Decision-Making Tool for Knowledge-Based Projects in Offshore Production Systems

The development of an offshore field demands knowledge of many experts to choose the different components of an offshore production system. All the specialized parts of this knowledge are intrinsically related. The aim of this paper is to use Fuzzy Sets and knowledge-based systems to describe and formalize the phases of development of an offshore production system project, in order to share and to manage the required knowledge for carrying out a project, while at the same time proposing alternatives for the oil field configuration.

2006 GEP-ISFG collaborative exercise on mtDNA: reflections about interpretation, artefacts, and DNA mixtures

We report the results of the seventh edition of the GEP-ISFG mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) collaborative exercise. The samples submitted to the participant laboratories were blood stains from a maternity case and Simulated forensic samples, including a case of mixture. The success rate for the blood stains was moderate (similar to 77%); even though four inexperienced laboratories concentrated about one-third of the total errors. A similar success was obtained for the analysis of mixed samples (78.8% for a hair-saliva mixture and 69.2% for a saliva-saliva Mixture). Two laboratories also dissected the haplotypes contributing to the saliva-saliva mixture. Most of the errors were due to reading problems and misinterpretation of electropherograms, demonstrating once more that the lack of a solid devised experimental approach is the main cause of error in mtDNA testing. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A GEP-ISFG collaborative study on the optimization of an X-STR decaplex: data on 15 Iberian and Latin American populations

In a collaborative work carried out by the Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group (GEP-ISFG), a polymerase chain reaction multiplex was optimized in order to type ten X-chromosome short tandem repeats (STRs) in a single reaction, including: DXS8378, DXS9902, DXS7132, DXS9898, DXS6809, DXS6789, DXS7133, GATA172D05, GATA31E08, and DXS7423. Using this X-decaplex, each 17 of the participating laboratories typed a population sample of approximately 200 unrelated individuals (100 males and 100 females). In this work, we report the allele frequencies for the ten X-STRs in 15 samples from Argentina (Buenos Aires, CA(3)rdoba, Rio Negro, Entre Rios, and Misiones), Brazil (SA o pound Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Parana, and Mato Grosso do Sul), Colombia (Antioquia), Costa Rica, Portugal (Northern and Central regions), and Spain (Galicia and Cantabria). Gene diversities were calculated for the ten markers in each population and all values were above 56%. The average diversity per locus varied between 66%, for DXS7133, and 82%, for DXS6809. For this set of STRs, a high discrimination power was obtained in all populations, both in males (a parts per thousand yen1 in 5 A- 10(5)) and females (a parts per thousand yen1 in 3 A- 10(9)), as well as high mean exclusion chance in father/daughter duos (a parts per thousand yen99.953%) and in father/mother/daughter trios (a parts per thousand yen99.999%). Genetic distance analysis showed no significant differences between northern and central Portugal or between the two Spanish samples from Galicia and Cantabria. Inside Brazil, significant differences were found between Rio de Janeiro and the other three populations, as well as between SA o pound Paulo and Parana. For the five Argentinean samples, significant distances were only observed when comparing Misiones with Entre Rios and with Rio Negro, the only two samples that do not differ significantly from Costa Rica. Antioquia differed from all other samples, except the one from Rio Negro.

Wetland projects developed in Brazil

The first studies with constructed wetlands undertaken in Brazil were the result of observations made from the Amazon flood plains. The first attempt to use this capacity to change the quality of the water, in the sense of purification performed in Brazil using constructed wetland systems, was made by Salati et al. After that, new technologies were developed in a focused attempt to increase the efficiency of the system and reduce investments. Over these 18 years, persuading the Brazilian scientific community as well as the environmental control agencies to give due attention to this kind of research has required endless efforts. Only in recent years have major institutions responsible for sewage treatment and potable water supply been concerned with this type of technology for solving real problems. These institutions are as follows: SABESP (Basic Sanitation Company of Sao Paulo State), SANEPAR (Sanitation Company of Parana State) and CESP (Electric Company of Sao Paulo State). One of the private institutions that has systematically worked in the design and projects of constructed wetlands is the Institute of Applied Ecology. This institution has enhanced and developed a water depuration system based on the purifying capacity of the soil. The wetlands with filtering soils are systems formed by overlapping layers of crushed stone, gravel and soil planted with rice. This technology has been used in sewage treatment and also in water supply systems.

Results of the GEP-ISFG collaborative study on an X-STR Decaplex

A collaborative work was carried out by the Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group with a PCR multiplex for X chromosome STRs. Markers were selected among those described as polymorphic in humans and that have been used by some laboratories in forensics. Primers and various technical methods were investigated with the aim of optimizing a multiplex for the 10 selected X-STRs. Primer mix stock solutions were sent to the laboratories that were asked to analyse two female bloodstains, taking as reference the genetic profiles from 9947A, 9948 and NA3657 samples. In this work, we report the results obtained by 30 GEP-ISFG laboratories, using this Decaplex, as well as alternative technical conditions that also produced good results. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Combined use of modeling techniques for the development of the conceptual model in simulation projects

The objective of this paper is to utilize the SIPOC, flowchart and IDEF0 modeling techniques combined to elaborate the conceptual model of a simulation project. It is intended to identify the contribution of these techniques in the elaboration of the computational model. To illustrate such application, a practical case of a high-end technology enterprise is presented. The paper concludes that the proposed approach eases the elaboration of the computational model. © 2008 IEEE.

TroCCiBras and its partner projects HIBISCUS and TROCCINOX: The 2004 field campaign in the state of São Paulo

This overview paper summarizes the objectives of the Tropical Convection and Cirrus Brasil project, as well as those of the European Commission sponsored HIBISCUS and TROCCINOX projects, which conducted a joint field campaign in the State of São Paulo from January to March 2004. Emphasis is given on the description of different types of lidars and their deployment for obtaining meteorological data during the joint field campaign in 2004. © Sociedad Española de Óptica.

The Ped-APS registry: The antiphospholipid syndrome in childhood

In recent years, antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) has been increasingly recognised in various paediatric autoimmune and nonautoimmune diseases, but the relatively low prevalence and heterogeneity of APS in childhood made it very difficult to study in a systematic way. The project of an international registry of paediatric patients with APS (the Ped-APS Registry) was initiated in 2004 to foster and conduct multicentre, controlled studies with large number of paediatric APS patients. The Ped-APS Registry is organised as a collaborative project of the European Forum on Antiphospholipid Antibodies and Juvenile Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Working Group of the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society. Currently, it documents a standardised clinical, laboratory and therapeutic data of 133 children with antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL)-related thrombosis from 14 countries. The priority projects for future research of the Ped-APS Registry include prospective enrolment of new patients with aPL-related thrombosis, assessment of differences between the paediatric and adult APS, evaluation of proinflammatory genotype as a risk factor for APS manifestations in childhood and evaluation of patients with isolated nonthrombotic aPL-related manifestations. © The Author(s), 2009.

Utilizing cross-domain SOAP Web services using client-side languages in an enterprise mashup platform

Service oriented architectures (SOA) based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Web services have attracted the attention of enterprises mainly for business-to-business integration and to create composite applications that execute business processes. An existing problem is the lack of preoccupation with non technical users due to the fact that to create a composite application to fulfill users needs, it is necessary to be in contact with IT staff. To overcome this issue, enterprises can take advantage of web 2.0, 'introducing in the development stage some technologies like mashups and some concepts like user empowerment, collaborative work and collective intelligence. Some results [3] [13] have shown how web 2.0 concepts can help non technical users to produce relative complex business processes. However, traditional enterprise requirements goes beyond typical web 2.0 solutions in several aspects: (1) traditional enterprise systems are based on heterogeneous stack of technologies that are not directly exploitable from a web-based client (where SOAP web services play an important role); (2) web browsers set some cross-domain security constraints making difficult to integrate services from diverse domains. In this paper, a contribution to two web 2.0 research projects [14] [15] partially solves the problems described: provide a way to invoke cross-domain backend services (based on SOAP technologies) directly only using clientside languages, without a need for any adaptation layer. © 2010 ACM.

Algebraic approach to optimal clone selection applied in metagenomic projects

Due to the wide diversity of unknown organisms in the environment, 99% of them cannot be grown in traditional culture medium in laboratories. Therefore, metagenomics projects are proposed to study microbial communities present in the environment, from molecular techniques, especially the sequencing. Thereby, for the coming years it is expected an accumulation of sequences produced by these projects. Thus, the sequences produced by genomics and metagenomics projects present several challenges for the treatment, storing and analysis such as: the search for clones containing genes of interest. This work presents the OCI Metagenomics, which allows defines and manages dynamically the rules of clone selection in metagenomic libraries, thought an algebraic approach based on process algebra. Furthermore, a web interface was developed to allow researchers to easily create and execute their own rules to select clones in genomic sequence database. This software has been tested in metagenomic cosmid library and it was able to select clones containing genes of interest. Copyright 2010 ACM.

Catálogo de publicaciones, 1988-1998 de la Dirección de Proyectos y Programación de Inversiones del ILPES = Publications catalogue, 1988-1998 of Projects and Investments Programming Division

Títulos de documentos en español y/o inglés

Catálogo de publicaciones, 1988-1999, de la Dirección de Proyectos y Programación de Inversiones del ILPES = Publications catalogue, 1988-1999, of Projects and Investments Programming Division

Títulos de documentos en español y/o inglés

TORP: An open standard framework for humanoid robots

Humanoid robots are an extremely complex interdisciplinary research field. Particularly, the development of high size humanoid robots usually requires joint efforts and skills from groups that are in many different research centers around the world. However, there are serious constraints in this kind of collaborative development. Some efforts have been made in order to propose new software frameworks that can allow distributed development with also some degree of hardware abstraction, allowing software reuse in successive projects. However, computation represents only one of the dimensions in robotics tasks, and the need for reuse and exchange of full robot modules between groups are growing. Large advances could be reached if physical parts of a robot could be reused in a different robot constructed with other technologies by other researcher or group. This paper proposes a new robot framework, from now on called TORP (The Open Robot Project), that aims to provide a standard architecture in all dimensions (electrical, mechanical and computational) for this collaborative development. This methodology also represents an open project that is fully shared. In this paper, the first robot constructed following the TORP specification set is presented as well as the advances proposed for its improvement. © 2010 IEEE.

Mujeres rurales de América Latina y el Caribe: resultados de programas y proyectos = Rural women in Latin America and the Caribbean: results of projects and programmes

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