GLOBO ECOLOGIA: O DISCURSO AMBIENTAL NA TELEVISÃO

O programa Globo Ecologia está no ar há 15 (quinze) anos e tem como objetivo principal auxiliar a preservação do ambiente. A cada semana são exibidas matérias em lugares de difícil acesso ao homem como, por exemplo, comunidades indígenas, comunidades de pescadores, áreas que sofrem com o desmatamento e a poluição. Seu discurso está, aparentemente, todo voltado para a proteção ambiental. Com um formato jornalístico simples, tem por meta maior demonstrar que a Fundação Roberto Marinho se preocupa também com essa temática. No entanto, esse programa é veiculado em um horário sem muita audiência, com um tempo de duração curto. O Objetivo dessa pesquisa é avaliar, por intermédio de uma leitura subsidiada pela análise do discurso e avaliação dos recursos técnicos utilizados, a imagem que esse programa constrói da Ecologia. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva, com o auxílio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, documental.(AU)

GLOBO ECOLOGIA: O DISCURSO AMBIENTAL NA TELEVISÃO

O programa Globo Ecologia está no ar há 15 (quinze) anos e tem como objetivo principal auxiliar a preservação do ambiente. A cada semana são exibidas matérias em lugares de difícil acesso ao homem como, por exemplo, comunidades indígenas, comunidades de pescadores, áreas que sofrem com o desmatamento e a poluição. Seu discurso está, aparentemente, todo voltado para a proteção ambiental. Com um formato jornalístico simples, tem por meta maior demonstrar que a Fundação Roberto Marinho se preocupa também com essa temática. No entanto, esse programa é veiculado em um horário sem muita audiência, com um tempo de duração curto. O Objetivo dessa pesquisa é avaliar, por intermédio de uma leitura subsidiada pela análise do discurso e avaliação dos recursos técnicos utilizados, a imagem que esse programa constrói da Ecologia. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva, com o auxílio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, documental.(AU)

GLOBO ECOLOGIA: O DISCURSO AMBIENTAL NA TELEVISÃO

O programa Globo Ecologia está no ar há 15 (quinze) anos e tem como objetivo principal auxiliar a preservação do ambiente. A cada semana são exibidas matérias em lugares de difícil acesso ao homem como, por exemplo, comunidades indígenas, comunidades de pescadores, áreas que sofrem com o desmatamento e a poluição. Seu discurso está, aparentemente, todo voltado para a proteção ambiental. Com um formato jornalístico simples, tem por meta maior demonstrar que a Fundação Roberto Marinho se preocupa também com essa temática. No entanto, esse programa é veiculado em um horário sem muita audiência, com um tempo de duração curto. O Objetivo dessa pesquisa é avaliar, por intermédio de uma leitura subsidiada pela análise do discurso e avaliação dos recursos técnicos utilizados, a imagem que esse programa constrói da Ecologia. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva, com o auxílio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, documental.(AU)

Acqusition and data analysis of the eco-efficiency for the establishment of indicators parameters for industrial environmental sustainability

The industrial activity is inevitably associated with a certain degradation of the environmental quality, because is not possible to guarantee that a manufacturing process can be totally innocuous. The eco-efficiency concept is globally accepted as a philosophy of entreprise management, that encourages the companies to become more competitive, innovative and environmentally responsible by promoting the link between its companies objectives for excellence and its objectives of environmental excellence issues. This link imposes the creation of an organizational methodology where the performance of the company is concordant with the sustainable development. The main propose of this project is to apply the concept of eco-efficiency to the particular case of the metallurgical and metal workshop industries through the development of the particular indicators needed and to produce a manual of procedures for implementation of the accurate solution.

From dichotic listening to the irrelevant sound effect: a behavioural and neuroimaging analysis of the processing of unattended speech

The assumption that ignoring irrelevant sound in a serial recall situation is identical to ignoring a non-target channel in dichotic listening is challenged. Dichotic listening is open to moderating effects of working memory capacity (Conway et al., 2001) whereas irrelevant sound effects (ISE) are not (Beaman, 2004). A right ear processing bias is apparent in dichotic listening, whereas the bias is to the left ear in the ISE (Hadlington et al., 2004). Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging data (Scott et al., 2004, submitted) show bilateral activation of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) in the presence of intelligible, but ignored, background speech and right hemisphere activation of the STG in the presence of unintelligible background speech. It is suggested that the right STG may be involved in the ISE and a particularly strong left ear effect might occur because of the contralateral connections in audition. It is further suggested that left STG activity is associated with dichotic listening effects and may be influenced by working memory span capacity. The relationship of this functional and neuroanatomical model to known neural correlates of working memory is considered.

Neurolinguistic analysis: aspects of language and speech deviations in Palestinian Arabic aphasics

The characteristics of aphasics’ speech in various languages have been the core of numerous studies, but Arabic in general, and Palestinian Arabic in particular, is still a virgin field in this respect. However, it is of vital importance to have a clear picture of the specific aspects of Palestinian Arabic that might be affected in the speech of aphasics in order to establish screening, diagnosis and therapy programs based on a clinical linguistic database. Hence the central questions of this study are what are the main neurolinguistic features of the Palestinian aphasics’ speech at the phonetic-acoustic level and to what extent are the results similar or not to those obtained from other languages. In general, this study is a survey of the most prominent features of Palestinian Broca’s aphasics’ speech. The main acoustic parameters of vowels and consonants are analysed such as vowel duration, formant frequency, Voice Onset Time (VOT), intensity and frication duration. The deviant patterns among the Broca’s aphasics are displayed and compared with those of normal speakers. The nature of deficit, whether phonetic or phonological, is also discussed. Moreover, the coarticulatory characteristics and some prosodic patterns of Broca’s aphasics are addressed. Samples were collected from six Broca’s aphasics from the same local region. The acoustic analysis conducted on a range of consonant and vowel parameters displayed differences between the speech patterns of Broca’s aphasics and normal speakers. For example, impairments in voicing contrast between the voiced and voiceless stops were found in Broca’s aphasics. This feature does not exist for the fricatives produced by the Palestinian Broca’s aphasics and hence deviates from data obtained for aphasics’ speech from other languages. The Palestinian Broca’s aphasics displayed particular problems with the emphatic sounds. They exhibited deviant coarticulation patterns, another feature that is inconsistent with data obtained from studies from other languages. However, several other findings are in accordance with those reported from various other languages such as impairments in the VOT. The results are in accordance with the suggestions that speech production deficits in Broca’s aphasics are not related to phoneme selection but rather to articulatory implementation and some speech output impairments are related to timing and planning deficits.

On the Selection of Non-Invasive Methods Based on Speech Analysis Oriented to Automatic Alzheimer Disease Diagnosis

The work presented here is part of a larger study to identify novel technologies and biomarkers for early Alzheimer disease (AD) detection and it focuses on evaluating the suitability of a new approach for early AD diagnosis by non-invasive methods. The purpose is to examine in a pilot study the potential of applying intelligent algorithms to speech features obtained from suspected patients in order to contribute to the improvement of diagnosis of AD and its degree of severity. In this sense, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have been used for the automatic classification of the two classes (AD and control subjects). Two human issues have been analyzed for feature selection: Spontaneous Speech and Emotional Response. Not only linear features but also non-linear ones, such as Fractal Dimension, have been explored. The approach is non invasive, low cost and without any side effects. Obtained experimental results were very satisfactory and promising for early diagnosis and classification of AD patients.

Speech Analysis using Modern Techniques of Nonlinear Dynamics

Medical fields requires fast, simple and noninvasive methods of diagnostic techniques. Several methods are available and possible because of the growth of technology that provides the necessary means of collecting and processing signals. The present thesis details the work done in the field of voice signals. New methods of analysis have been developed to understand the complexity of voice signals, such as nonlinear dynamics aiming at the exploration of voice signals dynamic nature. The purpose of this thesis is to characterize complexities of pathological voice from healthy signals and to differentiate stuttering signals from healthy signals. Efficiency of various acoustic as well as non linear time series methods are analysed. Three groups of samples are used, one from healthy individuals, subjects with vocal pathologies and stuttering subjects. Individual vowels/ and a continuous speech data for the utterance of the sentence "iruvarum changatimaranu" the meaning in English is "Both are good friends" from Malayalam language are recorded using a microphone . The recorded audio are converted to digital signals and are subjected to analysis.Acoustic perturbation methods like fundamental frequency (FO), jitter, shimmer, Zero Crossing Rate(ZCR) were carried out and non linear measures like maximum lyapunov exponent(Lamda max), correlation dimension (D2), Kolmogorov exponent(K2), and a new measure of entropy viz., Permutation entropy (PE) are evaluated for all three groups of the subjects. Permutation Entropy is a nonlinear complexity measure which can efficiently distinguish regular and complex nature of any signal and extract information about the change in dynamics of the process by indicating sudden change in its value. The results shows that nonlinear dynamical methods seem to be a suitable technique for voice signal analysis, due to the chaotic component of the human voice. Permutation entropy is well suited due to its sensitivity to uncertainties, since the pathologies are characterized by an increase in the signal complexity and unpredictability. Pathological groups have higher entropy values compared to the normal group. The stuttering signals have lower entropy values compared to the normal signals.PE is effective in charaterising the level of improvement after two weeks of speech therapy in the case of stuttering subjects. PE is also effective in characterizing the dynamical difference between healthy and pathological subjects. This suggests that PE can improve and complement the recent voice analysis methods available for clinicians. The work establishes the application of the simple, inexpensive and fast algorithm of PE for diagnosis in vocal disorders and stuttering subjects.

Physiological, biochemical and transcriptional analysis of onion bulbs during storage

Abstract: During the transition from endo-dormancy to eco-dormancy and subsequent growth, the onion bulb undergoes the transition from sink organ to source, to sustain cell division in the meristematic tissue. The mechanisms controlling these processes are not fully understood. Here, a detailed analysis of whole onion bulb physiological, biochemical and transcriptional changes in response to sprouting is reported, enabling a better knowledge of the mechanisms regulating post-harvest onion sprout development. Biochemical and physiological analyses were conducted on different cultivars ('Wellington', 'Sherpa' and 'Red Baron') grown at different sites over 3 years, cured at different temperatures (20, 24 and 28 degrees C) and stored under different regimes (1, 3, 6 and 6 1 degrees C). In addition, the first onion oligonucleotide microarray was developed to determine differential gene expression in onion during curing and storage, so that transcriptional changes could support biochemical and physiological analyses. There were greater transcriptional differences between samples at harvest and before sprouting than between the samples taken before and after sprouting, with some significant changes occurring during the relatively short curing period. These changes are likely to represent the transition from endo-dormancy to sprout suppression, and suggest that endo-dormancy is a relatively short period ending just after curing. Principal component analysis of biochemical and physiological data identified the ratio of monosaccharides (fructose and glucose) to disaccharide (sucrose), along with the concentration of zeatin riboside, as important factors in discriminating between sprouting and pre-sprouting bulbs. These detailed analyses provide novel insights into key regulatory triggers for sprout dormancy release in onion bulbs and provide the potential for the development of biochemical or transcriptional markers for sprout initiation. Evidence presented herein also suggests there is no detrimental effect on bulb storage life and quality caused by curing at 20 degrees C, producing a considerable saving in energy and costs.

Spoken language and speech perception abilities in deaf children

Despite early diagnosis, early fitting of more advanced sensory aids, early intervention, and intensive educational management, many children with severe to profound hearing loss are delayed in their acquisition of spoken language compared with their peers with normal hearing. More...Some of the greatest challenges facing educators of deaf children include determining where to focus intervention in order to maximise benefit, and establishing the most effective strategies for the development of age-appropriate language. The experimental research in this book examined the relationship between hearing, speech production, and vocabulary knowledge, and investigated the contributions of these factors to the overall speech perception performance of deaf children. This research also investigated the areas in which intervention would be most beneficial, and examined the effects of different types of intervention on the development of spoken language and speech perception skills in deaf children. The evaluation, analysis and intervention methods reported in this book provide an experimentally validated program for improving speech perception, speech production and spoken language skills of deaf children.

Tecnologias virtuais e análise videográfica: o YouTube® como recurso de pesquisa para compreensão sobre a imagem do idoso brasileiro = Virtual technologies and videographic analysis : YouTube® as research resource for understanding about brazilian elderly imagem

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