Physical activity and children's independent mobility in different social contexts

FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), IDP (Instituto do Desporto de Portugal), AIESEP World Congres

Dirac quantization of a nonminimal gauged O(3) sigma model

The (2+1) dimensional gauged O(3) nonlinear sigma model with Chern-Simons term is canonically quantized. Furthermore, we study a nonminimal coupling in this model implemented by means of a Pauli-type term. It is shown that the set of constraints of the model is modified by the introduction of the Pauli coupling. Moreover, we found that the quantum commutator relations in the nominimal case is independent of the Chern-Simons coefficient, in contrast to the minimal one.Comment: 7 pages, to appear in Modern Physics Letters

Reducibility of pointlike problems

We show that the pointlike and the idempotent pointlike problems are reducible with respect to natural signatures in the following cases: the pseudovariety of all fi nite semigroups in which the order of every subgroup is a product of elements of a fi xed set of primes; the pseudovariety of all fi nite semigroups in which every regular J-class is the product of a rectangular band by a group from a fixed pseudovariety of groups that is reducible for the pointlike problem, respectively graph reducible. Allowing only trivial groups, we obtain omega-reducibility of the pointlike and idempotent pointlike problems, respectively for the pseudovarieties of all finite aperiodic semigroups (A) and of all finite semigroups in which all regular elements are idempotents (DA).ANR 2010 BLAN 0202 01 FRE

Reducibility of joins involving some locally trivial pseudovarieties

In this paper, we show that sigma-reducibility is preserved under joins with K, where K is the pseudovariety of semigroups in which idempotents are left zeros. Reducibility of joins with D, the pseudovariety of semigroups in which idempotents are right zeros, is also considered. In this case, we were able to prove that sigma-reducibility is preserved for joins with pseudovarieties verifying a certain property of cancellation. As an example involving the semidirect product, we prove that Sl*K is k-tame, where Sl stands for the pseudovariety of semilattices.FCT through the Centro de Matemática da Universidade do MinhoEuropean Community Fund FEDE

Physical properties of the Schur complement of local covariance matrices

General properties of global covariance matrices representing bipartite Gaussian states can be decomposed into properties of local covariance matrices and their Schur complements. We demonstrate that given a bipartite Gaussian state $\rho_{12}$ described by a $4\times 4$ covariance matrix \textbf{V}, the Schur complement of a local covariance submatrix $\textbf{V}_1$ of it can be interpreted as a new covariance matrix representing a Gaussian operator of party 1 conditioned to local parity measurements on party 2. The connection with a partial parity measurement over a bipartite quantum state and the determination of the reduced Wigner function is given and an operational process of parity measurement is developed. Generalization of this procedure to a $n$-partite Gaussian state is given and it is demonstrated that the $n-1$ system state conditioned to a partial parity projection is given by a covariance matrix such as its $2 \times 2$ block elements are Schur complements of special local matrices.Comment: 10 pages. Replaced with final published versio

Universal quantum signature of mixed dynamics in antidot lattices

We investigate phase coherent ballistic transport through antidot lattices in the generic case where the classical phase space has both regular and chaotic components. It is shown that the conductivity fluctuations have a non-Gaussian distribution, and that their moments have a power-law dependence on a semiclassical parameter, with fractional exponents. These exponents are obtained from bifurcating periodic orbits in the semiclassical approximation. They are universal in situations where sufficiently long orbits contribute.Comment: 7 page

Domain and Geometry Agnostic CNNs for Left Atrium Segmentation in 3D Ultrasound

Segmentation of the left atrium and deriving its size can help to predict and detect various cardiovascular conditions. Automation of this process in 3D Ultrasound image data is desirable, since manual delineations are time-consuming, challenging and observer-dependent. Convolutional neural networks have made improvements in computer vision and in medical image analysis. They have successfully been applied to segmentation tasks and were extended to work on volumetric data. In this paper we introduce a combined deep-learning based approach on volumetric segmentation in Ultrasound acquisitions with incorporation of prior knowledge about left atrial shape and imaging device. The results show, that including a shape prior helps the domain adaptation and the accuracy of segmentation is further increased with adversarial learning

Closures of regular languages for profinite topologies

The Pin-Reutenauer algorithm gives a method, that can be viewed as a descriptive procedure, to compute the closure in the free group of a regular language with respect to the Hall topology. A similar descriptive procedure is shown to hold for the pseudovariety A of aperiodic semigroups, where the closure is taken in the free aperiodic omega-semigroup. It is inherited by a subpseudovariety of a given pseudovariety if both of them enjoy the property of being full. The pseudovariety A, as well as some of its subpseudovarieties are shown to be full. The interest in such descriptions stems from the fact that, for each of the main pseudovarieties V in our examples, the closures of two regular languages are disjoint if and only if the languages can be separated by a language whose syntactic semigroup lies in V. In the cases of A and of the pseudovariety DA of semigroups in which all regular elements are idempotents, this is a new result.PESSOA French-Portuguese project Egide-Grices 11113YM, "Automata, profinite semigroups and symbolic dynamics".FCT -- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, respectively under the projects PEst-C/MAT/UI0144/2011 and PEst-C/MAT/UI0013/2011.ANR 2010 BLAN 0202 01 FREC.AutoMathA programme of the European Science Foundation.FCT and the project PTDC/MAT/65481/2006 which was partly funded by the European Community Fund FEDER

Thin-layer agar for detection of resistance to rifampicin, ofloxacin and kanamycin in Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates

BACKGROUND: In low-income countries there is a great need for economical methods for testing the susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to antibiotics. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the thin-layer agar (TLA) for rapid detection of resistance to rifampicin (RMP), ofloxacin (OFX) and kanamycin (KM) in M. tuberculosis clinical isolates and to determine the sensitivity, specificity and time to positivity compared to the gold standard method. METHODS: One hundred and forty-seven clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis were studied. For the TLA method, a quadrant Petri plate containing 7H11 agar with RMP, OFX and KM was used. Results were compared to the Bactec MGIT960 for RMP and the proportion method for OFX and KM. RESULTS: The sensitivity and specificity for RMP and OFX were 100% and for KM they were 100% and 98.7%, respectively. The use of a TLA quadrant plate enables the rapid detection of resistance to the three anti-tuberculosis drugs RMP, OFX and KM in a median of 10 days. CONCLUSION: TLA was an accurate method for the detection of resistance in the three drugs studied. This faster method is simple to perform, providing an alternative method when more sophisticated techniques are not available in low-resource settings