Enrelvamento em vinha de encosta não regada: 2 - efeitos no crescimento vegetativo, produção e qualidade do mosto e vinho, casta Cabernet Sauvignon

Grapevine vegetative growth, yield, fruit composition and wine quality were studied in the Estremadura Winegrowing Region of Portugal in a ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ slopping non-irrigated vineyard. During three seasons three treatments were compared: soil tillage (control), permanent resident vegetation, and permanent sown cover crop. When compared to soil tillage, the inter-row sward treatments displayed a lower predawn leaf water potential from bloom to mid-ripening. These differences in vine water status did not affect vine yield or berry sugar accumulation; however, in the third season after experiment setup it induced a significant reduction in vegetative growth in the sward treatments, compared to soil tillage. This vegetative growth reduction had a positive effect on grape composition by reducing titratable acidity and increasing berry skin total phenols and anthocyanins. Those differences were also detected in the wines by the judges who gave a better classification to the wines from the sward treatments. Our results indicate that cover cropping can be a valuable tool for controlling vigour and enhancing wine quality in this winegrowing region

Enrelvamento em vinha de encosta não regada: 1 - efeito na composição e dinâmica das infestantes

The influence of two sward treatments and soil cultivation on the composition, the structure, and the evolution of the biomass of vineyard weed communities was examined. The 3-year study (2002-2004) was carried out in a sloping, non-irrigated vineyard, cv. ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’, in the Estremadura winegrowing region of Portugal. The experimental treatments were: soil tillage (control); permanent sown cover crop - Lolium perenne ‘Nui’, L. multiflorum ‘Bartíssimo’, Festuca ovina ‘Ridu’, F. rubra ssp. rubra ‘Echo’, Trifolium incarnatum. ‘Red’, T. repens ‘Huie’ and T. subterraneum ‘Claire’; and permanent resident vegetation. Total weed biomass in the spring did not reveal significant differences between treatments, but varied annually. The management practices – e.g. time and number of soil cultivations and inter-row mowing – were determinant in weed biomass evolution. Canonical correspondence analysis revealed significant treatment effects on community structure. Three years after the experiment was set up, in the soil tillage treatment weed composition was dominated by annual broad-leaved species, namely five Geraniaceae species, Medicago polymorpha and Sonchus oleraceus. The perennial broad-leaved species Oxalis pes-caprae was also a dominant species in soil tillage. In both sward treatments there was an increase in the perennial broad-leaved and grass species. Compared to soil tillage, in the resident vegetation treatment there was a significant increase in perennial species, such as Rumex crispus, Veronica anagallis-aquatica and Polypogon monspeliensis, and in the annuals Melilotus indica and Avena sterilis. The increase in these perennial species, which are considered to compete with vines, requires more frequent mowing in the summer. In the permanent sown cover crop treatment, L. perenne and T. repens displayed the ability to re-establish successfully, and their abundance decreased or suppressed most of the annual and perennial weed species

Identificação de parâmetros elásticos e piezoelétricos em estruturas activas tipo placa : técnicas de optimização clássica versus redes neuronais artificiais

Neste trabalho são apresentados dois métodos não destrutivos para a identificação de parâmetros elásticos e piezoeléctricos em estruturas laminadas activas do tipo placa, com sensores/actuadores de superfície. O primeiro destes métodos resolve o problema inverso através de métodos de optimização clássica, minimizando a diferença entre frequências naturais experimentais e as fornecidas por um modelo de elementos finitos. O segundo método baseia-se na construção de um “meta-modelo” do problema inverso, recorrendo a Redes Neuronais Artificiais. Os dois métodos são comparados recorrendo a resultados experimentais de uma placa em vibração livre

Optimizing the choice of microsatellite markers for fingerprinting eucalyptus

In this study we have analyzed the information provided by 17 publicly available Eucalyptus microsatellite (SSR) markers (Brondani et al. 1998, 2002; Jones et al. 2002; Steane et al. 2001) in the context of genetic identification within a sample of 140 individuals from an elite collection (denoted hereafter base) of RAIZ genetic improvement population

Optimal design for active damping in sandwich structures using the Direct MultiSearch method

This paper addresses the problem of optimal positioning of surface bonded piezoelectric patches in sandwich plates with viscoelastic core and laminated face layers. The objective is to maximize a set of modal loss factors for a given frequency range using multiobjective topology optimization. Active damping is introduced through co-located negative velocity feedback control. The multiobjective topology optimization problem is solved using the Direct MultiSearch Method. An application to a simply supported sandwich plate is presented with results for the maximization of the first six modal loss factors. The influence of the finite element mesh is analyzed and the results are, to some extent, compared with those obtained using alternative single objective optimization

A numerical-experimental method for damage location based on rotation fields spatial differentiation

This paper presents a structural damage location method that decreases the number of spatial differentiations needed to compute modal curvature fields. The method is numerically and experimentally applied to isotropic and laminated rectangular plates, respectively. A speckle shear interferometer is used to measure the rotation fields of the laminated plate, while the isotropic plate is analysed by finite elements. It was found that the Gaussian differentiation is the most suited technique to compute the curvature fields. It is also demonstrated the superior performance of the curvature method using measured rotation fields instead of measured displacement fields

Automatic structures for semigroup constructions

We survey results concerning automatic structures for semigroup constructions, providing references and describing the corresponding automatic structures. The constructions we consider are: free products, direct products, Rees matrix semigroups, Bruck-Reilly extensions and wreath products.Comment: 22 page

Boa Noite, E Boa Sorte: Determinantes Da Demissão De Ministros Envolvidos Em Escândalos De Corrupção No Primeiro Governo Dilma Rousseff

What determines the dismissal of Ministers? This article analyzes the lot of corruption scandals involving ministers of the first Dilma Rousseff's administration. The research design combines descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis for test of the hypothesis that news political scandals, political competition, and management of the government's coalition have a positive effect on the odds of the accused minister to leave the Cabinet. This paper based in construction of a database with 677 headlines of the three major national newspapers: Folha de S. Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo, and O Globo, over the first seventeen months of Rousseff's administration. The results show that the greater number of news articles covering the corruptions scandals involving the minister in question, the greater the probability that she/he will be fired. We desire that this case study contribute to the research agenda on the relationship political scandals/democratic institutions/accountability trying to place this phenomenon in recent Brazilian democracy.2219311

Molecular estimates of similarity in Eucalyptus globulus

The base populations used in most forest tree genetic improvement programs usually lack detailed pedigree information. Molecular markers, such as microsatellites (SSR), can be used to estimate individuals’ pairwise relatedness, which is based on the probabilities’ ratios of the identity in state between the individuals compared and the reference unrelated population These estimates can be very useful to infer the level of relationship among sub-populations of elite material and/or for the design of controlled crosses between putatively unrelated parents. Using 113 putatively unrelated individuals - genotyped with 18 SSR - self, full-sib, half-sib and unrelated were simulated, and four pairwise similarity coefficients were tested: Queller & Goodnight 1989; Li et al. 1993; Ritland 1996, and Lynch & Ritland 1999. The Lynch & Ritland (1999) coefficient was selected (Figure 1), for it displayed a better adjustment with the expected level of relatedness and narrower standard errors (SE). SE were calculated through Monte- Carlo techniques, to avoid unequal sample size bias, by using 105 simulations for each relatedness group. To illustrate the usefulness of molecular estimates of similarity in genetic improvement programs, a clustering (UPGMA) based on the pairwise Lynch & Ritland (1999) coefficient (LR) values was performed to infer about the putative relationship among individuals of the subgroups of E. globulus elite individuals. From that analysis at least two pairs might be related and a PCA analysis confirmed the clustering results