In January 2020, an extreme precipitation event occurred over southeast Brazil, with the epicentre in Minas Gerais state. Although rainfall frequently occurs this region during wet season, led to death of 56 people, drove thousands residents into homelessness, and incurred millions Brazilian Reais (BRL) financial loss through cascading effects flooding landslides. The main question that arises ...

A robust instance-based reinforcement learning (RL) approach for controlling autonomous multi-robot systems (MRS) is introduced in this chapter. Although RL has been proven to be an effective approach for behavior acquisition for an autonomous robot, it generates considerably sensitive results for the segmentation of the state and action spaces. This problem can yield severe results with increa...

A reproducible method for growing normal human bone marrow B-lineage colonies in agar is described. The clonogenic cells require a rich medium, Opti-MEM (GIBCO/BRL, Burlington, Ontario, Canada), and a source of T-cell-derived factors for growth. The conditions described appear to be limiting for the colony progenitor, suggesting assay clonality. Three novel methods that permit routine and rapid...

Using N1E-115 neuroblastoma cells as an experimental model, we have examined if four commonly used i.v. anaesthetic induction agents interact with 5-HT3 receptors. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that the antiemetic effects of propofol may result from 5-HT3 receptor antagonism. Binding of tropisetron (a 5-HT3 selective reference compound), etomidate, ketamine, thiopentone and propofol to...

Os protocolos de diagnóstico atuais para gamopatia monoclonal (GM) dependem da eletroforese proteínas do soro (EFPS) como a única avaliação inicial proteína monoclonal, ainda que limitada no diz respeito à sua sensibilidade. A associação teste cadeia leve livre (CLL, Freelite®) resulta na diminuição número resultados falso-negativos. Buscamos avaliar eficiência CLLs o GM Sistema Único Saúde (SU...

Cawley SM, Kolodziej S, Ichinose F, Brouckaert P, Buys ES, Bloch KD. sGC 1 mediates the negative inotropic effects of NO in cardiac myocytes independent of changes in calcium handling. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 301: H157–H163, 2011. First published May 2, 2011; doi:10.1152/ajpheart.01273.2010.—In the heart, nitric oxide (NO) modulates contractile function; however, the mechanisms responsi...