Flora de Cabo Verde: Plantas Vasculares - 32. Cucurbitaceae

Ervas anuais ou perenes, escandentes, trepadoras ou prostradas, com gavinhas, raramente ervas erectas sem gavinhas. Folhas alternas, palminerveas, simples ou pedadamente compostas. Gavinhas distalmente 2-fidas ou proximalmente 2-7-fidas, raras vezes reduzidas a espinhos ou ausentes, em geral urna por nó. Flores unissexuadas, monóicas ou dióicas, axilares, diversamente dispostas, as Q geralmente solitarias. Probrácteas por vezes presentes na base dos pedúnculos. Tubo-receptáculo (hipanto) curto a tubular, em geral -i-lobado, lobos geralmente pequenos. Pétalas em geral 5, livres ou diversamente unidas, corola na maioria dos casos regular. Androceu basicamente com 5 estames, diversamente modificado, em geral com 2 duplos estames e 1 estame simples, livres ou f unidos; tecas das anteras frequentemente convolutas; estaminódios com frequência presentes nas flores Q. Ovário ínfero, 1-locular ou por vezes 34ocular, geralmente formado a partir de 3 carpelos unidos; placentacão parietal, raramente axilar, placentas com frequência intrusivas; óvulos anatrópicos, horizontais, pêndulos ou ascendentes; estilete 1, com 2 ou geralmente 3 lobos estigmáticos. ou 3 estiletes. Fruto seco ou carnudo, cápsula, baga ou pepónio de casca dura, diversamente deiscente ou indeiscente, I -polispérmico, raras vezes tuna sâmara 1-spérmica. Sementes frequentemente achatadas, por vezex aladas: embrião grande; endosperma ausente. Familia pantropical de cerca de 600 espécies, algumas economicamente importantes como plantas alimenticias

Current status of the whitefly Aleurodicus dispersus as an invasive pest in the CapeVerte Islands

In the last three decades, the spiralling whitefly (Aleurodicus dispersus) has become an important international pest. The movement of plants and parts of plants (such as fruits) in international trade and tourism, and by natural dispersal, has favoured its introduction to new areas. In common with others whiteflies of economic importance, the immature and adult stages cause direct feeding damage by piercing and sucking of sap from foliage, and indirect damage following the accumulation all over host plants of honeydew and waxy flocculent material produced by the insects. Spiralling whitefly is a pest of tropical and subtropical crops, and highly polyphagous. Up to the 1970s, it had been recorded on 44 genera of plants, belonging to 26 botanical families (Mound & Halsey, 1978). This situation changed with the dispersal of the pest to new areas. Nowadays, the spiralling whitefly is one of the major pest of vegetable, ornamental and fruit crops around the globe (Lambkin, 1999). Important host crops include: banana (Musa sapientum), Citrus spp., coconut (Cocos nocifera), eggplant (Solanum melanogena), guava (Psidium guajava), Hibiscus rosa sinensis, Indian almond (Terminalia catappa), papya (Carica papaya), Rosa sp. and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) (Saminathan & Jayaraj, 2001). Spiralling whitefly has its origin in the tropical Americas, including Brazil. Although the pest has been recorded only once in Brasil, in the 1920s in the state of Bahia (Bondar, 1923), it now has official quarantine status because of its economic importance. In the Cape Verte Islands, on the West African coast, the pest was initially introduced in the first half of 2000; it has since become established, reaching urban, natural and agricultural areas of the islands that constitute the archipelago. Since then, the pest has been causing damage to many native plants, ornamentals and cultivated food crops (Anon., 2001; Monteiro, 2004). The present study was done in order to produce an inventory of the most common host plants of spiralling whitefly in this new habitat

Laser printing of micro-electronic communication systems for smart implants applications

Endow the implant with intrinsic communication system between sensors and actuators or between implant and patient is a key factor for its long-term success. The capacity of early diagnosis of failures and the ability to remedy them are necessary to minimize expensive complications and reducing revision procedures. Ti6Al4V is the most used titanium alloy for implant’s fabrication. In this sense, this work presents a promising approach to print communication systems by using laser technology, aiming integrate the smart components on titanium implants. Laser has been employed as a versatile tool to modify the surface in different ways, such as texturing, oxidizing and sintering. Silver wires have been printed on Ti6Al4V surface in order to conduct electrical current. To minimize current loss for the substrate, titanium oxide layer has been produced by different methods (laser and anodization). Laser sintering (LS) has been also compared to a conventional method (Hot-pressing- HP) to consolidate the silver powder into the cavities. In comparison to the conventional techniques, laser demonstrated to be a competitive approach to oxidizing the surface and also for consolidating the micro-wires on Ti6Al4V surface. Consequently, the micro-wires printed by laser approach presented satisfactory results in terms of electrical resistance, actuating as the conductor path for electrical current, with values of 0.0131 Ω, which is similar to the resistance of the wire printed in an insulator substrate.This work has been supported by FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia -Portugal) in the scope of the projects UID/EEA/04436/ 2019 and NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000018-HAMaBICo and Add.Additive_Manufacturing to Portuguese Industry_POCI-01-0247- FEDER-024533. I wish to thank the CNPq (205791/2014-0)

Effect of interchain coupling on conducting polymer luminescence: excimers in derivatives of poly(phenylene vinylene)

Optical excitation of a chain in a polymer film may result in formation of an excimer, a superposition of on-chain excitons and charge-transfer excitons on the originally excited chain and a neighboring chain. The excimer emission is red-shifted compared to that of an on-chain exciton by an amount depending on the interchain coupling $t_\perp$. Setting up the excimer wavefunction and calculating the red shift, we determine average $t_\perp$ values, referred to a monomer, of 0.52 eV and 0.16 eV for poly(2,5-hexyloxy $p$-phenylene cyanovinylene), CN-PPV, and poly[2-methoxy, 5-(2'-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1, 4 p-phenylene vinylene], MEH-PPV, respectively, and use them to determine the effect of interchain distance on the emission.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX, 1 PS figure, replaced version of cond-mat/9707095, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B, Rapid Communicatio

Energy production predication via Internet of Thing based machine learning system

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Wind energy is an interesting source of alternative energy to complement the Brazilian energy matrix. However, one of the great challenges lies in managing this resource, due to its uncertainty behavior. This study addresses the estimation of the electric power generation of a wind turbine, so that this energy can be used efficiently and sustainable. Real wind and power data generated in set of wind turbines installed in a wind farm in Ceará State, Brazil, were used to obtain the power curve from a wind turbine using logistic regression, integrated with Nonlinear Autoregressive neural networks to forecast wind speeds. In our system the average error in power generation estimate is of 29 W for 5 days ahead forecast. We decreased the error in the manufacturer\u27s power curve in 63%, with a logics regression approach, providing a 2.7 times more accurate estimate. The results have a large potential impact for the wind farm managers since it could drive not only the operation and maintenance but management level of energy sells

Inconsistency in shoulder arthrometers for measuring glenohumeral joint laxity: a systematic review

There is no consensus on how to measure shoulder joint laxity and results reported in the literature are not well systematized for the available shoulder arthrometer devices. This systematic review aims to summarize the results of currently available shoulder arthrometers for measuring glenohumeral laxity in individuals with healthy or injured shoulders. Searches were conducted on the PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases to identify studies that measure glenohumeral laxity with arthrometer-assisted assessment. The mean and standard deviations of the laxity measurement from each study were compared based on the type of population and arthrometer used. Data were organized according to the testing characteristics. A total of 23 studies were included and comprised 1162 shoulders. Populations were divided into 401 healthy individuals, 278 athletes with asymptomatic shoulder, and 134 individuals with symptomatic shoulder. Sensors were the most used method for measuring glenohumeral laxity and stiffness. Most arthrometers applied an external force to the humeral head or superior humerus by a manual-assisted mechanism. Glenohumeral laxity and stiffness were mostly assessed in the sagittal plane. There is substantial heterogeneity in glenohumeral laxity values that is mostly related to the arthrometer used and the testing conditions. This variability can lead to inconsistent results and influence the diagnosis and treatment decision-making.This article is a result of the project DILATO (reference 47289) supported by the Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)

Mathematical modelling of earlier stages of COVID-19 transmission dynamics in Ghana

In late 2019, a novel coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was identified in Wuhan, China and later spread to every corner of the globe. Whilst the number of infection-induced deaths in Ghana, West Africa are minimal when compared with the rest of the world, the impact on the local health service is still significant. Compartmental models are a useful framework for investigating transmission of diseases in societies. To understand how the infection will spread and how to limit the outbreak. We have developed a modified SEIR compartmental model with nine compartments (CoVCom9) to describe the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in Ghana. We have carried out a detailed mathematical analysis of the CoVCom9, including the derivation of the basic reproduction number, . In particular, we have shown that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable when  via a candidate Lyapunov function. Using the SARS-CoV-2 reported data for confirmed-positive cases and deaths from March 13 to August 10, 2020, we have parametrised the CoVCom9 model. The results of this fit show good agreement with data. We used Latin hypercube sampling-rank correlation coefficient (LHS-PRCC) to investigate the uncertainty and sensitivity of  since the results derived are significant in controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We estimate that over this five month period, the basic reproduction number is given by , with the 95% confidence interval being , and the mean value being . Of the 32 parameters in the model, we find that just six have a significant influence on , these include the rate of testing, where an increasing testing rate contributes to the reduction of 

Distinct microbial and immune niches of the human colon.

Gastrointestinal microbiota and immune cells interact closely and display regional specificity; however, little is known about how these communities differ with location. Here, we simultaneously assess microbiota and single immune cells across the healthy, adult human colon, with paired characterization of immune cells in the mesenteric lymph nodes, to delineate colonic immune niches at steady state. We describe distinct helper T cell activation and migration profiles along the colon and characterize the transcriptional adaptation trajectory of regulatory T cells between lymphoid tissue and colon. Finally, we show increasing B cell accumulation, clonal expansion and mutational frequency from the cecum to the sigmoid colon and link this to the increasing number of reactive bacterial species

Embedded real-time speed limit sign recognition using image processing and machine learning techniques

Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-29T04:54:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2017-12-01Instituto Federal do Ceara (IFCE)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020) through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER)The number of traffic accidents in Brazil has reached alarming levels and is currently one of the leading causes of death in the country. With the number of vehicles on the roads increasing rapidly, these problems will tend to worsen. Consequently, huge investments in resources to increase road safety will be required. The vertical R-19 system for optical character recognition of regulatory traffic signs (maximum speed limits) according to Brazilian Standards developed in this work uses a camera positioned at the front of the vehicle, facing forward. This is so that images of traffic signs can be captured, enabling the use of image processing and analysis techniques for sign detection. This paper proposes the detection and recognition of speed limit signs based on a cascade of boosted classifiers working with haar-like features. The recognition of the sign detected is achieved based on the optimum-path forest classifier (OPF), support vector machines (SVM), multilayer perceptron, k-nearest neighbor (kNN), extreme learning machine, least mean squares, and least squares machine learning techniques. The SVM, OPF and kNN classifiers had average accuracies higher than 99.5 %; the OPF classifier with a linear kernel took an average time of 87 mu s to recognize a sign, while kNN took 11,721 ls and SVM 12,595 ls. This sign detection approach found and recognized successfully 11,320 road signs from a set of 12,520 images, leading to an overall accuracy of 90.41 %. Analyzing the system globally recognition accuracy was 89.19 %, as 11,167 road signs from a database with 12,520 signs were correctly recognized. The processing speed of the embedded system varied between 20 and 30 frames per second. Therefore, based on these results, the proposed system can be considered a promising tool with high commercial potential.Inst Fed Fed Educ Ciencia & Tecnol Ceara IFCE, Lab Proc Digital Imagens & Simulacao Computac, Juazeiro Do Norte, Ceara, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista, Dept Ciencia Comp, Bauru, SP, BrazilUniv Fortaleza, Programa Posgrad Informat Aplicada, Lab Bioinformat, Fortaleza, CE, BrazilUniv Porto, Fac Engn, Inst Ciencia & Inovacao Engn Mecan & Engn Ind, Dept Engn Mecan, Oporto, PortugalUniv Estadual Paulista, Dept Ciencia Comp, Bauru, SP, BrazilInstituto Federal do Ceara (IFCE): PROINFRA/2013Instituto Federal do Ceara (IFCE): PROAPP/2014Instituto Federal do Ceara (IFCE): PROINFRA/2015CNPq: 470501/2013-8CNPq: 301928/2014-2: NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-00002