Spectroscopy of brown dwarf candidates in IC 348 and the determination of its substellar IMF down to planetary masses

Context. Brown dwarfs represent a sizable fraction of the stellar content of our Galaxy and populate the transition between the stellar and planetary mass regime. There is however no agreement on the processes responsible for their formation. Aims. We have conducted a large survey of the young, nearby cluster IC 348, to uncover its low-mass brown dwarf population and study the cluster properties in the substellar regime. Methods. Deep optical and near-IR images taken with MegaCam and WIRCam at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) were used to select photometric candidate members. A spectroscopic follow-up of a large fraction of the candidates was conducted to assess their youth and membership. Results. We confirmed spectroscopically 16 new members of the IC 348 cluster, including 13 brown dwarfs, contributing significantly to the substellar census of the cluster, where only 30 brown dwarfs were previously known. Five of the new members have a L0 spectral type, the latest-type objects found to date in this cluster. At 3 Myr, evolutionary models estimate these brown dwarfs to have a mass of ~13 Jupiter masses. Combining the new members with previous census of the cluster, we constructed the IMF complete down to 13 Jupiter masses. Conclusions. The IMF of IC 348 is well fitted by a log-normal function, and we do not see evidence for variations of the mass function down to planetary masses when compared to other young clusters.Comment: Accepted to A&A (8 November 2012

Cubus: autonomous embodied characters to stimulate creative idea generation in groups of children

Creativity is an ability that is crucial in nowadays societies. It is, therefore, important to develop activities that stimulate creativity at a very young age. It seems, however, that there is a lack of tools to support these activities. In this paper, we introduce Cubus, a tool that uses autonomous synthetic characters to stimulate idea generation in groups of children during a storytelling activity. With Cubus, children can invent a story and use the stop-motion technique to record a movie depicting it. In this paper, we explain Cubus’ system design and architecture and present the evaluation of Cubus’ impact in a creative task. This evaluation investigated idea generation in groups of children during their creative process of storytelling. Results showed that the autonomous behaviors of Cubus’ virtual agents contributed to the generation of more ideas in children, a key dimension of creativity.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Guide to build YOLO, a creativity-stimulating robot for children

YOLO is a non-anthropomorphic social robot designed to stimulate creativity in children. This robot was envisioned to be used by children during free-play where they use the robot as a character for the stories they create. During play, YOLO makes use of creativity techniques that promote the creation of new story-lines. Therefore, the robot serves as a tool that has the potential to stimulate creativity in children during the interaction. Particularly, YOLO can stimulate divergent and convergent thinking for story creations. Additionally, YOLO can have different personalities, providing it with socially intelligent and engaging behaviors. This work provides open-source and open-access of YOLO's hardware. The design of the robot was guided by psychological theories and models on creativity, design research including user-centered design practices with children, and informed by expert working in the field of creativity. Specifically, we relied on established theories of personality to inform the social behavior of the robot, and on theories of creativity to design creativity stimulating behaviors. Our design decisions were then based on design fieldwork with children. The end product is a robot that communicates using non-verbal expressive modalities (lights and movements) equipped with sensors that detect the playful behaviors of children. YOLO has the potential to be used as a research tool for academic studies, and as a toy for the community to engage in personal fabrication. The overall bene t of this proposed hardware is that it is open-source, less expensive than existing ones, and one that children can build by themselves under expert supervision.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

YOLO — Your own living object

Creativity is at the core of what it means to be human. It is an intrinsic ability that we all have and influences our well-being self-expression throughout life. However, a decline in creativity abilities occurs in children around the age of 7 years old. Our work aims to contribute to a re-balance of creative levels using social robots. In this video, we describe YOLO, an autonomous robotic toy for children that fosters their creativity during play. This robot is envisioned to be used as a character during storytelling, promoting creative story-lines that might not emerge otherwise.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Children as robot designers

We present the design process of the robot YOLO aimed at stimulating creativity in children. This robot was developed under a human-centered design approach with participatory design practices during two years and involving 142 children as active contributors at all design stages. The main contribution of this work is the development of methods and tools for child-centered robot design. We adapted existing participatory design practices used with adults to ft children’s development stages.We followed the Double-Diamond Design Process Model and rested the design process of the robot on the following principles: Low foor and wide walls, creativity provocations, open-ended playfulness, and disappointment avoidance through abstraction. The fnal product is a social robot designed for and with children. Our results show that YOLO increases their creativity during play, demonstrating a successful robot design project.We identifed several guidelines that made the design process successful: the use of toys as tools, playgrounds as spaces, the emphasis of playfulness for child expression, and child policies as allies for design studies. The design process described empowers children’s in the design of robots.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Boosting children's creativity through creative interactions with social robots

Creativity is one of the most important and pervasive of all human abilities. However, it seems to decline during school age years, in a phenomenon entitled “creative crisis”. As developed societies are shifting from an industrialized economy to a creative economy, there is a need to support creative abilities through life. With this work, we aim to use social robots as boosters for creative-driven behaviors with children.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Pulmonary Alveolar Microlithiasis

Routine chest x-ray of an asymptomatic patient disclosed an interstitial bilateral micronodular pattern. HRCT showed a diffuse micronodular pattern, randomly distributed in the lung parenchyma, associated with thickening of the subpleural and mediastinal interlobular septa. Individual nodules had spontaneous high density. CT-guided lung biopsy was performed, pathologist disclosed intraalveolar microliths

Cystic tumor of the pancreas

We describe a case of a 55-year-old female, with epigastric pain and vomiting for the last two months. Abdominal ultrasound and a CT showed the presence of a cystic mass in the pancreatic body and tail, without secondary lesions. After surgery, the pathologist stated that the lesion was a mucinous cystadenom

Fertilização com uréia em superfície em pastagem irrigada e a volatilização de amônia.

A aplicação de uréia em superfície na pastagem pode ocasionar elevadas perdas de amônia por volatilização e uma das alternativas para minimizar esse efeito é a irrigação ou a precipitação logo após a adubação. O objetivo dessa pesquisa foi avaliar o efeito da aplicação de lâminas de água, após a adubação com uréia (75 kgN/ha) na superfície e a lanço em pastagem de colonião, nas perdas de N por volatilização. Foram realizados três experimentos em três épocas, verão, inverno e primavera. O delineamento experimental foi em faixas, em sistema de aspersão em linha, com cinco repetições. Os tratamentos foram quatro níveis de irrigação após a adubação com uréia, sendo três tratamentos com lâminas de água e um controle (sem irrigação). Um dos tratamentos consistia em elevar a umidade do solo à capacidade de campo e os outros dois eram lâminas de água intermediárias aos do controle e capacidade de campo, havendo variação conforme a estação do ano. No verão, a aplicação de apenas 3,2 mm de água elevou a umidade do solo para 52,4% da capacidade de água disponível e reduziu as perdas de N-NH3 para menos de 3,1 % do N aplicado, enquanto a ausência de irrigação provocou perdas de 30,5%. No inverno e na primavera a volatilização de N-NH3 foi baixa, mesmo na ausência de irrigação após a adubação. Na primavera, a irrigação com 16 mm de água elevou a umidade do solo à capacidade de campo e reduziu as perdas para 1,6 % do N aplicado, enquanto no controle as perdas foram de 5%

Ocorrência de espécies de Potyvirus em milho, no Brasil.

xEdição do XXXI Congresso Paulista de Fitopatologia, Campinas, 2008