O uso da Divergência de Kullback-Leibler e da Divergência Generalizada como medida de similaridade em sistemas CBIR

The content-based image retrieval is important for various purposes like disease diagnoses from computerized tomography, for example. The relevance, social and economic of image retrieval systems has created the necessity of its improvement. Within this context, the content-based image retrieval systems are composed of two stages, the feature extraction and similarity measurement. The stage of similarity is still a challenge due to the wide variety of similarity measurement functions, which can be combined with the different techniques present in the recovery process and return results that aren’t always the most satisfactory. The most common functions used to measure the similarity are the Euclidean and Cosine, but some researchers have noted some limitations in these functions conventional proximity, in the step of search by similarity. For that reason, the Bregman divergences (Kullback Leibler and I-Generalized) have attracted the attention of researchers, due to its flexibility in the similarity analysis. Thus, the aim of this research was to conduct a comparative study over the use of Bregman divergences in relation the Euclidean and Cosine functions, in the step similarity of content-based image retrieval, checking the advantages and disadvantages of each function. For this, it was created a content-based image retrieval system in two stages: offline and online, using approaches BSM, FISM, BoVW and BoVW-SPM. With this system was created three groups of experiments using databases: Caltech101, Oxford and UK-bench. The performance of content-based image retrieval system using the different functions of similarity was tested through of evaluation measures: Mean Average Precision, normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain, precision at k, precision x recall. Finally, this study shows that the use of Bregman divergences (Kullback Leibler and Generalized) obtains better results than the Euclidean and Cosine measures with significant gains for content-based image retrieval.

Perfil exportador e crescimento econômico: uma análise de painel para economias africanas

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between the export profile and the African GDP growth rate. Chapter 1 presents the literature on the subject and studies that analyze the specific case of Africa. There seems to be a consensus that exports contribute to economic growth. However, there is no consensus on the benefits that are incorporated from exported products. The divergence lies between the approach of the Natural Resources Curse, where concentration of exports in commodities does not contribute to economic growth. Another work line supports the idea there is no such relation. Chapter 2 presents, through descriptive analysis, macroeconomic and international trade data for African economies data. Based on data from 52 countries for the period 1990-2014, it can be observed that the African continent has improved in macroeconomic terms, with increased exports and economic growth rates, suggesting a positive relationship between the variables. Trade indicators show Africa's integration into the global economy, with European Union, USA, China and some emerging countries as main partners. In addition, the analysis showed that the export is concentrated in oil and agricultural commodities. Most African countries face a negative trade balance, depending of primary products exports with low added value and imports of manufactured goods. Finally, Chapter 3 presents an empirical research using panel data analysis. The results suggest, in general, evidences that exports are important for explaining the African economic growth rate of African economies can be stimulated by the expansion of the share of exports in GDP. The estimated coefficients are positive and statistically significant in both the fixed effect estimation, as the estimation by GMM System. The estimation of growth models for fixed or random effects indicates a direct and statistically significant relationship between export oil / minerals and the growth rate of African countries. Thus, the export profile turns out to be important to determine the growth rate. The results obtained from the estimates do not corroborate the literature arguments called Curse of Natural Resources for the period analyzed, since export natural resources, especially oil and minerals, were relevant to explain the performance of the growth rate of economies.

Do reconhecimento à efetividade do direito fundamental à água: diálogos entre Nicarágua e Brasil

La humanidad está en un periodo de transición paradigmática, donde aún no existe acuerdo sobre en cual periodo nos encuadramos, sí modernidad o posmodernidad, pero el debate de ahí surgido se revela útil y transversal a los dilemas que enfrenta hoy la sociedad. Uno de esos dilemas tiene que ver con el reconocimiento del agua como derecho fundamental, ciertamente la era de la información ha permitido avanzar en armar el rompecabezas de la crisis hídrica mundial y sus riesgos, lo que ha develado una realidad importante, el acceso al agua tanto en naciones económicamente desarrolladas como en las menos desarrolladas constituye aun una aspiración, son varias las causas de esto, siendo una de las más comunes la atribuida al cambio climático, sin embargo, al profundizar en la materia surgen otras causas como la falta de voluntad política a nivel nacional, los intereses económicos que dan al agua tratamiento de mercancía y a nivel internacional la existencia de luces y sombras en el campo de los derechos humanos, estas constituyen las piezas del mencionado rompecabezas, aun por armar. Mientras tanto el Derecho tiene aquí un desafío de significativa importancia, adaptarse a fin de responder adecuadamente a las nuevas realidades: riesgos de diversas índoles. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo defender la existencia del derecho fundamental al agua en el ordenamiento jurídico brasileño y nicaragüense, comparando instrumentos que puedan asegurar su efectividad. Para la realización de este trabajo se utilizó un abordaje inductivo-comparativo, fuentes bibliográficas brasileñas, nicaragüenses y de países con experiencias relevantes para la comprensión del problema y que pudieran aportar propuestas de cara al reconocimiento y efectivación del derecho fundamental al agua. Este trabajo encontró que existen ambigüedades importantes en el campo del Derecho Humano al Agua motivadas por el trabajo de agencias que defienden el derecho pero a la vez establecen coordinaciones y normativas con quienes impulsan su privatización, fue posible presentar elementos que apoyan la fundamentalidad del derecho al agua desde un punto de vista material y de vinculación con otros derechos fundamentales, pero preocupa en el caso de Brasil y Nicaragua el poco avance jurisprudencial de cara al reconocimiento y finalmente la atribución de la crisis hídrica en muchos casos a la incertidumbre climática, cuando uno de los principales desafíos se encuentra en la explotación comercial del agua.