Desenvolvimento de um Sistema de Visão Global para uma Frota de Mini-Robôs Móveis

Navigation based on visual feedback for robots, working in a closed environment, can be obtained settling a camera in each robot (local vision system). However, this solution requests a camera and capacity of local processing for each robot. When possible, a global vision system is a cheapest solution for this problem. In this case, one or a little amount of cameras, covering all the workspace, can be shared by the entire team of robots, saving the cost of a great amount of cameras and the associated processing hardware needed in a local vision system. This work presents the implementation and experimental results of a global vision system for mobile mini-robots, using robot soccer as test platform. The proposed vision system consists of a camera, a frame grabber and a computer (PC) for image processing. The PC is responsible for the team motion control, based on the visual feedback, sending commands to the robots through a radio link. In order for the system to be able to unequivocally recognize each robot, each one has a label on its top, consisting of two colored circles. Image processing algorithms were developed for the eficient computation, in real time, of all objects position (robot and ball) and orientation (robot). A great problem found was to label the color, in real time, of each colored point of the image, in time-varying illumination conditions. To overcome this problem, an automatic camera calibration, based on clustering K-means algorithm, was implemented. This method guarantees that similar pixels will be clustered around a unique color class. The obtained experimental results shown that the position and orientation of each robot can be obtained with a precision of few millimeters. The updating of the position and orientation was attained in real time, analyzing 30 frames per second

Obtenção de cerâmicas à base de tricálcio fosfatos utilizando óxido de manganês como aditivo

The calcium phosphate ceramics have been very investigated as material for bone implants. The tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) had a great potential for application in temporary implants like a resorbable bioceramic. This material presents a limitation in its sintering temperature due to occurrence of the allotropic transformation β → α at temperatures around 1200°C, not allowing the attainment of dense ceramic bodies. This transformation also causes cracks, what diminishes the mechanical strength, limiting its use to applications of low mechanical requests. This work studies the influence of the addition of manganese oxide in the sintering of β-TCP. Two processing routes were investigated. The first was the powder metallurgy conventional process. The test bodies (samples) were pressed and sintering at temperatures of 1200 and 1250°C. The second route was uniaxial hot pressing and its objective was to obtain samples with high relative density. The samples were physically characterized through density and porosity measurements. The thermal behavior was studied through dilatometric, thermal differential and thermogravimetric analysis. The mechanical properties were characterized by three point flexure test and Vickers microhardness measurements. The microstructure was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. The addition of manganese oxide caused an improvement of the mechanical strength in relation to the material without additive and promoting the stabilization of β-TCP to greater temperatures

Corn seed treatment with naphthalic anhydride against isoxaflutole phytotoxication action

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Avaliação por pig de perfilagem de danos superfciais nos materiais das paredes de dutos de petróleo

The modern technology of materials and structural integrity of pipelines requests the use of inspection tools named inspection pigs to detect, localize and measure the length, width and depth dimensions of the thickness losses of walls of buried and underwater pipelines in service. These tools run them internally, performing and recording measurements, with performance that varies according to the pig s technology. It has been developed recently an instrumented pig technology, called feller pig. This work aims to indicate factors that influence the feller pig technology performance in the detection and in the accuracy of measurement of the length, width and depth dimensions of the thickness losses on the internal surface of an oil pipeline wall under normal conditions of oil pipe inspection with pig. In this work, is made a collection of factors and an analyses of the technology based on the available literature, as well as an experiment to observe the technology and the factors operating. In the experiment, a feeler pig is used in a pipeline built in carbon steel and in operation that flows petroleum, in witch are observed areas with internal thickness losses occurred naturally. Some of these areas and their dimensions taken by automated ultra-sound scanner are compared with the ones indicated by the feller pig. Based on the data collection, on the analysis and on the experiment, the influence of factors object of this research is discussed. It is concluded that, among these, there are factors related to pipe fabrication tolerances, to wear of pig components, to internal adhesive wear of pipeline, to other pipeline damages and to technology characteristics. Finally, actions are suggested to know better, improve and define the applicability of this technology

Forró eletrônico: uma análise sobre a representação da figura feminina

Understanding music as a social manifestation, able to represent the time and culture along with their uses and mores, we look at the female figure in the electronic forró genre. Through a reading of the two genres musical and feminine we seek to identify the discourses present in the compositions, which refer to the feminine with thematic and/or terms referring to women. The study focuses on the compositions between 2009 to 2010 which became hits, ie.: those which have attained the highest number of listeners to 96 FM in a program named Paradão 96, broadcasted daily in the city of Natal/RN. Grounded in such concepts as cultural industry, mass culture, folkcommunication and gender, we analyze the processes of meaning production as a result of using the female figure and more accurately, about the representation of women through the discourse of this specific genre. We have chose the descriptive research with a qualitative approach and Discourse Analysis as a technique to identify the terms that refer to women, reflecting on what would be the possible meanings found in these speeches. We point out that in our investigation the female figure turned into a sexual object, erotic and submissive, in their turn, attributes usually given to women, was not a predominant result in the speech of electronic forró gender. With a variant thematic some playful and others about the betrayal of women we have identified that, to the surprise of many, including ourselves, romantic love was the one who led the audience requests during our time frame and that the female figure has several facets within the studied genre

O Gênero requerimento na perspectiva sociorretórica: análise da produção de graduandos no ambiente acadêmico-administrativo da UFRN

In administrative settings of public institutions, many activities are conducted through writing practices. Concerning this, writing is always connected to an activity we intend to perform. Among those practices, the genre request consists of an instrument through which the requirer addresses to an institution in order to request something under the support of legislation. Considering our work experience in a public institution of higher education, we elected - as object of our research - the genre request produced by undergraduates within the administrative domain of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) due to its importance in this context. For this, the theoretical framework adopted refers to the socio-rethorical conception of genre studies, which understands the genre as forms as rhetorically typified action (MILLER, 2009a; SWALES, 1990; BAZERMAN, 2009). Regarding methodology, it is a research associated to a qualitative approach (BODGAN; BIKLEN, 1994; CHIZZOTTI, 2010) whose discussion inserts into the field of Applied Linguistics. The data were generated from samples of requests and their users replies in questionnaires, interviews and verbal protocols of writing. The data analysis is based on the ethnographic methods of genre analysis postulated by Devitt, Reiff and Bawarshi (apud JOHNS et al., 2006). These analyses indicated that the requests are not always fully accomplished due to a lack of comprehension about the genre and its rhetorical situation on the part of the producers. It must probably happen - among other reasons - because these students may not have understood that several factors, such as: context, audience and purpose, affect the text production. We believe that one possibility to make the practice of this genre more efficient is to develop a more simple and practical way of elaborating requests, taking the needs imposed by the rhetorical situation as a basis

A intervenção do poder judiciário no acesso a medicamentos no Rio Grande do Norte: uma análise sob a ótica das políticas nacionais de medicamento e de assistência farmacêutica

The present study aimed to evaluate the inclusion of the principles of the National Medicines Policy - PNM and the Pharmaceutical assistance - PNAF in the prosecution of lawsuits involving medicines. To fulfill this necessity , data collection was performed on the website by the Tribunal Rio Grande do Norte - TJ RN ( Rio Grande do Norte Court) , in 2012 . It was obtained 115 judgments, which were analyzed in order to generate Monitoring Indicators from lawsuits and conduct content analysis proposed by Bardin (2006). The results showed that : a) 100 % of the decisions were favorable to the author , b) 76 % of decisions were requests by the trade name of the drug , c) only one drug (eculizumabe) had not granted by ANVISA , d) 36 % of drugs were present in the list of standard medicines in SUS , 16 % of primary care block and 20 % of specialized component , e) 76 % of the decisions presented the request of at least 01 non-standard medicine. With regard to decentralization of PNM and PNAF we observed a commitment to this principle at judicial decisions, to see that municipalities and states are often forced to buy medicines of responsibility from another federal entity or other tertiary units as CACONs and UNACONS. The content analysis revealed that the argument from the judges used when you utter their decisions was that the right to health is recognized by Brazilian law as a fundamental right and should be guaranteed by the State for all its citizens. So, health is more than budgetary constraints of federal entities, which are severally liable for lawsuits , regardless the medication requested belongs or not to a particular block of a pharmaceutical assistance funding. Given these data, it is observed that there are gaps in the judgment when it comes to the insertion of the words and principles of PNM and PNAF, creating then the need for greater dialogue between the executive and judicial, so that they may consider relevant the effectiveness and application of such principles to minimize the negative consequences of the phenomenon of health judicialisation. Keywords: Judicialisation, Medicines, Public Policy, Pharmaceutical Care

Desenvolvimento e implantação de um sistema de gestão de pedidos de informação endereçados à Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte a partir do serviço de informações ao cidadão (E-SIC)

Among the numerous policy changes that the world has experienced in recent years, occupies a prominent place in the quest for greater transparency of public agencies. Transparency has been an important tool in the accountability of the State to promote greater participation of the society by providing information that was previously restricted knowledge of public agencies. Brazil, following this trend, promulgated in May 2012 the Access to Information Act that seeks to disclose the actions of the State at all levels, in all public administration agencies. On the same day of the enactment of the law is provided society with a site that is empowering citizens to make their requests for information to government agencies. The Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, which at that time had no a tool to assist them in managing this demand. This project has the objective to describe, build and implement a solution to solve this problem using Design Science Research as methodology. As result, the solution built in this research became a new module of the institution s ERP became it capable to control the entire process, and will be helpful to others partners which use our system ERP

Avaliação do comportamento de argila ativada na presença de água destilada, soluções salinas e inibidores de hidratação catiônicos

The clay swelling is today one of the major problems during the well drilling. Nearly 50% of clays that constitute shale expand easily in the presence of water molecules. During the drilling of a geological formation containing swelling clays, when is feasible the use of water base fluids, it is necessary to apply clay inhibitors. This avoids the incorporation of the cutting to the drilling fluid which is responsible for the wall swelling and crumbling. The aim of this work was to evaluate the synergistic behavior that occurs when swelling clay inhibitors are associated to NaCl and KCl salts. Three swelling clay inhibitors samples, INIB A, INIB B and INIB C, were analyzed. Each inhibitor was characterized by the amount of chlorides and active matter content. For the water-clay interaction evaluation in the presence of various fluids, it was used the Capillary Suction Timer (CST, Fann) and Linear Swell Meter (LSM 2000, Fann). For better interpretation of results, a Design of Experiments (DOE, Umetrics MODDE 7.0 TM) through Result Surface Methodology (RSM) was employed, taking into account the type, the swelling inhibitors concentration and the contact time with the clay. The results showed different efficiencies among the inhibitors employed, and the salt-inhibitors mixtures were more efficient than those products alone. However, for field operation, other parameters should be taking into account, as operational cost, environmental requests and time of application for each product

Projeto de Sistemas Integrados de Propósito Geral Baseados em Redes em Chip Expandindo as Funcionalidades dos Roteadores para Execução de Operações: A plataforma IPNoSys

It bet on the next generation of computers as architecture with multiple processors and/or multicore processors. In this sense there are challenges related to features interconnection, operating frequency, the area on chip, power dissipation, performance and programmability. The mechanism of interconnection and communication it was considered ideal for this type of architecture are the networks-on-chip, due its scalability, reusability and intrinsic parallelism. The networks-on-chip communication is accomplished by transmitting packets that carry data and instructions that represent requests and responses between the processing elements interconnected by the network. The transmission of packets is accomplished as in a pipeline between the routers in the network, from source to destination of the communication, even allowing simultaneous communications between pairs of different sources and destinations. From this fact, it is proposed to transform the entire infrastructure communication of network-on-chip, using the routing mechanisms, arbitration and storage, in a parallel processing system for high performance. In this proposal, the packages are formed by instructions and data that represent the applications, which are executed on routers as well as they are transmitted, using the pipeline and parallel communication transmissions. In contrast, traditional processors are not used, but only single cores that control the access to memory. An implementation of this idea is called IPNoSys (Integrated Processing NoC System), which has an own programming model and a routing algorithm that guarantees the execution of all instructions in the packets, preventing situations of deadlock, livelock and starvation. This architecture provides mechanisms for input and output, interruption and operating system support. As proof of concept was developed a programming environment and a simulator for this architecture in SystemC, which allows configuration of various parameters and to obtain several results to evaluate it

Um monitor de metadados de QoS e QoC para plataformas de middleware

Context-aware applications are typically dynamic and use services provided by several sources, with different quality levels. Context information qualities are expressed in terms of Quality of Context (QoC) metadata, such as precision, correctness, refreshment, and resolution. On the other hand, service qualities are expressed via Quality of Services (QoS) metadata such as response time, availability and error rate. In order to assure that an application is using services and context information that meet its requirements, it is essential to continuously monitor the metadata. For this purpose, it is needed a QoS and QoC monitoring mechanism that meet the following requirements: (i) to support measurement and monitoring of QoS and QoC metadata; (ii) to support synchronous and asynchronous operation, thus enabling the application to periodically gather the monitored metadata and also to be asynchronously notified whenever a given metadata becomes available; (iii) to use ontologies to represent information in order to avoid ambiguous interpretation. This work presents QoMonitor, a module for QoS and QoC metadata monitoring that meets the abovementioned requirement. The architecture and implementation of QoMonitor are discussed. To support asynchronous communication QoMonitor uses two protocols: JMS and Light-PubSubHubbub. In order to illustrate QoMonitor in the development of ubiquitous application it was integrated to OpenCOPI (Open COntext Platform Integration), a Middleware platform that integrates several context provision middleware. To validate QoMonitor we used two applications as proofof- concept: an oil and gas monitoring application and a healthcare application. This work also presents a validation of QoMonitor in terms of performance both in synchronous and asynchronous requests

O idoso e a ressignificação emocional do lazer

A sociedade contemporânea vê-se desafiada a responder qualitativamente às demandas da ciência e da tecnologia, cujas ressonâncias afetam as múltiplas dimensões humanas. Uma delas, o aumento da longevidade, vem requisitando políticas e programas sociais voltados à qualidade de vida, incluindo o âmbito do lazer. Este estudo qualitativo objetivou identificar aspectos emocionais na percepção de idosos, durante vivências no lazer. Os dados foram coletados por meio de questionário misto, aplicado a uma amostra de 20 participantes, de ambos os sexos. Foram analisados descritivamente pela Técnica de Análise de Conteúdo, revelando recorrências de crescimento positivo como a relação interpessoal e o respeito mútuo, a contemplação, a sensação de harmonia com a natureza, o elemento lúdico, entre outros, também responsáveis pelo vínculo afetivo do grupo. Conclui-se que experiências significativas no âmbito do lazer, capazes de contemplar a gama de necessidades e expectativas do homem, contribuem para a ressignificação emocional do lazer nesta fase do desenvolvimento.

SECAGEM DE SEMENTES DE SOJA em SILO COM DISTRIBUIÇÃO RADIAL do FLUXO DE AR: II. EFEITOS SOBRE A QUALIDADE DAS SEMENTES

O trabalho avaliou, em sementes de soja, as conseqüências qualitativas provenientes da secagem estacionária com distribuição radial de ar, variando o fluxo (26,9, 28,4 e 33,2 m³/minuto/t) e a temperatura do ar insuflado (42, 46 e 50ºC), considerando a posição das sementes na massa (17, 34 e 51 cm em relação ao cilindro de insuflação) e o tempo de secagem (0 a 12 horas, com intervalos de quatro horas). Para tanto, além das determinações das temperaturas e dos teores de água da massa, foi avaliado o desempenho fisiológico das sementes no início e ao final de seis meses de armazenamento. Apesar das vantagens físicas operacionais resultantes da combinação entre o fluxo e a temperatura intermediários (28,4 m³/minuto/t e 46ºC), a qualidade fisiológica foi menos prejudicada nas combinações dos menores fluxos (26,9 e 28,4 m³/minuto/t) com a maior temperatura (50ºC) e do maior fluxo (33,2 m³/minuto/t) com as menores temperaturas (42 e 46ºC); entre estas, levando em conta os aspectos físico-operacionais, a associação de 28,4 m³/minuto/t com 50ºC foi a mais eficiente na retirada de água das sementes. Assim, admitindo os intervalos de fluxo (26,9 a 33,2 m³/minuto/t) e de temperatura (42 a 50ºC) estudados, conclui-se que a elevação na temperatura demanda redução no fluxo e, inversamente, o aumento no fluxo demanda redução na temperatura.

Florescimento e frutificação do maracujazeiro silvestre Passiflora setacea D. C. cultivado em Jaboticabal, SP

Muitas espécies de Passiflora apresentam comportamento florífero diferente durante o ano e, consequentemente, com variações nas produções e períodos de colheitas, como observado para o maracujazeiro-amarelo (Passiflora edulis sims). Estudo com espécies silvestre constitui-se numa importante alternativa para usos de novos genótipos no melhoramento das espécies cultivadas comercialmente, em especial, a Passiflora setacea, devido ao grande potencial de mercado; contudo, essa espécie é pouco estudada, principalmente em relação à propagação, germinação, floração e condições de armazenamento. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o florescimento e a frutificação do maracujazeiro silvestre Passiflora setacea cultivado em Jaboticabal-SP. A floração e a frutificação foram avaliadas pelo percentual de frutificação através da polinização natural e artificial das flores, realizado no período de agosto a outubro. As características físicas dos frutos foram avaliadas através dos seguintes parâmetros: a) massa do fruto (g); b) diâmetro longitudinal do fruto (cm); c) diâmetro transversal do fruto (cm); d) espessura da casca (cm); e) rendimento de polpa (%). A característica química foi determinada por meio do teor de sólidos solúveis (SS). Verificou-se que a Passiflora setacea apresentou precocidade de floração em relação ao maracujazeiro-amarelo, com florescimento durante o ano todo, nas condições de Jaboticabal-SP. Observou-se que essa espécie possui bom nível de tolerância às doenças foliares, resistência à morte precoce e apresenta diferentes níveis de compatibilidade entre as plantas, possibilitando a essas características serem utilizadas em programas de melhoramento genético. Constatou-se ainda que as características físicas encontradas nos frutos atendem às exigências da indústria.

Promovendo a interação mãe-criança com implante coclear: um estudo de caso

O objetivo deste estudo foi verificar os efeitos de uma intervenção conduzida com a mãe de uma criança com implante coclear através da avaliação de mudanças comportamentais identificadas após o programa. Participou deste estudo uma díade mãe ouvinte-criança com deficiência auditiva e implante coclear, filmada em quatro sessões de observação: uma situação de brinquedo e outra do cotidiano, antes e após a intervenção. Esta constou de dois encontros nos quais a mãe assistiu às filmagens e foi orientada quanto à sua conduta com relação à criança. Os resultados mostraram aumento no número de verbalizações maternas nas categorias informar e solicitar, bem como de falas da criança nas categorias falar espontaneamente e fazer solicitação, quando comparadas as medidas pré e pós-testes nas duas situações observadas. O estudo mostra a importância de intervenções que favoreçam a relação mãe-filho para o desenvolvimento de habilidades comunicativas da criança com deficiência auditiva e implante coclear.