Management of estuarine beaches on the Amazon coast though the application of recreational carrying capacity indices

The purpose of this paper is to determine the Recreational Carrying Capacity of three estuarine beaches (Colares, Marudá and Murubira) on the Amazon coast of Brazil, based on the combined assessment of natural conditions and visitor facilities. In the final analysis, the carrying capacity of Colares beach was estimated to be 1089 visitors per day, and that of Murubira beach, 238 visitors per day. At Marudá beach, however, the inadequate quality of the water resulted in an RCC of zero, indicating that the beach should not be visited for recreational use. The results of this study may provide a valuable diagnostic tool for the development of future state and municipal coastal management programs. We believe that the procedures adopted in this study are applicable to other estuarine beaches on the Amazon coast, as well as in other estuarine beaches elsewhere with similar natural characteristics.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Prototypical dimensions of business opportunity in early stages of the entrepreneurial process

The purpose of this paper is to describe how individuals with no entrepreneurial experience use prototypical dimensions of business opportunities at the first two stages of the entrepreneurial process: recognition and decision to launch a venture. Previous studies have described the business opportunity prototype (Baron & Ensley, 2006); however, they do not describe how it is used and rely on retrospective data and entrepreneurs\u27 prior experience. We intend to overcome these gaps by using two hypothetical scenarios and three conditions, creating a first entrepreneurial experience for individuals, having thus a 2 (scenario A and B) X 3 (condition: Problem solving , Cash flow , Manageable risk ) design plan with a total of six groups. Our results allow us to describe how individuals use the prototype in the first two stages of the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, we have a better understanding of the importance of risk, customers, and profit in both stages. Both in the recognition and the decision stages, risk is the most important factor, but profit and customers are considered differently in the two stages. In recognition, profit is more important than customers; however, in the decision stage, customers are a major concern for the participants. These results provide relevant information on the first entrepreneurial experience of individuals, which is crucial given the recognized need to promote entrepreneurial initiatives and behavior

Transcriptional regulatory networks controlling woolliness in peach in response to preharvest gibberellin application and cold storage

BACKGROUND: Postharvest fruit conservation relies on low temperatures and manipulations of hormone metabolism to maintain sensory properties. Peaches are susceptible to chilling injuries, such as ‘woolliness’ that is caused by juice loss leading to a ‘wooly’ fruit texture. Application of gibberellic acid at the initial stages of pit hardening impairs woolliness incidence, however the mechanisms controlling the response remain unknown. We have employed genome wide transcriptional profiling to investigate the effects of gibberellic acid application and cold storage on harvested peaches. RESULTS: Approximately half of the investigated genes exhibited significant differential expression in response to the treatments. Cellular and developmental process gene ontologies were overrepresented among the differentially regulated genes, whereas sequences in cell death and immune response categories were underrepresented. Gene set enrichment demonstrated a predominant role of cold storage in repressing the transcription of genes associated to cell wall metabolism. In contrast, genes involved in hormone responses exhibited a more complex transcriptional response, indicating an extensive network of crosstalk between hormone signaling and low temperatures. Time course transcriptional analyses demonstrate the large contribution of gene expression regulation on the biochemical changes leading to woolliness in peach. CONCLUSION: Overall, our results provide insights on the mechanisms controlling the complex phenotypes associated to postharvest textural changes in peach and suggest that hormone mediated reprogramming previous to pit hardening affects the onset of chilling injuries. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12870-015-0659-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

A Markovian dynamics for C.elegansC. elegans behavior across scales

How do we capture the breadth of behavior in animal movement, from rapid body twitches to aging? Using high-resolution videos of the nematode worm $C. elegans$, we show that a single dynamics connects posture-scale fluctuations with trajectory diffusion, and longer-lived behavioral states. We take short posture sequences as an instantaneous behavioral measure, fixing the sequence length for maximal prediction. Within the space of posture sequences we construct a fine-scale, maximum entropy partition so that transitions among microstates define a high-fidelity Markov model, which we also use as a means of principled coarse-graining. We translate these dynamics into movement using resistive force theory, capturing the statistical properties of foraging trajectories. Predictive across scales, we leverage the longest-lived eigenvectors of the inferred Markov chain to perform a top-down subdivision of the worm's foraging behavior, revealing both ``runs-and-pirouettes'' as well as previously uncharacterized finer-scale behaviors. We use our model to investigate the relevance of these fine-scale behaviors for foraging success, recovering a trade-off between local and global search strategies.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figure

The Crystal-t Algorithm: A New Approach To Calculate The Sle Of Lipidic Mixtures Presenting Solid Solutions.

Lipidic mixtures present a particular phase change profile highly affected by their unique crystalline structure. However, classical solid-liquid equilibrium (SLE) thermodynamic modeling approaches, which assume the solid phase to be a pure component, sometimes fail in the correct description of the phase behavior. In addition, their inability increases with the complexity of the system. To overcome some of these problems, this study describes a new procedure to depict the SLE of fatty binary mixtures presenting solid solutions, namely the Crystal-T algorithm. Considering the non-ideality of both liquid and solid phases, this algorithm is aimed at the determination of the temperature in which the first and last crystal of the mixture melts. The evaluation is focused on experimental data measured and reported in this work for systems composed of triacylglycerols and fatty alcohols. The liquidus and solidus lines of the SLE phase diagrams were described by using excess Gibbs energy based equations, and the group contribution UNIFAC model for the calculation of the activity coefficients of both liquid and solid phases. Very low deviations of theoretical and experimental data evidenced the strength of the algorithm, contributing to the enlargement of the scope of the SLE modeling.1616740-5