CREDIT CO-OPERATIVES IN BRAZIL: SICREDI CASE.

This case investigated the Cooperative Bank Sicredi, ranked Top 5 financial institution, according to the Brazilian Central Bank, in 2018. Credit cooperatives in Brazil started their operations in 1902, at Nova Petr?polis, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazilian southern region, inspired by Raiffensen?s cooperative model. The first credit cooperative was founded by the Swiss priest Theodor Armstad, who created the Armstad Savings and Loans Bank (Caixa de Economias e Empr?stimosArmstad). Later it became CooperativaSicrediPioneira, still active. Credit Cooperatives in Brazil are regulated through Law no 5,764, from 1971. Credit is one of the thirteen different types of cooperatives in Brazil. Sicredi holds approximately 4 million associates, operating in 22 states. Key findings pointed to relevant and growing economic activity in the sector, approximately $ 44 billion in 2018. Sicredi was analyzed according to the standards of the Brazilian Central Bank and the World Co-operative Monitor\'s. Discussion on critical success factors and recommendations for future research complete the present article

Corynebacterium striatum Cardiac Device-Related Infective Endocarditis: The First Case Report in a Patient With a Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Defibrillator Device and Review of the Literature

Corynebacterium striatum (C. striatum) is a skin commensal agent, rarely described as a cause of infective endocarditis. We describe a case of a 48-year-old man, with multiple comorbidities with cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator (CRT-D) device implanted 1 year before. A cardiac device-related infective endocarditis (CDRIE) due to C. striatum, with vegetations in the tricuspid valve adjacent to the electrode lead and concomitant lumbar spondylodiscitis were diagnosed. The patient was treated initially with a 6-week course of vancomycin with sterile blood cultures and reduction of inflammatory parameters. Surgery was refused at this stage. Six weeks later, he was readmitted due to C. striatum bacteriemia recurrence, with vegetations adhering to the electrode wire, being treated with daptomycin 10mg/kg body weight, after presenting renal toxicity to vancomycin. CRT-D device was removed with implantation of epicardial cardiac resynchronization therapy pacemaker (CRT-P). To our knowledge, this might be the first description of C. striatum CDRIE in a patient with a CRT-D. In the five cases described in the literature of CDRIE by this agent, early removal of the pacemaker was performed with good results. In this case, the device was removed only after failure of medical treatment alone.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Video compression algorithms for HEVC and beyond

PhDDue to the increasing number of new services and devices that allow the creation, distribution and consumption of video content, the amount of video information being transmitted all over the world is constantly growing. Video compression technology is essential to cope with the ever increasing volume of digital video data being distributed in today's networks, as more e cient video compression techniques allow support for higher volumes of video data under the same memory/bandwidth constraints. This is especially relevant with the introduction of new and more immersive video formats associated with signi cantly higher amounts of data. In this thesis, novel techniques for improving the e ciency of current and future video coding technologies are investigated. Several aspects that in uence the way conventional video coding methods work are considered. In particular, the properties and limitations of the Human Visual System are exploited to tune the performance of video encoders towards better subjective quality. Additionally, it is shown how the visibility of speci c types of visual artefacts can be prevented during the video encoding process, in order to avoid subjective quality degradations in the compressed content. Techniques for higher video compression e ciency are also explored, targeting to improve the compression capabilities of state-of-the-art video coding standards. Finally, the application of video coding technologies to practical use-cases is considered. Accurate estimation models are devised to control the encoding time and bit rate associated with compressed video signals, in order to meet speci c encoding time and transmission time restrictions

O Combate à Violência na Perspectiva da Teoria dos Sistemas Vivos

A proposta do presente estudo é provocar o leitor a repensar o problema da violência sob a perspectiva da Teoria dos Sistemas Vivos. Para isso, discorre-se sobre o paradigma positivista, sua importância para o desenvolvimento da ciência, assim como suas limitações. Em seguida, sintetizam-se alguns elementos da Teoria em referência para, finalmente, lançar um olhar sistêmico sobre o combate à violência. Os procedimentos metodológicos respeitam o paradigma ora adotado, equilibrando síntese e análise em uma abordagem sistêmica-relacional. Paralelamente, utiliza-se também, dentro da perspectiva de uma pesquisa qualitativa exploratória, ferramentas de pesquisa bibliográfica típicas da análise de conteúdo, abordando a literatura teórica, empírica e metodológica sobre o tema do estudo. Os resultados sugerem que não há solução cartesiana para problemas complexos como o da violência. É necessário enxergar o problema em toda sua complexidade, compreender suas relações com outros sistemas e identificar as causas e consequências de seus fenômenos, elaborando soluções holísticas. Conclui-se que a efetividade no gerenciamento desse problema social depende da transcendência do paradigma positivista e ampliação do conceito de segurança pública, adotando as premissas de que são as relações que definem a existência, e a essência dos sistemas vivos é a auto-organização

Sarcomatoid Spermatocytic Tumour: Report of a Rare Case and Literature Review

okSpermatocytic tumour (ST) accounts for 1% of testicular germ cell tumours. It is an indolent neoplasm with good prognosis. In approximately 6% of STs, sarcomatous dedifferentiation may occur, portending an aggressive behaviour and representing a significant diagnostic challenge that can lead to its misdiagnosis. Herein, we report the clinicopathological features of a patient with a sarcomatoid spermatocytic tumor, initially diagnosed as mixed germ cell tumour, who was referred to our institution with lung metastases mainly composed of rhabdomyosarcomatous elements. This case report illustrates the importance of recognizing this entity for adequate management of these patients.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

Isolation and characterization of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii from calves and piglets.

The goal of our study was to isolate and characterize Faecalibacterium prausnitzii from fecal samples of healthy calves and piglets, in order to develop a novel probiotic for livestock animals. We identified 203 isolates of Faecalibacterium sp., which were clustered in 40 genetically distinct groups. One representative isolate from each cluster was selected for further characterization. The concentrations of the short chain fatty acids (SCFA) acetate, butyrate, propionate and isobutyrate in the culture media were measured by gas chromatography. We observed reduction in the concentration of acetate followed by concomitant increase in the concentration of butyrate, suggesting that the isolates were consuming acetate present in the media and producing butyrate. Butyrate production correlated positively with bacterial growth. Since butyrate has many benefits to the colonic epithelial cells, the selection of strains that produce higher amounts of butyrate is extremely important for the development of this potential probiotic. The effect of pH and concentration of bile salts on bacterial growth was also evaluated in order to mimic the conditions encountered by F. prausnitzii in vivo. The optimal pH for growth ranged between 5.5 and 6.7, while most isolates were inhibited by of the lowest concentration of bile salts tested (0.1%). Antimicrobial resistance profile showed that most isolates of Faecalibacterium sp. were resistant against ciprofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim. More than 50% of the isolates were resistant to tetracycline, amikacin, cefepime and cefoxitin. A total of 19 different combinations of multidrug resistance were observed among the isolates. Our results provide new insights into the cultural and physiological characteristics of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii illustrating large variability in short chain fatty acid production, in vitro growth, sensitivity to bile salts, and antibiotic resistance and suggesting that future probiotic candidates should be carefully studied before elected for in vivo studies

Deep autoencoders for acoustic anomaly detection: experiments with working machine and in-vehicle audio

The growing usage of digital microphones has generated an increased interest in the topic of Acoustic Anomaly Detection (AAD). Indeed, there are several real-world AAD application domains, including working machines and in-vehicle intelligence (the main target of this research project). This paper introduces three deep AutoEncoders (AE) for unsupervised AAD tasks, namely a Dense AE, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) AE and Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder (LSTM) AE. To tune the deep learning architectures, development data were adopted from public domain audio datasets related with working machines. A large set of computational experiments was held, showing that the three proposed deep autoencoders, when combined with a melspectrogram sound preprocessing, are quite competitive and outperform a recently proposed AE baseline. Next, on a second experimental stage, aiming to address the final in-vehicle passenger safety goal, the three AEs were adapted to learn from in-vehicle normal audio, assuming three realistic scenarios that were generated by a synthetic audio mixture tool. In general, a high quality AAD discrimination was obtained: working machine data - 72% to 91%; and in-vehicle audio - 78% to 81%. In conjunction with an automotive company, an in-vehicle AAD intelligent system prototype was further developed, aiming to test a selected model (LSTM AE) during a pilot demonstration event that targeted the cough anomaly. Interesting results were obtained, with the AAD system presenting a high cough classification accuracy (e.g., 100% for front seat locations).This work is supported by the European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) - Project no 039334; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-039334

Interdisciplinary Teaching Activities for High School Integrated to Vocational Education Promoting Reflections on Industry 4.0 Technologies and Their Implication in Society

The educational system in Brazil, especially the high school level, is characterized by a division, offering a general and humanist formation for the economic elite, and direct preparation for labor, for the working-class. Aiming to overcome this duality and contribute to the polytechnic formation of vocational education students, this paper presents and analyzes interdisciplinary teaching activities that discuss the relationships between Industry 4.0 technologies, production systems, and education.  The educational product, developed and applied based on the action research methodology, consisted of identifying the students' prior knowledge, three units of teaching activities, and a final evaluation questionnaire. According to the students' background and their suggestions, the content and didact methodology of each unit was selected, including the history of industrial revolutions, technologies arising from Industry 4.0 (internet of things, data mining, and cloud computing), the challenges of the fourth Industrial Revolution on the economy and labor. Didact methodologies include dialogic lecture based on slides, hands-on practical activity experimenting Industry 4.0 technologies through free online applications, and debate. Interdisciplinary activities were developed at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo, involving students of the 4th year (last) of high school integrated into vocational education with a qualification in Industrial Automation. During the application it was observed that the use of educational product led to considerable levels of motivation and promoted reflections related to the impact of the industry 4,0 technologies in society and employment. Also, it has been verified that the didact sequence increases the student capacity to identify problems and propose possible solutions; understand labor different dimensions (technology, employment, politics, and economics); use strong argumentation based on reliable sources, proposing possible interventions. Thus, the interdisciplinary approach of technological development, considering not only the technical concepts but also the historical and sociological issues related to the application of technologies in the productive system, contributes to a critical teaching-learning process and the omni-lateral formation in vocational education

Algumas propriedades de amplitudes de espalhamento em teorias de "gauge"

Orientadores: Fernando Tadeu Caldeira Brandt, Carlos Ourivio EscobarDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Fisica Gleb WataghinResumo: Investigamos algumas propriedades de amplitudes de espalhamento em teorias de "gauge" na aproximação de árvore. Uma breve introdução do caráter clássico da teoria e à descontinuidade de Dam-Veltman são apresentadas. Tratamos especificamente das amplitudes do espalhamento glúon-glúon e gráviton-gráviton e das propriedades de invariância de "gauge". Para a obtenção das regras de Feynman e cálculo das amplitudes foram elaborados algoritmos de computação simbólicaAbstract: We investigate some properties of scattering amplitudes in gauge theories, in tree approximation. A brief introduction about classical aspects and the Dam-Veltman discontinuity are discussed. We treat specifically the gluon-gluon and graviton-graviton scattering amplitudes and its properties of gauge invariance. To obtain the Feynman rules and amplitude calculation, we make some algorithms in computer algebraMestradoFísicaMestre em Físic