Symbolic Computation of Variational Symmetries in Optimal Control

We use a computer algebra system to compute, in an efficient way, optimal control variational symmetries up to a gauge term. The symmetries are then used to obtain families of Noether's first integrals, possibly in the presence of nonconservative external forces. As an application, we obtain eight independent first integrals for the sub-Riemannian nilpotent problem (2,3,5,8).Comment: Presented at the 4th Junior European Meeting on "Control and Optimization", Bialystok Technical University, Bialystok, Poland, 11-14 September 2005. Accepted (24-Feb-2006) to Control & Cybernetic

International refugee law: definitions and limitations of the 1951 refugee convention

This post is one of four articles to be published as part of this week’s intensive series on refugee and migration rights. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s article on the principle of non-refoulement

The Benguela Coastal Low-Level Jet in a Changing Climate

The main focus of this thesis was the study of the Benguela Coastal Low-Level Jet (CLLJ) variability, dynamics and structure, in the present and future climates. A fundamental first step was the development of an improved CLLJ detection algorithm to provide more accurate positive results. The analysis of the Benguela CLLJ was performed initially at a global scale, including the other CLLJ regions, using an ensemble of reanalyses at 0.7o. It was shown that the Benguela CLLJ occurs along the entire year and is characterized by a spatial displacement with two local maxima where the Benguela CLLJ is more frequent (-26oS and -17.5oS). Nonetheless, a more detailed analysis was needed to understand the physical mechanisms behind the occurrence of this coastal jet. The analysis of the present climate and future projections was done through dynamical downscaling at high resolution (25 km) with uncoupled and coupled atmosphere-ocean simulations. At a regional scale the importance of the local forcing in enhancing the frequency of occurrence of the Benguela CLLJ, particularly when the coastal jet is located more north, was shown. Under a warming climate, the frequency of occurrence and intensity of the Benguela CLLJ is projected to increase due to the changes in the St. Helen High, which intensifies the flow offshore the west coast of South Africa, and due to the intensification of the land-sea thermal contrasts. However, during spring, associated to the decrease in near-surface wind speed due to higher SSTs, the frequency and intensity of the Benguela CLLJ is expected to decrease near -17.5oS. The wind resource in the Southwestern African offshore region was analysed and revealed great potential in present and future climates, particularly in the areas where the Benguela CLLJ occurs

Educação ambiental na formação inicial de professores: um levantamento no Colégio Estadual Professor Flávio Warken

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso apresentado ao Instituto Latino-Americano de Arte, Cultura e História da Universidade Federal da Integração Latino- Americana, como requisito parcial à obtenção do título de Licenciado em História. Orientador: Profa. Dra. Luciana Mello RibeiroEste trabalho teve por objetivo investigar como o processo de formação ambiental na formação inicial de professores influência no momento do docente trabalhar com Educação Ambiental (EA), tomando o caso específico de treze professores do Colégio Estadual Professor Flávio Warken, localizado na cidade de Foz do Iguaçu – PR. O instrumento da pesquisa consistiu em um questionário composto por questões de múltipla escolha e respostas curtas e contou com a participação de profissionais de diversas áreas do conhecimento atuantes no ensino Fundamental II e Médio. Constatou-se que na maioria dos casos analisados a formação inicial contribuiu pouco para o trabalho com educação ambiental; que a área de conhecimento tem fraca relação com o grau de intensidade com que a EA apareceu na formação; e que apenas cinco entre os treze pesquisados já participou de algum curso de capacitação em EA, embora oito dentre o total de participantes tenham afirmado já ter realizado EA na escola ou em outra instituição, o que indica que a falta de um curso de capacitação ou a baixa contribuição para o trabalho com a temática na formação inicial não foi um fator determinante para o professor fazer ou não EA.Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo investigar cómo influye el proceso de educación ambiental en la formación inicial de los maestros en el momento en que el maestro trabaja con Educación Ambiental (EA), tomando el caso específico de trece maestros del Colégio Estadual Professor Flávio Warken, ubicado en la ciudad de Foz do Iguaçu – PR. El instrumento de investigación consistió en un cuestionario compuesto por preguntas de opción múltiple y respuestas cortas y contó con la asistencia de profesionales de diversas áreas del conocimiento que trabajan en la escuela primaria y secundaria. Se encontró que en la mayoría de los casos analizados, la capacitación inicial contribuyó poco al trabajo con la educación ambiental; que el área de conocimiento está poco relacionada con el grado de intensidad con el que apareció EA en la formación; y que solo cinco entre los trece investigados han participado en un curso de capacitación de EA, aunque ocho del total de participantes informaron que ya habían realizado EA en la escuela u otra institución, lo que indica que la falta de un curso de capacitación o la baja contribución al trabajo con el tema en la formación inicial no fue un factor determinante para que el maestro hiciera o no a E

mt5se: An Open Source Framework for Building Autonomous Traders

Autonomous trading robots have been studied in artificial intelligence area for quite some time. Many AI techniques have been tested for building autonomous agents able to trade financial assets. These initiatives include traditional neural networks, fuzzy logic, reinforcement learning but also more recent approaches like deep neural networks and deep reinforcement learning. Many developers claim to be successful in creating robots with great performance when simulating execution with historical price series, so called backtesting. However, when these robots are used in real markets frequently they present poor performance in terms of risks and return. In this paper, we propose an open source framework, called mt5se, that helps the development, backtesting, live testing and real operation of autonomous traders. We built and tested several traders using mt5se. The results indicate that it may help the development of better traders. Furthermore, we discuss the simple architecture that is used in many studies and propose an alternative multiagent architecture. Such architecture separates two main concerns for portfolio manager (PM) : price prediction and capital allocation. More than achieve a high accuracy, a PM should increase profits when it is right and reduce loss when it is wrong. Furthermore, price prediction is highly dependent of asset's nature and history, while capital allocation is dependent only on analyst's prediction performance and assets' correlation. Finally, we discuss some promising technologies in the area.Comment: This paper replaces an old version of the framework, called mt5b3, which is now deprecate

Phyllodocida (Annelida, Polychaeta) of the North East Atlantic as a model for the investigation of cryptic species

Tese de doutoramento em Biology (especialização em Integral Management of the Sea)Molecular techniques have been effective in signalling potential hidden diversity in species displaying similar morphology and presumed widespread distribution. In this study, members of Phyllodocida collected along European coasts were used as a model taxon to investigate this topic, by employing a combination of multi-locus molecular data (mtCOI-5P, 16SrRNA, ITS regions and 28SrRNA), together with morphological and morphometric examination. This work identified a large number of undescribed cryptic lineages within 6 morphospecies, namely: Eumida sanguinea (22 Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units - MOTUs); Eulalia clavigera (9 MOTUs); Hediste diversicolor (5 MOTUs); Platynereis dumerilii (10 MOTUs); Perinereis cultrifera (14 MOTUs) and Trypanosyllis zebra (10 MOTUs). In total 70 lineages were uncovered, of which 43 are unique to this work. Five of these morphospecies have a dedicated chapters where an integrative approach allowed the description of 13 new species to science and the clarification of ambiguities regarding previously descriptions. The Macaronesian islands and especially, the western part of the Mediterranean Sea, are hotspots of cryptic diversity, with a total of 10 and 30 unique lineages for each region, respectively. Mediterranean MOTUs appear to be genetically closer to the ones from Macaronesia islands, instead of the NE Atlantic lineages. A total of 2171 new sequences (1012 COI, 307 16S, 320 ITS and 532 28S) were added to the reference libraries (GenBank and BOLD systems) and will be publicly available upon publication in peer-reviewed journals. Upon minute morphological examination of the specimens, it become apparent that several lineages with obvious morphological differences have been overlooked in the literature, being commonly misidentified to the morphologically closer described species. Morphological stasis was challenged, since it appears that the older the ancestral split resulting from the different geological event periods, the higher is the probability of finding slight phenotypic disparities in cryptic lineages, previously thought to be morphological identical. Evidence for this can be seen in the deep divergence between major phylogenetic clades within some of the analysed species complex, and the perfect match of each clade to the specific morphological variation (e.g. complexes within Perinereis, Platynereis and Eulalia). In spite of these contributes, the analyses indicated that only 11% of the existing Phyllodocida species have DNA barcodes publicly available. Naming molecular lineages which lacked enough specimens with structural integrity, further sampling in subtidal regions and additional bio-informatic tools to explore the cryptic phenomena from an evolutionary and phylogeographic point of view is desirable in future works.Técnicas moleculares têm vindo a ser eficazes na sinalização de diversidade oculta em espécies com uma ampla distribuição geográfica. Nesta tese, membros dos Phyllodocida coletados ao longo das costas europeias foram utilizados como um táxon modelo para investigar espécies crípticas, usando uma combinação de dados moleculares multi-locus (mtCOI-5P, rRNA16S, regiões ITS e rRNA28S), morfológicos e morfométricos. Este estudo identificou um grande número de linhagens crípticas não descritas em 6 morfo-espécies distintas: Eumida sanguinea (22 Unidades moleculares taxonómicas operacionais - MOTUs); Eulalia clavigera (9 MOTUs); Hediste diversicolor (5 MOTUs); Platynereis dumerilii (10 MOTUs); Perinereis cultrifera (14 MOTUs) e Trypanosyllis zebra (10 MOTUs). No total, foram descobertas 70 linhagens, das quais 43 aparentam ser exclusivas deste trabalho. Cinco dessas morfo espécies têm nesta tese um capítulo dedicado, onde uma abordagem integrativa permitiu a descrição de 13 novas espécies para a ciência e a remoção de ambiguidades em relação a descrições anteriores. As ilhas da Macaronésia e a parte ocidental do Mar Mediterrâneo, são hotspots de especiação críptica, tendo-se encontrado um total de 10 e 30 linhagens únicas para cada região, respetivamente. MOTUs mediterrâneos aparentam ser geneticamente mais próximos das ilhas da Macaronésia, com as linhagens do Nordeste Atlântico aparentando ser mais distantes. Um total de 2171 novas sequencias (1012 COI, 307 16S, 320 ITS e 532 28S) foram adicionadas às bibliotecas de referência (GenBank e BOLD) e estarão disponíveis publicamente após publicação. Ao examinar mais detalhadamente o grau real de semelhança morfológica entre algumas destas supostas linhagens crípticas, fica claro que um numero considerável possui diferenças morfológicas que foram negligenciadas e erroneamente identificadas. A estase morfológica foi desafiada, uma vez que parece que quanto mais antiga a divisão ancestral resultante dos diferentes períodos geológicos, maior é a probabilidade de encontrar pequenas disparidades fenotípicas em linhagens que inicialmente aparentavam ser morfologicamente idênticas. A evidência disso pode ser vista na divergência profunda entre os principais clados filogenéticos em alguns dos complexos aqui analisados e a combinação perfeita de cada clado com uma variação morfológica específica (por exemplo, nos complexos Perinereis, Platynereis e Eulalia). Além do mais, verificou-se neste estudo que apenas 11% das espécies existentes na ordem dos Phyllodocida têm códigos de barra de ADN disponíveis ao público. Linhagens moleculares por nomear, mais amostragens em regiões subtidais e ferramentas bioinformáticas adicionais são necessárias para continuar a explorar este fenômeno críptico do ponto de vista evolutivo e filogeográfico.I am grateful to the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for supporting my PhD grant SFRH/BD/131527/2017, hosted by the University of Minho (Portugal), the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and University of Gothenburg (Sweden) in the scope of the PhD programme in Marine Science, Technology and Management (Do*Mar), specialization in Integral Management of the Sea. I also received financial support from the DNAqua-Net STSM grant "Rich and hidden biodiversity not yet barcoded in the Canary archipelago (Spain) as an opportunity to enrich the DNA barcode reference library for European polychaetes", under the EU Cost action CA15219 - Developing new genetic tools for bioassessment of aquatic ecosystems in Europe. The research leading to these results also received partial funding, from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730984, ASSEMBLE Plus project (application n. 8229, 4th CALL, "Crypticism in the marine realm: DNA barcode-based outlook into selected invertebrate taxa of the Eastern Mediterranean"). I would like to thank the project “The NextSea: Next generation monitoring of coastal ecosystems in a scenario of global change” (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000032), supported by NORTE 2020 (Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the project River2Ocean – Socio-ecological and biotechnological solutions for the conservation and valorisation of aquatic biodiversity in the Minho Region, with the reference NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000068, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE 2020), for supporting this work. Financial support to Arne Nygren from the Norwegian Taxonomy Initiative [http://www.biodiversity.no/Pages/135523] (Cryptic polychaete species in Norwegian waters, knr 49- 13, pnr 70184228), the Swedish Taxonomy Initiative [https://www.artdatabanken.se/en/the-swedish taxonomy-initiative/] (Polychaete species complexes in Swedish waters, dnr 140/07 1.4 and 166/08 1.4), and Kungliga Fysiografiska sällskapet Nilsson-Ehle donationerna [https://www.fysiografen.se/sv/]