Breadcrumbs: location and context aware mobile platform for story sharing

With the current proliferation of sensor equipped mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, location aware services are expanding beyond the mere efficiency and work related needs of users, evolving in order to incorporate fun, culture and the social life of users. Today people on the move have more and more connectivity and are expected to be able to communicate with their usual and familiar social networks. That means communications not only with their peers and colleagues, friends and family but also with unknown people that might share their interests, curiosities or happen to use the same social network. Through social networks, location aware blogging, cultural mobile applications relevant information is now available at specific geographical locations and open to feedback and conversations among friends as well as strangers. In fact, nowadays smartphone technologies aloud users to post and retrieve content while on the move, often relating to specific physical landmarks or locations, engaging and being engaged in conversations with strangers as much as their own social network. The use of such technologies and applications while on the move can often lead people to serendipitous discoveries and interactions. Throughout our thesis we are engaging on a two folded investigation: how can we foster and support serendipitous discoveries and what are the best interfaces for it? In fact, to read and write content while on the move is a cognitively intensive task. While the map serves the function of orienting the user, it also absorbs most of the user’s concentration. In order to address this kind of cognitive overload issue with Breadcrumbs we propose a 360 degrees interface that enables the user to find content around them by means of scanning the surrounding space with the mobile device. By using a loose metaphor of a periscope, harnessing the power of the smartphone sensors we designed an interactive interface capable of detecting content around the users and display it in the form of 2 dimensional bubbles which diameter depends on their distance from the users. Users will navigate the space in relation to the content that they are curious about, rather than in relation to the traditional geographical map. Through this model we envisage alleviating a certain cognitive overload generated by having to continuously confront a two dimensional map with the real three dimensional space surrounding the user, but also use the content as a navigational filter. Furthermore this alternative mean of navigating space might bring serendipitous discovery about places that user where not aware of or intending to reach. We hence conclude our thesis with the evaluation of the Breadcrumbs application and the comparison of the 360 degrees interface with a traditional 2 dimensional map displayed on the devise screen. Results from the evaluation are compiled in findings and insights for future use in designing and developing context aware mobile applications.

Soil CO2 emission and its relation to soil properties in sugarcane areas under Slash-and-burn and Green harvest

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Can native vegetation recover after slash pine cultivation in the Brazilian Savanna?

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Forest natural regeneration and biomass production after slash and burn in a seasonally dry forest in the Southern Brazilian Amazon

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

Fast-forward/fast-backward substitutions on vector computers

This paper deals with approaches for sparse matrix substitutions using vector processing. Many publications have used the W-matrix method to solve the forward/backward substitutions on vector computer. Recently a different approach has been presented using dependency-based substitution algorithm (DBSA). In this paper the focus is on new algorithms able to explore the sparsity of the vectors. The efficiency is tested using linear systems from power systems with 118, 320, 725 and 1729 buses. The tests were performed on a CRAY Y MP2E/232. The speedups for a fast-forward/fast-backward using a 1729-bus system are near 19 and 14 for real and complex arithmetic operations, respectively. When forward/backward is employed the speedups are about 8 and 6 to perform the same simulations.

gamma p and gamma gamma scattering from (p)over-bar-p, pp forward amplitudes in a QCD eikonal model with a dynamical gluon mass

We examine the gamma p photoproduction and the hadronic gamma gamma total cross sections by means of a QCD eikonal model with a dynamical infrared mass scale. In this model, where the dynamical gluon mass is the natural regulator for the tree level gluon-gluon scattering, the gamma p and gamma gamma total cross sections are derived from the pp and (p) over barp forward scattering amplitudes assuming vector meson dominance and the additive quark model. We show that the validity of the cross section factorization relation sigma(pp)/sigma(gamma p)=sigma(gamma p)/sigma(gamma gamma) is fulfilled depending on the Monte Carlo model used to unfold the hadronic gamma gamma cross section data, and we discuss in detail the case of sigma(gamma gamma -> hadrons) data with W-gamma gamma> 10 GeV unfolded by the Monte Carlo generators PYTHIA and PHOJET. The data seems to favor a mild dependence with the energy of the probability (P-had) that the photon interacts as a hadron.

Measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry in top-quark pair production

We present the first measurement of the integrated forward-backward charge asymmetry in top-quark-top-antiquark pair (t (t) over bar) production in proton-antiproton (p (p) over bar) collisions in the lepton+jets final state. Using a b-jet tagging algorithm and kinematic reconstruction assuming t (t) over bar +X production and decay, a sample of 0.9 fb(-1) of data, collected by the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, is used to measure the asymmetry for different jet multiplicities. The result is also used to set upper limits on t (t) over bar +X production via a Z' resonance.

Measurement of the Forward-Backward Charge Asymmetry and Extraction of sin(2)theta(eff)(W) in pp -> Z/gamma(*)+X -> e(+)e(-)+X Events Produced at s=1.96 TeV

We present a measurement of the forward-backward charge asymmetry (A(FB)) in pp -> Z/gamma(*)+X -> e(+)e(-)+X events at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV using 1.1 fb(-1) of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron collider. A(FB) is measured as a function of the invariant mass of the electron-positron pair, and found to be consistent with the standard model prediction. We use the A(FB) measurement to extract the effective weak mixing angle sin(2)theta(eff)(W)=0.2326 +/- 0.0018(stat)+/- 0.0006(syst).

Measurement of sin(2)theta(l)(eff) and Z-light quark couplings using the forward-backward charge asymmetry in p(p)over-bar -> Z/gamma* -> e(+)e(-) events with L=5.0 fb(-1) at root s=1.96 TeV

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Forward-backward asymmetry in top quark-antiquark production

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Forward energy flow, central charged-particle multiplicities, and pseudorapidity gaps in W and Z boson events from pp collisions at root s=7 TeV

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Measurement of the inclusive production cross sections for forward jets and for dijet events with one forward and one central jet in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV

The inclusive production cross sections for forward jets, as well for jets in dijet events with at least one jet emitted at central and the other at forward pseudorapidities, are measured in the range of transverse momenta p(T) = 35-150 GeV/c in proton-proton collisions at root s = 7 TeV by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Forward jets are measured within pseudorapidities 3.2<|eta|<4.7, and central jets within the |eta|<2.8 range. The double differential cross sections with respect to pt and eta are compared to predictions from three approaches in perturbative quantum chromodynamics: (i) next-to-leading-order calculations obtained with and without matching to parton-shower Monte Carlo simulations, (ii) PYTHIA and HERWIG parton-shower event generators with different tunes of parameters, and (iii) CASCADE and HEJ models, including different non-collinear corrections to standard single-parton radiation. The single-jet inclusive forward jet spectrum is well described by all models, but not all predictions are consistent with the spectra observed for the forward-central dijet events.

The spectrum of D-slash in QCD via replicas

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

Automatic identification of terpenoid skeletons by feed-forward neural networks

Feed-forward neural networks (FFNNs) were used to predict the skeletal type of molecules belonging to six classes of terpenoids. A database that contains the (13)C NMR spectra of about 5000 compounds was used to train the FFNNs. An efficient representation of the spectra was designed and the constitution of the best FFNN input vector format resorted from an heuristic approach. The latter was derived from general considerations on terpenoid structures. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.