2022
Authors
Toloi, RC; Reis, JGMD; Toloi, MNV; Vendrametto, O; Cabral, JASP;
Publication
Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural
Abstract
This paper aims to identify and analyze the factors that influence the decision of Mato Grosso’s farmers to produce soybean using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). We found evidence that decisionmaking of soybean production is related to rural production aspects such as climate, financing, cost of inputs, and soil quality rather than marketing and logistics. The novelty of this paper is the empirical analysis of the decision-making in agricultural production using AHP. The decision model was created and tested considering 21 farmers and 19 experts linked to the soybean production. Three different scenarios were considered: farmers’ view, experts’ view, and combined view. Our findings indicate that farmers and experts agree with rural aspects are predominant in the decision to plant soybean. Moreover, logistics have been used as an important flag of soybean competitiveness on international trade by soybean stakeholders in Brazil. However, our results show that logistics impact in the soybean decision-making process is low. Due to data limitation access, this study focuses only on Mato Grosso. However, this study has an exploratory character and presents empirical results that may help to understand soybean production over the country.
2022
Authors
Santana, A; Alves-Pimenta, S; Franco-Goncalo, P; Goncalves, L; Martins, J; Colaco, B; Ginja, M;
Publication
VETERINARY WORLD
Abstract
Background and Aim: Passive hip laxity (PHL) is considered the primary risk factor for canine hip dysplasia (HD) and is estimated, in stress hip radiographs, using the distraction index (DI). The study aimed to associate the early PHL using the hip Distractor of University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro (DisUTAD) and the late HD grades. Materials and Methods: A total of 41 dogs (82 hips) were submitted to a follow-up study. First, between 4 and 12 months of age, dogs were radiographed using the DisUTAD hip distractor and were determined the DI for each hip joint. Then, after 12 months of age, dogs were reevaluated for HD using the conventional hip ventrodorsal projection and hips were evaluated for HD using the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) scoring system. Results: Hips of dogs' in the second examination with FCI grades of A (n=28), B (n=11), C (n=22), and D and E (n=21) had an early DI of 0.32 +/- 0.1, 0.380.08, 0.50 +/- 0.12, and 0.64 +/- 0.11, respectively. Statistical analysis using the general linear model univariate, with the DI as dependent variable and the FCI grades, side and sex as fixed factors, and the post hoc Bonferroni correction test showed significant differences among FCI grades (p<0.05). Conclusion: These results show the association between early DI and the late FCI HD grades and the DisUTAD is recommended for the early canine HD diagnosis.
2022
Authors
Lima, DLS; Pessoa, ACP; de Paiva, AC; Cunha, AMTD; Braz, G; de Almeida, JDS;
Publication
2022 IEEE-EMBS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIOMEDICAL AND HEALTH INFORMATICS (BHI) JOINTLY ORGANISED WITH THE IEEE-EMBS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WEARABLE AND IMPLANTABLE BODY SENSOR NETWORKS (BSN'22)
Abstract
Cancers related to the gastrointestinal tract have a high incidence rate in the population, with a high mortality rate. Videos obtained through endoscopic capsules are essential for evaluating anomalies that can progress to cancer. However, due to their duration, which can reach 10 hours, they demand great attention from the medical specialist in their analysis. Machine learning techniques have been successfully applied in developing computer-aided diagnostic systems since the 1990s, where Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become very successful for pattern recognition in images. CNNs use convolutions to extract features from the analyzed data, operating in a fixed-size window and thus having problems capturing pixel-level relationships considering the spatial and temporal domains. Otherwise, transformers use attention mechanisms, where data is structured in a vector space that can aggregate information from adjacent data to determine meaning in a given context. This work proposes a computational method for analyzing images extracted from videos obtained by endoscopic capsules, using a transformer-based model that helps diagnose of gastrointestinal tract abnormalities. Preliminary results are promising. The classification task of 11 classes evaluated on the publicly available Kvasir-Capsule dataset yielded an average value of 99.70% of accuracy, 99.64% of precision, 99.86% of sensitivity, and 99.54% of f1-score.
2022
Authors
Egeter, B; Verissimo, J; Lopes Lima, M; Chaves, C; Pinto, J; Riccardi, N; Beja, P; Fonseca, NA;
Publication
MOLECULAR ECOLOGY RESOURCES
Abstract
Traditional detection of aquatic invasive species via morphological identification is often time-consuming and can require a high level of taxonomic expertise, leading to delayed mitigation responses. Environmental DNA (eDNA) detection approaches of multiple species using Illumina-based sequencing technology have been used to overcome these hindrances, but sample processing is often lengthy. More recently, portable nanopore sequencing technology has become available, which has the potential to make molecular detection of invasive species more widely accessible and substantially decrease sample turnaround times. However, nanopore-sequenced reads have a much higher error rate than those produced by Illumina platforms, which has so far hindered the adoption of this technology. We provide a detailed laboratory protocol and bioinformatic tools (msi package) to increase the reliability of nanopore sequencing to detect invasive species, and we test its application using invasive bivalves while comparing it with Illumina-based sequencing. We sampled water from sites with pre-existing bivalve occurrence and abundance data, and contrasting bivalve communities, in Italy and Portugal. Samples were extracted, amplified, and sequenced by the two platforms. The mean agreement between sequencing methods was 69% and the difference between methods was nonsignificant. The lack of detections of some species at some sites could be explained by their known low abundances. This is the first reported use of MinION to detect aquatic invasive species from eDNA samples.
2022
Authors
Carvalho, CL; Barbosa, B; Santos, CA;
Publication
Advances in Human Services and Public Health - Handbook of Research on Digital Citizenship and Management During Crises
Abstract
2022
Authors
Sousa, TB; Ferreira, HS; Correia, FF;
Publication
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Abstract
This work takes as a starting point a collection of patterns for engineering software for the cloud and tries to find how they are regarded and adopted by professionals. Existing literature assesses the adoption of cloud computing with a focus on business and technological aspects and falls short in grasping a holistic view of the underlying approaches. Other authors delve into how independent patterns can be discovered (mined) and verified, but do not provide insights on their adoption. We investigate (1) the relevance of the patterns for professional software developers, (2) the extent to which product and company characteristics influence their adoption, and (3) how adopting some patterns might correlate with the likelihood of adopting others. For this purpose, we survey practitioners using an online questionnaire (n = 102). Among other findings, we conclude that most companies use these patterns, with the overwhelming majority (97 percent) using at least one. We observe that the mean pattern adoption tends to increase as companies mature, namely when varying the product operation complexity, active monthly users, and company size. Finally, we search for correlations in the adoption of specific patterns and attempt to infer causation, providing further clues on how some practices depend or influence the adoption of others. We conclude that the adoption of some practices correlates with specific company and product characteristics, and find relationships between the patterns that were not covered by the original pattern language and which might deserve further investigation.
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