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A newly discovered dinosaur track-assemblage from the Upper Jurassic Lourinha˜ Formation (Lusitanian Basin, central-west Portugal), comprises medium- to large-sized sauropod tracks with well-preserved impressions of soft tissue anatomy, stegosaur tracks and tracks from medium- to large-sized theropods. The 400-m-thick Lourinha˜ Formation consists of mostly aluvial sediments, deposited during the early rifting of the Atlantic Ocean in the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian. The stratigraphic succession shows several shifts between flood-plain mud and fluvial sands that favour preservation and fossilization of tracks. The studied track-assemblage is found preserved as natural casts on the underside of a thin bivalve-rich carbonate bed near the Tithonian–Kimmeridgian boundary. The diversity of the tracks from the new track assemblage is compared with similar faunas from the Upper Jurassic of Asturias, Spain and the Middle Jurassic Yorkshire Coast of England. The Portuguese record of Upper Jurassic dinosaur body fossils show close similarity to the track fauna from the Lourinha˜ Formation.

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TheRuleInterchangeFormatProductionRuleDialect(RIF- PRD) is a W3C Recommendation to define production rules for the Semantic Web, whose semantics is defined operationally via labeled ter- minal transition systems.
In this paper, we introduce a declarative logical characterization of the full default semantics of RIF-PRD based on Answer Set Programming (ASP), including matching, conflict resolution and acting.
Our proposal to the semantics of RIF-PRD enjoys several features. Being based on ASP, it enables a straightforward integration with Logic Programming rule based technology, namely for reasoning and acting with ontologies. Then, its full declarative logical character facilitates the in- vestigation of formal properties of RIF-PRD itself. Furthermore, it turns out that our characterization based on ASP is flexible enough so that new conflict resolution semantics for RIF-PRD can easily be defined and encoded. Finally, it immediately serves as the declarative specification of an implementation, whose prototype we developed.

Transactional Memory allows programmers to reduce the number of synchronization errors introduced in concurrent programs, but does not ensures its complete elimination. This paper proposes a pattern matching based approach to the static detection of atomicity violation, based on a path-sensitive symbolic execution method to model four anomalies that may affect Transactional Memory programs. The proposed technique may be used to to bring to programmer's attention pairs of transactions that the programmer has mis-specified, and should have been combined into a single transaction. The algorithm first traverses the AST tree, removing all the non-transactional blocks and generating a trace tree in the path sensitive manner for each thread. The trace tree is a Trie like data structure, where each path from root to a leaf is a list of transactions. For each pair of threads, erroneous patterns involving two consecutive transactions are then checked in the trace tree. Results allow to conclude that the proposed technique, although triggering a moderate number of false positives, can be successfully applied to Java programs, correctly identifying the vast majority of the relevant erroneous patterns.

Dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was applied for the determination of 11 alkylphenols in eluates of chars produced in the co-pyrolysis of different wastes.

The optimized DLLME procedure, 4 mL of sample solution, 15 μL of trichloroethylene as extraction solvent, 1 mL of acetone as dispersion solvent and addition of 15% (w/v) of NaCl, was validated. Under the optimum conditions, the enrichment factors were in the range of 82–180. Calibration curves were constructed for each analyte in pure water in the concentration range of 0.5–8 μg/L with correlation coefficients higher than 0.999. The limits of detection were between 0.07 and 0.17 μg/L. The repeatability of the method was evaluated using water samples fortified with the analyte mixture at two concentration levels: the relative standard deviation (RSD) values were between 3.7% and 8.0% for a concentration of 0.5 μg/L, and between 4.2% and 6.4% for a concentration of 3 μg/L. The recoveries of the analytes evaluated by fortification of real eluate samples were in the range of 67.9–97.9% for eluate 1 (obtained from a decontaminated char) and in the range of 61.9–101.4% for eluate 2 (obtained from the untreated char). o-Methylphenol presented low recoveries for both eluates showing a possible matrix effect. The results obtained show that this method is adequate for the determination of alkylphenols in environmental aqueous samples and presents itself as a fast and inexpensive technique, using minor amounts of organic solvents.

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The traditional methodology used in civil engineering measurements requires a lot of equipment and a very complex procedure especially if the number of target points increase. Since the beginning of the current century, several studies have been conducted in the area of photogrametry using digital image
correlation associated with block motion algorithms to estimate displacements in reinforced concrete (RC) beams during a load test. Using image processing techniques it is possible to measure the whole area of interest and not only a few points of the tests materials. In this paper, block-matching algorithms are used in order to compare the results from photogrametry techniques and the data obtained with linear voltage displacement transducer (LVDT) sensors during the load tests of RC beams, which are very common to find in civil engineering laboratories.

Domain Specic Languages (DSLs) can contribute to increment productivity, while reducing the required maintenance and programming expertise. We hypothesize that Software Languages Engineering (SLE) developers consistently skip, or relax, Language Evaluation. Based on the experience of engineering other types of software products, we assume that this may potentially lead to the deployment of inadequate languages. The fact that the languages already deal with concepts from the problem domain, and not the solution domain, is not enough to validate several issues at stake, such as its expressiveness, usability,
effectiveness, maintainability, or even the domain expert's productivity while using them. We present a systematic review on articles published in top ranked venues, from 2001 to 2008, which report DSLs' construction, to characterize the common practice. This work conrms our initial hypothesis and lays the ground for the discussion on how to include a systematic approach to DSL evaluation in the SLE process.

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Transactional Memory allows programmers to reduce the number of synchronization errors introduced in concurrent programs, but does not ensures its complete elimination. This paper proposes a pattern matching based approach to the static detection of atomicity violation, based on a path-sensitive symbolic execution method to model four anomalies that may affect Transactional Memory programs. The proposed technique may be used to to bring to programmer’s attention pairs of transactions that the programmer has mis-specified, and should have been combined into a single transaction. The algorithm first traverses the AST tree, removing all the non-transactional blocks and generating a trace tree in the path sensitive manner for each thread. The trace tree is a Trie like data structure, where each path from root to a leaf is a list of transactions. For each pair of threads, erroneous patterns involving two consecutive transactions are then checked in the trace tree. Results allow to conclude that the proposed technique, although triggering a moderate number of false positives, can be successfully applied to Java programs, correctly identifying the vast majority of the relevant erroneous patterns.

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Cork is a cellular biomaterial that has unique characteristics that make it suitable for many types of applications. Since it is also an electrical insulator, the study of its electrical and dielectric properties can lead to new interesting applications. The moisture present in cork and derivatives has a very important role on the dielectric properties. In this work a composite made of both recycled cork and TetraPak (R) used containers was studied and compared with other cork products. The dielectric relaxation spectra of natural cork (as received), commercial cork agglomerate and of a composite cork/Tetrapak (R) was investigated in the temperature range of -50 to 120 degrees C and in the frequency range of 10(-1) Hz-2 MHz. For some samples of the composite a small amount of paraffin was added. The highest values for the imaginary part of the dielectric permittivity were found for the commercial material and the composite without paraffin. The lowest was found for the cork/TetraPak (R)/paraffin composite. The influence of humidity content was investigated for the composite with wax. Natural cork shows a peak around 80 degrees C (not seen in the derivative materials). The commercial agglomerate and the cork/TetraPak (R)/paraffin composite show a peak around 40-50 degrees C. In the composite this peak becomes smaller as humidity is removed. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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A collection of 155 accessions of ancient Portuguese common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L) was evaluated in relation to the content of 8 minerals (Zn, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ca, Mg, P and K) important for human nutrition. A high degree of variability for P. Fe, Zn, Cu, Mn and Ca was observed in the collection. Total correlation matrix analysis revealed the existence of two important sets of strong positive correlations (P <= 0.0001), one involving P, Fe, Zn, Cu and protein, and the other Ca and Mn. The principal component analysis showed that Zn, Fe and Cu are highly correlated to the first component (27% of variability) and Mn and Ca to the second component (22% of the variability). The high mineral variability observed in the seeds of this common bean collection could be useful for the selection of cultivars with higher nutrition value and for the improvement of seed nutrition quality traits. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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