Efeito do mês do parto na taxa de prenhez e no peso ao desmame de bovinos de corte criados extensivamente na sub ? região de Aquidauana.

Objetivou-se com este trabalho verificar o efeito do mês do parto sobre a taxa de prenhez e no peso a desmama de bezerros de vacas aneloradas criadas extensivamente na sub ? região de Aquidauana, Pantanal Sul ? Mato ? Grossense. Foram analisadas informações produtivas de 111 vacas multíparas aneloradas referente ao ano pecuário de 2007 e 2008. As informações da taxa de prenhez da vaca na estação de monta subsequente, o sexo, mês de nascimento e o peso ao desmame de bezerros foram consideradas nas análises. O efeito do mês do parto na taxa de prenhez foi analisado por meio de regressão logística. Na análise de variância verificaram-se os efeitos do sexo, mês de nascimento e a interação entre sexo e mês de nascimento. As informações foram analisadas através do programa estatístico R. As médias dos parâmetros avaliados considerados significativos foram comparadas através do Teste de Tukey a 5% de probabilidade de erro. Vacas com partos realizados no início da estação de nascimento apresentaram maiores taxas de prenhez na estação de monta subsequente (P<0,05). Os efeitos de sexo e mês de nascimento apresentaram interação significativa para o peso ao desmame de bezerros (P<0,05). Nas condições climáticas da sub ? região de Aquidauana, Pantanal Sul ? Mato ? Grossense, o ajuste estratégico da estação de monta visando os nascimentos dos bezerros em períodos de maior oferta de forragem contribui para o melhor desempenho reprodutivo e produtivo do rebanho

Variação anual do peso vivo e condição corporal de vacas de cria no Pantanal Sul ? Mato ? Grossense: vacas paridas e solteiras.

O estudo foi realizado com objetivo de monitorar o comportamento do peso vivo e a condição corporal de vacas paridas e solteiras ao longo de um ano de estudo. Para tanto, utilizou-se informações de peso vivo e condição corporal de 175 vacas aneloradas, sendo: 97 vacas paridas e 78 vacas solteiras pertencentes a uma propriedade particular que realiza a atividade de cria extensiva em pasto nativo, na sub-região do Paiaguás, Pantanal Sul ? Mato - Grossense. As informações de peso vivo e condição corporal foram obtidas mediante seis coletas realiza das a cada dois meses de dezembro de 2010 a outubro de 2011. O peso vivo das matrizes foi obtido sem jejum prévio, sempre no primeiro período da manhã, acompanhado da avaliação subjetiva da condição corporal, respeitando uma escala de 1 a 6 pontos. As médias, desvios padrões e o coeficiente de variação e o teste F para as características em cada categoria por período de coleta foram realizadas por meio do programa R. As médias dos parâmetros avaliados considerados significativos foram comparadas através do Teste de Tukey a 5 % de probabilidade de erro. As vacas solteiras apresentaram médias de peso vivo e escore de condição corporal superiores (P<0,05) em relação às vacas paridas ao longo do período de estudo. As variáveis peso vivo e condição corporal apresentaram curvas semelhantes com comportamento quadrático entre vacas paridas e solteiras. Para o peso vivo, a parte côncava da curva para vacas solteiras foi mais pronunciada quando compara das com as vacas paridas. A condição corporal de ambas as categorias de vacas apresentou resposta mais rápida em relação ao peso vivo em função do período de avaliação. Pode-se concluir que o peso vivo e a condição corporal estiveram relacionados com diferentes períodos do ano no sistema de cria extensivo em pasto nativo, na sub-região do Paiaguás

Kinematics of symmetric Galactic longitudes to probe the spiral arms of the Milky Way with Gaia

Aims. We model the effects of the spiral arms of the Milky Way on the disk stellar kinematics in the Gaia observable space. We also estimate the Gaia capabilities of detecting the predicted signatures. Methods. We use both controlled orbital integrations in analytic potentials and self-consistent simulations. We introduce a new strategy to investigate the effects of spiral arms, which consists of comparing the stellar kinematics of symmetric Galactic longitudes (+l and −l), in particular the median transverse velocity as determined from parallaxes and proper motions. This approach does not require the assumption of an axisymmetric model because it involves an internal comparison of the data. Results. The typical differences between the transverse velocity in symmetric longitudes in the models are of the order of ~2 km s-1, but can be larger than 10 km s-1 for certain longitudes and distances. The longitudes close to the Galactic centre and to the anti-centre are those with larger and smaller differences, respectively. The differences between the kinematics for +l and −l show clear trends that depend strongly on the properties of spiral arms. Thus, this method can be used to quantify the importance of the effects of spiral arms on the orbits of stars in the different regions of the disk, and to constrain the location of the arms, main resonances and, thus, pattern speed. Moreover, the method allows us to test different origin scenarios of spiral arms and the dynamical nature of the spiral structure (e.g. grand design versus transient multiple arms). We estimate the number of stars of each spectral type that Gaia will observe in certain representative Galactic longitudes, their characteristic errors in distance and transverse velocity, and the error in computing the median velocity as a function of distance. We will be able to measure the median transverse velocity exclusively with Gaia data, with precision smaller than ~1 km s-1 up to distances of ~4-6 kpc for certain giant stars, and up to ~2-4 kpc and better kinematic precision (≲0.5 km s-1) for certain sub-giants and dwarfs. These are enough to measure the typical signatures seen in the models. Conclusions. The Gaia catalogue will allow us to use the presented approach successfully and improve significantly upon current studies of the dynamics of the spiral arms of our Galaxy. We also show that a similar strategy can be used with line-of-sight velocities, which could be applied to Gaia data and to upcoming spectroscopic surveys

Intermittency layers associated to turbulent interfaces

In this study we focus on the transport across an interface which separates two regions with homogeneous and isotropic turbulence in absence of a mean shear. The turbulent transport resulting presents an internal structure. Indeed, in the case of turbulent self-diffusion, both experiments and simulations show that the fluid velocity field is marked by a high intermittency front located aside the interface, which is the source of turbulent bursts penetrating the low turbulence region. The presence of an inner structure inside a layer of turbulence self-transport highlights the different nature of the turbulent transport with respect to the Gaussian diffusion. By including other effects, for instance a passive scalar transport or a mass transport in presence of a density stratification, the phenomenology is much enriched. For instance, our preliminary numerical experiments on the passive scalar transport reveals the presence of two intermittency fronts, one on each side of the interface. As can be seen if the figure below, the intermittency level in the fronts is high. This is true both for the scalar and the scalr derivative statistics. A gradual decay in time is observed while they propagate toward the lateral isotropic regions of the flow. In the presence of a kinetic energy gradient across the interface, the locations and intensity of the intermittency fronts are no more symmetric to respect to the interface. The front on the high energy side of the mixing region penetrates deeper and exhibits stronger intermittency. Analogous features are observed also in two dimensions

Automatic segmentation of ultrasound images of gastrocnemius medialis with different echogenicity levels using convolutional neural networks

The purpose of this study was to develop an automatic method for the segmentation of muscle cross-sectional area on transverse B-mode ultrasound images of gastrocnemius medialis using a convolutional neural network(CNN). In the provided dataset images with both normal and increased echogenicity are present. The manually annotated dataset consisted of 591 images, from 200 subjects, 400 relative to subjects with normal echogenicity and 191 to subjects with augmented echogenicity. From the DICOM files, the image has been extracted and processed using the CNN, then the output has been post-processed to obtain a finer segmentation. Final results have been compared to the manual segmentations. Precision and Recall scores as mean ± standard deviation for training, validation, and test sets are 0.96 ± 0.05, 0.90 ± 0.18, 0.89 ± 0.15 and 0.97 ±0.03, 0.89± 0.17, 0.90 ± 0.14 respectively. The CNN approach has also been compared to another automatic algorithm, showing better performances. The proposed automatic method provides an accurate estimation of muscle cross-sectional area in muscles with different echogenicity levels

Comparison of Histogram-based Textural Features between Cancerous and Normal Prostatic Tissue in Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Images

In the last decade, multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) has been expanding its role in prostate cancer detection and characterization. In this work, 19 patients with clinically significant peripheral zone (PZ) tumours were studied. Tumour masks annotated on the whole-mount histology sections were mapped on T2-weighted (T2w) and diffusion-weighted (DW) sequences. Gray-level histograms of tumoral and normal tissue were compared using six first-order texture features. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was used to compare group means. Mean intensity signal of ADC showed the highest showed the highest area under the receiver operator characteristics curve (AUC) equal to 0.85. MANOVA analysis revealed that ADC features allows a better separation between normal and cancerous tissue with respect to T2w features (ADC: P = 0.0003, AUC = 0.86; T2w: P = 0.03, AUC = 0.74). MANOVA proved that the combination of T2-weighted and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) map features increased the AUC to 0.88. Histogram-based features extracted from invivo mpMRI can help discriminating significant PZ PCa