Comparison of esters determination techniques in cachaça

An analytical comparison of three different techniques for quantitative profile of esters in cachaça is reported. The Ministério da Agricultura Pecuária e Abastecimento (MAPA) recommends the use of GC/FID or volumetry. Despite being laborious and lacking in chemical speciation, the volumetric technique for total ester content shows to be appropriate, reproducible, and accurate for the analysis of cachaça. However, the GC/FID suggested by MAPA, considering only ethyl acetate, shows inaccuracy, underestimating the total ester content by a median factor of 72%, mainly due to the absence of ethyl lactate analysis. On the other hand, the GC/MS technique that comprises the analysis and speciation of nine esters, including ethyl lactate, proved to be reproducible, simple, fast and accurate for the analysis of total ester content in cachaça. Thus, the total ester content results obtained using GC/FID must be considered with precaution.FAPESPCNP

Uncertainty in multitask learning: joint representations for probabilistic MR-only radiotherapy planning

Multi-task neural network architectures provide a mechanism that jointly integrates information from distinct sources. It is ideal in the context of MR-only radiotherapy planning as it can jointly regress a synthetic CT (synCT) scan and segment organs-at-risk (OAR) from MRI. We propose a probabilistic multi-task network that estimates: 1) intrinsic uncertainty through a heteroscedastic noise model for spatially-adaptive task loss weighting and 2) parameter uncertainty through approximate Bayesian inference. This allows sampling of multiple segmentations and synCTs that share their network representation. We test our model on prostate cancer scans and show that it produces more accurate and consistent synCTs with a better estimation in the variance of the errors, state of the art results in OAR segmentation and a methodology for quality assurance in radiotherapy treatment planning.Comment: Early-accept at MICCAI 2018, 8 pages, 4 figure

β2-adrenergic agonists do not improve physical performance in healthy individuals

All beta-2 agonists are prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA, www.wada-ama.org). However, its use may be permitted in athletes who are granted a therapeutic use exemption (TUE). [...]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

β2-adrenergic agonists and doping: Where do we stand?

Hostrup et al1 kindly commented on our previous paper related to the enhancement of physical performance by β2-agonists.2 First, we would like to thank the authors for their review and acknowledge that our title and conclusions may have been misleading because, in fact, they only refer to endurance/aerobic-dominated performances [...]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Timing of labor demand

We examine the timing of firms' operations in a formal model of labor demand. Merging a variety of data sets from Portugal from 1995-2004, we describe temporal patterns of firms' demand for labor and estimate production-functions and relative labor-demand equations. The results demonstrate the existence of substitution of employment across times of the day/week and show that legislated penalties for work at irregular hours induce firms to alter their operating schedules. The results suggest a role for such penalties in an unregulated labor market, such as the United States, in which unusually large fractions of work are performed at night and on weekends

EMOTICOM: A Neuropsychological Test Battery to Evaluate Emotion, Motivation, Impulsivity, and Social Cognition.

In mental health practice, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments are aimed at improving neuropsychological symptoms, including cognitive and emotional impairments. However, at present there is no established neuropsychological test battery that comprehensively covers multiple affective domains relevant in a range of disorders. Our objective was to generate a standardized test battery, comprised of existing, adapted and novel tasks, to assess four core domains of affective cognition (emotion processing, motivation, impulsivity and social cognition) in order to facilitate and enhance treatment development and evaluation in a broad range of neuropsychiatric disorders. The battery was administered to 200 participants aged 18-50 years (50% female), 42 of whom were retested in order to assess reliability. An exploratory factor analysis identified 11 factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, which accounted for over 70% of the variance. Tasks showed moderate to excellent test-retest reliability and were not strongly correlated with demographic factors such as age or IQ. The EMOTICOM test battery is therefore a promising tool for the assessment of affective cognitive function in a range of contexts.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.0002