Adaptation and validation of the Portuguese version of the regulation of eating behavior scale (REBSp)

The aim of present study was two-fold: i) to translate and adapt the Regulation of Eating Behavior Scale to Portuguese (REBSp), and ii) to analyze its psychometrics properties (factorial validity with gender invariance analyses, reliability and construct validity). The study sample was composed by 471 Portuguese participants (68.4% females) with a mean age of 30.5 years (SD = 11.2). Structural equation modeling was used to verify the psychometric properties of the scale using SPSS v. 23.0 and AMOS 24.0 software. The analysis showed that the Portuguese 24-item scale presented a good fit, achieving good reliability and convergent validity. Some issues arose with discriminant validity within autonomous and controlled regulations, discussed in light of the simplex pattern expected by self-determination theory literature. Additionally, the scale presented concurrent validity and evidence of gender measurement invariance. Latent mean analysis between genders showed that women presented higher means for intrinsic motivation and integrated regulation when compared to men. In conclusion, analyses suggest that the 24-item Portuguese version of REBS can be used safely to assess the eating regulation in both genders.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Variations In Desiccation Tolerance In Seeds Of Eugenia Pyriformis: Dispersal At Different Stages Of Maturation

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Eugenia pyriformis Cambess., known locally as uvaieira, a species of fruit-bearing tree with both pharmacological and gastronomic potential, has seeds which are sensitive to desiccation. The aim of this study was to analyse whether the degree of tolerance to desiccation of uvaieira seeds depends on the stage of maturation of the seeds at shedding. This, in turn, depends on the environmental conditions in which the seeds develop, including the accumulation of degree-days and rainfall in the period. Seeds were collected from the ripe fruit of parent plants located in the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, Brazil, submitted to drying and analysed for water content and germination. A completely randomised design was used in a 20 × 3 factorial scheme (source of material x level of drying). The degree of desiccation tolerance differs between region and period of collection, even for the same parent plant when the seeds are collected in different years. The water and thermal conditions of the environment during seed development modify the maturation cycle, the physiological quality and the acquisition of desiccation tolerance. In uvaieira seeds, desiccation tolerance depends on the physiological maturity of the seeds at the time of dispersal, which is associated with the environmental conditions.471118126CAPES, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível SuperiorCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES

Geometric approach to nonvariational singular elliptic equations

In this work we develop a systematic geometric approach to study fully nonlinear elliptic equations with singular absorption terms as well as their related free boundary problems. The magnitude of the singularity is measured by a negative parameter $(\gamma -1)$, for $0 < \gamma < 1$, which reflects on lack of smoothness for an existing solution along the singular interface between its positive and zero phases. We establish existence as well sharp regularity properties of solutions. We further prove that minimal solutions are non-degenerate and obtain fine geometric-measure properties of the free boundary $\mathfrak{F} = \partial \{u > 0 \}$. In particular we show sharp Hausdorff estimates which imply local finiteness of the perimeter of the region $\{u > 0 \}$ and $\mathcal{H}^{n-1}$ a.e. weak differentiability property of $\mathfrak{F}$.Comment: Paper from D. Araujo's Ph.D. thesis, distinguished at the 2013 Carlos Gutierrez prize for best thesis, Archive for Rational Mechanics and Analysis 201

Tropical and subtropical cloud transitions in weather and climate prediction models: The GCSS/WGNE pacific cross-section intercomparison (GPCI)

International audienceA model evaluation approach is proposed in which weather and climate prediction models are analyzed along a Pacific Ocean cross section, from the stratocumulus regions off the coast of California, across the shallow convection dominated trade winds, to the deep convection regions of the ITCZ-the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Cloud System Study/Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (GCSS/WGNE) Pacific Cross-Section Intercomparison (GPCI). The main goal of GPCI is to evaluate and help understand and improve the representation of tropical and subtropical cloud processes in weather and climate prediction models. In this paper, a detailed analysis of cloud regime transitions along the cross section from the subtropics to the tropics for the season June-July-August of 1998 is presented. This GPCI study confirms many of the typical weather and climate prediction model problems in the representation of clouds: underestimation of clouds in the stratocumulus regime by most models with the corresponding consequences in terms of shortwave radiation biases; overestimation of clouds by the 40-yrECMWFRe-Analysis (ERA-40) in the deep tropics (in particular) with the corresponding impact in the outgoing longwave radiation; large spread between the different models in terms of cloud cover, liquid water path and shortwave radiation; significant differences between the models in terms of vertical cross sections of cloud properties (in particular), vertical velocity, and relative humidity. An alternative analysis of cloud cover mean statistics is proposed where sharp gradients in cloud cover along the GPCI transect are taken into account. This analysis shows that the negative cloud bias of some models and ERA-40 in the stratocumulus regions [as compared to the first International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP)] is associated not only with lower values of cloud cover in these regimes, but also with a stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition that occurs too early along the trade wind Lagrangian trajectory. Histograms of cloud cover along the cross section differ significantly between models. Some models exhibit a quasi-bimodal structure with cloud cover being either very large (close to 100%) or very small, while other models show a more continuous transition. The ISCCP observations suggest that reality is in-between these two extreme examples. These different patterns reflect the diverse nature of the cloud, boundary layer, and convection parameterizations in the participating weather and climate prediction models. © 2011 American Meteorological Society

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon cross-section in pp collisions at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV using 35 pb-1 of ATLAS data

A measurement of the differential cross-section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges |eta|<1.37 and 1.52<=|eta|<2.37 in the transverse energy range 45<=E_T<400GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 35 pb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The yields of the signal photons are measured using a data-driven technique, based on the observed distribution of the hadronic energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate and the photon selection criteria. The results are compared with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and found to be in good agreement over four orders of magnitude in cross-section.Comment: 7 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 4 tables, final version published in Physics Letters