Few studies have focused on nutrient-deficient diets and associated pathobiological dynamics of body composition and intestinal barrier function. This study evaluated the impact of a nutrient-deficient diet on physical development and intestinal morphofunctional barrier in mice. C57BL/6 (21 days of age) mice were fed a Northeastern Brazil regional basic diet (RBD) or a control diet for 21 days. The animals were subjected to bioimpedance analysis, lactulose test, morphometric analysis, and qRT-PCR to evaluate tight junctions and intestinal transporters. RBD feeding significantly reduced weight (p < 0.05) from day 5, weight gain from day 3, and tail length from day 14. The intake of RBD reduced total body water, extracellular fluid, fat mass, and fat-free mass from day 7 (p < 0.05). RBD induced changes in the jejunum, with an increase in the villus/crypt ratio on day 7, followed by reduction on days 14 and 21 (p < 0.05). Lactulose/mannitol ratio increased on day 14 (p < 0.05). Changes in intestinal barrier function on day 14 were associated with reductions in claudin-1 and occludin, and on day 21, there was a reduction in the levels of claudin-2 and occludin. SGLT-1 levels decreased on day 21. RBD compromises body composition and physical development with dynamic changes in intestinal barrier morphofunctional. RBD is associated with damage to intestinal permeability, reduced levels of claudin-1 and occludin transcripts, and return of bowel function in a chronic period.

Several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) could indirectly, as well directly, influence metabolic parameters related to health effects in response to selenium (Se) supplementation. This study aimed to investigate whether the selenoprotein SNPs were associated with the response of Se status biomarkers to the Brazil nut consumption in patients using statins and if the variation in Se homoeostasis could affect antioxidant protection, lipid profile, muscle homoeostasis and selenoproteins mRNA. The study was performed in the Ribeirão Preto Medical School University Hospital. Thirty-two patients using statins received one unit of Brazil nut daily for 3 months. Body composition, blood Se concentrations, erythrocyte glutathione peroxidase (GPX) activity, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), triacylglycerol (TAG), creatine kinase (CK) activity and gene expression of GPX1 and selenoprotein P (SELENOP) were evaluated before and after Brazil nut consumption. The volunteers were genotyped for SNP in GPX1 (rs1050450) and SELENOP (rs3877899 and rs7579). SNPs in selenoproteins were not associated with plasma and erythrocyte Se, but SNPs in SELENOP influenced the response of erythrocyte GPX activity and CK activity, TAG and LDL after Brazil nut consumption. Also, Brazil nut consumption increased GPX1 mRNA expression only in subjects with rs1050450 CC genotype. SELENOP mRNA expression was significantly lower in subjects with rs7579 GG genotype before and after the intervention. Thus, SNP in SELENOP could be associated with interindividual differences in Se homeostasis after Brazil nut consumption, emphasising the involvement of genetic variability in response to Se consumption towards health maintenance and disease prevention.

Visual simultaneous localization and mapping (VSLAM) is a relevant solution for vehicle localization and mapping environments. However, it is computationally expensive because it demands large computational effort, making it a non-real-time solution. The VSLAM systems that employ geometric reconstructions are based on the parallel processing paradigm developed in the Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) algorithm. This type of system was created for processors that have exactly two cores. The various SLAM methods based on the PTAM were also not designed to scale to all the cores of modern processors nor to function as a distributed system. Therefore, we propose a modification to the pipeline for the execution of well-known VSLAM systems so that they can be scaled to all available processors during execution, thereby increasing their performance in terms of processing time. We explain the principles behind this modification via a study of the threads in the SLAM systems based on PTAM. We validate our results with experiments describing the behavior of the original ORB-SLAM system and the modified version.

Oral nutritional supplements are widely recommended to head-and-neck cancer patients undergoing anti-cancer treatment; however, their effects on the outcomes of most importance to patients are unclear. This study aimed to systematically review the evidence of effect of oral nutritional supplements on mortality, treatment tolerance, quality of life, functional status, body weight and adverse effects. We searched PubMed, Embase, CENTRAL, LILACS, Web of Science, CINAHL, two trial registry platforms, three sources of grey literature and reference lists of included studies. We assessed the risk of bias using the revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool (RoB 2), and certainty of evidence using the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach. We used random-effects models with Hartung–Knapp correction for the meta-analyses. We included fifteen trials, of which five were ongoing or unpublished, providing evidence in four comparisons. We found very low to low certainty evidence for the effect of oral nutritional supplements on mortality, treatment tolerance, quality of life, functional status and adverse effects. When compared with nutritional counselling alone, nutritional counselling plus oral nutritional supplements probably increased body weight slightly. We also found adverse events relating to supplements use such as nausea, vomiting and feeling of fullness. Possible increases in mortality, treatment tolerance and quality of life besides a possible decrease in functional status are worthy of further investigation. Future research could attempt to address the clinical importance of a probable increase in body weight. Possible adverse effects of the use of oral nutritional supplements should not be overlooked.

Final conclusions and data comparisons from the thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) test results are made difficult by differences in test implementation methods, ie, TRH different administration routes, dosages and blood sampling times. A number of statistical analyses are feasible, which may also influence test interpretation. The authors review some types of statistical analyses and suggest using the area under curve (AUC) method as a means of evaluation. The TRH test was performed before treatment and after a 5-day wash-out period, in 40 depressed patients hospitalized in the Psychiatric Unit of Besancon Teaching Hospital (Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Besançon). Variation analyses performed by peak and threshold comparison (7.0 IµU/ml) and by the AUC method (386 IµU/ml) in positive and negative patients revealed some statistical differences.

Milk production is an important economic and social activity in Brazil. Failure to meet institutional and market demands for quality and sustainability has led farmers, particularly small-scale farmers, to leave agriculture. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the sustainability of dairy farms in Paraná, Brazil. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 75 dairy farm operators. Sustainability indicators were generated on the basis of economic, environmental and social data using exploratory factor analysis. Factor scores were subjected to hierarchical clustering, which resulted in the formation of three groups of dairy farms. Groups 1, 2 and 3 had high, intermediate and low levels of sustainability, respectively. Group 1 comprised large-scale dairy farms with high productivity. Dairy farms with intermediate sustainability (group 2) had medium production capacity, and farms with low sustainability (group 1) had the smallest production scale and capacity. Large-scale dairy farms have greater economic, environmental and social sustainability and are, therefore, more likely to survive in the medium and long term.

The constant search for the improvement of the performance of materials of industrial application, evaluated under aspects of weight reduction, greater resistance, greater resistance to wear and better thermal stability, among others, associated with the search for the development of ecologically viable products, that convert the context of environmental degradation in preservation and sustainability, reflects the need to conduct research that results in new materials. The objective of this work is to obtain composites of the AA6061 aluminum alloy reinforced with different contents of coke coal blast-furnace slag by powder metallurgy. The processing of these materials was done by sieving, mixing and compacting powders of reinforced aluminum alloy with 5, 10 and 15% of blast-furnace slag. The cold uniaxial compaction was realized at a pressure of 500MPa. The obtained materials were sintered at 580°C for 3h under inert atmosphere. Unreinforced aluminum alloy samples were also produced. The characterization of the materials was realized by density and hardness measurements and three-point bending tests. The analysis of its microstructure was realized by scanning electron microscopy. As results, the composites presented a homogeneous distribution of the reinforcing particles and also a progressive improvement of the hardness and the bending strength with the increase of the slag content, producing an increase of 79% in hardness and 128% in flexural strength, when compared to the material without reinforcement obtained by the same process. Such results give the coke coal blast-furnace slag a new possibility of exploitation in the metal-mechanical sector, besides contributing with the environmental issue.

Differences in forage nutritive value between morning and afternoon are related to patterns of dehydration and carbohydrate accumulation throughout the day. In this way, management strategies that maximize grazing time during the afternoon could increase forage nutritive value and consequently nutrient intake. The aim of the current experiment was to evaluate the effect of the time of day (06.00 h [designated AM] or 15.00 h [PM]) that cattle are moved to a new paddock on forage nutritive value, grazing behaviour and animal performance of beef cattle on rotationally stocked Marandu palisadegrass (Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu Syn. Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu) pastures. A spring and summer study was conducted in Pirassununga, SP, Brazil from October 2012 to March 2013 (182 days). Treatments were distributed in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Herbage mass, morphological composition, herbage allowance and stocking rates were similar between treatments during spring and summer. Moving animals to a new paddock, regardless of the time of day – 06.00 h (AM) or 15.00 h (PM) – stimulated grazing, modifying the distribution of meals throughout the day. However, compensatory mechanisms among grazing time, bite rate and forage nutritive value throughout the day operated in order to generate similar performance between animals offered a new paddock in the morning or in the afternoon.

Forage is the primary feed source for livestock in tropical regions and energy is one of the most important nutrients for ruminant nutrition. The effects of harvest management of Marandu palisade grass (Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu Syn. Urochloa brizantha cv. Marandu) on non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) concentrations were evaluated. A plot (Experiment 1) and a greenhouse study (Experiment 2) were conducted in 2013–14. In Experiment 1, treatments were the factorial arrangement of two harvest times and two vertical canopy layers (upper and intermediate), distributed in a completely randomized design with five replicates. In Experiment 2, treatments were the factorial arrangement of six harvest times and two morphological fractions (leaf blade and pseudostem). In both experiments, NSC concentration increased during the day. Upper and intermediate canopy layers had greater NSC concentration at 15.00 than 06.00 h during spring and summer. In addition, the magnitude of NSC increase was greater in the upper than intermediate canopy layer and in spring than summer. Marandu palisade grass shows greater digestibility in the afternoon than morning, representing an opportunity to optimize energy concentration through harvest management.

In this paper, we establish new characterization results concerning totally umbilical hypersurfaces of the hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^{n+1}$, under suitable constraints on the behavior of the Lorentzian Gauss map of complete hypersurfaces having some constant higher order mean curvature. Furthermore, working with different warped product models for $\mathbb{H}^{n+1}$ and supposing that certain natural inequalities involving two consecutive higher order mean curvature functions are satisfied, we study the rigidity and the nonexistence of complete hypersurfaces immersed in $\mathbb{H}^{n+1}$.

In this article, Conley’s connection matrix theory and a spectral sequence analysis of a filtered Morse chain complex $(C,{\rm\Delta})$ are used to study global continuation results for flows on surfaces. The briefly described unfoldings of Lyapunov graphs have been proved to be a well-suited combinatorial tool to keep track of continuations. The novelty herein is a global dynamical cancellation theorem inferred from the differentials of the spectral sequence $(E^{r},d^{r})$. The local version of this theorem relates differentials $d^{r}$ of the $r$th page $E^{r}$ to Smale’s theorem on cancellation of critical points.

The non-ferrous shape memory alloys have, normally, two problems that hinder its use in industrial scale: the natural aging and grains growth. The first degrades the memory effect, while the second, observed during the processing of alloy, modifies the temperatures which the transformations occur. Thus, the study of kynetic of recrystallization is important for enabling the control of hardened state in function of treatment time, without causing excessive grain growth. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the kinetics of recrystallization of Cu-14Al-4Ni shape memory alloy, based on an empirical law of the formation of Jonhson-Mehl-Avrami, as well as their activation energies for grain growth process according to the empirical Arrhenius law. The alloy was vacuum melted in an induction furnace. After casting, the bulk samples of the alloy were homogenized for 24 hours, solubilized and hot rolled followed by water-quenching to initiate the recrystallization. Then, different samples were annealed at temperatures close to the peak, start and end of the DSC curve. Following the heat treatments, the samples were submitted to mechanical tests and the values of the properties were correlated to the fraction transformed for determination of recrystallization’s kinetic. For the characterization of the grain growth process, analyses in optical microscopy were accomplished and all annealed samples were examined by statistical metallography and the grain sizes were measured. After measurements, the ln[-ln(1-Yrec)] x ln(t) and the ln [D-Do] x 1/T diagrams were plotted to determine the parameters of Jonhson-Mehl-Avrami equation and the activation energy of the process, respectively. The results showed that the equation of the recrystallized fraction follows the empiric law of the formation of Jonhson-Mehl-Avrami for the considered property, as well as, also showed that the alloy Cu-14Al-4Ni is extremely sensitive to temperature variation in which the alloy is treated, having a dual kinetics of grain growth. In the first domain, between 670 and 710°C, the diagram provides a value for the activation energy equal to 39.32 KJ/mol, in the second domain, between 710 and 790°C, the diagram provides a value for the activation energy equal to 9.01 KJ/mol.

We apply appropriate maximum principles in order to obtain characterization results concerning complete linear Weingarten hypersurfaces with bounded mean curvature in the hyperbolic space. By supposing a suitable restriction on the norm of the traceless part of the second fundamental form, we show that such a hypersurface must be either totally umbilical or isometric to a hyperbolic cylinder, when its scalar curvature is positive, or to a spherical cylinder, when its scalar curvature is negative. Related to the compact case, we also establish a rigidity result.

Brazil’s rich biological and cultural diversity makes it an exceptional location for examining the commerce in live wild birds and its implications for conservation. This paper catalogues the live bird species being traded in Brazil, characterises the trade in these animals, and discusses the implications for avian conservation. In spite of being illegal, capturing and selling birds is still a very common practice in Brazil and involves many actors who make up part of a large commercial network that distributes wild animals to every corner of the country. Our survey revealed that at least 295 bird species are illegally sold as pets in Brazil, with estimates derived from this data pointing to a total of more than 400 species - about 23% of the number of extant bird species in the country. Of the bird species recorded, two were classified as “Critically Endangered”, nine as “Endangered”, six as “Vulnerable”, and 19 as “Near Threatened” according to the most recent IUCN Red List. Most of the species recorded in this study as being widely bought and sold (including on the international market) are not listed by CITES even though many of them are in fact threatened. In light of the widespread illegal trade in wild birds in Brazil and the conservation implications for the species involved, there is an urgent need for actions that can control these activities. Steps should be taken to address the illegal traffic directly and these must include monitoring, law enforcement, effective sentencing (including deterrent sentences), targeting end-users, captive breeding, and education at all levels, taking into account the cultural, economic, social, and ecological aspects of the human populations involved.