Homogeneização de habitats de corredeiras e seu efeito na estrutura das assembléia de peixes de um trecho do rio madeira, Brasil

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente, Área de Concentração em Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Diagnóstico Ambiental, para obtenção de Título de Mestre em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente. Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente, Área de Concentração em Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Diagnóstico Ambiental, para obtenção de Título de Mestre em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente.Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente, Área de Concentração em Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Diagnóstico Ambiental, para obtenção de Título de Mestre em Desenvolvimento Regional e Meio Ambiente. Orientadora: Dra. Gislene Torrente VilaraAo mesmo tempo que barreiras naturais podem conduzir a extinção, elas podem aumentar as chances de especiação e aumentar a diversidade de uma região. Nesse sentido, as relações espécie-área e espécie-abundância desempenham um papel central na ecologia de comunidades e suas tendências podem orientar sobre consequências potencialmente importantes em função de impactos antropogênicos. As diferentes inclinações na relação espécie-abundância podem conduzir à adequação de medidas de planejamento, gerenciamento e conservação das espécies. O objetivo desse trabalho foi investigar como as relações de riqueza-abundância, bem como a composição da assembleia de peixes de afluentes historicamente separado pela cachoeira do Teotônio se comportou depois do fechamento do rio Madeira pela UHE Santo Antônio, afogando o principal divisor natural das províncias ictiofaunísticas desse rio. Uma estação a montante e outra a jusante, separadas pela cachoeira do Teotônio foram selecionadas para o estudo. A ictiofauna foi capturada com uma bateria padronizada de 13 malhadeiras em 24 eventos de coleta, em condições pré (12) e pós (12) a formação do reservatório. A riqueza total investigada somou 198 espécies, tendo sido registradas 146 espécies no pré e 176 espécies no pós UHE. A relação riqueza-abundância foi mais ajustada no pós UHE do que na condição natural do rio. Apesar disso, observamos uma diminuição no coeficiente angular da relação, o que revela que, mesmo com o incremento em espécies de uma ictiofauna imigrante, o aumento na abundância de espécies que começam a se adaptar no novo sistema promove uma diminuição na diversidade. Ao avaliar criteriosamente a composição de espécies, registramos apenas duas invasoras que eram exclusivas da província da jusante da cachoeira Teotônio no pré-UHE. Ainda no pré-UHE, 44 espécies nunca tinham sido registradas nos locais estudados, entre elas sete eram exclusivas da área a montante das cachoeiras e podem ser consideradas invasoras no UHE-SAE. Mesmo com a invasão de algumas espécies e o aumento das populações de espécies que estão predominando no novo ambiente, a homogeneização do trecho pelo afogamento da cachoeira Teotônio ainda é incipiente e revela o incrível efeito da cachoeira do Teotônio, mesmo submersa, na segregação da ictiofauna da atual área do UHE Santo Antônio

Influence of physical exercise and sodium intake on arterial pressure and cardiac hypertrophy in rats

Há evidências de que a hipertrofia cardíaca (HC) seja um fator de risco para várias doenças cardiovasculares. Uma variedade de estímulos pode levar à HC, entre os quais estão condições que gerem sobrecarga de volume ou pressão, como o exercício físico e a dieta rica em cloreto de sódio (NaCl). Com o objetivo de verificar a possibilidade de o exercício físico e a ingestão de dieta rica em NaCl influenciarem na pressão arterial e trofismo miocárdico, realizou-se o presente estudo. Foram utilizados 36 ratos Holtzman, do sexo feminino, pesando entre 200 e 300 gramas, e divididos nos seguintes grupos (n=6): Grupo I (dieta com água sem NaCl), Grupo II (dieta com água sem NaCl), Grupo III (dieta com solução de NaCl a 2,5%), Grupo IV (dieta com solução de NaCl a 5%), Grupo V (dieta com solução de NaCl a 2,5%), Grupo VI (dieta com solução de NaCl a 5%). Os animais dos grupos II, III e IV praticaram natação durante 100 minutos ao dia, por cinco semanas, após as quais foram mortos e seus corações pesados. As medidas de pressão arterial (PA) e de peso durante o experimento foram comparadas. Houve diminuição do peso dos grupos submetidos a exercício físico e / ou dieta salina: Grupo I (229,0 g), Grupo II (201,17 g), Grupo III (207,0 g), Grupo IV (149,17 g) e Grupo V (156,17 g). Ao final do experimento, o grupo que foi submetido à dieta mais rica em sódio juntamente com exercício mostrou uma PA significativamente maior (102,67 mmHg) que o Grupo I (88,83 mmHg), sem fatores de risco. Houve uma maior relação peso do coração/peso corporal nos grupos III (0,452 %) e IV (0,417 %), em comparação com o Grupo I (0,337%). Concluindo, houve indícios de hipertrofia cardíaca e aumento da pressão arterial nos animais que ingeriram solução salina e realizaram exercício físico.Evidence shows that cardiac hypertrophy (CH) is a risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases. Several stimuli may cause CH-like manifestations and promote volume or pressure overload. Exercise-induced cardiac hypertrophy is an expected adaptation to regular exercise training. Salt intake has been shown to be the most important determinant of blood pressure in different populations. The purpose of the present work was to verify the influence of physical exercise and sodium intake on the blood pressure and myocardium. The study was performed on 36 rats divided into six groups: Group I (diet without salt overload), Group II (diet without salt overload and swimming), Group III (diet with 2.5% NaCl solution and swimming), Group IV (diet with 5% NaCl solution and swimming), Group V (diet with 2.5% NaCl solution without exercise), Group VI (diet with 5% NaCl solution without exercise). The arterial pressure was significantly lower in Group I when compared with Group IV. The ratio of cardiac mass/body mass was increased in Groups III and IV. In conclusion, there was evidence that exercise training and NaCl intake promotes arterial hypertension and cardiac hypertrophy

Effect of Camphorquinone Concentration in Physical-Mechanical Properties of Experimental Flowable Resin Composites

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of camphorquinone concentration in physical-mechanical properties of experimental flowable composites in order to find the concentration that results in maximum conversion, balanced mechanical strength, and minimum shrinkage stress. Model composites based on BISGMA/TEGDMA with 70% wt filler loading were prepared containing different concentrations of camphorquinone (CQ) on resin matrix (0.25%, 0.50%, 1%, 1.50%, and 2% by weight). Degree of conversion was determined by FTIR. Surface hardness was assessed before and after 24 h ethanol storage and softening rate was determined. Depth of cure was determined by Knoop hardness evaluation at different depths. Color was assessed by reflectance spectrophotometer, employing the CIE-Lab system. Flexural strength and elastic modulus were determined by a three-point bending test. Shrinkage stress was determined in a Universal Testing Machine in a high compliance system. Data were submitted to ANOVA and Tukey's test (alpha = 0.05). The increase in CQ concentration caused a significant increase on flexural strength and luminosity of composites. Surface hardness was not affected by the concentration of CQ. Composite containing 0.25% wt CQ showed lower elastic modulus and shrinkage stress when compared to others. Depth of cure was 3 mm for composite containing 1% CQ and 2 mm for the other tested composites. Degree of conversion was inversely correlated with softening rate and directly correlated with elastic modulus and shrinkage stress. In conclusion, CQ concentration affects polymerization characteristics and mechanical strength of composites. The concentration of CQ in flowable composite for optimized polymerization and properties was 1% wt of the resin matrix, which allows adequate balance among degree of conversion, depth of cure, mechanical properties, and color characteristics of these materials.Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)Univ Fed Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencias Ambientais Quim & Farmaceut, Diadema, SP, BrazilUniv Anhanguera Sao Paulo UNIAN, Sao Paulo, SP, BrazilCSIC, ICTP, Madrid, SpainUniv Metropolitana Santos UNIMES, Santos, SP, BrazilUniv Mogi das Cruzes, NPT, Mogi das Cruzes, SP, BrazilUniv Fed Sao Paulo, Inst Ciencias Ambientais Quim & Farmaceut, Diadema, SP, BrazilFAPESP: 2015/16569-8Web of Scienc

Nanostructured Polypyrrole Powder: A Structural and Morphological Characterization

Polypyrrole (PPY) powder was chemically synthesized using ferric chloride (FeCl3) and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Le Bail Method, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). XRD pattern showed a broad scattering of a semicrystalline structure composed of main broad peaks centered at 2θ = 11.4°, 22.1°, and 43.3°. Crystallinity percentage was estimated by the ratio between the sums of the peak areas to the area of amorphous broad halo due to the amorphous phase and showed that PPY has around 20 (1)%. FTIR analysis allowed assigning characteristic absorption bands in the structure of PPY. SEM showed micrometric particles of varying sizes with morphologies similar to cauliflower. Crystal data (monoclinic, space group P 21/c, a=7.1499 (2) Å, b=13.9470 (2) Å, c=17.3316 (2) Å, α=90 Å, β=61.5640 (2) Å and γ=90 Å) were obtained using the FullProf package program under the conditions of the method proposed by Le Bail. Molecular relaxation was performed using the density functional theory (DFT) and suggests that tetramer polymer chains are arranged along the “c” direction. Average crystallite size was found in the range of 20 (1) Å. A value of 9.33 × 10−9 S/cm was found for PPY conductivity

Assessment of honey bee cells using deep learning

Temporal assessment of honey bee colony strength is required for different applications in many research projects. This task often requires counting the number of cells with brood and food reserves multiple times a year from images taken in the apiary. There are thousands of cells in each frame, which makes manual counting a time-consuming and tedious activity. Thus, the assessment of frames has been frequently been performed in the apiary in an approximate way by using methods such as the Liebefeld. The automation of this process using modern imaging processing techniques represents a major advance. The objective of this work was to develop a software capable of extracting each cell from frame images, classify its content and display the results to the researcher in a simple way. The cells’ contents display a high variation of patterns which added to light variation make their classification by software a challenging endeavor. To address this challenge, we used Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) for image processing. DNNs are known by achieving the state-of-art in many fields of study including image classification, because they can learn features that best describe the content being classified, such as the interior of frame cells. Our DNN model was trained with over 60,000 manually labeled images whose cells were classified into seven classes: egg, larvae, capped larvae, honey, nectar, pollen, and empty. Our contribution is an end-to-end software capable of doing automatic background removal, cell detection, and classification of its content based on an input image. With this software the researcher is able to achieve an average accuracy of 94% over all classes and get better results compared with approximation methods and previous techniques that used handmade features like color and texture.This research was funded through the 2013-2014 BiodivERsA/FACCE-JPJ joint call for research proposals,witht he national funders FCT (Portugal), CNRS (France), and MEC (Spain).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Automatic detection and classification of honey bee comb cells using deep learning

In a scenario of worldwide honey bee decline, assessing colony strength is becoming increasingly important for sustainable beekeeping. Temporal counts of number of comb cells with brood and food reserves offers researchers data for multiple applications, such as modelling colony dynamics, and beekeepers information on colony strength, an indicator of colony health and honey yield. Counting cells manually in comb images is labour intensive, tedious, and prone to error. Herein, we developed a free software, named DeepBee©, capable of automatically detecting cells in comb images and classifying their contents into seven classes. By distinguishing cells occupied by eggs, larvae, capped brood, pollen, nectar, honey, and other, DeepBee© allows an unprecedented level of accuracy in cell classification. Using Circle Hough Transform and the semantic segmentation technique, we obtained a cell detection rate of 98.7%, which is 16.2% higher than the best result found in the literature. For classification of comb cells, we trained and evaluated thirteen different convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, including: DenseNet (121, 169 and 201); InceptionResNetV2; InceptionV3; MobileNet; MobileNetV2; NasNet; NasNetMobile; ResNet50; VGG (16 and 19) and Xception. MobileNet revealed to be the best compromise between training cost, with ~9 s for processing all cells in a comb image, and accuracy, with an F1-Score of 94.3%. We show the technical details to build a complete pipeline for classifying and counting comb cells and we made the CNN models, source code, and datasets publicly available. With this effort, we hope to have expanded the frontier of apicultural precision analysis by providing a tool with high performance and source codes to foster improvement by third parties (https://github.com/AvsThiago/DeepBeesource).This research was developed in the framework of the project “BeeHope - Honeybee conservation centers in Western Europe: an innovative strategy using sustainable beekeeping to reduce honeybee decline”, funded through the 2013-2014 BiodivERsA/FACCE-JPI Joint call for research proposals, with the national funders FCT (Portugal), CNRS (France), and MEC (Spain).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of the efficiency of a Venturi scrubber in particulate matter collection smaller than 2.5 µm emitted by biomass burning

Energy demand has increased worldwide, and biomass burning is one of the solutions most used by industries, especially in countries that have a great potential in agriculture, such as Brazil. However, these energy sources generate pollutants, consisting of particulate matter (PM) with a complex chemical composition, such as sugarcane bagasse (SB) burning. Controlling these emissions is necessary; therefore, the aim was to evaluate PM collection using a rectangular Venturi scrubber (RVS), and its effects on the composition of the PM emitted. Considering the appropriate use of biomass as an industrial fuel and the emerging need for a technique capable of efficiently removing pollutants from biomass burning, this study shows the control of emissions as an innovation in a situation such as the industrial one with the use of a Venturi scrubber in fine particle collection, in addition to using portable and representative isokinetic sampling equipment of these particles. The pilot-scale simulation of the biomass burning process, the representative sampling of fine particles and obtaining parameters to control pollutant emissions for a Venturi scrubber, meets the current situation of concern about air quality. The average collection efficiency values were 96.6% for PM&gt; 2.5, 85.5% for PM1.0–2.5, and 66.9% for PM&lt; 1.0. The ionic analysis for PM&lt; 1.0 filters showed potassium, chloride, nitrate, and nitrite at concentrations ranging from 20.12 to 36.5 μg/m3. As the ethanol and sugar plants will continue to generate electricity with sugarcane bagasse burning, emission control technologies and cost-effective and efficient portable samplers are needed to monitor particulate materials and improve current gas cleaning equipment projects.</p

Reaproveitamento do resíduo da indústria de carnaúba no substrato para produção de mudas de melancia

Os produtores de mudas de hortaliças estão sempre ávidos por novas tecnologias, especialmente quando se trata do insumo substrato para plantas. Neste sentido, objetivou-se avaliar o desenvolvimento de mudas de melancia cultivar Crimson Sweet, produzidas em diferentes proporções de resíduo de carnaúba para composição de substratos. O experimento foi conduzido em delineamento experimental inteiramente casualizado com cinco tratamentos com diferentes proporções de resíduo de carnaúba com casca de arroz (RCCA) e resíduo de carnaúba em pó (RCP): 1) 100 % RCCA; 2) 75 % RCCA + 25 % RCP; 3) 50 % RCCA + 50 % RCP; 4) 25 % RCCA + 75 % RCP; e 5) 100 % RCP com quatro repetições de 64 plântulas cada. Há influência do uso resíduo de cera de carnaúba como componente de substrato na formação de mudas de melancia cv. Crimson Sweet. O substrato 100% RCCA pode ser usado na produção de mudas de melancia de qualidade