Patent Applications on Representative Sectors of Biotechnology in Brazil: an Analysis of the Last Decade

The present article aims to assess the innovative activity in the Brazilian most representative sector in biotechnology field. The search was conducted through patent applications of residents at the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI - Brazil), from 2000 to 2010. This article will also examine the patent applicants' profile and the partnerships among academic institutions and private firms in BrazilThe website of European Patent Office (EPO) patent database - Espacenet was used to conduct the survey, and the search strategy fields selected for the patent applications were: (i) Priority Number: BR (Brazil), and (ii) the International Patent Classification (IPC) - C12N, C07K14, and C07H21/04.The patent applications by Brazilian residents, from 2000 to 2010 in the Espacenet for the classifications adopted indicates a total of 396 patent applications in the most representative sectors in biotechnology over the past 10 years. After the Brazilian Innovation Law there is a growth trend line particularly in the years 2007 and 2008. The universities hold 48% of the patent applications in biotechnology, following by Individuals/ Researchers with 20%, Public Research Centers and Private Firms with 15%, and 11% of the total, respectively

Using migratable objects to enhance fault tolerance schemes in supercomputers

Supercomputers have seen an exponential increase in their size in the last two decades. Such a high growth rate is expected to take us to exascale in the timeframe 2018-2022. But, to bring a productive exascale environment about, it is necessary to focus on several key challenges. One of those challenges is fault tolerance. Machines at extreme scale will experience frequent failures and will require the system to avoid or overcome those failures. Various techniques have recently been developed to tolerate failures. The impact of these techniques and their scalability can be substantially enhanced by a parallel programming model called migratable objects. In this paper, we demonstrate how the migratable-objects model facilitates and improves several fault tolerance approaches. Our experimental results on thousands of cores suggest fault tolerance schemes based on migratable objects have low performance overhead and high scalability. Additionally, we present a performance model that predicts a significant benefit of using migratable objects to provide fault tolerance at extreme scale

Evolução da filosofia juridica no Brasil

Orientador: Luis Fernando CoelhoTese (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paran

Neuroprotective effects of seaweeds against 6-hydroxidopamine-induced cell death on an in vitro human neuroblastoma model

Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder of the central nervous system. Although the causes of PD pathogenesis remain incomplete, some evidences has suggested that oxidative stress is an important mediator in its pathogenesis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the protective effects of seaweeds with high antioxidant activity on 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-induced neurotoxicity in the human neuroblastoma cell line SH-SY5Y, as well as the associated intracellular signaling pathways. Methods: Cell viability studies were assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium (MTT) bromide assay and the intracellular signaling pathways analyzed were: hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production, changes in the mitochondrial membrane potential and Caspase-3 activity. Results: Exposure of SH-SY5Y cells to 6-OHDA (10–1000 μM) reduced cell’s viability in a concentration and timedependent manner. The data suggest that the cell death induced by 6-OHDA was mediated by an increase of H2O2 production, the depolarization of mitochondrial membrane potential and the increase of Caspase-3 activity. Extracts from S. polyshides, P. pavonica, S. muticum, C. tomentosum and U. compressa revealed to efficiently protect cell’s viability in the presence of 6-OHDA (100 μM; 24 h). These effects appear to be associated with the reduction of H2O2 cell’s production, the protection of mitochondrial membrane’s potential and the reduction of Caspase-3 activity. Conclusions: These results suggest that seaweeds can be a promising source of new compounds with neuroprotective potential.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

As representações e práticas sobre a segurança e saúde no trabalho: o caso dos trabalhadores do município de Albufeira

Mestrado em Segurança e Higiene no TrabalhoO envolvimento e a participação dos trabalhadores em matéria de segurança e saúde nos locais de trabalho são direitos adquiridos, mas nem sempre exercidos efetivamente, ou de um modo inteiramente construído, pelos seus intervenientes. Por outro lado, os comportamentos em contexto laboral, na maior parte dos casos não se apresentam coincidentes com o discurso normativo do “saudável” e da segurança no trabalho. Este estudo de caso visa compreender como os trabalhadores, numa organização autárquica, percecionam a segurança e a saúde em contexto laboral, e como caracterizam quer, o comportamento dos outros, quer o seu próprio comportamento. Pretende-se diagnosticar as necessidades de abordagem dos fenómenos sociais relacionados com as representações e práticas dos trabalhadores, e as suas interações. Contempla a aplicação de instrumentos de recolha de dados pouco usuais no contexto da atividade dos profissionais de segurança e saúde no trabalho: um processo de observação participante, continuada; entrevistas semi-diretivas, dirigidas aos trabalhadores, individualmente; e posteriormente, entrevistas de grupos focais. Ambiciona desenvolver uma etapa inicial de diagnóstico, enquanto primeira linha de investigação que conduza posteriormente a uma iniciativa de intervenção-ação, com vista a capacitar os trabalhadores para o envolvimento na construção da sua própria segurança e saúde no trabalho.ABSTRACT - The involvement and participation of workers in occupational health and safety are acquired rights, not always assumed effectively or entirely built by the stakeholders. On the other hand, in most cases, workers behaviour does not coincide with the normative discourse of “health" and work’s safety. This project outlines a study that aims to understand how workers perceive and evaluate their health and safety in a work context, and how they characterize both their own and others safety behaviour. This is a case study, to develop in a Portuguese Municipality that aims to diagnose the social phenomena related to the representations and practices of workers, and respective interactions. Contemplates the application of data collection instruments, not usually used by technicians in the context of occupational health and safety: continued participant observation; individual semi-directive interviews; and later, focus groups interviews. We aspire to develop an initial diagnostic step, as the first line of investigation, leading to an action research initiative, to empower workers to construct of their own occupational health and safety plan

Optimizing an MPI weather forecasting model via processor virtualization

Abstract—Weather forecasting models are computationally intensive applications. These models are typically executed in parallel machines and a major obstacle for their scalability is load imbalance. The causes of such imbalance are either static (e.g. topography) or dynamic (e.g. shortwave radiation, moving thunderstorms). Various techniques, often embedded in the application’s source code, have been used to address both sources. However, these techniques are inflexible and hard to use in legacy codes. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of processor virtualization for dynamically balancing the load in BRAMS, a mesoscale weather forecasting model based on MPI paral-lelization. We use the Charm++ infrastructure, with its over-decomposition and object-migration capabilities, to move sub-domains across processors during execution of the model. Pro-cessor virtualization enables better overlap between computation and communication and improved cache efficiency. Furthermore, by employing an appropriate load balancer, we achieve better processor utilization while requiring minimal changes to the model’s code. I