Relationship between inoculum density of the nematophagous fungus Paecilomyces lilacinus and control of Meloidogyne arenaria on tomato

International audienc

Crops use-efficiency of nitrogen from a manure allowed for organic-farming

During the last decade, Europe bus witnessed a fast development in the organic agriculture segment. This lead to the emergence of new markets for fertilisers allowed for organic farming. Taking into account the relatively high prices of some of these products it is essential to look into their fertilizing value. In this work, the agronomic behavior, of an organic amendement allowed for organic farming was compared to that of a conventional N fertiliser. We lay out results of crops N nutritional indices, N uptake and aboveground dry matter yields from a double-cropping system, which includes a mixture of small grains as winter cover crop and silage maize as summer crop

A cosmological concordance model with dynamical vacuum term

We demonstrate that creation of dark-matter particles at a constant rate implies the existence of a cosmological term that decays linearly with the Hubble rate. We discuss the cosmological model that arises in this context and test it against observations of the first acoustic peak in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectrum, the Hubble diagram for supernovas of type Ia (SNIa), the distance scale of baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the distribution of large scale structures (LSS). We show that a good concordance is obtained, albeit with a higher value of the present matter abundance than in the \Lambda CDM model. We also comment on general features of the CMB anisotropy spectrum and on the cosmic coincidence problem.Comment: Revised version. Accepted for publication in Physics Letters

Toward seamless environments for dispute prevention and resolution

Given the evolution of the Information Technology society, it is now rather simple to acquire products or services in a foreign country. This practice may conduct to the event of conflicts whenever a consumer detects some fault or malfunction in services or products he/she had bought. A situation that may worsen if at the time of the uncovering of the defect, the shopper is already in a different geographical arena. There is thus the need to develop computational tools that may prevent these disputes from even happening. In this work it is proposed the development of seamless intelligent environments for dispute resolution that will surround the user, independently of his/her location. It is described the implementation of a prototype that may provide contextualized real-time information and legal support to consumers. The objective is to decrease the number of disputes due to a poor understanding in relation to the The Law and make justice more personalized and closer to people.The work described in this paper was developed under the TIARAC - Telematics and Artificial Intelligence in Alternative Conflict Resolution Project (PTDC/JUR/71354/2006), which is a research project supported by FCT (Science & Technology Foundation), Portuga

Region proposals for saliency map refinement for weakly-supervised disease localisation and classification

First Online: 29 September 2020The deployment of automated systems to diagnose diseases from medical images is challenged by the requirement to localise the diagnosed diseases to justify or explain the classification decision. This requirement is hard to fulfil because most of the training sets available to develop these systems only contain global annotations, making the localisation of diseases a weakly supervised approach. The main methods designed for weakly supervised disease classification and localisation rely on saliency or attention maps that are not specifically trained for localisation, or on region proposals that can not be refined to produce accurate detections. In this paper, we introduce a new model that combines region proposal and saliency detection to overcome both limitations for weakly supervised disease classification and localisation. Using the ChestX-ray14 data set, we show that our proposed model establishes the new state-of-the-art for weakly-supervised disease diagnosis and localisation. We make our code available at https://github.com/renato145/RpSalWeaklyDet.Renato Hermoza, Gabriel Maicas, Jacinto C. Nascimento, Gustavo Carneir

Optimization clustering techniques on register unemployment data

An important strategy for data classification consists in organising data points in clusters. The k-means is a traditional optimisation method applied to cluster data points. Using a labour market database, aiming the segmentation of this market taking into account the heterogeneity resulting from different unemployment characteristics observed along the Portuguese geographical space, we suggest the application of an alternative method based on the computation of the dominant eigenvalue of a matrix related with the distance among data points. This approach presents results consistent with the results obtained by the k-means.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Robust Linear Longitudinal Feedback Control of a Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle

This paper falls under the idea of introducing biomimetic miniature air vehicles in ambient assisted living and home health applications. The concepts of active disturbance rejection control and flatness based control are used in this paper for the trajectory tracking tasks in the flapping-wing miniature air vehicle (FWMAV) time-averaged model. The generalized proportional integral (GPI) observers are used to obtain accurate estimations of the flat output associated phase variables and of the time-varying disturbance signals. This information is used in the proposed feedback controller in (a) approximate, yet close, cancelations, as lumped unstructured time-varying terms, of the influence of the highly coupled nonlinearities and (b) the devising of proper linear output feedback control laws based on the approximate estimates of the string of phase variables associated with the flat outputs simultaneously provided by the disturbance observers. Numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

UPLC-MS-ESI-QTOF analysis and antifungal activity of the spondias tuberosa arruda leaf and root hydroalcoholic extracts

The aim of this study was to identify and evaluate the chemical compositions and effects of the S. tuberosa leaf and root hydroalcoholic extracts (HELST and HERST) against different strains of Candida. Chemical analysis was performed by Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Quadrupole/Time of Flight System (UPLC-MS-ESI-QTOF). The Inhibitory Concentration of 50% of the growth (IC50) as well as the intrinsic and combined action of the extracts with the antifungal fluconazole (FCZ) were determined by the microdilution method while the minimum fungicidal concentrations (MFCs) and the effect on fungal morphological transitions were analyzed by subculture and in humid chambers, respectively. From the preliminary phytochemical analysis, the phenols and flavonoids were the most abundant. The intrinsic IC50 values for HELST ranged from 5716.3 to 7805.8 \ub5g/mL and from 6175.4 to 51070.9 \ub5g/mL for the HERST, whereas the combination of the extracts with fluconazole presented IC50 values from 2.65 to 278.41 \ub5g/mL. The MFC of the extracts, individually, for all the tested strains was 6516384 \ub5g/mL. When fluconazole was combined with each extract, the MFC against CA URM 5974 was reduced (HELST: 2048 and HERST: 4096 \ub5g/mL). Synergism was observed against standard C. albicans (CA) and C. tropicalis (CT) strains and with the root extract against the CT isolate. The leaf extract inhibited the morphological transition of all strains while the root extract inhibited only CT strains

CORRELAÇÃO GENÉTICA, FENOTÍPICA E AMBIENTAL EM CARACTERÍSTICAS DE CRESCIMENTO DE BOVINOS DA RAÇA NELORE VARIEDADE MOCHA

The objective of this work was estimate the genetic correlations, environmental and phenotypic on the birth weight (WB) and on the 205 (W205), 365 (W365) and 550 (W550) days of age, in animals of the polled nellore breed from Bahia state. The analyses were carried out by software MTDFREML. The genetic correlations were 0.08 (WB and W205), 0.00 (WB and W365), - 0.14 (WB and W550), 0.90 (W205 and W365), 0.81 (W205 and W550) and 0.97 (W205 and W550). The environmental correlations were 0.12 (WB and W205), 0.11 (WB and W365) and 0.16 (WB and W550), 0.35 (W205 and W365), 0.13 (W205 and W550) and 0.54 (W365 and W550). The phenotypic correlations were 0.09 (WB and W205), 0.05 (WB and W365), 0.00 (WB and W550), 0.75 (W205 and W365), 0.65 (W205 and W550) and 0.87 (W365 and W550). The birth weight presented weak genetic, environmental, and phenotypic associations with the others weighting. On the other hand, the values gotten for the genetic correlations between the other weighting, indicates that the selection for weight in young ages will promote changes on the future weights of the animal.O objetivo deste trabalho foi estimar as correlações genéticas, fenotípicas e ambientais sobre os pesos ao nascimento (PN) e aos 205 (P205), 365 (P365) e 550 (P550) dias de idade, em animais da raça Nelore Mocha, criados no estado da Bahia. As análises bi-características foram realizadas através do programa MTDFREML. As correlações genéticas foram iguais a 0,08 (PN e P205), 0,00 (PN e P365), - 0,14 (PN e P550), 0,90 (P205 e P365), 0,81, (P205 e P550) e 0,97 (P365 e P550). As correlações ambientais foram 0,12 (PN e P205), 0,11 (PN e P365), 0,16 (PN e P550), 0,35 (P205 e P365), 0,13 (P205 e P550) e 0,54 (P365 e P550). Os valores obtidos para as correlações fenotípicas foram 0,09 (PN e P205), 0,05 (PN e P365), 0,00 (PN e P550), 0,75 (P205 e P365) 0,65 (P205 e P550) e 0,87 (P365 e P550). O peso ao nascimento apresentou ausência de associações genéticas, ambientais e fenotípicas com as demais pesagens. Por outro lado, os valores obtidos para as correlações genéticas entre as outras pesagens, indicam que a seleção para peso em idades jovens deverá promover mudanças nos pesos posteriores dos animais