO) from 0.3 to 0.6 had no discernable effect on the conversion. This can be explained by the fact that a V-TEX/V-MESO as low as 0.3 is sufficient to facilitate the access of toluene into the framework confined mesopores without any molecular transport limitations. However, when using V-HMS synthesized by MDD, conversion of toluene is greatly improved when the V-TEX/ V-MESO ratio is increased from 0.1 to 0.6. This is because the diffusion limitations are minimized by this increase. V-HMS synthesized via MDD does not exhibit selectivity to benzaldehyde, favoring total oxidation to CO and CO2. This different oxidation mechanism can be explained in terms of location, accessibility and number of active species on the surface of the HMS support. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unplanned land clearing of Colombian rainforests: Spreading like disease?

Deforestation often occurs as temporal waves and in localized fronts termed 'deforestation hotspots' driven by economic pulses and population pressure. Of particular concern for conservation planning are 'biodiversity hotspots' where high concentrations of endemic species undergo rapid loss and fragmentation of habitat. We investigate the deforestation process in Caqueta, a biodiversity hotspot and major colonization front of the Colombian Amazon using multi-temporal satellite imagery of the periods 1989-1996-1999-2002. The probabilities of deforestation and regeneration were modeled against soil fertility, accessibility and neighborhood terms, using logistic regression analysis. Deforestation and regeneration patterns and rates were highly variable across the colonization front. The regional average annual deforestation rate was 2.6%, but varied locally between -1.8% (regeneration) and 5.3%, with maximum rates in landscapes with 40-60% forest cover and highest edge densities, showing an analogous pattern to the spread of disease. Soil fertility and forest and secondary vegetation neighbors showed positive and significant relationships with the probability of deforestation. For forest regeneration, soil fertility had a significant negative effect while the other parameters were marginally significant. The logistic regression models across all periods showed a high level of discrimination power for both deforestation and forest regeneration, with ROC values > 0.80. We document the effect of policies and institutional changes on the land clearing process, such as the failed peace process between government and guerillas in 1999-2002, which redirected the spread of deforestation and increased forest regeneration. The implications for conservation in biologically rich areas, such as Caqueta are discussed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

Moomba - A collaborative environment for supporting distributed extreme programming in global software development

Global Software Development (GSD) is an emerging distributive software engineering practice, in which a higher communication overhead due to temporal and geographical separation among developers is traded with gains in reduced development cost, improved flexibility and mobility for developers, increased access to skilled resource-pools and convenience of customer involvements. However, due to its distributive nature, GSD faces many fresh challenges in aspects relating to project coordination, awareness, collaborative coding and effective communication. New software engineering methodologies and processes are required to address these issues. Research has shown that, with adequate support tools, Distributed Extreme Programming (DXP) – a distributive variant of an agile methodology – Extreme Programming (XP) can be both efficient and beneficial to GDS projects. In this paper, we present the design and realization of a collaborative environment, called Moomba, which assists a distributed team in both instantiation and execution of a DXP process in GSD projects.

EDUCAÇÃO INFANTIL COMO DIREITO FUNDAMENTAL DA CRIANÇA CEGA CONGÊNITA

Esta dissertação se refere a uma pesquisa exploratória que tem como objetivo a Educação Infantil como direito fundamental da criança cega congênita de zero a cinco anos, ou que tenha ficado cega até os 12 meses de vida. Buscou-se compreender os benefícios da integração nos espaços educativos infantis públicos, as políticas públicas federais e as do município de São Paulo, bem como a relação do direito à educação na Modalidade Educação Especial. Para tanto, aborda o que é a cegueira, relacionando aspectos históricos da educação das pessoas com deficiência visual e de políticas públicas com o direito à educação. Embora a educação tenha despertado o interesse de muitos órgãos da sociedade e de agências da ONU, envolvendo documentos jurídicos como a Declaração Universal de Direitos Humanos (1948), a Constituição Federal do Brasil (1988), o Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente (1990), a Declaração de Salamanca (1994), que se constitui em um marco da Educação Especial, a Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional (1996) lei esta que garante a educação como direito de todos, conforme o enunciado constitucional e, ainda que a Educação Infantil seja essencial como alicerce da educação básica, ela ainda não é vista como direito fundamental. Esta pesquisa mostra que tanto crianças cegas congênitas quanto seus pais enfrentam obstáculos quando procuram as escolas: falta de vagas nas Creches e EMEIs, formação insuficiente dos pedagogos para trabalhar com a inclusão do aluno com necessidades educacionais especiais, estigmas e falta de estrutura física para a acessibilidade e autonomia do discente. A falta de salas de apoio à inclusão e de equipamentos de educação infantil, bem como de pessoal especializado, são alguns dos exemplos da situação evidenciada, que necessita de um olhar de caráter interventivo no município de São Paulo, sob pena de responsabilização das autoridades responsáveis por sua oferta, por ferir um direito que é fundamental pelas leis nacionais e internacionais.