Although South America lost more megafaunal genera than any other continent during the Late-Quaternary Extinction event (LQE), little is known about the chronology, causes or dynamics of these extinctions, especially in the northern part of the continent. Fossil deposits in…

Background: Clinical examinations increasingly consist of composite tests to assess all aspects of the curriculum recommended by the General Medical Council.
Setting: A final undergraduate medical school examination for 214 students.
Aim: To estimate the overall reliability of a composite…

This article presents the confluence of two general ideas: Defeasible Logic Programming (DeLP, an argumentation based formalism for representing knowledge and reasoning) and Abduction in logic. In first place, we introduce a framework that formally states the problem of doing…

In this paper, the two-dimensional strip packing problem with 3-stage level patterns is tackled using genetic algorithms (GAs). We evaluate the usefulness of a greedy seeding procedure for creating the initial population, incorporating problem knowledge. This is motivated by the…

The chemical composition of the essential oils from leaves and stems of Eugenia sulcata Spring ex Mart., obtained by hydrodistillation, was analyzed by GC-MS and quantified by CG-FID. In all, 37 components were identified and sesquiterpenes represented the largest fraction…

Tardigrades constitute one of three clades of Xenarthra. Whereas modern tree sloths are common in the Amazonian Basin, their giant ground sloth "kin" were abundant throughout the Americas. During the Miocene, sloths were conspicuous faunal elements in Patagonia, generally considered…

Recent contributions to the knowledge of Gondwanan cynodonts highlight the presence in Africa of taxa previously recognized in South America and vice-versa. This is the case for the Middle Triassic Namibian fauna from the upper Omingonde Formation, where the first…

Talampaya and Tarjados Formations correspond to the initial stage of the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin filling, and record the oldest post-Permian events in the region. The sequence consists of red beds deposited essentially by ephemeral alluvial and fluvial systems, and overlay…

Species of Brunfelsia, whose flowers change colour progressively from violet to white, are popularly known as yesterday-today-tomorrow and used in folk medicine, mainly as anesthetic and diuretic. Based on ethnobotanical surveys, they have been investigated chemically and pharmacologically for expanding…

This paper presents a proposal for an architecture that integrates knowledge discovery systems (automatic acquisition) and knowledge based systems (experts systems). This work formulates considerations over the viability of the implementation of this architecture according to the advance of the…