Comunicação e interação social da criança com perturbação do espectro do autismo

A Comunicação e a Interação Social da criança com Espectro do Autismo é o tema deste projeto. Esta investigação incide no estudo de caso de uma criança em idade pré-escolar com esta problemática, através do qual pretendemos compreender quais as suas dificuldades na comunicação e na Interação Social, estratégias aplicadas na sala e respetivas melhorias. Para tal, entrevistámos os técnicos que trabalham com a criança, onde apurámos as dificuldades da mesma. Também registámos que o papel do adulto, a componente lúdica, as medidas previstas na legislação, o recurso a terapias e um ambiente educativo estruturado, são estratégias facilitadoras da Interação e da Comunicação da criança com PEA. Daí que, face a estas estratégias, se tenha verificado uma evolução positiva. Contudo, os técnicos também registaram algumas discrepâncias na comunicação e na interação que a criança revela com os pares e com os adultos. Para verificar esta situação e finalizar o estudo, observámos a criança onde concluímos que esta tem mais dificuldades em comunicar e interagir com os adultos, do que com os pares. Concluímos que a inclusão de crianças com PEA no ensino regular é uma mais-valia no desenvolvimento das suas competências comunicativas e da interação social.

Perturbações do Espectro do Autismo : estratégias inclusivas na sala regular do 1º CEB

Este estudo teve como objetivo principal identificar estratégias utilizadas pelos professores na sala regular para desenvolver competências cognitivas e sociais dos alunos com Perturbações do Espectro do Autismo. Esta perturbação do desenvolvimento assenta numa tríade de incapacidades que comprometem o sucesso do aluno, afetando as áreas da comunicação, socialização e comportamento. O estudo empírico teve por base um trabalho de natureza qualitativa, recorrendo-se à análise de conteúdo de entrevistas a professores de Ensino Regular e de Educação Especial de um Agrupamento de Escolas do distrito de Santarém. Procurou averiguar-se os benefícios e desvantagens da inclusão de um aluno autista, verificar se os professores identificam caraterísticas típicas desta problemática e aferir estratégias desenvolvidas com estes alunos. A partir da pesquisa realizada é possível constatar que os professores referem mais benefícios do que desvantagens na inclusão, indicam caraterísticas típicas do autismo e enunciam como estratégias a utilização do computador e a adaptação das atividades para a promoção das competências cognitivas e o convívio entre pares e os jogos com vista ao desenvolvimento das competências sociais. Pretende-se que este estudo contribua para que os professores do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico promovam estratégias cada vez mais diferenciadas com vista ao sucesso dos alunos.

Los derechos de uso comercializables de frecuencias del espectro radioeléctrico para la explotación del servicio de radiodifusión en el Ecuador

El trabajo de investigación desarrollado, realiza un análisis de los aspectos regulatorios del espectro radioeléctrico en general, y de manera particular, el atribuido a los servicios de radiodifusión sonora y de televisión en el Ecuador. Se realiza una descripción de las funcionalidades de la gestión del espectro y se identifican los elementos constitutivos de carácter técnico y legal para la explotación del servicio de radiodifusión en el Ecuador, considerando el principio rector de la eficiencia en una nueva modalidad de gestión del espectro bajo consideraciones de mercado.

Gestión del espectro radioeléctrico en Ecuador: nueva modalidad para radiodifusión y televisión abierta

Más allá de las debilidades que tiene la administración centralizada del espectro radioeléctrico, se reconoce que los agentes del mercado: operadores y fabricantes de equipos, poseen más conocimiento sobre el espectro que requieren, así como también, más información con respecto a las tecnologías apropiadas para desplegar redes, proveer servicios y las preferencias de los consumidores, en este sentido, puede pensarse que algunas de las decisiones que le correspondería a la administración, deberían ser tomadas por los que usan eventualmente el espectro. Para hacer frente a la presión de los mercados y al rápido cambio tecnológico, un número creciente de países han empezado a desregular partes de sus regímenes de la gestión del espectro, sustituyendo su acción tradicional centralizada de comando y control sobre este recurso, por un acercamiento basado en el mercado. Su objetivo fundamental es llegar a gestionar el espectro radioeléctrico como recurso limitado, asegurando su disponibilidad para usos públicos y privados, bajo los principios de eficiencia, técnicos, económicos y sociales. En Ecuador, particularmente para la prestación de los servicios de radiodifusión, se identifica, que hay una demanda creciente, tanto para el acceso a las frecuencias principales como para las frecuencias auxiliares de dicho servicio, las que al momento han agotado en un gran porcentaje su disponibilidad, no obstante, también se aprecia, que ciertos operadores han empezado a utilizar de manera más eficiente algunos segmentos del sistema de transmisión inalámbrico, como es el caso de los enlaces que transportan las señales de radiodifusión de televisión, desde las estaciones matrices hacia las estaciones repetidoras o relevadores, agregando el audio de operadores de radiodifusión sonora, a la subportadora de sus enlaces.

Causes of the apparent scale independence of fractal indices associated with forest fragmentation in Bolivia

In a recent investigation, Landsat TM and ETM+ data were used to simulate different resolutions of remotely-sensed images (from 30 to 1100 m) and to analyze the effect of resolution on a range of landscape metrics associated with spatial patterns of forest fragmentation in Chapare, Bolivia since the mid-1980s. Whereas most metrics were found to be highly dependent on pixel size, several fractal metrics (DLFD, MPFD, and AWMPFD) were apparently independent of image resolution, in contradiction with a sizeable body of literature indicating that fractal dimensions of natural objects depend strongly on image characteristics. The present re-analysis of the Chapare images, using two alternative algorithms routinely used for the evaluation of fractal dimensions, shows that the values of the box-counting and information fractal dimensions are systematically larger, sometimes by as much as 85%, than the "fractal" indices DLFD, MPFD, and AWMFD for the same images. In addition, the geometrical fractal features of the forest and non-forest patches in the Chapare region strongly depend on the resolution of images used in the analysis. The largest dependency on resolution occurs for the box-counting fractal dimension in the case of the non-forest patches in 1993, where the difference between the 30 and I 100 m-resolution images corresponds to 24% of the full theoretical range (1.0 to 2.0) of the mass fractal dimension. The observation that the indices DLFD, MPFD, and AWMPFD, unlike the classical fractal dimensions, appear relatively unaffected by resolution in the case of the Chapare images seems due essentially to the fact that these indices are based on a heuristic, "non-geometric" approach to fractals. Because of their lack of a foundation in fractal geometry, nothing guarantees that these indices will be resolution-independent in general. (C) 2006 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Beurling zeta functions, generalised primes, and fractal membranes

We study generalised prime systems P (1 < p(1) <= p(2) <= ..., with p(j) is an element of R tending to infinity) and the associated Beurling zeta function zeta p(s) = Pi(infinity)(j=1)(1 - p(j)(-s))(-1). Under appropriate assumptions, we establish various analytic properties of zeta p(s), including its analytic continuation, and we characterise the existence of a suitable generalised functional equation. In particular, we examine the relationship between a counterpart of the Prime Number Theorem (with error term) and the properties of the analytic continuation of zeta p(s). Further we study 'well-behaved' g-prime systems, namely, systems for which both the prime and integer counting function are asymptotically well-behaved. Finally, we show that there exists a natural correspondence between generalised prime systems and suitable orders on N-2. Some of the above results are relevant to the second author's theory of 'fractal membranes', whose spectral partition functions are given by Beurling-type zeta functions, as well as to joint work of that author and R. Nest on zeta functions attached to quasicrystals.

Fractal quantization

A Fractal Quantizer is proposed that replaces the expensive division operation for the computation of scalar quantization by more modest and available multiplication, addition and shift operations. Although the proposed method is iterative in nature, simulations prove a virtually undetectable distortion to the naked eve for JPEG compressed images using a single iteration. The method requires a change to the usual tables used in JPEG algorithins but of similar size. For practical purposes, performing quantization is reduced to a multiplication plus addition operation easily programmed in either low-end embedded processors and suitable for efficient and very high speed implementation in ASIC or FPGA hardware. FPGA hardware implementation shows up to x15 area-time savingscompared to standars solutions for devices with dedicated multipliers. The method can be also immediately extended to perform adaptive quantization(1).

Characterization and classification of tumor lesions using computerized fractal-based texture analysis and support vector machines in digital mammograms

Objective: This paper presents a detailed study of fractal-based methods for texture characterization of mammographic mass lesions and architectural distortion. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of fractal and lacunarity analysis for the characterization and classification of both tumor lesions and normal breast parenchyma in mammography. Materials and methods: We conducted comparative evaluations of five popular fractal dimension estimation methods for the characterization of the texture of mass lesions and architectural distortion. We applied the concept of lacunarity to the description of the spatial distribution of the pixel intensities in mammographic images. These methods were tested with a set of 57 breast masses and 60 normal breast parenchyma (dataset1), and with another set of 19 architectural distortions and 41 normal breast parenchyma (dataset2). Support vector machines (SVM) were used as a pattern classification method for tumor classification. Results: Experimental results showed that the fractal dimension of region of interest (ROIs) depicting mass lesions and architectural distortion was statistically significantly lower than that of normal breast parenchyma for all five methods. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that fractional Brownian motion (FBM) method generated the highest area under ROC curve (A z = 0.839 for dataset1, 0.828 for dataset2, respectively) among five methods for both datasets. Lacunarity analysis showed that the ROIs depicting mass lesions and architectural distortion had higher lacunarities than those of ROIs depicting normal breast parenchyma. The combination of FBM fractal dimension and lacunarity yielded the highest A z value (0.903 and 0.875, respectively) than those based on single feature alone for both given datasets. The application of the SVM improved the performance of the fractal-based features in differentiating tumor lesions from normal breast parenchyma by generating higher A z value. Conclusion: FBM texture model is the most appropriate model for characterizing mammographic images due to self-affinity assumption of the method being a better approximation. Lacunarity is an effective counterpart measure of the fractal dimension in texture feature extraction in mammographic images. The classification results obtained in this work suggest that the SVM is an effective method with great potential for classification in mammographic image analysis.

Fractal spatialities

This paper argues for the use of ‘fractals’ in theorising sociospatial relations. From a realist position, a nonmathematical but nonmetaphoric and descriptive view of ‘fractals’ is advanced. Insights from the natural sciences are combined with insights on the position of the observer from Luhmann and notions of assemblages and repetitions from Deleuze. It is argued that the notion of ‘fractals’ can augment current understanding of sociospatialities in three ways. First, it can pose questions about the scalar position of the observer or the grain of observation; second, as a signifier of particular attributes, it prompts observation and description of particular structuring processes; and third, the epistemic access afforded by the concept can open up possibilities for transformative interventions and thereby inform the same. The theoretical usefulness of the concept is demonstrated by discussing the territory, place, scale, and networks (TPSN) model for theorising sociospatial relations advanced by B Jessop, N Brenner, and M Jones in their 2008 paper “Theorizing sociospatial relations”, published in this journal (volume 26, pages 389–401). It is suggested that a heuristic arising from a ‘fractal’ ontology can contribute to a polymorphous, as opposed to polyvalent, understanding of sociospatial relations.

Fractal spaces in planning and governance

This paper discusses concepts of space within the planning literature, the issues they give rise to and the gaps they reveal. It then introduces the notion of 'fractals' borrowed from complexity theory and illustrates how it unconsciously appears in planning practice. It then moves on to abstract the core dynamics through which fractals can be consciously applied and illustrates their working through a reinterpretation of the People's Planning Campaign of Kerala, India. Finally it highlights the key contribution of the fractal concept and the advantages that this conceptualisation brings to planning.

Fractal-to-Euclidean crossover of the isotropy restoration feature in a family of fractal resistor networks

Fractal with microscopic anisotropy shows a unique type of macroscopic isotropy restoration phenomenon that is absent in Euclidean space [M. T. Barlow et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3042]. In this paper the isotropy restoration feature is considered for a family of two-dimensional Sierpinski gasket type fractal resistor networks. A parameter xi is introduced to describe this phenomenon. Our numerical results show that xi satisfies the scaling law xi similar to l(-alpha), where l is the system size and alpha is an exponent independent of the degree of microscopic anisotropy, characterizing the isotropy restoration feature of the fractal systems. By changing the underlying fractal structure towards the Euclidean triangular lattice through increasing the side length b of the gasket generators, the fractal-to-Euclidean crossover behavior of the isotropy restoration feature is discussed.

Fractal geometry of aggregate snowflakes revealed by triple wavelength radar measurements

Radar reflectivity measurements from three different wavelengths are used to retrieve information about the shape of aggregate snowflakes in deep stratiform ice clouds. Dual-wavelength ratios are calculated for different shape models and compared to observations at 3, 35 and 94 GHz. It is demonstrated that many scattering models, including spherical and spheroidal models, do not adequately describe the aggregate snowflakes that are observed. The observations are consistent with fractal aggregate geometries generated by a physically-based aggregation model. It is demonstrated that the fractal dimension of large aggregates can be inferred directly from the radar data. Fractal dimensions close to 2 are retrieved, consistent with previous theoretical models and in-situ observations.