The impacts of a GTL plant on Brazil's oil products supply and refinery expansion

This paper assesses the impacts of a GTL plant on the expansion of Brazil's oil refining segment. The GTL plant (50,000 bpd) was sized to start up operations in 2015, producing diesel and naphtha through the indirect route (FT-synthesis). This plant will consume the non-associated natural gas production from the recent discoveries at the Santos Basin (around 419 Bm³), and the associated gas production from the Campos Basin. Both basins are located in the Southeast of Brazil, the most populated, rich and industrialized region of the country. Two different criteria for refinery expansion were simulated in order to meet oil product demand scenarios. Findings show that depending on the refinery expansion criteria considered GTL will play a fundamental hole to meet the oil product demand forecast to Brazil in the next 10 years.     

半导体产业进入无利繁荣时代

在近期一次SEMI产业策略论坛发表的演讲中,Lam Research Corp.的总裁兼CEO Stephen Newberry认为,半导体产业已经进入了“无利的繁荣时代”。2003年以来,每比特/功能的价格已经比每比特/价格的成本下降得更快,使得整个产业的利润遭到侵蚀。这似乎成为了一个无法维继的市场,随着时间的推移必须进行自我修正才行。     

Continuous and Discontinuous Innovation: Overcoming the Innovator Dilemma

Challenged by competition pressures and unprecedented pace of change, firms can no longer choose whether to concentrate on the needs of today's customers or on the anticipation of those of tomorrow: they must be excellent in both. This requires managing two related balancing acts: on the one side, being excellent in both exploitation and exploration of their capabilities and, on the other side, being excellent in managing both incremental and radical innovation. These balances are critical since exploitation and exploration, on the one side, and incremental and radical innovation, on the other, require different approaches that have traditionally been considered difficult to combine within the same organization. Working on evidence and discussion from the 7th CINet Conference held in Lucca (Italy) in 2006, this Special Section is aimed at contributing to theory and practice on these two complex balancing acts that today represent a hot issue in innovation management.     

A comparison study of wavelet transforms for the visualization of differentially methylated regions in DNA samples

The Journal of Supercomputing - DNA methylation analysis has become an important topic in the study of human health. DNA methylation analysis requires not only a specific treatment of DNA samples...     

Porous structures printed by fused deposition of granules processed from a novel polyamide/alumina-based system

Alumina ceramic porous structures were shaped by the fused deposition of alumina/polyamide 612 composite granules using an FDM 3D printer with a modified extruder to process granulated powder instead of a filament. The composite granules were prepared via thermally induced phase separation (TIPS). Firstly, in order to determine the proportion of polymer/solvent to be used in the TIPS process, different volume fractions of PA612 in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) were studied (0.01 to 0.20), and the granules obtained were characterized by SEM, DSC, and Raman spectroscopy. Secondly, the addition of different ceramic loadings to the PA612/DMSO solution was studied with the aim of determining the amount to be used for preparing the composite granules by TIPS. In particular, the effect of the alumina content on the morphology and size of the obtained composite granules was studied. In addition, rheological properties (oscillatory and rotational tests) of the feed materials were studied. Finally, the printing conditions, including the nozzle temperature and nozzle diameter, and the extrusion process, were optimized in order to obtain porous structures with good quality. Alumina porous structures were successfully printed, debinded, and sintered. Adequate bonding between layers was achieved, and no defects at interfaces were detected.     

Change detection by probabilistic segmentation from monocular view

We present a method for foreground/background video segmentation (change detection) in real-time that can be used, in applications such as background subtraction or analysis of surveillance cameras. Our approach implements a probabilistic segmentation based on the Quadratic Markov Measure Field models. This framework regularizes the likelihood of each pixel belonging to each one of the classes (background or foreground). We propose a new likelihood that takes into account two cases: the first one is when the background is static and the foreground might be static or moving (Static Background Subtraction), the second one is when the background is unstable and the foreground is moving (Unstable Background Subtraction). Moreover, our likelihood is robust to illumination changes, cast shadows and camouflage situations. We implement a parallel version of our algorithm in CUDA using a NVIDIA Graphics Processing Unit in order to fulfill real-time execution requirements.     

HumanTop: a multi-object tracking tabletop

In this paper, a computer vision based interactive multi-touch tabletop system called HumanTop is introduced. HumanTop implements a stereo camera vision subsystem which allows not only an accurate fingertip tracking algorithm but also a precise touch-over-the-working surface detection method. Based on a pair of visible spectra cameras, a novel synchronization circuit makes the camera caption and the image projection independent from each other, providing the minimum basis for the development of computer vision analysis based on visible spectrum cameras without any interference coming from the projector. The assembly of both cameras and the synchronization circuit is not only capable of performing an ad-hoc version of a depth camera, but it also introduces the recognition and tracking of textured planar objects, even when contents are projected over them. On the other hand HumanTop supports the tracking of sheets of paper and ID-code markers. This set of features makes the HumanTop a comprehensive, intuitive and versatile augmented tabletop that provides multitouch interaction with projective augmented reality on any flat surface. As an example to exploit all the capabilities of HumanTop, an educational application has been developed using an augmented book as a launcher to different didactic contents. A pilot study in which 28 fifth graders participated is presented. Results about efficiency, usability/satisfaction and motivation are provided. These results suggest that HumanTop is an interesting platform for the development of educational contents.     

Approximate similarity search for online multimedia services on distributed CPU–GPU platforms

Similarity search in high-dimensional spaces is a pivotal operation for several database applications, including online content-based multimedia services. With the increasing popularity of multimedia applications, these services are facing new challenges regarding (1) the very large and growing volumes of data to be indexed/searched and (2) the necessity of reducing the response times as observed by end-users. In addition, the nature of the interactions between users and online services creates fluctuating query request rates throughout execution, which requires a similarity search engine to adapt to better use the computation platform and minimize response times. In this work, we address these challenges with Hypercurves, a flexible framework for answering approximate k-nearest neighbor (kNN) queries for very large multimedia databases. Hypercurves executes in hybrid CPU–GPU environments and is able to attain massive query-processing rates through the cooperative use of these devices. Hypercurves also changes its CPU–GPU task partitioning dynamically according to the observed load, aiming for optimal response times. In our empirical evaluation, dynamic task partitioning reduced query response times by approximately 50 % compared to the best static task partition. Due to a probabilistic proof of equivalence to the sequential kNN algorithm, the CPU–GPU execution of Hypercurves in distributed (multi-node) environments can be aggressively optimized, attaining superlinear scalability while still guaranteeing, with high probability, results at least as good as those from the sequential algorithm.     

A Review of Element-Based Galerkin Methods for Numerical Weather Prediction: Finite Elements,Spectral Elements,and Discontinuous Galerkin

Numerical weather prediction (NWP) is in a period of transition. As resolutions increase, global models are moving towards fully nonhydrostatic dynamical cores, with the local and global models using the same governing equations; therefore we have reached a point where it will be necessary to use a single model for both applications. The new dynamical cores at the heart of these unified models are designed to scale efficiently on clusters with hundreds of thousands or even millions of CPU cores and GPUs. Operational and research NWP codes currently use a wide range of numerical methods: finite differences, spectral transform, finite volumes and, increasingly, finite/spectral elements and discontinuous Galerkin, which constitute element-based Galerkin (EBG) methods. Due to their important role in this transition, will EBGs be the dominant power behind NWP in the next 10 years, or will they just be one of many methods to choose from? One decade after the review of numerical methods for atmospheric modeling by Steppeler et al. (Meteorol Atmos Phys 82:287–301, 2003), this review discusses EBG methods as a viable numerical approach for the next-generation NWP models. One well-known weakness of EBG methods is the generation of unphysical oscillations in advection-dominated flows; special attention is hence devoted to dissipation-based stabilization methods. Since EBGs are geometrically flexible and allow both conforming and non-conforming meshes, as well as grid adaptivity, this review is concluded with a short overview of how mesh generation and dynamic mesh refinement are becoming as important for atmospheric modeling as they have been for engineering applications for many years.     

Standard goal programming with fuzzy hierarchies: a sequential approach

This paper proposes a pragmatic model for multi-objective decision-making processes involving clusters of objectives which have a decisional meaning for the decision maker (DM). We provide the DMs with a comfortable tool that allows them to express their preferences both by comparing criteria of the same cluster and via the comparison between the different clusters. In standard goal programming the importance of the goals is modeled by the introduction of preferential weights or/and the incorporation of pre-emptive priorities. However, in many cases the DM is not able to establish a precise preference structure. Even in the case of precise weights the solution does not match necessarily the relative weights or, in the case of precise pre-emptive priority, the result could be very restrictive. In order to overcome these drawbacks, in this paper the normalized unwanted deviations are interpreted in terms of achievement degrees of the goals and fuzzy relations are used to model the relative importance of the goals. Thus, we show how several methodologies from the fuzzy goal programming literature can be tailored for solving standard GP problems. We apply this new modeling to problems where there is a “natural” clustering between goals of the same class. We address this situation by solving two phases; in the first one each class is handled separately taking into account the hierarchy of their goals and, in the second phase, we integrate the results of the first phase and the imprecise hierarchy of the different classes. We formulate a new goal programming model called as sequential goal programming with fuzzy hierarchy model. Because many real situations involve decision making in this environment, our proposal can be a useful tool of broad application. A numerical example illustrates the methodology.