Multi-scale lacunarity as an alternative to quantify and diagnose the behavior of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a serious public health problem accounting for up to 30% of clinical tumors in men. The diagnosis of this disease is made with clinical, laboratorial and radiological exams, which may indicate the need for transrectal biopsy. Prostate biopsies are discerningly evaluated by pathologists in an attempt to determine the most appropriate conduct. This paper presents a set of techniques for identifying and quantifying regions of interest in prostatic images. Analyses were performed using multi-scale lacunarity and distinct classification methods: decision tree, support vector machine and polynomial classifier. The performance evaluation measures were based on area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The most appropriate region for distinguishing the different tissues (normal, hyperplastic and neoplasic) was defined: the corresponding lacunarity values and a rule's model were obtained considering combinations commonly explored by specialists in clinical practice. The best discriminative values (AUC) were 0.906, 0.891 and 0.859 between neoplasic versus normal, neoplasic versus hyperplastic and hyperplastic versus normal groups, respectively. The proposed protocol offers the advantage of making the findings comprehensible to pathologists. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The boson-fermion correspondence from linear ODEs

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Predicting breeding values for milk yield of Guzera (Bos indicus) cows using random regression models

Given the importance of Guzera breeding programs for milk production in the tropics, the objective of this study was to compare alternative random regression models for estimation of genetic parameters and prediction of breeding values. Test-day milk yields records (TDR) were collected monthly, in a maximum of 10 measurements. The database included 20,524 records of first lactation from 2816 Guzera cows. TDR data were analyzed by random regression models (RRM) considering additive genetic, permanent environmental and residual effects as random and the effects of contemporary group (CG), calving age as a covariate (linear and quadratic effects) and mean lactation curve as fixed. The genetic additive and permanent environmental effects were modeled by RRM using Wilmink, All and Schaeffer and cubic B-spline functions as well as Legendre polynomials. Residual variances were considered as heterogeneous classes, grouped differently according to the model used. Multi-trait analysis using finite-dimensional models (FDM) for testday milk records (TDR) and a single-trait model for 305-days milk yields (default) using the restricted maximum likelihood method were also carried out as further comparisons. Through the statistical criteria adopted, the best RRM was the one that used the cubic B-spline function with five random regression coefficients for the genetic additive and permanent environmental effects. However, the models using the Ali and Schaeffer function or Legendre polynomials with second and fifth order for, respectively, the additive genetic and permanent environmental effects can be adopted, as little variation was observed in the genetic parameter estimates compared to those estimated by models using the B-spline function. Therefore, due to the lower complexity in the (co)variance estimations, the model using Legendre polynomials represented the best option for the genetic evaluation of the Guzera lactation records. An increase of 3.6% in the accuracy of the estimated breeding values was verified when using RRM. The ranks of animals were very close whatever the RRM for the data set used to predict breeding values. Considering P305, results indicated only small to medium difference in the animals' ranking based on breeding values predicted by the conventional model or by RRM. Therefore, the sum of all the RRM-predicted breeding values along the lactation period (RRM305) can be used as a selection criterion for 305-day milk production. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Protonation Pattern, Tautomerism, Conformerism, and Physicochemical Analysis in New Crystal Forms of the Antibiotic Doxycycline

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Brewer's yeast and sugarcane yeast as protein sources for dogs

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Digit systems over commutative rings

Let epsilon be a commutative ring with identity and P is an element of epsilon[x] be a polynomial. In the present paper we consider digit representations in the residue class ring epsilon[x]/(P). In particular, we are interested in the question whether each A is an element of epsilon[x]/(P) can be represented modulo P in the form e(0)+ e(1)x + ... + e(h)x(h), where the e(i) is an element of epsilon[x]/(P) are taken from a fixed finite set of digits. This general concept generalizes both canonical number systems and digit systems over finite fields. Due to the fact that we do not assume that 0 is an element of the digit set and that P need not be monic, several new phenomena occur in this context.

Physical, Thermal and Water-Sorption Properties of Passion Fruit Seeds

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Response of pullets to digestible lysine intake

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Estudo da interação genótipo ambiente em búfalos leiteiros do Brasil e da Colômbia

Pós-graduação em Zootecnia - FCAV

Efeitos da dosagem de monensina sódica sobre o desempenho produtivo, comportamento ingestivo, saúde ruminal e características de carcaça em bovinos Nelore confinados

Pós-graduação em Ciência e Tecnologia Animal - FEIS

Problemas de máximos e mínimos no Ensino Médio

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A BCH code and a sequence of cyclic codes

This study establishes that for a given binary BCH code C0 n of length n generated by a polynomial g(x) ∈ F2[x] of degree r there exists a family of binary cyclic codes {Cm 2m−1(n+1)n}m≥1 such that for each m ≥ 1, the binary cyclic code Cm 2m−1(n+1)n has length 2m−1(n + 1)n and is generated by a generalized polynomial g(x 1 2m ) ∈ F2[x, 1 2m Z≥0] of degree 2mr. Furthermore, C0 n is embedded in Cm 2m−1(n+1)n and Cm 2m−1(n+1)n is embedded in Cm+1 2m(n+1)n for each m ≥ 1. By a newly proposed algorithm, codewords of the binary BCH code C0 n can be transmitted with high code rate and decoded by the decoder of any member of the family {Cm 2m−1(n+1)n}m≥1 of binary cyclic codes, having the same code rate.

A simple application of implicit function theorem

In this note we show that the roots of a polynomial are C∞ depend of the coefficients. The main tool to show this is the Implicit Function Theorem.

Goppa codes over certain semigroups

A Goppa code is described in terms of a polynomial, known as Goppa polynomial, and in contrast to cyclic codes, where it is difficult to estimate the minimum Hamming distance d from the generator polynomial. Furthermore, a Goppa code has the property that d ≥ deg(h(X))+1, where h(X) is a Goppa polynomial. In this paper, we present a decoding principle for Goppa codes constructed by generalized polynomials, which is based on modified Berlekamp-Massey algorithm.

A Note on Linear Codes over Semigroup Rings

In this paper, we introduced new construction techniques of BCH, alternant, Goppa, Srivastava codes through the semigroup ring B[X; 1 3Z0] instead of the polynomial ring B[X; Z0], where B is a finite commutative ring with identity, and for these constructions we improve the several results of [1]. After this, we present a decoding principle for BCH, alternant and Goppa codes which is based on modified Berlekamp-Massey algorithm. This algorithm corrects all errors up to the Hamming weight t ≤ r/2, i.e., whose minimum Hamming distance is r + 1.