Assessing the Profitability of Guava Production in South Florida Under Risk and Uncertainty

This article discusses an assessment of the profitability of operating a 5-acre Thai guava orchard in South Florida. The assessment used simulation techniques to incorporate yield and price risks. The article also demonstrates the use of a stoplight chart, an approach Extension agents might adopt to aid clients\u27 decision making. The stoplight chart presents the results of the analysis, which indicate a 2% chance that the grower would experience a negative return/loss (red), a 21% chance that the return would be greater than $0 but less than$8,450 (yellow), and a 77% chance that the return would be greater than $8,450 (green)

X-Ray Eclipse Time Delays in 4U2129+47

4U 2129+47 was discovered in the early 80's and classified as an accretion disk corona source due to its broad and partial X-ray eclipses. The 5.24 hr binary orbital period was inferred from the X-ray and optical light curve modulation, implying a late K or M spectral type companion star. The source entered a low state in 1983, during which the optical modulation disappeared and an F8 IV star was revealed, suggesting that 4U 2129+47 might be part of a triple system. The nature of 4U 2129+47 has since been investigated, but no definitive conclusion has been reached. Here, we present timing and spectral analyses of two XMM-Newton observations of this source, carried out in May and June, 2005. We find evidence for a delay between two mid-eclipse epochs measured ~22 days apart, and we show that this delay can be naturally explained as being due to the orbital motion of the binary 4U 2129+47 around the center of mass of a triple system. This result thus provides further support in favor of the triple nature of 4U 2129+47.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, accepted by A&

Preliminary trials on the effects of weaning and larval diets on survival and growth of silver therapon (Leiopotherapon plumbeus) larvae

Abstract only.Success in larval rearing of silver therapon can be achieved through early weaning of fish larvae from live food to artificial diet. Two experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of (a) weaning age (abrupt and gradual) and (b) larval diets (artificial and live foods) on survival and growth of silver therapon (Leiopotherapon plumbeus). In the first experiment, larvae were randomly stocked in round 4-l plastic basins at 15 larvae per basin to provide triplicates of four weaning age treatments (8, 14, 20 and 26 days after hatching or DAH, respectively). Larvae were fed thrice daily for 21 days with commercial feed (CF) and with copepods (COP) which served as the control. Larvae weaned at 26 DAH had the highest survival, body weight and total length among the treatment groups, which were comparable with that of the control. In the co-feeding protocol, larvae were fed Artemia nauplii (ART) as the control group and co-fed with either zooplankton i.e. 50% COP + 50% CF or 50% ART + 50% CF for 8 (8-15 DAH), 6 (14-19 DAH) and 4 (20-23 DAH) days, and suddenly weaned to FM until 21 days. Survival ranged from 22.2 ± 16.8 to 40.0 ± 24.0% between treatments, but was still lower than the control (88.9 ± 3.8%). Body weight and total length were significantly higher in larvae with co-feeding for 4 days (70.1 ± 2.8 mg; 18.1 ± 0.8 mm), but were still lower than that of the control (142.8 ± 7.6 mg; 22.3 ± 0.3 mm). In the second experiment, 26-day old larvae were stocked in 20-l glass aquaria at 4 larvae l-1. Larval diets ((I) commercial prawn feed (38% crude protein); (II) Artemia nauplii; (III) copepods; and (IV) free-living nematode Panagrellus redivivus) were given twice daily for 28 days. Survival was highest in larvae fed Artemia nauplii and poor in copepod fed larvae. Final total length (TL) of larvae fed prawn diet was higher than those fed copepod or nematodes. However, best growth was noted in larvae fed Artemia nauplii (TL= 24.30 ± 0.81 mm; BW = 156 ± 8 mg; specific growth rate or SGR = 5.33 ± 0.19%/d)

Modelos Matemáticos e suas Diversas Aplicações

Através de cursos interdisciplinares como o Bacharelado em Ciência e Tecnologia do Mar, é possível observar como diversas áreas do conhecimento muito diferentes entre si relacionam-se, e um elo significativo que conecta os referidos campos são as EDO, já que este conceito pode ser amplamente utilizado por inúmeras disciplinas e áreas de pesquisa. Com isso, este projeto apresenta os modelos matemáticos e suas diversas aplicações, visando evidenciar como os conceitos relacionados às EDO podem ser utilizados nos mais diversos âmbitos. Através de uma revisão bibliográfica realizada utilizando-se a bibliografia existente acerca do assunto disponível em bases de dados como Google Academicos, Scielo e Science Direct, uma pesquisa quantitativa foi executada acerca do referido conteúdo, relacionando-o às seguintes áreas: saúde, ecologia, forense e química nuclear. Apresenta-se uma abordagem geral de cada área escolhida, explicitando como os modelos matemáticos são utilizados nos campos citados, abrangendo, por exemplo, questões como o número de infectados por uma doença, a população de uma determinada espécie, a temperatura de um corpo e o decaimento radioativo de certa substância. Com isso, foi possível observar a versatilidade de aplicação das equações diferenciais ordinárias e como o aprendizado acerca do conteúdo de modelos matemáticos é importante para a sociedade, bem como a realização de incentivos para a realização desse e para a pesquisa que visa a aplicação do referido conceito para as mais diversas áreas.Through interdisciplinary courses such as the Bachelor of Science and Technology of the Sea, it is possible to observe how several areas of knowledge that are very different from each other are related, and a significant link that connects the referred fields are the ordinary differential equations, since this concept can be widely used by numerous disciplines and research areas. Thus, this project presents mathematical models and their various applications, aiming to show how concepts related to ordinary differential equations can be used in the most diverse areas. Through a bibliographic review carried out using the existing bibliography on the subject available in databases such as Google Academicos, Scielo and Science Direct, a quantitative research was performed on the referred content, relating it to the following areas: health, ecology, forensics and nuclear chemistry. A general approach to each chosen area is presented, explaining how mathematical models are used in the aforementioned fields, covering, for example, issues such as the number of people infected by a disease, the population of a given species, the temperature of a body and the radioactive decay of a certain substance. With this, it was possible to observe the versatility of application of ordinary differential equations and how learning about the content of mathematical models is important for society, as well as the realization of incentives for the realization of this and for the research that aims at the application of the aforementioned concept for the most diverse areas

Larval rearing of silver therapon (Leiopotherapon plumbeus) in outdoor tanks

Abstract only.Silver therapon (Leiopotherapon plumbeus, Kner 1864), locally known as ayungin, is an important freshwater food fish species found in Laguna de Bay, the largest lake in the Philippines. Its market price is twice that of other most sought after freshwater fishes such as tilapia and milkfish. However, intense fishing pressure on the species has significantly reduced the wild stock in Laguna de Bay. Studies to develop hatchery techniques for this indigenous freshwater fish species are therefore needed to produce seedstock for possible culture and wild stock rehabilitation. This study highlights the successful larval rearing of silver therapon in outdoor concrete tanks. Larvae reared in outdoor tanks with natural food (grown two weeks beforehand) reached the juvenile stage (40 days after hatching (DAH)), suggesting the presence of some suitable live food organisms in pre-conditioned rearing water. However, larval survival rates were low (11.58 ± 6.56% at stocking density of 0.9 larvae l-1), which is probably linked to the density of food items, particularly during the onset of exogenous feeding or due to high stocking density of larvae. To improve the availability of natural food for the larvae, fertilization of the rearing water in the outdoor tanks stocked with larvae at two densities (0.4 and 0.6 larvae l-1) was performed. Larval growth and survival were improved at stocking density of 0.4 larvae l-1 than at 0.6 larvae l-1. Diet composition of first-feeding silver therapon larvae in outdoor tanks inoculated with cultured microalgae (Chorella sorokiniana) and zooplankton was also determined. Larvae were able to consume rotifers and some phytoplankton beginning at 2 DAH and larger preys such as cladocerans and insect larvae starting at 12 DAH. The efficacy of raising silver therapon larvae in outdoor tanks using ambient lake water was also evaluated. Larvae reared in ambient lake water grew well but survival (48.44 ± 7.85%) was significantly improved in treatments where tropical almond or talisay Terminalia catappa leaves were added during the first two weeks of larval rearing

<i>VivesDebate</i>:A New Annotated Multilingual Corpus of Argumentation in a Debate Tournament

The application of the latest Natural Language Processing breakthroughs in computational argumentation has shown promising results, which have raised the interest in this area of research. However, the available corpora with argumentative annotations are often limited to a very specific purpose or are not of adequate size to take advantage of state-of-the-art deep learning techniques (e.g., deep neural networks). In this paper, we present VivesDebate, a large, richly annotated and versatile professional debate corpus for computational argumentation research. The corpus has been created from 29 transcripts of a debate tournament in Catalan and has been machine-translated into Spanish and English. The annotation contains argumentative propositions, argumentative relations, debate interactions and professional evaluations of the arguments and argumentation. The presented corpus can be useful for research on a heterogeneous set of computational argumentation underlying tasks such as Argument Mining, Argument Analysis, Argument Evaluation or Argument Generation, among others. All this makes VivesDebate a valuable resource for computational argumentation research within the context of massive corpora aimed at Natural Language Processing tasks

End-to-End Lyrics Recognition with Self-supervised Learning

Lyrics recognition is an important task in music processing. Despite traditional algorithms such as the hybrid HMM- TDNN model achieving good performance, studies on applying end-to-end models and self-supervised learning (SSL) are limited. In this paper, we first establish an end-to-end baseline for lyrics recognition and then explore the performance of SSL models on lyrics recognition task. We evaluate a variety of upstream SSL models with different training methods (masked reconstruction, masked prediction, autoregressive reconstruction, and contrastive learning). Our end-to-end self-supervised models, evaluated on the DAMP music dataset, outperform the previous state-of-the-art (SOTA) system by 5.23% for the dev set and 2.4% for the test set even without a language model trained by a large corpus. Moreover, we investigate the effect of background music on the performance of self-supervised learning models and conclude that the SSL models cannot extract features efficiently in the presence of background music. Finally, we study the out-of-domain generalization ability of the SSL features considering that those models were not trained on music datasets.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

<i>VivesDebate</i>:A New Annotated Multilingual Corpus of Argumentation in a Debate Tournament

The application of the latest Natural Language Processing breakthroughs in computational argumentation has shown promising results, which have raised the interest in this area of research. However, the available corpora with argumentative annotations are often limited to a very specific purpose or are not of adequate size to take advantage of state-of-the-art deep learning techniques (e.g., deep neural networks). In this paper, we present VivesDebate, a large, richly annotated and versatile professional debate corpus for computational argumentation research. The corpus has been created from 29 transcripts of a debate tournament in Catalan and has been machine-translated into Spanish and English. The annotation contains argumentative propositions, argumentative relations, debate interactions and professional evaluations of the arguments and argumentation. The presented corpus can be useful for research on a heterogeneous set of computational argumentation underlying tasks such as Argument Mining, Argument Analysis, Argument Evaluation or Argument Generation, among others. All this makes VivesDebate a valuable resource for computational argumentation research within the context of massive corpora aimed at Natural Language Processing tasks

Pulmonary function evaluation of patients affected by acute respiratory distress syndrome in late postoperative cardiac surgery

Orientadores: Ilma Aparecida Paschoal, Luiz Cláudio MartinsDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Ciências MédicasResumo: Introdução: De acordo com a definição de Berlim, os pacientes são classificados com síndrome do desconforto respiratório agudo (SDRA) quando apresentam insuficiência respiratória aguda não totalmente explicada por insuficiência cardíaca ou sobrecarga de líquidos; opacidades bilaterais condizentes com edema pulmonar na radiografia de tórax ou tomografia computadorizada; e início dentro de uma semana após ocorrência de um fator de risco. A função pulmonar e a oxigenação estão prejudicadas de 20 a 90% dos pacientes submetidos à cirurgia cardíaca com circulação extracorpórea (CEC). Os testes de função pulmonar contribuem para o rastreamento, entendimento fisiopatológico, diagnóstico e acompanhamento de tratamentos de pacientes. Objetivos: Avaliar a função respiratória e a qualidade de vida em sobreviventes da SDRA após cinco anos da cirurgia cardíaca com CEC. Método: Os dados deste estudo foram obtidos a partir do banco de dados e prontuários de pacientes do Hospital das Clínicas da Unicamp. Os indivíduos foram contatados via telefone pela pesquisadora e convidados a comparecer no Ambulatório de Função Pulmonar do mesmo hospital, onde foram convidados a responder o questionário de qualidade de vida (Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire ¿ MLHFQ), seguido de testes de função pulmonar (capnografia volumétrica e espirometria) e teste de caminhada de seis minutos (TC6). Um grupo controle foi utilizado na comparação das variáveis de capnográficas, constituído por 20 indivíduos sem histórico de doenças pulmonares ou cardíacas e não fumantes. Foi utilizado para correção da idade a análise de covariância (Ancova). O nível de significância adotado foi de 5% para os testes estatísticos. Resultados: A idade média dos pacientes foi de 57,1±7,2 anos e 13 (65%) eram do sexo masculino. Um paciente (5%) apresentou SDRA grave e 19 (95%) apresentaram SDRA moderada no pós-operatório. A idade foi significativamente maior no grupo de estudo (p= 0,001) em comparação com o grupo controle. A cirurgia mais frequente foi a revascularização do miocárdio (60%) e todos os pacientes estudados utilizaram circulação extra-corpórea (CEC). Em relação ao Questionário MLHFQ, a pontuação média alcançada correspondeu a 30% do escore máximo. No TC6, a porcentagem média de distância percorrida foi de 109% do valor previsto. Na espirometria, os valores médios de CVF, VEF1 e VEF1 / CVF revelaram uma ligeira restrição e o FEF25-75 foi em média, normal. Nas variáveis capnográficas, foram maiores no grupo controle o peso (p= 0,05), o Ve (p= 0,04), o Vi (p= 0,022) e o VCO2 (p= 0,048). Já no grupo de estudo foram maiores o Slp3 (p= 0,07), o Slp3/Ve (p= 0,011) e o Slp3/ETCO2 (p= 0,002). Foram iguais nos dois grupos todas as outras variáveis capnográficas, inclusive a frequência respiratória. No entanto, todas as diferenças desapareceram na análise de covariância (Ancova) com ajuste para idade. Conclusão: A função respiratória nos sobreviventes da SDRA avaliada após cinco anos pela espirometria e pelo TC6 mostrou-se normal. Também não houve grande alteração da qualidade de vida. Quanto à capnografia volumétrica, foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre casos e controles em algumas das variáveis capnográficas, diferenças estas que desapareceram quando foram ajustadas pela idadeAbstract: Introduction: According to the Berlin definition, patients are classified as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) when they present acute respiratory failure not fully explained by heart failure or fluid overload; bilateral opacities consistent with pulmonary edema on chest radiography or computed tomography; and beginning within one week after occurrence of a risk factor. Pulmonary function and oxygenation are impaired in 20 to 90% of patients undergoing cardiac surgery with extracorporeal circulation (ECC). Pulmonary function tests contribute to the screening, pathophysiological understanding, diagnosis and follow-up of patient treatments. Objectives: To evaluate respiratory function and quality of life in survivors of ARDS after five years of cardiac surgery with ECC. Method: Data from this study were obtained from the database and patient charts of the Hospital das Clínicas of Unicamp. The individuals were contacted via telephone by the researcher and invited to attend the Pulmonary Function Outpatient Clinic of the same hospital, where they were invite to answer the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ), followed by lung function tests ( volumetric capnography and spirometry) and six-minute walk test (6MWT). A control group was used in the comparison of capnographic variables, consisting of 20 individuals with no history of pulmonary or cardiac diseases and nonsmokers. Covariance analysis was used for age correction (Ancova). The level of significance was set at 5% for statistical tests. Results: The mean age of the patients was 57.1 ± 7.2 years and 13 (65%) were male. One patient (5%) had severe ARDS and 19 (95%) presented moderate ARDS in the postoperative period. Age was significantly higher in the study group (p = 0.001) compared to the control group. The most frequent surgery was myocardial revascularization (60%) and all the patients studied used extracorporeal circulation (ECC). Regarding the MLHFQ Questionnaire, the average score reached corresponded to 30% of the maximum score. In TC6, the average distance traveled was 109% of the predicted value. In spirometry, mean values of FVC, FEV1 and FEV1 / FVC showed a slight restriction and FEF 25-75 was on average normal. In the capnographic variables, weight (p = 0.05), Ve (p = 0.04), Vi (p = 0.022) and VCO2 (p = 0.048) were higher in the control group. In the study group, Slp3 (p = 0.07), Slp3 / Ve (p = 0.011) and Slp3 / ETCO2 (p = 0.002) were higher. All other capnographic variables, including respiratory rate, were the same in both groups. However, all differences disappeared in the analysis of covariance (Ancova) with adjustment for age. Conclusion: Respiratory function in survivors of ARDS evaluated after five years by spirometry and by 6MWT was normal. There was also no major change in quality of life. As to volumetric capnography, significant differences were found between cases and controls in some of the capnographic variables, which disappeared when they were adjusted for ageMestradoClinica MedicaMestra em Ciência

Induction and suppression of antiviral RNA silencing by Tomato spotted wilt virus

RNA silencing is an essential antiviral defense system in plants. Triggered by doublestranded RNA, silencing results in degradation or translational repression of target RNA. Viruses are inducers and targets of RNA silencing. To condition susceptibility, most plant viruses encode silencing suppressor proteins that interfere with RNA silencing. Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) NSs protein is an RNA silencing suppressor. The mechanism of RNA silencing suppression by NSs and its role in virus infection and movement remain to be determined. We cloned NSs from the Hawaii isolate of TSWV. Using two independent assays, we show that NSs restored pathogenicity and supported the formation of local infection foci by suppressor-deficient Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) and Turnip crinkle virus (TCV). Suppression of silencing directed against heterologous viruses establishes the foundation to determine the mechanism of antiviral RNA silencing suppression by NSs