Inbreeding, Average Relatedness Coefficient and Effective Population Size In Jaffarabadi Buffaloes Raised In Brazil

The major aim of this study was to evaluate the inbreeding (F), average relatedness coefficient (AR) and effective population size (Ne) in the Jaffarabadi buffalo breed from Brazil. Pedigree information of 1,272 animals born from 1966 was used. The effective population size was calculated in two ways: first, computed via individual increase in inbreeding and second estimated by individual increase in coancestry. The known generation numbers were 1.24, 1.76 and 2.64 for complete, equivalent and maximum generation, respectively. The effective size computed via individual increase in coancestry was small with a value of 10.82 +/- 1.29. The effective size computed by individual increase in inbreeding (10.40 +/- 3.69) was very similar but a little smaller than the previous reported value. The average values of F and AR for the population reference (1,059) were 4.22 and 12.5 percent. The mean of F for inbred animals (319) was 14.0%. The F and AR means were 5.7 and 13.3% for animals with at least 1.5 known equivalent generation and 9.3 and 15.97% for individuals having at least 2.5 equivalent generations known. It was found 78 matings between half sibs (6.14%) and 67 matings (5.27%) between parent-offspring. The estimated inbreeding increase per generation by considering maximum generation, complete generation and equivalent generation were 1.21%, 5.18% and 3.57%, respectively. Considering the uncompleted pedigree, the estimated inbreeding for the reference population could be underestimated.

Genetic variability in Mediterranean buffalos evaluated by pedigree analysis

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Population structure and genetic variability in the Murrah dairy breed of water buffalo in Brazil accessed via pedigree analysis

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Estrutura populacional e análise de variabilidade genética em rebanhos ovinos brasileiros

Pós-graduação em Ciência e Tecnologia Animal - FEIS

Estrutura populacional e análise de variabilidade genética em rebanhos ovinos brasileiros

Pós-graduação em Ciência e Tecnologia Animal - FEIS

Análise de pedigree e estimativas de parâmetros genéticos para características de importância econômica em bovinos Tabapuã

Pós-graduação em Genética e Melhoramento Animal - FCAV

Estrutura genômica de uma população de suínos base Landrace

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Could Relatedness Help Explain Why Individuals Lead in Bottlenose Dolphin Groups?

In many species, particular individuals consistently lead group travel. While benefits to followers often are relatively obvious, including access to resources, benefits to leaders are often less obvious. This is especially true for species that feed on patchy mobile resources where all group members may locate prey simultaneously and food intake likely decreases with increasing group size. Leaders in highly complex habitats, however, could provide access to foraging resources for less informed relatives, thereby gaining indirect benefits by helping kin. Recently, leadership has been documented in a population of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) where direct benefits to leaders appear unlikely. To test whether leaders could benefit indirectly we examined relatedness between leader-follower pairs and compared these levels to pairs who associated but did not have leader-follower relationship (neither ever led the other). We found the average relatedness value for leader-follower pairs was greater than expected based on chance. The same was not found when examining non leader-follower pairs. Additionally, relatedness for leader-follower pairs was positively correlated with association index values, but no correlation was found for this measure in non leader-follower pairs. Interestingly, haplotypes were not frequently shared between leader-follower pairs (25%). Together, these results suggest that bottlenose dolphin leaders have the opportunity to gain indirect benefits by leading relatives. These findings provide a potential mechanism for the maintenance of leadership in a highly dynamic fission-fusion population with few obvious direct benefits to leaders.

Ammonia volatilization in soil treated with tannery sludge

The utilization of tannery sludge in agricultural areas can be an alternative for its disposal and recycling. Despite this procedure may cause the loss of nitrogen by ammonia volatilization, there is no information about this process in tropical soils. For two years a field experiment was carried out in Rolandia (Parana State, Brazil), to evaluate the amount of NH(3) volatilization due to tannery sludge application on agricultural soil. The doses of total N applied varied from zero to 1200 kg ha(-1), maintained at the surface for 89 days, as usual in this region. The alkalinity of the tannery sludge used was equivalent to between 262 and 361 g CaCO(3) per kg. Michaelis-Menten equation was adequate to estimate NH(3)-N volatilization kinetics. The relation between total nitrogen applied as tannery sludge and the potentially volatilized NH(3)-N, calculated by the chemical-kinetics equation resulted in an average determination coefficient of 0.87 (P > 0.01). In this period, the amount of volatilized NH(3) was more intense during the first 30 days; the time to reach half of the maximum NH(3) volatilization (K(m)) was 13 an 9 days for the first and second experiments, respectively. The total loss as ammonia in the whole period corresponded in average to 17.5% of the total N applied and to 35% of the NH(4)(+)-N present in the sludge. If tannery sludge is to be surface applied to supply N for crops, the amounts lost as NH(3) must be taken into consideration. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Semi-automatic 3D Segmentation Of Costal Cartilage In CT Data From Pectus Excavatum Patients

One of the current frontiers in the clinical management of Pectus Excavatum (PE) patients is the prediction of the surgical outcome prior to the intervention. This can be done through computerized simulation of the Nuss procedure, which requires an anatomically correct representation of the costal cartilage. To this end, we take advantage of the costal cartilage tubular structure to detect it through multi-scale vesselness filtering. This information is then used in an interactive 2D initialization procedure which uses anatomical maximum intensity projections of 3D vesselness feature images to efficiently initialize the 3D segmentation process. We identify the cartilage tissue centerlines in these projected 2D images using a livewire approach. We finally refine the 3D cartilage surface through region-based sparse field level-sets. We have tested the proposed algorithm in 6 noncontrast CT datasets from PE patients. A good segmentation performance was found against reference manual contouring, with an average Dice coefficient of 0.75±0.04 and an average mean surface distance of 1.69±0.30mm. The proposed method requires roughly 1 minute for the interactive initialization step, which can positively contribute to an extended use of this tool in clinical practice, since current manual delineation of the costal cartilage can take up to an hour.

The influence of geometric factors on the wall shear stress distribution in realistic human coronary arteries

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Biomédica. A presente dissertação foi desenvolvida no Erasmus Medical Center em Roterdão, Holanda

Incidence of hepatitis C in Brazil

Abstract INTRODUCTION: Hepatitis C is a public health problem of global dimensions, affecting approximately 200 million people worldwide. The main objective of this study was to estimate the incidence rate of hepatitis C in Brazil during the period between 2001 and 2012. METHODS: An epidemiological, temporal, and descriptive study was performed using data from the Information System for Reportable Diseases. RESULTS: Between 2001 and 2012, a total of 151,056 hepatitis C cases were recorded, accounting for 30.3% of all hepatitis notifications in Brazil. The average gross coefficient for the analysis period was 6.7 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The regions with the highest rates were the Southeast region (8.7 new cases/100,000 inhabitants) and the South (13.9 new cases/100,000 inhabitants). There was a predominance of men with respect to the incidence rate (8.0 new cases/100,000 inhabitants) compared to women (5.5 new cases/100,000 inhabitants). Injection drug use was the most common source of infection, and members of the white race, residents of urban areas, and those aged 60 to 64 years had the highest incidences. CONCLUSIONS: Over the last 10 years, the incidence of hepatitis C in Brazil has increased, mainly in the South and Southeast. The adoption of fast, accurate diagnostic methods, together with epidemiological awareness, can facilitate early intervention measures for adequate control of the disease.

A novel approach for honey pollen profile assessment using an electronic tongue and chemometric tools

Nowadays the main honey producing countries require accurate labeling of honey before commercialization, including floral classification. Traditionally, this classification is made by melissopalynology analysis, an accurate but time-consuming task requiring laborious sample pre-treatment and high-skilled technicians. In this work the potential use of a potentiometric electronic tongue for pollinic assessment is evaluated, using monofloral and polyfloral honeys. The results showed that after splitting honeys according to color (white, amber and dark), the novel methodology enabled quantifying the relative percentage of the main pollens (Castanea sp., Echium sp., Erica sp., Eucaliptus sp., Lavandula sp., Prunus sp., Rubus sp. and Trifolium sp.). Multiple linear regression models were established for each type of pollen, based on the best sensors sub-sets selected using the simulated annealing algorithm. To minimize the overfitting risk, a repeated K-fold cross-validation procedure was implemented, ensuring that at least 10-20% of the honeys were used for internal validation. With this approach, a minimum average determination coefficient of 0.91 ± 0.15 was obtained. Also, the proposed technique enabled the correct classification of 92% and 100% of monofloral and polyfloral honeys, respectively. The quite satisfactory performance of the novel procedure for quantifying the relative pollen frequency may envisage its applicability for honey labeling and geographical origin identification. Nevertheless, this approach is not a full alternative to the traditional melissopalynologic analysis; it may be seen as a practical complementary tool for preliminary honey floral classification, leaving only problematic cases for pollinic evaluation.

Inbreeding and sex-biased gene flow in the ant Formica exsecta.

The objective of this study was to assess breeding and dispersal patterns of both males and females in a monogyne (a single queen per colony) population of ants. Monogyny is commonly associated with extensive nuptial flights, presumably leading to considerable gene flow over large areas. Opposite to these expectations we found evidence of both inbreeding and sex-biased gene flow in a monogyne population of Formica exsecta. We found a significant degree of population subdivision at a local scale (within islands) for queens (females heading established colonies) and workers, but not for colony fathers (the males mated to the colony queens). However, we found little evidence of population subdivision at a larger scale (among islands). More conclusive support for sex-biased gene flow comes from the analysis of isolation by distance on the largest island, and from assignment tests revealing differences in female and male philopatry. The genetic similarity between pairs of queens decreased significantly when geographical distance increased, demonstrating limited dispersal and isolation by distance in queens. By contrast, we found no such pattern for colony fathers. Furthermore, a significantly greater fraction of colony queens were assigned as having originated from the population of residence, as compared to colony fathers. Inbreeding coefficients were significantly positive for workers, but not for mother queens. The queen-male relatedness coefficient of 0.23 (regression relatedness) indicates that mating occurs between fairly close relatives. These results suggest that some monogyne species of ants have complex dispersal and mating systems that can result in genetic isolation by distance over small geographical scales. More generally, this study also highlights the importance of identifying the relevant scale in analyses of population structure and dispersal.

Only full-sibling families evolved eusociality.

Arising from M. A. Nowak, C. E. Tarnita & E. O. Wilson 466, 1057-1062 (2010); Nowak et al. reply. The paper by Nowak et al. has the evolution of eusociality as its title, but it is mostly about something else. It argues against inclusive fitness theory and offers an alternative modelling approach that is claimed to be more fundamental and general, but which, we believe, has no practical biological meaning for the evolution of eusociality. Nowak et al. overlook the robust empirical observation that eusociality has only arisen in clades where mothers are associated with their full-sibling offspring; that is, in families where the average relatedness of offspring to siblings is as high as to their own offspring, independent of population structure or ploidy. We believe that this omission makes the paper largely irrelevant for understanding the evolution of eusociality.