Industrial uses of geothermal energy a framework for application in a developing country

This paper presents a model of approach for agroindustrial development utilizing geothermal energy in an agriculturally based tropical developing country. Presented is the complexity of patterns in raw materials productivity, demand and the present problems of preserving their quality from biological deterioration thru drying.Utilization of a geothermal agroindustrial estate have to be carefully studied and programmed in reply to an almost constant heat demand profile consistent with seasonal available raw materials. This study uses the Tongonan Geothermal Field in Leyte Island as the model for presentation.     

Pressure Management in Water Distribution Systems Using a Self-Tuning Controller to Distribute the Available Potable Water with Equality

The rapid population growth of cities in developing countries (DC) make difficult to distribute the available potable water (PW) with equality. The distribution problem arises from an insufficient amount of PW and because cities water distribution systems (WDS) are not efficient. The novelty of this paper is a self-tuning controller (STC) proposed to manage, along the day, the pressure of water through the nodes of a WDS. It means, pressure management (PM) is proposed to control water levels (WLs) in householders tanks (HTs). The objective is to satisfy with equality the PW demand at different zones of a city forcing the flow of water by managing the pressure. The proposed STC performance is tested on the digital simulator developed to characterize the hydraulic operation of a WDS. The dynamic behaviour of the WDS is determined by the variation of the WL in the tanks of the WDS when water is supplied or extracted from them. The WDS of Mexico City is analysed and the proposed STC is applied to a simplified WDS. The results allow to conclude that the proposed STC could become a supporting tool for the decision making of WDS operators.     

Bibliometric analysis for characterization of oil production in Brazilian territory

Scientometrics - The theme related to the oil production in the Brazilian territory is not limited to the extraction means, distribution and use of this product, and involves political, cultural...     

Remote sensing of wetlands in South America: status and challenges

South America has a large proportion of wetlands compared with other continents. While most of these wetlands were conserved in a relatively good condition until a few decades ago, pressures brought about by land use and climate change have threaten their integrity in recent years. The aim of this article is to provide a bibliometric analysis of the available scientific literature relating to the remote sensing of wetlands in South America. From 1960 to 2015, 153 articles were published in 63 different journals, with the number of articles published per year increasing progressively since 1990. This rise is also paralleled by an increase in the contribution of local authors. The most intensively studied regions are the wetland macrosystems of South American mega-rivers: the Amazon and Paraná Rivers, along with the Pantanal at the headwaters of Paraguay River. Few studies spanned more than two countries. The most frequent objectives were mapping, covering all types of wetlands with optical data, and hydrology, focusing on floodplain wetlands with microwave data as the preferred data source. The last decade substantial growth reflects an increase in technological and scientific capacities. Nevertheless, the state of the art regarding the remote sensing of wetlands in South America remains enigmatic. Fundamental questions and guidelines which may contribute to the understanding of the functioning of these ecosystems are yet to be fully defined and there is considerable dispersion in the use of data and remote-sensing approaches.     

Binary monkey algorithm for approximate packing non-congruent circles in a rectangular container

A Packing problem consists in the best arrangement of several objects inside a bounded area named as the container. This arrangement must fulfill with technological constraints, for example, objects should not be overlapping. Some packing models for circular objects are typically formulated as non-convex optimization problems; where the continuous variables are the coordinates of the objects, so they are limited to not finding optimal solutions. Due to the combinatorial nature in the arrangement of such objects, heuristic methods are being used extensively which combine methods of global search and methods of local exhaustive search of local minima or their approximations. In this paper, we will address the packing problem for non-congruent (different size) circles with the binary version of the monkey algorithm which incorporates a cooperation process and a greedy strategy. We use a rectangular grid for covering the container. Every node in the grid represent potential positions for a circle. In this sense, binary monkey algorithm for the knapsack problem, can be used to solve de 0–1 approximate packing problem for non-congruet circles. The binary monkey problem uses two additional processes of the original monkey algorithm, these two processes are a greedy process and a cooperation processes.

     

The Brazilian academic genealogy: evidence of advisor–advisee relationships through quantitative analysis

Scientometrics - Science can be examined from several standpoints, such as through a bibliometric analysis of the scientific output of researchers, research groups or institutions. However, there...     

Amino acid composition of wheat grain. 1: Changes during development

The changes in the composition of free and total amino acids in wheat grain during development are described: the experiment was performed in a growth chamber with three varieties of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.): Splendeur, Hobbit and Maris Huntsman. The changes in the total composition of amino acids of the grain as development progressed were consistent with an increase in the proportion of storage proteins. At 15 days after anthesis, the relative amount of glycine increased, suggesting that at this moment the proportion of gliadins was relatively low. The relative amount of arginine increased in mature grain, showing that at times close to maturity the relative proportion of synthesis of a protein fraction rich in this amino acid increased. Free glutamate, proline and arginine decreased at 15 days to a greater extent than the other amino acids and was present in low relative amounts during the period of maximum protein synthesis in the grain; these three amino acids could be the most limiting for protein synthesis in grain. In the free fraction the following showed a similar pattern of change during grain development: aspartate, arginine and histidine on the one hand, and on the other alanine, valine, leucine, isoleucine, threonine, phenylalanine and tyrosine; moreover both groups were inversely correlated. Glycine and lysine were directly related to each other and inversely to glutamate.     

Influence of surrounding media refractive index on the thermal and strain sensitivities of long-period gratings

A detailed study of the thermal and strain sensitivities of a long-period grating when the device is immersed in different external media is presented. The range of refractive indices analyzed are within 1.000 to 1.447, corresponding to samples of air, water, ethanol, naphtha, thinner, turpentine, and kerosene. Within the same range of refractive indices, the strain sensitivity is between (-0.24 +/- 0.03) and (-0.94 +/- 0.11) pm/microepsilon. For the grating immersed in these fluids, the refractive index sensitivity ranges from -3 to -1035.6 nm per refractive index units. The coupling thermo-optic coefficients and the strain-optic coefficients are also measured, resulting in the range from (2.45 +/- 0.04)x10(-5) to (15.89 +/- 0.82)x10(-5) deg C(-1) and (-1.15 +/- 0.04) to (-1.61 +/- 0.04) microepsilon(-1), respectively. A noticeable nonlinear behavior of the thermal sensitivity is found for external media with refractive indices higher than 1.430.