A system for increasing variability in filamentous fungi?

The possibility of genetic analysis in the Fungi Imperfecti had its origin with the description of genetic recombination without sexual reproduction, later designated the parasexual cycle, in the ascomycete Aspergillus nidulans (Pontecorvo et al. 1953. Adv. Genet. 5:141-238; Pontecorvo 1956. Ann. Rev. Microbiol. 10:393-400). As the description occurred in a species with sexual reproduction, it obviously allowed comparisons between data obtained from sexual and parasexual analysis. Therefore it was possible to establish the basic parameters of genetic analysis far more easily that would have been possible if the parasexual cycle had been discovered in an imperfect species

THERMAL PERFORMANCE AND FLAME TEMPERATURES ON LPG RADIAL BURNERS IN DOMESTIC COOKERS

The objective is to investigate radial burners through experimental tests, looking for its thermal performance behavior. Gas burners in domestic cookers operate on LPG, typically with two different geometries and five thermal power conditions. Usually, those thermal equipment lacks information on its whole operating conditions range for higher energy conversion efficiency and lower fuel consumption; it is not pointed out by the manufacturer or by energy efficiency labeling, what could result in a recommendation for widely effective performance. Appropriate instrumentation was used to carry out the measurements and methodology used as a guideline regulations from INMETRO/CONPET, ABNT - Brazilian Technical Standards Normative, and ANP - National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels. Experimental measurements and uncertainties are for the following parameters: fuel mass consumption (kg.s-1), test time elapsed (s), temperature (°C), water mass (kg) and flame temperature by K-type thermocouples (quantitative) and a thermal camera (qualitative). Main conclusions are: a) Operating domestic cookers with handle position selector on middle position (TP3) provides almost the same temperature rise as maximum fuel consumption (TP5), i.e., ΔT in the water container; b) Heat is better transferred (Qgas → Qwater) with the handle position selector fully opened (TP5@B1) and just before fully opening (TP4@B2); c) A non-linear behavior occurs for ηThermal, when moving forward the handle position selector; maximum efficiency occurs at fully open (TP5@B2) and middle opening (TP3@B1); d) Higher values for TPexperimental occurs for B2, in comparison to B1, in whole operational condition ranges; differences are mainly due to geometric parameters (ARB2/ARB1~0.82). In general, B2 has a better geometric design; e) Uncertainty analysis indicate values lower than ±3%, proving to be a suitable methodology for the experimental results in this work; f) Flame temperatures are entirely consistent with both, ηThermal and heat energy delivered, reaching higher temperature values at TP4 for both burners; 751.5°C (B1) and 830.7°C (B2)

Ensembles of jittered association rule classifiers

The ensembling of classifiers tends to improve predictive accuracy. To obtain an ensemble with N classifiers, one typically needs to run N learning processes. In this paper we introduce and explore Model Jittering Ensembling, where one single model is perturbed in order to obtain variants that can be used as an ensemble. We use as base classifiers sets of classification association rules. The two methods of jittering ensembling we propose are Iterative Reordering Ensembling (IRE) and Post Bagging (PB). Both methods start by learning one rule set over a single run, and then produce multiple rule sets without relearning. Empirical results on 36 data sets are positive and show that both strategies tend to reduce error with respect to the single model association rule classifier. A bias–variance analysis reveals that while both IRE and PB are able to reduce the variance component of the error, IRE is particularly effective in reducing the bias component. We show that Model Jittering Ensembling can represent a very good speed-up w.r.t. multiple model learning ensembling. We also compare Model Jittering with various state of the art classifiers in terms of predictive accuracy and computational efficiency.This work was partially supported by FCT project Rank! (PTDC/EIA/81178/2006) and by AdI project Palco3.0 financed by QREN and Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER), and also supported by Fundacao Ciencia e Tecnologia, FEDER e Programa de Financiamento Plurianual de Unidades de I & D. Thanks are due to William Cohen for kindly providing the executable code for the SLIPPER implementation. Our gratitude goes also to our anonymous reviewers who have helped to significantly improve this paper by sharing their knowledge and their informed criticism with the authors

Improvement in the Adsorption of Anionic and Cationic Dyes From Aqueous Solutions: A Comparative Study Using Aluminium Pillared Clays and Activated Carbon

The aim of this work was to evaluate the adsorption properties of anionic dye Reactive Black 5 (RB5) and cationic dye Methylene Blue (MB) from salted aqueous solution using natural clay, aluminum pillared clay (Al-PILC), and activated carbon. The textural properties of the materials were obtained by N2 adsorption at 77 K and the structural properties of natural and pillared clays were determined by X-ray diffraction. The effect of pH, contact time, initial concentration of dye, and influence of the addition of NaCl were evaluated by batch adsorption. Adsorption isotherms of Al-PILC, in different salt concentration were compared with natural clay and activated carbon. The adsorption isotherms were well fitted by the Langmuir and Langmuir-Freundlich models. The process of pillaring only improved the adsorption of the anionic dye RB5. Depending on the system adsorbent/adsorbate analyzed, the salt concentration can either help or hinder dye adsorption. We found that a special morphology formed during the process of pillaring greatly increased adsorption of the MB cationic dye in the range of high salt concentrations. This unexpected result may help in developing new pillarization strategies to treat effluents with high salt content.Fil: Aguiar, J. E.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; BrasilFil: Bezerra, B. T. C.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; BrasilFil: Siqueira, A. C. A.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; BrasilFil: Barrera Diaz, Deicy Amparo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico San Luis. Instituto de Física Aplicada; ArgentinaFil: Sapag, Manuel Karim. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico San Luis. Instituto de Física Aplicada; ArgentinaFil: Azevedo, D. C. S.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; BrasilFil: Lucena, S. M. P.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; BrasilFil: Silva Jr., I. J.. Universidade Federal do Ceará. Centro de Tecnologia. Departamento de Engenharia Química. Grupo de Pesquisa em Separações por Adsorção; Brasi