INVESTIGAÇÃO RETROSPECTIVA DO CRESCIMENTO VOLUMÉTRICO DE PAU-FERRO (Astronium balansae)

RESUMO O crescimento em volume de árvores de pau-ferro (Astronium balansae) de uma floresta nativa e de um reflorestamento com doze anos de idade foi estudado pela técnica de análise de tronco. O exame das fatias transversais permitiu somente quantificar o crescimento das árvores oriundas de reflorestamento, por causa da inexistência de cerne nas secções transversais. Os dados de crescimento foram modelados por meio do procedimento "Stepwise" de regressão, fornecendo equações de alta precisão e ajuste para descrever o crescimento e incremento médio e corrente anual para uma árvore do estrato dominante e outra do estrato dominado. No período observado, não foi possível identificar o ponto de máximo incremento em razão da pouca idade das árvores

CRESCIMENTO DIAMÉTRICO DO PAU-FERRO (Astronium balansae) EM REFLORESTAMENTO NO MUNICÍPIO DE SÃO SEPÉ, RS

A técnica de análise de tronco foi testada para avaliar o crescimento de pau-ferro, Astronium balansae, em povoamento implantado no município de São Sepé, RS e, atualmente, com 12 anos de idade, bem como descrever através de modelos matemáticos o crescimento diamétrico e os incrementos médio e corrente anual para árvores do estrato dominante e dominado. Os resultados demonstraram a pertinência da técnica de análise de tronco para descrever o crescimento passado da espécie, e permitiram desenvolver modelos de alta precisão e bom ajuste para descrever o incremento corrente e médio anual. No período de observação os dados indicam que o culmínio do incremento corrente anual ocorreu aos seis anos e do incremento médio anual aos dez anos para a árvore do estrato dominante, não devendo, entretanto, esta constatação ser tomada como definitiva antes da medição do crescimento em árvores de maior idade, o que permitirá verificar ou não a continuidade da queda das taxas de incremento. Não foi possível determinar na árvore dominada as idades de culmínio de incremento

Reference Model and Method of Evaluation for Smart Cities in Government Portals: a study of the Portuguese and Brazilian reality

The urban issue is currently of great inter-est. The cities and its multiple socio-cultural and political manifestations have been acquiring, from the technological changes of Information Society, new in-struments for ensuring the quality of the future life of most of the world population, and this subject has been named in doctrine as Smart Cities. According to this, several organizations have been gathering efforts in order to monitoring the different dimensions of smart cities. It is thus of utmost importance to analyse the main (inter) national metrics and indicators for evaluating the levels of smartness of cities, with special focus in governance. For this, and based in bibliographic revision and realizacao of conceptual proof, it is proposed an evaluation method that expresses the variables capable of enhancing the intelligent governance in Govern-ment portals. From the research undertak-en, it may be verified that studies in this field are still incipient. On the other side, in spite of the knowledge of the limits of such approach, this method will serve as a new focus on the fiability of the communication process between government and society and as source of consultation and evaluation of the intelligent governance. Finally, it is believed that tha periodical application of this method will allows, besides the monitoring and control of public policies, also the opening up of new ways of citizen's participation.Our thanks to the CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil, and also to the CIIDH-Interdisciplinary Research Center in Human Rights, and to the Algo-ritimi Centre, both at University of Minho. The work of Marciele Berger has been supported by CAPES under Grant nr. BEX - 1788/15-9. The work of Paulo Novais has been supported by COMPETE Pro-gramme (operational programme for com-petitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of Nuno Lopes has been supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020) whithin the pro-ject "SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037", under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the Euro-pean Regional Development Fund (EFDR)

A realistic simulation environment as a teaching aid in educational robotics

The experimental component is an essential method in Engineering education. Sometimes the availability of laboratories and components is compromised, and the COVID-19 pandemic worsened the situation. Resorting to an accurate simulation seems to help this process by allowing students to develop the work, program, test, and validate it. Moreover, it lowers the development time and cost of the prototyping stages of a robotics project. As a multidisciplinary area, robotics requires simulation environments with essential characteristics, such as dynamics, connection to hardware (embedded systems), and other applications. Thus, this paper presents the Simulation environment of SimTwo, emphasizing previous publications with models of sensors, actuators, and simulation scenes. The simulator can be used for free, and the source code is available to the community. Proposed scenes and examples can inspire the development of other simulation scenes to be used in electrical and mechanical Engineering projects. © 2022 IEEE.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021). Thadeu Brito was supported by FCT PhD grant SFRH/BD/08598/2020 and Joao Braun received the ˜ support of a fellowship from ”la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) with code LCF/BQ/DI20/11780028.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Infection process of Phakopsora gossypii in cotton leaves

Tropical rust caused by the biotrophic fungus Phakopsora gossypii is an emerging disease in cotton that has caused significant yield losses of crop/cotton cultivated in Brazil. Considering the current importance of tropical rust and the need to obtain additional basic information about its causal agent to better control this disease, the present study aimed to determine the infection process of P. gossypii in cotton leaves using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Thirty-day-old plants were inoculated with a suspension of P. gossypii uredospores, and leaf fragments were collected 42 h after inoculation (hai) as well as 20, 25 and 35 days after inoculation (dai) for SEM observations. By 42 hai, the uredospores of P. gossypii had germinated and produced a germ tube and an appressorium that may directly penetrate the leaf cuticle. At 20 dai, closed uredia containing uredospores were observed on the abaxial leaf surface. At 25 dai, the uredia started to open and became fully open by 35 dai and contained many uredospores. By 25 dai, fungal hyphae were growing abundantly in the mesophyll next to the uredia that formed in the leaf fragments with total or partial removal of the epidermis. The results of the present study provide novel information regarding the infection process of P. gossypii in cotton leaves, which might be useful for the development of new and more effective strategies for tropical rust control

Where is the chromospheric response to conductive energy input from a hot pre-flare coronal loop?

Before the onset of a flare is observed in hard X-rays there is often a pro- longed pre-flare or pre-heating phase with no detectable hard X-ray emission but pronounced soft X-ray emission suggesting that energy is being released and deposited into the corona and chromosphere already at this stage. This work analyses the temporal evolution of coronal source heating and the chromospheric response during this pre-heating phase to investigate the origin and nature of early energy release and transport during a solar flare. Simultaneous X-ray, EUV, and microwave observations of a well observed flare with a prolonged pre-heating phase are analysed to study the time evolution of the thermal emission and to determine the onset of particle acceleration. During the 20 minutes duration of the pre-heating phase we find no hint of accelerated electrons, neither in hard X-rays nor in microwave emission. However, the total energy budget during the pre-heating phase suggests that energy must be supplied to the flaring loop to sustain the observed temperature and emission measure. Under the assumption of this energy being transported toward the chromosphere via thermal conduc- tion, significant energy deposition at the chromosphere is expected. However, no detectable increase of the emission in the AIA wavelength channels sensitive to chromospheric temperatures is observed. The observations suggest energy release and deposition in the flaring loop before the onset of particle acceleration, yet a model in which energy is conducted to the chromosphere and subsequent heating of the chromosphere is not supported by the observations

VITRUV - Science Cases

VITRUV is a second generation spectro-imager for the PRIMA enabled Very Large Telescope Interferometer. By combining simultaneously up to 8 telescopes VITRUV makes the VLTI up to 6 times more efficient. This operational gain allows two novel scientific methodologies: 1) massive surveys of sizes; 2) routine interferometric imaging. The science cases presented concentrate on the qualitatively new routine interferometric imaging methodology. The science cases are not exhaustive but complementary to the PRIMA reference mission. The focus is on: a) the close environment of young stars probing for the initial conditions of planet formation and disk evolution; b) the surfaces of stars tackling dynamos, activity, pulsation, mass-loss and evolution; c) revealing the origin of the extraordinary morphologies of Planetary Nebulae and related stars; d) studying the accretion-ejection structures of stellar black-holes (microquasars) in our galaxy; e) unveiling the different interacting components (torus, jets, BLRs) of Active Galactic Nuclei; and f) probing the environment of nearby supermassive black-holes and relativistic effects in the Galactic Center black-hole.Comment: 15 pages. The Power of Optical/IR Interferometry: Recent Scientific Results and 2nd Generation VLTI Instrumentation, Allemagne (2005) in pres

RobotAtFactory 4.0: a ROS framework for the SimTwo simulator

Robotics competitions encourage the development of solutions to new challenges that emerge in sync with the rise of Industry 4.0. In this context, robotic simulators are employed to facilitate the development of these solutions by disseminating knowledge in robotics, Education 4.0, and STEM. The RobotAtFactory 4.0 competition arises to promote improvements in industrial challenges related to autonomous robots. The official organization provides the simulation scene of the competition through the open-source SimTwo simulator. This paper aims to integrate the SiwTwo simulator with the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware by developing a framework. This integration facilitates the design of robotic systems since ROS has a vast repository of packages that address common problems in robotics. Thus, competitors can use this framework to develop their solutions through ROS, allowing the simulated and real systems to be integrated.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05757/2020. The project that gave rise to these results received the support of a fellowship from ”la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/DI20/11780028.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Benchmarking flexible job-shop scheduling and control systems

Benchmarking is comparing the output of different systems for a given set of input data in order to improve the system’s performance. Faced with the lack of realistic and operational benchmarks that can be used for testing optimization methods and control systems in flexible systems, this paper proposes a benchmark system based on a real production cell. A three-step method is presented: data preparation, experimentation, and reporting. This benchmark allows the evaluation of static optimization performances using traditional operation research tools and the evaluation of control system's robustness faced with unexpected events

Tratamento medicamentoso do infarto agudo do miocárdio no Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre

OBJECTIVE: To determine the prescription rates of thrombolytics, aspirin, betaadrenergic antagonists and angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors during the acutephase of the infarction, and to determine the prescription rates of aspirin, betaadrenergic antagonists, and angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors for secondaryprophylaxis.MATERIALS AND METHODS: The prescription rates were determined by reviewing the medical records of all patients whose diagnosis of acute myocardial infarctionwas made at Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre from January 1996 to February 1997.RESULTS: We identified 100 patients, with a mean age of 63 ± 13 years, 58% men and 89% white. The drug prescription rates in the acute phase were: 41% forthrombolytics, 97% for aspirin, 81% for beta-adrenergic antagonists and 38% for angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors. The secondary prophylaxis prescriptionrates were: 71% for aspirin, 68% for beta-adrenergic antagonists and 45% for angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors.CONCLUSION: The prescripition rates forthe drugs listed above are still bellow the ideal ranges, although they are comparable to the rates reported in the medicalliterature.OBJETIVO: Determinar a taxa de prescrição de trombolíticos, aspirina, betabloqueadores e inibidores da enzima conversora da angiotensina na fase aguda doinfarto e, no caso dos três últimos fármacos citados, na profilaxia secundária do infarto agudo do miocárdio.MATERIAIS E MÉTODOS: As taxas de prescrição foram determinadas mediante revisão de prontuários de todos os pacientes que estiveram internados com odiagnóstico de infarto agudo do miocárdio no Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre entre janeiro de 1996 e fevereiro de 1997.RESULTADOS: Foram identificados 100 pacientes, com uma idade média de 63 ± 13 anos, 58% homens e 89% brancos. As taxas de prescrição dos fármacos nafase aguda foram: 41% para trombolíticos, 97% para aspirina, 81% para betabloqueadores e 38% para inibidores da enzima conversora. As taxas de prescriçãona profilaxia secundária foram: 71% para aspirina, 68% para beta-bloqueadores e 45% para inibidores da enzima conversora.CONCLUSÃO: As taxas de prescrição dos fármacos acima citados ainda encontramse abaixo dos valores ideais, apesar de serem comparáveis às taxas relatadas na literatura