Análise do uso de tecnologias em estabelecimentos agropecuários por meio dos índices de Moran global e local.

Este artigo apresenta uma aplicação de técnica de análise exploratória de dados espaciais sobre dados de uso de tecnologias por parte de estabelecimentos agropecuários do País, com a finalidade de prospectar e justificar possíveis relações espaciais relacionadas ao uso das tecnologias. Os dados foram obtidos no Censo Agropecuário de 2006, e foram analisados por meio dos índices de Moran global e local. O trabalho apresenta uma breve revisão bibliográfica sobre a análise exploratória de dados espaciais e dos principais índices utilizados. Os resultados, visualizados no BoxMap, do diagrama de espalhamento de Moran e do MoranMap mostram que, para a maioria das características analisadas, há alta correlação espacial no uso de tecnologias nos municípios brasileiros, e que essa concentração está relacionada à produção de commodities do mercado internacional. Os resultados sugerem que, para algumas regiões do País, deve-se elaborar uma análise em escala menor, para identificar possíveis grupos (clusters) dentro dos estados ou de mesorregiões produtoras. O trabalho mostra que, para uma análise preliminar da distribuição espacial do uso de tecnologia na agropecuária, o uso do software TerraView mostrou-se satisfatório, e, por isso, sugere-se que seja adotado em estudos mais profundos com esses indicadores

Gold Standard Online Debates Summaries and First Experiments Towards Automatic Summarization of Online Debate Data

Usage of online textual media is steadily increasing. Daily, more and more news stories, blog posts and scientific articles are added to the online volumes. These are all freely accessible and have been employed extensively in multiple research areas, e.g. automatic text summarization, information retrieval, information extraction, etc. Meanwhile, online debate forums have recently become popular, but have remained largely unexplored. For this reason, there are no sufficient resources of annotated debate data available for conducting research in this genre. In this paper, we collected and annotated debate data for an automatic summarization task. Similar to extractive gold standard summary generation our data contains sentences worthy to include into a summary. Five human annotators performed this task. Inter-annotator agreement, based on semantic similarity, is 36% for Cohen's kappa and 48% for Krippendorff's alpha. Moreover, we also implement an extractive summarization system for online debates and discuss prominent features for the task of summarizing online debate data automatically.Comment: accepted and presented at the CICLING 2017 - 18th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistic

Expression and signal transduction of the glucagon receptor in βTC3 cells

AbstractThe expression and signal transduction of the glucagon receptor (GR) have been studied in βTC3 cells. Northern blot and RT-PCR analysis indicated the expression of the GR gene in βTC3 cells. One-5 nM glucagon stimulated a 2.5-fold increase in the IPs production. At glucagon concentrations higher than 5 nM, the production of IPs was blunted but not abolished. The accumulation of intracellular cAMP was observed following the stimulation with 5 nM of glucagon. A maximal 4.5-fold increase in cAMP was observed using 250 nM glucagon and higher. Comparative studies using a glucagon anatogonist, des-His1[Glu]9glucagon, showed no effect on intracellular cAMP and IPs in βTC3 cells. Our data shows that the GR gene is expressed in βTC3 cells. The GR in βTC3 cells transmits its intracellular signal by causing the accumulation of both IPs and cAMP

Epigenome-Wide and Transcriptome-Wide Analyses Reveal Gestational Diabetes is Associated with Alterations in the Human Leukocyte Antigen Complex

Background: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) affects approximately 10% of pregnancies in the United States and increases the risk of adverse health outcomes in the offspring. These adult disease propensities may be set by anatomical and molecular alterations in the placenta associated with GDM. Results: To assess the mechanistic aspects of fetal programming, we measured genome-wide methylation (Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips) and expression (Affymetrix transcriptome microarrays) in placental tissue of 41 GDM cases and 41 matched pregnancies without maternal complications from the Harvard Epigenetic Birth Cohort. Specific transcriptional and epigenetic perturbations associated with GDM status included alterations in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region, which were validated in an independent cohort, the Rhode Island Child Health Study. Gene ontology enrichment among gene regulation influenced by GDM revealed an over-representation of immune response pathways among differential expression, reflecting these coordinated changes in the MHC region. This differential methylation and expression may be capturing shifts in cellular composition, reflecting physiological changes in the placenta associated with GDM. Conclusions: Our study represents the largest investigation of transcriptomic and methylomic differences associated with GDM, providing comprehensive insight into how GDM shapes the intrauterine environment, which may have implications for fetal (re)programming

Diagnosing barren plateaus with tools from quantum optimal control

Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQAs) have received considerable attention due to their potential for achieving near-term quantum advantage. However, more work is needed to understand their scalability. One known scaling result for VQAs is barren plateaus, where certain circumstances lead to exponentially vanishing gradients. It is common folklore that problem-inspired ansatzes avoid barren plateaus, but in fact, very little is known about their gradient scaling. In this work we employ tools from quantum optimal control to develop a framework that can diagnose the presence or absence of barren plateaus for problem-inspired ansatzes. Such ansatzes include the Quantum Alternating Operator Ansatz (QAOA), the Hamiltonian Variational Ansatz (HVA), and others. With our framework, we prove that avoiding barren plateaus for these ansatzes is not always guaranteed. Specifically, we show that the gradient scaling of the VQA depends on the degree of controllability of the system, and hence can be diagnosed through the dynamical Lie algebra g obtained from the generators of the ansatz. We analyze the existence of barren plateaus in QAOA and HVA ansatzes, and we highlight the role of the input state, as different initial states can lead to the presence or absence of barren plateaus. Taken together, our results provide a framework for trainability-aware ansatz design strategies that do not come at the cost of extra quantum resources. Moreover, we prove no-go results for obtaining ground states with variational ansatzes for controllable system such as spin glasses. Our work establishes a link between the existence of barren plateaus and the scaling of the dimension of g

Parallel-in-time quantum simulation via Page and Wootters quantum time

In the past few decades, researchers have created a veritable zoo of quantum algorithm by drawing inspiration from classical computing, information theory, and even from physical phenomena. Here we present quantum algorithms for parallel-in-time simulations that are inspired by the Page and Wooters formalism. In this framework, and thus in our algorithms, the classical time-variable of quantum mechanics is promoted to the quantum realm by introducing a Hilbert space of "clock" qubits which are then entangled with the "system" qubits. We show that our algorithms can compute temporal properties over $N$ different times of many-body systems by only using $\log(N)$ clock qubits. As such, we achieve an exponential trade-off between time and spatial complexities. In addition, we rigorously prove that the entanglement created between the system qubits and the clock qubits has operational meaning, as it encodes valuable information about the system's dynamics. We also provide a circuit depth estimation of all the protocols, showing an exponential advantage in computation times over traditional sequential in time algorithms. In particular, for the case when the dynamics are determined by the Aubry-Andre model, we present a hybrid method for which our algorithms have a depth that only scales as $\mathcal{O}(\log(N)n)$. As a by product we can relate the previous schemes to the problem of equilibration of an isolated quantum system, thus indicating that our framework enable a new dimension for studying dynamical properties of many-body systems.Comment: 19+15 pages, 18+1 figure

Fiber Optic Cable Thermal Preparation to Ensure Stable Operation

Fiber optic cables are widely used in modern systems that must provide stable operation during exposure to changing environmental conditions. For example, a fiber optic cable on a satellite may have to reliably function over a temperature range of -50 C up to 125 C. While the system requirements for a particular application will dictate the exact method by which the fibers should be prepared, this work will examine multiple ruggedized fibers prepared in different fashions and subjected to thermal qualification testing. The data show that if properly conditioned the fiber cables can provide stable operation, but if done incorrectly, they will have large fluctuations in transmission

Mitochondrial ROS prime the hyperglycemic shift from apoptosis to necroptosis.

We have previously identified a shift from TNF-α-induced apoptosis to necroptosis that occurs under hyperglycemic conditions. This shift involves the downregulation or silencing of caspases and concurrent upregulation of necroptotic proteins leading to activation of the necrosome. In addition, under hyperglycemic conditions in vivo, this shift in cell death mechanisms exacerbates neonatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI) brain injury. Here, we identify two major factors that drive the hyperglycemic shift to necroptosis: (1) reactive oxygen species (ROS) and (2) receptor-interacting protein kinase 1 (RIP1). ROS, including mitochondrial superoxide, led to the oxidation of RIP1, as well as formation and activation of the necrosome. Concurrently, ROS mediate a decrease in the levels and activation of executioner caspases-3, -6, and -7. Importantly, hyperglycemia and mitochondrial ROS result in the oxidation of RIP1 and loss of executioner caspases prior to death receptor engagement by TNF-α. Moreover, RIP1 partially controlled levels of mitochondrial ROS in the context of hyperglycemia. As a result of its regulation of ROS, RIP1 also regulated necrosome activation and caspase loss. Mitochondrial ROS exacerbated neonatal HI-brain injury in hyperglycemic mice, as a result of the shift from apoptosis to necroptosis