Search results for: Marcus Vin´ıcius de Souza Almeida
69 Proposing Robotics Challenge Centered on Material Transportation in Smart Manufacturing
Authors: Brehme D’napoli Reis de Mesquita, Marcus Vin´ıcius de Souza Almeida, Caio Vin´ıcius Silva do Carmo
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Educational robotics has emerged as a pedagogical tool, utilizing technological artifacts to engage students’ curiosity and interest. It fosters active learning of STEM education competencies while also cultivating essential behavioral skills. Robotic competitions provide students with platforms to collaboratively devise diverse solutions to shared problems, fostering experience exchange, collaboration, and personal growth. Despite the prevalence of current robotic competitions, especially in Brazil, simulating real-world challenges like natural disasters, there is a notable absence of industry-related tasks. This article presents an educational robotics initiative centered around material transportation within smart manufacturing using automated guided vehicles. The proposed robotics challenge was executed in a competition held in Ac¸ailˆandia city, Maranh˜ao, Brazil, yielding satisfactory results and inspiring teams to develop time-limited solution strategies.
Keywords: Educational robotics, STEM education, robotic competitions, material transportation, smart manufacturing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 41768 Using Wiki for Enhancing the Knowledge Transfer to Newcomers: An Experience Report
Authors: H. O. Barbosa, A. C. R. da Silva, C. M. de Almeida, E. M. dos Santos, F. O. de Sousa, F. B. da S. Souza, F. B. da S. Souza, F. de O. Lima, L. H. Albuquerque, R. F. do Valle Cunha
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Software development is intrinsic human-based knowledge-intensive. Due to globalization, software development has become a complex challenge and we usually face barriers related to knowledge management, team building, costly testing processes, especially in distributed settings. In this paper, we present the use of experimental studies to improve our knowledge management process using the Wiki system. According to the results, it was possible to identify learning preferences from our software projects leader team, organize and improve the learning experience of our Wiki, and facilitate collaboration by newcomers to improve Wiki with new contents available in the Wiki.
Keywords: Mobile products, knowledge management process, Wiki system, Global Software Development.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 76067 A Tubular Electrode for Radiofrequency Ablation Therapy
Authors: Carlos L. Antunes, Tony R. Almeida, Nélia Raposeiro, Belarmino Gonçalves, Paulo Almeida, André Antunes
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In the last two decades radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has been considered a promising medical procedure for the treatment of primary and secondary malignancies. However, the needle-based electrodes so far developed for this kind of treatment are not suitable for the thermal ablation of tumors located in hollow organs like esophagus, colon or bile duct. In this work a tubular electrode solution is presented. Numerical and experimental analyses were performed to characterize the volume of the lesion induced. Results show that this kind of electrode is a feasible solution and numerical simulation might provide a tool for planning RFA procedure with some accuracy.Keywords: 3D modeling, cancer, medical therapy, radiofrequency ablation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 189866 Liver Lesion Extraction with Fuzzy Thresholding in Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound Images
Authors: Abder-Rahman Ali, Adélaïde Albouy-Kissi, Manuel Grand-Brochier, Viviane Ladan-Marcus, Christine Hoeffl, Claude Marcus, Antoine Vacavant, Jean-Yves Boire
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In this paper, we present a new segmentation approach for focal liver lesions in contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging. This approach, based on a two-cluster Fuzzy C-Means methodology, considers type-II fuzzy sets to handle uncertainty due to the image modality (presence of speckle noise, low contrast, etc.), and to calculate the optimum inter-cluster threshold. Fine boundaries are detected by a local recursive merging of ambiguous pixels. The method has been tested on a representative database. Compared to both Otsu and type-I Fuzzy C-Means techniques, the proposed method significantly reduces the segmentation errors.Keywords: Defuzzification, fuzzy clustering, image segmentation, type-II fuzzy sets.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 230865 Wound Healing Dressing and Some Composites Such as Zeolite, TiO2, Chitosan and PLGA: A Review
Authors: L. B. Naves, L. Almeida
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The development of Drugs Delivery System (DDS) has been widely investigated in the last decades. In this paper, first a general overview of traditional and modern wound dressing is presented. This is followed by a review of what scientists have done in the medical environment, focusing on the possibility to develop a new alternative for DDS through transdermal pathway, aiming to treat melanoma skin cancer.
Keywords: Cancer Therapy, Dressing Polymers, Melanoma, wound healing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 367964 LIFirr with an Indicator of Microbial Activity in Paraffinic Oil
Authors: M. P. Casiraghi, C. M. Quintella, P. Almeida
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Paraffinic oils were submitted to microbial action. The microorganisms consisted of bacteria of the genera Pseudomonas sp. and Bacillus lincheniforms. The alterations in interfacial tension were determined using a tensometer and applying the hanging drop technique at room temperature (299 K ±275 K). The alteration in the constitution of the paraffins was evaluated by means of gas chromatography. The microbial activity was observed to reduce interfacial tension by 54 to 78%, as well as consuming the paraffins C19 to C29 and producing paraffins C36 to C44. The LIFirr technique made it possible to determine the microbial action quickly.
Keywords: Paraffins, biosurfactants, LIFirr.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 236463 Cross-Cultural Strategies for Web Design
Authors: Armando Calabrese, Guendalina Capece, Michele Corbò, Nathan Levialdi Ghiron, Matteo M. Marucchi
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People from different cultures favor web pages characterized by the values of their culture and, therefore, tend to prefer different characteristics of a website according to their cultural values in terms of navigation, security, product information, customer service, shopping and design tools. For a company aiming to globalize its market it is useful to implement country specific cultural interfaces and different web sites for countries with different cultures. This paper, following the conclusions proposed by two models of Hall and Hofstede, and the studies of Marcus and Gould, defines, through an empirical analysis, the guidelines of web design for both the Scandinavian countries and Malaysia.Keywords: Cultural dimensions, cultural markers, Hofstede, web design, web marketing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 350562 Hydrochemical Contamination Profiling and Spatial-Temporal Mapping with the Support of Multivariate and Cluster Statistical Analysis
Authors: S. Barbosa, M. Pinto, J. A. Almeida, E. Carvalho, C. Diamantino
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The aim of this work was to test a methodology able to generate spatial-temporal maps that can synthesize simultaneously the trends of distinct hydrochemical indicators in an old radium-uranium tailings dam deposit. Multidimensionality reduction derived from principal component analysis and subsequent data aggregation derived from clustering analysis allow to identify distinct hydrochemical behavioral profiles and generate synthetic evolutionary hydrochemical maps.
Keywords: Contamination plume migration, K-means of PCA scores, groundwater and mine water monitoring, spatial-temporal hydrochemical trends.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 68061 Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Built-In Thermoelectric Generator Modules with an Elliptical Pin-Fin Heat Sink
Authors: J. Y. Jang, C. Y. Tseng
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A three-dimensional numerical model of thermoelectric generator (TEG) modules attached to a large chimney plate is proposed and solved numerically using a control volume based finite difference formulation. The TEG module consists of a thermoelectric generator, an elliptical pin-fin heat sink, and a cold plate for water cooling. In the chimney, the temperature of flue gases is 450-650K. Although the TEG hot-side temperature and thus the electric power output can be increased by inserting an elliptical pin-fin heat sink into the chimney tunnel to increase the heat transfer area, the pin fin heat sink would cause extra pumping power at the same time. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of geometrical parameters on the electric power output and chimney pressure drop characteristics. The effects of different operating conditions, including various inlet velocities (Vin= 1, 3, 5 m/s), inlet temperatures (Tgas = 450, 550, 650K) and different fin height (0 to 150 mm) are discussed in detail. The predicted numerical data for the power vs. current (P-I) curve are in good agreement (within 11%) with the experimental data.
Keywords: Thermoelectric generator, Waste heat recovery, Elliptical pin-fin heat sink.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 247560 Dynamics in Tangible Chemical Reactions
Authors: Patrick Maier, Marcus Tönnis, Gudrun Klinker
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Spatial understanding and the understanding of dynamic change in the spatial structure of molecules during a reaction is essential for designing new molecules. Knowing the physical processes in the reactions helps to speed up the designing process. To support the designer with the correct representation of the designed molecule as well as showing the dynamic behavior of the whole reacting system is the goal of our application. Our system shows the spatial deformation of the molecules at every time interval by minimizing the energy level of the molecules. The position and orientation of the molecules can be intuitively controlled by manipulating objects of the real world using Augmented Reality techniques. Our approach has the potential to speed up the design of new molecules and help students to understand the chemical processes better.Keywords: Augmented Augmented Chemical Reactions, Augmented Reality, chemistry, education.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 180959 Friction Estimation and Compensation for Steering Angle Control for Highly Automated Driving
Authors: Marcus Walter, Norbert Nitzsche, Dirk Odenthal, Steffen M¨uller
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This contribution presents a friction estimator for industrial purposes which identifies Coulomb friction in a steering system. The estimator only needs a few, usually known, steering system parameters. Friction occurs on almost every mechanical system and has a negative influence on high-precision position control. This is demonstrated on a steering angle controller for highly automated driving. In this steering system the friction induces limit cycles which cause oscillating vehicle movement when the vehicle follows a given reference trajectory. When compensating the friction with the introduced estimator, limit cycles can be suppressed. This is demonstrated by measurements in a series vehicle.Keywords: Friction estimation, friction compensation, steering system, lateral vehicle guidance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 307258 Tissue Composition and Muscularity of Lamb Legs Fed with Sunflower Seeds and Vitamin E
Authors: A. G. Silva Sobrinho, G. M. Manzi, N. L. L. Lima, F. A. Almeida, V. Endo, N. M. B. L. Zeola
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The purpose of this study was to evaluate the tissue composition and carcass muscularity of 32 legs of Ile de France lambs fed with diets containing sunflower seeds and vitamin E, with mean body weight of 15 kg, lodged in individual pens at 15 kg and slaughtered at 32 kg of body weight. The treatments influenced (P<0,05) leg weight, femur length and muscle:bone ratio, being the highest values (2,13 kg, 16,19 cm and 7,38, respectively) in lambs that received diet without sunflower seeds and vitamin E. The other variables were not affected (P>0,05) by the treatments. The interaction of the sunflower and vitamin E was positive for bone total weights and intermuscular fat.Keywords: sheep, conformation, feedlot, nutrition, sugar-cane
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 230457 Developing a Structured and Strategically Focused Performance Assessment System
Authors: Isabel Duarte de Almeida, João Vilas-Boas, Ana Abrantes Cabral
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The number and adequacy of Performance-Indicators (PIs) for organisational purposes are core to the success of organisations and a major concern to the sponsor of this research. This assignment developed a procedure to improve a firm’s performance assessment system, by identifying two key-PIs out of 28 initial ones, and by setting criteria and their relative importance to validate and rank the adequacy and the right number of operational metrics. The Analytical-Hierarchy-Process was used with a synthesismethod to treat data coming from the management inquiries. Although organisational alignment has been achieved, business processes should also be targeted and PIs continuously revised.Keywords: Strategic performance assessment systems, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 164656 From “Boat to Plate”: Creating Value through Sustainable Fish Supply Chain Visibility
Authors: Isabel Duarte de Almeida, João Vilas-Boas, Luís Miguel Ferreira
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Environmental concerns about the scarcity of marine resources are critical driving forces for firms aiming to prepare their supply chains for sustainability. Building on previous work, this paper highlights the implementation of good practices geared towards sustainable operations in the seafood department, which were pursued in an exploratory retailer case. Outcomes of the adopted environmentally and socially acceptable fish retailing strategies, ranged from traceability, to self-certification and eco-labelling. The consequences for business were, as follows: stronger collaboration and trust across the chain of custody, improvement of sponsors’ image and of consumers’ loyalty and, progress in the Greenpeace retailers’ evaluation ranking.Keywords: Sustainability in sea food, Supply Chain Traceability, Social Responsibility.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 175255 The Design of a Die for the Processing of Aluminum through Equal Channel Angular Pressing
Authors: P. G. F. Siqueira, N. G. S. Almeida, P. M. A. Stemler, P. R. Cetlin, M. T. P. Aguilar
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The processing of metals through Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) leads to their remarkable strengthening. The ECAP dies control the amount of strain imposed on the material through its geometry, especially through the angle between the die channels, and thus the microstructural and mechanical properties evolution of the material. The present study describes the design of an ECAP die whose utilization and maintenance are facilitated, and that also controls the eventual undesired flow of the material during processing. The proposed design was validated through numerical simulations procedures using commercial software. The die was manufactured according to the present design and tested. Tests using aluminum alloys also indicated to be suitable for the processing of higher strength alloys.
Keywords: ECAP, mechanical design, numerical methods, SPD.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 82254 Suggestions for the Improvement of the Quality of Public Transportation Service in Campos,Brazil
Authors: D. I. De Souza, G. P. Azevedo, P. Duarte
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In this paper the main objective is to analyze the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the city of Campos, located in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This analysis, based on the opinion of the bus customers, will help to determine their degree of satisfaction with the service provided by the bus companies. The result of this assessment shows that the bus customers are displeased with the quality of service supplied by the bus companies. Therefore, it is necessary to identify alternative solutions to minimize the consequences of the main problems related to customers- dissatisfaction identified in our evaluation and to help the bus companies operating in Campos better fulfill their riders- needs.Keywords: PubicTransportation, Quality of Service, Riders'Opinion, Bus Companies
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 252553 Secondary Organic Contribution to Particles Formed on the Ice Melted Arctic Ocean
Authors: Petri Vaattovaara, Zoran D. Ristovski, Martin Graus, Marcus Müller, EijaAsmi, Luca Di Liberto, StaffanSjögren, Douglas Orsini, Caroline Leck, Ari Laaksonen
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Due to climate warming and consequently due to ice and snow melting of the Arctic Ocean, the highly biologically active ocean surface area has been expanding quickly making possible longer marine biota growth seasons during polar summers. That increase the probability of the remote marine environment secondary contribution, especially secondary organic contribution, to the particle production and particle growth events and particle properties, consequently effecting on the open ocean, pack ice and ground based regions radiation budget and thus on the feedbacks between arctic biota, particles, clouds, and climate.
Keywords: Arctic Ocean, ice melting, nucleation, secondary organics, clouds, climate.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 151552 System of Innovation: Comparing Savings of Brazil and South Africa
Authors: Glessiane de O. Almeida, Sérgio Murilo C. Messias, Iracema M. de Aragão Gomes
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This article discusses issues related to the System of Innovation: Comparing economies of Brazil and South Africa. Having as this study aimed at comparing the Innovation System of the countries mentioned. Then briefly describe the process of Venture Capital and present the industry innovation in Brazil and South Africa. The methodological approach described in this article is descriptive and the approach is qualitative, taking as a basis secondary data relating to research articles. The main results are related to the different forms of financing of Venture Capital used by countries compared, in addition to the training and economic policy. And finally, it was highlighted the importance of implementation of policy reforms for the Brazil and Africa in the innovation process.
Keywords: Innovation, Venture Capital, Economy, National Innovation System (NIS), BRICS.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 180151 An Application for Web Mining Systems with Services Oriented Architecture
Authors: Thiago M. R. Dias, Gray F. Moita, Paulo E. M. Almeida
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Although the World Wide Web is considered the largest source of information there exists nowadays, due to its inherent dynamic characteristics, the task of finding useful and qualified information can become a very frustrating experience. This study presents a research on the information mining systems in the Web; and proposes an implementation of these systems by means of components that can be built using the technology of Web services. This implies that they can encompass features offered by a services oriented architecture (SOA) and specific components may be used by other tools, independent of platforms or programming languages. Hence, the main objective of this work is to provide an architecture to Web mining systems, divided into stages, where each step is a component that will incorporate the characteristics of SOA. The separation of these steps was designed based upon the existing literature. Interesting results were obtained and are shown here.Keywords: Web Mining, Service Oriented Architecture, WebServices.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 149350 Ensuring Consistency under the Snapshot Isolation
Authors: Carlos Roberto Valˆencio, F´abio Renato de Almeida, Thatiane Kawabata, Leandro Alves Neves, Julio Cesar Momente, Mario Luiz Tronco, Angelo Cesar Colombini
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By running transactions under the SNAPSHOT isolation we can achieve a good level of concurrency, specially in databases with high-intensive read workloads. However, SNAPSHOT is not immune to all the problems that arise from competing transactions and therefore no serialization warranty exists. We propose in this paper a technique to obtain data consistency with SNAPSHOT by using some special triggers that we named DAEMON TRIGGERS. Besides keeping the benefits of the SNAPSHOT isolation, the technique is specially useful for those database systems that do not have an isolation level that ensures serializability, like Firebird and Oracle. We describe all the anomalies that might arise when using the SNAPSHOT isolation and show how to preclude them with DAEMON TRIGGERS. Based on the methodology presented here, it is also proposed the creation of a new isolation level: DAEMON SNAPSHOT.
Keywords: Data consistency, serialization, snapshot.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 214349 Environmental Analysis of Springs in Urban Areas–A Methodological Proposal
Authors: Milton Pavezzi Netto, Gustavo D'Almeida Scarpinella, Ricardo Siloto da Silva
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The springs located in urban areas are the outpouring of surface water, which can serve as water supply, effluent receptors and important local macro-drainage elements. With unplanned occupation, non-compliance with environmental legislation and the importance of these water bodies, it is vital to analyze the springs within urban areas, considering the Brazilian forest code. This paper submits an analysis and discussion methodology proposal of environmental compliance functions of urban springs, by means of G.I.S. - Geographic Information System analysis - and in situ analysis. The case study included two springs which exhibit a history of occupation along its length, with different degrees of impact. The proposed method is effective and easy to apply, representing a powerful tool for analyzing the environmental conditions of springs in urban areas.Keywords: Springs, urban area, Brazilian forest code.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 161948 Microclimate Variations in Rio de Janeiro Related to Massive Public Transportation
Authors: Marco E. O. Jardim, Frederico A. M. Souza, Valeria M. Bastos, Myrian C. A. Costa, Nelson F. F. Ebecken
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Urban public transportation in Rio de Janeiro is based on bus lines, powered by diesel, and four limited metro lines that support only some neighborhoods. This work presents an infrastructure built to better understand microclimate variations related to massive urban transportation in some specific areas of the city. The use of sensor nodes with small analytics capacity provides environmental information to population or public services. The analyses of data collected from a few small sensors positioned near some heavy traffic streets show the harmful impact due to poor bus route plan.
Keywords: Big data, IoT, public transportation, public health system.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 112647 Environmental Analysis of the Zinc Oxide Nanophotocatalyst Synthesis
Authors: Natália B. Pompermayer, Mariana B. Porto, Elizabeth F. Souza
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Nanophotocatalysts such as titanium (TiO2), zinc (ZnO), and iron (Fe2O3) oxides can be used in organic pollutants oxidation, and in many other applications. But among the challenges for technological application (scale-up) of the nanotechnology scientific developments two aspects are still little explored: research on environmental risk of the nanomaterials preparation methods, and the study of nanomaterials properties and/or performance variability. The environmental analysis was performed for six different methods of ZnO nanoparticles synthesis, and showed that it is possible to identify the more environmentally compatible process even at laboratory scale research. The obtained ZnO nanoparticles were tested as photocatalysts, and increased the degradation rate of the Rhodamine B dye up to 30 times.
Keywords: Environmental impact analysis, inorganic nanoparticles, photocatalysts.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 348146 Muscularity and Leg Tissue Composition of Lambs Fed with Hydrolyzed Sugarcane
Authors: V. Endo, A.G. Silva Sobrinho, N.L.L. Lima, G.M. Manzi, L.G.A. Cirne, V.T. Santana, F.A. Almeida
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This study aimed to evaluate the muscularity and tissue composition of 24 legs of Ile de France lambs. They were fed with diets containing “in nature" or hydrolyzed sugarcane with 0.6% of calcium oxide in aerobic and anaerobic environments. Animals entered the trial at 15 and were slaughtered at 32 kg of body weight. The leg tissue composition, as well as muscularity (0.47), muscle:bone (6.66) and muscle:fat (4.25) were not affected (P>0.05) by treatments. The proportions found were: 67.62% for muscle, 17.52% for bone and 10.15% for fat. In relation to lambs fed with “in nature" sugarcane, hydrolyzed sugarcane with calcium oxide in aerobic and anaerobic environments did not affect muscularity and leg tissue composition of lambs.
Keywords: calcium oxide, feedlot, Saccharum officinarum
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 169645 Piezoelectric Micro-generator Characterization for Energy Harvesting Application
Authors: José E. Q. Souza, Marcio Fontana, Antonio C. C. Lima
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This paper presents analysis and characterization of a piezoelectric micro-generator for energy harvesting application. A low-cost experimental prototype was designed to operate as piezoelectric micro-generator in the laboratory. An input acceleration of 9.8m/s2 using a sine signal (peak-to-peak voltage: 1V, offset voltage: 0V) at frequencies ranging from 10Hz to 160Hz generated a maximum average power of 432.4μW (linear mass position = 25mm) and an average power of 543.3μW (angular mass position = 35°). These promising results show that the prototype can be considered for low consumption load application as an energy harvesting micro-generator.Keywords: Piezoelectric, microgenerator, energy harvesting, cantilever beam.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 94744 An Optimization Tool-Based Design Strategy Applied to Divide-by-2 Circuits with Unbalanced Loads
Authors: Agord M. Pinto Jr., Yuzo Iano, Leandro T. Manera, Raphael R. N. Souza
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This paper describes an optimization tool-based design strategy for a Current Mode Logic CML divide-by-2 circuit. Representing a building block for output frequency generation in a RFID protocol based-frequency synthesizer, the circuit was designed to minimize the power consumption for driving of multiple loads with unbalancing (at transceiver level). Implemented with XFAB XC08 180 nm technology, the circuit was optimized through MunEDA WiCkeD tool at Cadence Virtuoso Analog Design Environment ADE.Keywords: Divide-by-2 circuit, CMOS technology, PLL phase locked-loop, optimization tool, CML current mode logic, RF transceiver.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 215243 Comparing the Quality of Service of Bus Companies Operating in two Cities in Brazil
Authors: D. I. De Souza, D. Kipper, G. P. Azevedo
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The main objective of this work is to compare the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the city of Rio Branco, located in the state of Acre with the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the city of Campos, situated in the state of Rio de Janeiro, both cities in Brazil. This comparison, based on the opinion of the bus users, will determine their degree of satisfaction with the service available in both cities. The outcome of this evaluation shows the users unhappy with the quality of the service provided by the bus companies operating in both cities and the need to identify alternative solutions that may minimize the consequences caused by the main problems detected in this work. With these alternatives available, the bus companies will be able to better understand the needs of their customers in terms of manpower, service cost, time schedule, etc.Keywords: PubicTransportation, Quality of Service, Riders' Opinion, Bus Companies
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 131042 A Model for the Characterization and Selection of Beeswaxes for use as base Substitute Tissue in Photon Teletherapy
Authors: R.M.V. Silva, D.N. Souza
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This paper presents a model for the characterization and selection of beeswaxes for use as base substitute tissue for the manufacture of objects suitable for external radiotherapy using megavoltage photon beams. The model of characterization was divided into three distinct stages: 1) verification of aspects related to the origin of the beeswax, the bee species, the flora in the vicinity of the beehives and procedures to detect adulterations; 2) evaluation of physical and chemical properties; and 3) evaluation of beam attenuation capacity. The chemical composition of the beeswax evaluated in this study was similar to other simulators commonly used in radiotherapy. The behavior of the mass attenuation coefficient in the radiotherapy energy range was comparable to other simulators. The proposed model is efficient and enables convenient assessment of the use of any particular beeswax as a base substitute tissue for radiotherapy.Keywords: Beeswaxes, characterization, model, radiotherapy
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 156341 Additional Considerations on a Sequential Life Testing Approach using a Weibull Model
Authors: D. I. De Souza, D. R. Fonseca, R. Rocha
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In this paper we will develop further the sequential life test approach presented in a previous article by [1] using an underlying two parameter Weibull sampling distribution. The minimum life will be considered equal to zero. We will again provide rules for making one of the three possible decisions as each observation becomes available; that is: accept the null hypothesis H0; reject the null hypothesis H0; or obtain additional information by making another observation. The product being analyzed is a new type of a low alloy-high strength steel product. To estimate the shape and the scale parameters of the underlying Weibull model we will use a maximum likelihood approach for censored failure data. A new example will further develop the proposed sequential life testing approach.Keywords: Sequential Life Testing, Underlying Weibull Model, Maximum Likelihood Approach, Hypothesis Testing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 140440 Development and Evaluation of a Dynamic Cardiac Phantom for use in Nuclear Medicine
Authors: Marcos A. Dullius, Ramon C. Fernandes, Divanízia N. Souza
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The aim of this study was to develop a dynamic cardiac phantom for quality control in myocardial scintigraphy. The dynamic heart phantom constructed only contained the left ventricle, made of elastic material (latex), comprising two cavities: one internal and one external. The data showed a non-significant variation in the values of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) obtained by varying the heart rate. It was also possible to evaluate the ejection fraction (LVEF) through different arrays of image acquisition and to perform an intercomparison of LVEF by two different scintillation cameras. The results of the quality control tests were satisfactory, showing that they can be used as parameters in future assessments. The new dynamic heart phantom was demonstrated to be effective for use in LVEF measurements. Therefore, the new heart simulator is useful for the quality control of scintigraphic cameras.
Keywords: sheart, nuclear medicine, phantom
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2538