Estrutura genética populacional de Heliconius erato e Heliconius melpomene (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) em fragmentos de Mata Atlântica do Rio Grande do Norte

Extensive studies using molecular markers on butterflies have shown how a highly fragmented landscape may result in the reduction of gene flow among patches of habitat and, consequently, increase genetic differentiation among populations. However, little is known about Heliconius geographical structure and the effects of fragmentation on the connectivity of populations. Furthermore, findings on the effects of the population structure on the dynamics of mimicry evolution in Heliconius butterflies need to be tested in H. erato and H. melpomene specimens found in other locations other than Central and northern South Americas. For the present study, we had two motivations: (1) compare the population structure of H. erato and H. melpomene given the highly fragmented Brazil s Atlantic Forest habitat; and (2) studying population structure of co-mimics could give us insights into the dynamics of mimicry evolution. For this, we analysed the spatial structure and connectivity of eight populations of Heliconius butterflies, in a total of 137 H. erato specimens and 145 H. melpomene specimens, using nine microsatellites loci, 1144 AFLPs markers and 282 mitochondrial DNA sequences. In general, both species exhibited evidence of population subdivision but no isolation by distance indicating some extent of genetic differentiation among populations. Contrary to Kronforst & Gilbert s (2008) Costa Rican Heliconius, H. melpomene exhibited more genetic differentiation than H. erato based on nuclear markers. However, for mitochondrial DNA, H. erato populations showed more genetic differentiation than H. melpomene. Our results corroborate to other studies on Heliconius butterflies concerning the pronounced population subdivision and local genetic drift found in this genus. Nevertheless, the pattern of this differentiation varies significantly from the pattern found in studies conducted in Central America, where H. erato is generally more differentiated and structured than H. melpomene, based on nuclear markers. This different pattern may reflect different evolutionary histories of Heliconius species in Northeastern Brazil s Atlantic Forest

Estrutura populacional e aspectos reprodutivos do Octopus insularis Cephalopodas: Octopodidae: implicações para o manejo da pesca de polvo no município de Rio de Fogo-RN

In northeastern Brazil, Octopus insularis is the most commercially important cephalopod species and its capture has been performed for several years by the lobster fishermen in the region. In order to obtain information about the reproductive biology, 1108 specimens were collected between November 2009 and September 2011 in the landings and fish markets of Rio do Fogo (RN). For each specimen the mantle length (CM) and total fresh weight (PT) were recorded. Gonads of 264 males and 295 females were examined macroscopically and histologically to assess sexual maturation and determine reproductive indices. Four reproductive stages were determined for males (immature, maturing, mature and post-mature) and females (immature, early maturing, late maturing and mature). The average of eggs recorded in the female s gonads was 93.820 and 39 was the average of spermatophores found in male Needham s complex. Spermathecae with sperm were found in females with 69 mm CM (immature). Males and females become sexually mature at 64.41 and 98.50 mm of CM, respectively. The weight at sexual maturity was 270 g for males and 630 g for females. The values of the size and weight at sexual maturity found in this study show that males mature at smaller sizes than females. For both sexes the maturation peaks occurred in February and November 2010 and also in September 2011. The periods of maximum reproductive activity lasted about 3 months and it seems to occur every 7 10 months. Only one spent female (stage V) was found and the number of mature females was low. Presumably, mature females migrate to deep waters with complex habitat to protect the offspring, indicating that fishery by snorkeling with maximum depth of 15 meters is not reaches this part of the stock. Finally, it is noticeable the importance of the establishment of management strategies for the exploitation of O. insularis different of the ones used for O. vulgaris, once the species have distinct biological features

Influência das mudanças climáticas na estrutura funcional da comunidade fitoplanctônica em um reservatório da região do semiárido

The Brazilian Northeast is the most vulnerable region to climatic variability risks. For the Brazilian semi-arid is expected a reduction in the overall rates of precipitation and an increase in the number of dry days. These changes predicted by the IPCC (2007) will intensify the rainfall and droughts period that could promote the dominance of cyanobacteria, thus affecting the water quality of reservoirs, that are most used for water supply, in the semi-arid. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of increasing temperature combined with nutrient enrichment on the functional structure of the phytoplankton community of a mesotrophic reservoir in the semi-arid, in the worst case scenario of climate change predicted by the IPCC (2007). Two experiments were performed, one in a rainy season and another in the dry season. In the water sampled, nutrients (nitrate and orthophosphate) were added in different concentrations. The microcosms were submitted to two different temperatures, five-year average of air temperature in the reservoir (control) and 4°C above the control temperature (warming). The results of this study showed that warming and nutrient enrichment benefited mainly the functional groups of cyanobacteria. During the rainy season it was verified the increasing biomass of small functional groups of unicellular and opportunists algae such as F (colonial green algae with mucilage) and X1 (nanoplanktonic algae of eutrophic lake systems). It was also observed an increasing in total biomass, in the richness and diversity of the community. In the dry season experiment there was a greater contribution in the relative biomass of filamentous algae, with a replacement of the group S1 (non-filamentous cyanobacteria with heterocytes) for H1 (filamentous cyanobacteria with heterocytes) in nutrient- enriched treatments. Moreover, there was also loss in total biomass, species richness and diversity of the community. The effects of temperature and nutrients manipulation on phytoplankton community of reservoir Ministro João Alves provoked changes in species richness, the diversity of the community and its functional composition, being the dry period which showed the highest susceptibility to the increase in the contribution of potentially toxic cyanobacteria with heterocytes

Os efeitos da estrutura de habitat sobre as comunidades de aranhas em uma floresta de caatinga do nordeste brasileiro

The inherent complexity of natural communities is a challenge to our understanding about how the habitat influences the abundance, local distribution and species diversity. The habitat can influence community structure in multiple ways and elucidate these relationships has provoked a lot of debate in ecology. The habitat heterogeneity hypothesis states that an increase in habitat heterogeneity (number of habitats) leads to an increase in species diversity in the landscape due to an expansion in niche dimensions. This study aims to identify whether this hypothesis is valid for the spiders that inhabit a locality in the Caatinga of northeastern Brazil. Cursorial and arboreal spiders were sampled in 30 plots within an area of Caatinga together with measures of environmental complexity, habitat heterogeneity and environmental parameters related to multiple aspects of vegetation architecture and species composition of woody plants. Stepwise multiple regressions were used to define which local environmental parameters best explain the variation in arboreal and cursorial spiders richness. Then a NMDS (Nonmetric multidimensional scaling) was used to reduce the number of predictive variables to those who are the most important and best represent the variation in spiders richness associated with the environment they were sampled. The results show a clear segregation between the guilds of arboreal and cursorial spiders, both related to what kind of environmental variables best explain its variation as well as in relation to what part of the vegetation they occupy

Mercado de trabalho e estrutura sócio-ocupacional: estudo comparativo entre as regiões metropolitanas de Fortaleza, Recife e Salvador 2001-2008

The economic transformations in the world, the end of World War II, listing significant changes in production structures and labor market in the world. Initially developed countries realize these changes and subsequently developing countries. The changes in production patterns, especially with the crisis of Fordism, peripheral countries further accentuated the problems in the workplace. Flexible accumulation, in turn, was responsible for significant changes in the labor market at the periphery of global capitalism. This restructuring process, in Brazil, begun from the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, being more accentuated the impacts on the labor market in the poorest regions of the country, particularly the Northeast. In that sense, this thesis aims to evaluate the job market in the metropolitan areas of Fortaleza, Recife and Salvador in light of the transformation process in the production structures and labor market and its influences in the 2000s. The time frame are the years 2001-2008. Data are from the National Household Sample Survey - PNAD and were drawn from the study proposal developed by the Centre of the Metropolis. The study shows that the labor market of the three metropolitan areas continues to be affected by the restructuring process of the late twentieth century. It found high rates of unprotected busy at work is more precarious conditions of employment for non-whites, women, adolescents / young and old. We also highlight the high percentage of employed persons earning income up 1.00 minimum wage, and a large number of persons employed in the tertiary and tertiary non-specialist. With the picture observed in the three metropolitan areas you can see the major problems in the labor market that proliferate, especially in the metropolitan context of the Northeast, with characteristics similar to those observed in the literature that investigated the labor market in 1990

Diferenciais de rendimentos por gênero: uma análise dos efeitos composição e estrutura salarial no Brasil (1976, 1987, 1996 e 2009)

This study aims to analyze the income differentials by gender in Brazil, in the years 1976, 1987, 1996 and 2009. Specifically, there are two objectives. First, attempt to analyze the importance of the effects of composition and wage structure in the job market. In the second, to verify which socioeconomic variables explain the effects of composition and wage structure in the job market. The information in this study was obtained from the microdata of Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD) regarding the respective years. In the first stage of the methodology we used: the index of income distribution Theil-T; the income gap decompositions proposed by Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973); and Firpo et al. (2007). In the second stage we applied the RIF regression method (Recentered Influence Function) of Firpo et al. (2007). The results show that income inequality is higher among men than among women in the country. It was observed that the component of inequality between people of the same gender represented the largest share in the decomposition of income inequality between genders. It was found, in the decomposition of the average income, a downward trend of income gap, but the differential remains favorable to the men. We noticed that the impact of the composition effect in reducing the gap was offset by the positive effect of wage structure. Regarding the distribution quantis, income differential between genres appeared greater at the bottom, in the years 1976, 1987 and 2009; and at the top of the distribution, in 1996 featuring, respectively, the sticky floor and glass ceiling effects in Brazil. As for the decomposition of the RIF, it turns out that the composition effect assisted in the downfall of the income gap between 1976 and 2009, but was offset by the positive effect of the wage structure in quantis 10th, 50th, and 90th. The main socioeconomic variables influenced the drop in income gap were: the composition effect, the manual labor occupations, service sector and low-grade and high school, and the wage structure effect, schooling low and high experience professional and technical occupations and urban centers

Análise de estruturas de superfície delgadas axissimétricas via método dos elementos finitos com utilização de elemento retilíneo

The present work deals with the linear analysis of bi-dimensional axisymmetric structures, through development and implementation of a Finite Element Method code. The structures are initially studied alone and afterwards compatibilized into coupled structures, that is, assemblages, including tanks and pressure vessels. Examples are analysed and, in order to prove accuracy, the results were compared with those furnished by the analytical solutions

Modelagem de dados de falhas de equipamentos de sub-superfície em poços de petróleo da Bacia Potiguar

This master´s thesis presents a reliability study conducted among onshore oil fields in the Potiguar Basin (RN/CE) of Petrobras company, Brazil. The main study objective was to build a regression model to predict the risk of failures that impede production wells to function properly using the information of explanatory variables related to wells such as the elevation method, the amount of water produced in the well (BSW), the ratio gas-oil (RGO), the depth of the production bomb, the operational unit of the oil field, among others. The study was based on a retrospective sample of 603 oil columns from all that were functioning between 2000 and 2006. Statistical hypothesis tests under a Weibull regression model fitted to the failure data allowed the selection of some significant predictors in the set considered to explain the first failure time in the wells

Estabilidade e robustez de um controlador adaptativo indireto por um modelo de referência e estrutura variável

In this thesis, it is developed the robustness and stability analysis of a variable structure model reference adaptive controller considering the presence of disturbances and unmodeled dynamics. The controller is applied to uncertain, monovariable, linear time-invariant plants with relative degree one, and its development is based on the indirect adaptive control. In the direct approach, well known in the literature, the switching laws are designed for the controller parameters. In the indirect one, they are designed for the plant parameters and, thus, the selection of the relays upper bounds becomes more intuitive, whereas they are related to physical parameters, which present uncertainties that can be known easier, such as resistances, capacitances, inertia moments and friction coefficients. Two versions for the controller algorithm with the stability analysis are presented. The global asymptotic stability with respect to a compact set is guaranteed for both cases. Simulation results under adverse operation conditions in order to verify the theoretical results and to show the performance and robustness of the proposed controller are showed. Moreover, for practical purposes, some simplifications on the original algorithm are developed

Reconhecimento de voz através de unidades menores do que a palavra, utilizando Wavelet Packet e SVM, em uma nova estrutura hierárquica de decisão

The automatic speech recognition by machine has been the target of researchers in the past five decades. In this period have been numerous advances, such as in the field of recognition of isolated words (commands), which has very high rates of recognition, currently. However, we are still far from developing a system that could have a performance similar to the human being (automatic continuous speech recognition). One of the great challenges of searches for continuous speech recognition is the large amount of pattern. The modern languages such as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese have approximately 500,000 words or patterns to be identified. The purpose of this study is to use smaller units than the word such as phonemes, syllables and difones units as the basis for the speech recognition, aiming to recognize any words without necessarily using them. The main goal is to reduce the restriction imposed by the excessive amount of patterns. In order to validate this proposal, the system was tested in the isolated word recognition in dependent-case. The phonemes characteristics of the Brazil s Portuguese language were used to developed the hierarchy decision system. These decisions are made through the use of neural networks SVM (Support Vector Machines). The main speech features used were obtained from the Wavelet Packet Transform. The descriptors MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient) are also used in this work. It was concluded that the method proposed in this work, showed good results in the steps of recognition of vowels, consonants (syllables) and words when compared with other existing methods in literature

Controle adaptativo robusto para um modelo desacoplado de um robô móvel

This thesis presents a new structure of robust adaptive controller applied to mobile robots (surface mobile robot) with nonholonomic constraints. It acts in the dynamics and kinematics of the robot, and it is split in two distinct parts. The first part controls the robot dynamics, using variable structure model reference adaptive controllers. The second part controls the robot kinematics, using a position controller, whose objective is to make the robot to reach any point in the cartesian plan. The kinematic controller is based only on information about the robot configuration. A decoupling method is adopted to transform the linear model of the mobile robot, a multiple-input multiple-output system, into two decoupled single-input single-output systems, thus reducing the complexity of designing the controller for the mobile robot. After that, a variable structure model reference adaptive controller is applied to each one of the resulting systems. One of such controllers will be responsible for the robot position and the other for the leading angle, using reference signals generated by the position controller. To validate the proposed structure, some simulated and experimental results using differential drive mobile robots of a robot soccer kit are presented. The simulator uses the main characteristics of real physical system as noise and non-linearities such as deadzone and saturation. The experimental results were obtained through an C++ program applied to the robot soccer kit of Microrobot team at the LACI/UFRN. The simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed at the end of the text

Avaliação de robustez, desempenho e aplicação do controlador adaptativo por posicionamento de pólos e estrutura variável

In this work, the variable structure adaptive pole placement controller (VS-APPC) robustness and performance are evaluated and this algorithm is applied in a motor control system. The controller robustness evaluation will be done through simulations, where will be introduced in the system the following adversities: time delay, actuator response boundeds, disturbances, parametric variation and unmodeled dynamics. The VS-APPC will be compared with PI control, pole placement control (PPC) and adaptive pole placement controller (APPC). The VS-APPC will be simulated to track a step and a sine reference. It will be applied in a three-phase induction motor control system to track a sine signal in the stator reference frame. Simulation and experimental results will prove the efficiency and robustness of this control strategy

Infra-estrutura para avaliação e testes de protocolos sociais de comunicação em ambientes tridimencionais compartilhados

The advent of the Internet stimulated the appearance of several services. An example is the communication ones present in the users day-by-day. Services as chat and e-mail reach an increasing number of users. This fact is turning the Net a powerful communication medium. The following work explores the use of communication conventional services into the Net infrastructure. We introduce the concept of communication social protocols applied to a shared virtual environment. We argue that communication tools have to be adapted to the Internet potentialities. To do that, we approach some theories of the Communication area and its applicability in a virtual environment context. We define multi-agent architecture to support the offer of these services, as well as, a software and hardware platform to support the accomplishment of experiments using Mixed Reality. Finally, we present the obtained results, experiments and products

Análise e projeto de superfícies seletivas de frequência com elementos pré-fractais para aplicações em comunicações indoor

In this thesis, a frequency selective surface (FSS) consists of a two-dimensional periodic structure mounted on a dielectric substrate, which is capable of selecting signals in one or more frequency bands of interest. In search of better performance, more compact dimensions, low cost manufacturing, among other characteristics, these periodic structures have been continually optimized over time. Due to its spectral characteristics, which are similar to band-stop or band-pass filters, the FSSs have been studied and used in several applications for more than four decades. The design of an FSS with a periodic structure composed by pre-fractal elements facilitates the tuning of these spatial filters and the adjustment of its electromagnetic parameters, enabling a compact design which generally has a stable frequency response and superior performance relative to its euclidean counterpart. The unique properties of geometric fractals have shown to be useful, mainly in the production of antennas and frequency selective surfaces, enabling innovative solutions and commercial applications in microwave range. In recent applications, the FSSs modify the indoor propagation environments (emerging concept called wireless building ). In this context, the use of pre-fractal elements has also shown promising results, allowing a more effective filtering of more than one frequency band with a single-layer structure. This thesis approaches the design of FSSs using pre-fractal elements based on Vicsek, Peano and teragons geometries, which act as band-stop spatial filters. The transmission properties of the periodic surfaces are analyzed to design compact and efficient devices with stable frequency responses, applicable to microwave frequency range and suitable for use in indoor communications. The results are discussed in terms of the electromagnetic effect resulting from the variation of parameters such as: fractal iteration number (or fractal level), scale factor, fractal dimension and periodicity of FSS, according the pre-fractal element applied on the surface. The analysis of the fractal dimension s influence on the resonant properties of a FSS is a new contribution in relation to researches about microwave devices that use fractal geometry. Due to its own characteristics and the geometric shape of the Peano pre-fractal elements, the reconfiguration possibility of these structures is also investigated and discussed. This thesis also approaches, the construction of efficient selective filters with new configurations of teragons pre-fractal patches, proposed to control the WLAN coverage in indoor environments by rejecting the signals in the bands of 2.4~2.5 GHz (IEEE 802.11 b) and 5.0~6.0 GHz (IEEE 802.11a). The FSSs are initially analyzed through simulations performed by commercial software s: Ansoft DesignerTM and HFSSTM. The fractal design methodology is validated by experimental characterization of the built prototypes, using alternatively, different measurement setups, with commercial horn antennas and microstrip monopoles fabricated for low cost measurements

Modelagem e controle de um microveículo aéreo: uma aplicação de estabilidade robusta com a técnica backstepping em uma estrutura hexarrotor

In this Thesis, the development of the dynamic model of multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle with vertical takeoff and landing characteristics, considering input nonlinearities and a full state robust backstepping controller are presented. The dynamic model is expressed using the Newton-Euler laws, aiming to obtain a better mathematical representation of the mechanical system for system analysis and control design, not only when it is hovering, but also when it is taking-off, or landing, or flying to perform a task. The input nonlinearities are the deadzone and saturation, where the gravitational effect and the inherent physical constrains of the rotors are related and addressed. The experimental multirotor aerial vehicle is equipped with an inertial measurement unit and a sonar sensor, which appropriately provides measurements of attitude and altitude. A real-time attitude estimation scheme based on the extended Kalman filter using quaternions was developed. Then, for robustness analysis, sensors were modeled as the ideal value with addition of an unknown bias and unknown white noise. The bounded robust attitude/altitude controller were derived based on globally uniformly practically asymptotically stable for real systems, that remains globally uniformly asymptotically stable if and only if their solutions are globally uniformly bounded, dealing with convergence and stability into a ball of the state space with non-null radius, under some assumptions. The Lyapunov analysis technique was used to prove the stability of the closed-loop system, compute bounds on control gains and guaranteeing desired bounds on attitude dynamics tracking errors in the presence of measurement disturbances. The controller laws were tested in numerical simulations and in an experimental hexarotor, developed at the UFRN Robotics Laboratory