Where biodiversity, traditional knowledge, health and livelihoods meet: Institutional pillars for the productive inclusion of local communities (Brazil case study)

[Introduction ...] The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 provides a brief background of the economic and social context of rural development issues in Brazil. Section 3 explores Brazil’s productive inclusion approach and draws implications for the design of natural-resource-based production chains and the delivery of services (e.g. phytotherapies and phytocosmetics). Section 4 of the paper provides a survey of issues at the intersection of biodiversity, traditional medicine, drug discovery and health care. It discusses Brazil’s National Programme on Medicinal Plants and Herbal Medicines (Programa Nacional de Plantas Medicinais e Fitoterápicos, PNPMF), and alludes to the experiences of countries such as India and China so as to place the discussion about Brazil’s approach within a broader cross-country context. In light of Brazil’s multi-stakeholder approach to productive inclusion, the paper explores the roles of community-based networks and applied public research institutions which can serve to stimulate social and technological innovation and help to address structural asymmetries in the relation between the private sector and local communities. Section 5 focuses on access and benefit-sharing issues. Section 6 concludes the paper by drawing institutional lessons and highlighting issues for policy discussion

Phase relationship between the long-time beats of free induction decays and spin echoes in solids

Recent theoretical work on the role of microscopic chaos in the dynamics and relaxation of many-body quantum systems has made several experimentally confirmed predictions about the systems of interacting nuclear spins in solids, focusing, in particular, on the shapes of spin echo responses measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). These predictions were based on the idea that the transverse nuclear spin decays evolve in a manner governed at long times by the slowest decaying eigenmode of the quantum system, analogous to a chaotic resonance in a classical system. The present paper extends the above investigations both theoretically and experimentally. On the theoretical side, the notion of chaotic eigenmodes is used to make predictions about the relationships between the long-time oscillation phase of the nuclear free induction decay (FID) and the amplitudes and phases of spin echoes. On the experimental side, the above predictions are tested for the nuclear spin decays of F-19 in CaF2 crystals and Xe-129 in frozen xenon. Good agreement between the theory and the experiment is found.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, significant new experimental content in comparison with version

Impacto do Projeto “Turmas Mais Sucesso” ao nível da Instrução, da Estimulação e da Socialização dos Alunos

Este artigo sintetiza um estudo de caso realizado na Escola Secundária do Castêlo da Maia (ESCM), que investigou o impacto que o projeto de combate ao insucesso escolar denominado “Turmas Mais Sucesso” (TSM) teve sobre a instrução, a estimulação e a socialização dos alunos de baixo rendimento. O projeto, desenvolvido no terreno desde 2006-07, tem por base uma metodologia de constituição de turmas do ensino básico assente na análise cuidada do historial escolar do aluno, agrupando na mesma turma os alunos com difi culdades anteriores a três disciplinas fundamentais: Português, Matemática e Inglês. Esta opção de constituir turmas relativamente “homogéneas” traduz uma aposta nem sempre consensual na investigação educacional. Mas, como os resultados do estudo o evidenciam, o sucesso nestas turmas foi potenciado por um conjunto de fatores conjugados de ordem pedagógico-didática, administrativa e de recursos humanos. No que respeita ao impacto do projeto sobre os resultados da instrução dos alunos, é forçoso concluir que o mesmo foi um sucesso, uma vez que nenhum aluno fi cou retido no fi nal do ciclo, tendo esta dimensão sido avaliada positivamente por todos os intervenientes. Em relação à estimulação, embora o resultado global seja positivo, há menor convergência de opiniões concordantes e são os professores quem avalia menos positivamente este aspeto. O impacto do projeto na socialização dos alunos é avaliado positivamente por todos os intervenientes, exceto pelos professores que avaliam menos favoravelmente alguns dos indicadores desta dimensão

Civil Procedure—Venue—Contract Fixing Venue in Advance of Litigation

Civil Procedure—Venue—Contract Fixing Venue in Advance of Litigation (Electrical Products Consolidated v. Bodell

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis work presents the results of various investigations using various techniques of hyperpolarizing the nuclei of atoms. Hyperpolarization implies magnetic order in excess of the thermal order obtained naturally as described by Curie's law. The main portion of this work presents the results of a detailed experimental exploration of predictions arising from a new model of transverse nuclear spin relaxation in quantum systems, based on possible manifestations of microscopic chaos in quantum systems. Experiments have been carried out on a number of hyperpolarized xenon samples, each di ering in its relative percentage of xenon isotopes in order to vary the homonuclear and heteronuclear dipole couplings in the spin system. The experiments were performed under a variety of conditions in an attempt to observe the behaviors predicted by the model. Additionally, much more extensive measurements were made on a number of samples of solid CaF2 in both single crystal and powder forms. These samples, although thermally polarized, were observed with superior signal to noise ratios than even the hyperpolarized xenon solids, allowing for more precise measurements for comparison to the theory. This work thus contains the rst experimental evidence for the majority of the model's predictions. Additionally, this work contains the rst precise measurements of the frequency-shift enhancement parameters for 129Xe and krypton in the presence of spin-polarized Rb. The determination of these important numbers will be useful to many groups who utilize spinexchange optical pumping in their labs. This work built on the prior knowledge of a precise number for the frequency-shift enhancement parameter of 3He in Rb vapor. Finally, I detail work using NMR to detect nuclear-spin polarization enhancement in silicon phosphorus by a novel, photo-induced hyperpolarization technique developed by the Boehme research group at the University of Utah. Signiif cant nuclear polarization enhancements were observed by the Boehme group due to electron-photon interactions in semiconductor soilds; these enhancements were observed by their e ffects on the ambient electrons and measured with electron spin resonance techniques. The work described here details experiments to observe the enhanced nuclear polarization by directly measuring the intensity increase in an NMR measurement

Identification of copy number variants from exome sequence data

Background With advances in next generation sequencing technologies and genomic capture techniques, exome sequencing has become a cost-effective approach for mutation detection in genetic diseases. However, computational prediction of copy number variants (CNVs) from exome sequence data is a challenging task. Whilst numerous programs are available, they have different sensitivities, and have low sensitivity to detect smaller CNVs (1–4 exons). Additionally, exonic CNV discovery using standard aCGH has limitations due to the low probe density over exonic regions. The goal of our study was to develop a protocol to detect exonic CNVs (including shorter CNVs that cover 1–4 exons), combining computational prediction algorithms and a high-resolution custom CGH array. Results We used six published CNV prediction programs (ExomeCNV, CONTRA, ExomeCopy, ExomeDepth, CoNIFER, XHMM) and an in-house modification to ExomeCopy and ExomeDepth (ExCopyDepth) for computational CNV prediction on 30 exomes from the 1000 genomes project and 9 exomes from primary immunodeficiency patients. CNV predictions were tested using a custom CGH array designed to capture all exons (exaCGH). After this validation, we next evaluated the computational prediction of shorter CNVs. ExomeCopy and the in-house modified algorithm, ExCopyDepth, showed the highest capability in detecting shorter CNVs. Finally, the performance of each computational program was assessed by calculating the sensitivity and false positive rate. Conclusions In this paper, we assessed the ability of 6 computational programs to predict CNVs, focussing on short (1–4 exon) CNVs. We also tested these predictions using a custom array targeting exons. Based on these results, we propose a protocol to identify and confirm shorter exonic CNVs combining computational prediction algorithms and custom aCGH experiments