Ulcerative colitis: let's talk about extent

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory disease in which clinical course varies substantially between patients. The extent of the disease is usually pointed out as one of the factors responsible for this variation. With this study, we pretended to evaluate the differences in natural history and pharmacological therapy prescription between left-sided and extended UC

Uma ferramenta para cadastro e visualização de metadados em Agricultura de Precisão utilizando GeoNetwork.

A Rede Agricultura de Precisão (RedeAP) consiste em um sistema que pode ser descrito como uma estratégia de gestão dos dados produzidos nas Unidades Piloto, e é fundamentalmente constituído de três componentes inter-relacionados entre si, sendo eles: Bancos de Dados, Política de Acesso e uso dos Dados, e Aplicação. O componente de Aplicação se trata de um Sistema de Informações Geográficas para a Web baseado no software livre i3Geo com o aplicativo de catalogação de dados geoespaciais GeoNetwork (QUEIROS et al., 2011). A adição de novos registros no catálogo do GeoNetwork pode ser feita utilizando o próprio editor de metadados ou pela ferramenta de importação dos dados no formato XML. Em ambos os casos, o usuário deve ser, no mínimo, registrado como editor no grupo correspondente. Contudo, o controle de usuários, perfis e níveis de acesso deve ser feito pelo próprio sistema RedeAP, utilizando, assim, o GeoNetwork somente para a visualização dos metadados catalogados. Baseado nesse contexto, surgiu a necessidade da criação de uma ferramenta que fizesse a catalogação dos metadados com o objetivo de mantê-los armazenados no banco de dados do sistema e também possibilitar sua visualização nos padrões de exibição do GeoNetwork

Mepiquat chloride application on cotton at variable rate.

Mepiquat chloride (1.1 - dimethylpiperidinium chloride) are used to control excessive vegetative growth in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) broadcast sprayed by ground or air. As proven by previous researches the variability of the cotton plants height in the field is large enough to justify the application of Mepiquat at variable rate. The major advantages of it are: (i) yield increase; (ii) economy of the applied input; (iii) reducing the potential of environmental pollution. The main objective of this project was to develop a prototype device capable to accomplish the application of Mepiquat at variable rate in real time. This project used an equipment previously developed for automatic mapping of the cotton plants height based on ultrasound transducers. An electronic control device for ground sprayers was designed and constructed based on microcontroller PIC, using open source tools as Java, Linux operational system and IDE Netbeans. The device controls the pressure and flow in the spray line and uses Varitarget® nozzles due to its characteristics of linearity of flow and pressure. The calculation of the Mepiquat dosage to be applied is based on the obtained information of the plants heights and the map of previous application. The laboratory results demonstrate the accuracy of the equipment, with low response time considering the commercial sprayers velocity (3 m.s-1 to 5 m.s-1)

Long-term exposure to elevated pCO2 more than warming modifies juvenile shell growth patterns in a temperate gastropod

Co-occurring global change drivers, such as ocean warming and acidification, can have large impacts on the behaviour, physiology, and health of marine organisms. However, whilst early-life stages are thought to be most sensitive to these impacts, little is known about the individual level processes by which such impacts take place. Here, using mesocosm experiments simulating ocean warming (OW) and ocean acidification (OA) conditions expected for the NE Atlantic region by 2100 using a variety of treatments of elevated pCO2 and temperature. We investigated their impacts on bio-mineralization, microstructure, and ontogeny of Nucella lapillus (L.) juveniles, a common gastropod predator that exerts important top-down controls on biodiversity patterns in temperate rocky shores. The shell of juveniles hatched in mesocosms during a 14 month long experiment were analysed using micro-CT scanning, 3D geometric morphometrics, and scanning-electron microscopy. Elevated temperature and age determined shell density, length, width, thickness, elemental chemistry, shape, and shell surface damages. However, co-occurring elevated pCO2 modified the impacts of elevated temperature, in line with expected changes in carbonate chemistry driven by temperature. Young N. lapillus from acidified treatments had weaker shells and were therefore expected to be more vulnerable to predation and environmental pressures such as wave action. However, in some instances, the effects of both higher CO2 content and elevated temperature appeared to have reversed as the individuals aged. This study suggests that compensatory development may therefore occur, and that expected increases in juvenile mortality under OA and OW may be counteracted, to some degree, by high plasticity in shell formation in this species. This feature may prove advantageous for N. lapillus community dynamics in near-future conditions

A Roadmap to Gamify Programming Education

Learning programming relies on practicing it which is often hampered by the barrier of difficulty. The combined use of automated assessment, which provides fast feedback to the students experimenting with their code, and gamification, which provides additional motivation for the students to intensify their learning effort, can help pass the barrier of difficulty in learning programming. In such environment, students keep receiving the relevant feedback no matter how many times they try (thanks to automated assessment), and their engagement is retained (thanks to gamification). While there is a number of open software and programming exercise collections supporting automated assessment, up to this date, there are no available open collections of gamified programming exercises, no open interactive programming learning environment that would support such exercises, and even no open standard for the representation of such exercises so that they could be developed in different educational institutions and shared among them. This gap is addressed by Framework for Gamified Programming Education (FGPE), an international project whose primary objective is to provide necessary prerequisites for the application of gamification to programming education, including a dedicated gamification scheme, a gamified exercise format and exercises conforming to it, software for editing the exercises and an interactive learning environment capable of presenting them to students. This paper presents the FGPE project, its architecture and main components, as well as the results achieved so far. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Social and professional topics ! Computer science education

Probability densities for the sums of iterates of the sine-circle map in the vicinity of the quasi-periodic edge of chaos

We investigate the probability density of rescaled sum of iterates of sine-circle map within quasi-periodic route to chaos. When the dynamical system is strongly mixing (i.e., ergodic), standard Central Limit Theorem (CLT) is expected to be valid, but at the edge of chaos where iterates have strong correlations, the standard CLT is not necessarily to be valid anymore. We discuss here the main characteristics of the central limit behavior of deterministic dynamical systems which exhibit quasi-periodic route to chaos. At the golden-mean onset of chaos for the sine-circle map, we numerically verify that the probability density appears to converge to a q-Gaussian with q<1 as the golden mean value is approached.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Proposta de dispositivo para aplicação de reguladores de crescimento à taxa variada e em tempo real para a cultura do algodão.

Fitorreguladores são utilizados para controlar a arquitetura da planta de algodão, uma vez que permitem aumentar a produtividade, além de manter a altura do algodoeiro em tamanho adequado para a colheita mecanizada. O objetivo principal desse projeto é propor e desenvolver um protótipo de dispositivo capaz de realizar aplicações à taxa variada em tempo real dos reguladores de crescimento.SBIAgro 2007

Flux networks in metabolic graphs

A metabolic model can be represented as bipartite graph comprising linked reaction and metabolite nodes. Here it is shown how a network of conserved fluxes can be assigned to the edges of such a graph by combining the reaction fluxes with a conserved metabolite property such as molecular weight. A similar flux network can be constructed by combining the primal and dual solutions to the linear programming problem that typically arises in constraint-based modelling. Such constructions may help with the visualisation of flux distributions in complex metabolic networks. The analysis also explains the strong correlation observed between metabolite shadow prices (the dual linear programming variables) and conserved metabolite properties. The methods were applied to recent metabolic models for Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Methanosarcina barkeri. Detailed results are reported for E. coli; similar results were found for the other organisms.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 4.0, supplementary data available (excel

Análise e otimização do tempo de publicação de websites no âmbito do Sistema Gestor de Conteúdo do projeto Agência de Informação Embrapa.

Otimizar o tempo de publicação, automatizando os procedimentos que hoje são feitos manualmente, é a proposta deste trabalho. Para análise dos procedimentos passíveis de automatização, foi utilizado o roteiro de Publicação manual seguido pela equipe de TI e a técnica de Histórico de Caso de Uso, para coletar requisitos que agreguem qualidade na atual forma de fazer a publicação