Three Tramp Dacetine Ants in Taiwan

Trabalho de projeto do mestrado em Economia (Economia Financeira), apresentado à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra.Neste trabalho, as taxas forward foram utilizadas para prever os valores futuros da Estrutura de Prazo das Taxas de Juro, em diferentes pontos desta estrutura, e em diferentes contextos do sistema financeiro, e abrange o período que vai do final de 2004 ao final de 2014. As taxas spot e forward foram construidas a partir do modelo de Nelson, Siegel e Svensson (1994), e para a anlisar a relação existente entre estes dois tipos de taxas, recorreu-se o método de cointegração proposto por Johansen (1988, 1991). Para períodos mais curtos, foram construídas taxas forward instantâneas, que antecipam as taxas spot instantâneas a distâncias que vão de 1 a 10 dias. Para períodos mais longos, foram construídas taxas forward com prazo de 1 mês, que antecipam as taxas spot com o mesmo prazo, a distâncias que vão de 1 a 12 meses. Nas taxas instantâneas, verificou-se que existe cointegração entre todas as taxas forward e as taxas spot que antecipam, nas estimações que abrangem a totalidade da amostra, e para alguns casos quando se divide a amostra em sub-períodos. Nas taxas mensais, pelo contrário, apenas em alguns casos foi constatada a existência de cointegração, quer para a totalidade do período quer para os sub-períodos. De seguida, foi estimado o Modelo de Correção dos Erros proposto por Johansen (1988, 1991), e recorreu-se à analise da função impulso-resposta, para as taxas cointegradas. As taxas mensais apresentaram sempre um comportamento mais instável, quando comparadas com as taxas instantâneas. Entretanto, com a divisão do período, as taxas instantâneas apresentaram um comportamento instável, principalmente para o sub-período 2012-2014

High expression FUT1 and B3GALT5 is an independent predictor of postoperative recurrence and survival in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Cancer may arise from dedifferentiation of mature cells or maturation-arrested stem cells. Previously we reported that definitive endoderm from which liver was derived, expressed Globo H, SSEA-3 and SSEA-4. In this study, we examined the expression of their biosynthetic enzymes, FUT1, FUT2, B3GALT5 and ST3GAL2, in 135 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues by qRT-PCR. High expression of either FUT1 or B3GALT5 was significantly associated with advanced stages and poor outcome. Kaplan Meier survival analysis showed significantly shorter relapse-free survival (RFS) for those with high expression of either FUT1 or B3GALT5 (P = 0.024 and 0.001, respectively) and shorter overall survival (OS) for those with high expression of B3GALT5 (P = 0.017). Combination of FUT1 and B3GALT5 revealed that high expression of both genes had poorer RFS and OS than the others (P < 0.001). Moreover, multivariable Cox regression analysis identified the combination of B3GALT5 and FUT1 as an independent predictor for RFS (HR: 2.370, 95% CI: 1.505-3.731, P < 0.001) and OS (HR: 2.153, 95% CI: 1.188-3.902, P = 0.012) in HCC. In addition, the presence of Globo H, SSEA-3 and SSEA-4 in some HCC tissues and their absence in normal liver was established by immunohistochemistry staining and mass spectrometric analysis

D2ADA: Dynamic Density-aware Active Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation

In the field of domain adaptation, a trade-off exists between the model performance and the number of target domain annotations. Active learning, maximizing model performance with few informative labeled data, comes in handy for such a scenario. In this work, we present D2ADA, a general active domain adaptation framework for semantic segmentation. To adapt the model to the target domain with minimum queried labels, we propose acquiring labels of the samples with high probability density in the target domain yet with low probability density in the source domain, complementary to the existing source domain labeled data. To further facilitate labeling efficiency, we design a dynamic scheduling policy to adjust the labeling budgets between domain exploration and model uncertainty over time. Extensive experiments show that our method outperforms existing active learning and domain adaptation baselines on two benchmarks, GTA5 -> Cityscapes and SYNTHIA -> Cityscapes. With less than 5% target domain annotations, our method reaches comparable results with that of full supervision.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Monitoring Resistance to Spinosad in the Melon Fly (Bactrocera cucurbitae) in Hawaii and Taiwan

Spinosad is a natural insecticide with desirable qualities, and it is widely used as an alternative to organophosphates for control of pests such as the melon fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae (Coquillett). To monitor the potential for development of resistance, information about the current levels of tolerance to spinosad in melon fly populations were established in this study. Spinosad tolerance bioassays were conducted using both topical applications and feeding methods on flies from field populations with extensive exposure to spinosad as well as from collections with little or no prior exposure. Increased levels of resistance were observed in flies from the field populations. Also, higher dosages were generally required to achieve specific levels of mortality using topical applications compared to the feeding method, but these levels were all lower than those used for many organophosphate-based food lures. Our information is important for maintaining effective programs for melon fly management using spinosad