[pt] Nesta dissertação descrevemos a preparação de nanopartículas (NPs) de ouro através do aquecimento de filmes finos de ouro depositados em substratos de soda-lime pela técnica Magnetron Sputtering. Foi realizado um estudo para cinco espessuras diferentes variando entre (6–20) nm. Descrevemos também a caracterização morfológica e óptica (linear e não-linear) das nanopartículas formadas. Os resultados indicaram que a temperatura é de fundamental importância na formação das NPs, tendo sido realizado um estudo para formação a diferentes temperaturas. As amostras foram caracterizadas estruturalmente pela microscopia de força atômica (AFM) e microscopia eletrônica de varredura de emissão de campo (FESEM). Para o processamento das imagens geradas pelas microscopias utilizou-se uma análise de imagem (IA) antes da extração dos atributos morfológicos envolvendo as etapas de pré-processamento, segmentação, pós-processamento e medida. Para o processamento e extração de atributos, utilizou-se o Software KS400. As partículas possuem dimensões nanométricas com forma aproximadamente esféricas e diâmetros médios em torno de 13 nm para NPs formadas pelo aquecimento de filmes finos de 6 nm de espessura à 600° C por 4 minutos. As caracterizações ópticas lineares e não-lineares das NPs em estudo foram realizadas através das técnicas de espectroscopia UV-Vis e varredura z (Z-SCAN) em 800 nm respectivamente. No estudo da não-linearidade óptica foram determinados os índices de refração não linear (n2) e a absorção não- linear (a2) das NPs de ouro. Os resultados revelaram altos índices de refração não- linear, assim como uma inversão de sinal na absorção não-linear e no índice de refração não-linear quando os filmes finos de ouro são submetidos a um aquecimento a 600°C por 4 minutos. / [en] In this dissertation we describe the preparation of gold nanoparticles (NPs) by heating gold thin films of thicknesses between (6-20) nm, previously deposited on soda-lime substrates by Magnetron Sputtering. Also described are the morphological and optical (linear and nonlinear) characterization of the NPs. The tempertature dependence of the formation process of the NPs was investigated. The samples were structurally characterized by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy, High Resolution (FESEM). We used an image analysis (IA) before extraction of morphological features involving the steps of preprocessing, segmentation, post-processing and measurement. For the processing and extraction of attributes, we used the software KS400. The particles have nanometers dimensions with approximately spherical shape and diameters around 13 nm for NPs formed by heating 6 nm thick thin films at 600 ° C for 4 minutes. The linear and nonlinear optical characterization of the NPs were performed through the techniques of UV-Vis spectroscopy and (TM-EZ at 532 nm, respectively. The non-linear optical characterization yielded the nonlinear refractive index (n2) and nonlinear absorption (a2) of the gold NPs formed. The results revealed high linear refractive indices, as well as a sign inversion of the nonlinear absorption when the NPs were formed.

<p>Climatic variation and change affect the dynamics of organisms and ecosystem processes. This thesis examines phytoplankton as a target variable to trace climatic impacts on Lake Erken (Sweden) with special emphasis on the spring bloom. </p><p>A strong correlation between the timing of the spring bloom and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) illustrates the link between atmospheric pressure variations and local biological processes. The predictive power increased by applying a recently established regional Scandinavian Circulation Index (SCI). Changes to an earlier timing of the spring bloom and elevated water temperature were induced by the global warming trend. The climate signal was still persistent in summer manifested by an enhanced summer phytoplankton biomass. </p><p>Between spring and summer, the phytoplankton was mainly controlled by phosphorus limitation. The application of a new method to measure alkaline phosphatase activity revealed that P-limitation varied between species and among individual cells.</p><p>Combining the above knowledge and literature data, the impact of the NAO on the timing of life history events, biomass and trophic cascade in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems was quantitatively tested with a meta-analysis. In all environments, pronounced effects of the NAO were apparent, indicating the generality of climate effects found in different ecosystems. </p><p>Finally, a regional climate model was applied, forcing a physical lake model from which future lake conditions were simulated. The simulation revealed a one-month shorter ice cover period with two years out of ten being completely ice free. Internal eutrophication is one of the expected consequences. </p><p>In conclusion, the strong influences of global and regional climate are apparent in local physical, chemical and biological variables and will most probably also in future affect the structure and function of processes in lakes. </p>

Climatic variation and change affect the dynamics of organisms and ecosystem processes. This thesis examines phytoplankton as a target variable to trace climatic impacts on Lake Erken (Sweden) with special emphasis on the spring bloom. A strong correlation between the timing of the spring bloom and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) illustrates the link between atmospheric pressure variations and local biological processes. The predictive power increased by applying a recently established regional Scandinavian Circulation Index (SCI). Changes to an earlier timing of the spring bloom and elevated water temperature were induced by the global warming trend. The climate signal was still persistent in summer manifested by an enhanced summer phytoplankton biomass. Between spring and summer, the phytoplankton was mainly controlled by phosphorus limitation. The application of a new method to measure alkaline phosphatase activity revealed that P-limitation varied between species and among individual cells. Combining the above knowledge and literature data, the impact of the NAO on the timing of life history events, biomass and trophic cascade in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems was quantitatively tested with a meta-analysis. In all environments, pronounced effects of the NAO were apparent, indicating the generality of climate effects found in different ecosystems. Finally, a regional climate model was applied, forcing a physical lake model from which future lake conditions were simulated. The simulation revealed a one-month shorter ice cover period with two years out of ten being completely ice free. Internal eutrophication is one of the expected consequences. In conclusion, the strong influences of global and regional climate are apparent in local physical, chemical and biological variables and will most probably also in future affect the structure and function of processes in lakes.

Simulation is often used in research and industry as a low cost, high efficiency alternative to real model testing. Simulation has also been used to develop and test powerful learning algorithms. However, optimized values in simulation do not translate directly to optimized values in application. In fact, heavy optimization in simulation is likely to exploit the simplifications made in simulation. This observation brings to question the utility of learning in simulation. The UT Austin Villa 3D Simulation Team developed an optimization framework on which a robot agent was trained to maximize the speed of an omni-directional walk. The resulting agent won first place in the 2011 RoboCup 3D Simulation League. This thesis presents the adaptation of this optimization framework to learn parameters in simulation that improved the forward walk speed of the real Aldebaran Nao. By constraining the simulation with tree models learned from the real robot, and manually guiding the optimization based on testing on the real robot, the Nao's walk speed was improved by about 30%. / text

South Asia, a land of contrasting landscapes, seasons and climates, is highly vulnerable to climate variability over intra-seasonal to decadal time scales. In winter, precipitation over the western parts of south Asia and fog over the Indo-Gangetic (IG) plains are the two major climatic features. During summer most of the region comes under the grip of monsoon. Winter precipitation over the north-western parts of South Asia is associated with eastwards propagating ‘western disturbances’ originating mostly from Mediterranean. Both observations and regional climate-model simulations show that the winter precipitation increases/decreases during the positive/negative phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the warm/cold phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During these phases, the intensification of western disturbances results from the effect of an enhanced trough visible at sea-level as well as at higher altitudes over central Asia. The inter-annual variability of fog is coupled over IG plains with a significant trend in the fog frequencies, both in observations and ERA-Interim reanalysis data. This increase shows two distinct regime shifts in 1990 and 1998 with respect to mean and variance, this in contrast to a gradual increase of the humidity over the region. The thermodynamic analysis of the intra-seasonal summer monsoon active phases (APs) over Pakistan revealed that a few days before AP, an upper-level warm anomaly appears over the northern Hindu Kush-Himalaya region and is reinforced by surface heating. The baroclinic height anomalies, with a low-level anticyclone located east of the warming, causes a moisture convergence, strong enough to overcome the preexisting stable atmospheric conditions. The extratropical dynamics also play an important role for the inter-annual variation of the South-Asian monsoon. It is found that the two leading modes between the upper-level circulation in the Atlantic/European region and monsoon rainfall are the Circumglobal Teleconnection (CGT) and the summer NAO. The positive phase of the CGT is related to a widespread increase of monsoon rainfall, and a positive summer NAO is related to a precipitation dipole with its positive anomaly over Pakistan. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Submitted.

Mestre -- Universidade de Sao Paulo. Faculdade de Saude Publica. Departamento de Pratica de Saude Publica, Sao Paulo, 1999.

Mestre -- Escola Nacional de Saude Publica, Rio de Janeiro, 2003.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:36:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissNBHL.pdf: 436465 bytes, checksum: 91371a4fb587142e90d5201bfc8fb866 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2003-11-28 / Recently, interest on studies of electron scattering by highly-reactive free radicals has grown mostly because their participation on many important processes in several fields such astrophysics, biological and earth s atmospheric studies, as well as in industrial applications. In this work, we report a theoretical study on electron collisions on two radicals, OH and NH. More specifically, calculated elastic differential, integral and momentum-transfer cross sections as well as total (elastic + inelastic) and total absorption cross sections in a wide incident energy range are reported. The main motivation of the present work is to fill partially the existent lacuna in the literatura for electron-radical interactions, since both theoretical and experimental data for such interactions are rare. It is also known that the experimental determination of electron-radical scattering cross sections are very difficult due to the high reactivity of these species. The present work covers incident energies in the (0.5-500.0)-eV range. A complex optical potential is used to describe the dynamics of electron-radical interaction whereas a combination of the Schwinger variational iterative method and the distorted-wave approximation is used to solve the Lippmann-Schwinger scattering equation. Our calculated results are compared with a few theoretical and experimental data for total ionization cross sections, available in the literature for these radicals. Comparison is also made with the results obtained from electron scattering by the molecules H2O e NH3, which are formed by the same chemical elements of the radicals. Several interesting points are observed in the comparison. / Os estudos das colisões elétron-radicais livres, espécies altamente reativas, tem crescido recentemente, em vista de sua importante participação em muitos processos astrofísicos, atmosféricos, biológicos e industriais. Neste trabalho, foram calculadas as seções de choque diferenciais, integrais e de transferência de momento para o espalhamento elástico de elétrons pelos radicais livres OH e NH. Também foram calculadas as seções de choque total (elástica + inelástica) para estas colisões. A principal motivação de nosso trabalho se deve à falta de dados tanto teóricos quanto experimentais para estas interações. A determinação experimental de tais dados é muito difícil devido à alta reatividade destes radicais. Este estudo visa preencher em parte a grande lacuna existente na literatura sobre o espalhamento de elétrons por espécies radicalares. Neste trabalho, a faixa de energia em estudo incluiu as regiões de energia baixa e intermediária situada entre 0,5 a 500,0 eV. Um potencial ótico complexo foi utilizado para representar a dinâmica de interação elétron-radical. Para resolver as equações de espalhamento foi utilizado o método variacional de Schwinger iterativo combinado com aproximações de ondas distorcidas. As comparações foram feitas com os escassos dados teóricos e experimentais para estes radicais e também com as moléculas mais estáveis, formadas pelos mesmos elementos químicos (H2O e NH3). Essas comparações resultaram em informações interessantes sobre os efeitos predominantes nos espalhamentos por estes alvos.

[pt] A perfuração de poços de petróleo em águas profundas tem como objetivo atingir o melhor ponto de extração de óleo e gás natural presentes em reservatórios a alguns milhares de metros no fundo do mar. Um melhor entendimento da dinâmica de perfuração através da análise de parâmetros operacionais em tempo real é importante para otimizar os processos de perfuração e reduzir seus tempos de operação. Com esse objetivo, operadoras de petróleo têm realizado grandes investimentos no desenvolvimento de ferramentas de medição e transmissão de parâmetros durante a perfuração, tais como, entre outros, o peso sobre broca, rotação da coluna e vazão do fluido de perfuração. Dentre as vantagens em se monitorar estes dados em tempo real, destaca-se a otimização de parâmetros operacionais buscando obter uma taxa de penetração satisfatória com o menor gasto de energia possível. Em uma perfuração rotativa, essa energia é muitas vezes parcialmente dissipada devido à vibração da coluna causada pela interação entre broca e formação. Nesta dissertação, com o objetivo de extrair características comuns que pudessem vir a ajudar na otimização da atividade de perfuração, foi utilizada uma técnica de redes neurais não supervisionadas para análise de uma extensa base de dados levantados ao longo de campanhas de perfuração de poços em um mesmo campo de petróleo. Os dados de campo analisados foram obtidos ao longo de perfurações de poços verticais, exclusivamente empregando brocas tipo PDC e exibindo elevados níveis de vibração torcional. O estudo realizado a partir de registros de parâmetros de perfuração, características dos poços e respostas de vibração obtidas em tempo real por ferramentas de poço, e empregando o código de mineração de dados WEKA e a plataforma computacional de análise TIBCO Spotfire, permitiu a determinação de uma curva de desgaste de broca e a influência das ferramentas de navegação no nível de severidade de vibração ao longo da perfuração. / [en] Drilling oil wells in deep waters aims to achieve the best point of extraction of oil and natural gas reservoirs present in a few thousand meters in the seabed. A better understanding of the drilling dynamics through the analysis of real time operation parameters is important to optimize drilling process and reduce operation time. For this purpose petroleum operator companies have been made great investments in developing tools that measure and transmit parameters during drilling operation, such as the weight on bit, pipes rotation per minute and drilling fluid flow. Among the advantages to monitor this real time data there is the operational parameters optimization looking for the least expenditure of energy as possible. In a rotary drilling operation this energy is often lost partially due to column vibration caused by the interaction between bit and formation.In this master s thesis in order to extract common features that could help on the drilling operation optimization a technique using unsupervised neural networks for analyze an extensive database which was built over drilling campaigns in a big oil field . The field data analyzed were obtained during drilling vertical wells exclusively employing PDC bits and presented high levels of torcional vibration. The study was made from drilling parameters records, wells characteristics and vibration responses obtained in real time by downhole tools. Employing the WEKA data mining code and the computing analysis platform TIBCO potfire it was possible determine a bit wear curve and the real influence of navigation tools on the severity levels of vibration during drilling operations.

[pt] Neste trabalho estuda-se uma estratégia para o controle ativo não-linear de estruturas flexíveis submetidas a carregamentos dinâmicos. O algoritmo de controle é deduzido com base na teoria de controle ótimo não-linear com realimentação de estado, utilizando uma representação tensorial. Desenvolve-se as equações polinomiais de controle para diferentes ordens, partindo-se do controle linear clássico até um controle não-linear de quinta ordem. A estratégia é particularizada para aplicação em sistemas com um grau de liberdade que apresentem não-linearidades quadráticas e cúbicas, que podem representar, de forma aproximada, a maioria dos elementos estruturais encontrados nas Engenharias Civil e Mecânica, tais como vigas, arcos, placas e cascas. Determina-se analiticamente os coeficientes de ganhos até a terceira ordem, e utiliza-se os mesmos para estudar o feito das forças de controle sobre a não- linearidade e estabilidade do sistema. Vários exemplos numéricos de aplicação são apresentados, utilizando-se diferentes tipos de excitação. Uma atenção especial é dedicada a sistemas caracterizados pela coexistência de dois vales potenciais, um deles correspondente a uma posição de equilíbrio pós- flambagem. A influência do sistema de controle sobre a carga de escape é estudada. O efeito do retardo na aplicação das forças de controle é analisado tanto numericamente como analiticamente, utilizando-se o método das múltiplas escalas para desenvolver expressões que permitem encontrar situações críticas de retardo. Como exemplo de aplicação prática, estuda-se o problema de uma viga flambada submetida a um carregamento dinâmico lateral. / [en] The present thesis studies a strategy for the active non- linear control of dynamically loaded flexible structures. The control method is based on the non-linear optimal control theory using state feedback and the solution of the non-linear optimal control problem is obtained by representing system non-linearities and performance indices by power series with the help of algebraic tensor theory. General polynomial representations of the non-linear control law are obtained up to the fifth order. This methodology is applied to systems with quadratic and cubic nonlinearities, capable of representing most of the elements usually used in civil and mechanical engineering structures, such as beams, plates, shells and arcs. Control gains up to the third order are analytically derived and the effect of the control forces on the system is studied. Special emphasis is placed on systems susceptible to chaotic vibrations, escape from a potential well and dynamic jumps. Several examples are provided to illustrate the control approach. Strongly nonlinear systems subjected to free vibration, simple harmonic excitations, impact and ground acceleration are tested. The variation of the dynamic buckling load with the degree of the control algorithms is studied for the problem of structures with two potential wells, one of them corresponding to a post-buckling equilibrium position. The effect of time delay on controlled systems is studied analytically and numerically. The studied methodology is also applied to control the oscillations of simply supported buckled beams, in order to mitigate the effects of dynamic loading on the vibration amplitudes and prevent dangerous instability phenomena. / [es] En este trabajo estudia se una estrategia para el control activo no-lineal de extructuras flexibles sometidas la cargas dinámicas. EL algoritmo de control es deduzido con base en la teoría de control ótimo no lineal con realimentación de estado, utilizando una representación tensorial. Se dearrollan las ecuaciones polinomiales de control para diferentes órdenes, desde el control lineal clásico hasta el control no lineal de quinta orden. Se particulariza la estrategia para la aplicación en sistemas con un grado de liberdad que presenten no linealidades cuadráticas y cúbicas, que pueden representar, de forma aproximada, la mayoría de los elementos extructurales encontrados en las Ingenierías Civil y Mecánica, tales como vigas, arcos y placas. Se determinan analiticamente los coeficientes de ganancias hasta tercer orden, y se utilizan los mismos para estudiar las fuerzas de control sobre la no linealidad y estabilidad del sistema. Varios ejemplos numéricos de aplicación son presentados, utilizando diferentes tipos de excitación. Atención especial se le dedica a los sistemas caracterizados por la coexistencia de dos vales potenciales, uno de ellos correspondiendo a una posición de equilibrio posflameado. Se estudia también la influencia del sistema de control sobre la carga de escape. EL efecto de retardo en la aplicación de las fuerzas de control se anlaiza tanto numérica como analíticamente, utilizando el método de las múltiples escalas para dearrollar expresiones que permiten encontrar situaciones críticas de retardo. Como ejemplo de aplicación práctica, se estudia el problema de una viga flameada sometida a una carga dinámica lateral.