Influência da matéria orgânica dissolvida alóctone e autóctone sobre o balanço de carbono em sistemas aquáticos: um experimento em mesocosmos

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

Um sistema para gestão do conhecimento em ameaças, vulnerabilidades e seus efeitos

Attacks to devices connected to networks are one of the main problems related to the confidentiality of sensitive data and the correct functioning of computer systems. In spite of the availability of tools and procedures that harden or prevent the occurrence of security incidents, network devices are successfully attacked using strategies applied in previous events. The lack of knowledge about scenarios in which these attacks occurred effectively contributes to the success of new attacks. The development of a tool that makes this kind of information available is, therefore, of great relevance. This work presents a support system to the management of corporate security for the storage, retrieval and help in constructing attack scenarios and related information. If an incident occurs in a corporation, an expert must access the system to store the specific attack scenario. This scenario, made available through controlled access, must be analyzed so that effective decisions or actions can be taken for similar cases. Besides the strategy used by the attacker, attack scenarios also exacerbate vulnerabilities in devices. The access to this kind of information contributes to an increased security level of a corporation's network devices and a decreased response time to occurring incidents

Desenvolvimento de um middleware para comunicação via web services e sua aplicação em sistemas de aquisição de dados industriais

The control of industrial processes has become increasingly complex due to variety of factory devices, quality requirement and market competition. Such complexity requires a large amount of data to be treated by the three levels of process control: field devices, control systems and management softwares. To use data effectively in each one of these levels is extremely important to industry. Many of today s industrial computer systems consist of distributed software systems written in a wide variety of programming languages and developed for specific platforms, so, even more companies apply a significant investment to maintain or even re-write their systems for different platforms. Furthermore, it is rare that a software system works in complete isolation. In industrial automation is common that, software had to interact with other systems on different machines and even written in different languages. Thus, interoperability is not just a long-term challenge, but also a current context requirement of industrial software production. This work aims to propose a middleware solution for communication over web service and presents an user case applying the solution developed to an integrated system for industrial data capture , allowing such data to be available simplified and platformindependent across the network

Estudo de propriedades críticas em sistemas complexos: método de procura automática em sistemas tipo Ising e percolação de longo alcance

The new technique for automatic search of the order parameters and critical properties is applied to several well-know physical systems, testing the efficiency of such a procedure, in order to apply it for complex systems in general. The automatic-search method is combined with Monte Carlo simulations, which makes use of a given dynamical rule for the time evolution of the system. In the problems inves¬tigated, the Metropolis and Glauber dynamics produced essentially equivalent results. We present a brief introduction to critical phenomena and phase transitions. We describe the automatic-search method and discuss some previous works, where the method has been applied successfully. We apply the method for the ferromagnetic fsing model, computing the critical fron¬tiers and the magnetization exponent (3 for several geometric lattices. We also apply the method for the site-diluted ferromagnetic Ising model on a square lattice, computing its critical frontier, as well as the magnetization exponent f3 and the susceptibility exponent 7. We verify that the universality class of the system remains unchanged when the site dilution is introduced. We study the problem of long-range bond percolation in a diluted linear chain and discuss the non-extensivity questions inherent to long-range-interaction systems. Finally we present our conclusions and possible extensions of this work

On developing efficient applications using conservative distributed simulation paradigm

This paper aims to present, using a set of guidelines, how to apply the conservative distributed simulation paradigm (CMB protocol) to develop efficient applications. Using these guidelines, even a user with little experience on distributed simulation and computer architecture can have good performance on distributed simulations using conservative synchronization protocols for parallel processes.The set of guidelines is focus on a specific application domain, the performance evaluation of computer systems, considering models with coarse granularity and few logical processes and running over two platforms: parallel (high performance communication environment) and distributed (low performance communication environment).

STREAM-AP: um processo para sistematizar a escolha de padrões arquiteturais baseado em requisitos não-funcionais

The importance of non-functional requirements for computer systems is increasing. Satisfying these requirements requires special attention to the software architecture, since an unsuitable architecture introduces greater complexity in addition to the intrinsic complexity of the system. Some studies have shown that, despite requirements engineering and software architecture activities act on different aspects of development, they must be performed iteratively and intertwined to produce satisfactory software systems. The STREAM process presents a systematic approach to reduce the gap between requirements and architecture development, emphasizing the functional requirements, but using the non-functional requirements in an ad hoc way. However, non-functional requirements typically influence the system as a whole. Thus, the STREAM uses Architectural Patterns to refine the software architecture. These patterns are chosen by using non-functional requirements in an ad hoc way. This master thesis presents a process to improve STREAM in making the choice of architectural patterns systematic by using non-functional requirements, in order to guide the refinement of a software architecture

Multiscale Fractal Descriptors and Polynomial Classifier for Partial Pixels Identification in Regions of Interest of Mammographic Images

Computer systems are used to support breast cancer diagnosis, with decisions taken from measurements carried out in regions of interest (ROIs). We show that support decisions obtained from square or rectangular ROIs can to include background regions with different behavior of healthy or diseased tissues. In this study, the background regions were identified as Partial Pixels (PP), obtained with a multilevel method of segmentation based on maximum entropy. The behaviors of healthy, diseased and partial tissues were quantified by fractal dimension and multiscale lacunarity, calculated through signatures of textures. The separability of groups was achieved using a polynomial classifier. The polynomials have powerful approximation properties as classifiers to treat characteristics linearly separable or not. This proposed method allowed quantifying the ROIs investigated and demonstrated that different behaviors are obtained, with distinctions of 90% for images obtained in the Cranio-caudal (CC) and Mediolateral Oblique (MLO) views.

TIME-OPTIMAL GEOMAGNETIC ATTITUDE MANEUVERS OF AN AXISYMMETRICAL SPINNING SATELLITE

A formulation used to determine the time-optimal geomagnetic attitude maneuvers subject to dynamic and geometric constraints is proposed in this paper. This was obtained by a direct search procedure based on a control function parametrization method, using linear programming to obtain numerical suboptimal solutions by linear perturbation. Due to its characteristics it can be used in small computers and to generate computer programs of general application. The dynamic modeling, the magnetic torque model and the suboptimal control procedure are presented. Simulation runs have verified the feasibility of the formulation thus derived and have shown a notable improvement in performance.

Size limiting in Tsallis statistics

Power law scaling is observed in many physical, biological and socio-economical complex systems and is now considered an important property of these systems. In general, power law exists in the central part of the distribution. It has deviations from power law for very small and very large variable sizes. Tsallis, through non-extensive thermodynamics, explained power law distribution in many cases including deviation from the power law. In case of very large steps, the used the heuristic crossover approach. In the present we present an alternative model in which we consider that the entropy factor 9 decreases with variable size due to the softening of long range interactions or memory. We apply this model for distribution of citation index of scientists and examination scores and are able to explain the distribution for entire variable range. In the present model, we can have very sharp cut-off without interfering with power law in its central part as observed in many cases. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

CeO2 nanoparticles synthesized by a microwave-assisted hydrothermal method: evolution from nanospheres to nanorods

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

Algorithms for network piecewise-linear programs: A comparative study

Piecewise-Linear Programming (PLP) is an important area of Mathematical Programming and concerns the minimisation of a convex separable piecewise-linear objective function, subject to linear constraints. In this paper a subarea of PLP called Network Piecewise-Linear Programming (NPLP) is explored. The paper presents four specialised algorithms for NPLP: (Strongly Feasible) Primal Simplex, Dual Method, Out-of-Kilter and (Strongly Polynomial) Cost-Scaling and their relative efficiency is studied. A statistically designed experiment is used to perform a computational comparison of the algorithms. The response variable observed in the experiment is the CPU time to solve randomly generated network piecewise-linear problems classified according to problem class (Transportation, Transshipment and Circulation), problem size, extent of capacitation, and number of breakpoints per arc. Results and conclusions on performance of the algorithms are reported.

Utilizing the CORBA platform in the construction of a highly immersive virtual environment

This article presents the implementation of a distributed system of virtual reality, through the integration of services offered by the CORBA platform (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) and by the environment of development of 3D graphic applications in real time, the WorldToolkit, of Sense8. The developed application for the validation of this integration is that of a virtual city, with an emphasis on its traffic ways, vehicles (movable objects) and buildings (immovable objects). In this virtual world, several users can interact, each one controlling his/her own car. Since the modelling of the application took into consideration the criteria and principles of the Transport Engineering, the aim is to use it in the planning, project and construction of traffic ways for vehicles. The system was structured according to the approach client/server utilizing multicast communication among the participating nodes. The chosen implementation for the CORBA was the Iona's ORBIX software. The performance results obtained are presented and discussed in the end.

AI automates substation control

An overview is given on the possibility of controlling the status of circuit breakers (CB) in a substations with the use of a knowledge base that relates some of the operation magnitudes, mixing status variables with time variables and fuzzy sets. It is shown that even when all the magnitudes to be controlled cannot be included in the analysis, it is possible to control the desired status while supervising some important magnitudes as the voltage, power factor, and harmonic distortion, as well as the present status.

Revisão sobre técnicas de controle em estruturas inteligentes

One of the great challenges of structural dynamics is to ally structures lighther and stronger. The great difficulty is that light systems, in general, have a low inherent damping. Besides, they contain resonance frequencies in the low frequency range. So, any external disturbance can excite the system in some resonance and the resulting effect can be drastic. The methodologies of active damping, with control algorithms and piezoelectric sensors and actuators coupled in a base structure, are attractive in current days, in order to overcome the contradictory features of these requeriments. In this sense, this article contributes with a bibliographical review of the literature on the importance of active noise and vibration control in engineering applications, models of smart structures, techniques of optimal placement of piezoelectric sensors and actuators and methodologies of structural active control. Finally, it is discussed the future perspectives in this area.

Real-time crowd density estimation using images

This paper presents a technique for real-time crowd density estimation based on textures of crowd images. In this technique, the current image from a sequence of input images is classified into a crowd density class. Then, the classification is corrected by a low-pass filter based on the crowd density classification of the last n images of the input sequence. The technique obtained 73.89% of correct classification in a real-time application on a sequence of 9892 crowd images. Distributed processing was used in order to obtain real-time performance. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.