Does a new research-funding model ask for a new evaluation framework? The case of Serrapilheira in Brazil

The purpose of this manuscript is to present an on-going experience of impact evaluation applied to a recently created S&T funding agency. The Institute Serrapilheira (ISP) is a private nonprofit organization created to fund new and challenging themes of research. Serrapilheira brings innovation to the Brazilian scenario of science funding in at least three directions. First, ISP is the first family-philanthropically funded organization totally dedicated to support science in Brazil. Secondly, as a private institution, it can provide researchers with greater flexibility in terms of resource allocation comparing to public funding agencies. The 2018 estimated budget is US$ 4,5 million. Thirdly, in its first call for proposals launched in mid-2017, ISP asked young researchers to present proposals out of the “Normal Science”. The definition of the impact evaluation model of the first call of Serrapilheira was based on both the institutional model proposed by the organization – and its main purposes – as well as on the particular goals of the first call. As a first step, these objectives were discussed with Serrapilheira’s staff. The second step consisted of detecting evaluation hypotheses, themes and indicators based on the discussion of the model’s objectives. As a result, six evaluation themes were defined – one oriented to characterizing the grantees both in terms of diversity and academic training and the other five oriented to measure impacts: (i) professional trajectory, (ii) scientific and technology production, (iii) night science, (iv) insertion and prominence and (v) research culture. Traditional and widely accepted indicators of scientific and technological impact were used, even for dialogue with communities and scientific institutions and terms of comparison. Nevertheless, the main challenge was to identify indicators that allow the measurement of variables that directly or indirectly approach the particularities of the research-funding model. As a first remark, we understand that the particularities of the new research-funding model proposed by ISP asks for a new evaluation framework, more oriented to alternative indicators and to a broad perspective about outputs, outcomes and impacts in a more diverse and multifaceted research system. In this current hands-on impact-study a methodology is being built and simultaneously applied to a concrete case. This experience may contribute to the field of impact evaluation to the extent it proposes not only alternative indicators to be mixed with traditional ones, but also because it has a longitudinal perspective of following grantees since the inception (with the advantage of starting with a baseline) till two years after projects end, performing a 5-year long evaluation. Another possible contribution refers to the understanding about the ways funding agencies are evaluating the outcomes and impacts of their initiatives

Influence of soybean phenological stage and leaflets age on infection by Phakopsora pachyrhizi

Objetivou-se detectar a influência do estádio fenológico e da idade da folha de soja na infecção por Phakopsora pachyrhizi, agente causal da ferrugemasiática (FA). Plantas das cultivares BRS 154 e BRS 258 foram inoculadas, com suspensão de 10(5) urediniósporos/mL, nos estádios fenológicos V3, R1 e R5. Após 24 horas de câmara úmida, as plantas foram acondicionadas em condições de casa de vegetação por 20 dias. Avaliou-se o período latente médio (PLM) e a severidade. Para a avaliação da suscetibilidade de trifólios à FA utilizou-se a cultivar BRS 154 (V5). A inoculação foi realizada nos quatro primeiros trifólios. Aos 15 dias após a inoculação, os folíolos foram avaliados quanto à severidade, tamanho médio de lesão e freqüência de infecção. O estádio das plantas de soja não influenciou no PLM. As cultivares BRS 154 e BRS 258 tiveram PLM de 8 e 9 dias, respectivamente. As cultivares não se diferenciaram quanto à severidade da doença. Não houve diferença de severidade nos estádios V3 e R1, porém, os valores de severidade nesses estádios foram superiores ao valor de severidade no estádio R5, na avaliação realizada 8 dias após a inoculação. Em relação à suscetibilidade de folhas, o trifólio mais velho apresentou maiores valores de doença.This work was conducted to study the influence of soybean growth stage and leaf age on the infection of Phakopsora pachyrhizi, the soybean rust pathogen. Soybean plants (cv. BRS 154 and BRS 258) at the V3, R1 and R5 growth stages were inoculated with a 1 x 10(5) urediniospores per mL suspension. After a period of 24 hours in dew chambers, all plants were removed from the chambers and placed under greenhouse conditions for 20 days. Mean latent period (PLM) and disease severity were estimated. The susceptibility of trifoliate leaves to soybean rust was estimated on cv. BRS 154 at the growth stage R5. Pathogen inoculation was done at the first four trifoliate leaves. Fifteen days after inoculation, leaflets of each trefoil were evaluated for disease severity, lesion mean size and infection frequency. Plants' growth stage did not influence the PLM. Cultivars BRS 154 and BRS 258 presented PLM of 8 and 9 days, respectively. There was no difference in disease severity at the growth stages V3 and R1, but those values were higher than at the R5 growth stage, 8 days after inoculation. The oldest trefoil showed the highest disease values

Amino Acid Starvation Induced by Invasive Bacterial Pathogens Triggers an Innate Host Defense Program

SummaryAutophagy, which targets cellular constituents for degradation, is normally inhibited in metabolically replete cells by the metabolic checkpoint kinase mTOR. Although autophagic degradation of invasive bacteria has emerged as a critical host defense mechanism, the signals that induce autophagy upon bacterial infection remain unclear. We find that infection of epithelial cells with Shigella and Salmonella triggers acute intracellular amino acid (AA) starvation due to host membrane damage. Pathogen-induced AA starvation caused downregulation of mTOR activity, resulting in the induction of autophagy. In Salmonella-infected cells, membrane integrity and cytosolic AA levels rapidly normalized, favoring mTOR reactivation at the surface of the Salmonella-containing vacuole and bacterial escape from autophagy. In addition, bacteria-induced AA starvation activated the GCN2 kinase, eukaryotic initiation factor 2α, and the transcription factor ATF3-dependent integrated stress response and transcriptional reprogramming. Thus, AA starvation induced by bacterial pathogens is sensed by the host to trigger protective innate immune and stress responses

I Ciclo de Conferências : Conselho Técnico Científico : temas atuais em investigação

A obra é constituída pelos resumos das comunicações apresentadas pelos docentes da Escola Superior Agrária do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco e são referentes aos projetos de investigação nos quais estão envolvidos.O Conselho Técnico-Científico (CTC) da Escola Superior Agrária tomou posse no dia 9 de Fevereiro de 2010. As suas primeiras acções orientaram-se no sentido de dar cumprimento ao estabelecido nos Estatutos da Escola Superior Agrária do Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, que entraram em vigor a partir de 14 de Janeiro de 2010. Estas acções centraram-se na re-organização interna da estrutura técnica e científica, na definição das estratégias de formação e de investigação, desenvolvimento e inovação (ID&I) da Escola Superior Agrária. Enquadrada nesta estratégia, o CTC considerou oportuno promover um ciclo de conferências, com o principal objectivo de criar um meio de apresentação e debate público do trabalho de ID&I desenvolvido por docentes e técnicos que possibilitasse, nas áreas de intervenção da ESA, o desenvolvimento de novas ideias e a criação de sinergias para estabelecimento de trabalhos pluridisciplinares e parcerias, não só a nível interno como também com stakeholders. A publicação das conferências realizadas neste primeiro mandato (2010-2012), disponibiliza a informação para um público mais alargado, visando contribuir de uma forma concreta para o desenvolvimento da região, aspecto de interesse prioritário na missão do IPCB/ESA

Arbitrary parameters in implicit regularization and democracy within perturbative description of 2-dimensional gravitational anomalies

We show that the Implicit Regularization Technique is useful to display quantum symmetry breaking in a complete regularization independent fashion. Arbitrary parameters are expressed by finite differences between integrals of the same superficial degree of divergence whose value is fixed on physical grounds (symmetry requirements or phenomenology). We study Weyl fermions on a classical gravitational background in two dimensions and show that, assuming Lorentz symmetry, the Weyl and Einstein Ward identities reduce to a set of algebraic equations for the arbitrary parameters which allows us to study the Ward identities on equal footing. We conclude in a renormalization independent way that the axial part of the Einstein Ward identity is always violated. Moreover whereas we can preserve the pure tensor part of the Einstein Ward identity at the expense of violating the Weyl Ward identities we may as well violate the former and preserve the latter.Comment: 8 pages, no figure

Molecular characterization of Mycobacterium bovis infection in cattle and buffalo in Amazon Region, Brazil

The aim of this study was to characterize Mycobacterium bovis from cattle and buffalo tissue samples, from two Brazilian states, and to analyse their genetic diversity by spoligotyping. Tissue samples from tuberculosis suspect animals, 57 in Amazonas State (12 cattle and 45 buffaloes) and six from Pará State (5 cattle and one buffalo) from slaughterhouses under State Veterinary Inspection, were isolated in culture medium Stonebrink. The positive cultures were confirmed by PCR and analysed by the spoligotyping technique and the patterns (spoligotypes) were identified and compared at the Mycobacterium bovis Spoligotype Database (http://www.mbovis.org/). There was bacterial growth in 44 (69.8%) of the tissues of the 63 animals, of which PCR for region of differentiation 4 identified 35/44 (79.5%) as Mycobacterium bovis. Six different spoligotypes were identified among the 35 Mycobacterium bovis isolates, of which SB0295, SB1869, SB0121 and SB1800 had already been described in Brazil, and SB0822 and SB1608 had not been described. The most frequent spoligotype in this study (SB0822) had already been described in buffaloes in Colombia, a neighbouring country of Amazonas state. The other identified spoligotypes were also described in other South American countries, such as Argentina and Venezuela, and described in the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso and Goiás, indicating an active movement of Mycobacterium bovis strains within Brazil.Instituto de BiotecnologíaFil: Carneiro, Paulo A. M. Michigan State University. Center for Comparative Epidemiology; Estados UnidosFil: Pasquatti, Taynara N. Dom Bosco Catholic University; BrasilFil: Takatani, Haruo. Agencia de Defesa Agropecuaria do Amazonas; BrasilFil: Zumarraga, Martin Jose. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Marfil, Maria Jimena. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Barnard, Christian. Agencia de Defesa Agropecuaria do Amazonas; BrasilFil: Fitzgerald, Scott D. Michigan State University. Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory; Estados UnidosFil: Abramovitch, Robert B. Michigan State University. Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics; Estados UnidosFil: Araujo, Flabio Ribeiro de. Centro Nacional de Pesquisa de Gado de Corte; BrasilFil: Kaneene, John B. Michigan State University. Center for Comparative Epidemiology; Estados Unido

PLK4 trans-Autoactivation Controls Centriole Biogenesis in Space

The deposited article is a post-print version and has been submitted to peer review.This publication hasn't any creative commons license associated.The deposited article version contains attached the supplementary materials within the pdf.Centrioles are essential for cilia and centrosome assembly. In centriole-containing cells, centrioles always form juxtaposed to pre-existing ones, motivating a century-old debate on centriole biogenesis control. Here, we show that trans-autoactivation of Polo-like kinase 4 (PLK4), the trigger of centriole biogenesis, is a critical event in the spatial control of that process. We demonstrate that centrioles promote PLK4 activation through its recruitment and local accumulation. Though centriole removal reduces the proportion of active PLK4, this is rescued by concentrating PLK4 to the peroxisome lumen. Moreover, while mild overexpression of PLK4 only triggers centriole amplification at the existing centriole, higher PLK4 levels trigger both centriolar and cytoplasmatic (de novo) biogenesis. Hence, centrioles promote their assembly locally and disfavor de novo synthesis. Similar mechanisms enforcing the local concentration and/or activity of other centriole components are likely to contribute to the spatial control of centriole biogenesis under physiological conditions.Fundação Portuguesa para a Ciência e Tecnologia grants: (SFRH/BPD/87479/2012, PTDC/BBB-BEP/1724/2012, HMSP-CT/SAU-ICT/0075/2009, PTDC/SAU-OBD/105616/2008, EXPL/BIM-ONC/0830/2013, PTDC/BBB-BEP/1724/2012); EMBO installation grant; ERC starting grant: (PFE-GI-UE-ERC-2010-StG-261344).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

De Sitter Gravity and Liouville Theory

We show that the spectrum of conical defects in three-dimensional de Sitter space is in one-to-one correspondence with the spectrum of vertex operators in Liouville conformal field theory. The classical conformal dimensions of vertex operators are equal to the masses of the classical point particles in dS_3 that cause the conical defect. The quantum dimensions instead are shown to coincide with the mass of the Kerr-dS_3 solution computed with the Brown-York stress tensor. Therefore classical de Sitter gravity encodes the quantum properties of Liouville theory. The equality of the gravitational and the Liouville stress tensor provides a further check of this correspondence. The Seiberg bound for vertex operators translates on the bulk side into an upper mass bound for classical point particles. Bulk solutions with cosmological event horizons correspond to microscopic Liouville states, whereas those without horizons correspond to macroscopic (normalizable) states. We also comment on recent criticism by Dyson, Lindesay and Susskind, and point out that the contradictions found by these authors may be resolved if the dual CFT is not able to capture the thermal nature of de Sitter space. Indeed we find that on the CFT side, de Sitter entropy is merely Liouville momentum, and thus has no statistical interpretation in this approach.Comment: 22 pages, LateX2e; added references for section 1 and section 2; corrected typos; improved discussion in section

Cardy-Verlinde Formula and Achucarro-Ortiz Black Hole

In this paper it is shown that the entropy of the black hole horizon in the Achucarro-Ortiz spacetime, which is the most general two-dimensional black hole derived from the three-dimensional rotating BTZ black hole, can be described by the Cardy-Verlinde formula. The latter is supposed to be an entropy formula of conformal field theory in any dimension.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, v2: minor changes, references added, to appear in Phys. Rev.