A Framework of Landsat-8 Band Selection based on UMDA for Deforestation Detection

The conservation of tropical forests is a current subject of social and ecological relevance due to their crucial role in the global ecosystem. Unfortunately, millions of hectares are deforested and degraded each year. Therefore, government or private initiatives are needed for monitoring tropical forests. In this sense, this work proposes a novel framework, which uses of distribution estimation algorithm (UMDA) to select spectral bands from Landsat-8 that yield a better representation of deforestation areas to guide a semantic segmentation architecture called DeepLabv3+. In performed experiments, it was possible to find several compositions that reach balanced accuracy superior to 90% in segment classification tasks. Furthermore, the best composition (651) found by UMDA algorithm fed the DeepLabv3+ architecture and surpassed in efficiency and effectiveness all compositions compared in this work.Comment: in Portuguese language. Best Paper Award at the Workshop of Undergraduate Works (WUW), SIBGRAPI 202

From program strategic planning to program initiation: lessons learned from a collaborative university-industry R&D case study

This paper aims to contribute to knowledge by presenting the lessons learned resultant from a large case study composed by three collaborative University-Industry RD funded programs between the University of Minho (UMinho) and Bosch Car Multimedia Portugal (Bosch). The three programs selected amount to a total investment of above €109 million, over the period between 2013 and 2021, involving more than one thousand University researchers and Industry collaborators. The lessons learned are limited to the time span from Program Strategic Planning, where new project ideas/innovation opportunities are identified and developed for the preparation of the 'Funding Application', to Program Initiation, where the program effectively initiates after the negotiation of the 'Funding Contract'. The collection, analysis and implementation of lessons learned allowed the development of a structured process to guide University-Industry partners on the path to transform some newly identified project ideas into the initiation of a large RD funded program. The proposed process is currently adopted by the governance structure of Bosch and UMinho partnership and other UMinho partnerships with Industry.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019, by the Research Grant: SFRH/BPD/111033/2015, and by the Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development. Project in co-promotion nº 039334/2018

Spatial Factors Play a Major Role as Determinants of Endemic Ground Beetle Beta Diversity of Madeira Island Laurisilva

The development in recent years of new beta diversity analytical approaches highlighted valuable information on the different processes structuring ecological communities. A crucial development for the understanding of beta diversity patterns was also its differentiation in two components: species turnover and richness differences. In this study, we evaluate beta diversity patterns of ground beetles from 26 sites in Madeira Island distributed throughout Laurisilva – a relict forest restricted to the Macaronesian archipelagos. We assess how the two components of ground beetle beta diversity (βrepl – species turnover and βrich - species richness differences) relate with differences in climate, geography, landscape composition matrix, woody plant species richness and soil characteristics and the relative importance of the effects of these variables at different spatial scales. We sampled 1025 specimens from 31 species, most of which are endemic to Madeira Island. A spatially explicit analysis was used to evaluate the contribution of pure environmental, pure spatial and environmental spatially structured effects on variation in ground beetle species richness and composition. Variation partitioning showed that 31.9% of species turnover (βrepl) and 40.7% of species richness variation (βrich) could be explained by the environmental and spatial variables. However, different environmental variables controlled the two types of beta diversity: βrepl was influenced by climate, disturbance and soil organic matter content whilst βrich was controlled by altitude and slope. Furthermore, spatial variables, represented through Moran’s eigenvector maps, played a significant role in explaining both βrepl and βrich, suggesting that both dispersal ability and Madeira Island complex orography are crucial for the understanding of beta diversity patterns in this group of beetles.Peer reviewe

Zebrafish models for human acute organophosphorus poisoning

Terrorist use of organophosphorus-based nerve agents and toxic industrial chemicals against civilian populations constitutes a real threat, as demonstrated by the terrorist attacks in Japan in the 1990 s or, even more recently, in the Syrian civil war. Thus, development of more effective countermeasures against acute organophosphorus poisoning is urgently needed. Here, we have generated and validated zebrafish models for mild, moderate and severe acute organophosphorus poisoning by exposing zebrafish larvae to different concentrations of the prototypic organophosphorus compound chlorpyrifos-oxon. Our results show that zebrafish models mimic most of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind this toxidrome in humans, including acetylcholinesterase inhibition, N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor activation, and calcium dysregulation as well as inflammatory and immune responses. The suitability of the zebrafish larvae to in vivo high-throughput screenings of small molecule libraries makes these models a valuable tool for identifying new drugs for multifunctional drug therapy against acute organophosphorus poisoning

Inovação e interdisciplinaridade: um estudo de caso no desenvolvimento de competências no curso de engenharia civil

A inovação tecnológica é um processo complexo e o desempenho das organizações depende da sua capacidade de evoluir para se manter com sucesso em mercados cada vez mais globais e competitivos. A interdisciplinaridade é parte fundamental da inovação, porque as modernas soluções dependem da atuação integrada das diversas áreas do conhecimento para que os resultados sejam maximizados. A construção de uma abordagem interdisciplinar é, portanto, fundamental para promover a criação de respostas a quaisquer desafios que possam vir a confrontar as sociedades e organizações. Assim, este trabalho define esses conceitos relevantes e faz uma ligação entre o desenvolvimento de diferentes competências e habilidades de forma interdisciplinar reunindo as bases para um processo de inovação tecnológica e acadêmica orientado à solução de problemas reais, através de ampla pesquisa bibliográfica e valendo-se de um estudo de caso aplicado em uma instituição de ensino superior.  A proposta foi seguir as novas Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais dos Cursos de Engenharia (DCN) (MEC, 2019a), pela Resolução MEC nº 2, de 24 de abril de 2019 e propor melhorias nas grades do curso de engenharia civil. Adaptando a nova consciência que o curso pode ter 25% da grade EAD (Ensino a Distância) e que a interdisciplinaridade faz parte da inovação

Inovação e interdisciplinaridade: um estudo de caso no desenvolvimento de competências no curso de engenharia civil

A inovação tecnológica é um processo complexo e o desempenho das organizações depende da sua capacidade de evoluir para se manter com sucesso em mercados cada vez mais globais e competitivos. A interdisciplinaridade é parte fundamental da inovação, porque as modernas soluções dependem da atuação integrada das diversas áreas do conhecimento para que os resultados sejam maximizados. A construção de uma abordagem interdisciplinar é, portanto, fundamental para promover a criação de respostas a quaisquer desafios que possam vir a confrontar as sociedades e organizações. Assim, este trabalho define esses conceitos relevantes e faz uma ligação entre o desenvolvimento de diferentes competências e habilidades de forma interdisciplinar reunindo as bases para um processo de inovação tecnológica e acadêmica orientado à solução de problemas reais, através de ampla pesquisa bibliográfica e valendo-se de um estudo de caso aplicado em uma instituição de ensino superior.  A proposta foi seguir as novas Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais dos Cursos de Engenharia (DCN) (MEC, 2019a), pela Resolução MEC nº 2, de 24 de abril de 2019 e propor melhorias nas grades do curso de engenharia civil. Adaptando a nova consciência que o curso pode ter 25% da grade EAD (Ensino a Distância) e que a interdisciplinaridade faz parte da inovação

A 46,XX testicular disorder of sex development caused by a Wilms’ tumour Factorâ 1 (WT1) pathogenic variant

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146930/1/cge13459_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146930/2/cge13459.pd