Determinants of the compliance of honey producers with HACCP-based quality management: The case of family apiculture in Northeastern Brazil

101 p.Worldwide the progress in food technology and the growing knowledge of food health hazards awakened the concern to protect consumers. In this sense the adoption of the HACCP system took place as mandatory requirement in developed countries. It was not any different in Brazil; the government too adopted the HACCP system as a mandatory standard for food processing industry in 1998, and in 2004 as well for the primary production of honey. In order to analyze the factors which influence the compliance of honey producers with HACCP-based quality management, the author of the present thesis conducted an empirical survey in three micro-regions of the State of Ceará/Brazil. The interviews were made with 115 beekeepers. The results showed that the beekeepers’ knowledge of the HACCP-based quality management is positively influenced by the attendance in beekeeping courses and selling directly to the exporting firm. Knowledge turned out to be a precursor of the implementation. Better knowledge has also a positive impact on the improvements on the infrastructure for extracting the honey. Infrastructure showed to improve the levels of the implementation of the HACCP-based quality management. That is the reason why the distance to the nearest constructed house especially designed to extract honey turned out to be negatively correlated with the implementation. Higher levels of implementation lead to the register into the MAPA, subsequently the beekeepers start to be inspected by the SIF and to comply with the Brazilian legislation. It was found that only 11% of the beekeepers are inspected by the SIF and do not receive an extra price for complying with the national legislation. Facing that 90% of the beekeepers have less than 100 beehives with bees and extract honey on average 3.22 times per year, the construction of collective houses for extracting honey are a vital issue. This construction should be facilitated by the government. It should be the obligation of the State who provides legislation to make it easier for the beekeepers to comply with it. In this sense, the house for extracting honey should be subsidized by the government. This subsidy could be with donations of materials for the constructions or with special credit programs for group of beekeepers

Gauge Invariant Factorisation and Canonical Quantisation of Topologically Massive Gauge Theories in Any Dimension

Abelian topologically massive gauge theories (TMGT) provide a topological mechanism to generate mass for a bosonic p-tensor field in any spacetime dimension. These theories include the 2+1 dimensional Maxwell-Chern-Simons and 3+1 dimensional Cremmer-Scherk actions as particular cases. Within the Hamiltonian formulation, the embedded topological field theory (TFT) sector related to the topological mass term is not manifest in the original phase space. However through an appropriate canonical transformation, a gauge invariant factorisation of phase space into two orthogonal sectors is feasible. The first of these sectors includes canonically conjugate gauge invariant variables with free massive excitations. The second sector, which decouples from the total Hamiltonian, is equivalent to the phase space description of the associated non dynamical pure TFT. Within canonical quantisation, a likewise factorisation of quantum states thus arises for the full spectrum of TMGT in any dimension. This new factorisation scheme also enables a definition of the usual projection from TMGT onto topological quantum field theories in a most natural and transparent way. None of these results rely on any gauge fixing procedure whatsoever.Comment: 1+25 pages, no figure

A Study of Anyon Statistics by Breit Hamiltonian Formalism

We study the anyon statistics of a $2 + 1$ dimensional Maxwell-Chern-Simons (MCS) gauge theory by using a systemmetic metheod, the Breit Hamiltonian formalism.Comment: 25 pages, LATE

Comparative survival of elderly renal transplant recipients with a living donor versus a deceased donor:A retrospective single center observational study

Increasing numbers of elderly (≥65 years) patients are listed for kidney transplantation. This study compares the survival outcome between living (LDK), regularly allocated (ETKAS), and Eurotransplant Senior Program (ESP) donor kidneys in elderly recipients. This is a single-center retrospective cohort study of elderly kidney transplant recipients transplanted between 2005 and 2017. Primary outcome measures were nondeath-censored graft, death-censored graft, and patient survival. In total, 348 patients were transplanted, 109 recipients (31.3%) received an LDK, 100 (28.7%) an ETKAS, and 139 (40%) an ESP kidney. 62.5% were male, and median age was 68 years. LDK recipients had significantly better 5-year nondeath-censored graft survival compared with ETKAS and ESP (resp. 71.0% vs. 66.1% vs. 55.6%, P = 0.047). Death-censored graft survival after 1 year was significantly better in LDK recipients (99.1%) (ETKAS 90.8%; ESP 87.7%, P < 0.001). After 5 years, the difference remained significant (P < 0.001) with little additional graft loss (97.7% vs. 88.1% vs. 85.6). There was no significant difference in patient survival after 5 years (71.7% vs. 67.4% vs 61.9%, P = 0.480). In elderly recipients, the patient survival benefits of an LDK are limited, but there is decreased death-censored graft loss for LDK recipients. Nevertheless, graft survival in ETKAS and ESP remains satisfactory

Metagenomic Approaches for Investigating the Role of the Microbiome in Gut Health and Inflammatory Diseases

The human gut microbiota makes fundamental contributions to host metabolism and immune system. Therefore, perturbations in its composition, a process known as dysbiosis, have an important role in the development of several chronicle diseases, mainly intestinal inflammatory disorders. Culture-independent molecular methods are allowing scientific community to uncover substantive findings, thus giving a more detailed description of the human intestinal microbiota. This chapter presents a review on current metagenomic approaches, based on next-generation sequencing technologies, for investigating bacterial taxonomic classification and predictive function associated with the human gut in health and disease. In this context, we describe recent studies that have been trying to elucidate important alterations in microbiome composition across individuals according to delivery mode, aging, diet and medication that might be linked to susceptibility to immune-mediated diseases. A description of the main bacterial taxa and genes acting in dysbiosis during inflammation, focusing on chronic inflammatory bowel diseases and colorectal cancer, is also explored in this chapter

Alterações estruturais do sistema radicular de soja em resposta à disponibilidade de fósforo no solo

Tendo em vista que os métodos estatísticos tradicionais de análise dos atributos métricos do sistema radicular são insatisfatórios no que diz respeito à identificação e interpretação de estratégias adotadas pela planta em adaptação ao ambiente edáfico, o objetivo do trabalho foi utilizar conceitos de topologia para analisar as alterações estruturais apresentadas pelo sistema radicular da soja (Glycine max L. Merr. cv. Williams 82) em resposta à disponibilidade de fósforo no solo. Plantas de soja foram cultivadas em recipientes de acrílico preto, em condições controladas de temperatura e fotoperíodo. Dois tratamentos foram estabelecidos, pela adição de solução nutritiva ao substrato dos recipientes: +P (15,5 mg L-1 P) e -P (8,5 mg L-1 P). Utilizando-se delineamento experimental inteiramente casualizado, com parcelas subdivididas no tempo, três repetições foram amostradas aos 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 e 30 dias após a germinação. Para cada tratamento, idade de amostragem e repetição foram obtidos o comprimento da raiz principal (ordem 0), e os respectivos números e comprimentos médios das raízes laterais de ordens 1, 2 e 3, de acordo com a posição de origem na raiz principal. Índices topológicos foram definidos e aplicados para cada tratamento, utilizando-se os valores médios das três repetições. Os índices utilizados foram eficientes em detectar as alterações estruturais apresentadas pelos sistemas radiculares das plantas cultivadas sob menor teor de fósforo no solo.Since the analytical framework and quantitative tools associated with classical statistics are not efficient to identify and interpret plant strategies for adaptation to a given soil environment, the objective of this study was to utilize concepts of topology in order to analyze the structural changes in soybean root systems in response to soil phosphorus availability. Soybean plants were grown in black plexiglas boxes under controlled environment (temperature and photoperiod). The boxes were packed with substrate mixed with nutrient solution to achieve uniform P concentration for two treatments: +P (15.5 mg L-1 P) and -P (8.5 mg L-1 P). In a completely randomized experimental design, three replicates were sampled at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 days after germination. For each treatment, plant age, and replicate, the following attributes were obtained: main root length (order 0), and average number and length of order-1, order-2, and order-3 lateral roots according to their position of origin along the main root. Topological indexes were defined and calculated for both treatments, using the mean values of three replicates. Indexes used in this study were efficient in detecting the structural changes performed by the soybean root systems growing under lower soil P concentration

Effects of large-scale structure on the accuracy of weak lensing mass measurements

Weak gravitational lensing has become an important method to determine the masses of galaxy clusters. The intrinsic shapes of the galaxies are a dominant source of uncertainty, but there are other limitations to the precision that can be achieved. In this paper we revisit a typically ignored source of uncertainty: structure along the line-of sight. Using results from the Millennium Simulation we confirm the validity of analytical calculations that have shown that such random projections are particularly important for studies of the cluster density profile. In general the contribution of large-scale structure to the total error budget is comparable to the statistical errors. We find that the precision of the mass measurement can be improved only slightly by modelling the large-scale structure using readily available data.Comment: submitted to MNRAS; 10 pages, 8 figure