751 research outputs found
Greenhouse watching system using multi-technologies
Traditional agriculture uses empiric methods and is very exposed to meteorological conditions. To increase the agriculture production, greenhouses had appeared to allow crops with higher quality. Greenhouses also permit the study of cause-effect concepts that by them allow building models that improve the crop’s production and quality.
Based on this reality, this paper presents a system developed by researchers of two schools of the Instituto Politécnico of Castelo Branco(IPCB) to monitor a greenhouse located in the campus of Escola Superior Agrária (ESA). This proposed system uses several different technologies
Boat noise impacts Lusitanian toadfish breeding males and reproductive outcome
Anthropogenic noise is a growing threat to marine organisms, including fish. Yet very few studies have addressed the
impact of anthropogenic noise on fish reproduction, especially in situ. In this study, we investigated the impacts of boat
noise exposure in the reproductive success of wild Lusitanian toadfish (Halobatrachus didactylus), a species that relies
on advertisement calls for mate attraction, using behavioural, physiological and reproductive endpoints. Two sets of
artificial nests were deployed in the Tagus estuary and exposed to either ambient sound or boat noise during their
breeding season. Toadfish males spontaneously used these nests to breed. We inspected nests for occupation and the
presence of eggs in six spring low tides (in two years) and assessed male vocal activity and stress responses. Boat
noise did not affect nest occupation by males but impacted reproductive success by decreasing the likelihood of receiving eggs, decreasing the number of live eggs and increasing the number of dead eggs, compared to control males. Treatment males also showed depressed vocal activity and slightly higher cortisol levels. The assessment of oxidative stress
and energy metabolism-related biomarkers revealed no oxidative damage in noise exposed males despite having lower
antioxidant responses and pointed towards a decrease in the activity levels of energy metabolism-related biomarkers.
These results suggest that males exposed to boat noise depressed their metabolism and their activity (such as parental
care and mate attraction) to cope with an acoustic stressor, consistent with a freezing defensive response/behaviour.
Together, our study demonstrates that boat noise has severe impacts on reproductive fitness in Lusitanian toadfish. We
argue that, at least fishes that cannot easily avoid noise sources due to their dependence on specific spawning sites,
may incur in significant direct fitness costs due to chronic noise exposure.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Compliance, persistence, costs and quality of life in young patients treated with antipsychotic drugs: Results from the COMETA study
Background: Little data is available on the real-world socio-economic burden and outcomes in schizophrenia. This study aimed to assess persistence, compliance, costs and Health-Related Quality-of-Life (HRQoL) in young patients undergoing antipsychotic treatment according to clinical practice.Methods: A naturalistic, longitudinal, multicentre cohort study was conducted: we involved 637 patients aged 18-40 years, with schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder diagnosed ≤10 years before, enrolled in 86 Italian Mental Health Centres and followed-up for 1 year. Comparisons were conducted between naïve (i.e., patients visiting the centre for the first time and starting a new treatment regimen) and non naïve patients.Results: At enrolment, 84% of patients were taking atypical drugs, 3.7% typical, 10% a combination of the two classes, and 2% were untreated. During follow-up, 23% of patients switched at least once to a different class of treatment, a combination or no treatment. The mean Drug-Attitude-Inventory score was 43.4, with 94.3% of the patients considered compliant by the clinicians. On average, medical costs at baseline were 390.93€/patient-month, mostly for drug treatment (29.5%), psychotherapy (29.2%), and hospitalizations (27.1%). Patients and caregivers lost 3.5 days/patient-month of productivity. During follow-up, attitude toward treatment remained fairly similar, medical costs were generally stable, while productivity, clinical statusand HRQoL significantly improved. While no significantly different overall direct costs trends were found between naïve and non naïve patients, naïve patients showed generally a significant mean higher improvement of clinical outcomes, HRQoL and indirect costs, compared to the others.Conclusions: Our results suggest how tailoring the treatment strategy according to the complex and specific patient needs make it possible to achieve benefits and to allocate more efficiently resources. This study can also provide information on the most relevant items to be considered when conducting cost-effectiveness studies comparing specific alternatives for the treatment of target patients
Early life stage mechanisms of an active fish species to cope with ocean warming and hypoxia as interacting stressors
Ocean’s characteristics are rapidly changing, modifying environmental suitability for early life stages of fish. We
assessed whether the chronic effects of warming (24 ◦C) and hypoxia (<2–2.5 mg L− 1
) will be amplified by the
combination of these stressors on mortality, growth, behaviour, metabolism and oxidative stress of early stages of
the white seabream Diplodus sargus. Combined warming and hypoxia synergistically increased larval mortality by
>51%. Warming induced faster growth in length and slower gains in weight when compared to other treatments.
Boldness and exploration were not directly affected, but swimming activity increased under all test treatments.
Under the combination of warming and hypoxia, routine metabolic rate (RMR) significantly decreases when
compared to other treatments and shows a negative thermal dependence. Superoxide dismutase and catalase
activities increased under warming and were maintained similar to control levels under hypoxia or under
combined stressors. Under hypoxia, the enzymatic activities were not enough to prevent oxidative damages as
lipid peroxidation and DNA damage increased above control levels. Hypoxia reduced electron transport system
activity (cellular respiration) and isocitrate dehydrogenase activity (aerobic metabolism) below control levels.
However, lactate dehydrogenase activity (anaerobic metabolism) did not differ among treatments. A Redundancy Analysis showed that ~99% of the variability in mortality, growth, behaviour and RMR among treatments
can be explained by molecular responses. Mortality and growth are highly influenced by oxidative stress and
energy metabolism, exhibiting a positive relationship with reactive oxygen species and a negative relationship
with aerobic metabolism, regardless of treatment. Under hypoxic condition, RMR, boldness and swimming activity have a positive relationship with anaerobic metabolism regardless of temperature. Thus, seabreams may
use anaerobic reliance to counterbalance the effects of the stressors on RMR, activity and growth. The outcomes
suggests that early life stages of white seabream overcame the single and combined effects of hypoxia and
warming.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Does Solar Physics Provide Constraints to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles?
We investigate whether present data on helioseismology and solar neutrino
fluxes may constrain WIMP--matter interactions in the range of WIMP parameters
under current exploration in WIMP searches. We find that, for a WIMP mass of 30
GeV, once the effect of the presence of WIMPs in the Sun's interior is
maximized, the squared isothermal sound speed is modified, with respect to the
standard solar model, by at most 0.4% at the Sun's center. The maximal effect
on the Boron-8 solar neutrino flux is a reduction of 4.5%. Larger masses lead
to smaller effects. These results imply that present sensitivities in the
measurements of solar properties, though greatly improved in recent years, do
not provide information or constraints on WIMP properties of relevance for dark
matter. Furthermore, we show that, when current bounds from direct WIMP
searches are taken into account, the effect induced by WIMPs with dominant
coherent interactions are drastically reduced as compared to the values quoted
above. The case of neutralinos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is
also discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 2 tables and 9 figures, typeset with ReVTeX4. The paper may
also be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers/helio.ps.gz or
through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart/index.htm
Balancing selection on a recessive lethal deletion with pleiotropic effects on two neighboring genes in the porcine genome
Livestock populations can be used to study recessive defects caused by deleterious alleles. The frequency of deleterious alleles including recessive lethal alleles can stay at high or moderate frequency within a population, especially if recessive lethal alleles exhibit an advantage for favourable traits in heterozygotes. In this study, we report such a recessive lethal deletion of 212kb (del) within the BBS9 gene in a breeding population of pigs. The deletion produces a truncated BBS9 protein expected to cause a complete loss-of-function, and we find a reduction of approximately 20% on the total number of piglets born from carrier by carrier matings. Homozygous del/del animals die mid- to late-gestation, as observed from high increase in numbers of mummified piglets resulting from carrier-by-carrier crosses. The moderate 10.8% carrier frequency (5.4% allele frequency) in this pig population suggests an advantage on a favourable trait in heterozygotes. Indeed, heterozygous carriers exhibit increased growth rate, an important selection trait in pig breeding. Increased growth and appetite together with a lower birth weight for carriers of the BBS9 null allele in pigs is analogous to the phenotype described in human and mouse for (naturally occurring) BBS9 null-mutants. We show that fetal death, however, is induced by reduced expression of the downstream BMPER gene, an essential gene for normal foetal development. In conclusion, this study describes a lethal 212kb deletion with pleiotropic effects on two different genes, one resulting in fetal death in homozygous state (BMPER), and the other increasing growth (BBS9) in heterozygous state. We provide strong evidence for balancing selection resulting in an unexpected high frequency of a lethal allele in the population. This study shows that the large amounts of genomic and phenotypic data routinely generated in modern commercial breeding programs deliver a powerful tool to monitor and control lethal alleles much more efficiently.</p
Search for and Using Genetic Programming Event Selection
We apply a genetic programming technique to search for the double Cabibbo
suppressed decays and .
We normalize these decays to their Cabibbo favored partners and find
\Lambda_c^+ \to p K^+ \pi^-\Lambda_c^+ \to p K^-
\pi^+ and D_s^+ \to K^+ K^+
\pi^-D_s^+ \to K^+ K^- \pi^+ where
the first errors are statistical and the second are systematic. Expressed as
90% confidence levels (CL), we find and respectively.
This is the first successful use of genetic programming in a high energy
physics data analysis.Comment: 10 page
A Non-parametric Approach to the D+ to K*0bar mu+ nu Form Factors
Using a large sample of D+ -> K- pi+ mu+ nu decays collected by the FOCUS
photoproduction experiment at Fermilab, we present the first measurements of
the helicity basis form factors free from the assumption of spectroscopic pole
dominance. We also present the first information on the form factor that
controls the s-wave interference discussed in a previous paper by the FOCUS
collaboration. We find reasonable agreement with the usual assumption of
spectroscopic pole dominance and measured form factor ratios.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, and 2 tables. We updated the previous version by
changing some words, removing one plot, and adding two tables. These changes
are mostly stylisti
Measurements of Branching Ratios
Using data collected by the fixed target Fermilab experiment FOCUS, we
measure the branching ratios of the Cabibbo favored decays , , and relative to to be
, , and ,
respectively. We report the first observation of the Cabibbo suppressed decay
and we measure the branching ratio relative to
to be . We also set 90%
confidence level upper limits for and relative to to
be 0.12 and 0.05, respectively. We find an indication of the decays and and set
90% confidence level upper limits for the branching ratios with respect to
to be 0.12 and 1.72, respectively. Finally, we
determine the 90% C.L. upper limit for the resonant contribution relative to to be 0.10.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure
Dalitz plot analysis of D_s+ and D+ decay to pi+pi-pi+ using the K-matrix formalism
FOCUS results from Dalitz plot analysis of D_s+ and D+ to pi+pi-pi+ are
presented. The K-matrix formalism is applied to charm decays for the first time
to fully exploit the already existing knowledge coming from the light-meson
spectroscopy experiments. In particular all the measured dynamics of the S-wave
pipi scattering, characterized by broad/overlapping resonances and large
non-resonant background, can be properly included. This paper studies the
extent to which the K-matrix approach is able to reproduce the observed Dalitz
plot and thus help us to understand the underlying dynamics. The results are
discussed, along with their possible implications on the controversial nature
of the sigma meson.Comment: To be submitted to Phys.Lett.B A misprint corrected in formula
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