Thick Braneworlds and the Gibbons-Kallosh-Linde No-go Theorem in the Gauss-Bonnet Framework

The sum rules related to thick braneworlds are constructed, in order to encompass Gauss-Bonnet terms. The generation of thick branes is hence proposed in a periodic extra dimension scenario, what circumvents the Gibbons-Kallosh-Linde no-go theorem in this context.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in the EPL. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.632

Estudo eletromiográfico dos músculos escapulares em diferentes variações da box position e da prancha

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Licenciada em FisioterapiaResumo: Objetivo: Analisar a atividade eletromiográfica dos músculos serrátil anterior, trapézio superior e inferior ao longo do exercício de box position e prancha com diferentes variações e superfícies. Metodologia: Foi realizada a análise da atividade electromiográfica dos músculos acima referidos em quinze participantes (média de idades 22.00±2.00 anos; IMC 23.41±3.83 kg/m2) nas diferentes variações dos exercícios box position e prancha, sendo os elétrodos colocados no membro superior dominante dos participantes. Resultados: Foram encontradas diferenças significativas quando analisada a atividade electromiográfica nos diversos músculos em cada variação mas também em cada músculo entre as variações. O músculo serrátil anterior foi o que evidenciou uma maior atividade muscular, com cerca de 38,41% de contração máxima voluntária, sendo que os valores mais altos foram observados em superfícies estáveis. O músculo que evidenciou menos atividade muscular foi o trapézio superior. Conclusão: A atividade electromiográfica dos músculos em questão variam consoante o tipo de variação dos exercícios efetuados. No entanto o músculo serrátil anterior apresentou os maiores níveis de atividade eletromiográfica em todas as variações dos exercícios propostos.Objective: The aim of the present study is to analyze the electromyographic activity of the anterior serratus muscle, upper and lower trapezius throughout the box position and plank exercise, with different variations and surfaces. Methodology: The electromyographic activity of announced muscles was realized in fifteen participants (mean age 22.00±2.00 years; BMI 23.41±3.83 kg/m2) in different variations of box position and plank, being placed electrodes according to the preference of the participants. Results: Significant differences were found when the electromyographic activity were analyzed in the various muscles in each variation but also in every muscle between the variations. The anterior serratus muscle was what showed greater muscular activity, with value of 38.41% of maximum voluntary contraction, with the higher values verified on stable surfaces. The muscle that showed less muscular activity was the upper trapezius muscle. Conclusion: The present electromyographic muscular activity changes depending on the type of variation of performed exercises. However, the anterior serratus muscle presented higher levels of electromyographic activity in each exercise variation proposed.N/

Customer relationship management at Sport Lisboa e Benfica: football customer segmentation

The purpose of this study is to consolidate the knowledge and learning from the field lab at SL Benfica and propose a conceptual framework for customer-based lifecycle segmentation that suits the club’s needs and its customer base. Relevant customer relationship management and segmentation literature was reviewed and served as the basis for the proposed segmentation method supported by 78 qualitative semi-structured interviews with Benfica supporters. Benfica needs to improve its targeting and marketing efforts and realize the true potential behind certain segments of customers within its database by applying a customer-based lifecycle segmentation technique as proposed in this study

Ginger: A Transactional Middleware with Data and Operation Centric Mixed Consistency

Many modern digital services to correspond to user demand need to offer high availability and low response times. To that end, a lot of digital services resort to geo-replicateddistributed systems. These systems are deployed closer to users, splitting latency acrossmultiple servers and allowing for faster access and communication. However, to accommodate these systems the data stores are also split up across multiple locations. Committing an operation is such systems requires coordination among the multiple replicas.These systems must allow data to be stored as fast as possible without breaking safety constraints of the developers systems.There are three main approaches to define the level of consistency to be guaranteed when accessing the data: over data, over operations or over transactions. The problem with approaches such as consistency over data or consistency over transactions is that they are very limited, as they can result in operations that could be executed in lower consistency levels to be executed at higher consistency levels. Our approach to this problemis the conciliation of executing transactions while expressing consistency in both data and operations. We instantiate this proposition in a middleware system, called Ginger,that is deployed between the user and the data stores. Ginger benefits from all the other approaches, allowing for execution of transactions, that include operations with different levels of consistency, over data with different levels of consistency. This provides the benefits of the isolation from transactions while also providing the performance and control,that consistency defined over operations and consistency defined over data provide.Our experimental results show that Ginger comparing to previously mentioned approaches, such as consistency over data and consistency over transaction, provides faster transaction committing speeds. Ginger serves as proof of concept that using consistency defined both over data and operations while using transactions is possible and may be aviable approach. Further development of the system will provide more functionalities,further evaluation, and a more in-depth comparison to other systems.Os serviços digitais modernos para corresponder às necessidades dos utilizadores precisam de oferecer alta disponibilidade e baixos tempos de resposta. Para tal, os serviços digitais recorrem a sistemas geo-replicados. Esses sistemas são implantados perto dos utilizadores, dividindo a latência entre servidores. No entanto, para acomodar esses sistemas, os serviços de armazenamentos de dados são divididos. O commiting de uma operação nesses sistemas requer coordenação entre múltiplas réplicas. Esses sistemas devem permitir que os dados sejam armazenados rapidamente, sem quebrar restrições de segurança.Existem três abordagens principais para definir o nível de consistência a ser garantido durante o acesso aos dados: sobre dados, sobre operações ou sobre transacções. O problema com abordagens como consistência sobre dados ou sobre transacções é que são limitadas, podendo resultar em operações de níveis de consistência baixos serem executadas com níveis de consistência mais altos. A nossa abordagem a este problema é a conciliação da expressão de consistência tanto nos dados como nas operações. Instanciámos esta proposição num sistema de middleware, denominado Ginger, que é implantado entre o usuário e os serviços de armazenamentos de dados. O Ginger beneficia de todas as abordagens referidas, permitindo a execução de transacções, que incluem operações com diferentes níveis de consistência, sobre dados com diferentes níveis de consistência. Isto beneficia do isolamento das transacções, ao mesmo tempo que fornece o desempenho e o controle, que a consistência definida nas operações e a consistência definida nos dados fornecem.Os nossos resultados experimentais mostram que o Ginger, em comparação com as outras abordagens, como por exemplo consistência sobre os dados e consistência sobre a transação, fornece velocidades de commiting de transacções mais rápidas. Ginger serve como prova de conceito de que o uso de transacções com níveis de consistência definidos sobre os dados e operações é possível e pode ser uma abordagem viável. O desenvolvimento futuro do sistema fornecerá mais funcionalidades, avaliação adicional e uma comparação mais aprofundada com outros sistemas

Merlin : metabolic models reconstruction using genome-scale information

This article describes Merlin, a user-friendly program that performs functional genomic annotations of lists of genes. Merlin retrieves information of each homologue and automatically scores the results, allowing the user to change the score selection, and dynamically (re-)annotate the genome. Merlin expedites the transition from genome-scale data to SBML metabolic models, allowing the user to have a preliminary view of the biochemical network.FCT -Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(SFRH/BD/47307/2008

Assembling genome-wide transporter system annotations

Over the years, several genome-scale metabolic models have been released with compartmentation information. Models such as iMH805/775 [1] (15 compartments) and iMM904 [2] (8 compartments) for Saccharomyces cerevisiae or iRS1563 [3] for Zea mays (6 compartments) include reactions performed in specific cellular organelles, such as mitochondria, chloroplasts (in photosynthetic organisms), lysosomes, cell nucleus or the Golgi apparatus, etc. Thus, cells have specific structures, the transport systems, to assist on the metabolites relocation. Cellular transport systems are described in databases such as TCDB (http://www.tcdb.org/) maintained by the Saier Lab Bioinformatics Group, the TransportDB (http://www.membranetransport.org/) or the YTPdb (http://homes.esat.kuleuven.be/~sbrohee/ytpdb/index.php/Main_Page) yeast transport protein database. TCDB proposed a classification system, analogous to the Enzyme Classification System (EC Number) [4] though including phylogenetic information, for transport proteins. The phylogenetic information included in the proposed nomenclature is very restrictive as it assigns a distinct TC Number to each transport protein identified in this database. Hence, in this work we propose a system to detect and classify potential transport proteins for a given genome. A TMHMM (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/TMHMM/) [5] search was performed to identify potential transmembrane domains in the genome. Next, Smith-Waterman (SW) [6] alignments were performed on the transport candidate genes, against the TCDB database [7], to identify sequences encoding proteins with sequences similarities to the known transport systems. Instead of assigning a similar TC number to the transport system, the classification of the metabolites is proposed, according to the frequency of the metabolite in the SW search and the taxonomy resemblance of each hit organism to the case study organism, and not the transporter systems. The membrane where the transporter is located is predicted by the WoLF PSORT (http://wolfpsort.org/) [8] software