DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATED BIOPROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PRODUCTION OF PECTIC OLIGOSACCHARIDES (POS) FROM AGRO-PROCESSING RESIDUES

This research deals with the production of pectic oligosaccharides (POS) from agro-industrial residues, with specific focus on development of continuous cross flow enzyme membrane reactor. Pectic oligosaccharides have recently gained attention due to their prebiotic activity. Lack of information on the continuous production of POS from agro-industrial residues formed the basis for the present study. Four residues i.e sugar beet pulp, onion hulls, pressed pumpkin cake and berry pomace were taken to study their pectin content. Based on the presence of higher galacturonic acid and arabinose (both homogalacturonan and rhamnogalacturonan) in sugar beet pulp and galacturonic acid (only homogalacturonan) in onion hulls, further optimization of different extraction methods of pectin (causing minimum damage to pectic chain) from these residues were done. The most suitable extractant for sugar beet pulp and onion hulls were nitric acid and sodium hexametaphosphate respectively. Further the experiments on the continuous production of POS from sugar beet pulp in an enzyme membrane reactor was initiated. Several optimization experiments indicated the optimum enzyme (Viscozyme) as well as feed concentration (25 g/L) to be used for producing POS from sugar beet pulp in an enzyme membrane reactor. The results highlighted that steady state POS production with volumetric and specific productivity of 22g/L/h and 11 g/gE/h respectively could be achieved by continuous cross flow filtration of sugar beet pulp pectic extract over 10 kDa membrane at residence time of 20 min. The POS yield of about 80% could be achieved using above conditions. Also, in this thesis preliminary experiments on the production and characterization of POS from onion hulls were conducted. The results revelaed that the most suitable enzyme for POS production from onion hulls is endo-polygalacturonase M2. The POS produced from onion hulls were present in the form of DP1 -DP10 in substituted as well as unsubstituted forms. This study clearly demonstrates that continuous production of POS from pectin rich sources can be achieved by using cross flow continuous enzyme membrane reactor.

COMUNICAÇÃO PÚBLICA: UMA LEITURA CRÍTICA ENTRE O INSTITUCIONAL E O MERCADOLÓGICO

A pesquisa ora apresentada discute os processos comunicacionais e de gestão no desenvolvimento de atividades de Comunicação Pública. Sobretudo aqueles que sejam capazes de alcançar um elevado nível de qualidade em prol da eficácia na prestação de serviços ao cidadão-consumidor. Transitando entre a comunicação institucional e a mercadológica, em referência à linha de pesquisa de mesmo nome constante do Programa de Pós-graduação de Comunicação Social da Universidade, o trabalho em questão aborda tópicos como o estudo de boas práticas e aspectos interessantes sobre processos, políticas, estratégias e ações na gestão de competências da comunicação nas organizações. Para isso, em termos de metodologia, são utilizados elementos bibliográficos e documentais, além de entrevistas abertas com os gestores do setor que conformam exemplos de comunicação organizacional em duas instituições. Esses procedimentos verificados durante a pesquisa no processo comunicacional das organizações estudadas se correlacionam a uma contextualização histórica de conceitos, teorias e métodos voltados à realidade da sociedade contemporânea. Análise justificada em que pese uma abordagem a respeito de princípios que possam ser visualizados na práxis comunicacional, como sustentabilidade, transparência, governança corporativa e gestão da comunicação em uma ambiência tecnossocial de produção simbólica de conteúdos (informações, produtos, serviços, marcas, imagem etc.). A análise dessa dinâmica como um todo objetiva abordar, ainda, as implicações sociais do processo de planejamento em Comunicação e do ato comunicativo em si, que nos faz perceber de que forma as organizações públicas observam a relação (discurso versus prática) com seus clientes no acesso a informações, produtos ou serviços.

PROCESSOS COMUNICACIONAIS NAS RÁDIOS COMUNITÁRIAS DO SERTÃO DO NORDESTE BRASILEIRO NA INTERNET

A tese aborda os processos comunicacionais nas rádios comunitárias do Sertão do Nordeste do Brasil que estão na Internet. Objetiva-se entender teórica e empiricamente como ocorrem esses processos nestas emissoras e explorar suas especificidades; compreender as estruturas, programações, equipes, financiamentos e históricos de inserção digital; entender os processos de estímulo, emissão e interação, em termos de cidadania; compreender como se dão as novas vozes, territoriais e na Internet; entender como se dá a participação do usuário (internauta); e listar as rádios comunitárias ou que se assumem comunitárias sertanejas, entendendo suas peculiaridades de programação, diferencial em termos de emissão territorial e não territorial (via Internet). A metodologia empregada consiste em pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, em mapeamento prévio das emissoras, bem como de pesquisa de campo por meio visitas in loco e de entrevistas semiestruturadas para entender-se as emissoras nos oito Estados sertanejos nordestinos (Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte e Sergipe). Acompanhou-se também o trabalho das emissoras na Internet, tanto em seus sites quanto a presença em redes sociais. Constata-se, com base em parâmetros teóricos, a existência de três tipos de emissoras de rádio comunitária na Internet: as off-line (que apenas têm espaço na Internet, mas não há transmissão simultânea), as online institucionais (que apenas transmitem simultaneamente a programação no dial) e as online dinâmicas (que têm conteúdo diferencial da emissora no dial e promovem interação e interatividade). O fato de estar na Internet faz com que as emissoras de rádio comunitária sertanejas aumentem sua capacidade de promover a participação, a interação e a interatividade, pois ocorre a retroalimentação da comunicação comunitária radiofônica com um novo tipo movido pela desterritorialização, que é o maior desafio dessas emissoras em lugares de baixo poder aquisitivo e comunicacional onde a presença do coronelismo eletrônico ainda persiste.

A principled approach to interactive hierarchical non-linear visualization of high-dimensional data

Hierarchical visualization systems are desirable because a single two-dimensional visualization plot may not be sufficient to capture all of the interesting aspects of complex high-dimensional data sets. We extend an existing locally linear hierarchical visualization system PhiVis [1] in several directions: bf(1) we allow for em non-linear projection manifolds (the basic building block is the Generative Topographic Mapping -- GTM), bf(2) we introduce a general formulation of hierarchical probabilistic models consisting of local probabilistic models organized in a hierarchical tree, bf(3) we describe folding patterns of low-dimensional projection manifold in high-dimensional data space by computing and visualizing the manifold's local directional curvatures. Quantities such as magnification factors [3] and directional curvatures are helpful for understanding the layout of the nonlinear projection manifold in the data space and for further refinement of the hierarchical visualization plot. Like PhiVis, our system is statistically principled and is built interactively in a top-down fashion using the EM algorithm. We demonstrate the visualization system principle of the approach on a complex 12-dimensional data set and mention possible applications in the pharmaceutical industry.

Social impact assessment:A case study of a sewerage project in Barbados

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons of social impacts of projects in developing countries despite of thorough impact assessment in appraisal phase of projects. A case study approach on a sewerage project in Barbados was undertaken using primary and secondary information. The study reveals that although the impact assessment report suggested appropriate mitigation measures, but they were not implemented by the contractors. The study suggests fostering an interconnected and symbiotic relationship between appraisal and implementation phases of a project in order to manage project environment. Additionally, a more vigilant and proactive supervisory role should be instituted and strengthened over time and adapted within the dictates of environmental needs. Copyright © 2005 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Leadership development: the role of developmental readiness, personality dispositions, and individual values

Increased awareness of the crucial role of leadership as a competitive advantage for organisations (McCall, 1998; Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, & Ainina, 1999) has led to billions spent on leadership development programmes and training (Avolio & Hannah, 2008). However, research reports confusing and contradictory evidence regarding return on investment and developmental outcomes, and a lot of variance has been observed across studies (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009). The purpose of this thesis is to understand the mechanisms underlying this variability in leadership development. Of the many factors at play in the process, such as programme design and delivery, organisational support, and perceptions of relevance (Mabey, 2002; Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009), individual differences and characteristics stand out. One way in which individuals differ is in their Developmental Readiness (DR), a concept recently introduced in the literature that may well explain this variance and which has been proposed to accelerate development (Avolio & Hannah, 2008, 2009). Building on previous work, DR is introduced and conceptualised somewhat differently. In this study, DR is construed of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation, proposed by Day (2000) to be the backbones of leadership development. DR is suggested to moderate the developmental process. Furthermore, personality dispositions and individual values are proposed to be precursors of DR. The empirical research conducted uses a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design. Before conducting the study, though, both a measure of Developmental Readiness and a competency profiling measure are tested in two pilot studies. Results do not find evidence of a direct effect of leadership development programmes on development, but do support an interactive effect between DR and leadership development programmes. Personality dispositions Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience and value orientations Conservation, Open, and Closed Orientation are found to significantly predict DR. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

Computer integrated manufacturing control

Many manufacturing companies have long endured the problems associated with the presence of `islands of automation'. Due to rapid computerisation, `islands' such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) and Material Requirement Planning (MRP), have emerged, and with a lack of co-ordination, often lead to inefficient performance of the overall system. The main objective of Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) technology is to form a cohesive network between these islands. Unfortunately, a commonly used approach - the centralised system approach, has imposed major technical constraints and design complication on development strategies. As a consequence, small companies have experienced difficulties in participating in CIM technology. The research described in this thesis has aimed to examine alternative approaches to CIM system design. Through research and experimentation, the cellular system approach, which has existed in the form of manufacturing layouts, has been found to simplify the complexity of an integrated manufacturing system, leading to better control and far higher system flexibility. Based on the cellular principle, some central management functions have also been distributed to smaller cells within the system. This concept is known, specifically, as distributed planning and control. Through the development of an embryo cellular CIM system, the influence of both the cellular principle and the distribution methodology have been evaluated. Based on the evidence obtained, it has been concluded that distributed planning and control methodology can greatly enhance cellular features within an integrated system. Both the cellular system approach and the distributed control concept will therefore make significant contributions to the design of future CIM systems, particularly systems designed with respect to small company requirements.

A Bayesian modeling approach to multi-dimensional sentiment distributions prediction

Sentiment analysis has long focused on binary classification of text as either positive or negative. There has been few work on mapping sentiments or emotions into multiple dimensions. This paper studies a Bayesian modeling approach to multi-class sentiment classification and multidimensional sentiment distributions prediction. It proposes effective mechanisms to incorporate supervised information such as labeled feature constraints and document-level sentiment distributions derived from the training data into model learning. We have evaluated our approach on the datasets collected from the confession section of the Experience Project website where people share their life experiences and personal stories. Our results show that using the latent representation of the training documents derived from our approach as features to build a maximum entropy classifier outperforms other approaches on multi-class sentiment classification. In the more difficult task of multi-dimensional sentiment distributions prediction, our approach gives superior performance compared to a few competitive baselines. © 2012 ACM.

Semisupervised learning of hierarchical latent trait models for data visualization

Recently, we have developed the hierarchical Generative Topographic Mapping (HGTM), an interactive method for visualization of large high-dimensional real-valued data sets. In this paper, we propose a more general visualization system by extending HGTM in three ways, which allows the user to visualize a wider range of data sets and better support the model development process. 1) We integrate HGTM with noise models from the exponential family of distributions. The basic building block is the Latent Trait Model (LTM). This enables us to visualize data of inherently discrete nature, e.g., collections of documents, in a hierarchical manner. 2) We give the user a choice of initializing the child plots of the current plot in either interactive, or automatic mode. In the interactive mode, the user selects "regions of interest," whereas in the automatic mode, an unsupervised minimum message length (MML)-inspired construction of a mixture of LTMs is employed. The unsupervised construction is particularly useful when high-level plots are covered with dense clusters of highly overlapping data projections, making it difficult to use the interactive mode. Such a situation often arises when visualizing large data sets. 3) We derive general formulas for magnification factors in latent trait models. Magnification factors are a useful tool to improve our understanding of the visualization plots, since they can highlight the boundaries between data clusters. We illustrate our approach on a toy example and evaluate it on three more complex real data sets. © 2005 IEEE.

The Application of Graph Model for Automation of the User Interface Construction

The ability of automatic graphic user interface construction is described. It is based on the building of user interface as reflection of the data domain logical definition. The submitted approach to development of the information system user interface enables dynamic adaptation of the system during their operation. This approach is used for creation of information systems based on CASE-system METAS.

Teaching Strategies and Ontologies for E-Learning

* The work is partially suported by Russian Foundation for Basic Studies (grant 02-01-00466).

A rule-based approach to implicit emotion detection in text

Most research in the area of emotion detection in written text focused on detecting explicit expressions of emotions in text. In this paper, we present a rule-based pipeline approach for detecting implicit emotions in written text without emotion-bearing words based on the OCC Model. We have evaluated our approach on three different datasets with five emotion categories. Our results show that the proposed approach outperforms the lexicon matching method consistently across all the three datasets by a large margin of 17–30% in F-measure and gives competitive performance compared to a supervised classifier. In particular, when dealing with formal text which follows grammatical rules strictly, our approach gives an average F-measure of 82.7% on “Happy”, “Angry-Disgust” and “Sad”, even outperforming the supervised baseline by nearly 17% in F-measure. Our preliminary results show the feasibility of the approach for the task of implicit emotion detection in written text.

Activity streets as economic opportunity generators: Case study of the Langa Township, Cape Town, South Africa

The Republic of South Africa since the 1948 inception of Apartheid policies has experienced economic problems resulting from spatially dispersed growth. The election of President Mandela in 1994, however, eliminated the last forms of Apartheid as well as its discriminatory spatial, social, and economic policies, specially toward black Africans. In Cape Town, South Africa, several initiatives to restructure and to economically revitalize blighted and abandoned township communities, like Langa, have been instituted. One element of this strategy is the development of activity streets. The main questions asked in this study are whether activity streets are a feasible solution to the local economic problems left by the apartheid system and whether activity streets represent an economically sustainable approach to development. An analysis of a proposed activity street in Langa and its potential to generate jobs is undertaken. An Employment Generation Model used in this study shows that many of the businesses rely on the local purchasing power of the residents. Since the economic activities are mostly service oriented, a combination of manufacturing industries and institutionally implemented strategies within the township will have to be developed in order to generate sustainable employment. The result seem to indicate that, in Langa, the activity street depend very much on an increase in sales, pedestrian and vehicular traffic flow. ^

The order selection and lot sizing problem in the make-to-order environment

This research is motivated by the need for considering lot sizing while accepting customer orders in a make-to-order (MTO) environment, in which each customer order must be delivered by its due date. Job shop is the typical operation model used in an MTO operation, where the production planner must make three concurrent decisions; they are order selection, lot size, and job schedule. These decisions are usually treated separately in the literature and are mostly led to heuristic solutions. The first phase of the study is focused on a formal definition of the problem. Mathematical programming techniques are applied to modeling this problem in terms of its objective, decision variables, and constraints. A commercial solver, CPLEX is applied to solve the resulting mixed-integer linear programming model with small instances to validate the mathematical formulation. The computational result shows it is not practical for solving problems of industrial size, using a commercial solver. The second phase of this study is focused on development of an effective solution approach to this problem of large scale. The proposed solution approach is an iterative process involving three sequential decision steps of order selection, lot sizing, and lot scheduling. A range of simple sequencing rules are identified for each of the three subproblems. Using computer simulation as the tool, an experiment is designed to evaluate their performance against a set of system parameters. For order selection, the proposed weighted most profit rule performs the best. The shifting bottleneck and the earliest operation finish time both are the best scheduling rules. For lot sizing, the proposed minimum cost increase heuristic, based on the Dixon-Silver method performs the best, when the demand-to-capacity ratio at the bottleneck machine is high. The proposed minimum cost heuristic, based on the Wagner-Whitin algorithm is the best lot-sizing heuristic for shops of a low demand-to-capacity ratio. The proposed heuristic is applied to an industrial case to further evaluate its performance. The result shows it can improve an average of total profit by 16.62%. This research contributes to the production planning research community with a complete mathematical definition of the problem and an effective solution approach to solving the problem of industry scale.

Application and evaluation of an Institute of Medicine approach to dietary assessment and planning in long -term care

The primary purpose of these studies was to determine the effect of planning menus using the Institute of Medicine's (IOMs) Simple Nutrient Density Approach on nutrient intakes of long-term care (LTC) residents. In the first study, nutrient intakes of 72 subjects were assessed using Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and IOM methodology. The intake distributions were used to set intake and menu planning goals. In the second study, the facility's regular menus were modified to meet the intake goals for vitamin E, magnesium, zinc, vitamin D and calcium. An experiment was used to test whether the modified menu resulted in intakes of micronutrients sufficient to achieve a low prevalence (<3%) of nutrient inadequacies. Three-day weighed food intakes for 35 females were adjusted for day-to-day variations in order to obtain an estimate of long-term average intake and to estimate the proportion of residents with inadequate nutrient intakes. ^ In the first study, the prevalence of inadequate intakes was determined to be between 65-99% for magnesium, vitamin E, and zinc. Mean usual intakes of Vitamin D and calcium were far below the Adequate Intakes (AIs). In the experimental study, the prevalence of inadequacies was reduced to <3% for zinc and vitamin E but not magnesium. The groups' mean usual intake from the modified menu met or exceeded the AI for calcium but fell short for vitamin D. Alternatively, it was determined that addition of a multivitamin and mineral (MVM) supplement to intakes of the regular menu could be used to achieve goals for vitamin E, zinc and vitamin D but not calcium and magnesium. ^ A combination of menu modification and MVM supplementation may be necessary to achieve a low prevalence of micronutrient inadequacies among LTC residents. Menus should be planned to optimize intakes of those nutrients that are low in an MVM, such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. A MVM supplement should be provided to fill the gap for nutrients not provided in sufficient amounts by the diet, such as vitamin E and vitamin D. ^