Convolution Products in L1(R+), Integral Transforms and Fractional Calculus

Mathematics Subject Classification: 43A20, 26A33 (main), 44A10, 44A15

L1-norm-based 2DPCA

In this paper, we first present a simple but effective L1-norm-based two-dimensional principal component analysis (2DPCA). Traditional L2-norm-based least squares criterion is sensitive to outliers, while the newly proposed L1-norm 2DPCA is robust. Experimental results demonstrate its advantages. © 2006 IEEE.

Robust tensor analysis with L1-norm

Tensor analysis plays an important role in modern image and vision computing problems. Most of the existing tensor analysis approaches are based on the Frobenius norm, which makes them sensitive to outliers. In this paper, we propose L1-norm-based tensor analysis (TPCA-L1), which is robust to outliers. Experimental results upon face and other datasets demonstrate the advantages of the proposed approach. © 2006 IEEE.

The Role of Ras Oncogene in Differentiation of 3T3-L1 Preadipocytes

Ras is a proto-oncogene that codes for a small GTPase and is responsible for linking several extracellular signals to intracellular mechanisms that involve cell growth, differentiation and cell-programmed death in normal and diseased cells. In all these processes, Ras has been extensively investigated. However, the role of Ras GTPases is still poorly understood during the differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. In this study I investigated the role of the H-Ras defective mutant, Ras:G12V on the differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes. Preadipocytes were differentiated in vitro to adipocytes (fat cells) by adding an induction medium containing several factors including glucose and insulin. The formation of fat cells evidenced by the visualization of lipid drops as well as by quantifying the accumulation of Oil red O into lipid drops. To examine the role of Ras:G12V mutant, several selective mutations were introduced in order to determine the signaling transduction pathways (i.e., PI3(K)kinase and MAP(K)Kinase) responsible for the Ras-dependent adipogenesis. Cells expressing Ras:G12V mutant stimulated 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation without he need for induction media, suggesting that Ras activation is an essential factor required for 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation. Introduction of a second mutation on Ras:G12V (i.e., Ras:G12V;E37G), which blocks the activation of the MAPKinase pathway, strongly inhibited the 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation. It is also important to note Ras:G12V:E37G double mutant does not inhibit the activation of the PI3kinase pathway. Other Ras double mutants (Ras:G12V;S35T, and V12G;C40Y) showed a modest inhibition of the 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation. Taken together, these observations indicate that Ras plays a selective role in 3T3-L1 preadipocyte differentiation. Thus, understanding which specific pathway Ras employs during preadipocyte differentiation could clarify some of the uncertainties surrounding fat production.

Extrafiscalidade: análise da norma potiguar regulamentadora do imposto sobre propriedade veicular automotora à luz da tutela ambiental

From the second half of the twentieth century the state bega n to use exaction beyond your fiscalist character, also as a means of alignment deformities economic and social balance, influencing in different directions, according to economic, social and political policy. It is what is usually called the extrafiscalit y. It is in light of this phenomenon and the constitutional perspective, the present work aims to analyze item IV of article. 8 of Law n. 6.967/96, regulatory Property Tax Vehicle Automotive (property taxes) in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, in view of its possible incompatibility with the principles of the Basic Statute and with international guidelines for protection of the environment The problem of this research is Seated in art. 225 of the Constitution, which provides that everyone has the right to an ecologically balanced environment. From the reading of this standard, extracted it is the responsibility of the state protecting the environment, which requires the adoption of suitable actions to that end. However, we look to state law cited follows th e constitutional path, since it exempts the collection of property taxes automotive vehicles with over 10 years of manufacturing, which could encourage the conservation of a fleet of old vehicles, mostly more polluting and harmful to the environment and hu man health. Would the state legislature oblivious to the constitutional principles and the global trend of environmental preservation? Thus questions whether such an incentive for more polluting vehicles, emitting more gases in the atmosphere. Moreover, th e international community is already moving through important conventions in an attempt to minimize and control global warming and climate change. Predicting the theme in CF/88 demonstrates that the country is no stranger to the issue. Thus, the work is a retelling of Law No. 6.967/96 order to check whether it is compatible with the existing system. The methodology consists of a documentary, deductive, dialectical literature. At the end of the survey, it was found that provide a tax benefit to these vehicle s is encouraged to maintain them in circulation and contribute to the increase in air and noise pollution, in addition to the traffic problems generated. Thus, this potiguar anything standard can be expressed extrafiscality because the medium and long term there is encouragement and worsening environmental problem. Despite the ability to pay clause, but this remission is an affront to legally protected interests. Thus, this device goes in reverse order compared to the values of the legal system and in relat ion to sustainable development. Modern Tax Law should be used as a tool to achieve the purposes collimated by the State, and not otherwise. It was noticed that the vast majority of Brazilian states does not follow this rule, including Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais have no such exemption. Therefore, the RN State does not constitute a model for sustainable public policies, nor example of environmental protection by state law.

LCD-OpenPACS: sistema integrado de telerradiologia com auxílio ao diagnóstico de nódulos pulmonares em exames de tomografia computadorizada

Lung cancer is one of the most common types of cancer and has the highest mortality rate. Patient survival is highly correlated with early detection. Computed Tomography technology services the early detection of lung cancer tremendously by offering aminimally invasive medical diagnostic tool. However, the large amount of data per examination makes the interpretation difficult. This leads to omission of nodules by human radiologist. This thesis presents a development of a computer-aided diagnosis system (CADe) tool for the detection of lung nodules in Computed Tomography study. The system, called LCD-OpenPACS (Lung Cancer Detection - OpenPACS) should be integrated into the OpenPACS system and have all the requirements for use in the workflow of health facilities belonging to the SUS (Brazilian health system). The LCD-OpenPACS made use of image processing techniques (Region Growing and Watershed), feature extraction (Histogram of Gradient Oriented), dimensionality reduction (Principal Component Analysis) and classifier (Support Vector Machine). System was tested on 220 cases, totaling 296 pulmonary nodules, with sensitivity of 94.4% and 7.04 false positives per case. The total time for processing was approximately 10 minutes per case. The system has detected pulmonary nodules (solitary, juxtavascular, ground-glass opacity and juxtapleural) between 3 mm and 30 mm.

Resolução em tomografia de tempo de trânsito poço-a-poço: a dependência da iluminação

The key aspect limiting resolution in crosswell traveltime tomography is illumination, a well known result but not as well exemplified. Resolution in the 2D case is revisited using a simple geometric approach based on the angular aperture distribution and the Radon Transform properties. Analitically it is shown that if an interface has dips contained in the angular aperture limits in all points, it is correctly imaged in the tomogram. By inversion of synthetic data this result is confirmed and it is also evidenced that isolated artifacts might be present when the dip is near the illumination limit. In the inverse sense, however, if an interface is interpretable from a tomogram, even an aproximately horizontal interface, there is no guarantee that it corresponds to a true interface. Similarly, if a body is present in the interwell region it is diffusely imaged in the tomogram, but its interfaces - particularly vertical edges - can not be resolved and additional artifacts might be present. Again, in the inverse sense, there is no guarantee that an isolated anomaly corresponds to a true anomalous body because this anomaly can also be an artifact. Jointly, these results state the dilemma of ill-posed inverse problems: absence of guarantee of correspondence to the true distribution. The limitations due to illumination may not be solved by the use of mathematical constraints. It is shown that crosswell tomograms derived by the use of sparsity constraints, using both Discrete Cosine Transform and Daubechies bases, basically reproduces the same features seen in tomograms obtained with the classic smoothness constraint. Interpretation must be done always taking in consideration the a priori information and the particular limitations due to illumination. An example of interpreting a real data survey in this context is also presented.

Resolução em tomografia de tempo de trânsito poço-a-poço: a dependência da iluminação

The key aspect limiting resolution in crosswell traveltime tomography is illumination, a well known result but not as well exemplified. Resolution in the 2D case is revisited using a simple geometric approach based on the angular aperture distribution and the Radon Transform properties. Analitically it is shown that if an interface has dips contained in the angular aperture limits in all points, it is correctly imaged in the tomogram. By inversion of synthetic data this result is confirmed and it is also evidenced that isolated artifacts might be present when the dip is near the illumination limit. In the inverse sense, however, if an interface is interpretable from a tomogram, even an aproximately horizontal interface, there is no guarantee that it corresponds to a true interface. Similarly, if a body is present in the interwell region it is diffusely imaged in the tomogram, but its interfaces - particularly vertical edges - can not be resolved and additional artifacts might be present. Again, in the inverse sense, there is no guarantee that an isolated anomaly corresponds to a true anomalous body because this anomaly can also be an artifact. Jointly, these results state the dilemma of ill-posed inverse problems: absence of guarantee of correspondence to the true distribution. The limitations due to illumination may not be solved by the use of mathematical constraints. It is shown that crosswell tomograms derived by the use of sparsity constraints, using both Discrete Cosine Transform and Daubechies bases, basically reproduces the same features seen in tomograms obtained with the classic smoothness constraint. Interpretation must be done always taking in consideration the a priori information and the particular limitations due to illumination. An example of interpreting a real data survey in this context is also presented.

Teranostica: diagnosi e cura attraverso nanoparticelle

La prospettiva della teranostica è quella di effettuare contemporaneamente diagnosi e cura, individuando le singole particelle tumorali. Questo è possibile grazie a nanoparticelle magnetiche, entità multifunzionali rivestite da un polimero, accompagnate nel luogo di interesse mediante un campo magnetico esterno. Per quanto riguarda la diagnosi possono essere utilizzate come agenti nella risonanza magnetica nucleare per aumentare il contrasto dell’immagine e consentire una migliore rivelazione del tumore. Per quanto riguarda la terapia esse sono utilizzate per l’ipertermia magnetica, tecnica basata sul riscaldamento mediante l’applicazione di un debole campo magnetico alternato dotato di un’opportuna frequenza. In questo modo le cellule tumorali, essendo più sensibili al calore rispetto a quelle sane, vengono distrutte, una volta raggiunta una temperatura locale tra i 41 e i 46°C. Un’altra grande applicazione terapeutica è il rilascio controllato e mirato dei farmaci (drug target delivery). Infatti un opportuno rivestimento polimerico consente di coniugare alla particella dei medicinali chemioterapici che, una volta raggiunta la zona tumorale, possono essere rilasciati nel tempo, permettendo dunque la somministrazione di una minor dose e un’azione più mirata rispetto ai classici trattamenti. I materiali maggiormente utilizzati per la sintesi delle nanoparticelle sono gli ossidi di ferro (come la magnetite Fe3O4 e la maghemite γ − Fe2O3) e l’oro. Tuttavia, nonostante i possibili vantaggi, questi trattamenti presentano degli effetti collaterali. Trattandosi infatti di particelle ultrafini, dell’ordine dei nanometri, possono migrare all’interno del corpo umano raggiungendo organi bersaglio e comprometterne il loro funzionamento. La teranostica, però, è una disciplina molto studiata e in via di sviluppo; si spera che da qui a breve sia possibile un utilizzo concreto di questi nuovi metodi, riducendo al minimo la tossicità per il corpo umano.

Simulazione della bradicinesia in soggetti parkinsoniani attraverso modello neurale

I Gangli della Base svolgono un ruolo molto importante nel movimento volontario, ovvero nel meccanismo di azione-selezione, e la loro influenza è evidente soprattutto in alcune patologie che ancora ad oggi sono in fase di studio: una di queste è il Morbo di Parkinson. I Gangli della Base comprendono quattro formazioni nervose: lo striato, il globus pallidus, la substantia nigra e il nucleo subtalamico: essi ricevono le principali afferenze dalla corteccia cerebrale ed inviano le principali efferenze al tronco dell’encefalo, e, per mezzo del talamo, alle corteccia prefrontale, premotoria e motrice. A differenza della maggior parte delle altre componenti dei sistemi motori, i Gangli della Base non stabiliscono direttamente né connessioni afferenti, né efferenti con il midollo spinale. Il compito principale svolto dai Gangli dDella Base è la selezione di un’azione: esso permette ad un’azione di essere selezionata rispetto ad un’altra, che in questo modo viene inibita. La descrizione dell’anatomia, dei meccanismi fisiologici e del Morbo di Parkinson è trattata nel Capitolo 1. In questo elaborato è utilizzato il modello computazionale di Mauro Ursino e Chiara Baston, che sarà illustrato dettagliatamente nel Capitolo 2, riguardante il meccanismo di azione-selezione svolto dai Gangli della Base. E’ descritto un sistema di valutazione di un paziente parkinsoniano, il tapping test: esso consiste in un movimento alternato del dito e ad oggi risulta essere uno dei metodi più semplici per ottenere informazioni sulla gravità della bradicinesia. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di comprendere, tramite l’analisi di simulazioni effettuate per mezzo del modello computazionale di Mauro Ursino e Chiara Baston, come la frequenza di tapping dipenda dal variare di alcuni parametri delle equazioni del modello: gli effetti dovuti alla variazione di un singolo parametro o più di uno, saranno mostrati nel Capitolo 3.

Parlamento, norma jurídica y jurisdicción constitucional en el pensamiento de Kelsen desde el punto de vista de la neutralidad

El presente trabajo estudia la obra de Kelsen respecto al parlamento, la norma jurídica y, la jurisdicción constitucional. El análisis del objeto de investigación se realiza destacando la neutralidad en el pensamiento de Kelsen, lo cual es propio de una teoría científica del derecho, que no de la moral, la política o, la ética. Se sostiene que Kelsen asume la defensa de la democracia en base a los valores de libertad e igualdad, aunque no con el objeto de instaurar un modelo político o, desde la defensa de un poder político. Del mismo modo, la teoría normativa de Kelsen ha sido desarrollada desde una perspectiva general, no busca adecuarse a un sistema legal, ni dice lo que es el derecho o, cuál debe ser el contenido material del derecho. No prescribe, sólo describe. En igual sentido, la doctrina del Tribunal Constitucional como legislador negativo se sintetiza en verificar la conformidad de la norma con la Constitución, y no en evaluar el contenido material de la norma general. Antes de abordar los postulados antes mencionados se ha considerado conveniente estudiar de modo preliminar la valoración y la neutralidad en Kelsen para entender en qué grado la teoría pura del derecho es neutral destacando dicho componente en los apartados propuestos con el objeto de responder a otra pregunta mayor referida a la utilidad de una teoría neutral y relativista en una sociedad diversa y cambiante. Kelsen admite la inevitabilidad de la valoración en el derecho y en la política en contraposición al valor neutro desarrollado en la teoría pura del derecho y en toda su doctrina. Ciertamente, la teoría pura del derecho prescinde de toda ideología; es decir, de aprobar o desaprobar su objeto de estudio o, de evaluar o justificar por medio de la ciencia del derecho una determinada idea de justicia, moral, política, etc. Sin embargo, considero que a través de toda su doctrina persigue valores comunes como la paz, la libertad, la igualdad, la justicia y la felicidad colectiva.

Synthèse totale de trois produits naturels : la curacine A, la curacine B et la cystothiazole A

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Synthèse d'oligosaccharides bioactifs ; Synthèse totale de la (-)-doliculide

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Comparaison de deux méthodes de positionnement acétabulaire lors de l'arthroplastie totale de la hanche

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Estratégias na Implementação da norma ISO 9001 em IPSS (Instituições Particulares de Solidariedade Social)

A qualidade está na base do sucesso no mundo empresarial, sendo um fator de competitividade e de diferenciação entre organizações. No contexto das Instituições Particulares de Solidariedade Social, a aposta na qualidade é também uma realidade. No entanto, estas instituições enfrentam diversas dificuldades no processo de implementação do sistema de gestão da qualidade (SGQ) ISO 9001. De entre estas, destaca-se o difícil acesso à metodologia, crenças impostas, culturas resistentes à mudança, desconhecimentos e receios, que resultam em custos avultados para as organizações, dado o recurso frequente a empresas de consultoria. Como tal, o presente trabalho de investigação pretende salientar as principais dificuldades no processo de implementação da norma ISO9001:2008 em IPSS e dar o seu contributo para a clarificação da polémica que envolve a certificação desta norma, mediante a criação de um kit, com todas as ferramentas necessárias à implementação da norma. Por conseguinte, e para dar resposta ao objetivo proposto, procedeu-se numa primeira instância à realização de inquéritos a 29 organizações certificadas pelas normas ISO 9001:2008 e/ou EQUASS (European Quality in Social Services), de forma a apreender as principais dificuldades no processo de implementação da norma nas várias IPSS. Esta análise permitiu concluir que, os principais fatores que dificultaram a implementação do sistema de gestão da qualidade, segundo a norma ISO 9001:2008, são essencialmente a falta de tempo e/ou disponibilidade, assim como a dificuldade de interpretação da norma. Como tal, as organizações necessitam de ferramentas de auxílio que as apoiem e esclareçam no processo de implementação do sistema da qualidade. Neste sentido, elaborou-se o kit de implementação “Qualifica”. Este é constituído por um manual e um CD interativo com documentos, formações e ferramentas para a implementação do sistema, cujo objetivo é esclarecer, encaminhar, orientar e simplificar todo o processo de implementação da norma e utilizando uma linguagem simples e acessível. Para finalizar, a viabilidade do KIT “Qualifica” foi devidamente validada através da sua aplicação numa IPSS não certificada. Após a revisão do sistema implementado na IPSS em estudo, conclui-se que o KIT "Qualifica" ofereceu todas as bases e todos os recursos necessários para o bom entendimento, encaminhamento e implementação da norma, provando a sua potencialidade como ferramenta auxiliar fundamental que qualquer organização poderá no futuro utilizar.