A low cost one-camera optical tracking system for indoor wide-area augmented and virtual reality environments

In the last years the number of industrial applications for Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) environments has significantly increased. Optical tracking systems are an important component of AR/VR environments. In this work, a low cost optical tracking system with adequate attributes for professional use is proposed. The system works in infrared spectral region to reduce optical noise. A highspeed camera, equipped with daylight blocking filter and infrared flash strobes, transfers uncompressed grayscale images to a regular PC, where image pre-processing software and the PTrack tracking algorithm recognize a set of retro-reflective markers and extract its 3D position and orientation. Included in this work is a comprehensive research on image pre-processing and tracking algorithms. A testbed was built to perform accuracy and precision tests. Results show that the system reaches accuracy and precision levels slightly worse than but still comparable to professional systems. Due to its modularity, the system can be expanded by using several one-camera tracking modules linked by a sensor fusion algorithm, in order to obtain a larger working range. A setup with two modules was built and tested, resulting in performance similar to the stand-alone configuration.

Citizens and the future of multilateralism in a polycentric world at 2030: the perspectives of emerging countries for the trading system: the impasse of WTO, the trends of mega agreements, the logic of value chains and the advent of consumers concerns on international trade

A new paradigm is modeling the World: evolutionary innovations in all fronts, new information technologies, huge mobility of capital, use of risky financial tools, globalization of production, new emerging powers and the impact of consumer concerns on governmental policies. These phenomena are shaping the World and forcing the advent of a new World Order in the Multilateral Monetary, Financial, and Trading System. The effects of this new paradigm are also transforming global governance. The political and economic orders established after the World War and centered on the multilateral model of UN, IMF, World Bank, and the GATT, leaded by the developed countries, are facing significant challenges. The rise of China and emerging countries shifted the old model to a polycentric World, where the governance of these organizations are threatened by emerging countries demanding a bigger participation in the role and decision boards of these international bodies. As a consequence, multilateralism is being confronted by polycentrism. Negotiations for a more representative voting process and the pressure for new rules to cope with the new demands are paralyzing important decisions. This scenario is affecting seriously not only the Monetary and Financial Systems but also the Multilateral Trading System. International trade is facing some significant challenges: a serious deadlock to conclude the last round of the multilateral negotiation at the WTO, the fragmentation of trade rules by the multiplication of preferential and mega agreements, the arrival of a new model of global production and trade leaded by global value chains that is threatening the old trade order, and the imposition of new sets of regulations by private bodies commanded by transnationals to support global value chains and non-governmental organizations to reflect the concerns of consumers in the North based on their precautionary attitude about sustainability of products made in the World. The lack of any multilateral order in this new regulation is creating a big cacophony of rules and developing a new regulatory war of the Global North against the Global South. The objective of this paper is to explore how these challenges are affecting the Tradinge System and how it can evolve to manage these new trends.

Seven stories: location based story-delivery system

Location aware content-based experiences have a substantial tradition in HCI, several projects over the last two decades have explored the association of digital media to specific locations or objects. However, a large portion of the literature has little focus on the creative side of designing of the experience and on the iterative process of user evaluations. In this thesis we present two iterations in the design and evaluation of a location based story delivery system (LBSDS), inspired by local folklore and oral storytelling in Madeira. We started by testing an already existing location based story platform, PlaceWear, with short multimedia clips that recounted local traditions and folktales, to this experience we called iLand. An initial evaluation of iLand, was conducted; we shadowed users during the experience and then they responded to a questionnaire. By analyzing the evaluation results we uncovered several issues that informed the redesign of the system itself as well as part of the story content. The outcome of this re design was the 7Stories experience. In the new experience we performed the integration of visual markers in the interface and the framing of the fragmented story content through the literary technique of the narrator. This was done aiming to improving the connection of the audience to the physical context where the experience is delivered. The 7Stories experience was evaluated following a similar methodology to the iLand evaluation but the user’s experience resulted considerably different; because of the same setting for the experience in both versions and the constancy of the most of the content across the two versions we were able to assess the specific effect of the new design and discuss its strengths and shortcomings. Although we did not run a formal and strict comparative test between the two evaluations, it is evident from the collected data how the specific design changes to our LBSDS influenced the user experience.

Soil microbial biomass in organic farming system

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Stress-induced cross-sensitization to amphetamine is related to changes in the dopaminergic system

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

An Intelligent System for Petroleum Well Drilling Cutting Analysis

Cutting analysis is a important and crucial task task to detect and prevent problems during the petroleum well drilling process. Several studies have been developed for drilling inspection, but none of them takes care about analysing the generated cutting at the vibrating shale shakers. Here we proposed a system to analyse the cutting's concentration at the vibrating shale shakers, which can indicate problems during the petroleum well drilling process, such that the collapse of the well borehole walls. Cutting's images are acquired and sent to the data analysis module, which has as the main goal to extract features and to classify frames according to one of three previously classes of cutting's volume. A collection of supervised classifiers were applied in order to allow comparisons about their accuracy and efficiency. We used the Optimum-Path Forest (OPF), Artificial Neural Network using Multi layer Perceptrons (ANN-MLP), Support Vector Machines (SVM) and a Bayesian Classifier (BC) for this task. The first one outperformed all the remaining classifiers. Recall that we are also the first to introduce the OPF classifier in this field of knowledge. Very good results show the robustness of the proposed system, which can be also integrated with other commonly system (Mud-Logging) in order to improve the last one's efficiency.

Microlepidogaster dimorpha, a new species of Hypoptopomatinae (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from the upper rio Paraná system

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Thermodynamic analysis of the cogeneration system expansion in a sugar-alcohol factory

In this work it was performed energetic and exergetic analyses of three thermal plants to assessment a cogeneration system in expansion of a sugar-alcohol factory. The initial configuration considered is constituted by a low pressure steam generator, single stage steam turbines for electricity generation and crusher, shredder and mills with mechanical driving. In the intermediary configuration, the low pressure steam generator was substituted by another which generates steam at higher pressure and higher temperature, the steam turbines for electricity generation were substituted by a multiple stages extraction-condensation turbine and the other steam turbines were maintained. The final configuration consists in the substitution of these last turbines by electrical motors. Thermodynamic analyses were performed to evaluate the equipment and the overall plants efficiencies to permit a comparison among the plants. Besides of this, some important parameters of the sugar-alcohol factories were calculated.

Solid-state reactions of mercury with pure noble metals - Part 2. Mercury-iridium system

Thermogravimetry, cyclic voltammetry and other analytical techniques were used to study the reactions of mercury with pure iridium. The results allowed to suggest when subjected to heat or anodic stripping voltammetry an electrodeposited mercury film reacts with Ir substrate and at least three mass loss steps and three peaks appear in the mercury desorption process. The first two were attributed to Hg(0) species removal like a mercury bulk and a mercury monolayer. The last can be ascribed to the mercury removal from a solid solution with iridium.

A comparative study of the extracutaneous pigmentary system in three anuran amphibian species evaluated during the breeding season.

The present investigation examined the extracutaneous pigmentation pattern of three species of anuran amphibians, Dendropsophus nanus, Physalaemus cuvieri, and Rhinella schneideri, during the course of their breeding seasons. Pigmentation intensity in the different organs was graded on a 4-category scale, in which category 0 refers to organs without pigment and category 3 refers to intensely pigmented organs, with 2 intermediate stages of progressively stronger pigmentation. Rhinella schneideri showed testicular pigmentation, with intra-specific variation (categories 0 and 1). In P. cuvieri the pigmentation in the lungs varied in time: all the animals showed pigmentation (category 1) at the beginning of the breeding season, and as the season progressed the absence of pigments became the most common pattern. In the liver of the first animals collected, the pigment intensity was high (category 2) with many iridophores present, but in the last specimens collected no iridophores were found. The variation in D. nanus occurred in the kidneys, where animals collected at the beginning of the season did not show pigmentation. Renal veins displayed few melanocytes (category 1); animals collected at the end of the season showed more pigmentation in the kidneys (category 2), whereas in the renal veins the intensity remained the same. The changes observed in the extracutaneous pigment system in some organs, during the reproductive period, may be due to physiological alterations or may represent a species-specific characteristic.

Sm-Nd system in total rock open versus closed isotopic composition in zones of high deformation

High strain shear zones of Brasiliano age, developed in Paleoproterozoic basement gneiss of the Caicó region, Borborema Province, NE Brazil, were associated with medium- to low-grade metamorphism and deformational processes that transformed porphyritic augen gneiss into muscovite quartzite, modifying their original mineralogy and chemical properties. During the last hydrothermal event mobility of major, minor and trace elements was great, whereas the pattern of Rare Earth Elements was not changed. We carried out a Sm-Nd isotopic study in these rocks in order to understand the behavior of Nd isotopes during mylonite generation. TDM model ages at around 2.6 Ga and εNd (t) values for both protolith and transformed rock suggest that the Nd isotopic system remained closed, recording the original source rock signature, despite undergoing two superposed metamorphic events. These new Sm-Nd results provide important information on the geologic evolution of basement rocks in the central Rio Grande do Norte Terrane of the Borborema Province, NE Brazil.

Malware distributed collection and pre-classification system using honeypot technology

Malware has become a major threat in the last years due to the ease of spread through the Internet. Malware detection has become difficult with the use of compression, polymorphic methods and techniques to detect and disable security software. Those and other obfuscation techniques pose a problem for detection and classification schemes that analyze malware behavior. In this paper we propose a distributed architecture to improve malware collection using different honeypot technologies to increase the variety of malware collected. We also present a daemon tool developed to grab malware distributed through spam and a pre-classification technique that uses antivirus technology to separate malware in generic classes. © 2009 SPIE.

Intrusion detection system using optimum-path forest

Intrusion detection systems that make use of artificial intelligence techniques in order to improve effectiveness have been actively pursued in the last decade. Neural networks and Support Vector Machines have been also extensively applied to this task. However, their complexity to learn new attacks has become very expensive, making them inviable for a real time retraining. In this research, we introduce a new pattern classifier named Optimum-Path Forest (OPF) to this task, which has demonstrated to be similar to the state-of-the-art pattern recognition techniques, but extremely more efficient for training patterns. Experiments on public datasets showed that OPF classifier may be a suitable tool to detect intrusions on computer networks, as well as allow the algorithm to learn new attacks faster than the other techniques. © 2011 IEEE.

A malware detection system inspired on the human immune system

Malicious programs (malware) can cause severe damage on computer systems and data. The mechanism that the human immune system uses to detect and protect from organisms that threaten the human body is efficient and can be adapted to detect malware attacks. In this paper we propose a system to perform malware distributed collection, analysis and detection, this last inspired by the human immune system. After collecting malware samples from Internet, they are dynamically analyzed so as to provide execution traces at the operating system level and network flows that are used to create a behavioral model and to generate a detection signature. Those signatures serve as input to a malware detector, acting as the antibodies in the antigen detection process. This allows us to understand the malware attack and aids in the infection removal procedures. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

The embodied embedded character of system 1 processing

In the last thirty years, a relatively large group of cognitive scientists have begun characterising the mind in terms of two distinct, relatively autonomous systems. To account for paradoxes in empirical results of studies mainly on reasoning, Dual Process Theories were developed. Such Dual Process Theories generally agree that System 1 is rapid, automatic, parallel, and heuristic-based and System 2 is slow, capacity-demanding, sequential, and related to consciousness. While System 2 can still be decently understood from a traditional cognitivist approach, I will argue that it is essential for System 1 processing to be comprehended in an Embodied Embedded approach to Cognition.© MSM 2013.