Determinantes da Estrutura de Capital de Companhias Abertas Brasileiras Não-Financeiras: Um Estudo Empírico com Dados em Painel

When a company desires to invest in a project, it must obtain resources needed to make the investment. The alternatives are using firm s internal resources or obtain external resources through contracts of debt and issuance of shares. Decisions involving the composition of internal resources, debt and shares in the total resources used to finance the activities of a company related to the choice of its capital structure. Although there are studies in the area of finance on the debt determinants of firms, the issue of capital structure is still controversial. This work sought to identify the predominant factors that determine the capital structure of Brazilian share capital, non-financial firms. This work was used a quantitative approach, with application of the statistical technique of multiple linear regression on data in panel. Estimates were made by the method of ordinary least squares with model of fixed effects. About 116 companies were selected to participate in this research. The period considered is from 2003 to 2007. The variables and hypotheses tested in this study were built based on theories of capital structure and in empirical researches. Results indicate that the variables, such as risk, size, and composition of assets and firms growth influence their indebtedness. The profitability variable was not relevant to the composition of indebtedness of the companies analyzed. However, analyzing only the long-term debt, comes to the conclusion that the relevant variables are the size of firms and, especially, the composition of its assets (tangibility).This sense, the smaller the size of the undertaking or the greater the representation of fixed assets in total assets, the greater its propensity to long-term debt. Furthermore, this research could not identify a predominant theory to explain the capital structure of Brazilian

Contribuição ao desenvolvimento de ontologias para processos petroquímicos : estudo de caso em uma planta DEA

In the last decades, the oil, gas and petrochemical industries have registered a series of huge accidents. Influenced by this context, companies have felt the necessity of engaging themselves in processes to protect the external environment, which can be understood as an ecological concern. In the particular case of the nuclear industry, sustainable education and training, which depend too much on the quality and applicability of the knowledge base, have been considered key points on the safely application of this energy source. As a consequence, this research was motivated by the use of the ontology concept as a tool to improve the knowledge management in a refinery, through the representation of a fuel gas sweetening plant, mixing many pieces of information associated with its normal operation mode. In terms of methodology, this research can be classified as an applied and descriptive research, where many pieces of information were analysed, classified and interpreted to create the ontology of a real plant. The DEA plant modeling was performed according to its process flow diagram, piping and instrumentation diagrams, descriptive documents of its normal operation mode, and the list of all the alarms associated to the instruments, which were complemented by a non-structured interview with a specialist in that plant operation. The ontology was verified by comparing its descriptive diagrams with the original plant documents and discussing with other members of the researchers group. All the concepts applied in this research can be expanded to represent other plants in the same refinery or even in other kind of industry. An ontology can be considered a knowledge base that, because of its formal representation nature, can be applied as one of the elements to develop tools to navigate through the plant, simulate its behavior, diagnose faults, among other possibilities

Análise da trajetória de poços horizontais em reservatório de óleo pesado

The application of thermal methods, to increase the recovery of heavy oil in mature fields through drainage with multilateral and horizontal wells, has been thoroughly studied, theorically, experimentally, testing new tools and methods. The continuous injection of steam, through a steam injector well and a horizontal producer well in order to improve horizontal sweep of the fluid reservoir, it is an efficient method. Starting from an heterogeneous model, geologically characterized, modeling geostatistics, set history and identification of the best path of permeability, with seismic 3D, has been dubbed a studying model. It was studied horizontal wells in various directions in relation to the steam and the channel of higher permeability, in eight different depths. Into in the same area were studied, the sensitivity of the trajectories of horizontal wells, according to the depth of navigation. With the purpose of obtaining the highest output of oil to a particular flow, quality, temperature and time for the injection of steam. The wells studied showed a significant improvement in the cumulative oil recovery in one of the paths by promoting an alternative to application in mature fields or under development fields with heavy oil

Estudo da viabilidade econômica em campos maduros

When it comes to oil and gas in Brazil is almost certain that we are referring to activities in deep waters off the coast of Campos, Rio de Janeiro, the main field of action of PETROBRAS and a small number of multinational oil companies . Since the Law 9.478/97 allows, by means of concessions, that other companies other than Petrobras, to explore and produce oil and gas domestically. Soon it moved, then the private companies that want small and medium-sized businesses to invest in such activities, forming a segment of independent producers, as occurs in other countries. In this context, this work aims at making an economic feasibility study, is currently analyzing how this thread and focus on the factors that contribute to its development as well as those that constitute barriers. To this end, we conducted a survey examining some mature fields that are in production in order to capture cost information in the phases of project, operation and abandonment. The work also presents an analysis of the results obtained in the survey, identifying the costs higher. With the results obtained through the study used economic engineering tools such as NPV and IRR, using a variety of design scenarios, to study the economic viability of these fields. In scenario 4 was set a production of 4.0 m³ / d of oil, which is an expected average production for several of these fields, whose minimum value of a barrel of oil, to enable this field, was $ 55.00, this value well below what was being practiced in the market today.

Caracterização batimétrica e fisicooceanográfica do canal de acesso ao porto de Cabedelo/PB: uma análise ambiental ao derrame de óleo

The State of Paraíba is one of the most dynamic states of Brazil, strategically located in the northeast, is notable for the excellent potential for integration of different transportation modes forming the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Pernambuco and Alagoas. The dynamic that occurs with port activity causes changes in the space where it is installed. And the elements of this space are always more than suffering direct or indirect influences as the flow in the port is expanded. Therefore, this region became subject to the accidental spillage of oil, because it presents a heavy traffic of ships of various sizes that can run aground or collide with oil causing accidental events. The study of geomorphological and sedimentological compositions of seafloor becomes important as more is known about the relationships between these parameters and associated fauna, and can identify their preferred habitats. The database background, acoustically collected along the proposed study area, is a wealth of information, which were duly examined, cataloged and made available. Such information can serve as an important tool, providing a geomorphological survey of the sedimentary area studied, and come to subsidize, in a flexible, future decision making. With the study area Port of Cabedelo, Paraíba - Brazil, this research aimed to evaluate the influence of the tidal surface and background in modeling the seabed, including the acquisition of information about the location of submerged rocky bodies and the depth of these bodies may turn out to be natural traps for the trapping of oil in case of leaks, and obtain the relationship between types of bed and the hydrodynamic conditions present in the region. In this context, for this study were collected bathymetric data (depth) and physical oceanographic (height of water column, water temperature, intensity and direction of currents, waves and turbidity), meteorological (rainfall, air temperature, humidity, winds and barometric pressure) of the access channel to the Port of Cabedelo / PB and its basin evolution (where the cruise ships dock), and includes tools of remote sensing (Landsat 7 ETM +, 2001), so that images and the results are integrated into Geographic Information Systems and used in the elaboration of measures aimed at environmental protection areas under the influence of this scale facilities, serving as a grant to prepare a contingency plan in case of oil spills in the region. The main findings highlight the techniques of using hydroacoustic data acquisition together bathymetric surveys of high and low frequency. From there, five were prepared in bathymetric pattern of Directorate of Hydrography and Navigation - DHN, with the depth in meters, on a scale of 1:2500 (Channel and Basin Evolution of Access to Port of Cabedelo), where there is a large extent possible beachrocks that hinder the movement of vessels in the port area, which can cause collisions, running aground and leaking oil. From the scatter diagram of the vectors of currents, it can be seen as the tidal stream and undergoes a channeling effect caused by the bidirectional effect of the tide (ebb and flood) in the basin of the Port of Cabedelo evolution in NW-direction SE and the highest speed of the currents occurs at low tide. The characterization weather for the period from 28/02 to 04/07/2010 values was within the expected average for the region of study. The multidisciplinary integration of products (digital maps and remote sensing images), proved to be efficient for the characterization of underwater geomorphological study area, reaching the aim to discriminate and enhance submerged structures, previously not visible in the images

Vivendo do mar: tradição, memória e mudança na vida pesqueira de Pitangui-RN

This research focuses on the fishery activity, aligned to knowledge of past generations, and the transformation to those who depend on this activity for their livelihood, at the seashore community of Pitangui in Extremoz municipality, which lies 40 km away from Natal, seat of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. The intense modernization which has taking place during the last few years may be considered the result of a number of economic, social and cultural factors, as the introduction of new fishery technology. On the other hand, the present study seeks to show how this changing process happened, and to what extent those affected understand and evaluate this transformation. The methodology to carry out the ethnographic work was mainly adopted by qualitative methods and techniques - by participant observation, oral history, photography and the audiovisual records besides reference to data extracted under quantitative methods, as an important instrument of analyses. This induces a conclusion that the transformation of the community is a consequence of the globalized market, though still tied up to specific local relations. The emerging results are: the use of new fishery technology, and new ways of orientation and navigation; the opening to new jobs and occupational activity, the re-order of space s appropriation; changing sociability, larger access to consumer goods, besides bringing on some new conflicts land appropriation and the fishery and the protection of the environment. All this comprehended as a result of the movement of the local relations participating in the global spaces

Saberes da pesca: uma arqueologia da ciência da tradição

This essay presents and discusses knowledge obtained through tradition taken as knowledge built along generations, transmitted from mouth to mouth and everyday experiences result of a non-scientific knowledge based on observation and hints given by more experient generations. The referred icon used to develop such a discussion in this essay is fishing. We point out the knoledge which enables the fishermen, among other dominions, to: find out the fish and other animals feeding habits; find their way through by astral influence during night navigation and learn the tide flowing based on the moon cycle. On what comes to fishing knowledge, the research was organized based on a bibliographic study about several ways of fishing in the Northern, Northeastern, Southern and Southestern regions of Brazil. In the Northern and Northeastern regions, the field research was also focused. Having interviews, photographs and films as reference, this part of the research was divided into two parts: the first one situated in the Amazonian Region in na area called Baixo-Tocantins, in the State of Pará where we worked with fishermen in the small towns of Abaetetuba and Igarapé-Miri; and the second one was held in the Northeastern region of Brazil, in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, where we worked with fishermen on the Piató Lake, in the small city of Assú. We tarted discussing based on a descriptive study of the fishing techniques used, aiming to identify them as an ordered activity, differed and classified by knoledge obtained through the years, based on the relationship between man and Nature. Creativity, stimulated by human curiosity, is also discussed and shown as a result of various fishing journeys. The myths, as a component of the fishing world, especially those which describe the relationship between men and waters, also have an outstanding place. At last, two fishing techniques belonging to the research field reference, are also described and analysed under the focus of construction and systematization of the knowledge related to fishing. The theory approach is based on reflection upon the tradition knowledge discussed by Almeida (2001), Balandier (1997), Câmara Cascudo (1957, 2000, 2002) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1976, 1987 and 1991). The essay is an exercise of knowledge production which defends the "relink" of knowledge, as Edgar Morin suggests when dealing with the sciences of complexity

A obra de triangulis omnimodis libri quinque de Johann Müller Regiomontanus (1436 1476): uma contribuição para o desenvolvimento da trigonometria

Trigonometry, branch of mathematics related to the study of triangles, developed from practical needs, especially relating to astronomy, Surveying and Navigation. Johann Müller, the Regiomontanus (1436-1476) mathematician and astronomer of the fifteenth century played an important role in the development of this science. His work titled De Triangulis Omnimodis Libri Quinque written around 1464, and published posthumously in 1533, presents the first systematic exposure of European plane and spherical trigonometry, a treatment independent of astronomy. In this study we present a description, translation and analysis of some aspects of this important work in the history of trigonometry. Therefore, the translation was performed using a version of the book Regiomontanus on Triangles of Barnabas Hughes, 1967. In it you will find the original work in Latin and an English translation. For this study, we use for most of our translation in Portuguese, the English version, but some doubt utterance, statement and figures were made by the original Latin. In this work, we can see that trigonometry is considered as a branch of mathematics which is subordinated to geometry, that is, toward the study of triangles. Regiomontanus provides a large number of theorems as the original trigonometric formula for the area of a triangle. Use algebra to solve geometric problems and mainly shows the first practical theorem for the law of cosines in spherical trigonometry. Thus, this study shows some of the development of the trigonometry in the fifteenth century, especially with regard to concepts such as sine and cosine (sine reverse), the work discussed above, is of paramount importance for the research in the history of mathematics more specifically in the area of historical analysis and critique of literary sources or studying the work of a particular mathematician

Avaliação da usabilidade de Websites de hotéis segundo as heurísticas de Nielsen: pesquisa exploratória em hotéis da Região Rordeste do Brasil

This Thesis deals with the usability in some sites of hotels placed in a specific region of Brazil. Usability is the property of a site that shows how it allows the user get all information available without a large effort and in a clear and objective way. A questionnaire was used as a tool to value, by the common user perspective, navigation, on line reservation simulation, appreciation of the available content and, by this way, an easiness in the interaction site-users. As a result, it is possible to say that, considering all material analyzed, those sites that present usability criterion are more interactive and dynamic, demonstrating an easy navigation in a users view. By other side, it was possible to note that, about heuristics used in the search, the most of the websites demonstrated a deficiency in questions as firmness, user control and how to avoid mistakes. There was still valued as deficiency by the most of users in websites the general characters and the view of user. It was presented, seeing general characters, that a big part of the websites needs tools that can make user rapidly find what looks for. It was yet possible to see that users don't believe in secret when websites ask them some information. This is a point that needs to be appreciated because it causes some insecurity during navigation

Desenvolvimento de um modelo computacional para a ampliação do atendimento do Programa de Acessibilidade Especial Porta a Porta - PRAE

Worldwide, the demand for transportation services for persons with disabilities, the elderly, and persons with reduced mobility have increased in recent years. The population is aging, governments need to adapt to this reality, and this fact could mean business opportunities for companies. Within this context is inserted the Programa de Acessibilidade Especial porta a porta PRAE, a door to door public transportation service from the city of Natal-RN in Brazil. The research presented in this dissertation seeks to develop a programming model which can assist the process of decision making of managers of the shuttle. To that end, it was created an algorithm based on methods of generating approximate solutions known as heuristics. The purpose of the model is to increase the number of people served by the PRAE, given the available fleet, generating optimized schedules routes. The PRAE is a problem of vehicle routing and scheduling of dial-a-ride - DARP, the most complex type among the routing problems. The validation of the method of resolution was made by comparing the results derived by the model and the currently programming method. It is expected that the model is able to increase the current capacity of the service requests of transport

Localização e planejamento de caminhos para um robô humanóide e um robô escravo com rodas

This work presents the localization and path planning systems for two robots: a non-instrumented humanoid and a slave wheeled robot. The localization of wheeled robot is made using odometry information and landmark detection. These informations are fused using a Extended Kalman Filter. The relative position of humanoid is acquired fusing (using another Kalman Filter) the wheeled robot pose with the characteristics of the landmark on the back of humanoid. Knowing the wheeled robot position and the humanoid relative position in relation to it, we acquired the absolute position of humanoid. The path planning system was developed to provide the cooperative movement of the two robots,incorporating the visibility restrictions of the robotic system

Mapeamento robótico 2,5-D com representação em grade de ocupação-elevação

This work introduces a new method for environment mapping with three-dimensional information from visual information for robotic accurate navigation. Many approaches of 3D mapping using occupancy grid typically requires high computacional effort to both build and store the map. We introduce an 2.5-D occupancy-elevation grid mapping, which is a discrete mapping approach, where each cell stores the occupancy probability, the height of the terrain at current place in the environment and the variance of this height. This 2.5-dimensional representation allows that a mobile robot to know whether a place in the environment is occupied by an obstacle and the height of this obstacle, thus, it can decide if is possible to traverse the obstacle. Sensorial informations necessary to construct the map is provided by a stereo vision system, which has been modeled with a robust probabilistic approach, considering the noise present in the stereo processing. The resulting maps favors the execution of tasks like decision making in the autonomous navigation, exploration, localization and path planning. Experiments carried out with a real mobile robots demonstrates that this proposed approach yields useful maps for robot autonomous navigation

Um método para determinação da profundidade combinando visão estéreo e autocalibração para aplicação em robótica móvel

This work proposes a method to determine the depth of objects in a scene using a combination between stereo vision and self-calibration techniques. Determining the rel- ative distance between visualized objects and a robot, with a stereo head, it is possible to navigate in unknown environments. Stereo vision techniques supply a depth measure by the combination of two or more images from the same scene. To achieve a depth estimates of the in scene objects a reconstruction of this scene geometry is necessary. For such reconstruction the relationship between the three-dimensional world coordi- nates and the two-dimensional images coordinates is necessary. Through the achievement of the cameras intrinsic parameters it is possible to make this coordinates systems relationship. These parameters can be gotten through geometric camera calibration, which, generally is made by a correlation between image characteristics of a calibration pattern with know dimensions. The cameras self-calibration allows the achievement of their intrinsic parameters without using a known calibration pattern, being possible their calculation and alteration during the displacement of the robot in an unknown environment. In this work a self-calibration method based in the three-dimensional polar coordinates to represent image features is presented. This representation is determined by the relationship between images features and horizontal and vertical opening cameras angles. Using the polar coordinates it is possible to geometrically reconstruct the scene. Through the proposed techniques combination it is possible to calculate a scene objects depth estimate, allowing the robot navigation in an unknown environment

Posicionamento e movimentação de um robô humanóide utilizando imagens de uma câmera móvel externa

This work proposes a method to localize a simple humanoid robot, without embedded sensors, using images taken from an extern camera and image processing techniques. Once the robot is localized relative to the camera, supposing we know the position of the camera relative to the world, we can compute the position of the robot relative to the world. To make the camera move in the work space, we will use another mobile robot with wheels, which has a precise locating system, and will place the camera on it. Once the humanoid is localized in the work space, we can take the necessary actions to move it. Simultaneously, we will move the camera robot, so it will take good images of the humanoid. The mainly contributions of this work are: the idea of using another mobile robot to aid the navigation of a humanoid robot without and advanced embedded electronics; chosing of the intrinsic and extrinsic calibration methods appropriated to the task, especially in the real time part; and the collaborative algorithm of simultaneous navigation of the robots

Implementação de rotinas computacionais básicas para cabeça estéreo robótica

O Laboratório de Sistemas Inteligentes do Departamento de Engenharia de Computação e Automação da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte - UFRN -tem como um de seus projetos de pesquisa -Robosense -a construção de uma plataforma robótica móvel. Trata-se de um robô provido de duas rodas, acionadas de forma diferencial, dois braços, com 5 graus de liberdade cada, um cinturão de sonares e uma cabeça estéreo. Como objetivo principal do projeto Robosense, o robô deverá ser capaz de navegar por todo o prédio do LECA, desviando de obstáculos. O sistema de navegação do robô, responsável pela geração e seguimento de rotas, atuará em malha fechada. Ou seja, sensores serão utilizados pelo sistema com o intuito de informar ao robô a sua pose atual, incluindo localização e a configuração de seus recursos. Encoders (sensores especiais de rotação) foram instalados nas rodas, bem como em todos os motores dos dois braços da cabeça estéreo. Sensores de fim-de-curso foram instalados em todas as juntas da cabeça estéreo para que seja possível sua pré-calibração. Sonares e câmeras também farão parte do grupo de sensores utilizados no projeto. O robô contará com uma plataforma composta por, a princípio, dois computadores ligados a um barramento único para uma operação em tempo real, em paralelo. Um deles será responsável pela parte de controle dos braços e de sua navegação, tomando como base as informações recebidas dos sensores das rodas e dos próximos objetivos do robô. O outro computador processará todas as informações referentes à cabeça estéreo do robô, como as imagens recebidas das câmeras. A utilização de técnicas de imageamento estéreo torna-se necessária, pois a informação de uma única imagem não determina unicamente a posição de um dado ponto correspondente no mundo. Podemos então, através da utilização de duas ou mais câmeras, recuperar a informação de profundidade da cena. A cabeça estéreo proposta nada mais é que um artefato físico que deve dar suporte a duas câmeras de vídeo, movimentá-las seguindo requisições de programas (softwares) apropriados e ser capaz de fornecer sua pose atual. Fatores como velocidade angular de movimentação das câmeras, precisão espacial e acurácia são determinantes para o eficiente resultado dos algoritmos que nesses valores se baseiam