Real-time rheology of actively growing bacteria

The population growth of a Staphylococcus aureus culture, an active colloidal system of spherical cells, was followed by rheological measurements, under steady-state and oscillatory shear flows. We observed a rich viscoelastic behavior as a consequence of the bacteria activity, namely, of their multiplication and density-dependent aggregation properties. In the early stages of growth (lag and exponential phases), the viscosity increases by about a factor of 20, presenting several drops and full recoveries. This allows us to evoke the existence of a percolation phenomenon. Remarkably, as the bacteria reach their late phase of development, in which the population stabilizes, the viscosity returns close to its initial value. Most probably, this is caused by a change in the bacteria physiological activity and in particular, by the decrease of their adhesion properties. The viscous and elastic moduli exhibit power-law behaviors compatible with the "soft glassy materials" model, whose exponents are dependent on the bacteria growth stage. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.87.030701.

Desenvolvimento de pastilha potencialmente probiótica

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Inter-relação de Meloidogyne enterolobii e Pratylenchus brachyurus em variedades de goiabeiras

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Produção Vegetal) - FCAV

A aprendizagem da divisão: um olhar sobre os procedimentos usados pelos alunos

Este artigo apresenta e discute alguns aspetos sobre a aprendizagem da divisão com números naturais, focando-se nos procedimentos usados por alunos de uma turma do 3.º ano na resolução de tarefas de divisão. Os resultados apresentados fazem parte de uma investigação mais abrangente que teve como finalidade a compreensão do modo como os alunos aprofundam a aprendizagem da multiplicação numa perspetiva de desenvolvimento do sentido do número. A investigação realizada seguiu uma metodologia de design research, na modalidade de experiência de ensino. A análise das produções escritas dos alunos e de episódios de sala de aula relativos às discussões coletivas sobre as resoluções das tarefas propostas mostra que os alunos usam uma diversidade de procedimentos e que estes evoluem significativamente ao longo da experiência de ensino. Esta evolução parece ser suportada pelas características das tarefas, os seus contextos e números, assim como pela articulação, desde logo estabelecida, entre a divisão e a multiplicação. Além disso, o recurso ao modelo retangular parece, também, ter contribuído para a progressão para procedimentos multiplicativos, baseados na decomposição de um dos fatores. Os resultados do estudo permitem ainda perceber que a evolução dos procedimentos usados pelos alunos e a sua diversidade não são alheias ao ambiente de sala de aula construído.

Contraste e alteridade na viagem contemporânea

No mundo contemporâneo globalizado, definido pela sua qualidade essencialmente fluida e instável, o carácter distintivo da viagem parece dissolver-se face à contracção do planeta, à economia das ―trocas simbólicas‖ e a um alegado processo de diluição das diferenças e de homogeneização cultural. Com efeito, a mediatização da sociedade e a proliferação icónica contemporâneas produzem um aparente estado de saturação da geografia real e de multiplicação de lugares enquanto representações e imagens, permitindo pôr em causa a própria necessidade e urgência de deslocação, bem como admitir a abolição do ―estatuto de privilégio‖ de certos lugares e a derradeira quebra no conceito aurático das férias e das viagens, tradicionalmente assente em antinomias cruciais entre o quotidiano/familiar e o diferente/extraordinário. O presente artigo propõe-se abordar o paradigma da mobilidade contemporânea, nomeadamente no que diz respeito à traumática aniquilação do espaço e do tempo e ao seu impacto fortemente disruptivo sobre a dimensão ontológica de uma prática cultural cujo poder aurático se encontra tradicionalmente relacionado com a conquista de distâncias, a percepção de diferenças e a experiência de alteridade. O artigo pretende, por outro lado, refutar a declaração pós-moderna de que a familiarização com o outro conduz a uma diminuição do potencial de choque cultural no turismo contemporâneo, discutindo a relevância e a prevalência da busca de contraste e formas de vivência de alteridade no complexo novelo de motivações da viagem turística contemporânea.

A Compact and Scalable RNS Architecture

Conferência: IEEE 24th International Conference on Application-Specific Systems, Architectures and Processors (ASAP)- Jun 05-07, 2013

A divisão no 4º ano de escolaridade

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Educação Matemática na Educação Pré-Escolar e nos 1.º e 2.º Ciclos do Ensino Básico

Assigning real-time tasks on heterogeneous multiprocessors with two unrelated types of processors

A preliminary version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of the 31st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2010, pp. 239–248.

An efficient scalable RNS architecture for large dynamic ranges

This paper proposes an efficient scalable Residue Number System (RNS) architecture supporting moduli sets with an arbitrary number of channels, allowing to achieve larger dynamic range and a higher level of parallelism. The proposed architecture allows the forward and reverse RNS conversion, by reusing the arithmetic channel units. The arithmetic operations supported at the channel level include addition, subtraction, and multiplication with accumulation capability. For the reverse conversion two algorithms are considered, one based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem and the other one on Mixed-Radix-Conversion, leading to implementations optimized for delay and required circuit area. With the proposed architecture a complete and compact RNS platform is achieved. Experimental results suggest gains of 17 % in the delay in the arithmetic operations, with an area reduction of 23 % regarding the RNS state of the art. When compared with a binary system the proposed architecture allows to perform the same computation 20 times faster alongside with only 10 % of the circuit area resources.

Efficient Implementation Of A Single-Precision Floating-Point Arithmetic Unit on FPGA

This paper presents a single precision floating point arithmetic unit with support for multiplication, addition, fused multiply-add, reciprocal, square-root and inverse squareroot with high-performance and low resource usage. The design uses a piecewise 2nd order polynomial approximation to implement reciprocal, square-root and inverse square-root. The unit can be configured with any number of operations and is capable to calculate any function with a throughput of one operation per cycle. The floatingpoint multiplier of the unit is also used to implement the polynomial approximation and the fused multiply-add operation. We have compared our implementation with other state-of-the-art proposals, including the Xilinx Core-Gen operators, and conclude that the approach has a high relative performance/area efficiency. © 2014 Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Study on the growth promoting capacity of calf and fetal bovine serum for animal cells "in vitro" II: electrophoretic study and survey on the antiproteolytic activity of pools of calf and fetal bovine serum

Calf serum and fetal bovine serum present great variability as to its growth promoting efficiency (GPE). As supplement of culture media to cultivate cells of animal origin they stimulate the "in vitro" multiplication and maintain cell viability. When fourteen lots of calf sera of variable GPE had the total protein contents as well as the percentages of serum fractions determined, no significant differences that could possibly explain the variability of the GPE were observed. Evaluation of the antiproteolytic activity of nineteen lots of calf serum and eighteen serum lots of younger calves showed that the former exhibited lower antiproteolytic titers (1:40 to 1:80) than the latter (1:80 to 1:160). Twelve lots of fetal bovine serum studied in parallel, showed the highest concentration of antiproteolytic factors, with titers equal to 1:320. Sera of bovine origin, but not fetal sera, are usually heat-inactivated, what was demonstrated to be responsible for the decrease of the antiproteolytic activity of 75% of the lots tested. This could explain the inability of certain heat-inactivated sera in promoting multiplication of some cells "in vitro", as verified with primary monkey kidney cells. The results obtained in this study indicated the convenience of submiting each lot of serum to be introduced in cell culture to previous determination of its characteristics, such as growth promoting efficiency, antiproteolytic activity and also toxicity, absence of extraneous agents, etc., in order to minimize the possibility of using serum lots of questionable quality, thus preventing not only the loss of cell lines, but also undesirable and sometimes expensive delays.

Trypanosoma (Herpetosoma) rangeli Tejera, 1920: intracellular amastigote stages of reproduction in white mice

The method, site, and stage of multiplication of Trypanosoma (Herpetosoma) rangeli Tejera, 1920 has not hitherto been known. "We have now observed many intracellular nests or pseudocysts, containing amastigotes and trypomastigotes of this parasite in the heart, liver, and spleen of suckling (5.0 g) male white mice (NMRI strain) inoculated i.p. with 9 x 10(4) metatrypomastigotes/g body weight from a 12-day-old culture of the "Dog-82" strain of T. rangeli. At the peak of parasitemia (1.9 x 10(6) trypomastigotes/ml blood, 3 days post-inoculation) various tissues were taken for sectioning and staining. The heart was most intensely parasitized. The amastigotes were rounded or ellipsoidal, with a rounded nucleus and the kinetoplast in the form of a straight or curved bar; the average maximum diameter of 50 measured amastigotes was 4.2 p. Binary fission was seen in the nucleus and kinetoplast of some amastigotes; no blood trypomastigotes were seen in division. The above characteristics, as well as the location of the pseudocysts in the tissues, are similar to T. cruzi. Comparison of these results with those reported for other Herpetosoma suggest study of the taxonomic position of T. rangeli.

A multiplicação e a divisão de números naturais: uma análise de manuais escolares de 1.º ciclo

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção de grau de mestre em Educação Matemática na Educação Pré-escolar e nos 1.º e 2.º ciclos do Ensino Básico

A many-core co-processor for embedded parallel computing on FPGA

Single processor architectures are unable to provide the required performance of high performance embedded systems. Parallel processing based on general-purpose processors can achieve these performances with a considerable increase of required resources. However, in many cases, simplified optimized parallel cores can be used instead of general-purpose processors achieving better performance at lower resource utilization. In this paper, we propose a configurable many-core architecture to serve as a co-processor for high-performance embedded computing on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays. The architecture consists of an array of configurable simple cores with support for floating-point operations interconnected with a configurable interconnection network. For each core it is possible to configure the size of the internal memory, the supported operations and number of interfacing ports. The architecture was tested in a ZYNQ-7020 FPGA in the execution of several parallel algorithms. The results show that the proposed many-core architecture achieves better performance than that achieved with a parallel generalpurpose processor and that up to 32 floating-point cores can be implemented in a ZYNQ-7020 SoC FPGA.

Jorge Lobo’s disease: experimental inoculation in Swiss mice

Sixty-four isogenic Swiss mice were intradermically inoculated in both hind foot pads. The inocula, consisting of fungal suspensions from biopsies obtained from Jorge Lobo’s Disease patients, had the total number of fungi and the viability index determined using a Neubauer chamber and the fluorescein diacetate-ethidium bromide technique (FD-EB), respectively. The animals were sacrificed at times ranging from ten days to eighteen months after inoculation. The cellular infiltrate, mainly consisting of macrophages containing fungi, increased progressively up to end of the study; however, no macroscopic alterations were observed in the inoculated feet. After nine months, small numbers of Langhans’ giant cells started to appear in the infiltrate. A considerable number of fungi was observed at the end of the experimental period, but only a few were viable when stained by the FD-EB technique. This fact suggests that there is a multiplication of fungal cells, which are destroyed by the macrophages but remain in the tissue for a long time due perhaps to the difficulties in their elimination. These findings led us to conclude that in spite of the maintenance of the infection in these animals, Swiss mice cannot be considered an ideal model to study Jorge Lobo’s Disease. However, the authors call attention to the possibility of other mouse strains being more susceptible to Paracoccidioides loboi.