Dynamical (super)symmetry vacuum properties of the supersymmetric Chern-Simons-matter model

By computing the two-loop effective potential of the D=3 N=1 supersymmetric Chern-Simons model minimally coupled to a massless self-interacting matter superfield, it is shown that supersymmetry is preserved, while the internal U(1) and the scale symmetries are broken at two-loop order, dynamically generating masses both for the gauge superfield and for the real component of the matter superfield.

Determination of atenolol in environmental water samples and pharmaceutical formulations at a graphite-epoxy composite electrode

A bare graphite-epoxy composite was evaluated as an electrode material in the determination of atenolol in natural water samples and pharmaceutical formulations for which the analyte was spiked. Using a DPV procedure, a linear response was observed in the 4.45-84.7 mu mol L-1 range with a LOD = 2.23 mu mol L-1, without need of surface renewal between successive runs, and recoveries between 92.5 and 107.5% for pharmaceutical formulations. The results obtained from the proposed procedure agreed with HPLC results within a 95% confidence level. During the determination of atenolol in water samples, recoveries between 96.1 and 102.6% were found.

Does H -> gamma gamma taste like vanilla new physics?

We analyse the interplay between the Higgs to diphoton rate and electroweak precision measurements constraints in extensions of the Standard Model with new uncolored charged fermions that do not mix with the ordinary ones. We also compute the pair production cross sections for the lightest fermion and compare them with current bounds.

Non-functionant urinary bladder paraganglioma

Introduction: Paragangliomas are rare tumors origined on chromaffin-cells of neural crest and can be located from skull base to pelvis, on sympathetic or parasympathetic paraganglia. They account on less than 0,06% of all urinary bladder tumors, with only few hundreds of cases reported in literature since the first record by Zimmermmann in 1953. Case Report: A 63 year-old woman referring irritative urinary symptoms was submitted to an ultrassonography that disclosed an irregular-shaped nodulation on her bladder. CT confirmed the existence of a nodulation on bladder's anterior wall. Patient had normal levels of urinary catecholamins and Vanilmandelic acid. Tumor was excised and posterior immunohistochemical study revealed it was a paraganglioma. Nowadays, ten months after surgery, patient stills healthy and disease-free. Discussion: Paragangliomas can be classified as functionant or non-functionant, according to its production of cathecolamins, which can cause the same symptom complex of pheocromocytomas. About 10-15% of bladder paragangliomas are malignant, and potential metastasis are more common to lymph nodes, lungs and bones. 131-MIBG iodine cyntilography is the most sensitive method for diagnosis and surgery (transurethral resection or cystectomy) is the best choice for treatment.

Soil-nutrient availability modifies the response of young pioneer and late successional trees to elevated carbon dioxide in a Brazilian tropical environment

The aim of this work was to determine the impact of three levels of [CO2] and two levels of soil-nutrient availability on the growth and physiological responses of two tropical tree species differing in their ecological group: Croton urucurana Baillon, a pioneer (P), and also Cariniana legalis (Martius) Kuntze, a late succession (LS). We aimed to test the hypothesis that P species have stronger response to elevated [CO2] than LS species as a result of differences in photosynthetic capacity and growth kinetics between both functional groups. Seedlings of both species were grown in open-top-chambers under high (HN) or low (LN) soil-nutrient supply and exposed to ambient (380 mu mol mol(-1)) or elevated (570 and 760 mu mol mol(-1)) [CO2]. Measurements of gas exchange, chlorophyll a fluorescence, seedling biomass and allocation were made after 70 days of treatment. Results suggest that elevated [CO2] significantly enhances the photosynthetic rates (A) and biomass production in the seedlings of both species, but that soil-nutrient supply has the potential to modify the response of young tropical trees to elevated [CO2]. In relation to plants grown in ambient [CO2], the P species grown under 760 mu mol mol(-1) [CO2] showed increases of 28% and 91% in A when grown in LN and HN, respectively. In P species grown under 570 mu mol mol(-1) [CO2], A increased by 16% under HN, but there was no effect in LN. In LS species, the enhancement of A by effect of 760 mu mol mol(-1) [CO2] was 30% and 70% in LN and HN, respectively. The exposure to 570 mu mol mol(-1) [CO2] stimulated A by 31% in HN, but was no effect in LN. Reductions in stomatal conductance (g(s)) and transpiration (E), as a result of elevated [CO2] were observed. Increasing the nutrient supply from low to high increased both the maximum rate of carboxylation (V-cmax) and maximum potential rate of electron transport (J(max)). As the level of [CO2] increased, both the V-cmax and the J(max) were found to decrease, whereas the J(max)/V-cmax ratio increased. In the LS species, the maximum efficiency of PSII (F-v/F-m) was higher in the 760 mu mol mol(-1) [CO2] treatment relative to other [CO2] treatments. The results suggest that when grown under HN and the highest [CO2], the performance of the P species C. urucurana, in terms of photosynthesis and biomass enhancement, is better than the LS species C. legalis. However, a larger biomass is allocated to roots when C. legalis seedlings were exposed to elevated [CO2]. This response would be an important strategy for plant survival and productivity of the LS species under drought stresses conditions on tropical environments in a global-change scenario. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Genetic relationship between growth and reproductive traits in Nellore cattle

The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic relationship between postweaning weight gain (PWG), heifer pregnancy (HP), scrotal circumference (SC) at 18 months of age, stayability at 6 years of age (STAY) and finishing visual score at 18 months of age (PREC), and to determine the potential of these traits as selection criteria for the genetic improvement of growth and reproduction in Nellore cattle. The HP was defined as the observation that a heifer conceived and remained pregnant, which was assessed by rectal palpation at 60 days. The STAY was defined as whether or not a cow calved every year up to the age of 6 years, given that she was provided the opportunity to breed. The Bayesian linear-threshold analysis via the Gibbs sampler was used to estimate the variance and covariance components applying a multitrait model. Posterior mean estimates of direct heritability were 0.15 +/- 0.00, 0.42 +/- 0.02, 0.49 +/- 0.01, 0.11 +/- 0.01 and 0.19 +/- 0.00 for PWG, HP, SC, STAY and PREC, respectively. The genetic correlations between traits ranged from 0.17 to 0.62. The traits studied generally have potential for use as selection criteria in genetic breeding programs. The genetic correlations between all traits show that selection for one of these traits does not imply the loss of the others.

Characterization of quaternary tufas in the Serra do Andre Lopes karst, southeastern Brazil

Active tufas in the form of waterfalls and dams occur along drainage channels in the Serra do Andre Lopes region (State of Sao Paulo, southeastern Brazil) and are associated with the karst system that developed on a dolomitic plateau with a superhumid subtropical climate. The predominance of autogenic waters enables the groundwater to become enriched in calcium carbonate, with low terrigenous sediment content. The tufas that were studied are composed of calcite and have high calcium contents and low magnesium contents. Eroded tufa beds that originate from changes in the position of fluvial channels or river flow rates also occur in this region. In the Sapatu deposit, phytohermal tufas with complex morphologies are arranged in levels constituting various temporally repeated sequences that were deposited between 10,570 and 4,972 cal years BP. In the Frias deposit, distal fluvial deposits of tufa are massive with a relatively greater quantity of terrigenous material and show evidence of dissolution and reprecipitation. The base of this deposit is composed of a cemented breccia dated at 25,390 years BP, which is younger than the overlying tufas ([42,000 years BP). In the two deposits, the levels of terrigenous sediments (quartz sand and lithic pebbles) and terrestrial gastropod shells are interpreted as phases of increased flow rate of rivers during intervals of higher rainfall.

Ages (U-Pb SHRIMP and LA ICPMS) and stratigraphic evolution of the Neoproterozoic volcano-sedimentary successions from the extensional Camaqua Basin, Southern Brazil

During the Ediacaran, southern Brazil was the site of multiple episodes of volcanism and sedimentation, which are best preserved in the 3000 km(2) Camaqua Basin. The interlayered sedimentary and volcanic rocks record tectonic events and paleoenvironmental changes in a more than 10 km-thick succession. In this contribution, we report new U-Pb and Sm-Nd geochronological constraints for the 605 to 580 Ma Born Jardim Group, the 570 Ma Acampamento Velho Formation, and a newly-recognized 544 Ma volcanism. Depositional patterns of these units reveal the transition from a restricted, fault-bounded basin into a wide, shallow basin. The expansion of the basin and diminished subsidence rates are demonstrated by increasing areal distribution and compressed isopachs and increasing onlap of sediments onto the basement to the west. The Sm-Nd isotopic composition of the volcanic rocks indicates mixed sources, including crustal rocks from the adjacent basement. Both Neoproterozoic and Paleoproterozoic sources are indicated for the western part of the basin, whereas only the older Paleoproterozoic signature can be discerned in the eastern part of the basin. (C) 2011 International Association for Gondwana Research. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Assessment of SNPs for linkage mapping in Eucalyptus: construction of a consensus SNP/microsatellite map from two unrelated pedigrees

Financial support. Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (CNPq Grant 577047-2008-6), FAP-DF NEXTREE Grant 193.000.570/2009 and EMBRAPA Macroprogram 2 project grant 02.07.01.004.

Matrix-vector multiplication and triangular linear solver using GPGPU for symmetric positive definite matrices derived from elliptic equations

The modern GPUs are well suited for intensive computational tasks and massive parallel computation. Sparse matrix multiplication and linear triangular solver are the most important and heavily used kernels in scientific computation, and several challenges in developing a high performance kernel with the two modules is investigated. The main interest it to solve linear systems derived from the elliptic equations with triangular elements. The resulting linear system has a symmetric positive definite matrix. The sparse matrix is stored in the compressed sparse row (CSR) format. It is proposed a CUDA algorithm to execute the matrix vector multiplication using directly the CSR format. A dependence tree algorithm is used to determine which variables the linear triangular solver can determine in parallel. To increase the number of the parallel threads, a coloring graph algorithm is implemented to reorder the mesh numbering in a pre-processing phase. The proposed method is compared with parallel and serial available libraries. The results show that the proposed method improves the computation cost of the matrix vector multiplication. The pre-processing associated with the triangular solver needs to be executed just once in the proposed method. The conjugate gradient method was implemented and showed similar convergence rate for all the compared methods. The proposed method showed significant smaller execution time.

Parallel Layout Construction Algorithm for Irregular Shape Packing Problems

Cutting and packing problems arise in a variety of industries, including garment, wood and shipbuilding. Irregular shape packing is a special case which admits irregular items and is much more complex due to the geometry of items. In order to ensure that items do not overlap and no item from the layout protrudes from the container, the collision free region concept was adopted. It represents all possible translations for a new item to be inserted into a container with already placed items. To construct a feasible layout, collision free region for each item is determined through a sequence of Boolean operations over polygons. In order to improve the speed of the algorithm, a parallel version of the layout construction was proposed and it was applied to a simulated annealing algorithm used to solve bin packing problems. Tests were performed in order to determine the speed improvement of the parallel version over the serial algorithm

MVP expression in the prediction of clinical outcome of locally advanced oral squamous cell carcinoma patients treated with radiotherapy

[EN] Objective: To explore the role of Major Vault Protein (MVP) in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma patients. Subjects and Methods: 131 consecutive patients suffering from oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma were included in the study. In the whole series, the mean follow-up for survivors was 123.11 ± 40.36 months. Patients in tumour stages I and II were referred to surgery; patients in stage III-IV to postoperative radiotherapy (mean dose = 62.13 ± 7.74 Gy in 1.8–2 Gy/fraction). MVP expression was studied by immunohistochemistry in paraffin-embedded tumour tissue. Results: MVP expression was positive in 112 patients (85.5%) and no relation was found with clinic pathological variables. MVP overexpression (those tumours with moderate or strong expression of the protein) was related to insulin-like growth factor receptor-1 (IGF-1R) expression (P = 0.014). Tumour stage of the disease was the most important prognostic factor related to survival. Tumours overexpressing MVP and IGF-1R were strongly related to poor disease-free survival (P = 0.008, Exp(B) = 2.730, CI95% (1.302-5.724)) and cause-specific survival (P = 0.014, Exp(B) = 2.570, CI95% (1.215-5.437)) in patients achieving tumour stages III-IV, in multivariate analysis. Conclusions: MVP and IGF-1R expression were related in oral squamous cell carcinoma and conferred reduced long-term survival in patients suffering from advanced stages of the disease.