O Ensino de Geometria por meio de atividades investigativas: uma experiência com alunos do primeiro ano do Ensino Médio

This qualitative nature of work was developed with the participation of a group of students enrolled in the first year of high school from a public school of the state of São Paulo, in the city of Taubaté. Their goal was to determine how students deal with geometry tasks in investigative classes. To guide this research was drawn up the following question: As students of the first year of high school express their knowledge of building triangles and quads in classes of investigative activities?. The choice of investigative nature of this activity occurred by enhancing student participation and thus generate a greater chance of it not be guided only by what the teacher wants, but by his own curiosity and using their own tools for this. In the data analysis process stands out the interest generated in students for this type of activity and posture maintained throughout the work, mobilizing their expertise to answer the questions posed

Ensino e aprendizagem de matemática: o uso de recursos manipulativos em sala de aula

In this work, we understand the importance of the use of manipulative resources for learning mathematics. For both we developed a qualitative phenomenological approach. Performing a case study with nine 7th grade students of the Elementary School, we used the abacus of the integers to examine in what way the use of Abacus contributes to students learning. The choice of material was made according to the focus of research, understanding the signs rule. In the analysis and interpretation of data, highlight lines of students, subject of the research, units of meaning that allow us to say that the material using awakened interest in students Who actively participated in the research and enabled them to understand the rule of signs, to operate with integers enabled them to understand the rule of signs, to operate with integers

O ensino de geografia e a educação ambiental: um estudo de caso com resíduos sólidos urbanos em Bauru (SP)

Pós-graduação em Geografia - IGCE

Simultaneous Quantification of Lycopene, beta-Carotene, Retinol and alpha-Tocopherol in Plasma after a Simple Extraction Procedure: Stability Study and Application to Human Volunteers

A method for the simultaneous quantification of lycopene, beta-carotene, retinol and alpha-tocopherol by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with Vis/fluorescence detection with isocratic elution was optimized and validated. The method consists of a rapid and simple liquid-liquid extraction procedure and a posterior quantification of extracted supernatants by HPLC. Aliquots of plasma were stored at -20 degrees C for three months for stability study. The methodology was applied to samples from painters and individuals not exposed to paints (n = 75). The assay was linear for all vitamins (r > 0.99). Intra-and inter-run precisions were obtained with coefficient of variation smaller than 5%. The accuracies ranged from 0.29 to -5.80% and recoveries between 92.73 and 101.97%. Plasma samples and extracted supernatants were stable for 60 days at -20 degrees C. A significant decrease of lycopene, beta-carotene and retinol concentrations in plasma from exposed individuals compared to non-exposed individuals (p < 0.05) was observed. The method is simple, reproducible, precise, accurate and sensitive, and can be routinely utilized in clinical laboratories.

Simultaneous quantification of lycopene, β-carotene, retinol and α -tocopherol in plasma after a simple extraction procedure: stability study and application to human volunteers

A method for the simultaneous quantification of lycopene, β-carotene, retinol and α-tocopherol by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with Vis/fluorescence detection with isocratic elution was optimized and validated. The method consists of a rapid and simple liquid-liquid extraction procedure and a posterior quantification of extracted supernatants by HPLC. Aliquots of plasma were stored at -20°C for three months for stability study. The methodology was applied to samples from painters and individuals not exposed to paints (n = 75). The assay was linear for all vitamins (r > 0.99). Intra- and inter-run precisions were obtained with coefficient of variation smaller than 5%. The accuracies ranged from 0.29 to -5.80% and recoveries between 92.73 and 101.97%. Plasma samples and extracted supernatants were stable for 60 days at -20°C. A significant decrease of lycopene, β-carotene and retinol concentrations in plasma from exposed individuals compared to non-exposed individuals (p < 0.05) was observed. The method is simple, reproducible, precise, accurate and sensitive, and can be routinely utilized in clinical laboratories.

Pyrolysis of peptides and proteins. Analytical study and environmental applications

Analytical pyrolysis was used to investigate the formation of diketopiperazines (DKPs) which are cyclic dipeptides formed from the thermal degradation of proteins. A quali/quantitative procedure was developed combining microscale flash pyrolysis at 500 °C with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) of DKPs trapped onto an adsorbent phase. Polar DKPs were silylated prior to GC-MS. Particular attention was paid to the identification of proline (Pro) containing DKPs due to their greater facility of formation. The GC-MS characteristics of more than 80 original and silylated DKPs were collected from the pyrolysis of sixteen linear dipeptides and four model proteins (e.g. bovine serum albumin, BSA). The structure of a novel DKP, cyclo(pyroglutamic-Pro) was established by NMR and ESI-MS analysis, while the structures of other novel DKPs remained tentative. DKPs resulted rather specific markers of amino acid sequence in proteins, even though the thermal degradation of DKPs should be taken into account. Structural information of DKPs gathered from the pyrolysis of model compounds was employed to the identification of these compounds in the pyrolysate of proteinaceous samples, including intrinsecally unfolded protein (IUP). Analysis of the liquid fraction (bio-oil) obtained from the pyrolysis of microalgae Nannochloropsis gaditana, Scenedesmus spp with a bench scale reactor showed that DKPs constituted an important pool of nitrogen-containing compounds. Conversely, the level of DKPs was rather low in the bio-oil of Botryococcus braunii. The developed micropyrolysis procedure was applied in combination with thermogravimetry (TGA) and infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) to investigate surface interaction between BSA and synthetic chrysotile. The results showed that the thermal behavior of BSA (e.g. DKPs formation) was affected by the different form of doped synthetic chrysotile. The typical DKPs evolved from collagen were quantified in the pyrolysates of archaeological bones from Vicenne Necropolis in order to evaluate their conservation status in combination with TGA, FTIR and XRD analysis.

Melanocytes: a new potential tool to study and monitoring Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Dystrophin is a subsarcolemmal protein critical for the integrity of muscle fibers by linking the actin cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix via the dystroglycan complex. It is reported that dystroglycans are also localized in the skin, at dermal-epidermal junction. Here we show that epidermal melanocytes express dystrophin at the interface with the basement membrane. The full-length muscle isoform mDp427 was clearly detectable in epidermis and in melanocyte cultures as assessed by RNA and western blot analysis. Dystrophin was absent in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) patients melanocytes, and the ultrastructural analysis revealed mitochondrial alterations, similar to those occurring in myoblasts from the same patients. Interestingly, mitochondrial dysfunction of DMD melanocytes reflected the alterations identified in dystrophin-deficient muscle cells. In fact, mitochondria of melanocytes from DMD patients accumulated tetramethylrhodamine methyl ester but, on the contrary of control donor, mitochondria of DMD patients readily depolarized upon the addition of oligomycin, suggesting either that they are maintaining the membrane potential at the expense of glycolytic ATP, or that they are affected by a latent dysfunction unmasked by inhibition of the ATP synthase. Melanocyte cultures can be easily obtained by conventional skin biopsies, less invasive procedure than muscular biopsy, so that they may represent an alternative cellular model to myoblast for studying and monitoring dystrophinopathies also in response to pharmacological treatments.

Engineering Agent-Oriented Technologies and Programming Languages for Computer Programming and Software Development

Mainstream hardware is becoming parallel, heterogeneous, and distributed on every desk, every home and in every pocket. As a consequence, in the last years software is having an epochal turn toward concurrency, distribution, interaction which is pushed by the evolution of hardware architectures and the growing of network availability. This calls for introducing further abstraction layers on top of those provided by classical mainstream programming paradigms, to tackle more effectively the new complexities that developers have to face in everyday programming. A convergence it is recognizable in the mainstream toward the adoption of the actor paradigm as a mean to unite object-oriented programming and concurrency. Nevertheless, we argue that the actor paradigm can only be considered a good starting point to provide a more comprehensive response to such a fundamental and radical change in software development. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis is to propose Agent-Oriented Programming (AOP) as a high-level general purpose programming paradigm, natural evolution of actors and objects, introducing a further level of human-inspired concepts for programming software systems, meant to simplify the design and programming of concurrent, distributed, reactive/interactive programs. To this end, in the dissertation first we construct the required background by studying the state-of-the-art of both actor-oriented and agent-oriented programming, and then we focus on the engineering of integrated programming technologies for developing agent-based systems in their classical application domains: artificial intelligence and distributed artificial intelligence. Then, we shift the perspective moving from the development of intelligent software systems, toward general purpose software development. Using the expertise maturated during the phase of background construction, we introduce a general-purpose programming language named simpAL, which founds its roots on general principles and practices of software development, and at the same time provides an agent-oriented level of abstraction for the engineering of general purpose software systems.

Volunteer-based coral reef monitoring: reliability of data, environmental education and implications for conservation

Coral reefs are the most biodiverse ecosystems of the ocean and they provide notable ecosystem services. Nowadays, they are facing a number of local anthropogenic threats and environmental change is threatening their survivorship on a global scale. Large-scale monitoring is necessary to understand environmental changes and to perform useful conservation measurements. Governmental agencies are often underfunded and are not able of sustain the necessary spatial and temporal large-scale monitoring. To overcome the economic constrains, in some cases scientists can engage volunteers in environmental monitoring. Citizen Science enables the collection and analysis of scientific data at larger spatial and temporal scales than otherwise possible, addressing issues that are otherwise logistically or financially unfeasible. “STE: Scuba Tourism for the Environment” was a volunteer-based Red Sea coral reef biodiversity monitoring program. SCUBA divers and snorkelers were involved in the collection of data for 72 taxa, by completing survey questionnaires after their dives. In my thesis, I evaluated the reliability of the data collected by volunteers, comparing their questionnaires with those completed by professional scientists. Validation trials showed a sufficient level of reliability, indicating that non-specialists performed similarly to conservation volunteer divers on accurate transects. Using the data collected by volunteers, I developed a biodiversity index that revealed spatial trends across surveyed areas. The project results provided important feedbacks to the local authorities on the current health status of Red Sea coral reefs and on the effectiveness of the environmental management. I also analysed the spatial and temporal distribution of each surveyed taxa, identifying abundance trends related with anthropogenic impacts. Finally, I evaluated the effectiveness of the project to increase the environmental education of volunteers and showed that the participation in STEproject significantly increased both the knowledge on coral reef biology and ecology and the awareness of human behavioural impacts on the environment.

Stratigraphic study and analysis of the barchan dunefield of the Laguna coastal zone in Santa Catarina, Brazil

The association of several favorable factors has resulted in the development of a wide barchan dune field that stands out as a fundamental element in the coastal landscape of southern Santa Catarina state in Brazil. This original ecosystem is being destroyed and highly modified, due to urbanization. This work identifies and discusses its basic characteristics and analyzes the favorable factors for its preservation, in the foreseen of both a sustainable future and potential incomes from ecotourism. The knowledge of the geologic evolution allows to associate this transgressive Holocene dunes formation to more dissipative beach conditions. Spatial differences on morphodynamics are related to local and regional contrasts in the sediment budget, with an influence on gradients of wave attenuation in the inner shelf and consequently with influence in the level of coastal erosion. The link between relative sea level changes and coastal eolian sedimentation can be used to integrate coastal eolian systems to the sequence stratigraphy model. The main accumulation phase of eolian sediments would occur during the final transgressive and highstand systems tracts. Considering the global character of Quaternary relative sea level changes, the Laguna transgressive dune field should be correlated with similar eolian deposits developed along other parts of the Brazilian coast compatibles with the model of dunefield initiation during rising and highstand sea level phases.

Assimilation of data from conventional and non conventional networks through a LETKF scheme in the COSMO model

The present work studies a km-scale data assimilation scheme based on a LETKF developed for the COSMO model. The aim is to evaluate the impact of the assimilation of two different types of data: temperature, humidity, pressure and wind data from conventional networks (SYNOP, TEMP, AIREP reports) and 3d reflectivity from radar volume. A 3-hourly continuous assimilation cycle has been implemented over an Italian domain, based on a 20 member ensemble, with boundary conditions provided from ECMWF ENS. Three different experiments have been run for evaluating the performance of the assimilation on one week in October 2014 during which Genova flood and Parma flood took place: a control run of the data assimilation cycle with assimilation of data from conventional networks only, a second run in which the SPPT scheme is activated into the COSMO model, a third run in which also reflectivity volumes from meteorological radar are assimilated. Objective evaluation of the experiments has been carried out both on case studies and on the entire week: check of the analysis increments, computing the Desroziers statistics for SYNOP, TEMP, AIREP and RADAR, over the Italian domain, verification of the analyses against data not assimilated (temperature at the lowest model level objectively verified against SYNOP data), and objective verification of the deterministic forecasts initialised with the KENDA analyses for each of the three experiments.

Processing-dependent and -independent pathways for recognition of iodinated contrast media by specific human T cells

One to three percent of patients exposed to intravenously injected iodinated contrast media (CM) develop delayed hypersensitivity reactions. Positive patch test reactions, immunohistological findings, and CM-specific proliferation of T cells in vitro suggest a pathogenetic role for T cells. We have previously demonstrated that CM-specific T cell clones (TCCs) show a broad range of cross-reactivity to different CM. However, the mechanism of specific CM recognition by T cell receptors (TCRs) has not been analysed so far.