RCAAP Repository

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

The Biomedical Engineering, through its subspecialties, such as the Clinical Engineering and Hospital Engineering was incorporated permanently into the lives of health institutions, as with the advancement of technology and the definitive inclusion of medical equipment as a means of diagnosis and therapy, has become essential to these organizations. The activities developed by the Clinical Engineering in healthcare facilities are based on engineering knowledge and the manage applied to health technologies. In this context, this research aimed to study and report the impact of the application of management techniques in Clinical Engineering at the UFU Clinical Hospital, a large university hospital and reference for high complexity. This is a case studied, a quantitative, considering an economic and quality evaluation, which was used the documental research as technical procedure. It was analyzed data in reports and administrative documents from the hospital at the period 2001 to 2010, related to human resources, service indicators, quality indicators, parts costs and contracts. Among the findings, the highlight was an approximately 20% reduction in corrective maintenance at the moment of implementation of preventive maintenance and the stabilizing of corrective despite the increase of the technological park of the institution over the 10 years studied. The preventive maintenance reached its highest rate in 2007 with 33% of all maintenance, having a 27% reduction in 2010. In the overall amount of spending on contracts, there was a reduction of about 2/3 in the study period. The savings generated by the Clinical Engineering management for the institution was approximately R$ 2million in 2010, and the cumulative savings over the period 2001 to 2010 was R$ 7.6million. It was concluded therefore that the management of clinical engineering in that institution, enabled a reduction in hospital costs and promote increased of the medical equipment availability and quality assurance and reliability of services provided.

The deregulation of the electricity sector and the evolution in the legislation related to the consumers right and economy growth - with the inclusion of more people in higher classes - have had a strong impact on the relationship between energy distribution companies and electricity consumers. The Strong management of Regulatory Agencies, with frequent application of penalties, has stimulated scientific research by the distribution companies and universities to identify the main causes of the conflicting aspects involving the consumer, the regulator and the energy concessionaire. In this context, a field of study that has generated growing importance is regarding the increase in requests for damage compensation to electronic equipment. If in a way the volume of requests and financial amount to cover these requests have rose highly on another way the lack of efficient mechanisms for analyzing the causal relationship between damage and motivator, has prevented consistent and conclusive analysis, multiplying the claims next to the ombudsman service. This work has as its main objectives: the construction of more real supportability curves from destructive tests and the proposed methodology; the inclusion of such curves in the new version of the APR software (developed in this study); the construction of a friendlier interface for importing data from the georeferenced system of the Energy Concessionaire for the mentioned software, in addition to conducting trials to test the effectiveness of mitigation devices known as DPS. Studies to guide the data were collected by the concessionaire CEMIG D, which guided the analysis for microcomputers, which have been used increasingly and also have had a larger volume / amount of money in requests for damages.

Optical Character Recognition systems (OCR) refer generically to technologies applied to recognize characters from an image file that contains text. It allows, for example, that a scanned sheet of printed text could be converted into an editable text file. These systems have been widespread over the past years, with several commercial versions, including the ones embedded within scanner devices. One of the steps that define the success or failure of this type of system is the correct segmentation of text lines and characters that constitute it. Recently, it has gained importance the correct segmentation of words in the textto assist possible post-processing steps to correct deviations of recognition. This paper presents two different methods for segmentation of texts. The first method, called Segmentation of Lines and Words based Teager energy operator (SLP-TEO), based on the Teager energy operator (TEO), is used in the segmentation of text lines and words. The TEO is applied to the signal abstracted from the linear projection (horizontal or vertical) generated by the binary image of the text. A unique feature of this method is that it can be applied to printed texts or manuscripts, without prior arrangements. Moreover, the same algorithm is used to segmentation of text lines and segmentation of words, no matter if they are printed or handwritten. The adopteddatabase for this project (IAM-Database), widely used in OCR researches, has, for all printed text, handwritten transcripts that were also targeted using SLP-TEO method. The second method, called gray-Region Oriented Segmentation of Characters (gROSC) is applied to grayscale word images for the purpose of character segmentation. This method is based on region oriented methodswhere connected pixels that are visited and labeled. A unique feature of the method is that it should be applied to grayscale images of the segmented words. Moreover, using the Otsu threshold and knowing the gray levels of the image in advance, the method determines the maximum variation between shades of gray that allows or not to visit the neighboring pixel, adding it to the target region of interest. In the adopted database, there are three basic types of characters problems to solve: overlapping characters, connected characters, and font design. The gROSCmethod is applied to all previously segmented words images, and the characters are equally segmented, without previous identification of possible character problems. The experiments and results in all stages of segmentation with both methods are very relevant and demonstrate the efficiency and simplicity of the proposed methods.

Aneel Ordinance No. 414 of September 9, 2010, guarantees the right to consumers of electricity supplied at a voltage equal to or less than 2.3 kV, in case of damage caused by disruption occurred in the system, replacement of damaged electrical equipment, installed in consumer units, operating in the same condition found prior to the occurrence or, alternatively, compensation in cash equivalent to that required to make it return to that condition, or even replaced with equivalent equipment, regardless of fault of the concessionaire. The consumer has up to 90 (ninety) days from the date of the likely occurrence of lightning damage to equipment, to request reimbursement to the distributor, and provide at least the following elements, according to the ordinance above: I - likely date and time the damage occurred; II - information showing that the applicant is the holder of the consumer unit, or his legal representative; III - report of the problem presented by electrical equipment, and IV - Description and general characteristics of the damaged equipment, such as brand and model. The same decree states that the distributor should investigate the existence of causation, even considering the records of occurrences in your network and must inform the consumer the result of the reimbursement request in writing within 15 (fifteen) days from the date of the check or, failing that, from the date of the request for reimbursement. Also in case of refusal, the distributor must provide the consumer with a standardized application form in writing, containing at least the detailed reasons for the rejection. Due to the complexity of the analysis of power system disturbances propagated by the concessionaire and the lack of tools to support such analysis, what we see today are simplistic analysis, often based on technical reports from an authorized dealer, which suggests a possible origin for the defect. The concessionaire will often choose to make the compensation to avoid wear and image conflicts with their customers. Thus, given the new demands of the current ordinance, the need to establish a scientific methodology and easy operation, the growing number of complaints and a high cost of claims paid, utilities have invested in research R & D from scientific institutions to obtain procedures that can contribute to a more transparent, fair and scientific basis for this scenario. That said, this dissertation has met the needs listed above, proposing a methodology for examining applications for reimbursements of televisions based on the new curves and dielectric withstand unprecedented thermal curves, integrating quickly and easily to the geo-referenced database the system\'s electrical utility Cemig SA, culminating in a software for easy operation.

In the past few years, computer-based training systems have been widely studied in the field of human rehabilitation. One of the cutting-edge technologies applied in this kind of system is Virtual Reality. In health applications, Virtual Reality presents itself as an appropriate tool to simulate training environments without exposing the patients to the real world associated risks. In particular, one application of Virtual Reality in human rehabilitation is in virtual prosthesis design. Virtual prosthetic devices have been used to reduce the great mental effort needed by patients fitted with myoelectric prosthesis, during the training stage. This effort is one of the main difficulties that lead patients to give up at this stage. In this paper, the application of Virtual Reality in a hand prosthesis training system is presented. To achieve this, the possibility of exploring Artificial Neural Networks in a real-time classification system is discussed. Also, a signal windowing algorithm and a communication architecture between the classification system and the virtual environment are presented. Finally, a prototype developed in order to investigate the application of the proposed system in a real-time processing and classification context is presented.

This work deals with the protection of distribution networks of electricity from high-impedance faults (HIF). It proposed a methodology for the detection of HIF by detecting the degree of imbalance of electrical networks and the implementation of the technique in reclosers and switches. It is developed a software to calculate the levels of current imbalance in typical electrical distribution. Thus it was possible to estimate the limits of imbalances typical of unbalanced loads. This made it possible to choose the settings of the detectors imbalances for them to command the opening of the system only when an actual HIF occurs and not when there is an ordinary imbalance. The software was tested in a typical feeder. Finally, it is proposed an outline of the hardware on which the detector imbalance can be implemented.

The use of a wheelchair after a Stroke is often necessary, in addition to facilitate the locomotion this device may help support and correct positioning in sitting posture. For this purpose, a few modifications in wheelchair may be required. These interventions, known as seating, aim to user comfort, prevention of deformities and pressures ulcers, besides the maintenance of a functional sitting posture. However, there are poor scientific evidence proving the benefits of these adaptations for individuals whit a sensory-motor impairment, especially those with hemiplegy. The goal of this study is to assess the different combinations of density foam seats in sitting posture individuals with hemiplegy caused by a Stroke. Participants were 18 adults with mean age of 63 years, seven female and 11 male. The procedure consisted in the demarcation of anatomical points in the anterior and posterior frontal plane, followed by a clinical assessment that determined in which hemisphere would be placed the higher density foam, according pelvic obliquity, each individual was shot eight times in four different situations. Photographic records were analyzed by postural analysis software CorporisPro® and data were submitted to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis. Regarding the use of different densities of foam in seat, this research demonstrated evidence of earnings not only pelvic alignment, but also on the trunk and head with the use hemiespumas of different densities. Thus, the results shown that the method employed can be an important tool to aid definition of seating strategies to be adopted by rehabilitation professionals as well as being a low cost technique and easy access and management.

In the last years the refunding requests for damages in electric and electronic equipments have been increasing substantially and this subject has deserved the attention of electric power utilities, regulation agencies, consumers and other government organizations. Such concerns have emerged the theme referred in this dissertation which aims at establishing the first steps towards the validation of a computational program - APR developed at the Federal University of Uberlandia. This software is to be used to provide reports about specific refunding requests throughout technical and scientific electrical fundaments. The strategy here focused is based on the comparison of real cases computational results from the APR to the traditional procedures followed by of electric power utilities. To achieve such goals the studies are carried out in accordance with the following sequence: consumer claimer\'s identification, modeling the respective feeder circuit, disturbance simulation, selection of the claimed equipment and, at the end, the determination of the correlation among the distribution system disturbances causing dielectric and thermal effects applied at the claimed equipment and the corresponding tolerances allowed in terms of the device supportability limits. Following the above steps it becomes clear that the APR applicative is then submitted to a first level of a validation strategy toward the achievement of a reliable, rapid and consistent computational tool to help decisions about equipment damage requests.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

This work considers the implementation of an authorship system, composition for an applicatory mounter of courses and a motor applicatory. The applicatory mounter has simplified visual interface, for manipulation for professors with little knowledge in computer science. The motor system show the content of the course for the pupil, through animations, pictures, sounds, text, exercises with automatic correction, etc. The system generates for the professor report with excellent information for a truthful accompaniment of the actions taken for the pupil front to the contents and tests. Under the global point of view, the work also considers technological adequacy to the Internet and supply of data for research related to the routines of study of the human being.

With the growth of the demand of multimedia applications in the Internet and with the current backbones, it is expected that UMTS backbones support different applications with QoS requirements, mainly those which are sensitive to delays, packet losses and jitter. However, real time applications require proper mechanisms to guarantee QoS according to their specific characteristics. It is proposed in this work, the use of a mechanism based on the DiffServ model, which will classify and treat each packet in accordance to the needs which were previously established by its applications. Such proposal provides a differentiated treatment to the traffic of several flows in the network. The results reached from simulation and modeling showed that the use of the proposed mechanism treats the UMTS traffic classes in a differentiated way, offering a suitable level of QoS even under mobility conditions of the users.

Distance learning systems have been receiving support to research because they can provide flexibility for the student. There are many systems already developed but with great opportunity to improved the way of tracking the student. The main purpose of this research is to propose an intelligent tutor based on artificial neural networks to reduce the number of students with low performance in computer language learning. The system monitor the student during his study stage and suggest the best path to be followed seeking for the best performance. The neural network will be trained to monitor a predetermined sequence of study but adaptively can adjust this sequence to the performance of the student. The system was applied to a group of students in a technical college and the learning performance increased in 10 % compared to another group without the assistance of the intelligent tutor.

Among the several impairmentes suffered by an RF satellite signal above 10GHz , the attenuation due to rain, is which causes the most significant and detrimental effect. This attenuation requires reserving a considerable margin in the system project; which leads to increase in power, the use or larger antennas or complex error correction techniques, consequently, leading to increased costs. This work describes the design, construction and operation of a receiving system in the Ku / Ka band to measure, date and store the instantly value of both the attenuation and the rain rate, in order to build a database, which allows to study and compare the data obtained the light of the theoretical models used in the projects. The system has a parabolic antenna 4.2 m in diameter with angular movement in elevation and azimuth axes using electric motors, a station for collecting environmental data and an unmodulated carrier receiver (beacon). The antenna was designed to allow a measuring range up to 28dB of attenuation in the signal, considering the typical transmitted signal levels of the satellites currently in geostationary orbits.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais

The purpose of this paper is to show that the software ScicosLab can be used as an interesting and effective computational tool to analyze the automatic generation control of electric power systems. Firstly it is presented the software and, afterwards, the concepts and definitions of rotational movements in order to develop mathematical models for the generators equipped with steam turbines or hydraulic turbines and speed governors, and for their electrical loads. For the studies it is used a system comprised by two distinct interconnected areas where a load increase in one area is simulated without/with the tieline, ignoring, and then considering the primary and supplementary controls. Finally, it is analyzed a more realistic system with three distinct areas extracted from the Brazilian power system. The computational results show graphically the variations of the two main quantities of interest: the frequency of each area of the system and the tieline power. These quantities allow the evaluation of the system behavior after a disturbance that affects the generation-load balance. Within the above context, it is verified that the ScicosLab computer package effectively models and simulates the load-frequency control of power systems, qualifying, therefore, as an excellent alternative to replace any similar program which requires license payment.

The increase in commercial losses in electric utility companies has been a reason of great concern for these companies. The main motives of the increase in these losses are two: fraud practiced by the consumers; and problems in the energy meters. Nowadays, to identify one of the two problems mentioned above, in-site inspections are required. However, due to the high number of consumer unities, such inspections are done without any previous analysis of the consumer behavior, which results in a low rate of problem identification. On the other hand, electric utility companies have a database with much information about their consumers. So, this information can be used to identify the behavior profile of those consumers that are likely to be frauding or having problems with their energy meters. However, due to high quantity of data, it is demanding the use of an automatic process for identification of such behavior profiles. The goal of this work is to develop a decision support system to combat commercial losses in distribution power systems. Such system is based on Knowledge Discovery in Database KDD, which refers to discovering of knowledge in database, which may increase the rate of successful in-site inspections. The tool used to do the data mining stage of the KDD is Decision Tree. This is an artificial intelligence technique that tries to emulate human abilities in a computer system, and it learns from data and it is used for classification type of problems.