Estratégia ambiental e agências de viagens e turismo :um estudo sobre a importância de práticas ambientais na escolha de um pacote turístico

The objective of the work was to investigate, from the vision of travel agents, the importance of environmental practices as a decision factor in the purchase of a tourist package. For in such a way, it was established as target population, the travel agencies and tourism linked to he Brazilian Association of Travel agencies ABAV, hearing the Brazilian travel agents that exerted the function in Natal, city in 2005. The election of the sample was accomplished using the simple random sampling technique. The amount of agents effectively searched was of 150 agents being distributed 150 questionnaires, with closed and opened questions, applied during the month of November in 2005. Results showed great variability of interviewed answers in that if it relates for sale of package tourist where the customer demonstrates enviromental concern with the environmental quality. Through multiple regression analyses, it was environmental concern with the environmental quality of the place and the perception of the practical importance of the existence environmental practices in the place as important factor in the decision of tourist package purchase

Impactos da adoção da INTERNET na hotelaria : a percepção dos gerentes de hotéis de médio e grande porte de Natal / RN

The hotel industry is increasingly using the Internet like a management and operational tool. That way, the hotels will be more prepared to offer quality services to their guests and increase their profits as well. However, many managers seem don t perceive the advantages brought from this new digital environment. This thesis analyse the effects of the hotel managers perceptions as for the Internet effectiveness, Internet access, Internet as a communication tool, future importance of the Internet, benefits and drawbacks of the Internet, according to property type (simple, medium comfort and luxe), property size (quantity of the apartaments), age and hotel industry experience of the managers. The methodology utilized was a survey about the hotels that had at least 40 apartments (medium and big property size), were working in Natal-RN and classified in categories in the Guia Quatro Rodas Brasil, totalizing 35 hotels. Through the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey test, the results showed that the hotel managers with more than 50 apartments, the managers of the hotel more comfortable, the younger managers and the managers less experient in the hotel industry, demonstrated more conscious about the importance of the adoption of the Internet than the rest of the others. The contribution of this work is to offer more knowledge to the hotel executives about how they can use the Internet and show the importance of the web adoption in their properties

Algoritmos inteligentes para auto-correção, auto-verificação e auto-validação de medidas em sensores

This work presents a set of intelligent algorithms with the purpose of correcting calibration errors in sensors and reducting the periodicity of their calibrations. Such algorithms were designed using Artificial Neural Networks due to its great capacity of learning, adaptation and function approximation. Two approaches willbe shown, the firstone uses Multilayer Perceptron Networks to approximate the many shapes of the calibration curve of a sensor which discalibrates in different time points. This approach requires the knowledge of the sensor s functioning time, but this information is not always available. To overcome this need, another approach using Recurrent Neural Networks was proposed. The Recurrent Neural Networks have a great capacity of learning the dynamics of a system to which it was trained, so they can learn the dynamics of a sensor s discalibration. Knowingthe sensor s functioning time or its discalibration dynamics, it is possible to determine how much a sensor is discalibrated and correct its measured value, providing then, a more exact measurement. The algorithms proposed in this work can be implemented in a Foundation Fieldbus industrial network environment, which has a good capacity of device programming through its function blocks, making it possible to have them applied to the measurement process

Análise de antenas utilizando substrato cerâmico, zpt, produzido por síntese auto propagante para aplicações em sistemas de micro-ondas

Ceramic substrates have been investigated by researchers around the world and has achieved a high interest in the scientific community, because they had high dielectric constants and excellent performance in the structures employed. Such ceramics result in miniaturized structures with dimensions well reduced and high radiation efficiency. In this work, we have used a new ceramic material called lead zinc titanate in the form of Zn0,8Pb0,2TiO3, capable of being used as a dielectric substrate in the construction of various structures of antennas. The method used in constructing the ceramic combustion synthesis was Self- Sustained High Temperature (SHS - "Self-Propagating High-Temperature Synthesis") which is defined as a process that uses highly exothermic reactions to produce various materials. Once initiated the reaction area in the reaction mixture, the heat generated is sufficient to become self-sustaining combustion in the form of a wave that propagates converting the reaction mixture into the product of interest. Were analyzed aspects of the formation of the composite Zn0,8Pb0,2TiO3 by SHS powders and characterized. The analysis consisted of determining the parameters of the reaction for the formation of the composite, as the ignition temperature and reaction mechanisms. The production of composite Zn0,8Pb0,2TiO3 by SHS performed in the laboratory, was the result of a total control of combustion temperature and after obtaining the powder began the development of ceramics. The product was obtained in the form of regular, alternating layers of porous ceramics and was obtained by uniaxial pressing. 10 The product was characterized by analysis of dilatometry, X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy. One of the contributions typically defined in this work is the development of a new dielectric material, nevertheless presented previously in the literature. Therefore, the structures of the antennas presented in this work consisted of new dielectric ceramics based Zn0,8Pb0,2TiO3 usually used as dielectric substrate. The materials produced were characterized in the microwave range. These are dielectrics with high relative permittivity and low loss tangent. The Ansoft HFSS, commercial program employee, using the finite element method, and was used for analysis of antennas studied in this work

Compressão auto-adaptativa de imagens coloridas

Image compress consists in represent by small amount of data, without loss a visual quality. Data compression is important when large images are used, for example satellite image. Full color digital images typically use 24 bits to specify the color of each pixel of the Images with 8 bits for each of the primary components, red, green and blue (RGB). Compress an image with three or more bands (multispectral) is fundamental to reduce the transmission time, process time and record time. Because many applications need images, that compression image data is important: medical image, satellite image, sensor etc. In this work a new compression color images method is proposed. This method is based in measure of information of each band. This technique is called by Self-Adaptive Compression (S.A.C.) and each band of image is compressed with a different threshold, for preserve information with better result. SAC do a large compression in large redundancy bands, that is, lower information and soft compression to bands with bigger amount of information. Two image transforms are used in this technique: Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Primary step is convert data to new bands without relationship, with PCA. Later Apply DCT in each band. Data Loss is doing when a threshold discarding any coefficients. This threshold is calculated with two elements: PCA result and a parameter user. Parameters user define a compression tax. The system produce three different thresholds, one to each band of image, that is proportional of amount information. For image reconstruction is realized DCT and PCA inverse. SAC was compared with JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) standard and YIQ compression and better results are obtain, in MSE (Mean Square Root). Tests shown that SAC has better quality in hard compressions. With two advantages: (a) like is adaptive is sensible to image type, that is, presents good results to divers images kinds (synthetic, landscapes, people etc., and, (b) it need only one parameters user, that is, just letter human intervention is required

Estudo avaliativo de um algoritmo genético auto-organizável e multiobjetivo utilizando aprendizado de máquina para aplicações de telecomunicações

This paper presents an evaluative study about the effects of using a machine learning technique on the main features of a self-organizing and multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA). A typical GA can be seen as a search technique which is usually applied in problems involving no polynomial complexity. Originally, these algorithms were designed to create methods that seek acceptable solutions to problems where the global optimum is inaccessible or difficult to obtain. At first, the GAs considered only one evaluation function and a single objective optimization. Today, however, implementations that consider several optimization objectives simultaneously (multiobjective algorithms) are common, besides allowing the change of many components of the algorithm dynamically (self-organizing algorithms). At the same time, they are also common combinations of GAs with machine learning techniques to improve some of its characteristics of performance and use. In this work, a GA with a machine learning technique was analyzed and applied in a antenna design. We used a variant of bicubic interpolation technique, called 2D Spline, as machine learning technique to estimate the behavior of a dynamic fitness function, based on the knowledge obtained from a set of laboratory experiments. This fitness function is also called evaluation function and, it is responsible for determining the fitness degree of a candidate solution (individual), in relation to others in the same population. The algorithm can be applied in many areas, including in the field of telecommunications, as projects of antennas and frequency selective surfaces. In this particular work, the presented algorithm was developed to optimize the design of a microstrip antenna, usually used in wireless communication systems for application in Ultra-Wideband (UWB). The algorithm allowed the optimization of two variables of geometry antenna - the length (Ls) and width (Ws) a slit in the ground plane with respect to three objectives: radiated signal bandwidth, return loss and central frequency deviation. These two dimensions (Ws and Ls) are used as variables in three different interpolation functions, one Spline for each optimization objective, to compose a multiobjective and aggregate fitness function. The final result proposed by the algorithm was compared with the simulation program result and the measured result of a physical prototype of the antenna built in the laboratory. In the present study, the algorithm was analyzed with respect to their success degree in relation to four important characteristics of a self-organizing multiobjective GA: performance, flexibility, scalability and accuracy. At the end of the study, it was observed a time increase in algorithm execution in comparison to a common GA, due to the time required for the machine learning process. On the plus side, we notice a sensitive gain with respect to flexibility and accuracy of results, and a prosperous path that indicates directions to the algorithm to allow the optimization problems with "η" variables

Contribuições a técnicas de agrupamento e visualização de dados multivariados utilizando mapas auto-organizáveis

Self-organizing maps (SOM) are artificial neural networks widely used in the data mining field, mainly because they constitute a dimensionality reduction technique given the fixed grid of neurons associated with the network. In order to properly the partition and visualize the SOM network, the various methods available in the literature must be applied in a post-processing stage, that consists of inferring, through its neurons, relevant characteristics of the data set. In general, such processing applied to the network neurons, instead of the entire database, reduces the computational costs due to vector quantization. This work proposes a post-processing of the SOM neurons in the input and output spaces, combining visualization techniques with algorithms based on gravitational forces and the search for the shortest path with the greatest reward. Such methods take into account the connection strength between neighbouring neurons and characteristics of pattern density and distances among neurons, both associated with the position that the neurons occupy in the data space after training the network. Thus, the goal consists of defining more clearly the arrangement of the clusters present in the data. Experiments were carried out so as to evaluate the proposed methods using various artificially generated data sets, as well as real world data sets. The results obtained were compared with those from a number of well-known methods existent in the literature

Diagnóstco geoambiental e avaliação de uso e ocupação do campo de dunas da zona especial de interesse turístco II (ZET-II) Natal/RN

The accelerated pressure of use and occupation of Rio Grande do Norte coastline in the last two decades presented the tourism as its main vector, having as a consequence a strong, articulated and growing real estate speculation of this area. In the Natal County there is a Zona Especial de Interesse Turistico II (Special Zone of Tourism Interest II) (ZET-II), consisted of urban beaches with approximately 8.5 km that is an important seashore of the city. The purpose of this research was identification, characterization and assessment of the process of use and occupation of dunes fields emphasizing the role of ZET-II, whereas the specific goals was the analysis of weather, geology and geomorphology, characterization of use and occupation of soil, and elaboration of an environmental diagnosis with identification and description of its mains consequences. The result of this work was the delineation of geologic-geomorphological map of the area with identification of principals units, determining its use and occupation, the measurement of the area already occupied by equipments, besides the description of the environmental impacts on dune fields: devastation, coastline erosion, ocean pollution by sewer and pluvial waters, contamination of groundwater, distribution inadequate of solid residues, landscape degradation, and occupation of seashore through the privatization of public areas. Concluding that the degrading changes occurred in this areas are resulting from the nature of use and urban seashore regulations, which have been diminishing the natural aspect, altering the landscape definitely, compromising the quality of hydro resources and altering its use, privatizing the areas between tides, complicating the population access and obstructing the scenery visualization of dunes and ocean. There is an urgent necessity of improvement of public politics in order to improve the strategies and organization of use and occupation of space urban-coastline

Avaliação do desenvolvimento sustentável na bacia hidrográfica do Rio Seridó em face das políticas públicas e da gestão dos recursos hídricos

The reality of water resources management in semiarid regions, such as the Seridó region, has been shaped by a complex chain involving social-cultural, political, economic and environmental aspects, covering different spheres of activity - from local to federal. Because water is a scarce element, the most rational way pointed out by our recent history has been to move towards an increasing emphasis on the need for a truly rational, integrated, sustainable and participatory water resources management, supported by legislation and by a network of institutions that could materialize it. In this sense, despite all the advances in the formulation of public policies in water resources, which ones have indeed lead to significant changes that have occurred or are underway in semiarid regions such as Seridó? What factors may be preventing the realization of the desires rationality embedded in the framers of water policies intents? How to properly manage water resources if the current actors who promote their management and the political, human, cultural and institutional processes that intervene in this management, show strong traces of unsustainability? The research methodology adopted in this paper led to a breakdown of the traditional approach to water resource management, to integrate it into other areas of knowledge, especially to political science and public administration, catalyzed by the concept of "sustainable development". From a broad, interdisciplinary literature review, an exhaustive characterization of the river basin Seridó, a set of interviews with key people in the public administration acting in the region, a series of diagnoses and a set of propositions were made in order to correct the direction of current public policies for the region. From the point of view of public policies, it is in the deployment phase, not in its formulation, which lies a major problem of the lack of significant progress in water management. The lack of coordination between government programs are well characterized, as well as the lack of efficiency and effectiveness of their actions. The causes of this secular model are also discussed, including political factors and social relations of production, which led to a stalemate difficult, but of possible solution. It can be perceived there is a scenario of progressive deterioration of natural resources of the fragile ecosystem and a network of environmental and social consequences difficult to reverse, the result of a persistent and inertial sociopolitical culture, whose main factors reinforce itself. The work leads towards a characterization of the water resources management also from the perspective of environmental, institutional, political and human sustainability , the latter being identified, particularly as investment in the development of people as autonomous beings - not based in ideological directives of any kind - in the emancipation of the traditional figure of the poor man of the hinterland" to the "catalyst for change" responsible for their own decisions or omissions, based upon an education for free-thinking that brings each one as co-responsible epicenter of (self-) sustainable changes in their midst

Cosmoeducação: uma abordagem transdisciplinar no ensino de astronomia

This work proposes a transdisciplinary approach that integrates transpersonal psychology exercises with astronomy teaching, seeking to allow one to reintegrate the sky in his/her daily life, expand his/her environmental awareness and eventually experiment the unity between human and cosmos. This proposal intends to collaborate with the supplying of education, which lacks initiatives of this kind, with the promotion of an integration of the scientific knowledge with the human experience that transcends the materialistic and fragmentary objectives of the current educational system. As a result of that lack, the teachers formation is also poor as for an integral and transdisciplinary approach. Besides, we also approached in this research the necessity to propose alternatives so that the educators may work in a more assertive way with the environmental and anthropological crisis in which we are living. Our working hypothesis is that the contents of astronomy, when they are dealt in a holisticanthropological focus and are related with transpersonal psychology practices, can come to be an efficient cultural-academic vehicle, capable of propitiating an expansion of consciousness and changes in the way one conceives the world. Such changes are necessary so that a more solidary, fair and ecologically balanced life may come to exist and prevail in the planet. Part of the collection of data was done through the ethnographic method, once an anthropological interpretation is inextricably associated with this kind of educational intervention, which will naturally include ethno-visions of the universe as well as specific cultural elements. In the beginning the scope of this research was a group of students attending the Astronomy assignment in an undergraduate Geography course (UFRN), in which we accomplished participant observation, half-open interviews and the first experimental practices mentioned. After the evaluation of the first data collected from that initial group, we elaborated an academic extension course, Laboratory in Cosmoeducation, and we offered it to teachers of the 1st and 2nd cycles of the fundamental level of the Alceu Amoroso Lima State School, located in the North Zone of Natal. We prized self-experimentation in that course, so that the teachers could enrich their repertoire of personal experiences, stimulating meditative reflections and eventual changes in the ways of conceiving the world and in their pedagogical practice. The transdisciplinary attitude permeated all our educational action, because this approach transcends the boundaries of disciplines, seeking essentially the integral development of the human being. The process has made us realize that the practice of looking at the sky , as a way of reintegrating it into daily life, provokes a process of expansion of the consciousness and of reintegration of the self in a wider level of environmental interrelation. According to the results, the occurrence of conceptual and existential changes of the world vision of the participant teachers was evident, reassuring ourselves of the idea that the interface between astronomy teaching and the practices of transpersonal psychology can contribute to the recovery of a holistic relationship between the human being and the cosmos and to inspire the arising of a more wide-ranging ethics, based on universal, impartial and sustainable values

A utilização de espaços de educação não formal por professores de biologia de Natal-RN

La práctica educativa en espacios no formales es un recurso didáctico catalizador de motivación e interese, tanto para alumnos como para los profesores. El crecimiento de los espacios no formales coincide con los cambios recientes en el mundo en los campos sociales, políticos, económicos y culturales. Como una de las consecuencias de esos cambios, tenemos el crecimiento de otras instancias difusoras de conocimientos rompiendo, así, la hegemonía de la escuela. De esa forma, en este trabajo busqué investigar la frecuencia y las formas de utilización de los espacios de educación no formal por profesores de biología, de la enseñanza media, de la Ciudad de Natal (RN). Procuré también, identificar cuales son los espacios de educación no-formal que son utilizados; describir los recursos y las acciones desarrolladas en eses espacios; identificar la existencia o no de interese y la importancia que atribuyen a los espacios para la enseñanza de biología, además de divulgar los espacios utilizados como recursos didácticos. Para alcanzar estos objetivos fueron hechas observaciones de los espacios, aplicados cuestionarios y realizadas entrevistas con los profesores que realizan actividades junto a tales instituciones. Para el análisis de los datos se utilizó tanto el abordaje cuantitativo como cualitativa. Nos basamos en referenciales teóricos de autores que buscan establecer las relaciones entre diferentes modalidades de educación para mejor comprender lo que es la educación no-formal y su trayectoria histórica. Constaté que los profesores utilizan los espacios de educación no-formales, aun la cantidad de visitas al año sea reducida, en virtud de varias dificultades por ellos apuntadas, tales como el transporte, la falta de recursos financieros y de apoyo para viabilizar la visita, entre otros. Verifiqué también que los profesores demostraron un alto interese por los espacios no-formales y apuntaron como principales justificativas para considerarlos importantes para la enseñanza de la biología la posibilidad de establecer conexiones entre la teoría y la practica, además de la complementariedad

Helena de Machado de Assis; Imagens literárias e a retórica da morte da nação inconclusa

Helena is the romance of perishable and discontinuous title character denominator of a dialectic that does not consume and build the narrative by sequential fragmentation combined with episodic frame. The novel is a lightning stroke to the romantic literary project. Therefore, this study aims to find "objective" elements of the novel that would constitute a conception of literary nation proposed by Machado de Assis, as in classical writing, where women are engaged as a metaphor for the nation by a non-cultural heroism, as the example of the Greek myth of Helena, where the feminine represents a mythical image of the nation. The paper's theoretical conception of the history of Walter Benjamin, that is, that is constructed as an allegorical appeal, the conclusions about the disciplinary society of nineteenth century of Michel Foucault, the construction of the nation as a subtle game to remember and forget of Wander Miranda and the rhetoric of death and loss reflected in the speeches of the cultural heritage of José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves, which allow you to analyze the work permeated by subjectivity and existential conflicts by Machado, who has it arranged in dialectic with the avant-garde literary romanticism and realism. In this relationship with the Greek myth of Helen, explained that characters with the nickname of Helena in Machado's work are not uncommon. As in classical Helena, Machado s Helena uses three rhetorical are the cause of the seizure of the nation. In this game of remembering and forgetting, in the daily plebiscite, Machado draw ideal images that forged our mythical past and commitment to the future. The suffering love of Helena is suffering from failure of the nation which would have led the author to the use of allegorical language, seeking a balance in the chaos generated by the opposition between cruelty and pity widespread view in an area where only left the character's confession guilt for the death. It is a simulacrum of unfinished nation, the space for the game of remembering and forgetting, while the rhetoric of negotiation of our Brazilianness

A relação gramatical objeto direto : implicações para o ensino de língua materna

This paper attempts to investigate the discourse manifestations of the grammatical relation direct object with respect to the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties that underlie this element. The research adopts theoretical orientation of the functionalism from North American and Brazilian schools inspired in Givón (1995, 2001), Hopper and Thompson (1980), Chafe (1979), Furtado da Cunha, Oliveira, Martelotta (2003) inter alia. From functionalism, the research uses principles of iconicity, markedness and informativity and it analize categories of transitivity, grounding and animacy. This research is anchored in prototype model (TAYLOR 1995); construction grammar model (GOLDBERG 1996, 2002). Both theoretical orientations share the view that language is a malleable living organism subject to socio-cultural context. Grammar is then the result of created, maintained, and systematized linguistic patterns developed from and used for language use. According to a functional linguistics and cognitivist linguistics verbs are stored in the speakers lexicon in syntactic-semantic frames which are more frequent. These frames carry information concerning obligatory and optional arguments and the semantic roles these arguments take in the clause. The analysis focuses on the semantic type of the verbs and its relationship with the argument encoded as a direct object observing the aspectual nature of verbs. Direct objects are classified according to their morphology (lexical or pronominal noun phrase), semantic role, informational content and animacy. This study discusses pedagogical implications with relation to how the grammatical concepts touched on this paper are treated in school textbooks. The empirical data come from Corpus Discurso & Gramática: a língua falada e escrita na cidade do Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 1998). This corpus is composed of texts that contain spoken and written modalities. These modalities are in turn organized according to different types: personal narratives, retold narrative, description of preferred place, procedural place, procedural description and report on argumentation. The sample data totals 40 texts produced by four language consultants of the last graduation date. The paper shows that the same syntactic structures (formed through Subject-Verb-Object) correspond to different semantic-pragmatic structures in relation to specific communicative purposes even verb is an event, process or state. The argument structure are not aleatory but are related to experience; that is the way humans conceptualize the world and talk about it

Resistência e performance na arte de João Cota

Researching about the art of tell and the tales told by João Cota is somehow revisiting the oral tradition and social practice in the story-telling art. It takes into consideration the resistance this art still exerts, mainly by using the performance of oral transmission and receptiveness to tales. The study of this practice contributes to the vivacious and dynamcis permanence of this authentic and traditional storyteller of his repertory and of his form to tellin our culture. Story-telling is part of the humankind living heritage communicated by means of popular wisdom. Despite the risk of vanishing into thin air, along with their narrators, the tales still manage to resist the contemporary mass culture model. How long further will stories like the ones narrated by João Cota be able to resist to strong and stronger structures dictated by writing and other communication means? João Cota s practice in story-telling will be studied not only as a proposal to identify the presence of this practice and the oral cultural resistance but also, through the performance prospective, to identify the oral transmission and receptiveness to the tales that are part of this storyteller s repertoire. In other words: what he tells, how he tells it, and why he tells it. The advent of new technologies such as internet, through which people can easily communicate with others in different parts of the world, and the greater and greater expansion in the writing skill concept interfere the maintenance of the oral tradition elements present in João Cota s narratives and inserted in the Brazilian culture. This has become more visible in the latest decades although we still notice the living tradition and permanence of the story-telling practice in several parts of the country through their wise storytellers. Our research target will require - in each of its study stages reference to works by several theoreticians namely Paul Zumthor, Mikhail Bakhtin, Câmara Cascudo, theoreticians from the receptiveness aesthetic, from the written culture history, from oral cultures and reading practices, from tradition and the Brazilian Culture of oral story-telling. In order to get to know and draw a profile of this storyteller, we ve chosen to use the comprehensive interview method by French Sociologist Jean Claude Kaufmann. The originality in the method consists of the qualitative data put together in situ , concentrated on the storyteller s narratives/speeches recorded on tape, which will be the focal point of this study. Our analysis method is based on tireless sessions of listening to interviews out of which we gathered information related to the storyteller, his practice in telling the tales, and his repertoire

Os Brutos: tradição literária e a memória cultural do Seridó

Partindo do princípio de que a força centralizadora do discurso do narrador sob o universo romanesco encontra-se regido por nuanças sócio-ideológicas que fazem parte do mundo psicológico do autor, procede-se uma leitura crítica de Os Brutos (1938), romance de estréia do escritor José Bezerra Gomes. O trabalho mencionado visa a tecer algumas considerações em torno do ponto de vista do narrador, enfocando a encenação do EU no cenário artístico-literário e sua interferência no modo de narração da citada obra. O procedimento metodológico adotado foi a pesquisa bibliográfica, e como aporte teórico recorreu-se à crítica especializada que trata da temática em questão. Ao final percebeu-se que o discurso do narrador possui um caráter ambivalente, o qual permite que o interlocutor presente não assuma uma perspectiva fixa diante do que narra