O património geomorfológico do Vale da Ribeira Principal: parque natural da serra da Malagueta, ilha de Santiago, Cabo Verdeavaliação e propostas de valorização

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On-line event detection by recursive dynamic principal component analysis and gas sensor arrays under drift conditions

Leakage detection is an important issue in many chemical sensing applications. Leakage detection hy thresholds suffers from important drawbacks when sensors have serious drifts or they are affected by cross-sensitivities. Here we present an adaptive method based in a Dynamic Principal Component Analysis that models the relationships between the sensors in the may. In normal conditions a certain variance distribution characterizes sensor signals. However, in the presence of a new source of variance the PCA decomposition changes drastically. In order to prevent the influence of sensor drifts the model is adaptive and it is calculated in a recursive manner with minimum computational effort. The behavior of this technique is studied with synthetic signals and with real signals arising by oil vapor leakages in an air compressor. Results clearly demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Drift compensation of gas sensor array data by common principal component analysis

A new drift compensation method based on Common Principal Component Analysis (CPCA) is proposed. The drift variance in data is found as the principal components computed by CPCA. This method finds components that are common for all gasses in feature space. The method is compared in classification task with respect to the other approaches published where the drift direction is estimated through a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of a reference gas. The proposed new method ¿ employing no specific reference gas, but information from all gases ¿has shown the same performance as the traditional approach with the best-fitted reference gas. Results are shown with data lasting 7-months including three gases at different concentrations for an array of 17 polymeric sensors.

Characterization of soil chemical properties of strawberry fields using principal component analysis

One of the largest strawberry-producing municipalities of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) is Turuçu, in the South of the State. The strawberry production system adopted by farmers is similar to that used in other regions in Brazil and in the world. The main difference is related to the soil management, which can change the soil chemical properties during the strawberry cycle. This study had the objective of assessing the spatial and temporal distribution of soil fertility parameters using principal component analysis (PCA). Soil sampling was based on topography, dividing the field in three thirds: upper, middle and lower. From each of these thirds, five soil samples were randomly collected in the 0-0.20 m layer, to form a composite sample for each third. Four samples were taken during the strawberry cycle and the following properties were determined: soil organic matter (OM), soil total nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), exchangeable calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg), soil pH (pH), cation exchange capacity (CEC) at pH 7.0, soil base (V%) and soil aluminum saturation(m%). No spatial variation was observed for any of the studied soil fertility parameters in the strawberry fields and temporal variation was only detected for available K. Phosphorus and K contents were always high or very high from the beginning of the strawberry cycle, while pH values ranged from very low to very high. Principal component analysis allowed the clustering of all strawberry fields based on variables related to soil acidity and organic matter content.

Herança da estatura de planta e do comprimento da panícula principal no cruzamento entre Avena Sativa L. e Avena Sterilis L.

A espécie selvagem Avena sterilis L. tem sido amplamente utilizada para cruzamento com aveia cultivada, pela alta afinidade existente entre ambas, o que possibilita um aumento na variabilidade genética e transferência de genes de importância agronômica. Entretanto, caracteres indesejáveis, como a alta estatura e um maior comprimento de panícula, podem ser transferidos à progênie. Nesse sentido, com o objetivo de avaliar a variabilidade genética, bem como a herança em cruzamentos entre Avena sativa L. e Avena sterilis L., foram mensurados os caracteres estatura de planta e comprimento da panícula principal. As variâncias fenotípicas e genéticas foram altas e as variâncias de ambiente foram baixas, proporcionando uma alta herdabilidade no sentido amplo. O efeito gênico de aditividade foi o mais importante para explicar a variação genética em ambos os caracteres.

Retaining principal components for discrete variables

The present study discusses retention criteria for principal components analysis (PCA) applied to Likert scale items typical in psychological questionnaires. The main aim is to recommend applied researchers to restrain from relying only on the eigenvalue-than-one criterion; alternative procedures are suggested for adjusting for sampling error. An additional objective is to add evidence on the consequences of applying this rule when PCA is used with discrete variables. The experimental conditions were studied by means of Monte Carlo sampling including several sample sizes, different number of variables and answer alternatives, and four non-normal distributions. The results suggest that even when all the items and thus the underlying dimensions are independent, eigenvalues greater than one are frequent and they can explain up to 80% of the variance in data, meeting the empirical criterion. The consequences of using Kaiser"s rule are illustrated with a clinical psychology example. The size of the eigenvalues resulted to be a function of the sample size and the number of variables, which is also the case for parallel analysis as previous research shows. To enhance the application of alternative criteria, an R package was developed for deciding the number of principal components to retain by means of confidence intervals constructed about the eigenvalues corresponding to lack of relationship between discrete variables.

Crescimento da cultura principal e da soca de genótipos de arroz irrigado por inundação

Com o objetivo de identificar e avaliar as características fisiológicas que se correlacionam com o rendimento de grãos da cultura principal e da soca para estabelecer critérios de seleção de genótipos de arroz irrigado por inundação com maior capacidade produtiva de grãos, foi conduzido um experimento em solo Gley Pouco Húmico. O delineamento experimental usado foi o de blocos balanceados em grupos, com quatro repetições, onde os grupos consistiram nos ciclos e, as parcelas, dos genótipos em cada ciclo. Na soca, os genótipos de ciclo médio apresentaram maiores valores de matéria seca total da parte aérea e de folha que os de ciclo curto e, na cultura principal, além desses parâmetros, foram superiores na matéria seca de raiz, densidade radicular, índice e duração de área foliar. Os valores de razão de área foliar, área foliar específica e razão de peso de folha da cultura principal foram mais elevados aos 20 dias após a emergência das plântulas e declinaram ao longo do ciclo. Foram realizadas correlações entre as variáveis estudadas e entre estas e o rendimento de grãos da cultura principal e da soca. Os índices fisiológicos da cultura principal correlacionaram-se com o rendimento de grãos, não apresentando, contudo, correlação significativa com o rendimento de grãos da soca.

Manejo de água no comportamento da cultura principal e da soca de arroz irrigado

O cultivo da soca de arroz (Oryza sativa L.) pode se constituir em uma fonte de renda importante se o manejo da água de irrigação for adequado. O objetivo deste estudo foi determinar os efeitos de períodos de drenagem e de irrigação, antes e depois, respectivamente, da colheita da cultura principal sobre o comportamento da cultura principal e da soca de arroz. Os tratamentos consistiram da combinação de quatro períodos de drenagem (corte da irrigação e abertura dos drenos aos 0, 10, 20 e 30 dias) antes da colheita da cultura principal, com o reinício da irrigação aos 0, 10, 20 e 30 dias após a colheita da cultura principal, em arranjo fatorial 4x4, no delineamento experimental de blocos ao acaso, com quatro repetições. Os períodos de irrigação após a colheita afetaram diferentemente o comportamento da soca de arroz de acordo com as condições climáticas. Com temperaturas do ar mais baixas, o atraso no reinício da irrigação reduziu a produtividade e a qualidade do produto colhido. Em condições climáticas de temperaturas do ar mais altas, a inundação iniciada nove dias após a colheita da cultura principal resultou em melhor desempenho da soca, com uma economia de água de 14% em relação à inundação imediatamente após a colheita. A soca aparentemente não se apresenta favorável ao desenvolvimento de populações daninhas de larvas da bicheira-da-raiz do arroz, Oryzophagus oryzae.

Diagnosing Patients Combining Principal Components Analysis and Case Based Reasoning

This paper addresses the application of a PCA analysis on categorical data prior to diagnose a patients data set using a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) system. The particularity is that the standard PCA techniques are designed to deal with numerical attributes, but our medical data set contains many categorical data and alternative methods as RS-PCA are required. Thus, we propose to hybridize RS-PCA (Regular Simplex PCA) and a simple CBR. Results show how the hybrid system produces similar results when diagnosing a medical data set, that the ones obtained when using the original attributes. These results are quite promising since they allow to diagnose with less computation effort and memory storage

ERK1/2 controls Na,K-ATPase activity and transepithelial sodium transport in the principal cell of the cortical collecting duct of the mouse kidney.

The collecting duct of normal kidney exhibits significant activity of the MEK1/2-ERK1/2 pathway as shown in vivo by immunostaining of phosphorylated active ERK1/2 (pERK1/2). The MEK1/2-ERK1/2 pathway controls many different ion transports both in proximal and distal nephron, raising the question of whether this pathway is involved in the basal and/or hormone-dependent transepithelial sodium reabsorption in the principal cell of the cortical collecting duct (CCD), a process mediated by the apical epithelial sodium channel and the basolateral sodium pump (Na,K-ATPase). To answer this question we used ex vivo microdissected CCDs from normal mouse kidney or in vitro cultured mpkCCDcl4 principal cells. Significant basal levels of pERK1/2 were observed ex vivo and in vitro. Aldosterone and vasopressin, known to up-regulate sodium reabsorption in CCDs, did not change ERK1/2 activity either ex vivo or in vitro. Basal and aldosterone- or vasopressin-stimulated sodium transport was down-regulated by the MEK1/2 inhibitor PD98059, in parallel with a decrease in pERK1/2 in vitro. The activity of Na,K-ATPase but not that of epithelial sodium channel was inhibited by MEK1/2 inhibitors in both unstimulated and aldosterone- or vasopressin-stimulated CCDs in vitro. Cell surface biotinylation showed that intrinsic activity rather than cell surface expression of Na,K-ATPase was controlled by pERK1/2. PD98059 also significantly inhibited the activity of Na,K-ATPase ex vivo. Our data demonstrate that the ERK1/2 pathway controls Na,K-ATPase activity and transepithelial sodium transport in the principal cell and indicate that basal constitutive activity of the ERK1/2 pathway is a critical component of this control.