scholarly journals Disparity between scientific accomplishment and biotechnology availability in Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 003685042110283
Author(s):  
Lucia Maria Almeida Braz ◽  
Roozbeh Tahmasebi ◽  
Antonio Charlys da Costa ◽  
Steven S Witkin

Despite being among the world’s leaders in scientific output, Brazil ranks 66th among countries in the production of reagents and supplies needed for state-of-the-art scientific analyses. The production of needed reagents and equipment for experimental analyses and patient diagnostics is sorely lacking within Brazil and explicit in this pandemic period caused by SARS-CoV-2. A significant fraction of resources from Brazilian funding agencies is now being transferred to companies in other countries for the purchase of essential scientific-related products. Is this sustainable? Therefore it is necessary to draw the attention of all the world and Brazilian society about this situation

Antibiotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Michela Pugliese ◽  
Vito Biondi ◽  
Enrico Gugliandolo ◽  
Patrizia Licata ◽  
Alessio Filippo Peritore ◽  
...  

Chelant agents are the mainstay of treatment in copper-associated hepatitis in humans, where D-penicillamine is the chelant agent of first choice. In veterinary medicine, the use of D-penicillamine has increased with the recent recognition of copper-associated hepatopathies that occur in several breeds of dogs. Although the different regulatory authorities in the world (United States Food and Drugs Administration—U.S. FDA, European Medicines Agency—EMEA, etc.) do not approve D-penicillamine for use in dogs, it has been used to treat copper-associated hepatitis in dogs since the 1970s, and is prescribed legally by veterinarians as an extra-label drug to treat this disease and alleviate suffering. The present study aims to: (a) address the pharmacological features; (b) outline the clinical scenario underlying the increased interest in D-penicillamine by overviewing the evolution of its main therapeutic goals in humans and dogs; and finally, (c) provide a discussion on its use and prescription in veterinary medicine from a regulatory perspective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 2535
Author(s):  
Di Fan ◽  
Hyunwoo Kim ◽  
Jummo Kim ◽  
Yunhui Liu ◽  
Qiang Huang

Face attributes prediction has an increasing amount of applications in human–computer interaction, face verification and video surveillance. Various studies show that dependencies exist in face attributes. Multi-task learning architecture can build a synergy among the correlated tasks by parameter sharing in the shared layers. However, the dependencies between the tasks have been ignored in the task-specific layers of most multi-task learning architectures. Thus, how to further boost the performance of individual tasks by using task dependencies among face attributes is quite challenging. In this paper, we propose a multi-task learning using task dependencies architecture for face attributes prediction and evaluate the performance with the tasks of smile and gender prediction. The designed attention modules in task-specific layers of our proposed architecture are used for learning task-dependent disentangled representations. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed network by comparing with the traditional multi-task learning architecture and the state-of-the-art methods on Faces of the world (FotW) and Labeled faces in the wild-a (LFWA) datasets.


Author(s):  
Marcos Sanchez Sanchez ◽  
John Iliff

<p>This paper describes the key elements from early planning to completion of a new bridge over the River Barrow which is part of the New Ross bypass in the south of Ireland. The structure has a total length of 887m, with a span arrangement of 36-45-95-230-230-95-70-50-36m. The two central twin spans are the longest of its kind in the world (extrados with a full concrete deck). The bridge carries a dual carriageway with a cable arrangement consisting of a single plane of cables located in the central axis of the deck. The design and construction focused in providing a structure with long term durability, resilience, and a robust approach to design scenarios using the Eurocodes and state of the art analysis techniques, including extreme events such as fire and ship impact<i>.</i></p>


Author(s):  
J R Bolter

Sir Charles Parsons died some three years after the author was born. In this paper the author looks back at the pioneering work of Parsons in the field of power generation. It shows how he was able to increase output of the steam turbine generator from 7.5 kW in 1884 to 50000 kW in 1930 while increasing efficiency from 1.6 to 36 per cent, and relates these achievements to the current state of the art. Blading design, rotor construction and other aspects of turbine engineering are considered. The conclusion is that Parsons and his associates charted the course which manufacturers and utilities throughout the world have continued to follow, although increasingly sophisticated design and analytical methods have succeeded the intuitive approach of Parsons. His constant search for improved efficiency was and is highly relevant to today's concern for the environment. Finally, although it did not become a practical proposition in his lifetime, the paper reviews Parsons' vision of, and continuing interest in, the gas turbine, first mentioned in his 1884 patents.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3169
Author(s):  
Roberto Gaudio

The main focus of this Special Issue of Water is the state-of-the-art and recent research on turbulence and flow–sediment interactions in open-channel flows. Our knowledge of river hydraulics is becoming deeper and deeper, thanks to both laboratory/field experiments related to the characteristics of turbulence and their link to the erosion, transport, deposition, and local scouring phenomena. Collaboration among engineers, physicists, and other experts is increasing and furnishing new inter/multidisciplinary perspectives to the research in river hydraulics and fluid mechanics. At the same time, the development of both sophisticated laboratory instrumentation and computing skills is giving rise to excellent experimental–numerical comparative studies. Thus, this Special Issue, with ten papers by researchers from many institutions around the world, aims at offering a modern panoramic view on all the above aspects to the vast audience of river researchers.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (22) ◽  
pp. 6450
Author(s):  
Taimur Hassan ◽  
Muhammad Shafay ◽  
Samet Akçay ◽  
Salman Khan ◽  
Mohammed Bennamoun ◽  
...  

Screening baggage against potential threats has become one of the prime aviation security concerns all over the world, where manual detection of prohibited items is a time-consuming and hectic process. Many researchers have developed autonomous systems to recognize baggage threats using security X-ray scans. However, all of these frameworks are vulnerable against screening cluttered and concealed contraband items. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no framework possesses the capacity to recognize baggage threats across multiple scanner specifications without an explicit retraining process. To overcome this, we present a novel meta-transfer learning-driven tensor-shot detector that decomposes the candidate scan into dual-energy tensors and employs a meta-one-shot classification backbone to recognize and localize the cluttered baggage threats. In addition, the proposed detection framework can be well-generalized to multiple scanner specifications due to its capacity to generate object proposals from the unified tensor maps rather than diversified raw scans. We have rigorously evaluated the proposed tensor-shot detector on the publicly available SIXray and GDXray datasets (containing a cumulative of 1,067,381 grayscale and colored baggage X-ray scans). On the SIXray dataset, the proposed framework achieved a mean average precision (mAP) of 0.6457, and on the GDXray dataset, it achieved the precision and F1 score of 0.9441 and 0.9598, respectively. Furthermore, it outperforms state-of-the-art frameworks by 8.03% in terms of mAP, 1.49% in terms of precision, and 0.573% in terms of F1 on the SIXray and GDXray dataset, respectively.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1539
Author(s):  
Kai Kwong Hon ◽  
Pak Wai Chan

The Doppler Lidar windshear alerting system at the Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA), the first of its kind in the world, has been in operation since 2006. This paper reports on an enhancement to the automatic windshear detection algorithm at HKIA, which aims at filtering out alerts associated with smoother headwind changes spread over longer distances along the aircraft glide path (called “gentle ramps”) which may nonetheless exceed the well-established alerting threshold. Real-time statistics are examined over a 46-month study period between March 2016 and December 2019, covering a total of 2,017,440 min and over 1500 quality-controlled pilot reports of windshear (PIREP). The “gentle ramp removal” (GRR) function is able to effectively cut down the alert duration over the 5 major runway corridors, inclusive of both landing and take-off, which together account for over 98% of the PIREP received at HKIA during the study period. In all 5 runway corridors this is achieved with a proportionately smaller decrease—even with no changes in 2 cases—in the hit rate, highlighting the efficiency of the GRR function. The difference in statistical behaviour across the runway corridors also echo literature findings about the differences in length scale of wind disturbances at different locations within HKIA. This study serves as a unique documentation of the state-of-the-art in operational Lidar windshear detection and can provide useful reference to airports and aviation meteorologists around the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Gesoon j.k Al-Abass ◽  
Huda R. ALkifaey

"Internet of things (IoT) domain targets human with smart resolutions through the connection of “M2M” in all over the world, effectively. It was difficult to ignore domain importance field of IoT with the new deployment of applications such as smartphone in recent days. The most important layer in architecture of IoT is network layer, because of various systems (perform of cloud computing, switching, hub, gateway, so on), different technologies of connection (Long-Term Evolution (LTE), WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.) gathered in layer. Network layers should transfer the information from or to various applications/objects, via gateways/interfaces between networks that are heterogeneous, therefore utilizing different connection technologies, protocols. Recent work highlighted IoT technologies state-of-the-art utilized in architectures of IoT, some variations among them in addition to the applications of them in life."


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (17) ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Oscar Hernán Cerquera Losada

Este documento muestra el Estado de arte de los determinantes del rendimiento académico en la educación media, teniendo en cuenta las principales investigaciones realizadas, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional, acerca de los factores que influyen en el logro escolar de los estudiantes. Con este trabajo, se busca establecer las principales variables, tanto en Colombia como en algunos lugares del mundo, que afectan el desempeño académico de los estudiantes. Este documento se organiza en dos sesiones, determinantes a nivel mundial y determinantes a nivel colombiano; cada sesión clasifica las investigaciones de acuerdo a los factores del estudiante, de la escuela y las características organizacionales y políticas. A pesar de existir muchas investigaciones sobre el tema, aún no se ha llegado a un consenso general sobre cómo determinar los factores del  rendimiento académico, pues en la realidad son muchas las características del individuo, la escuela o el sistema que se relacionan entre sí de diferente manera y pueden afectar el logro estudiantil.ABSTRACTThis document shows the state of the art of the determinants of academic achievement in secondary education, taking into account the main research conducted, both nationally and internationally, about the factors that influence school achievement of students. With this paper, we seek to establish the main variables which affect the academic achievement of students in Colombia as well as in some parts of the world. This document is organized in two sessions: world and Colombian determinants; each session classifies research according to the factors of the student, the school and organizational and political characteristics. Although there is much research on the topic so far it has not been possible to reach a consensus on how to determine the factors of academic achievement, because in reality many characteristics of the individual, of the school or of the system relate to each other differently and can affect student achievement.RESUMOEste documento mostra o Estado da arte dos determinantes do rendimento escolar no ensino medio, tendo em conta às principais pesquisas realizadas, tanto a nível nacional como internacionalmente, sobres os fatores que influenciam o desempenho escolar dos estudantes. Com este trabalho, se procura estabelecer as principais variáveis, tanto na Colômbia e em alguns lugares do mundo, afetando o desempenho acadêmico dos estudantes. Este documento está organizado em duas sessões, determinantes a nível mundial e determinantes a nível colombiano; cada sessão clasifica as pesquisas de acordó a os fatores do estudante, da escola e das características organizacionais e políticas. Embora haja muitas pesquisas sobre o tema, ainda não se chegou a um consenso geral sobre os fatores determinantes no desempenho acadêmico, porque na realidade são muitas as características do indivíduo, a escola ou o sistema que se relacionam uns com os outros de forma diferente e podem afetar o desempenho acadêmico.


2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
A. Mutule ◽  
I. Zikmanis ◽  
A.-M. Dumitrescu

AbstractIn the modern world, many cities make use of state-of-the-art technologies for a diversity of applications. A field with very specific needs is the electric power system that deals with both large entities that govern themselves (grid operators) and the citizens. For both and all actors in between, there is an increased need for information. Steps to provide these data are always taken and several initiatives are ongoing across the world to equip residential users with last generation smart meters. However, a full deployment is still not possible. Considering this aspect, the authors propose KPIs for the specific situation when some information is available from the meters and other sources, but some is not. The study case is based on a residential area occupied mainly by university students and after an extensive measurement campaign the results have been studied and analysis methods proposed.


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