Cirrus clouds observation in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul during the experiment Chuva - Sul.

Cirrus clouds are an interesting point in the research of the atmosphere due their behavior and the effect on the earth radiation budget. They can affect the atmospheric radiation budget by reflecting the incoming solar radiation and absorbing the outgoing terrestrial radiation. Also, this cloud type is involved in the dehydration of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. So, it is interesting to increment the measurements of this type of clouds from the ground. During November and December 2012, through the CHUVA-SUL campaign, measurements with lidar in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul were conducted. The system installed in Santa Maria site (29.8 °S; 53.7 °W, 100 m asl) was a single elastic-backscatter lidar using the wavelength of 532 nm. Some days with cirrus clouds lidar measurements were detected. Four days with presence of cirrus cloud are showed in the present study. These days, 7, 8, 19 and 28 November 2012, was selected due the persistence of cirrus clouds over many hours. The raw retrieval lidar signals and inverted backscatter coefficient profiles were analyzed for the selected days. Base and top height was obtained by analysis of raw signal and backscatter coefficient. Extinction coefficient profiles were obtained by the assumption of the lidar ratio. Cirrus cloud optical depth (COD) values were calculated, from the integration of the extinction coefficient between the base and top altitudes of the cirrus clouds.

A Fuzzy Ontology-Driven Approach to Semantic Interoperability in e-Government Big Data

With the increasing production of information from e-government initiatives, there is also the need to transform a large volume of unstructured data into useful information for society. All this information should be easily accessible and made available in a meaningful and effective way in order to achieve semantic interoperability in electronic government services, which is a challenge to be pursued by governments round the world. Our aim is to discuss the context of e-Government Big Data and to present a framework to promote semantic interoperability through automatic generation of ontologies from unstructured information found in the Internet. We propose the use of fuzzy mechanisms to deal with natural language terms and present some related works found in this area. The results achieved in this study are based on the architectural definition and major components and requirements in order to compose the proposed framework. With this, it is possible to take advantage of the large volume of information generated from e-Government initiatives and use it to benefit society.

Ontology for Data Representation in the Production of Cotton Fiber in Brazil

An important feature in computer systems developed for the agricultural sector is to satisfy the heterogeneity of data generated in different processes. Most problems related with this heterogeneity arise from the lack of standard for different computing solutions proposed. An efficient solution for that is to create a single standard for data exchange. The study on the actual process involved in cotton production was based on a research developed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) that reports all phases as a result of the compilation of several theoretical and practical researches related to cotton crop. The proposition of a standard starts with the identification of the most important classes of data involved in the process, and includes an ontology that is the systematization of concepts related to the production of cotton fiber and results in a set of classes, relations, functions and instances. The results are used as a reference for the development of computational tools, transforming implicit knowledge into applications that support the knowledge described. This research is based on data from the Midwest of Brazil. The choice of the cotton process as a study case comes from the fact that Brazil is one of the major players and there are several improvements required for system integration in this segment.