Compressão de imagem e vídeo com controlador ARM

Este trabalho foi desenvolvido num estágio na empresa ABS GmbH sucursal em Portugal, e teve como foco a compressão de imagem e vídeo com os padrões JPEG e H.264, respetivamente. Foi utilizada a plataforma LeopardBoard DM368, com um controlador ARM9. A análise do desempenho de compressão de ambos os padrões foi realizada através de programas em linguagem C, para execução no processador DM368. O programa para compressão de imagem recebe como parâmetros de entrada o nome e a resolução da imagem a comprimir, e comprime-a com 10 níveis de quantização diferentes. Os resultados mostram que é possível obter uma velocidade de compressão até 73 fps (frames per second) para a resolução 1280x720, e que imagens de boa qualidade podem ser obtidas com rácios de compressão até cerca de 22:1. No programa para compressão de vídeo, o codificador está configurado de acordo com as recomendações para as seguintes aplicações: videoconferência, videovigilância, armazenamento e broadcasting/streaming. As configurações em cada processo de codificação, o nome do ficheiro, o número de frames e a resolução do mesmo representam os parâmetros de entrada. Para a resolução 1280x720, foram obtidas velocidades de compressão até cerca de 68 fps, enquanto para a resolução 1920x1088 esse valor foi cerca de 30 fps. Foi ainda desenvolvida uma aplicação com capacidades para capturar imagens ou vídeos, aplicar processamento de imagem, compressão, armazenamento e transmissão para uma saída DVI (Digital Visual Interface). O processamento de imagem em software permite melhorar dinamicamente as imagens, e a taxa média de captura, compressão e armazenamento é cerca de 5 fps para a resolução 1280x720, adequando-se à captura de imagens individuais. Sem processamento em software, a taxa sobe para cerca de 23 fps para a resolução 1280x720, sendo cerca de 28 fps para a resolução 1280x1088, o que é favorável à captura de vídeo.

Plane detection from monocular image sequences

AIRES, Kelson R. T. ; ARAÚJO, Hélder J. ; MEDEIROS, Adelardo A. D. . Plane Detection from Monocular Image Sequences. In: VISUALIZATION, IMAGING AND IMAGE PROCESSING, 2008, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Proceedings..., Palma de Mallorca: VIIP, 2008

Plane Detection Using Affine Homography

AIRES, Kelson R. T.; ARAÚJO, Hélder J.; MEDEIROS, Adelardo A. D. Plane Detection Using Affine Homography. In: CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE AUTOMÁTICA, 2008, Juiz de Fora, MG: Anais... do CBA 2008.

Estudo do genoma do vírus causador da mionecrose infecciosa em camarões e desenvolvimento de métodos para detecção de diferentes variantes

Shrimp farming is one of the activities that contribute most to the growth of global aquaculture. However, this business has undergone significant economic losses due to the onset of viral diseases such as Infectious Myonecrosis (IMN). The IMN is already widespread throughout Northeastern Brazil and affects other countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and China. The main symptom of disease is myonecrosis, which consists of necrosis of striated muscles of the abdomen and cephalothorax of shrimp. The IMN is caused by infectious myonecrosis virus (IMNV), a non-enveloped virus which has protrusions along its capsid. The viral genome consists of a single molecule of double-stranded RNA and has two Open Reading Frames (ORFs). The ORF1 encodes the major capsid protein (MCP) and a potential RNA binding protein (RBP). ORF2 encodes a probable RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and classifies IMNV in Totiviridae family. Thus, the objective of this research was study the IMNV complete genome and encoded proteins in order to develop a system differentiate virus isolates based on polymorphisms presence. The phylogenetic relationship among some totivirus was investigated and showed a new group to IMNV within Totiviridae family. Two new genomes were sequenced, analyzed and compared to two other genomes already deposited in GenBank. The new genomes were more similar to each other than those already described. Conserved and variable regions of the genome were identified through similarity graphs and alignments using the four IMNV sequences. This analyze allowed mapping of polymorphic sites and revealed that the most variable region of the genome is in the first half of ORF1, which coincides with the regions that possibly encode the viral protrusion, while the most stable regions of the genome were found in conserved domains of proteins that interact with RNA. Moreover, secondary structures were predicted for all proteins using various softwares and protein structural models were calculated using threading and ab initio modeling approaches. From these analyses was possible to observe that the IMNV proteins have motifs and shapes similar to proteins of other totiviruses and new possible protein functions have been proposed. The genome and proteins study was essential for development of a PCR-based detection system able to discriminate the four IMNV isolates based on the presence of polymorphic sites

Alguns aspectos sobre o processo da democratização dos sistemas políticos no mundo árabe :Egito e Líbano como modelos de estudo

The World has tried diverse democratic waves at distinct moments. Some nations have adopted the idea of the democracy for years; others have not yet and other ones are still in a slow process of transition. The field of studies on the Arabian political systems has testified since the last quarter of 20th century a notorious development. This advance disclosed in the existence of a set of trends that has turned around a number of concepts and main theoretical frames such as the political pluralism and the democratic transition and the civil society and its relation with the State. The speech on the process of democratic transition consists in part in the capture and the analysis of the role of the forces and the organizations of the civil society in this process. The peculiarities of the Arab World excite questions concerning the establishment of one governmental system in this universe in the mold of that one that develops with hegemony in the Occident, which has become an interesting field of inquiries for the Political Science. This study comprises the analysis of some aspects of the political situation in the Arab World towards the process of democratization in which Egypt and Lebanon are models of study. Thus the theoretical basis of the term democracy is introduced, presenting different considerations about this expression, since the sprouting of the term until its current conception; later the civil society is analyzed as well as the systems of the political parties and the electoral systems of both countries in attempt to identify the level of democratization existing there and also to find the possible ways to magnify the democratic horizons

Influência da área de amostragem na determinação de perdas totais na colheita de soja

A metodologia, atualmente utilizada, para a determinação das perdas na colheita de soja, que consiste na utilização de armações de 2 m², vem fornecendo resultados com alto coeficiente de variação, o que dificulta detectar diferenças significativas entre os tratamentos, mesmo que esta diferença apresente valores numéricos muito altos. em função deste problema, objetivou-se avaliar o efeito das armações sobre a quantificação das perdas totais na colheita da cultura da soja, alterando-se a velocidade de deslocamento da colhedora e a abertura entre o cilindro e o côncavo. O delineamento experimental foi em blocos casualizados, em esquema fatorial 2 x 3 x 2, totalizando 12 tratamentos com quatro repetições. Os resultados evidenciaram que o coeficiente de variação para a armação de 2 m² foi de 88,26%, enquanto que para a armação de 3 m² este valor foi de 32,85%, e que com a armação de 2 m² foram detectadas perdas totais de 45 kg ha-1, enquanto que com a de 3 m² quantificou-se 73 kg ha-1, indicando que a área das armações interfere na quantificação das perdas totais na cultura da soja.

Controle estatístico aplicado ao processo de colheita mecanizada diurna e noturna de cana-de-açúcar

The system of mechanized harvesting can seek process improvements using quality tools that can assist in reducing losses, damaged ratoons and increase the longevity of sugarcane crop. Therefore, the objective this study was to detect the effective control of the variability of losses and damage to ratoon and identify whether they are within acceptable standards. Thus, 40 points were sampled in two periods of harvest, diurnal and nocturnal, in rectangular grids (55 x 45 m) for determining visible losses (whole and shattered billets, fixed and loose piece, stump and shrapnel), using frames of 10 m(2). Also, we measured the height of cut and degree of damage to ratoon (without damage, partial injury and fragmentation). The statistic used was descriptive variables for the loss of sugarcane during the diurnal (D) and nocturnal (N) periods, analysis of variance using the F test at 5% probability and the Tukey test for comparison of the mean, also using the statistical control through charts process. There was no difference to ratoon damage. In the process of harvest, losses of whole and shattered billets by grinding were considered under control, so as losses from the stump. on the other hand, the losses of fixed piece, shrapnel and whole-cane were not controlled. The cutting height and total losses were higher during the nocturnal harvest. The charts were shown to be effective for the evaluation of control process of diurnal and nocturnal harvests.

Group Sequential Communication (GSC): Especificação e Análise de Desempenho de umMecanismo de Comunicação de Tempo Real Compatível ao Padrão IEEE 802.11/11e Aplicado à Automação Industrial

This thesis proposes the specification and performance analysis of a real-time communication mechanism for IEEE 802.11/11e standard. This approach is called Group Sequential Communication (GSC). The GSC has a better performance for dealing with small data packets when compared to the HCCA mechanism by adopting a decentralized medium access control using a publish/subscribe communication scheme. The main objective of the thesis is the HCCA overhead reduction of the Polling, ACK and QoS Null frames exchanged between the Hybrid Coordinator and the polled stations. The GSC eliminates the polling scheme used by HCCA scheduling algorithm by using a Virtual Token Passing procedure among members of the real-time group to whom a high-priority and sequential access to communication medium is granted. In order to improve the reliability of the mechanism proposed into a noisy channel, it is presented an error recovery scheme called second chance algorithm. This scheme is based on block acknowledgment strategy where there is a possibility of retransmitting when missing real-time messages. Thus, the GSC mechanism maintains the real-time traffic across many IEEE 802.11/11e devices, optimized bandwidth usage and minimal delay variation for data packets in the wireless network. For validation purpose of the communication scheme, the GSC and HCCA mechanisms have been implemented in network simulation software developed in C/C++ and their performance results were compared. The experiments show the efficiency of the GSC mechanism, especially in industrial communication scenarios.