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This paper aims at quantifying natural and artificial radionuclides, trace and major elements in sediments collected along the Tietê River basin. The results obtained for Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni and Zn, indicated that the region of "High Tietê" is highly polluted, followed by the region of "Middle Tietê" and the region of "Low Tietê" does not present evidence of contamination. The natural radionuclide concentrations were of the same order of magnitude of world average values and can be defined as basal levels of the region. Cesium-137 activity concentration ranged from 0.22 ± 0.08 Bq kg−1 to 0.96 ± 0.12 Bq kg−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, different types of rocks exploited in a quarry located in the Limeira region (São Paulo State, Brazil) were studied to investigate its main petrographic characteristics, physical–mechanical (apparent specific weigh ρa, apparent porosity ηa, water absorption αa and uniaxial compressive strength UCS) and thermoanalytical properties, whose curves of each of the rocks were obtained from thermogravimetry (TG), differential thermal analysis and thermomechanical analysis (TMA). Four main petrographic types were evaluated: an aphanitic rock (APH), a diabase (DIA) and two monzodiorites with distinct granulations designated as MOMM and MONMC. In terms of mineralogical composition APH is the only rock that presents volcanic glass, while for the other rocks the main mineralogy was always associated with plagioclases, clinopyroxenes and opaque minerals. The results of the physical and mechanical characterization indicate the good aptitude of these materials to be used as aggregates in engineering works. The obtained values of apparent porosity (ηa) were less than 1% for all rocks. The value of resistance rates for all samples showed that the APH has the larger value, which is attributed to the grain size of the rock. The TG curves of each of the four samples contain small mass losses between the initial temperature and around 105 °C, which attributed to the water absorption. Besides, the APH sample had a mass loss attributed to the carbonate compound. The TMA curves showed that form DIA and MOMM are similar between them, while the APH differ from both. Further, the MONMC has not presented an appreciable thermal expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development steps and core ideas used by the USP Farmers herding team, that has participated in the 2010 edition of the Multi-Agent Programming Contest (MAPC 2010). This is the third year that the competitors must design a team of herding agents, whose global goal is to lead a maximum number of cows to their own corral. As this is a very complex task and requires coordination of the team, we have developed the individual agents using the Jason (Bordini et al. ) interpreter for AgentSpeak(L) (Rao ). Moreover, the coordination strategy was defined using the $\mathcal{M}$ OISE (Hübner et al. , ) organizational model. We have also used the idea of artifact (Ricci et al. ) to develop global services, available to all the agents. Moreover, it is clear that for this contest some pure procedural processing should be developed in a lower abstraction level (Hübner et al. ); therefore some calculation and pre-defined global decisions were implemented by Java classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vehicular illumination system has undergone considerable technological advances in recent decades such as the use of a Light Emitting Diode (LED) Adaptive Front-lighting System (AFS), which represents an industry breakthrough in lighting technology and is rapidly becoming one of the most important innovative technologies around the world in the lighting community. This paper presents AFS control alternatives using fuzzy logic (types 1 and 2) to determine its operating parameters taking into consideration the road conditions in the state of São Paulo (Brazil). Fuzzy logic is a well-known extension of the conventional (Boolean) logic that enables the treatment of uncertainty present in the information through the definition of intermediary membership values between the 'completely true' and the 'completely false'. This technique or modeling strategy is particularly important when a multi-parameter decision must be taken or the decisions are based on the human knowledge. The results show the potential of the methodology proposed and its suitability for light control providing safer nighttime driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]