Planning for transportation within northern Canadian communities presents unique challenges, but new research tools offer opportunities for testing potentially innovative solutions that might help improve mobility within these communities. In particular, problem solving has been enriched in recent years by using the spatial modeling methods offered by Geographical Information Systems (GIS). This thesis first reviews various GIS methods before applying one method – the ‘Route Utility Theory’ – to a newly-developed set of metrics for determining the cost of alternate modes of intracommunity transportation. This set of metrics is applied to a data set that represents the trips or journeys made by non-car users in Iqaluit, the capital city of Nunavut Territory. GIS data on roads, walking trails, land contours, and public and residential neighbourhoods are analyzed. The results facilitate comparisons between road options and trail options for improving the movement of people within Iqaluit. Five bus routes were then custom designed and compared using the study’s metrics. The study found that increasing bus and trail options within Iqaluit would provide more efficient options for non-car users. It is argued that the study’s metrics can be adapted for application in other northern communities, and possibly in other isolated and rural communities in different world situations. / Graduate

Orientador: Aparecido Augusto de Carvalho / Resumo: There are, nowadays, about 110 million people in the world who live with some type of severe motor disability. Specifically in Brazil, about 2.2% of the population are estimated to live with a condition of difficult locomotion. Aiming to help these people, a vast variety of devices, techniques and services are currently being developed. Among those, one of the most complex and challenging techniques is the study and development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are systems that allow the user to communicate with the external world controlling devices without the use of muscles or peripheral nerves, using only his decoded brain activity. To achieve this, there is a need to develop robust pattern recognition systems, that must be able to detect the user’s intention through electroencephalography (EEG) signals and activate the corresponding output with reliable accuracy and within the shortest possible processing time. In this work, different EEG signal processing techniques were studied, and it is presented the development of a EEG under visual stimulation (Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials - SSVEP) pattern recognition system. Using only Open Source tools and Python programming language, modules to manage datasets, reduce noise, extract features and perform classification of EEG signals were developed, and a comparative study of different techniques was performed, using filter banks and Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) as feature extraction approach... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Mestre

The trend of structural engineering in the recent years is toward the use of lighter and moreeconomical structural elements. In steel construction, peculiarly, thin-walled structural elements arebecoming more popular and have a growing importance. Improved techniques in a manufacturing ofthin-walled elements have led to increased competitiveness of such products in the buildingapplications. Some examples of such structural element can be found in everyday life in form ofcolumns, studs, roofing trusses, and light-weight frames. However, the use of slender profiles and acomplex cross sections shape lead to requirements to study instability phenomenon in a form of local,distortional, flexural, torsional and coupled instability. Such complex structural behavior is inevitablyaccompanied by demand to improve calculation methods and design provisions. In this thesis, aninnovative solution of structural element composed of thin-walled plates is proposed for theapplication on lattice support structure of wind turbine.Thin-walled cold-formed profiles are steel products usually made from cold rolled coils and folded inthe second step. In this way, only open profiles can be produced. The predominant problem of theopen cross-section is the excessive torsional effect caused by the non-coincidence between the shearcenter and mass center, and a poor torsional resistance. A better response is possible with closed crosssections, but such profiles could not be produced by the folding. The solution is to make semi-closedsection by assembling them into polygonal profiles with mechanical fasteners, as presented in thisthesis.Objective of this work is to study the proposed structural sections in design situation and toinvestigate possible design models. The expected structural behavior of the column is a mixturebetween the open and closed cross-section. These cases will be investigated through numerical study.In this thesis presented a comprehensive parametric study on the ultimate strength of proposed coldformedsteel columns using the Finite Element package ABAQUS. FE models were first developedfor columns by using automation that was made through MATLAB and Python script. The bucklingand non-linear FE study was done for the investigation of local (L), distortional (D) and global (G)possible buckling failures and ultimate resistance, respectively. Modelling issues such as boundaryconditions, meshing, initial imperfections, material models, and non-linear solution controls in FEAwere also addressed.The parametric study involved series of profiles of built-up polygonal cross-section types with variedthickness (t), number of corners (n), diameter (d), slenderness (slend), yield strength (fy), number ofpoints along corner radii (np), extension lip length (lext), gusset plate thickness (tg), member length (l),and density of fasteners (s/d ratio), loaded in compression and bending moment. The bending momentoccurs as the effect of forces acting on the connection. The purpose of this analysis is to study thecritical load, cross-sectional behavior, influence of the amplitude of initial imperfections on theultimate load, and influence of each parameter used in the analysis through Full Factorial Design.

Submitted by Marco Antônio de Ramos Chagas (mchagas@ufv.br) on 2017-03-24T14:25:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 2448440 bytes, checksum: 7d2b03e708fe8f14a1d9290a6c09aeda (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-24T14:25:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 2448440 bytes, checksum: 7d2b03e708fe8f14a1d9290a6c09aeda (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-25 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Estradas desempenham diversas funções para a sociedade. No setor florestal esse meio de transporte é fundamental, pois é utilizado em praticamente todas as atividades do empreendimento. Dentre essas atividades, o transporte de madeira merece destaque pois, juntamente com a colheita, é a operação mais onerosa do processo produtivo. Diversos elementos podem influenciar o custo do transporte; no entanto, a estrada pode ser considerada como um dos mais importantes, pois possui forte relação com os demais elementos, estando associada a impactos ambientais, além de ter elevados custo de construção e manutenção. O principal desafio dos gestores é determinar o local ideal de construção de estrada, de forma a permitir o tráfego com eficiência e segurança. Neste estudo é proposto um método desenvolvido para otimização do traçado geométrico de estradas florestais, implementado em ambiente de sistema de informações geográficas (SIG). A metaheurística simulated annealing foi utilizada para implementar um algoritmo com o objetivo de minimizar o custo total da estrada, atendendo restrições técnicas dos alinhamentos horizontal e vertical. O custo total incluiu: construção, manutenção, utilização e fatores ambientais e sociais. O método desenvolvido é apropriado para a otimização do traçado geométrico de estradas, por atender as condições necessárias: considera todos os custos dominantes e sensíveis, respeitando as restrições técnicas; otimiza as atribuições horizontais e verticais de modo simultâneo; é capaz de retornar uma boa solução para um problema de grande porte em um tempo aceitável; e é compatível com um SIG, o que favorece o processo de tomada de decisão, permitindo lidar com bases de dados extensas e complexas. / Roads perform many functions for society. In the forestry sector, it is a key factor, because it is used in practically all the activities of the enterprise. Among these activities, timber transportation deserves special mention because, together with harvesting, it is the most costly operation of the production process. Several elements can influence the cost of transport; however, the road can be considered as one of the most important because it has a strong relationship with other elements, for instance, being associated with environmental impacts, and also having high construction and maintenance costs. The main challenge for managers is to determine the ideal local for road construction in order to allow efficient and safe traffic. In this study, a method developed for optimization of the geometric alignment of forest roads, implemented in a geographic information system (GIS) environment, is proposed. The simulated annealing metaheuristic was used to implement an algorithm with the objective of minimizing the total cost of the road, addressing technical restrictions of the horizontal and vertical alignment. The total cost included: construction, maintenance, use and environmental and social factors. The developed method is suitable for optimization of the geometric alignment of roads, considering the needed conditions: it considers all the dominant and sensitive costs, respecting the technical restrictions; it optimizes horizontal and vertical assignments simultaneously; it is able to return a good solution to a large problem in an acceptable time; and it is compatible with a GIS, which favors the decision- making process, allowing to deal with extensive and complex databases.

Submitted by Renato de Macedo Giovanini null (renato81243@aluno.feis.unesp.br) on 2017-09-25T14:52:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_renato_de_macedo_giovanini_2017_final.pdf: 10453769 bytes, checksum: 7f7e2415a0912fae282affadea2685b8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Monique Sasaki (sayumi_sasaki@hotmail.com) on 2017-09-27T20:24:55Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 giovanini_rm_me_ilha.pdf: 10453769 bytes, checksum: 7f7e2415a0912fae282affadea2685b8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-27T20:24:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 giovanini_rm_me_ilha.pdf: 10453769 bytes, checksum: 7f7e2415a0912fae282affadea2685b8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-18 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / There are, nowadays, about 110 million people in the world who live with some type of severe motor disability. Specifically in Brazil, about 2.2% of the population are estimated to live with a condition of difficult locomotion. Aiming to help these people, a vast variety of devices, techniques and services are currently being developed. Among those, one of the most complex and challenging techniques is the study and development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). BCIs are systems that allow the user to communicate with the external world controlling devices without the use of muscles or peripheral nerves, using only his decoded brain activity. To achieve this, there is a need to develop robust pattern recognition systems, that must be able to detect the user’s intention through electroencephalography (EEG) signals and activate the corresponding output with reliable accuracy and within the shortest possible processing time. In this work, different EEG signal processing techniques were studied, and it is presented the development of a EEG under visual stimulation (Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials - SSVEP) pattern recognition system. Using only Open Source tools and Python programming language, modules to manage datasets, reduce noise, extract features and perform classification of EEG signals were developed, and a comparative study of different techniques was performed, using filter banks and Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) as feature extraction approaches, and the classifiers K-Nearest Neighbors, Multilayer Perceptron and Random Forests. Using DWT approach with Random Forest and Multilayer Perceptron classifiers, high accuracy rates up to 92 % were achieved in deeper decomposition levels. Then, the small-size microcomputer Raspberry Pi was used to perform time processing evaluation, obtaining short processing times for every classifiers. This work is a preliminary study of BCIs at the Laboratório de Instrumentação e Engenharia Biomédica, and, in the future, the system here presented may be part of a complete SSVEP-BCI system. / Existem, atualmente, cerca de 110 milhões de pessoas no mundo que vivem com algum tipo de deficiência motora severa. Especificamente no Brasil, é estimado que cerca de 2.2% da população conviva com alguma condição que dificulte a locomoção. Com o intuito de auxiliar tais pessoas, uma grande variedade de dispositivos, técnicas e serviços são atualmente desenvolvidos. Dentre elas, uma das técnicas mais complexas e desafiadoras é o estudo e o desenvolvimento de Interfaces Cérebro-Computador (ICMs). As ICMs são sistemas que permitem ao usuário comunicar-se com o mundo externo, controlando dispositivos sem o uso de músculos ou nervos periféricos, utilizando apenas sua atividade cerebral decodificada. Para alcançar isso, existe a necessidade de desenvolvimento de sistemas robustos de reconhecimento de padrões, que devem ser capazes de detectar as intenções do usuáro através dos sinais de eletroencefalografia (EEG) e ativar a saída correspondente com acurácia confiável e o menor tempo de processamento possível. Nesse trabalho foi realizado um estudo de diferentes técnicas de processamento de sinais de EEG, e o desenvolvimento de um sistema de reconhecimento de padrões de sinais de EEG sob estimulação visual (Potenciais Evocados Visuais de Regime Permanente - PEVRP). Utilizando apenas técnicas de código aberto e a linguagem Python de programação, foram desenvolvidos módulos para realizar o gerenciamento de datasets, redução de ruído, extração de características e classificação de sinais de EEG, e um estudo comparativo de diferentes técnicas foi realizado, utilizando-se bancos de filtros e a Transformada Wavelet Discreta (DWT) como abordagens de extração de características, e os classificadores K-Nearest Neighbors, Perceptron Multicamadas e Random Forests. Utilizando-se a DWT juntamente com Random Forests e Perceptron Multicamadas, altas taxas de acurácia de até 92 % foram obtidas nos níveis mais profundos de decomposição. Então, o computador Raspberry Pi, de pequenas dimensões, foi utilizado para realizar a avaliação do tempo de processamento, obtendo um baixo tempo de processamento para todos os classificadores. Este trabalho é um estudo preliminar em ICMs no Laboratório de Instrumentação e Engenharia Biomédica e, no futuro, pode ser parte de um sistema ICM completo.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014 / The IEC 61850 standard, “Communication networks and systems in substations” was promulgated to accommodate the need for a common communication platform within substations for devices from different vendors. The IEC 61850 standard proposes a substation automation architecture that is Ethernet-based, with a “station-bus” for protection devices within the substation and a “process bus” where raw data from the voltage and current transformers are published onto the data network using a device known as a Merging Unit. To date, most of the standardization efforts were focused at the station bus level where event-triggered messages are exchanged between the substation automation devices, commonly referred to as Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). These messages are known as Generic Object Oriented Substation Event messages. Equipment from vendors to accommodate the “process bus” paradigm, however is still limited at present. The Centre for Substation Automation and Energy Management Systems was established within the Electrical Engineering Department at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology with one of its objectives being the development of equipment either for simulation or real-time purposes in compliance with the IEC 61850 standard. In order to fulfil this long-term objective of the Centre, an in-depth understanding of the IEC 61850 standard is required. This document details the efforts at acquiring the requisite knowledge base in support of the educational objectives of the Centre and the research project implements a simulation of a merging unit which is compliant with the functional behavior as stipulated by the standard. This limited functional implementation (i.e. non-real-time) of the merging unit, is achieved through the development of a virtualized data acquisition node capable of synthetic generation of waveforms, encoding of the data and publishing the data in a format compliant with the IEC 61850-9-2 sampled value message structure. This functional behavior of the virtual sensor node which was implemented has been validated against the behavior of a commercial device and the sampled value message structure is validated against the standard. The temporal behavior of the proposed device is commented upon. This research project forms the basis for future real-time implementation of a merging unit.

Orientador: Max Henrique Machado Costa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T00:12:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 GoncalvesNeto_Jahyr_M.pdf: 950657 bytes, checksum: f62691d16e5db013d1b8a9c4e4a32c88 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Nesta dissertação apresentamos o desenvolvimento de uma plataforma multimídia baseada no modelo cliente-servidor voltada para aplicações de streaming de áudio e vídeo. Essa plataforma deverá evoluir para um sistema de videoconferência em um projeto futuro. A plataforma permite a comunicação de áudio, vídeo e texto a partir de um ponto (o servidor) para vários outros pontos (os clientes). Uma das inovações do projeto está no desenvolvimento em Python, que é uma linguagem interpretada, orientada a objetos e dinamicamente tipada / Abstract: This dissertation presents the development of a client-server platform designed initially for audio and video streaming applications. This platform will evolve into a videoconference system as part of a future project. The platform allows audio, video and text communication from a point (the server) to several others points (the clients). One of the project innovations is the implementation Python Language, which is an interpreted, objectoriented and dynamically typed language / Mestrado / Telecomunicações e Telemática / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica

The objective of this thesis was to design and implement a scalable and load efficient back-end system for web game services. This is of interest since web applications may overnight gain a significant increase in user base, because of viral sharing. Therefore designing the web application to service an increasing amount of users can make or break the application, in regard to keep the user base. Because of this, testing how well the system performs during heavy load can be used as a foundation when making a decision of when and where to scale up the application. The system was to be generically accessible through an Application Programming Interface (API) by the different game services. This was done using a RESTful architecture where emphasise was put on building the system scalable and load efficient. This thesis focuses on designing and implementing such a system, and how load testing can be used to evaluate this systems performance for an increasing amount of simultaneous clients using the web application. The results from load testing the implemented system was above the expectations, considering the hardware used when running the tests and hosting the system. The conclusion of this thesis is that by following REST when designing a web service, scalability becomes a natural part of how one would design the system.

In the form of teacher didactical design research, this work addresses a didactical issue encountered during physics teaching in a Swedish upper secondary school. A need for renewed practical laboratory work related to Newtonian mechanics is met by proposing and designing an activity based on high- speed photography using the nowadays omnipresent smartphone, thus bringing new technology into the classroom. The activity – video analysis of the collision physics of football kicks – is designed and evaluated by following a didactical design cycle. The work elaborates on how the proposed laboratory activity relates to the potential and complications of experimental activities in science education, as described in the vast literature on the topic. It is argued that the use of smartphones constitutes an interesting use of new technology for addressing known problems of practical work. Of particular interest is that smartphones offer a way to bridge the gap between the everyday life of students and the world of physics experiments (smartphones are powerful pocket laboratories). The use of smartphones also avoids using unfamiliar laboratory equipment that is known to hinder focus on intended content, while at the same time exploring a powerful tool for data acquisition and analysis. Overall, the use of smartphones (and computers) in this manner can be seen as the result of applying Occam’s razor to didactics: only familiar and readily available instrumentation is used, and skills learned (movie handling and image analysis) are all educationally worthwhile. Although the activity was judged successful, a systematic investigation of learning outcome was out of scope. This means that no strong conclusions can be drawn based on this limited work. Nonetheless, the smartphone activity was well received by the students and should constitute a useful addition to the set of instructional approaches, especially since variation is known to benefit learning. The main failure of the design was an overestimation of student prior knowledge on motion physics (and its application to image data). As a consequence, the activity took required more time and effort than originally anticipated. No severe pitfalls of smartphone usage were identified, but it should be noted that the proposed activity – with its lack of well-defined results due to variations in kick strength – requires that the teacher is capable of efficiently analysing multiple student films (avoiding the feedback process to become overwhelmingly time consuming). If not all student films are evaluated, the feedback to the students may become of low quality, and misconceptions may pass under the radar. On the other hand, given that programming from 2018 will become compulsory, an interesting development of the activity would be to include handling of images and videos using a high-level programming language like Python.

As a research focused organization the problem with making the information easily read and interesting to the extent that the reader wants to share this information with its friends is a crucial one. To create the perfect communication, reaching and affecting the majority of society is an impossible task. If the focus instead lies on the thought that by building a serious and dependable reputation, using the ease of social media and trying to create a ripple effect to make change by networking communication, there is a possibility to influence. The art of persuasion starts by building trust in a person or in this case in an organization. But if the communication is made by social media, how can one tell if the communication has built trust or created any positive response by the readers? By using Python, a search algorithm has been set up for mining Twitter and analyzing all data covering the area of biofuel and its participants. This data is then used to start an information feedback loop, where the analytical conclusions made from the retrieved information and activities can affect the communication forwarded from the sender. In an agile manner the user is to choose “sprint”-time as well as a time for retrospect, all to refine the analytical method and improve the process.