MUNICÍPIO RESILIENTE EM AFOGAMENTO

De acordo com a Organização Mundial da Saúde, afogamento é uma grave ameaça negligenciada à saúde pública, sendo que morrem em média 372.000 pessoas por ano em todo o mundo; 40 pessoas a cada hora do dia. No Brasil quase 1 milhão de pessoas se afogam e 5.700 morrem por afogamento a cada ano, sendo mais de 75% em rios, lagos e represas onde não existe nenhuma supervisão de guarda-vidas. Tendo em vista esta trágica realidade, é fundamental criar mecanismos de resiliência para estes locais, tendo como atores centrais os municípios, de forma a melhor efetivarem a gestão de riscos de afogamento em suas áreas geográficas

Phenology and Seasonal Ecosystem Productivity in an Amazonian Floodplain Forest

everal studies have explored the linkages between phenology and ecosystem productivity across the Amazon basin. However, few studies have focused on flooded forests, which correspond to c.a. 14% of the basin. In this study, we assessed the seasonality of ecosystem productivity (gross primary productivity, GPP) from eddy covariance measurements, environmental drivers and phenological patterns obtained from the field (leaf litter mass) and satellite measurements (enhanced vegetation index (EVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer/multi-angle implementation correction (MODIS/MAIAC)) in an Amazonian floodplain forest. We found that ecosystem productivity is limited by soil moisture in two different ways. During the flooded period, the excess of water limits GPP (Spearman’s correlation; rho = −0.22), while during non-flooded months, GPP is positively associated with soil moisture (rho = 0.34). However, GPP is maximized when cumulative water deficit (CWD) increases (rho = 0.81), indicating that GPP is dependent on the amount of water available. EVI was positively associated with leaf litter mass (Pearson’s correlation; r = 0.55) and with GPP (r = 0.50), suggesting a coupling between new leaf production and the phenology of photosynthetic capacity, decreasing both at the peak of the flooded period and at the end of the dry season. EVI was able to describe the inter-annual variations on forest responses to environmental drivers, which have changed during an observed El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) year (2015/2016)

Classificação de assimetria em lesões de pele por meio de imagens usando máquina de vetor de suporte

The increased occurrence of cancer cases over the years and the importance of prevention work motivated the development of this work. It aim is help the dermatologist in the diagnosis of skin lesions, providing information about the characteristics of asymmetry of ABCD rule (Asymmetry, Edge, Color and Diameter), widely used in the initial examination to determine if a lesion is malignant or no. To do so, are extracted from scanned images of the asymmetric features of the lesion, and classified as symmetrical or asymmetrical, through a Support Vector Machine (SVM). This process is used an anisotropic diffusion filter to soften the image and the model of active contour without edge (Chan-vese) to segment them. Thus, allows to define the contour of the lesion so that can be extracted their characteristics of asymmetry, used as input in the smart classifier

Foreign direct investment and institutional reform : evidence and an application to Portugal

We examine the role of geographic, economic, and institutional factors in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Europe, using a cross-section of inward bilateral investments. We estimate and assess the expected benefits, the required reform efforts, and the efficiency of reform options corresponding to a con- vergence of Portuguese institutions to EU standards. We conclude that improving home institutions is likely to have a quantitatively very significant role in attracting FDI. Geographical and market size factors also play a role. Reforms promoting the independence of financial institutions and a leaner bureaucracy, lowering political risk and corruption, and improving the investment code may significantly affect the amount of bilateral inward FDI that is targeted to Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The BLue Amazon Brain (BLAB): A Modular Architecture of Services about the Brazilian Maritime Territory

We describe the first steps in the development of an artificial agent focused on the Brazilian maritime territory, a large region within the South Atlantic also known as the Blue Amazon. The "BLue Amazon Brain" (BLAB) integrates a number of services aimed at disseminating information about this region and its importance, functioning as a tool for environmental awareness. The main service provided by BLAB is a conversational facility that deals with complex questions about the Blue Amazon, called BLAB-Chat; its central component is a controller that manages several task-oriented natural language processing modules (e.g., question answering and summarizer systems). These modules have access to an internal data lake as well as to third-party databases. A news reporter (BLAB-Reporter) and a purposely-developed wiki (BLAB-Wiki) are also part of the BLAB service architecture. In this paper, we describe our current version of BLAB's architecture (interface, backend, web services, NLP modules, and resources) and comment on the challenges we have faced so far, such as the lack of training data and the scattered state of domain information. Solving these issues presents a considerable challenge in the development of artificial intelligence for technical domains

Different lighting conditions affect the germination and seedling development of two varieties of Shiso.

Shiso (Perilla frutescens L.) is an Asian plant that contains properties that allow it to be used in both cooking and medicine. The present study set out to understand how different lighting conditions affect the germination and development of shiso seedlings of the purple and green varieties. Germination stabilization occurred 15 days after sowing (DAS), accounting for the environment with 70% shading 84 germinations of the purple variety and 34 germinations of the green variety. While, in the full sunshine treatment, germinations were much lower, however, the seedlings did not remain viable for monitoring the development of seedlings in full sunshine. After stabilization of germination, the following were evaluated: specific leaf area, diameter of the neck, height and number of leaves and but after 35 DAS there was a decrease in the production of biomass by both varieties

Impact of Continuous Axenic Cultivation in Leishmania infantum Virulence

Experimental infections with visceral Leishmania spp. are frequently performed referring to stationary parasite cultures that are comprised of a mixture of metacyclic and non-metacyclic parasites often with little regard to time of culture and metacyclic purification. This may lead to misleading or irreproducible experimental data. It is known that the maintenance of Leishmania spp. in vitro results in a progressive loss of virulence that can be reverted by passage in a mammalian host. In the present study, we aimed to characterize the loss of virulence in culture comparing the in vitro and in vivo infection and immunological profile of L. infantum stationary promastigotes submitted to successive periods of in vitro cultivation. To evaluate the effect of axenic in vitro culture in parasite virulence, we submitted L. infantum promastigotes to 4, 21 or 31 successive in vitro passages. Our results demonstrated a rapid and significant loss of parasite virulence when parasites are sustained in axenic culture. Strikingly, the parasite capacity to modulate macrophage activation decreased significantly with the augmentation of the number of in vitro passages. We validated these in vitro observations using an experimental murine model of infection. A significant correlation was found between higher parasite burdens and lower number of in vitro passages in infected Balb/c mice. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that the virulence deficit caused by successive in vitro passages results from an inadequate capacity to differentiate into amastigote forms. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that the use of parasites with distinct periods of axenic in vitro culture induce distinct infection rates and immunological responses and correlated this phenotype with a rapid loss of promastigote differentiation capacity. These results highlight the need for a standard operating protocol (SOP) when studying Leishmania species