The need for a more reliable method to select beef heifers to retain as replacement dams has become a concern in the beef industry. Two polymorphisms described in leptin (LEP), p.Arg25Cys, and pro-melanin concentrating hormone (PMCH), g.-134A>T, have already been shown to improve carcass quality in beef cattle. This study was designed to evaluate any additional advantages of these polymorphisms in terms of heifer conception and calving success and lactational milk yield measured indirectly by their calves’ early ADG while they were primarily on lactation. A dominant effect of the dam’s PMCH T allele was observed on improved calf early ADGs in Simmental heifer dams, although not in Angus heifer dams. This effect could be useful in cow-calf operations where calves were suckling their dams for a longer period before sending the cow-calf pairs out to summer pasture. The dam LEP genotype did not show an effect on their calves’ ADG. This was assumed to be due to low body fat reserves of the heifer dams at the age of two years, allowing for only low levels of leptin. Even though heifer conception was not affected by their LEP and PMCH genotypes, it would be worth evaluating their rebreeding success in the presence of these SNPs in the future. The Integral Membrane Protein 2A (ITM2A) was hypothesized as a candidate gene for frame size in cattle. DNA fragments from 20 cattle, matching the predicted exons of the cattle ITM2A gene, were sequenced to determine whether genetic variation existed. However, the sequence obtained based on the predicted cattle ITM2A sequences appeared to be a pseudogene, rather than the actual cattle ITM2A gene, because exons 1, 2, 3 and 5 contained stop codons. Since frame size has been reported to be associated with the reproductive performance of beef dams and their calves’ growth characteristics, it would be useful to characterize this gene once an improved cattle genome assembly is available.

Frame aggregation is one of the major MAC layer enhancements in the IEEE 802.11 family that boosts the network throughput performance. It aims to achieve higher throughput by transmitting huge amount of data in a single transmit oppor- tunity. With the increasing awareness of energy e ciency, it has become vital to rethink about the design of such frame aggregation protocol. Aggregation techniques help to reduce energy consumption over ideal channel conditions. However, in a noisy channel environment, a new energy-aware frame aggregation scheme is required. In this thesis, a novel Green Frame Aggregation (GFA) scheduling scheme has been proposed and evaluated. GFA optimizes the aggregate size based on channel quality in order to minimize the consumed energy. GFA selects the optimal sub-frame size that satisfies the loss constraint for real-time applications as well as the energy budget of the ideal channel situations. The design, the implementation, and evaluation of GFA using testbed deployment is done. The experimental analysis shows that GFA outperforms the conventional frame aggregation methodology in terms of energy e ciency by about 6⇥ in the presence of severe interference conditions. Moreover, GFA also outperforms the static frame sizing method in terms of network goodput and maintains almost the same end- to-end latency.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The present work was carried out at the National Forest of São Francisco de Paula - FLONA/RS Araucaria Forest, which is of a great species diversity of Rio Grande do Sul. Litter is the material deposited on the soil in the forests and this is very important to the maintenance of soil fertility, because this is how the nutrients return to the plants in the ecosystem. The objective of this study was to estimate the accumulated litter and sampling intensity in each season in this Araucaria Forest. 15 random samples in four different size frame were used. a) Great (G) = 1m x 1m (1m2); b) medial (M) = 1m x 0,75m (0,75m2); c) Small (P) = 0,75m x 0,75m (0,56m2); d) Very Small (MP) = 0,5 x 0,5m (0,25m2), per hectare in each season (Autumm Spring Summer and Winter) totalizing 60 samples in one hectare, per season. After the litter was separated in storeys (branches, rinds, leaves, and miscellaneous) at the Laboratory of the Departmento of Fitotecnia , UFSM, and later placed in the greenhouse (75º C) until it get constant weight, and then, weighted on scale of precision (0,1g). The delineation used was completely random in each frame and season, for later commun joint analysis of the experiments. The simple random sampling admits a maximum estimated error of 10, 15, 20 and 25%. However, the intensity of sampling (n) per hectare was calculated with an estimated error probability of 5%. The interaction results (frame and season) in the joint analysis were not significant for the total and storeys. The behavior of the frames is the same in the different seasons and the response of the treatments can be used for all seasons. The variances verified in the seasons are not null, that is, heterogeneity can be found in different seasons regarding the litter accumulation. The total effect of the frames and storeys, branches, rinds and miscellaneous does not differ between themselves, presenting a significant difference only in leaves. There aren t significant differences between the frame and the total. As the most adjusted would be the Very Small frame (0,25 m²), with homogeneity of the variance in the season. It s necessary 27 samples in the winter, 25 in the spring, 33 in the autumn, and in the summer 15 sample units in order to get 15% of samples the averages. / O presente trabalho foi realizado na Floresta Ombrófila Mista de São Francisco de Paula - FLONA sendo esta representante de grande diversidade tipológica no estado do Rio Grande do Sul. Todo o material depositado nas florestas nas camadas acima do solo, é chamado de serapilheira ou manta, e possui um papel fundamental na manutenção da fertilidade do solo, constituindo o principal meio de retorno dos nutrientes para as plantas no ecossistema. Assim, o presente trabalho tem por objetivo estimar a serapilheira acumulada e a intensidade amostral para cada estação sazonal, na Floresta Ombrófila Mista, RS. Foram coletadas 15 amostras aleatórias de quatro diferentes tamanhos de moldura: a) Grande (G) = 1 m x 1 m (1 m2); b) Média (M) = 1 m x 0,75 m (0,75 m2); c) Pequena (P) = 0,75 m x 0,75 m (0,56 m2); d) Muito Pequena (MP) = 0,5 m x 0,5 m (0,25 m2), por hectare em cada estação sazonal (primavera, verão, outono, inverno), totalizando 60 amostras em um hectare, por estação. Após a serapilheira foi levada ao Laboratório do Departamento de Fitotecnia da UFSM e separada em estratos (folhas, cascas, galhos e miscelâneas) e, posteriormente, colocada em estufa (75ºC) até peso constante, e pesada com balança de precisão de 0,1 g. O delineamento utilizado foi o inteiramente casualizado em cada moldura e estação, para posterior realização da análise conjunta dos experimentos. Calculou-se a média, variância, coeficiente de variação e a contribuição em porcentagem relativa para todos os estratos. Por meio da amostragem aleatória simples, admitindo-se um erro de amostragem máximo de 10, 15, 20 e 25% da média estimada, com 5% de probabilidade de erro, calculou-se a intensidade de amostragem (n) por hectare, para população infinita. A interação (moldura e estação) na análise conjunta não foi significativa para o total e para os estratos, logo o comportamento das molduras é o mesmo nas diferentes estações e, as respostas dos tratamentos podem ser usadas para todas as estações. As variâncias verificadas nas estações não são nulas, isto é, existe heterogeneidade nas diferentes estações quanto ao acúmulo de serapilheira. O efeito das molduras para o total e para os estratos, galhos, cascas e miscelâneas não diferem entre si, apresentando diferença significativa somente nas folhas. Não existem diferenças significativas entre as molduras para o total, sendo a mais adequada a moldura Muito Pequena (0,25 m²), com homogeneidade da variância nas estações. São necessárias 27 amostras no inverno, 25 na primavera, 33 no outono, e 15 no verão para obter 15% da amostragem das médias.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:55:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 EduardoJB.pdf: 1367282 bytes, checksum: 6b7509a3a7d719223deb44d539d92c51 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-12-16 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The introduction of new digital services in the cellular networks, in transmission rates each time more raised, has stimulated recent research that comes studying ways to increase the data communication capacity and to reduce the delays in forward and reverse links of third generation WCDMA systems. These studies have resulted in new standards, known as 3.5G, published by 3GPP group, for the evolution of the third generation of the cellular systems. In this Masters Thesis the performance of a 3G WCDMA system, with diverse base stations and thousand of users is developed with assists of the planning tool NPSW. Moreover the performance of the 3.5G techniques hybrid automatic retransmission and multi-user detection with interference cancellation, candidates for enhance the WCDMA uplink capacity, is verified by means of computational simulations in Matlab of the increase of the data communication capacity and the reduction of the delays in the retransmission of packages of information / A introdu??o de novos servi?os digitais nas redes celulares, em taxas de transmiss?o cada vez mais elevadas, tem impulsionado recentes pesquisas que v?m estudando maneiras de aumentar a capacidade de transmiss?o de dados e diminuir os atrasos nos enlaces direto e reverso de sistemas de terceira gera??o WCDMA. Esses estudos t?m resultado em novos padr?es, chamados de 3.5G, publicados pelo grupo 3GPP, para a evolu??o da terceira gera??o dos sistemas celulares. Nesta disserta??o de mestrado o desempenho de um sistema de 3G WCDMA, com diversas esta??es base e milhares de usu?rios ? analisado com aux?lio da ferramenta de projetos NPSW. Al?m disso a performance das t?cnicas de 3.5G redu??o do tamanho do quadro de transmiss?o, retransmiss?o autom?tica h?brida e detec??o multi-usu?rio com cancelamento de interfer?ncias, candidatas para amplia??o do uplink de redes WCDMA, ? verificada por meio de simula??es computacionais, na linguagem Matlab, do aumento da capacidade de transmiss?o de dados e da diminui??o dos atrasos na retransmiss?o de pacotes de informa??o. Palavras-Chave: WCDMA, UMTS, capacidade de transmiss?o, t?cnicas de 3.5G EUL, redu??o do quadro de transmiss?o, retransmiss?o autom?tica h?brida, detec??o multi-usu?rio, cancelamento de interfer?ncias