Um estudo de caso da marca da empresa Wilson, Sons Logística

Os estudos relacionados ao valor da marca para as organizações utilizam diversas abordagens – alguns estão focados na análise qualitativa, outros na análise financeira (STOBART, 1994), existem os estudos que focam apenas na perspectiva das empresas ou apenas na perspectiva dos consumidores (KELLER, 1998) e também encontramos uma abordagem mais complexa, em que o valor da marca é um conjunto de ativos e passivos que precisam ser analisados dentro de alguns critérios (AAKER, 2000). Seja como for, todos esses autores tentam demonstrar a necessidade das organizações em focar suas estratégias na marca, para que as mesmas decidam pelos modelos mais adequados as suas realidades empresariais. De acordo com Keller (1998), uma marca tem valor quando os consumidores reagem mais favoravelmente ao produto a partir do momento que a conhecem e a identificam. Muitas vezes esse conhecimento prévio da mesma facilita a tomada de decisão com relação à compra de um produto ou serviço e até dispensa informações extras a respeito das organizações produtoras desses produtos ou prestadoras de tais serviços. Como a escolha da marca e da melhor forma de divulgação da mesma são decisões muito importantes para uma organização, pode-se considerar válido em muitos casos a realização de uma pesquisa de marketing. Para Churchill e Peter (2000), esta é definida como a função que liga o consumidor, o cliente e o público ao profissional de marketing por meio de informações. No entanto, é preciso que seja feita uma avaliação criteriosa da utilização ou não de pesquisa de marketing, pois ela normalmente envolve custo e tempo, o que muitas vezes as organizações não estão dispostas a despender

Functional Diversification after Gene Duplication: Paralog Specific Regions of Structural Disorder and Phosphorylation in p53, p63, and p73

Conformational and functional flexibility promote protein evolvability. High evolvability allows related proteins to functionally diverge and perhaps to neostructuralize. p53 is a multifunctional protein frequently referred to as the Guardian of the Genome–a hub for e.g. incoming and outgoing signals in apoptosis and DNA repair. p53 has been found to be structurally disordered, an extreme form of conformational flexibility. Here, p53, and its paralogs p63 and p73, were studied for further insights into the evolutionary dynamics of structural disorder, secondary structure, and phosphorylation. This study is focused on the post gene duplication phase for the p53 family in vertebrates, but also visits the origin of the protein family and the early domain loss and gain events. Functional divergence, measured by rapid evolutionary dynamics of protein domains, structural properties, and phosphorylation propensity, is inferred across vertebrate p53 proteins, in p63 and p73 from fish, and between the three paralogs. In particular, structurally disordered regions are redistributed among paralogs, but within clades redistribution of structural disorder also appears to be an ongoing process. Despite its deemed importance as the Guardian of the Genome, p53 is indeed a protein with high evolvability as seen not only in rearranged structural disorder, but also in fluctuating domain sequence signatures among lineages

MySmartPi

Nowadays, accessing the Internet in a secure way in a big concern for many people due to the increase of cybersecurity attacks and the vulnerability of the data that is transferred online. In order to address such vulnerabilities, the use of a Virtual Private Network is really important. Not only for security reasons, but also to access resources of the network, such as printers, files or web pages. Considering that many people, especially IT students, have curiosity and enjoy creating their own technologies, this project aims to create a user manual to teach how people can create their own VPN server at home using a Raspberry Pi and to access their files and folders which are in the network. For that, tutorials were used and adapted in order to install the VPN server and NAS. In order to prove that the whole process was successful, some tools, such as, Wireshark, were used to show how the network traffic works once the VPN is used. The process was successful and many concepts were learnt and used such as Cryptography, Port forwarding, dynamic DNS, OpenVPN, etc

Synthetically induced Arabidopsis thaliana autotetraploids provide insights into the analysis of meiotic mutants with altered crossover frequency

Mutations affecting crossover (CO) frequency and distribution lead to the presence of univalents during meiosis, giving rise to aneuploid gametes and sterility. These mutations may have a different effect after chromosome doubling. The combination of altered ploidy and mutations could be potentially useful to gain new insights into the mechanisms and regulation of meiotic recombination; however, studies using autopolyploid meiotic mutants are scarce. Here, we have analyzed the cytogenetic consequences in colchicine-induced autotetraploids (colchiploids) from different Arabidopsis mutants with an altered CO frequency. We have found that there are three types of mutants: mutants in which chiasma frequency is doubled after chromosome duplication (zip4, mus81), as in the control; mutants in which polyploidy leads to a higher-than-expected increase in chiasma frequency (asy1, mer3, hei10, and mlh3); and mutants in which the rise in chiasma frequency produced by the presence of two extrachromosomal sets is less than doubled (msh5, fancm). In addition, the proportion of class I/class II COs varies after chromosome duplication in the control. The results obtained reveal the potential of colchiploid meiotic mutants for better understanding of the function of key proteins during plant meiosis. This is especially relevant considering that most crops are polyploids.Depto. de Genética, Fisiología y MicrobiologíaFac. de Ciencias BiológicasTRUEpu

Chiral spin-transfer torque induced by curvature gradient

This work analyzes the propagation of a transverse domain wall (DW) motion under the action of an electric current along a nanowire (NW) with a curvature gradient. Our results evidence that the curvature gradient induces a chiral spin-transfer torque (CSTT) whose effect on the DW motion depends on the direction along which the DW points. The origin of the CSTT is explained in terms of a position and phase-dependent effective field associated with the DW profile and the electric current direction. Finally, our results reveal that this chiral mechanism can also affect the behavior of other magnetization collective modes, such as spin waves. This work shows the emergence of curvature-induced chiral spin transport and highlights a new phenomenon to be considered for designing spintronic devices.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Tunable narrowband Excitonic Optical Tamm States enabled by a metal-free all-organic structure

Optical Tamm States (OTS) are confined optical modes that can occur at the interface between two highly reflective structures. However, due to the strong reflectance required, their implemen-tation with highly processable and metal-free flexible materials has proven challenging. Herein, we develop the first structure supporting OTS based only on organic polymeric materials, demon-strating a photonic platform based on non-critical, widely available, and easily processable mate-rials. The structures fabricated present large areas and consist of a narrowband multi-layered polymeric Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) followed by a thin film of J-aggregate molecular exci-tonic material that can act as a highly reflective surface within a narrowband range. We take ad-vantage of the narrowband spectral response of the DBR and of the reflective molecular layer to tune the OTS band by varying the periodicity of the multilayer, opening the door for the fabrica-tion of OTS structures based on lightweight integrable excitonic devices with cost-effective proce-dures.Comment: 15 pages, 8 (3+5) figures, supplementary information include

Prostaglandin D2/J2 signaling pathway in a rat model of neuroinflammation displaying progressive parkinsonian-like pathology: potential novel therapeutic targets

Background: Prostaglandins are products of the cyclooxygenase pathway, which is implicated in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Limited knowledge is available on mechanisms by which prostaglandins contribute to PD neurodegeneration. To address this gap, we focused on the prostaglandin PGD2/J2 signaling pathway, because PGD2 is the most abundant prostaglandin in the brain, and the one that increases the most under pathological conditions. Moreover, PGJ2 is spontaneously derived from PGD2. Methods: In this study, we determined in rats the impact of unilateral nigral PGJ2-microinfusions on COX-2, lipocalin-type PGD2 synthase (L-PGDS), PGD2/J2 receptor 2 (DP2), and 15 hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH). Nigral dopaminergic (DA) and microglial distribution and expression levels of these key factors of the prostaglandin D2/J2 pathway were evaluated by immunohistochemistry. PGJ2-induced motor deficits were assessed with the cylinder test. We also determined whether oral treatment with ibuprofen improved the PD-like pathology induced by PGJ2. Results: PGJ2 treatment induced progressive PD-like pathology in the rats. Concomitant with DA neuronal loss in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc), PGJ2-treated rats exhibited microglia and astrocyte activation and motor deficits. In DA neurons, COX-2, L-PGDS, and 15-PGDH levelsincreased significantly in PGJ2-treated rats compared to controls, while DP2 receptor levels were unchanged. In microglia, DP2 receptors were basically non-detectable, while COX-2 and L-PGDS levels increased upon PGJ2-treatment, and 15-PGDH remained unchanged. 15-PGDH was also detected in oligodendrocytes. Notably, ibuprofen prevented most PGJ2-induced PD-like pathology. Conclusions: The PGJ2-induced rat model develops progressive PD pathology, which is a hard-to-mimic aspect of this disorder. Moreover, prevention of most PGJ2-induced PD-like pathology with ibuprofen suggests a positive feedback mechanism between PGJ2 and COX-2 that could lead to chronic neuroinflammation. Notably, this is the first study that analyzes the nigral dopaminergic and microglial distribution and levels of factors of the PGD2/J2 signaling pathway in rodents. Our findings support the notions that upregulation of COX-2 and L-PGDS may be important in the PGJ2 evoked PD-like pathology, and that neuronal DP2 receptor antagonists and L-PGDS inhibitors may be novel pharmacotherapeutics to relieve neuroinflammation-mediated neurodegeneration in PD, circumventing the adverse side effects of cyclooxygenase inhibitors

Evaluation of the Acute Effects of Organic Solvents on Adults of Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky, 1855 (Coleoptera, Curculionidae)

The continuous use of synthetic insecticides has created problems for the environment and human health. With the objective of reducing such problems, ecofriendly measures have been taken and, in this case, plants have representing an important resource for pest control. Due to the increase of studies using organic extracts in bioassays and the difficulty of finding solubilizant agents that do not interfere in the results, the aim of this work was to evaluated the acute effect of different solvents on Sitophilus zeamais by contact and ingestion assays. The results suggest that pure dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) and Tween- 20 solvents have toxic acute effects on adults of S. zeamais, but they can be used diluted at 1 or 5% with no toxic acute effect. On contrary, pure dichloromethane (DCM) and methanol (MeOH) did not cause any acute effect on target organism. Thus, DCM and MeOH solvents even in the pure form and the Tween-20 and DMSO diluted at 1 or 5% can be used as solubilizant agents for apolar to medium polarity plant extracts, involving contact or ingestion assay on adults of S. zeamais. Keywords: plant extracts, stored grain pest, solvents, toxicity