The detection of single electrons by means of a Micromegas-covered MediPix2 pixel CMOS readout circuit

A small drift chamber was read out by means of a MediPix2 readout chip as direct anode. A Micromegas foil was placed 50 $\mu$m above the chip, and electron multiplication occurred in the gap. With a He/Isobutane 80/20 mixture, gas multiplication factors up to tens of thousands were achieved, resulting in an efficiency for detecting single electrons of better than 90% . We recorded many frames containing 2D images with tracks from cosmic muons. Along these tracks, electron clusters were observed, as well as delta-rays.Comment: 15 pages, 9 included postscript figures, 5 separate jpeg figures, submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A. A complete postscript version with high resolution figures 1, 3, 11, 12 and 14 can be found at http://www.nikhef.nl/~i06/RandD/final/letter4.p

Watching subgraphs to improve efficiency in maximum clique search

This paper describes a new technique referred to as watched subgraphs which improves the performance of BBMC, a leading state of the art exact maximum clique solver (MCP). It is based on watched literals employed by modern SAT solvers for boolean constraint propagation. In efficient SAT algorithms, a list of clauses is kept for each literal (it is said that the clauses watch the literal) so that only those in the list are checked for constraint propagation when a (watched) literal is assigned during search. BBMC encodes vertex sets as bit strings, a bit block representing a subset of vertices (and the corresponding induced subgraph) the size of the CPU register word. The paper proposes to watch two subgraphs of critical sets during MCP search to efficiently compute a number of basic operations. Reported results validate the approach as the size and density of problem instances rise, while achieving comparable performance in the general case

Fireballs recorded between May and July 2021 by the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network

This work focuses on the analysis of the most remarkable bolides recorded over the Iberian Peninsula and neighboring areas in the framework of the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) and the SMART project. These events were spotted from May to July 2021.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (project PID2019-105797GB-I00).State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709).Spanish grant AYA - RTI2018 – 098657 -J - I00 “LEO – SBNAF” (MCIU / AEI / FEDER, UE)

Remarkable bolides recorded along August 2021 in the framework of the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network

The most remarkable fireballs observed along August 2021 in the framework of the Southwestern Europe Meteor Network (SWEMN) and the SMART project are presented in this work. These fireballs overflew the Iberian Peninsula and neighboring areas, and reached an absolute peak luminosity ranging between mag. –8 and –12. The emission spectra of some of these bright meteors are also discussed.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (project PID2019-105797GB-I00). State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709)”. Spanish grant AYARTI2018 – 098657 – J - I00 ``LEO - SBNAF'' (MCIU / AEI / FEDER, UE)

Fully Automatic Expression-Invariant Face Correspondence

We consider the problem of computing accurate point-to-point correspondences among a set of human face scans with varying expressions. Our fully automatic approach does not require any manually placed markers on the scan. Instead, the approach learns the locations of a set of landmarks present in a database and uses this knowledge to automatically predict the locations of these landmarks on a newly available scan. The predicted landmarks are then used to compute point-to-point correspondences between a template model and the newly available scan. To accurately fit the expression of the template to the expression of the scan, we use as template a blendshape model. Our algorithm was tested on a database of human faces of different ethnic groups with strongly varying expressions. Experimental results show that the obtained point-to-point correspondence is both highly accurate and consistent for most of the tested 3D face models

Treatment with interferon-alpha delays disease in swine infected with a highly virulent CSFV strain

AbstractInterferon-alpha (IFNα) can effectively inhibit or abort a viral infection within the host. It has been reported that IFN induction and production is hindered during classical swine fever virus (CSFV) infection. Most of those studies have been performed in vitro, making it difficult to elucidate the actual role of IFNs during CSFV infection in swine. Here, we report the effect of IFNα treatment (delivered by a replication defective recombinant human adenovirus type 5, Ad5) in swine experimentally infected with highly virulent CSFV strain Brescia. Treatment with two different subtypes of IFNα delayed the appearance of CSF-related clinical signs and virus replication although it did not prevent lethal disease. This is the first report describing the effect of IFNα treatment during CSFV infection in swine

Demanda de informação em sistemas agroflorestais para agricultura familiar sustentável no Nordeste paraense.

Práticas alternativas começam a ser vistas como uma garantia de preservação dos sistemas produtivos da agricultura familiar. O uso de sistemas alternativos para recuperação de áreas degradadas e/ou abandonadas é fundamental para alcançar sustentabilidade de unidades de produção familiar rurais, com propostas tecnológicas e baseadas no conhecimento e uso racional dos recursos naturais. Disponibilizar alternativas sustentáveis à recuperação de áreas degradadas com agricultura e pastagens com vistas ao uso sustentado da terra e melhoria de vida dos agricultores da Amazônia foi objetivo do projeto "Desenvolvimento e Validação de Estratégias Participativas de Recuperação de Áreas Agrícolas e Pastagens Degradadas na Amazônia", componente da Sub-Rede RECUPERAMAZ. Para viabilizar o processo de divulgação científica dos resultados de pesquisa, foi realizada uma ação de identificação de demanda por informação, aplicando-se metodologia apropriada e adaptada, para 81 agricultores familiares, representantes de 16 associações comunitárias rurais, distribuídos entre os municípios de Igarapé-Açu, Mãe do Rio e Concórdia do Pará, região Nordeste Paraense. Os resultados indicam que os agricultores apresentam um perfil que facilita o processo de divulgação dos resultados de pesquisas, com maior ou menor habilidade para uso de diferentes mídias e fontes. Demonstram interesse em "novos" conhecimentos, i.e. através das informações fornecidas por técnicos, pelas instituições governamentais e não-governamentais entre outros e demandam informações relacionadas às suas práticas agrícolas cotidianas para soluções de diferentes problemas