El uso de SIG en la zonificación de las áreas protegidas- Apa- Itaúna/Brasil- un caso de estudio

Este artículo trata sobre el uso de Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) como herramienta esencial en el tratamiento de información que apoyan el desarrollo de una zonificación ambiental. El estudio tiene como objetivo diagnosticar una zona de interés medioambiental situado en Itaúna/Brasil propuso la creación de una APA (Área de Protección Ambiental), basados en la cartografía de las características físicas, ambientales, morfológicas y sociales, así como gestión de riesgos y ocupación de la tierra. Al final, se propone que la delimitación de la zona y una zonificación modelo, desarrollado con la ayuda directa de los SIG, habida cuenta de las muchas alternativas que ofrece esta herramienta, por ejemplo, la integración y la manipulación de varias variables complejas, permitiendo una planificación y espacialmente gestionarse con más eficacia.This article deals about the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an essential tool in the treatment of information that support the development of an Environmental Zoning. The study pretend to diagnose an area of environmental interest located in Itaúna/Brazil and propose the creation of an APA (Environmental Protection Area), based in mapping of physical, environmental, morphological and social condition, as well as risk management and occupation of land. At the end it is proposed that the demarcation of the area and a model zoning, developed with the direct assistance of GIS, given the many alternatives that this tool provides, for example, integration and manipulation of several complex variables, allowing a planning and a more efficient space management

Basic language learning in artificial animals

We explore a general architecture for artificial animals, or animats, that develops over time. The architecture combines reinforcementlearning, dynamic concept formation, and homeostatic decision-making aimed at need satisfaction. We show that thisarchitecture, which contains no ad hoc features for language processing, is capable of basic language learning of three kinds: (i)learning to reproduce phonemes that are perceived in the environment via motor babbling; (ii) learning to reproduce sequences ofphonemes corresponding to spoken words perceived in the environment; and (iii) learning to ground the semantics of spoken wordsin sensory experience by associating spoken words (e.g. the word “cold”) to sensory experience (e.g. the activity of a sensor forcold temperature) and vice versa

Co-evolution of cerebral and cerebellar expansion in cetaceans.

Cetaceans possess brains that rank among the largest to have ever evolved, either in terms of absolute mass or relative to body size. Cetaceans have evolved these huge brains under relatively unique environmental conditions, making them a fascinating case study to investigate the constraints and selection pressures that shape how brains evolve. Indeed, cetaceans have some unusual neuroanatomical features, including a thin but highly folded cerebrum with low cortical neuron density, as well as many structural adaptations associated with acoustic communication. Previous reports also suggest that at least some cetaceans have an expanded cerebellum, a brain structure with wide-ranging functions in adaptive filtering of sensory information, the control of motor actions, and cognition. Here, we report that, relative to the size of the rest of the brain, both the cerebrum and cerebellum are dramatically enlarged in cetaceans and show evidence of co-evolution, a pattern of brain evolution that is convergent with primates. However, we also highlight several branches where cortico-cerebellar co-evolution may be partially decoupled, suggesting these structures can respond to independent selection pressures. Across cetaceans, we find no evidence of a simple linear relationship between either cerebrum and cerebellum size and the complexity of social ecology or acoustic communication, but do find evidence that their expansion may be associated with dietary breadth. In addition, our results suggest that major increases in both cerebrum and cerebellum size occurred early in cetacean evolution, prior to the origin of the major extant clades, and predate the evolution of echolocation

Scaling of Brain Metabolism with a Fixed Energy Budget per Neuron: Implications for Neuronal Activity, Plasticity and Evolution

It is usually considered that larger brains have larger neurons, which consume more energy individually, and are therefore accompanied by a larger number of glial cells per neuron. These notions, however, have never been tested. Based on glucose and oxygen metabolic rates in awake animals and their recently determined numbers of neurons, here I show that, contrary to the expected, the estimated glucose use per neuron is remarkably constant, varying only by 40% across the six species of rodents and primates (including humans). The estimated average glucose use per neuron does not correlate with neuronal density in any structure. This suggests that the energy budget of the whole brain per neuron is fixed across species and brain sizes, such that total glucose use by the brain as a whole, by the cerebral cortex and also by the cerebellum alone are linear functions of the number of neurons in the structures across the species (although the average glucose consumption per neuron is at least 10× higher in the cerebral cortex than in the cerebellum). These results indicate that the apparently remarkable use in humans of 20% of the whole body energy budget by a brain that represents only 2% of body mass is explained simply by its large number of neurons. Because synaptic activity is considered the major determinant of metabolic cost, a conserved energy budget per neuron has several profound implications for synaptic homeostasis and the regulation of firing rates, synaptic plasticity, brain imaging, pathologies, and for brain scaling in evolution

A region-based algorithm for automatic bone segmentation in volumetric CT

In Computed Tomography (CT), bone segmentation is considered an important step to extract bone parameters, which are frequently useful for computer-aided diagnosis, surgery and treatment of many diseases such as osteoporosis. Consequently, the development of accurate and reliable segmentation techniques is essential, since it often provides a great impact on quantitative image analysis and diagnosis outcome. This chapter presents an automated multistep approach for bone segmentation in volumetric CT datasets. It starts with a three-dimensional (3D) watershed operation on an image gradient magnitude. The outcome of the watershed algorithm is an over-partioning image of many 3D regions that can be merged, yielding a meaningful image partitioning. In order to reduce the number of regions, a merging procedure was performed that merges neighbouring regions presenting a mean intensity distribution difference of ±15%. Finally, once all bones have been distinguished in high contrast, the final 3D bone segmentation was achieved by selecting all regions with bone fragments, using the information retrieved by a threshold mask. The bones contours were accurately defined according to the watershed regions outlines instead of considering the thresholding segmentation result. This new method was tested to segment the rib cage on 185 CT images, acquired at the São João Hospital of Porto (Portugal) and evaluated using the dice similarity coefficient as a statistical validation metric, leading to a coefficient mean score of 0.89. This could represent a step forward towards accurate and automatic quantitative analysis in clinical environments and decreasing time-consumption, user dependence and subjectivity.The authors acknowledge to Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) - Portugal for the fellowships with the references: SFRH/BD/74276/2010; SFRH/BD/68270/2010; and, SFRH/BPD/46851/2008. This work was also supported by FCT R&D project PTDC/SAU-BEB/103368/2008

Phylogenetic Analysis and Karyotype Evolution in Two Species of Core Gruiformes: Aramides cajaneus and Psophia viridis.

Gruiformes is a group with phylogenetic issues. Recent studies based on mitochondrial and genomic DNA have proposed the existence of a core Gruiformes, consisting of five families: Heliornithidae, Aramidae, Gruidae, Psophiidae and Rallidae. Karyotype studies on these species are still scarce, either by conventional staining or molecular cytogenetics. Due to this, this study aimed to analyze the karyotype of two species (Aramides cajaneus and Psophia viridis) belonging to families Rallidae and Psopiidae, respectively, by comparative chromosome painting. The results show that some chromosome rearrangements in this group have different origins, such as the association of GGA5/GGA7 in A. cajaneus, as well as the fission of GGA4p and association GGA6/GGA7, which place P. viridis close to Fulica atra and Gallinula chloropus. In addition, we conclude that the common ancestor of the core Gruiformes maintained the original syntenic groups found in the putative avian ancestral karyotype

Partitioning and purification of polygalacturonases produced by Aspergillus niger URM 5162 using PEG-phosphate in an aqueous two-phase system

Pectinases, or pectinolytic enzymes, are naturally produced by plants, filamentous fungi, bacteria and yeasts. The pectinases are of great importance to clarify and reduce viscosity in fruit juices, improving and increasing tbe filtration efficiency. When used in the crushing of grapes or wine must improve juice extraction, reduce the time to clarify and enhance tbe content ofterpenes in wine. The filamentous fungi most frequently used fur industrial purposes because as much as 90% ofthe enzyme can be excreted into the culture medium. The partitioning and purification of polygalacturonases (PG) produced by Aspergillus niger URM 5162 were investigated in aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS), furmed by polyetbylene glycol and phosphate salts (PE(ijlhosphate). To evaluate the effect oftbe 4 independent variables- molar mass ofpolyetbylene glycol (PEG) (400-8000 g1nol MPEG), PEG concentration (12.5-17.5%, w/w- CPEG), phosphate concentration (15-25%, ...W, CPHOS) and pH (6.0, 8.0) - on the 3 response variables: partition coefficient (K), activity yield (Y) and purification fàctor (PF), a fuctorial design (24) was used. The endo-polygalacturonases (endo-PG) were prefurentially partitioned in tbe top phase. For endo-PG, the highest values for the response variables K, Y and PF of 1.23, 74.04% and 8.18, respectively, were obtained for a CPEG of 12.5% (...W), MPEG of8000 g1nol, and CPHOS of25% (w/w) at pH 6.0. Also, exo-polygalacturonases (exo-PG) were preferentially partitioned in the top phase. ln tbis case, the highest values ofK (2.40), Y (33.33%), and PF (1.98) were obtained with a MPEG of 8000 g1nol, CPEG of 12.5% (...W), and CPHOS of25% (...W) at pH 6.0. ln both cases, MPEG had a positive influence on K, Y and PF. The conditions ofMPEG 8000 g1nol, CPEG of 12.5% (...W), and CPHOS of25% (...W) at pH 6.0 were considered the most suitable for tbe purification of PG produced by A. niger URM 5162. Furtbermore, MPEG and CPHOS were the most important independent variables. The PEG/phosphate system is a useful cost-effective altemative for PG purification