Síntese e caracterização de tungstatos de cério e estrôncio para fins catalíticos

The main goal of this work was to produce nanosized ceramic materials of the family of the tungstates (tungstates of cerium and strontium), and test them for their catalytic activity in processes involving the transformation of methane (CH4). The methodology used for the synthesis of the ceramic powders involved the complexation combining EDTA-citrate. The materials characterization was performed using simple and differential thermogravimetry, x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The microstructure analysis was performed using the refinement by the Rietveld method, and the crystallite size and distribution of the materials was elucidate by the Scherrer and Williamson-Hall methods. The conditions of the synthesis process for the three envisaged materials (SrWO4, SrWO4 using tungsten oxide concentrate as raw material, and Ce2(WO4)3) were adjusted to obtain a single phase crystalline material. The catalytic tests were carried out in the presence of methane and synthetic air, which is composed of 21% O2 and 79% N2. The analysis of the conversion of the reaction was done with the aid of an fourier transform infrared device (FTIR). The analysis showed that, structurally, the SrWO4 produced using raw materials of high and poor purity (99% and 92%, respectively) are similar. The ideal parameters of calcination, in the tested range, are temperature of 1000 °C and time of calcination 5 hours. For the Ce2(WO4)3, the ideal calcination time and are temperature 15 hours and 1000°C, respectively. The Williamson-Hall method provided two different distributions for the crystallite size of each material, whose values ranged between the nanometer and micrometer scales. According to method of Scherrer, all materials produced were composed of nanometric crystallites. The analyses of transmission electron microscopy confirmed the results obtained from the Williamson- Hall method for the crystallite size. The EDS showed an atomic composition for the metals in the SrWO4 that was different of the theoretical composition. With respect to the catalytic tests, all materials were found to be catalytically active, but the reaction process should be further studied and optimized.

Disponibilidade hídrica potencial em face da distribuição espaço-temporal das precipitações no Estado do Rio Grande do Norte

The state of Rio Grande do Norte, possessor of an extremely irregular regime of rains, has the necessity of enlarge and specify the researches about its own hydro-climatic conditions, to achieve trustworthy results that are able to minimize the adversities imposed by these conditions and make possible the implementation of a better planning in the economic activities and of subsistence that somehow utilize of the multiple uses of hydro resources of the State. This way, the daily values observed from the pluviometric series of 166 posts, with 45 years uninterrupted of historic data, were adjusted to the incomplete gamma function to the determination of the probability of rain in the 36 period of ten days in which the year was divided. To the attainment of the α and β parameters of this function it was applied the method of the maximum verisimilitude allowing, in the end, to analyze the temporal and spatial distribution of the rain in the level of 75% of probability. The values of potential evapo-transpiration were calculated by the Linacre method that, through the SURFER software, were confronted with the dependant rain, obtaining, in this way, the spatialization of the potential hydro availability, which the values can be known to any period of ten days of the year, city and/or region of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. With the identification of the main meteorological systems that act in the State, we sought to better comprehend how this systems interfere, in the irregular regime of rain, in the situations of several clime in the major part of Rio Grande do Norte and in the hydro regional balance. And, finally, with these data in hand and with the generated maps, we verified that space-temporal distribution of the rain and of the potential hydro availability were heterogeneous in the whole State, mainly in the West and Central regions, inserted in potiguar s semi-arid, which, after the period of the rains station, suffers with dry season and length drought during the rest of the year

Fractais e Percolação na Recuperação de Petróleo

The complex behavior of a wide variety of phenomena that are of interest to physicists, chemists, and engineers has been quantitatively characterized by using the ideas of fractal and multifractal distributions, which correspond in a unique way to the geometrical shape and dynamical properties of the systems under study. In this thesis we present the Space of Fractals and the methods of Hausdorff-Besicovitch, box-counting and Scaling to calculate the fractal dimension of a set. In this Thesis we investigate also percolation phenomena in multifractal objects that are built in a simple way. The central object of our analysis is a multifractal object that we call Qmf . In these objects the multifractality comes directly from the geometric tiling. We identify some differences between percolation in the proposed multifractals and in a regular lattice. There are basically two sources of these differences. The first is related to the coordination number, c, which changes along the multifractal. The second comes from the way the weight of each cell in the multifractal affects the percolation cluster. We use many samples of finite size lattices and draw the histogram of percolating lattices against site occupation probability p. Depending on a parameter, ρ, characterizing the multifractal and the lattice size, L, the histogram can have two peaks. We observe that the probability of occupation at the percolation threshold, pc, for the multifractal is lower than that for the square lattice. We compute the fractal dimension of the percolating cluster and the critical exponent β. Despite the topological differences, we find that the percolation in a multifractal support is in the same universality class as standard percolation. The area and the number of neighbors of the blocks of Qmf show a non-trivial behavior. A general view of the object Qmf shows an anisotropy. The value of pc is a function of ρ which is related to its anisotropy. We investigate the relation between pc and the average number of neighbors of the blocks as well as the anisotropy of Qmf. In this Thesis we study likewise the distribution of shortest paths in percolation systems at the percolation threshold in two dimensions (2D). We study paths from one given point to multiple other points

Fractais e percolação na recuperação de Petróleo

The complex behavior of a wide variety of phenomena that are of interest to physicists, chemists, and engineers has been quantitatively characterized by using the ideas of fractal and multifractal distributions, which correspond in a unique way to the geometrical shape and dynamical properties of the systems under study. In this thesis we present the Space of Fractals and the methods of Hausdorff-Besicovitch, box-counting and Scaling to calculate the fractal dimension of a set. In this Thesis we investigate also percolation phenomena in multifractal objects that are built in a simple way. The central object of our analysis is a multifractal object that we call Qmf . In these objects the multifractality comes directly from the geometric tiling. We identify some differences between percolation in the proposed multifractals and in a regular lattice. There are basically two sources of these differences. The first is related to the coordination number, c, which changes along the multifractal. The second comes from the way the weight of each cell in the multifractal affects the percolation cluster. We use many samples of finite size lattices and draw the histogram of percolating lattices against site occupation probability p. Depending on a parameter, ρ, characterizing the multifractal and the lattice size, L, the histogram can have two peaks. We observe that the probability of occupation at the percolation threshold, pc, for the multifractal is lower than that for the square lattice. We compute the fractal dimension of the percolating cluster and the critical exponent β. Despite the topological differences, we find that the percolation in a multifractal support is in the same universality class as standard percolation. The area and the number of neighbors of the blocks of Qmf show a non-trivial behavior. A general view of the object Qmf shows an anisotropy. The value of pc is a function of ρ which is related to its anisotropy. We investigate the relation between pc and the average number of neighbors of the blocks as well as the anisotropy of Qmf. In this Thesis we study likewise the distribution of shortest paths in percolation systems at the percolation threshold in two dimensions (2D). We study paths from one given point to multiple other points. In oil recovery terminology, the given single point can be mapped to an injection well (injector) and the multiple other points to production wells (producers). In the previously standard case of one injection well and one production well separated by Euclidean distance r, the distribution of shortest paths l, P(l|r), shows a power-law behavior with exponent gl = 2.14 in 2D. Here we analyze the situation of one injector and an array A of producers. Symmetric arrays of producers lead to one peak in the distribution P(l|A), the probability that the shortest path between the injector and any of the producers is l, while the asymmetric configurations lead to several peaks in the distribution. We analyze configurations in which the injector is outside and inside the set of producers. The peak in P(l|A) for the symmetric arrays decays faster than for the standard case. For very long paths all the studied arrays exhibit a power-law behavior with exponent g ∼= gl.

Formação de caudas maxwellianas no Contexto da rotação estelar

In this Thesis, we analyzed the formation of maxwellian tails of the distributions of the rotational velocity in the context of the out of equilibrium Boltzmann Gibbs statistical mechanics. We start from a unified model for the angular momentum loss rate which made possible the construction of a general theory for the rotational decay in the which, finally, through the compilation between standard Maxwellian and the relation of rotational decay, we defined the (_, _) Maxwellian distributions. The results reveal that the out of equilibrium Boltzmann Gibbs statistics supplies us results as good as the one of the Tsallis and Kaniadakis generalized statistics, besides allowing fittings controlled by physical properties extracted of the own theory of stellar rotation. In addition, our results point out that these generalized statistics converge to the one of Boltzmann Gibbs when we inserted, in your respective functions of distributions, a rotational velocity defined as a distribution

Parâmetros físico-químicos de estrelas nos campos de exoplanetas do satélite corot

A rotação estelar é um dos mais importantes observáveis da evolução estelar. Neste sentido, o satélite CoRoT representa uma oportunidade única de medir os períodos rotacionais para uma amostra de estrelas estatisticamente robusta, oferecendo dados absolutamente necessários para o estudo da rotação e seu papel na evolução estelar. Para conseguir isto, um passo fundamental é a caracterização física e química das estrelas observadas pelo CoRoT, especificamente devido ao fato de que o cálculo de períodos rotacionais confiáveis é um trabalho difícil sem a ajuda dos parâmetros estelares. Desta forma, foi elaborado um importante seguimento observacional das estrelas nos campos do CoRoT do anticentro LRa01 e do centro LRc01, permitindo a correta identificação dos períodos que reflitam a modulação rotacional. Nesta tese de doutorado são apresentados os resultados de tal seguimento. Parâmetros físicos e químicos, tais como temperatura efetiva Teff , gravidade superficial log(g), velocidade de microturbulência Vmic, abundância de ferro [Fe/H], velocidade de rotação projetada Vsin(i), e abundância de lítio A(Li) são apresentados para uma amostra de 116 estrelas dos campos CoRoT. Elas se encontram em diferentes estágios evolutivos, desde a sequência principal (SP) até o ramo das gigantes vermelhas (GV). As observações foram feitas utilizando os espectrógrafos UVES (VLT) e HYDRA (CTIO). Para a derivação de tais parâmetros foram utilizados o programa TurboSpectrum e os modelos de atmosfera de MARCS. Paralelamente, velocidades rotacionais Vsin(i) foram obtidas a partir do ajuste dos perfis observados e sintéticos das linhas de ferro e por meio de uma calibração de função de correlação cruzada (CCF). Períodos rotacionais Prot para 77 estrelas da amostra foram obtidos a partir das curvas de luz do satélite CoRoT. Extensas tabelas destes parâmetros e seus respectivos erros são apresentadas. Foram encontradas diferenças nas distribuições de Teff , [Fe/H] e estágios evolutivos entre os diferentes campos do CoRoT, indicando possíveis efeitos de seleção na amostra, assim como a existência de diferentes populações estelares do disco Galáctico. Por outro lado, o comportamento rotacional e as abundâncias de lítio não apresentam diferenças entre estrelas de parâmetros físicos similares, mas que pertencem a diferentes campos do CoRoT. A partir da análise de temperaturas, foi encontrada uma maior extinção por avermelhamento para estrelas do CoRoT localizadas no campo LRc01, assim como um gradiente deste valor em função da distância. Os resultados mostram que as abundâncias de lítio, as velocidades de rotação e os períodos rotacionais apresentam o mesmo comportamento descrito na literatura. Por outro lado, é apresentada pela primeira vez a relação que existe entre o lítio e o período de rotação em diferentes estágios evolutivos, mostrando, tal como era esperado, que ambas as grandezas possuem uma anticorrelação. Também é apresentada a evolução simultânea da rotação e do lítio, e foram calculadas relações que permitem obter valores médios de A(Li) como função da temperatura efetiva e do período rotacional. Os dados apresentados nesta tese de doutorado representam um importante ponto de partida para serem utilizados como uma amostra de calibração para diferentes programas no contexto da missão do satélite CoRoT, uma vez que a lista de estrelas aqui analisadas são parte das mais brilhantes que compõem o campo Exo do CoRoT

Um estudo da rotação em estrelas da seqüência principal

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Processos difusivos generalizados

We investigate several diffusion equations which extend the usual one by considering the presence of nonlinear terms or a memory effect on the diffusive term. We also considered a spatial time dependent diffusion coefficient. For these equations we have obtained a new classes of solutions and studied the connection of them with the anomalous diffusion process. We start by considering a nonlinear diffusion equation with a spatial time dependent diffusion coefficient. The solutions obtained for this case generalize the usual one and can be expressed in terms of the q-exponential and q-logarithm functions present in the generalized thermostatistics context (Tsallis formalism). After, a nonlinear external force is considered. For this case the solutions can be also expressed in terms of the q-exponential and q-logarithm functions. However, by a suitable choice of the nonlinear external force, we may have an exponential behavior, suggesting a connection with standard thermostatistics. This fact reveals that these solutions may present an anomalous relaxation process and then, reach an equilibrium state of the kind Boltzmann- Gibbs. Next, we investigate a nonmarkovian linear diffusion equation that presents a kernel leading to the anomalous diffusive process. Particularly, our first choice leads to both a the usual behavior and anomalous behavior obtained through a fractionalderivative equation. The results obtained, within this context, correspond to a change in the waiting-time distribution for jumps in the formalism of random walks. These modifications had direct influence in the solutions, that turned out to be expressed in terms of the Mittag-Leffler or H of Fox functions. In this way, the second moment associated to these distributions led to an anomalous spread of the distribution, in contrast to the usual situation where one finds a linear increase with time

Aglomerado estelar M67: processos de diluição e a evolução do Momentum Angular

Galactic stellar clusters have a great variety of physical properties that make valuable probes of stellar and galactic chemical evolution. Current studies show a discrepancy between the standard evolutionary models and observations, mainly considering the level of mixing and convective dilution of light elements, as well as to the evolution of the angular momentum. In order to better settle some of these properties, we present a detailed spectroscopic analysis of 28 evolved stars, from the turn-off to the RGB, belonging to the stellar open cluster M67. The observations were performed using UVES+FLAMES at VLT/UT2. We determined stellar parameters and metallicity from LTE analysis of Fe I and Fe II lines between 420 1100 nm. The Li abundance was obtained using the line at 6707.78 ˚A, for the whole sample of stars. The Li abundances of evolved stars of M67 present a gradual decreasing when decreasing the effective temperature. The Li dilution factor for giant stars of M67 with Teff ∼ 4350K is at least 2300 times greater than that predicted by standard theory for single field giant stars. The Li abundance as a function of rotation exhibits a good correlation for evolved stars of M67, with a much smaller dispersion than the field evolved stars. The mass and the age seem to be some of the parameters that influence this connection. We discovered a Li-rich subgiant star in M67 (S1242). It is member of a spectroscopic binary system with a high eccentricity. Its Li abundance is 2.7, the highest Li content ever measured for an evolved star in M67. Two possibilities could explain this anomalous Li content: (i) preservation of the Li at the post turn off stage due to tidal effects, or (ii) an efficient dredge-up of Li, hidden below the convective zone by atomic diffusion occurring in the post turn off stage. We also study the evolution of the angular momentum for the evolved stars in M67. The results are in agreement with previous studies dedicated to evolved stars of this cluster, where stars in the same region of the CM-diagram have quite similar rotations, but with values that indicate an extra breaking along the main sequence. Finally, we analize the distributions of the average rotational velocity and of the average Li abundance as a function of age. With relation to the average Li abundances, stars in clusters and field stars present the same type of exponencial decay law t−β. Such decay is observed for ages lesser than 2 Gyr. From this age, is observed that the average Li abundance remain constant, differently of the one observed in the rotation age connection, where the average rotational velocity decreases slowly with age

Estimação clássica e Bayesiana em modelos de sobrevida com fração de cura

In Survival Analysis, long duration models allow for the estimation of the healing fraction, which represents a portion of the population immune to the event of interest. Here we address classical and Bayesian estimation based on mixture models and promotion time models, using different distributions (exponential, Weibull and Pareto) to model failure time. The database used to illustrate the implementations is described in Kersey et al. (1987) and it consists of a group of leukemia patients who underwent a certain type of transplant. The specific implementations used were numeric optimization by BFGS as implemented in R (base::optim), Laplace approximation (own implementation) and Gibbs sampling as implemented in Winbugs. We describe the main features of the models used, the estimation methods and the computational aspects. We also discuss how different prior information can affect the Bayesian estimates

Uma estratégia aleatória chamada de MOSES

This paper we study a random strategy called MOSES, which was introduced in 1996 by Fran¸cois. Asymptotic results of this strategy; behavior of the stationary distributions of the chain associated to strategy, were derived by Fran¸cois, in 1998, of the theory of Freidlin and Wentzell [8]. Detailings of these results are in this work. Moreover, we noted that an alternative approach the convergence of this strategy is possible without making use of theory of Freidlin and Wentzell, yielding the visit almost certain of the strategy to uniform populations which contain the minimum. Some simulations in Matlab are presented in this work

Os acidentes de trabalho e os valores humanos em operadores de uma fábrica de calçados

The study present analyzes the relation between work accident and human values. It was developed with the sample of 156 operators of a factory, through to an application of structured questionnaires. The data were submitted to quantitative analyses (for example, analyses of frequency distributions, Chi-Square, test t). It was verified that 27 employees that filled out the questionnaires suffered work accidents. The results evidence that there aren´t significant differences between the people s values that suffered work accidents and those that did not suffer. The employees presented a hierarchy of different values comparing with the others Brazilian studies. It was observed that the work accidents varies for organizational sectors. So, we get the conclusion, the occurrence of the work accidents is not associated to the values, but they are probably associated to work conditions

Perfil de mortalidade de idosos no Rio Grande do Norte: estudo comparativo entre duas faixas etárias e fatores relacionados

Measures of mortality represent one of the most important indicators of health conditions. For comprising the larger rate of deaths, the study of mortality in the elderly population is regarded as essential to understand the health situation. In this sense, the present study aims to analyze the mortality profile of the population from 60 to 69 (young elders) and older than 80 years old (oldest old) in the Rio Grande do Norte state (Brazil) in the period 2001 to 2011, and to identify the association with contextual factors and variables about the quality of the Mortality Information System (SIM). For this purpose, Mortality Proportional (MP) was calculated for the state and Specific Mortality Rate by Age (CMId) , according to chapters of ICD- 10, to the municipalities of Rio Grande do Norte , through data from the Mortality Information System (SIM) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IGBE). In order to identify groups of municipalities with similar mortality profiles, Nonhierarchical Clustering K-means method was applied and the Factor Analysis by the Principal Components Analysis was resort to reduce contextual variables. The spatial distribution of these groups and the factors were visualized using the Spatial Analysis Areas technique. During the period investigated, 21,813 younger elders deaths were recorded , with a predominance of deaths from circulatory diseases (32.75%) and neoplasms (22.9 %) . Among the oldest old, 50,637 deaths were observed, which 35.26% occurred because of cardiovascular diseases and 17.27% of ill-defined causes. Clustering Analysis produced three clusters to the two age groups and Factor Analysis reduced the contextual variables into three factors, also the sum of the factor scores was considered. Among the younger elders, the groups are called misinformation profile, development profile and development paradox, which showed a statistically significant association with education and poverty and extreme poverty factors, factorial sum and the variable related to underreporting of deaths. Misinformation profile remained in the oldest old group, accompanied by the epidemiological transition profile and the epidemiological paradox, that were statistically associated with the development and health factor, as well as with the variables that indicate the SIM quality: proportion of blank fields about the schooling and underreporting. It proposed that the mortality profiles of the younger elders and oldest old differ on the importance of the basic causes and that are influenced by different contextual aspects , observing that 60 to 69 years group is more affected by such aspects. Health inequalities can be reduced by measures aimed to improve levels of education and poverty, especially in younger elders, and by optimizing the use of health services, which is more associated to the oldest old health situation. Furthermore, it is important to improve the quality of information for the two age groups

Segmentação Fuzzy de Texturas e Vídeos

The segmentation of an image aims to subdivide it into constituent regions or objects that have some relevant semantic content. This subdivision can also be applied to videos. However, in these cases, the objects appear in various frames that compose the videos. The task of segmenting an image becomes more complex when they are composed of objects that are defined by textural features, where the color information alone is not a good descriptor of the image. Fuzzy Segmentation is a region-growing segmentation algorithm that uses affinity functions in order to assign to each element in an image a grade of membership for each object (between 0 and 1). This work presents a modification of the Fuzzy Segmentation algorithm, for the purpose of improving the temporal and spatial complexity. The algorithm was adapted to segmenting color videos, treating them as 3D volume. In order to perform segmentation in videos, conventional color model or a hybrid model obtained by a method for choosing the best channels were used. The Fuzzy Segmentation algorithm was also applied to texture segmentation by using adaptive affinity functions defined for each object texture. Two types of affinity functions were used, one defined using the normal (or Gaussian) probability distribution and the other using the Skew Divergence. This latter, a Kullback-Leibler Divergence variation, is a measure of the difference between two probability distributions. Finally, the algorithm was tested in somes videos and also in texture mosaic images composed by images of the Brodatz album

Otimização em braquiterapia de alta taxa de dose com algoritmo transgenético

Este trabalho aborda o problema de otimização em braquiterapia de alta taxa de dose no tratamento de pacientes com câncer, com vistas à definição do conjunto de tempos de parada. A técnica de solução adotada foi a Transgenética Computacional apoiada pelo método L-BFGS. O algoritmo desenvolvido foi empregado para gerar soluções não denominadas cujas distribuições de dose fossem capazes de eiminar o câncer e ao mesmo tempo preservar as regiões normais