Mel silvestre: qualidade para a valorização e competitividade da apicultura no Pantanal.

O presente trabalho teve-se o objetivo de avaliar, por meio de análises físico-químicas e sensoriais, a qualidade de 17 amostras de méis silvestres multiflorais de abelhas africanizadas (Apis mellifera L.), produzidos em escala experimental entre 2006 e 2007 na fazenda Nhumirim, Unidade Experimental da Embrapa Pantanal, localizada na sub-região da Nhecolândia do Pantanal, Corumbá-MSbitstream/item/161779/1/BP98.pd

Aircraft Route Optimization Using the A-Star Algorithm

This research develops an Aviation Distance Estimation and Route Planning Tool (ADERPT) that finds least-cost aircraft routing from a designated departure airfield to an arrival airfield for the purposes of mission cost estimation and pre-mission planning. The model network consists of 43 Army airfields and 426 airports in the Contiguous United States (CONUS) with Department of Defense contract fuel. Using the A-Star algorithm and considering aircraft fuel range, ground speed, and refueling time, we determine the refuel locations that result in the most efficient route. Considering the use of both distance and travel time, we compare our model\u27s performance with Dijkstra\u27s algorithm, a greedy heuristic, and existing cost-estimation techniques. The ADERPT also examines the use of a grid-based network for obstacle avoidance in route planning and provides a proof of concept for its potential use as a mission planning tool

Trust and the city: Linking urban upbringing to neural mechanisms of trust in psychosis

Objective: Elevated prevalence of non-affective psychotic disorders is often found in densely populated areas. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates if reduced trust, a component of impaired social functioning in patients with psychotic disorder, is associated with urban upbringing. Methods: In total, 39 patients (22 first episode and 17 clinical high risk) and 30 healthy controls, aged 16–29, performed two multi-round trust games, with a cooperative and unfair partner during functional magnetic resonance imaging scan-ning. Baseline trust was operationalized as the first investment made, and changes of trust as changes in investments made over the 20 trials during the games. Urban exposure during upbringing (0–15 years) was defined as higher urban (≥2500 inhabitants/km2) or lower urban (<2500 inhabitants/km2). Results: Patients displayed lower baseline trust (first investment) than controls, regardless of urbanicity exposure. During cooperative interactions, lower-urban patients showed increasing investments. In addition, during cooperative interactions, group-by-developmental urbanicity interactions were found in the right and left amygdalae, although for the latter only at trend level. Higher urbanicity was associated with decreased activation of the left amygdala in patients and controls during investments and with increased activation of the right and left amygdalae in patients only, during repayments. During unfair interactions, no associations of urbanicity with behavior or brain activation were found. Conclusion: Urban upbringing was unrelated to baseline trust. Associations with urbanicity were stronger for patients compared to controls, suggesting greater susceptibility to urbanicity effects during the developmental period. Higher-urban patients failed to compensate for the initial distrust specifically during repeated cooperative interactions. This finding highlights potential implications for social functioning. Urban upbringing was linked to dif-ferential amygdala activation, suggesting altered mechanisms of feedback learning, but this was not associated with trust game behavio

Contact Strength and Fracture Toughness from Opposite Cylinder Loading Tests

Bars loaded by oppositely concentrated forces via rollers are appropriate test specimens for the determination of strength and fracture toughness under contact loading. Test devices are described and solutions for the stress, the stress intensity factor, and the T-stress term are reported. Experimental results are compiled for the contact strength. For most investigated materials, measured contact strengths showed strongly reduced Weibull exponents compared with those from 4-point bending tests. This important effect is attributed to the strong stress gradients near the contact zone

Neuroimaging oxytocin modulation of social reward learning in schizophrenia.

Conventional pharmacological approaches have limited effectiveness for schizophrenia. There is interest in the application of oxytocin, which is involved in social cognition. Clinical trials have yielded mixed results, with a gap in understanding neural mechanisms. To evaluate the behavioural impact of oxytocin administration on a social learning task in individuals with schizophrenia, and elucidate any differential neural activity produced. We recruited 20 clinically stable right-handed men diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. In a double-blind cross-over randomised controlled study, 40 IU of oxytocin or placebo were administered before functional magnetic resonance imaging of participants playing a multi-round economic exchange game of trust. Participants had the role of investors (investment trials) receiving repayment on their investments (repayment trials), playing one session against a computer and a second against a player believed to be human. During investment trials, oxytocin increased neural signalling in the right lateral parietal cortex for both human and computer player trials, and attenuated signalling in the right insula for human player trials. For repayment trials, oxytocin elicited signal increases in left insula and left ventral caudate, and a signal decrease in right amygdala during the human player trials; conversely it resulted in right dorsal caudate activation during the computer player trials. We did not find a significant change in behavioural performance associated with oxytocin administration, or any associations with symptoms. During a social learning task oxytocin modulates cortical and limbic substrates of the reward-processing network. These perturbations can be putatively linked to the pathoaetiology of schizophrenia