The aim of this thesis is to analyze the change in response of Latin American governments to the economic crisis and thus the change in the character of protectionist measures applied. How do the means of the protection of domestic market change? How does the financial globalization reflect in the Latin American protectionism? What are the further perspectives of the development of Latin American countries? The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter examines the forms of protectionism in the reaction to economic crisis of the 20th century. Firstly, it presents Latin America as a traditionally protectionist region in the period of the import substitution industrialization, secondly it focuses on governments' reactions to the cyclic crises of the 80s and 90s that were caused by the liberalization of the capital accounts and high sensitivity of Latin American economies to the sudden stop on financial markets. The second chapter is devoted to the current global economic crisis. It analyses the means of trade and financial protectionism. Simultaneously, it compares the protectionist measures used to the ones employed in previous periods. The final part of the thesis explores further perspectives of Latin American regionalism and improved macroeconomic stability of Latin American economies.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

As Moore's law nears its limit, a new form of signal processing is needed. Neuromorphic computing has used inspiration from biology to produce a new form of signal processing by mimicking biological neural networks using electrical components. Neuromorphic computing requires less signal preprocessing than digital systems since it can encode signals directly using analog temporal encoders from Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs). These encoders receive an analog signal as an input and generate a spike or spike trains as their output. The proposed temporal encoders use latency and Inter-Spike Interval (ISI) encoding and are expected to produce a highly sensitive hardware implementation of time encoding to preprocess signals for dynamic neural processors. Two ISI and two latency encoders were designed using Integrate-and-Fire (IF) and Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) neurons and optimized to produce low area designs. The IF and LIF neurons were designed using the Global Foundries 180nm CMOS process and achieved an area of 186µm2 and 182µm2, respectively. All four encoders have a sampling frequency of 50kHz. The latency encoders achieved an average energy consumption per spike of 277nJ and 316pJ for the IF-based and LIF-based latency encoders, respectively. The ISI encoders achieved an average energy consumption per spike of 1.07uJ and 901nJ for the IF-based and LIF-based ISI encoders, respectively. Power consumption is proportional to the number of neurons employed in the encoder and the potential to reduce power consumption through layout-level simulations is presented. The LIF neuron is able to use a smaller membrane capacitance to achieve similar operability as the IF neuron and consumes less area despite having more components. This demonstrates that capacitor sizes are the main limitations of a small size in spiking neurons for SNNs. An overview of the design and layout process of the two presented neurons is discussed with tips for overcoming problems encountered. The proposed designs can result in a fast neuromorphic process by employing a frequency higher than 10kHz and by providing a hardware implementation that is efficient in multiple sectors like machine learning, medical implementations, or security systems since hardware is safer from hacks. / Master of Science / As Moore's law nears its limit, a new form of signal processing is needed. Moore's law anticipated that transistor sizes will decrease exponentially as the years pass but CMOS technology is reaching physical limitations which could mean an end to Moore's prediction. Neuromorphic computing has used inspiration from biology to produce a new form of signal processing by mimicking biological neural networks using electrical components. Biological neural networks communicate through interconnected neurons that transmit signals through synapses. Neuromorphic computing uses a subdivision of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) called Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) to encode input signals into voltage spikes to mimic biological neurons. Neuromorphic computing reduces the preprocessing step needed to process data in the digital domain since it can encode signals directly using analog temporal encoders from SNNs. These encoders receive an analog signal as an input and generate a spike or spike trains as their output. The proposed temporal encoders use latency and Inter-Spike Interval (ISI) encoding and are expected to produce a highly sensitive hardware implementation of time encoding to preprocess signals for dynamic neural processors. Two ISI and two latency encoders were designed using Integrate-and-Fire (IF) and Leaky Integrate-and-Fire (LIF) neurons and optimized to produce low area designs. All four encoders have a sampling frequency of 50kHz. The latency encoders achieved an average energy consumption per spike of 277nJ and 316pJ for the IF-based and LIF-based latency encoders, respectively. The ISI encoders achieved an average energy consumption per spike of 1.07uJ and 901nJ for the IF-based and LIF-based ISI encoders, respectively. Power consumption is proportional to the number of neurons employed in the encoder and the potential to reduce power consumption through layout-level simulations is presented. The LIF neuron is able to use a smaller membrane capacitance to achieve similar operability which consumes less area despite having more components than the IF neuron. This demonstrates that capacitor sizes are the main limitations of small size in neurons for spiking neural networks. An overview of the design and layout process of the two presented neurons is discussed with tips for overcoming problems encountered. The proposed designs can result in a fast neuromorphic process by employing a frequency higher than 10kHz and by providing a hardware implementation that is efficient in multiple sectors like machine learning, medical implementations, or security systems since hardware is safer from hacks.

Yes / A major drawback in deploying beamforming scheme in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is to obtain the optimal weights that are associated with information beams. Two beam weighting methods, namely co-phasing and singular vector decomposition (SVD), are considered to maximize the signal beams for such beamforming scheme. Initially the system performance with and without interleaving is investigated using coded fast Fourier transform (FFT)-OFDM and wavelet-based OFDM. The two beamforming schemes are applied to the wavelet-based OFDM as confirmed to perform better than the FFT-OFDM. It is found that the beam-weight by SVD improves the performance of the system by about 2dB at the expense of the co-phasing method. The capacity performances of the weighting methods are also compared and discussed.

Yes / The need to achieve high data rates in modern telecommunication systems, such as 5G standard, motivates the study and development of large antenna and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. This study introduces a large antenna-order design of MIMO quasi-orthogonal space-time block code (QO-STBC) system that achieves better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit-error ratio (BER) performances than the conventional QO-STBCs with the potential for massive MIMO (mMIMO) configurations. Although some earlier MIMO standards were built on orthogonal space-time block codes (O-STBCs), which are limited to two transmit antennas and data rates, the need for higher data rates motivates the exploration of higher antenna configurations using different QO-STBC schemes. The standard QO-STBC offers a higher number of antennas than the O-STBC with the full spatial rate. Unfortunately, also, the standard QO-STBCs are not able to achieve full diversity due to self-interference within their detection matrices; this diminishes the BER performance of the QO-STBC scheme. The detection also involves nonlinear processing, which further complicates the system. To solve these problems, we propose a linear processing design technique (which eliminates the system complexity) for constructing interference-free QO-STBCs and that also achieves full diversity using Hadamard modal matrices with the potential for mMIMO design. Since the modal matrices that orthogonalize QO-STBC are not sparse, our proposal also supports O-STBCs with a well-behaved peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and better BER. The results of the proposed QO-STBC outperform other full diversity techniques including Givens-rotation and the eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) techniques by 15 dB for both MIMO and multiple-input single-output (MISO) antenna configurations at 10−3 BER. The proposed interference-free QO-STBC is also implemented for 16×NR and 32×NR MIMO systems, where NR≤2. We demonstrate 8 x 16 and 32 transmit antenna-enabled MIMO systems with the potential for mMIMO design applications with attractive BER and PAPR performance characteristics.

Diversos indicadores bibliométricos têm sido empregados na avaliação de desempenho de pesquisadores, universidades e países. Indicadores de impacto, calculados a partir das citações recebidas pelos artigos, têm sido objeto de muitos estudos constantes da pesquisa documentária. Dessa maneira, almeja-se apontar possíveis formas de adequação da análise do impacto de revistas brasileiras com vistas ao aprimoramento dos critérios de avaliação de produção científica no Brasil. Objetivos. A pesquisa foi conduzida de acordo com três objetivos: (1) Verificar se o uso exclusivo de indicadores internacionais deixa a política científica brasileira fora do contexto de sua realidade local, e se o acesso às revistas indexadas nas bases do ISI (Thomson Scientific) tem se justificado pelo uso ? o acesso gratuito aos textos completos é oferecido à comunidade científica pela Capes (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). (2) Investigar se a base SciELO pode oferecer indicadores de impacto da produção científica brasileira com vistas ao aprimoramento da avaliação científica nacional. (3) Buscar propor metodologias de indicadores mais adequadas à realidade da ciência brasileira. Metodologia. Foi conduzido um estudo exploratório quantitativo, baseados em características qualitativas e quantitativas de revistas científicas provenientes de três fontes: revistas classificadas pela Avaliação Qualis (triênio 2001/2003), revistas do Portal de Periódicos da Capes e revistas indexadas na base SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library). Uma comparação do impacto nacional e internacional de um conjunto de revistas brasileiras indexadas na base SciELO foi realizada a partir das citações recebidas pelas revistas em cada contexto (base SciELO e as bases do ISI). Uma metodologia de análise de revistas foi apresentada aplicando-se técnicas de análise estatística multivariada a um conjunto de 42 indicadores. Resultados. A análise da Avaliação Qualis mostrou que os critérios definidos favorecem principalmente a publicação em revistas internacionais e fazem uso do Fator de Impacto do ISI. O Impacto Pós-Portal, como foi denominado, indicou um efeito positivo, notado pelo aumento da média de citações recebidas na SciELO, por aproximadamente 70% das revistas da amostra (Ciências da Vida), após o ano de publicação no Portal. A comparação do impacto nacional versus internacional das revistas SciELO mostrou que revistas indexadas também no ISI são citadas com mais freqüência naquela base, além de receberem aproximadamente 72% das citações de revistas ISI de autores estrangeiros e terem os artigos em colaboração (nacional e internacional) mais citados que aqueles em autoria única. Em relação às revistas publicadas somente na SciELO, verificou-se que são citadas em quantidades similares naquela base e nas bases do ISI, recebem 68% das citações de revistas ISI de autores estrangeiros e têm seus artigos de autoria única mais citados, seguidos daqueles em colaboração nacional. A análise multivariada dos indicadores das revistas SciELO permitiu a identificação de diferentes grupos de revistas, discriminados de acordo com as diferentes práticas de comunicação científica. Conclusões. A adequação dos critérios utilizados na avaliação da produção científica nacional pode ser conseguida considerando-se indicadores de impacto mensurados a partir de citações provenientes das revistas nacionais, definindo critérios que valorizem a publicação em revistas nacionais de qualidade reconhecida, o que permitirá a publicação de trabalhos importantes na língua portuguesa, e estimulará o processo de melhoria de qualidade das revistas nacionais. / Many bibliometric indicators have been used to evaluate the scientific performance of researchers, universities and countries. Impact indicators, measured from citations to articles, have been addressed in many studies in the literature. The present study aimed to put forward possible forms of analysis adequacy to Brazilian scientific journals, to improve the scientific production evaluation criteria in the Brazilian framework. Objectives. The research was conducted in agreement with three objectives: (1) To verify if the exclusive use of international indicators leaves the Brazilian scientific policy out of context of its local reality, and if the ISI (Thomson Scientific) indexed journals usage has been justified ? the access of which in full article texts has been offered gratuitous to the scientific community by Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of High Education Personnel). (2) To investigate if SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library)-indexed Brazilian scientific production could provide impact indicators to appropriately contribute to the national science evaluation. (3) To find more indicators and new methodologies for science assessment in the context of the Brazilian science reality. Methodology. An exploratory quantitative study was conducted, based on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of scientific journals from three sources: journals classified by Qualis Assessment (years 2001/2002/2003), journals of the ?Portal de Periódicos da Capes? and SciELO journals. A comparison between the national and international impact of a set of Brazilian SciELO journals was conducted based on citations received from journals in each database (SciELO and ISI). A methodology of journal analysis was presented applying the multivariate statistical analysis technique to a set of 42 indicators. Results. The analysis of Qualis Assessment showed that the defined criteria favor mainly the publications in international journals by using ISI Impact Factor. The comparison of the annual average of citations received in SciELO by a sample of journals, before and after the availability in it, showed a positive effect, noticed by an increase to 70% of the journals (Life Sciences). The comparison of the national impact versus international impact of SciELO journals showed that those indexed also on ISI are cited more frequently; in the whole sample, SciELO journals received approximately 72% of ISI?s citations from international authors; had the articles in collaboration (national and international) cited more often than those with single authorship. It was noticed that journals indexed only in SciELO, are cited in similar numbers in both databases; received 68% of ISI?s citations from international authors and have articles with single authorship cited more frequently, followed by those with national collaboration. The multivariate analysis of SciELO journals indicators allowed the identification of different groups of journals, separated according to different practices of scientific communication. Conclusions. The criteria adequacy used in the evaluation of the national scientific production can be met considering impact indicators measured by citations on national journals. Criteria should be defined that value the publication in national journals with renown quality. This will allow the publication of important articles in Portuguese, and will encourage the process of national journals quality improvement.

Diversos indicadores bibliométricos têm sido empregados na avaliação de desempenho de pesquisadores, universidades e países. Indicadores de impacto, calculados a partir das citações recebidas pelos artigos, têm sido objeto de muitos estudos constantes da pesquisa documentária. Dessa maneira, almeja-se apontar possíveis formas de adequação da análise do impacto de revistas brasileiras com vistas ao aprimoramento dos critérios de avaliação de produção científica no Brasil. Objetivos. A pesquisa foi conduzida de acordo com três objetivos: (1) Verificar se o uso exclusivo de indicadores internacionais deixa a política científica brasileira fora do contexto de sua realidade local, e se o acesso às revistas indexadas nas bases do ISI (Thomson Scientific) tem se justificado pelo uso ? o acesso gratuito aos textos completos é oferecido à comunidade científica pela Capes (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). (2) Investigar se a base SciELO pode oferecer indicadores de impacto da produção científica brasileira com vistas ao aprimoramento da avaliação científica nacional. (3) Buscar propor metodologias de indicadores mais adequadas à realidade da ciência brasileira. Metodologia. Foi conduzido um estudo exploratório quantitativo, baseados em características qualitativas e quantitativas de revistas científicas provenientes de três fontes: revistas classificadas pela Avaliação Qualis (triênio 2001/2003), revistas do Portal de Periódicos da Capes e revistas indexadas na base SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library). Uma comparação do impacto nacional e internacional de um conjunto de revistas brasileiras indexadas na base SciELO foi realizada a partir das citações recebidas pelas revistas em cada contexto (base SciELO e as bases do ISI). Uma metodologia de análise de revistas foi apresentada aplicando-se técnicas de análise estatística multivariada a um conjunto de 42 indicadores. Resultados. A análise da Avaliação Qualis mostrou que os critérios definidos favorecem principalmente a publicação em revistas internacionais e fazem uso do Fator de Impacto do ISI. O Impacto Pós-Portal, como foi denominado, indicou um efeito positivo, notado pelo aumento da média de citações recebidas na SciELO, por aproximadamente 70% das revistas da amostra (Ciências da Vida), após o ano de publicação no Portal. A comparação do impacto nacional versus internacional das revistas SciELO mostrou que revistas indexadas também no ISI são citadas com mais freqüência naquela base, além de receberem aproximadamente 72% das citações de revistas ISI de autores estrangeiros e terem os artigos em colaboração (nacional e internacional) mais citados que aqueles em autoria única. Em relação às revistas publicadas somente na SciELO, verificou-se que são citadas em quantidades similares naquela base e nas bases do ISI, recebem 68% das citações de revistas ISI de autores estrangeiros e têm seus artigos de autoria única mais citados, seguidos daqueles em colaboração nacional. A análise multivariada dos indicadores das revistas SciELO permitiu a identificação de diferentes grupos de revistas, discriminados de acordo com as diferentes práticas de comunicação científica. Conclusões. A adequação dos critérios utilizados na avaliação da produção científica nacional pode ser conseguida considerando-se indicadores de impacto mensurados a partir de citações provenientes das revistas nacionais, definindo critérios que valorizem a publicação em revistas nacionais de qualidade reconhecida, o que permitirá a publicação de trabalhos importantes na língua portuguesa, e estimulará o processo de melhoria de qualidade das revistas nacionais. / Many bibliometric indicators have been used to evaluate the scientific performance of researchers, universities and countries. Impact indicators, measured from citations to articles, have been addressed in many studies in the literature. The present study aimed to put forward possible forms of analysis adequacy to Brazilian scientific journals, to improve the scientific production evaluation criteria in the Brazilian framework. Objectives. The research was conducted in agreement with three objectives: (1) To verify if the exclusive use of international indicators leaves the Brazilian scientific policy out of context of its local reality, and if the ISI (Thomson Scientific) indexed journals usage has been justified ? the access of which in full article texts has been offered gratuitous to the scientific community by Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of High Education Personnel). (2) To investigate if SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library)-indexed Brazilian scientific production could provide impact indicators to appropriately contribute to the national science evaluation. (3) To find more indicators and new methodologies for science assessment in the context of the Brazilian science reality. Methodology. An exploratory quantitative study was conducted, based on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of scientific journals from three sources: journals classified by Qualis Assessment (years 2001/2002/2003), journals of the ?Portal de Periódicos da Capes? and SciELO journals. A comparison between the national and international impact of a set of Brazilian SciELO journals was conducted based on citations received from journals in each database (SciELO and ISI). A methodology of journal analysis was presented applying the multivariate statistical analysis technique to a set of 42 indicators. Results. The analysis of Qualis Assessment showed that the defined criteria favor mainly the publications in international journals by using ISI Impact Factor. The comparison of the annual average of citations received in SciELO by a sample of journals, before and after the availability in it, showed a positive effect, noticed by an increase to 70% of the journals (Life Sciences). The comparison of the national impact versus international impact of SciELO journals showed that those indexed also on ISI are cited more frequently; in the whole sample, SciELO journals received approximately 72% of ISI?s citations from international authors; had the articles in collaboration (national and international) cited more often than those with single authorship. It was noticed that journals indexed only in SciELO, are cited in similar numbers in both databases; received 68% of ISI?s citations from international authors and have articles with single authorship cited more frequently, followed by those with national collaboration. The multivariate analysis of SciELO journals indicators allowed the identification of different groups of journals, separated according to different practices of scientific communication. Conclusions. The criteria adequacy used in the evaluation of the national scientific production can be met considering impact indicators measured by citations on national journals. Criteria should be defined that value the publication in national journals with renown quality. This will allow the publication of important articles in Portuguese, and will encourage the process of national journals quality improvement.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 27-30, 1997 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) currently achieves a bandwidth efficiency (h ) of 0.5 to 1.0 bps/Hz by using traditional modulation schemes, such as, BPSK and QFSK. SNL has an interest in increasing the present bandwidth efficiency by a factor of 4 or higher with the same allocated bandwidth (about 10 MHz). Simulations have shown that 32- QAM trellis-coded modulation (TCM) gives a good bit error rate (BER) performance, and meets the requirements as far as the bandwidth efficiency is concerned. Critical to achieving this is that the receiver be able to achieve timing synchronization. This paper examines a particular timing recovery algorithm for all-digital receivers. Timing synchronization in a digital receiver can be achieved in different ways. One way of achieving this is by interpolating the original sampled sequence to produce another sampled sequence synchronized to the symbol rate or a multiple of the symbol rate. An adaptive sampling conversion algorithm which performs this function was developed by Floyd Gardner in 1993. In the present work, his algorithm was applied to two different modulation schemes, BPSK and 4-ary PAM. The two schemes were simulated in the presence of AWGN and ISI along with Gardner’s algorithm for timing recovery, and a fractionally spaced equalizer (T/2 FSE) for equalization. Simulations show that the algorithm gives good BER performance for BPSK in all the situations, and at different sampling frequencies, but unfortunately poor performance for the 4-ary PAM scheme. This indicates that Gardner’s algorithm for sampling conversion is not suitable for multi-level signaling schemes.