Percepção do tempo e espaço pós-modernizados : um estudo da compressão espaço-tempo no Aeroporto Internacional de Brasília

Monografia (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, 2012.Este trabalho inicia-se com a discussão sobre a natureza social das categorias tempo e espaço, a partir da premissa de que a forma de senti-las e padronizá-las dependerá de valores e sentidos social e culturalmente constituídos. O tema central é a análise do fenômeno da compressão espaço-tempo e sua condição derivada de uma conjuntura globalizada com valores pautados por uma sociedade capitalista ocidental. Por se tratar de um fenômeno que tem a mobilidade e a velocidade proporcionada pelos meios de comunicação e de transportes como pontos centrais, escolhi o Aeroporto Internacional Presidente Juscelino Kubitschek de Brasília como local para desenvolver esta etnografia. Meus “nativos” foram viajantes em trânsito que participavam desse fluxo global. As técnicas utilizadas foram a observação direta e entrevista semi-estruturada. O objetivo foi levantar o tipo e o nível de expressão que o fenômeno de compressão espaço-tempo tinha na vida das pessoas, entendendo as razões pelas quais os entrevistados sentiam a existência da “aceleração” do tempo e “encolhimento” do espaço geográfico em suas vidas e suas consequências. A excesiva exposição às informações, a multiplicação de atividades e a velocidade das mudanças estavam entre as causas. Entre as consequências mais frequentes encontravam-se o stress, a falta de tempo, novos tipos de relacionamentos, quebra de preconceitos e outros. Os resultados apontam para a existência de particularidades na forma de processar essa nova realidade espaço-temporal em nível individual e em nível cultural, falando-se mesmo em formas “brasileiras” de vivenciá-la. _________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTThis work begins with a deliberation about the social nature of time and space categories starting from the premise that the way we feel and standardize them will depend on the values and meanings socially and culturally constituted. The main theme is the analyses of the time and space compression phenomenon and its condition derived from a globalized conjuncture which has values lined by a western capitalistic society. For being a phenomenon which has mobility and velocity provided by the communication and transportation means as main points, I chose the International Airport Juscelino Kubitschek President of Brasilia city to be the place to develop my ethnography. My “natives” were travelers who were in this global flux. The techniques used were direct observation and semi-structured interview. The goal was to set up the kind and the level of expression this phenomenon of time and space compression has had on people’s lives by understanding the reasons through which the interviewers feel the existence of the time “acceleration” and geographical space “reduction” in their lives and their consequences. The overwhelming exposition to information, the increasing amount of activities and the speed of changes were among these causes. Among the most reported consequences were the stress, lack of time, new patterns of relationships, the disruption of prejudices and so on. The results also point out to the existence of particularities on the processing way of this new time-space reality in both individual and cultural level, even speaking in Brazilian way of living it

Influence of simulated microgravity on the activation of the small GTPase Rho involved in cytoskeletal formation – molecular cloning and sequencing of bovine leukemia-associated guanine nucleotide exchange factor

BACKGROUND: The irregular formation of cytoskeletal fibers in spaceflown experimental cells has been observed, but the disorganization process of fibers is still poorly understood. It is well known that the activation of the small GTPase Rho leads to actin stress fibers assembly. This study was performed to evaluate the effect of simulated microgravity on the activation of Rho that is involved in actin fiber remodeling in cells. RESULTS: Clinorotation influences actin fiber remodeling and its related signaling pathways that involve the small GTPase Rho. Actin stress fiber remodeling was significantly inhibited to a greater extent in cells cultured under clinorotation than in static cultured cells. From the gene and protein expression analyses, we found that the expression level of leukemia-associated Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factor (LARG), which activates Rho, was downregulated under clinorotation. Moreover, we identified the full-length LARG cDNA. The amount of GTP-bound RhoA, that is, the active form of RhoA, decreased under this condition. CONCLUSION: The activation of the small GTPase Rho was influenced by simulated microgravity generated by a three-dimensional (3D) clinostat. Furthermore, the full-length cDNA of bovine LARG, a member of the Rho guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) family, was identified, and its gene expression was observed to be downregulated under clinorotation. This downregulation subsequently resulted in the repression of RhoA activation. These results indicated that the disorganization of the actin fibers was caused by the inhibition of Rho activation by 3D clinorotation

KEGG for taxonomy-based analysis of pathways and genomes

KEGG (https://www.kegg.jp) is a manually curated database resource integrating various biological objects categorized into systems, genomic, chemical and health information. Each object (database entry) is identified by the KEGG identifier (kid), which generally takes the form of a prefix followed by a five-digit number, and can be retrieved by appending /entry/kid in the URL. The KEGG pathway map viewer, the Brite hierarchy viewer and the newly released KEGG genome browser can be launched by appending /pathway/kid, /brite/kid and /genome/kid, respectively, in the URL. Together with an improved annotation procedure for KO (KEGG Orthology) assignment, an increasing number of eukaryotic genomes have been included in KEGG for better representation of organisms in the taxonomic tree. Multiple taxonomy files are generated for classification of KEGG organisms and viruses, and the Brite hierarchy viewer is used for taxonomy mapping, a variant of Brite mapping in the new KEGG Mapper suite. The taxonomy mapping enables analysis of, for example, how functional links of genes in the pathway and physical links of genes on the chromosome are conserved among organism groups

Study on progress of internal erosion and its effects on mechanical properties

学位の種別:課程博士University of Tokyo(東京大学

Effect of enhancers on the in vitro percutaneous absorption of piroxicam from compounding formulations

Formulations of piroxicam in Lanette® (L) or Net Fs® (N) vehicles, with or without permeation enhancers, the ethanol (E) or propylene glycol (P) were developed. The piroxicam permeation through porcine ear skin, in a Franz Cell was evaluated, comparing with a commercial product. The permeate was analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using a 5 mm C18 column with mobile phase methanol:phosphate buffer (60:40), at 354 nm and the run time of 10 min. This method was validated and the limit of quantification was 0.138 mg/mL, with linearity over 0.02-5 µg/mL, without endogenous skin interference. The order of piroxicam permeation after 24 h was: LE >; L>; Feldene® >; N >; LP >; NP >; NE. The L based formulations showed greater piroxicam permeation compared with N based formulations, particularly up to 10 h of experiment. The ethanol enhancer provided the highest piroxicam permeation. The commercial product shows a different behavior, providing piroxicam permeation almost after 10 h. These results show the development of effective, simple and economic percutaneous formulations of piroxicam allowing the choice of formulations for higher or lower piroxicam permeation.Formulações de piroxicam com base Lanette® (L) ou Net Fs ® (N), com ou sem promotores de absorção (etanol-E ou propilenoglicol-P), foram desenvolvidas. O estudo de permeação de piroxicam das formulações foi realizado em célula de Franz, usando pele de porco e o desempenho foi comparado com a especialidade farmacêutica. O fármaco permeado foi analisado por método desenvolvido por CLAE usando uma coluna analítica C18 de 15 x 0,46 cm, com fase móvel metanol: tampão fosfato (60:40), comprimento de onda de 354 nm e o tempo de corrida foi de 10 min. O ensaio foi validado e apresentou limite de quantificação de 0,138 mg/mL , linearidade na faixa de 0,02-5 µg/mL e não ocorreu interferência de substâncias endógenas da pele ou da formulação. A ordem de permeação de piroxicam, após 24 horas, foi LE >; L>; Feldene® >; N >; LP >; NP >; NE. As formulações com L mostraram maior permeação de piroxicam quando comparado com as formulações de base N. Entre os promotores, o etanol promoveu a maior permeação do fármaco. Os resultados mostraram o desenvolvimento de formulações tópicas econômicas, de fácil obtenção, com efetiva permeação de piroxicam possibilitando a escolha de formulações com maior ou menor permeação do fármaco

Evaluating different methods of microarray data normalization

BACKGROUND: With the development of DNA hybridization microarray technologies, nowadays it is possible to simultaneously assess the expression levels of thousands to tens of thousands of genes. Quantitative comparison of microarrays uncovers distinct patterns of gene expression, which define different cellular phenotypes or cellular responses to drugs. Due to technical biases, normalization of the intensity levels is a pre-requisite to performing further statistical analyses. Therefore, choosing a suitable approach for normalization can be critical, deserving judicious consideration. RESULTS: Here, we considered three commonly used normalization approaches, namely: Loess, Splines and Wavelets, and two non-parametric regression methods, which have yet to be used for normalization, namely, the Kernel smoothing and Support Vector Regression. The results obtained were compared using artificial microarray data and benchmark studies. The results indicate that the Support Vector Regression is the most robust to outliers and that Kernel is the worst normalization technique, while no practical differences were observed between Loess, Splines and Wavelets. CONCLUSION: In face of our results, the Support Vector Regression is favored for microarray normalization due to its superiority when compared to the other methods for its robustness in estimating the normalization curve

Elimination of Specific miRNAs by Naked 14-nt sgRNAs

tRNase ZL-utilizing efficacious gene silencing (TRUE gene silencing) is a newly developed technology to suppress mammalian gene expression. TRUE gene silencing works on the basis of a unique enzymatic property of mammalian tRNase ZL, which is that it can recognize a pre-tRNA-like or micro-pre-tRNA-like complex formed between target RNA and artificial small guide RNA (sgRNA) and can cleave any target RNA at any desired site. There are four types of sgRNA, 5′-half-tRNA, RNA heptamer, hook RNA, and ∼14-nt linear RNA. Here we show that a 14-nt linear-type sgRNA against human miR-16 can guide tRNase ZL cleavage of miR-16 in vitro and can downregulate the miR-16 level in HEK293 cells. We also demonstrate that the 14-nt sgRNA can be efficiently taken up without any transfection reagents by living cells and can exist stably in there for at least 24 hours. The naked 14-nt sgRNA significantly reduced the miR-16 level in HEK293 and HL60 cells. Three other naked 14-nt sgRNAs against miR-142-3p, miR-206, and miR-19a/b are also shown to downregulate the respective miRNA levels in various mammalian cell lines. Our observations suggest that in general we can eliminate a specific cellular miRNA at least by ∼50% by using a naked 14-nt sgRNA on the basis of TRUE gene silencing