A family of graded epistemic logics

Multi-Agent Epistemic Logic has been investigated in Computer Science [Fagin, R., J. Halpern, Y. Moses and M. Vardi, “Reasoning about Knowledge,” MIT Press, USA, 1995] to represent and reason about agents or groups of agents knowledge and beliefs. Some extensions aimed to reasoning about knowledge and probabilities [Fagin, R. and J. Halpern, Reasoning about knowledge and probability, Journal of the ACM 41 (1994), pp. 340–367] and also with a fuzzy semantics have been proposed [Fitting, M., Many-valued modal logics, Fundam. Inform. 15 (1991), pp. 235–254; Maruyama, Y., Reasoning about fuzzy belief and common belief: With emphasis on incomparable beliefs, in: IJCAI 2011, Proceedings of the 22nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, July 16–22, 2011, 2011, pp. 1008–1013]. This paper introduces a parametric method to build graded epistemic logics inspired in the systematic method to build Multi-valued Dynamic Logics introduced in [Madeira, A., R. Neves and M. A. Martins, An exercise on the generation of many-valued dynamic logics, J. Log. Algebr. Meth. Program. 85 (2016), pp. 1011–1037. URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jlamp.2016.03.004; Madeira, A., R. Neves, M. A. Martins and L. S. Barbosa, A dynamic logic for every season, in: C. Braga and N. Martí-Oliet, editors, Formal Methods: Foundations and Applications – 17th Brazilian Symposium, SBMF 2014, Maceió, AL, Brazil, September 29-October 1, 2014. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8941 (2014), pp. 130–145. URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15075-8_9]. The parameter in both methods is the same: an action lattice [Kozen, D., On action algebras, Logic and Information Flow (1994), pp. 78–88]. This algebraic structure supports a generic space of agent knowledge operators, as choice, composition and closure (as a Kleene algebra), but also a proper truth space for possible non bivalent interpretation of the assertions (as a residuated lattice).publishe

Drying kinetics of pineapple agro-industrial residues: a new approach / Cinética de secagem de resíduos agro-industriais de abacaxi: uma nova abordagem

Drying kinetics of pineapple agro-industrial residues was studied using thin-layer of product at , ,  and , and airflow rate of . The diffusion model was modified and fitted to experimental data of moisture ratio of pineapple residue to estimate the diffusion coefficient as function of temperature, and a good fitting of Arrhenius equation was obtained, with a variance explained of  Values of diffusion coefficients varied in the range from  to , approximately. A modification was implemented in the Page’s equation to include the diffusion effects explicitly, leading to a less empirical and simpler model to describe drying kinetics of pineapple residue. The model presented in this work proved to be adequate to predict drying ratio of pineapple residue, if the material layer thickness is , under the drying conditions used

Evaluation of the effects of Quercetin and Kaempherol on the surface of MT-2 cells visualized by atomic force microscopy

AbstractThis study investigated the anti-viral effects of the polyphenolic compounds Quercetin and Kaempherol on the release of HTLV-1 from the surface of MT-2 cells. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to scan the surface of the MT-2 cells. MT-2 cells were fixed with 100% methanol on round glass lamina or cleaved mica and dried under UV light and laminar flow. The images were captured on a Multimode equipment monitored by a NanoScope IIId controller from Veeco Instruments Inc operated in tapping mode and equipped with phase-imaging hardware. The images demonstrated viral budding structures 131±57nm in size, indicating profuse viral budding. Interestingly, cell-free viruses and budding structures visualized on the surface of cells were less common when MT-2 was incubated with Quercetin, and no particles were seen on the surface of cells incubated with Kaempherol. In summary, these data indicate that HTLV-1 is budding constantly from the MT-2 cell surface and that polyphenolic compounds were able to reduce this viral release. Biological samples were analyzed with crude cell preparations just after cultivation in the presence of Quercetin and Kaempherol, showing that the AFM technique is a rapid and powerful tool for analysis of antiviral activity of new biological compounds

GEOBIT: A Geodesic-Based Binary Descriptor Invariant to Non-Rigid Deformations for RGB-D Images

International audienceAt the core of most three-dimensional alignment and tracking tasks resides the critical problem of point correspondence. In this context, the design of descriptors that efficiently and uniquely identifies keypoints, to be matched, is of central importance. Numerous descriptors have been developed for dealing with affine/perspective warps, but few can also handle non-rigid deformations. In this paper, we introduce a novel binary RGB-D descriptor invariant to iso-metric deformations. Our method uses geodesic isocurves on smooth textured manifolds. It combines appearance and geometric information from RGB-D images to tackle non-rigid transformations. We used our descriptor to track multiple textured depth maps and demonstrate that it produces reliable feature descriptors even in the presence of strong non-rigid deformations and depth noise. The experiments show that our descriptor outperforms different state-of-the-art descriptors in both precision-recall and recognition rate metrics. We also provide to the community a new dataset composed of annotated RGB-D images of different objects (shirts, cloths, paintings, bags), subjected to strong non-rigid deformations, to evaluate point correspondence algorithms

Sustainable strategy based on induced precipitation for the purification of phycobiliproteins

Phycobiliproteins are fluorescent proteins mainly produced by red macroalgae and cyanobacteria. These proteins, essential to the survival of these organisms, find application in many fields of interest, from medical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic to food and textile industries. The biggest obstacle to their use is the lack of simple environmental and economical sustainable methodologies to obtain these proteins with high purity. In this work, a new purification process is proposed based on the induced precipitation of the target proteins followed by ultrafiltration. Purities of 89.5% of both phycobiliproteins and 87.3% of R-phycoerythrin were achieved using ammonium sulfate and poly(acrylic acid) sodium salts as precipitation agents (followed by an ultrafiltration step), while maintaining high recovery yields and protein structure stability. Environmental analysis performed to evaluate the proposed process shows that the carbon footprint for the proposed process is much lower than that reported for alternative methodology, and the economic analysis reveals the cost-effective character associated to its high performance. This work is a step toward more sustainable and effective methodologies/processes with high industrial potential.publishe

Electromechanical Modulations in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Nanosheets: Implications for Environmental Sensors

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are key players in the two-dimensional materials nanoarena due to their exquisite optoelectronic properties under a standard environment (room temperature and atmospheric pressure). Nevertheless, as reported in the literature, they may also portray interesting physical properties under different environments. Here, we show two distinct and significant electromechanical modulations in TMD nanosheets which are tuned by the environmental conditions (applied pressure and adsorbents). Using scanning probe microscopy techniques, we modify the environmental conditions and observe steplike rises in the electrical response of all studied TMDs (MoS2, WS2, MoSe2, and WSe2—monolayers and few layers). Ab initio calculations enable full understanding of specific mechanisms behind these electromechanical modulations, which may find important applications in the design of TMD-based environmental sensors

Quantification of titanium dioxide (TiO2) anatase and rutile polymorphs in binary mixtures by Raman spectroscopy: an interlaboratory comparison

This article presents an interlaboratory comparison (ILC) on Raman spectroscopy as a technique for relative quantification of the two most common polymorphs of titanium dioxide (TiO2)-anatase and rutile-in binary mixtures. Some standard methods are currently employed internationally for the determination of TiO2 content in samples (ISO 591-1, ASTM D3720-90), but require extensive sample preparation, do not distinguish between the two polymorphs or are accurate only for small fractions of either polymorph. Raman spectroscopy is a well-suited characterization technique for measuring and differentiating TiO2 in a fast, non-invasive way, while requiring no particular reagent or sample preparation. Eleven international participants conducted the study under the framework of Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards. The collected data was analyzed by means of partial least squares regression after spectral preprocessing. The resulting models all show discrepancies of lower than 2% from the nominal values in the quantitative analysis over the concentration range of 5%-95% mixture fractions, with many datasets showing substantial improvement margins on this figure. The results of this ILC provide validation of Raman spectroscopy as a reliable method for quantification of TiO2 phases