Parasites or Cohabitants: Cruel Omnipresent Usurpers or Creative “Éminences Grises”?

This paper presents many types of interplays between parasites and the host, showing the history of parasites, the effects of parasites on the outcome of wars, invasions, migrations, and on the development of numerous regions of the globe, and the impact of parasitic diseases on the society and on the course of human evolution. It also emphasizes the pressing need to change the look at the parasitism phenomenon, proposing that the term “cohabitant” is more accurate than parasite, because every living being, from bacteria to mammals, is a consortium of living beings in the pangenome. Even the term parasitology should be replaced by cohabitology because there is no parasite alone and host alone: both together compose a new adaptive system: the parasitized-host or the cohabitant-cohabited being. It also suggests switching the old paradigm based on attrition and destruction, to a new one founded on adaptation and living together

A ilustração científica como parceira na conservação do Cerrado

Nowadays, when somebody mentions scientific sketching, most people will be perplexed, at theleast. Some will even think that it is an extinct ”“ or all but extinct ”“ undertaking. Others will nothave a clue about what it is, especially if they do not belong to academic or scientific circles.However, a bit of history lets us see that scientific sketchers are the inheritors of a multi-seculartradition.Quando se fala de ilustração científica, a reação que temos é de, no mínimo, perplexidade. Al- guns imaginam que se trata de uma área extinta ou em vias de extinção. Outros nem sabem do que se trata, principalmente fora do meio acadêmico. Mas, repassemos um pouco de história, para ver que nós, ilustradores científicos, somos herdeiros de uma tradição secular

Mineração em metadados aplicados ao processo de desenvolvimento de coleções

The increasing of the new scientific areas, along with the multitude of information items, it's pushing the librarians to find creatively novel ways to gather information for the development of the collection under their responsability. This must definitely change the usual practice of these professionals towards mastering moderns IT tools in order to better analyse a huge volume of data in a shorter amount of time. Hence, this paper discusses a proposal of building metadata of the syllabus plans, within a university to easy the minering some important information out of them as part of a master collection development policy

Genome visualization in space

Phylogeny is an important field to understand evolution and the organization of life. However, most methods depend highly on manual study and analysis, making the construction of phylogeny error prone. Linear Algebra methods are known to be efficient to deal with the semantic relationships between a large number of elements in spaces of high dimensionality. Therefore, they can be useful to help the construction of phylogenetic trees. The ability to visualize the relationships between genomes is crucial in this process. In this paper, a linear algebra method, followed by optimization, is used to generate a visualization of a set of complete genomes. Using the proposed method we were able to visualize the relationships of 64 complete mitochondrial genomes, organized as six different groups, and of 31 complete mitochondrial genomes of mammals, organized as nine different groups. The prespecified groups could be seen clustered together in the visualization, and similar species were represented close together. Besides, there seems to be an evolutionary influence in the organization of the graph

Quantum authentication with unitary coding sets

A general class of authentication schemes for arbitrary quantum messages is proposed. The class is based on the use of sets of unitary quantum operations in both transmission and reception, and on appending a quantum tag to the quantum message used in transmission. The previous secret between partners required for any authentication is a classical key. We obtain the minimal requirements on the unitary operations that lead to a probability of failure of the scheme less than one. This failure may be caused by someone performing a unitary operation on the message in the channel between the communicating partners, or by a potential forger impersonating the transmitter.Comment: RevTeX4, 10 page

Dielectrophoretic manipulation of individual nickel nanowires for electrical transport measurements

FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOCNPQ - CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICOCAPES - COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIORNanowires (NW) have received much attention due to their high aspect ratio, shape anisotropy, relatively large surface area and particular electron transport properties. In addition, since NW present low current levels and high sensitivity, they can be used as sensor devices for several applications. One of the major challenges when dealing with transport measurements in NW is to trap them between electrodes, which allow electrical characterization and therefore fabrication of nanowire-based devices. Electrically neutral NW can be deposited by dielectrophoresis (DEP) method, which requires the application of an alternating electric field between electrodes. In this work, properly dispersed Ni nanowires (NiNW) (length = 4+/-1 mu m, diameter = 35+/-5 nm) were deposited on top of Pt electrodes using the DEP method. The effects of electrodes geometry and electric field frequency on DEP efficiency were evaluated. For optimized DEP parameters, the process efficiency is up to 85%. The deposited NiNW exhibit a Schottky-like current versus voltage behavior due to the high contact resistance between NiNW and electrode. Its reduction down to two orders of magnitude, reaching value less than the NiNW resistance (similar to 6k Omega), was achieved by depositing a 10 nm-thick Pt layer over the NW extremities. Therefore, this method presents a selection of adequate electrical DEP parameters and electrode geometry, making it a suitable process of NW deposition and electrical characterization. This can be used for investigation of electrical transport properties of individual NW and fabrication of NW-based devices, like sensors and field effect transistors. (C) 2015 American Vacuum Society.Nanowires (NW) have received much attention due to their high aspect ratio, shape anisotropy, relatively large surface area and particular electron transport properties. In addition, since NW present low current levels and high sensitivity, they can be used as sensor devices for several applications. One of the major challenges when dealing with transport measurements in NW is to trap them between electrodes, which allow electrical characterization and therefore fabrication of nanowire-based devices. Electrically neutral NW can be deposited by dielectrophoresis (DEP) method, which requires the application of an alternating electric field between electrodes. In this work, properly dispersed Ni nanowires (NiNW) (length = 4+/-1 mu m, diameter = 35+/-5 nm) were deposited on top of Pt electrodes using the DEP method. The effects of electrodes geometry and electric field frequency on DEP efficiency were evaluated. For optimized DEP parameters, the process efficiency is up to 85%. The deposited NiNW exhibit a Schottky-like current versus voltage behavior due to the high contact resistance between NiNW and electrode. Its reduction down to two orders of magnitude, reaching value less than the NiNW resistance (similar to 6k Omega), was achieved by depositing a 10 nm-thick Pt layer over the NW extremities. Therefore, this method presents a selection of adequate electrical DEP parameters and electrode geometry, making it a suitable process of NW deposition and electrical characterization. This can be used for investigation of electrical transport properties of individual NW and fabrication of NW-based devices, like sensors and field effect transistors.33318FAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOCNPQ - CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICOCAPES - COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIORFAPESP - FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULOCNPQ - CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICOCAPES - COORDENAÇÃO DE APERFEIÇOAMENTO DE PESSOAL DE NÍVEL SUPERIORSem informaçãoSem informaçãoSem informaçãoThe authors would like to thank CCS/UNICAMP and LMBT/IFGW/UNICAMP staff for device processing and characterization. The work was supported by the Brazilian funding agencies Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).Reference