Holcosus festivus (Central American Whitptail Lizard): Nuptial gift

Signaling the ability to provision limited re-sources to a mate's reproductive success should be favored by sexual selection. In many taxa, female mate choice is driven by courtship offerings in the form of nutritional items, commonly known as nuptial gifts where males present their partners with feeding gifts before, during, or after courtship and/or copulating. Such mating effort has been widely reported across invertebrate species, but it has been less reported among vertebrates, especially reptiles. Here, we report on a novel mating ritual in the lizard Holcosus festivus from a tropical lowland rainforest in Costa Rica.Fil: Chaves Acuña, Wagner Josue. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Salas Solano, Diego. Universidad de Costa Rica; Costa Ric

In search of sound threshold: gestures, sounds and risks in folia tuning

The article deals with the tuning of musical instruments in the religious and festive context of the folias in Taboquinha, a rural locality in the city of São Francisco, northern Minas Gerais. The text draws attention to the dynamics involved in the tuning process, understanding the phenomenon as a collective practice that takes place in interactions between people through an expressive and communicative economy involving gestures, objects, body movements, looks, words and sounds. In this sense, the question that animates this exercise is not so much what the tuning is or what is tuning, but:  how the instruments are tuned. What happens when the practice is performed? What effects does tuning produce? How does tuning relate to other situations and moments in the ritual cycle of folias? The article also suggests that tuning, on the one hand creates a framework, a sense of collectivity and integration, on the other is permeated with dangers, risks and uncertainties, making it a constant search, a continuous movement, a threshold between tensions, heights and frequency.O artigo aborda a afinação dos instrumentos musicais no contexto religioso e festivo das folias na Taboquinha, localidade rural pertencente ao município de São Francisco, norte de Minas Gerais. O texto chama a atenção para a dinâmica envolvida no processo de afinação, entendendo o fenômeno como uma prática coletiva realizada na interação entre pessoas por meio de uma economia expressiva e comunicativa, envolvendo gestos, objetos, movimentos corporais, olhares, palavras e sonoridades. Nessa direção, a pergunta que anima este exercício não é tanto qual é a afinação ou o que é afinação, mas:  como se afinam os instrumentos? O que acontece quando a prática é realizada? Quais os efeitos produzidos pela afinação? Como a afinação se relaciona com outras situações e momentos do ciclo ritual das folias? O artigo sugere ainda que a afinação, se por um lado cria um enquadramento, um sentido de coletividade e integração; por outro, é permeada de perigos, riscos e incertezas, fazendo dela uma busca constante, um movimento contínuo, um limiar entre tensões, alturas e frequências.  &nbsp

Does Debt Influence Earnings Management in Going Private Transactions in Brazil?

This paper aimed to analyze the influence of debt in earnings management of non-financial companies that were listed on the Brazilian capital market and went private by stock repurchase between 2002 and 2020. The companies that went private were matched by size and sector of activity with those that remained on the stock exchange market in the year prior to the offer announcement. Earnings management was estimated using discretionary accruals and debt was measured by Debt-to-Equity ratio and Total Debt ratio. The results suggest that companies that went public by repurchasing shares tend present negative earnings management. Also, it was found negative and significant relationship between earnings management and Debt-to-Equity ratio and company size. It is understood that the intensification of the monitoring of the managers' actions, mainly due to the publicity of the process implies the restriction of discretionary practices

A search for VHE counterparts of Galactic Fermi bright sources and MeV to TeV spectral characterization

Very high-energy (VHE; E>100 GeV) gamma-rays have been detected from a wide range of astronomical objects, such as pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe), supernova remnants (SNRs), giant molecular clouds, gamma-ray binaries, the Galactic Center, active galactic nuclei (AGN), radio galaxies, starburst galaxies, and possibly star-forming regions as well. At lower energies, observations using the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard Fermi provide a rich set of data which can be used to study the behavior of cosmic accelerators in the MeV to TeV energy bands. In particular, the improved angular resolution of current telescopes in both bands compared to previous instruments significantly reduces source confusion and facilitates the identification of associated counterparts at lower energies. In this paper, a comprehensive search for VHE gamma-ray sources which are spatially coincident with Galactic Fermi/LAT bright sources is performed, and the available MeV to TeV spectra of coincident sources are compared. It is found that bright LAT GeV sources are correlated with TeV sources, in contrast to previous studies using EGRET data. Moreover, a single spectral component seems unable to describe the MeV to TeV spectra of many coincident GeV/TeV sources. It has been suggested that gamma-ray pulsars may be accompanied by VHE gamma-ray emitting nebulae, a hypothesis that can be tested with VHE observations of these pulsars.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, in press, 17 pages, 12 figures, 5 table

Dynamical robustness of biological networks with hierarchical distribution of time scales

We propose the concepts of distributed robustness and r-robustness, well adapted to functional genetics. Then we discuss the robustness of the relaxation time using a chemical reaction description of genetic and signalling networks. First, we obtain the following result for linear networks: for large multiscale systems with hierarchical distribution of time scales the variance of the inverse relaxation time (as well as the variance of the stationary rate) is much lower than the variance of the separate constants. Moreover, it can tend to 0 faster than 1/n, where n is the number of reactions. We argue that similar phenomena are valid in the nonlinear case as well. As a numerical illustration we use a model of signalling network that can be applied to important transcription factors such as NFkB

The Brazilian private pharmaceutical market after the first ten years of the generics law

Objectives: To describe changes in the private market for selected originators, branded generics (\u27similares\u27), and generic products during the 10 years following passage of the Brazilian Generics Law. Methods: We analyzed longitudinal data collected by IQVIA(R) on quarterly sales by wholesalers to retail pharmacies in Brazil from 1998 through 2010, grouped by originators, branded generics, and generic products in three therapeutic classes (antibiotics, antidiabetics, and antihypertensives). Outcomes included market share (proportion of the total private market volume), sales volume per capita, prices and number of manufacturers by group. Results: In the private market share, generics became dominant in each therapeutic class but the speed of uptake varied. Originators consistently lost most market share while branded generics varied over time. By the end of the study period, generics were the most sold product type in all classes, followed by branded generics. The number of generic manufacturers increased in all classes, while branded generics increased just after the policy but then decreased slowly through the end of 2010. For approximately 50% of the antibiotics analyzed, branded generics and generics had lower prices than originators. For antidiabetics, branded generic and generic prices were quite similar during the period analyzed. Price trends for the various subclasses of antihypertensive exhibited very different patterns over time. Conclusion: Sales of branded generics and originators decreased substantially in the three therapeutic classes analysed following the introduction of the generics policy in Brazil, but the time to market dominance of generics varied by class

RateMyDay: Mobile Tool to Follow the Daily Activities

The advance of the Internet, mobile devices and their applications are providing a new range of data and habits that can help achieve our goals everyday and still provide us a better quality of life. In this context, we present the RateMyDay, which is a tool for mobile devices. This tool aims to support people in adapting and monitoring daily routines. People will be able to record and analyze, in a simple, private and personal, their day to day and thus form and monitor your routine life. In a second step, they can analyze your progress through a historical, indexes and statistics