Uma nova forma de calcular os centros dos Clusters em algoritmos de agrupamento tipo fuzzy c-means

Clustering data is a very important task in data mining, image processing and pattern recognition problems. One of the most popular clustering algorithms is the Fuzzy C-Means (FCM). This thesis proposes to implement a new way of calculating the cluster centers in the procedure of FCM algorithm which are called ckMeans, and in some variants of FCM, in particular, here we apply it for those variants that use other distances. The goal of this change is to reduce the number of iterations and processing time of these algorithms without affecting the quality of the partition, or even to improve the number of correct classifications in some cases. Also, we developed an algorithm based on ckMeans to manipulate interval data considering interval membership degrees. This algorithm allows the representation of data without converting interval data into punctual ones, as it happens to other extensions of FCM that deal with interval data. In order to validate the proposed methodologies it was made a comparison between a clustering for ckMeans, K-Means and FCM algorithms (since the algorithm proposed in this paper to calculate the centers is similar to the K-Means) considering three different distances. We used several known databases. In this case, the results of Interval ckMeans were compared with the results of other clustering algorithms when applied to an interval database with minimum and maximum temperature of the month for a given year, referring to 37 cities distributed across continents

Um monitor de metadados de QoS e QoC para plataformas de middleware

Context-aware applications are typically dynamic and use services provided by several sources, with different quality levels. Context information qualities are expressed in terms of Quality of Context (QoC) metadata, such as precision, correctness, refreshment, and resolution. On the other hand, service qualities are expressed via Quality of Services (QoS) metadata such as response time, availability and error rate. In order to assure that an application is using services and context information that meet its requirements, it is essential to continuously monitor the metadata. For this purpose, it is needed a QoS and QoC monitoring mechanism that meet the following requirements: (i) to support measurement and monitoring of QoS and QoC metadata; (ii) to support synchronous and asynchronous operation, thus enabling the application to periodically gather the monitored metadata and also to be asynchronously notified whenever a given metadata becomes available; (iii) to use ontologies to represent information in order to avoid ambiguous interpretation. This work presents QoMonitor, a module for QoS and QoC metadata monitoring that meets the abovementioned requirement. The architecture and implementation of QoMonitor are discussed. To support asynchronous communication QoMonitor uses two protocols: JMS and Light-PubSubHubbub. In order to illustrate QoMonitor in the development of ubiquitous application it was integrated to OpenCOPI (Open COntext Platform Integration), a Middleware platform that integrates several context provision middleware. To validate QoMonitor we used two applications as proofof- concept: an oil and gas monitoring application and a healthcare application. This work also presents a validation of QoMonitor in terms of performance both in synchronous and asynchronous requests

Em direção a uma representação para equações algébricas :uma lógica equacional local

The intervalar arithmetic well-known as arithmetic of Moore, doesn't possess the same properties of the real numbers, and for this reason, it is confronted with a problem of operative nature, when we want to solve intervalar equations as extension of real equations by the usual equality and of the intervalar arithmetic, for this not to possess the inverse addictive, as well as, the property of the distributivity of the multiplication for the sum doesn t be valid for any triplet of intervals. The lack of those properties disables the use of equacional logic, so much for the resolution of an intervalar equation using the same, as for a representation of a real equation, and still, for the algebraic verification of properties of a computational system, whose data are real numbers represented by intervals. However, with the notion of order of information and of approach on intervals, introduced by Acióly[6] in 1991, the idea of an intervalar equation appears to represent a real equation satisfactorily, since the terms of the intervalar equation carry the information about the solution of the real equation. In 1999, Santiago proposed the notion of simple equality and, later on, local equality for intervals [8] and [33]. Based on that idea, this dissertation extends Santiago's local groups for local algebras, following the idea of Σ-algebras according to (Hennessy[31], 1988) and (Santiago[7], 1995). One of the contributions of this dissertation, is the theorem 5.1.3.2 that it guarantees that, when deducing a local Σ-equation E t t in the proposed system SDedLoc(E), the interpretations of t and t' will be locally the same in any local Σ-algebra that satisfies the group of fixed equations local E, whenever t and t have meaning in A. This assures to a kind of safety between the local equacional logic and the local algebras

Um framework baseado em modelos para desenvolvimento de sistemas multimídia distribuídos autoadaptativos

Distributed multimedia systems have highly variable characteristics, resulting in new requirements while new technologies become available or in the need for adequacy in accordance with the amount of available resources. So, these systems should provide support for dynamic adaptations in order to adjust their structures and behaviors at runtime. This paper presents an approach to adaptation model-based and proposes a reflective and component-based framework for construction and support of self-adaptive distributed multimedia systems, providing many facilities for the development and evolution of such systems, such as dynamic adaptation. The propose is to keep one or more models to represent the system at runtime, so some external entity can perform an analysis of these models by identifying problems and trying to solve them. These models integrate the reflective meta-level, acting as a system self-representation. The framework defines a meta-model for description of self-adaptive distributed multimedia applications, which can represent components and their relationships, policies for QoS specification and adaptation actions. Additionally, this paper proposes an ADL and architecture for model-based adaptation. As a case study, this paper presents some scenarios to demonstrate the application of the framework in practice, with and without the use of ADL, as well as check some characteristics related to dynamic adaptation

Geração procedural de cenários orientada a objetivos

The game industry has been experiencing a consistent increase in production costs of games lately. Part of this increase refers to the current trend of having bigger, more interactive and replayable environments. This trend translates to an increase in both team size and development time, which makes game development a even more risky investment and may reduce innovation in the area. As a possible solution to this problem, the scientific community is focusing on the generation of procedural content and, more specifically, on procedurally generated levels. Given the great diversity and complexity of games, most works choose to deal with a specific genre, platform games being one of the most studied. This work aims at proposing a procedural level generation method for platform/adventure games, a fairly more complex genre than most classic platformers which so far has not been the subject of study from other works. The level generation process was divided in two steps, planning and viusal generation, respectively responsible for generating a compact representation of the level and determining its view. The planning stage was divided in game design and level design, and uses a goaloriented process to output a set of rooms. The visual generation step receives a set of rooms and fills its interior with the appropriate parts of previously authored geometry

X-ARM: um modelo de representação de artefatos de software

A great challenge of the Component Based Development is the creation of mechanisms to facilitate the finding of reusable assets that fulfill the requirements of a particular system under development. In this sense, some component repositories have been proposed in order to answer such a need. However, repositories need to represent the asset characteristics that can be taken into account by the consumers when choosing the more adequate assets for their needs. In such a context, the literature presents some models proposed to describe the asset characteristics, such as identification, classification, non-functional requirements, usage and deployment information and component interfaces. Nevertheless, the set of characteristics represented by those models is insufficient to describe information used before, during and after the asset acquisition. This information refers to negotiation, certification, change history, adopted development process, events, exceptions and so on. In order to overcome this gap, this work proposes an XML-based model to represent several characteristics, of different asset types, that may be employed in the component-based development. Besides representing metadata used by consumers, useful for asset discovering, acquisition and usage, this model, called X-ARM, also focus on helping asset developers activities. Since the proposed model represents an expressive amount of information, this work also presents a tool called X-Packager, developed with the goal of helping asset description with X-ARM

Dimensão educativa do trabalho: estudo de caso da associação de bordadeiras do Seridó ABS- Caicó/ Rio Grande do Norte

This current work s contains issues about the educative dimension of work and its organization s process and managing for it own professionals. It aims to understand how the skills and pedagogic process, in a educative praxis perspective. Are based in a new culture of work of education process an work managing by workers in Handcraft Association of Serido/ Caicó/ RN. It uses as a methodologic-theoric reference cases s study approach, selecting the procedures of part extructure interview. It was done with six embroidereses from the Handcraft Association. The research shows that the educative process of learning and knowledges construction, in the work and by the work. Those processes develop in exchange experiences net in a friendly economic environment and raise elements of a work culture personal that work there. The embroidereses learn how to embroid doing the job and this learning, a lot of times, is influenced by the life conditions, residence local and infantile work in the country area and the living to the urban area, particularly to Caicó. The knowledge relation between them is the matter fact in the embroider learning process that means a social relation based on the knowledge differences between their position in its structure involving the work division, that each handcraft maker knows every part of the embroider, type of work or machine type, step by step until the work is done. It involves decision, execution and machine movements repetition, the focus are the categories that fit in current flexible financial issue. They schedule the work at home so they have time to do other stuff. Most part of the production currently is done to obey de a certain request that aims as production target, being a homework. Another important issue is the embroider work time: time and experience that is within in the professional life and its knowledge representation of job/profession. This time is got as a acquisition process of certain a work dominion and self knowing; time added to changes that were being there practicing from the new characteristics in the furniture, clothes and towels that are in the introduction communicative and its effect. In this way this work include articulations process among skills, educative process and handcraft work organization that allowed the interpretation and finish, that are related to the case study and its developments: handcraft embroidered considered as a profession, money source not conventional where is not work available and a temporary activity while studyng, homework and flexible work

A representação social de educação tecnológica de docentes da Rede Federal de Educação Profissional e Tecnológica: CEFETs do Rio Grande do Norte

The aim of this study was to investigate the social representation of technological education teachers at the Federal Technological Education Network. The survey was conducted from 2007 to 2010, and the respondents were 275 teachers, 135 of the Federal Center for Technological Education (CEFET in portuguese) in the state of Amazonas, in Manaus unit headquarters; 140 of the CEFET in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, a unit based in Natal. We adopt the concept of technological education as the top level of professional education, that is to say, the undergraduate programs of short duration called technological courses. The Federal Technological Education Network gathers hundreds of related institutions, coordinated and supervised by the Office of Vocational and Technological Education of the Ministry of Education. Although many of these institutions offer courses in technology education, no research addressing this subject from the perspective of Social Representations Theory (SRT) was found in the literature. We seek to unravel the social representation of technological education of the teachers by adopting the procedural approach of SRT. This is a qualitative approach, focusing on significant aspects of the representative activity and the formation mechanisms of the representation. Therefore, we search the socio-genesis of the representation in the articulations between discourses, social institutions and practices. We initiated the research through applying critical reading and an analytical perspective on the historical and regulatory documents of technological education in Brazil, from the early twentieth century to the present day. We adopt the Procedure for Multiple Classifications (PMC) from the Free Words Association Technique (FWAT) to access the elements of representational content. For the analysis of the data obtained with FWAT and selection of major words / phrases pertinent to the semantic field of education technology, we used Hamlet II software. For the data analysis of PMC and Free Classification (FC) we used the SPSS ® (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) version 17.0 and used the method of multidimensional scaling - Multidimensional scaling - (MDS). The output from the central MDS takes the form of a set of scatterplots - "perceptual maps" - of which the points are the elements of the representational content. For the FC data analysis we used the Scalogram Multidimensional Analysis (SMA) - which makes use of the original data in its raw form and allows categorical data to be interpreted in the map as measures of (di)similarity. In order to help with the understanding of the settings of the perceptual maps of FC, we used the Content Analysis of the discourse fragments of the teachers interviewed. The results confirm our initial hypothesis regarding the presence of a single plot among the socio-cognitive study subjects, which is the basis for a social representation of technological education in line with the historic assumption of the dichotomy between mental and manual labor. In spite of the three merging representational elements of the representational content, the perceptual maps compiled from the MSA statistics corroborates the dichotomy, with the exception of the map relating to the subgroup of teachers belonging to the humanities

Segregação socioespacial e turismo: estudo da representação fílmica criada pelos turistas e residentes sobre Natal Rio Grande do Norte

This study emerges and develops, from a note by Italo Calvino, who in his novel Invisible Cities advised to avoid saying "that sometimes different cities follow on the same site and with the same name, born and die without knowing, without communication among itself ". The research with a transdisciplinary work ( using elements of sociology, anthropology, geography and communication) made a reflection about segregation and tourism: poverty-richness, center-periphery, tradition- spectaclezation , the visitor-visited maping the touristic circuit and discussing about the phenomenon on the real city and touristic place: Natal and the "Sun City" - Rio Grande do Norte, studying videos produced by residents (documentary) and tourists ( posted on the Internet). Doing a comparative analysis between the realities of these two subjects (resident and tourist), the research found few similarities, many differences on the urban experience, with the existence of two distinct realities (tourist region X the periphery region). Based on theory of phenomenology, social representation, and using content analysis of film, it was noted that promotes to the visitor a trip segmented and disintegrated to daily life, culture and contact with the resident. Resident that, in largely part, lives in a unattended area, with no prospect of life (represented by Novo Horizonte Community). The confinement and segregation occurs even in his moments of leisure and cultural expressions (represented by Redinha‟s Beach), because the private an public leisure areas of tourism indirectly prevent access by people who can not contribute to the consumption on this places. This papper concluded that the tourism in Natal is an activity-phenomenon that directs and focuses on public investments for infrastructure tourist region (Ponta Negra Beach), in detriment of the poorest and periphery areas of the city

Controle adaptativo por modelo de referencia e estrutura variável discreto no tempo

With the technology progess, embedded systems using adaptive techniques are being used frequently. One of these techniques is the Variable Structure Model- Reference Adaptive Control (VS-MRAC). The implementation of this technique in embedded systems, requires consideration of a sampling period which if not taken into consideration, can adversely affect system performance and even takes the system to instability. This work proposes a stability analysis of a discrete-time VS-MRAC accomplished for SISO linear time-invariant plants with relative degree one. The aim is to analyse the in uence of the sampling period in the system performance and the relation of this period with the chattering and system instability

Predição em modelos de tempo de falha acelerado com efeito aleatório para avaliação de riscos de falha em poços petrolíferos

We considered prediction techniques based on models of accelerated failure time with random e ects for correlated survival data. Besides the bayesian approach through empirical Bayes estimator, we also discussed about the use of a classical predictor, the Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Predictor (EBLUP). In order to illustrate the use of these predictors, we considered applications on a real data set coming from the oil industry. More speci - cally, the data set involves the mean time between failure of petroleum-well equipments of the Bacia Potiguar. The goal of this study is to predict the risk/probability of failure in order to help a preventive maintenance program. The results show that both methods are suitable to predict future failures, providing good decisions in relation to employment and economy of resources for preventive maintenance.

Modelo de tempo de falha acelerado com fração de cura : uma abordagem unificada

In this work we study the accelerated failure-time generalized Gamma regression models with a unified approach. The models attempt to estimate simultaneously the effects of covariates on the acceleration/deceleration of the timing of a given event and the surviving fraction. The method is implemented in the free statistical software R. Finally the model is applied to a real dataset referring to the time until the return of the disease in patients diagnosed with breast cancer

Tratamento técnico informacional de discos sonoros: uma abordagem voltata para a análise, representação e organização de acervos musicais

Aborda o tratamento técnico informacional de discos sonoros na Biblioteca Especializada em Música Pe. Jaime Diniz, da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Caracteriza os discos sonoros enquanto suporte informacional. Relata as dificuldades encontradas no processo de tratamento da informação musical em materiais especiais. Objetiva estabelecer diretrizes para a análise, representação e organização do acervo de discos sonoros. Utiliza a pesquisa bibliográfica em fontes impressas e eletrônicas para o suporte teórico, tendo como metodologia o estudo de caso. Conclui que as regras e padrões para o tratamento técnico da informação no campo da Biblioteconomia podem sofrer adaptações para melhor representar o conteúdo musical dos discos sonoros, considerando a necessidade do profissional da informação em aperfeiçoar seus conhecimentos em música.

O uso da representação cartográfica e a cartofobia: analisando a prática e a formação inicial docente na Geografia do ensino público em Teresina-PI

This word has objective to analyzer the relevance of the use of the cartographic representations, in the constructions of the geographical knowledge, during the process of the teaching-learning in the classes of the Geographic of the High School, drawing liam with the formation docent of the regulars courses of teacher training in the regular courses of Degree in Geography. Delimit is the area of empiric search to College State Zacarias de Goes (CEZG) Liceu Piauiense, and to regulars courses of Degree in Geography of the University Federal of the Piauí (UFPI) and University State of the Piauí (UESPI), educational institutions of the public network, located in the city of the Teresina Piauí. Expression of the problematic searched is gaps to been demystified on the vision cartofógica, when has reference to use of the cartographic representations, in the practice, and the initial formation docent in the Geography. To analyze the dynamics of the use of the cartographic resources, tried demystify the Cartography while of the space during the teaching of discipline Geography. So, the lyam with the initial formation in the begree search understand the impasses of construction to academic know and the possibilities of the didactic transposition to the restructure of the know scholar to teacher who works in the Geography, trying to make the teaching of this discipline more interesting and value

O carnaval de Natal/RN: espaço dos "índios" no tempo de folia

A cidade de Natal/RN apresenta-se como palco para múltiplas manifestações culturais, entre as quais se encontram as tribos de índios carnavalescas. O presente estudo procurará compreender a produção do carnaval destas agremiações enquanto uma manifestação de lazer e trabalho. Pautado numa visão pluralista, percebemos que os vários usos do espaço implicam em territorialidades que envolvem as dimensões política, econômica e simbólica, intermediadas pela cultura. Sob a análise proposta, pretendemos desvendar as dinâmicas espaciais e os vários agentes sociais que engendram relações de poder, trabalho e sociabilidades, mostrando neste mundo carnavalesco seus aspectos culturais e suas práticas sociais, guardando, em seu cerne, o caráter popular e ordinário do cotidiano. A pesquisa mostra que, para além da racionalidade hegemônica, existem outras racionalidades, manifestadas em microterritorialidades, que acionam mecanismos e táticas cotidianas, valorizando-se o fenômeno do estar-junto, existentes no interior dos centros urbanos, nos bairros e nas ruas