A treatise of algebra, in three parts. Containing I. The fundamental rules and operations; II. The composition and resolution of equations of all degrees, and the different affections of their roots; III. The application of algebra and geometry to each other. To which is added an appendix concerning the general properties of geometrical lines.

Appendix in Latin.

Simulation and modelling tools for quantitative safety assessments of unmanned aircraft systems and operations

This paper presents two simple simulation and modelling tools designed to aid in the safety assessment required for unmanned aircraft operations within unsegregated airspace. First, a fast pair-wise encounter generator is derived to simulate the See and Avoid environment. The utility of the encounter generator is demonstrated through the development of a hybrid database and a statistical performance evaluation of an autonomous See and Avoid decision and control strategy. Second, an unmanned aircraft mission generator is derived to help visualise the impact of multiple persistent unmanned operations on existing air traffic. The utility of the mission generator is demonstrated through an example analysis of a mixed airspace environment using real traffic data in Australia. These simulation and modelling approaches constitute a useful and extensible set of analysis tools, that can be leveraged to help explore some of the more fundamental and challenging problems facing civilian unmanned aircraft system integration.

Automated Computation of the Fundamental Matrix for Vision-Based Construction Site Applications

Estimating the fundamental matrix (F), to determine the epipolar geometry between a pair of images or video frames, is a basic step for a wide variety of vision-based functions used in construction operations, such as camera-pair calibration, automatic progress monitoring, and 3D reconstruction. Currently, robust methods (e.g., SIFT + normalized eight-point algorithm + RANSAC) are widely used in the construction community for this purpose. Although they can provide acceptable accuracy, the significant amount of required computational time impedes their adoption in real-time applications, especially video data analysis with many frames per second. Aiming to overcome this limitation, this paper presents and evaluates the accuracy of a solution to find F by combining the use of two speedy and consistent methods: SURF for the selection of a robust set of point correspondences and the normalized eight-point algorithm. This solution is tested extensively on construction site image pairs including changes in viewpoint, scale, illumination, rotation, and moving objects. The results demonstrate that this method can be used for real-time applications (5 image pairs per second with the resolution of 640 × 480) involving scenes of the built environment.

Screw conveyor device for laboratory tests on conditioned soil for EPB tunneling operations

Earth pressure balanced (EPB) full face tunneling machines have experienced a remarkable increase in the number of applications throughout the world due to both mechanical developments and a more effective use of additives to condition the ground. Conditioning modifies the mechanical and hydraulic properties of a soil by making it suitable for the pressure control in the bulk chamber and extraction with the screw conveyor. The extraction system plays a fundamental role during the EPB operations particularly for a correct application of the face pressure. Despite the extensive use of the EPB technique, little knowledge exists concerning the understanding of the behavior of conditioned soil, particularly for noncohesive ground (sand and gravel). This paper presents and describes a prototype laboratory device, which simulates the extraction of the ground from a pressurized tank with a screw conveyor. The results of a preliminary test program carried out on a medium sized sand show that the prototype device is efficient in verifying the effects of foam for an optimal use in EPB conditioning. © 2007 ASCE.

Biologically Plausible Neural Circuits for Realization of Maximum Operations

Object recognition in the visual cortex is based on a hierarchical architecture, in which specialized brain regions along the ventral pathway extract object features of increasing levels of complexity, accompanied by greater invariance in stimulus size, position, and orientation. Recent theoretical studies postulate a non-linear pooling function, such as the maximum (MAX) operation could be fundamental in achieving such invariance. In this paper, we are concerned with neurally plausible mechanisms that may be involved in realizing the MAX operation. Four canonical circuits are proposed, each based on neural mechanisms that have been previously discussed in the context of cortical processing. Through simulations and mathematical analysis, we examine the relative performance and robustness of these mechanisms. We derive experimentally verifiable predictions for each circuit and discuss their respective physiological considerations.

Operations research/management science tools for integrating people with disabilities into employment. A study on Valencia`s Sheltered Work Centres for Disabled

People with disabilities have a right to a full life in every sense and one of those fundamental rights is the possibility to work. In this paper, the importance of social employment integration of disabled people is highlighted as one of the stakeholders to be satisfied by companies in the new framework that corporate social responsibility is constructing. The objective of the paper is to revise the benefits of some well-known operations research/management science tools that, if applied correctly, have a double positive impact on work accessibility and improved productivity. The responses collected from managers of Valencia`s ShelteredWork Centres for Disabled by means of a structured questionnaire are used to analyse the level of implementation of these tools and their impact depending on the type of centre, the kind of disability and other structural variables.

Operations strategy in perspective: the means for achieving superior performance

Manufacturing strategy has been widely studied and it is increasingly gaining attention. It has a fundamental role that is to translate the business strategy to the operations by developing the capabilities that are needed by the company in order to accomplish the desired performance. More precisely, manufacturing strategy comprises the decisions that managers take during a certain period of time in order to achieve a desire result. These decisions are related to which operational practices and resources are implemented. Our goal was to identify the relationship between these two decisions with operational performance. We based our arguments on the resource-based view for identifying sources of competitive advantage. Hence, we argued that operational practices and resources affect positively the operational performances. Additionally, we proposed that in the presence of some resources the implementation of operational practices would lead to a greater performance. We used previous scales for measuring operational practices and performance, and developed new constructs for resources. The data used is part of the High Performance Manufacturing project and the sample is composed by 291 plants. Through confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regressions we found that operational practices to a certain extant are positively related to operational performance. More specifically, the results show that JIT and customer orientation practices have a positive relationship with quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost performances. Moreover, we found that resources like technology and people explain a great variance of operational performance.

Pedagogia etnomatemática : ações e reflexões em matemática do Ensino Fundamental com um grupo sócio cultural específico

mongst the trends in Mathematics Education, which have as their object a more significant and criticallearning, is the Ethnomathematics. This field of knowledge, still very recent amongst us, besides analyzing an externalist history of the sciences in a search for a relationship between the development of the scientific disciplines and the socio-cultural context, goes beyond this externalism, for it also approaches the intimate relationships betwe_n cognition and culture. In fact, the Ethnomathematics proposes an alternative epistemological approach associated with a wider historiography. It struggles to understand the reality and come to the pedagogical action by means of a cognitive approach with strong cultural basis. But the difficulty of inserting the Ethnomathematics into the educational context is met by resistance from some mathematics educators who seem indifferent to the influence of the culture on the understanding of the mathematics ideas. It was with such concerns in mind that I started this paper that had as object to develop a curricular reorientation pedagogical proposal in mathematics education, at the levei of the 5th grade of the Ensino Fundamental (Elementary School), built from the mathematical knowledge of a vegetable farmers community, 30 km away from the center of Natal/RN, but in accordance with the teaching dimensions of mathematics of the 1 st and 2nd cycles proposed by the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais - PCN: Numbers and Operations, Space and Form, Units and Measures, and Information Treatment. To achieve that, I developed pedagogical activities from the mathematical concepts of the vegetable farmers of that community, explained in my dissertation research in the period 2000 through 2002. The pedagogical process was developed from August through Oecember 2007 with 24 students of the 5th Grade of the Ensino Fundamental (Elementary School) of the school of that community. The qualitative analysis of the data was conducted taking into account three categories of students: one made up of students that helped their parents in the work with vegetables. Another one by students whose parents and relatives worked with vegetables, though they did not participate directly of this working process and one third category of students that never worked with vegetables, not to mention their parents, but lived adjacent to that community. From the analyses and results of the data gathered by these three distinct categories of students, I concluded that those students that assisted their parents with the daily work with vegetables solved the problem-situations with understanding, and, sometimes, with enriching contributions to the proposed problems. The other categories of students, in spite of the various field researches to the gardens of that community, before and during the pedagogical activities, did not show the same results as those students/vegetable farmers, but showed interest and motivation in ali activities of the pedagogical process in that period

Managing object identity with less I/O operations

Non-conventional database management systems are used to achieve a better performance when dealing with complex data. One fundamental concept of these systems is object identity (OID). Two techniques can be used for the implementation of OIDs: physical or logical. A logical implementation of OIDs, based on an Indirection Table, is used by NuGeM, a multimedia data manager kernel which is described in this paper. NuGeM Indirection Table allows the relocation of all pages in a database. The proposed strategy modifies the workings of this table so that it is possible to reduce considerably the number of I/O operations during the request and release of pages containing objects and their OIDs. Tests show a reduction of 84% in reading operations and a 67% reduction in writing operations when pages are requested. Although no changes were observed in writing operations during the release of pages, a 100% of reduction in reading operations was obtained. © 2012 IEEE.

Análise de sequências didáticas de gêneros direcionadas ao ensinoaprendizagem de língua materna no Ensino Fundamental: aportes do interacionismo sociodiscursivo

Pós-graduação em Linguística e Língua Portuguesa - FCLAR

Frontex and the respect of fundamental rights: from better protection to full responsibility. EPC Policy Brief, 3 June 2014

The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Frontex) was created to improve border management cooperation between Member States. Seen from its inception as a security-oriented body, tools and rules have been gradually developed to enhance the human rights dimension and protection regarding Frontex activities. However, this step has not been accompanied with the explicit recognition of Frontex’s legal responsibility regarding violations of human rights occurring during joint operations it coordinates. Despite Frontex position rejecting such a responsibility, it is no longer clear whether this position can be maintained, as Yves Pascouau and Pascal Schumacher demonstrate in this Policy Brief.

Fundamental studies in automatic vehicle control. Interim report.

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Research and Development, Washington, D.C.

Fundamental studies in automatic vehicle control. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Research, Washington, D.C.

Operações linguístico-discursivas em relatos retextualizados por alunos do ensino fundamental

The following paper attempted to investigate and discuss the possible improvements in the writing of students from the public network in the 6th grade of elementary school. This research was run in the professional master degree In Portuguese Language. Also based upon Genetic Criticism, this study attempting to analyze in which way and in which proportions the alterations done in the texts reveal and perspective capacity in the students as they replace, broad, remove or just move terms in their assignments. We tried to develop our analysis in the pragmatic perspective in which Textual Linguistic is included, investigating the texts and appreciating them as a construction process of meaning. Our theoretical discussion will be based on and socio-interactional conception of language (MARCUSCHI, 2008), as well as in the postulates of Analyze of Discursion (ADAM, 2010, 2008). It has also been used the theoretical assumptions taken from Genetic Criticism which regard the relation between text and genesis, due to the fact that it considers the text and a the result of a construction of progressive elaboration and the writing as an activity of constant movement (DE BIASI, [2000] 2010; GRÉSILLON, 1989; [1990] 2008; [1992] 2002; SALLES, 2008a). To assemble the data in this research we took into consideration the social variables related to the students and the sociocultural context. Nonetheless, this investigation point towards a real classroom situation where we tried to analyze the language functioning in application conditions, thus, giving us authority to describe more precisely the reality we lived in, which provided us with a more attentive look to the observed particularities. This description of the reality appreciated built a path that point to a research of qualitative data approach to which meanings deriving from interpretation were attributed. To conduct this research we resourced to the Action-Research process. The data are comprised of ten personal reports that were created from rewriting assignments, which constitutes a range of twenty texts assessed starting from the linguistic operations acknowledged by Generative Grammar and continued by Lebrave and Grésillon (2009). As result of this analysis, we identified the operation of adding more often than the other ones. The replacement and removal operations display a very close offspring. Nevertheless, the moving operation was scarcely used. These results, besides demonstrating linguistic creativity of the students, revealed that for a text to be seen as “concluded”, the writing student articulates new elaborations through these linguistic operators and that these movements of coming and going, of erasures and amendments contribute significantly for the teacher to approach the relationship the student keeps with his textual and discursive expression, and then, with that, to hold information that eventually provides individual and collective directions in school productions.