Association between C-reactive protein with all-cause mortality in ELSA-Brasil cohort

Background: High-sensitive C-reactive protein (hsCRP) has been proposed as a marker of incident cardiovascular disease and vascular mortality, and it may also be a marker of non-vascular mortality. However, most evidence comes from either North American or European cohorts. The present proposal aims to investigate the association of high-sensitive C-reactive protein with the risk of all-cause mortality in a multi-ethnic Brazilian population Methods: Cohort data from baseline (2008–2010) of 14 792 subjects participating in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health were used. HsCRP was assayed with Immunochemistry. The association of baseline covariates with all-cause mortality was calculated by Cox regression for univariate model and adjusted for different confounders after mean follow-up of 8.0 ± 1.1 years. The final model was adjusted for age, sex, self-rated race/ethnicity, schooling, health behaviours and prevalent chronic disease. Results: The risk of death increased steadily by quartiles of hsCRP from 1.45 (95% Confidence Interval: 1.05, 2.01) in Quartile 2 to 1.95 (1.42, 2.69) in Quartile 4 compared to Quartile 1. Furthermore, the persistence of a significant graded association after the exclusion of deaths in the first year of follow-up suggests that these results are unlikely to be due to reverse causality. Finally, the hazard ratios were unaffected by the exclusion of participants that had self-reported past medical history for diabetes, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Conclusions: Our study shows that hsCRP levels is associated with mortality in a highly admixed population, independently of a large set of lifestyle and clinical variables

Relatório técnico da Embrapa Gado de Leite 1999-2000.

Núcleos temáticos:Resultados de pesquisa por Núcleo Temático da Embrapa Gado de Leite; Núcleo Temático Biogenética Animal Projetos: Marcadores genéticos associados às características de resistência a endo e ectoparasitos e ao estresse térmico em bovinos de leite; Organização do sistema de avaliação genética das raças de bovinos de leite no Brasil; Otimização do ganho genético em rebanhos zebus leiteiros; Otimização das técnicas de transferência de embrião e produção in vitro de embrião na raça Gir; SeJeção nas raças Holandesa e Girolando, Publicações geradas pelo Núcleo Temático; Núcleo Temático Biogenética de Forrageiras Projetos: Banco Ativo de Germoplasma de Capim-elefante e Alfafa; Identificação e ava\iação in vitro de clones de capim-elefante para tolerância ao estresse hídrico; Melhoramento genético do capim-elefante (P. purpureum Schum.) e da alfafa (M. sativa L.) para diferentes condições edafoclimáticas; Publicações geradas pelo Núcleo Temático; Núcleo Temático Sistemas de Alimentação -Projetos: Avaliação de milho e sorgo para silagem; Desenvolvimento de cultivares de sorgo; Publicações geradas pelo Nucleo Temático; Núcleo Temático Sustentabilidade da Atividade Leiteira -Projetos: Estratégias de manejo nutricional de vacas leiteiras em pastagens de capim-elefante; Inserção da fixação biológica de nitrogênio na recuperação de áreas degradadas e na sustentabilidade e produtividade de solos tropicais; Sistemas alternativos de produção de leite a pasto sob manejo intef)sivo; Zoneamento bioclimatológico utilizando o índice de temperatura e umidade, para bovinocultura de leite na Região Sudeste do Brasil; Publicações geradas pelo Núcleo Temático; Núcleo Temático Qualidade do Leite e Segurança Alimentar -Projetos: Diagnóstico e gestão da qualidade na produção de leite; Patogenia, imunologia e controle de Babesia bovis, Babesia bigemina, Anaplasma marginale e seus vetores; Publicações geradas pelo Núcleo Temático; Núcleo Temático Sócio-economia do Agronegócio do Leite Projetos: Análise da dinâmica do setor leiteiro; Estudo econômico da tecnologia de pastejo rotativo na produção de leite; Publicações geradas pelo Núcleo Temático; Subprojetos em fase inicial de execução; Transferência de tecnologia -Comunicação empresarial Negócios Tecnológicos Informaçãor Projeto: Ações para transferência de conhecimento e tecnologia na Embrapa Gado de Leite; Perfil da Embrapa Gado de Leite; Infra-estrutura; Recursos humanos; Acordos e convênios de cooperação técnica e financeira.bitstream/item/81938/1/Relatorio-tecnico-Embrapa-gado-de-leite.pd

Vantagens comparativas reveladas e orientação regional das exportações agrícolas brasileiras para a União Européia

The paper analyses the Brazilian agricultural trade with the European Union (EU), in the context of the negotiations for a commercial agreement between Mercosur and the EU. We calculate indexes of revealed comparative advantages (RCA) and regional orientation (RO), for the period from 1991 to 2001. We selected the following products: soybeans, orange juice, tobacco, chicken meat, bovine meat, sugar and coffee. Altogether, these products corresponded to more than 20% of total Brazilian exports in that period. The products that show the highest Brazilian participation in world trade are soybeans, orange juice and coffee. Except for sugar, all the analyzed products had the EU as an important destiny for the exports. The results indicate comparative advantages for the Brazilian products, showing stable or increasing indexes along the decade. Besides, there is a high orientation of Brazilian exports to the EU, except for chicken meat and sugar, but with no increases in the period. Thus, an agreement between the blocs, reducing or eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers, may result in a trade creation, in favor of Brazilian agricultural exports to the EU.Regional integration, International trade, Comparative advantages, Agriculture, International Relations/Trade,

Chromatographic techniques for the determination of free phenol in foundry resins

Phenol is a toxic compound present in a wide variety of foundry resins. Its quantification is important for the characterization of the resins as well as for the evaluation of free contaminants present in foundry wastes. Two chromatographic methods, liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection (LC-UV) and gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (GC-FID), for the analysis of free phenol in several foundry resins, after a simple extraction procedure (30 min), were developed. Both chromatographic methods were suitable for the determination of phenol in the studied furanic and phenolic resins, showing good selectivity, accuracy (recovery 99–100%; relative deviations <5%), and precision (coefficients of variation <6%). The used ASTM reference method was only found to be useful in the analysis of phenolic resins, while the LC and GC methods were applicable for all the studied resins. The developed methods reduce the time of analysis from 3.5 hours to about 30 min and can readily be used in routine quality control laboratories

Maximizing the Conditional Expected Reward for Reaching the Goal

The paper addresses the problem of computing maximal conditional expected accumulated rewards until reaching a target state (briefly called maximal conditional expectations) in finite-state Markov decision processes where the condition is given as a reachability constraint. Conditional expectations of this type can, e.g., stand for the maximal expected termination time of probabilistic programs with non-determinism, under the condition that the program eventually terminates, or for the worst-case expected penalty to be paid, assuming that at least three deadlines are missed. The main results of the paper are (i) a polynomial-time algorithm to check the finiteness of maximal conditional expectations, (ii) PSPACE-completeness for the threshold problem in acyclic Markov decision processes where the task is to check whether the maximal conditional expectation exceeds a given threshold, (iii) a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm for the threshold problem in the general (cyclic) case, and (iv) an exponential-time algorithm for computing the maximal conditional expectation and an optimal scheduler.Comment: 103 pages, extended version with appendices of a paper accepted at TACAS 201

Técnica Embrapa de inseminação artificial transcervical em caprinos por meio de fixação cervical.

bitstream/item/57083/1/CT-43.pd

Técnica Embrapa de inseminação artificial transcervical em caprinos por meio de fixação cervical.

bitstream/item/81396/1/CT43.pd

Challenging differential privacy: the case of non-interactive mechanisms

Best Student Paper AwardInternational audienceIn this paper, we consider personalized recommendation systems in which before publication, the profile of a user is sanitized by a non-interactive mechanism compliant with the concept of differential privacy. We consider two existing schemes offering a differentially private representation of profiles: BLIP (BLoom-and-flIP) and JLT (Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform). For assessing their security levels, we play the role of an adversary aiming at reconstructing a user profile. We compare two inference attacks named single and joint decoding. The first one decides of the presence of a single item in the profile, and sequentially browses all the item set. The latter strategy decides whether a subset of items is likely to be the user profile, and browses all the possible subsets. Our contributions are a theoretical analysis and practical implementations of both attacks tested on datasets composed of real user profiles revealing that joint decoding is the most powerful attack. This also gives useful insights on the setting the differential privacy parameter $\epsilon$

UV photodecomposition of zinc acetate for the growth of ZnO nanowires

The thermal annealing of zinc precursors to form suitable seed layers for the growth of ZnO nanowires is common. However, the process is relatively long and involves high temperatures which limit substrate choice. In this study the use of a low temperature, ultra-violet (UV) exposure is demonstrated for photodecomposition of zinc acetate precursors to form suitable seed layers. Comparisons are made between ZnO nanowire growth performed on seed layers produced through thermal annealing and exposure to UV. The dependence of growth density and nanowire diameter on UV exposure time is investigated. Growth quality is confirmed with energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) and x-ray diffraction analyses. The chemical composition of the exposed layers is investigated with EDX and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is utilized to investigate morphological changes with respect to UV exposure. The diameter and density of the resultant growth was found to be strongly dependent on the UV exposure time. UV exposure times of only 25–30 s led to maximum density of growth and minimum diameter, significantly faster than thermal annealing. EDX, XPS and AFM analyses of the seed layers confirmed decomposition of the zinc precursor and morphological changes which influenced the growth

Análise de desempenho econômico da produção orgânica de leite: estudo de caso no Distrito Federal

Neste trabalho, objetivou-se analisar economicamente a produção orgânica de leite. Para esta avaliação foram utilizados os dados obtidos em uma propriedade certificada como orgânica, localizada no Distrito Federal, durante os períodos de 2002 e 2003. A Renda Líquida (RL) por litro de leite foi positiva no ano de 2002 e negativa no de 2003, considerando-se o preço do leite a R$0,40/ L, (preço histórico pago ao produtor de leite convencional na região), apresentando resultados positivos com o preço simulado de R$ 0,80/L (preço pago aos produtores orgânicos nas Regiões Sul e Sudeste do país). Os índices de produtividade foram semelhantes aos observados nas propriedades convencionais. A produção orgânica de leite pode ser uma alternativa economicamente viável para a pecuária, desde que haja uma remuneração superior à praticada para o leite convencional