Analysis of Urban Sustainability of Araranguá-SC-Brazil Applying Thermodynamic Concepts to Municipal Solid Waste Indexes

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Campus Araranguá. Engenharia de Energia.Each day, humankind adds more and more products into the earth’ life cycle, mostly made out of virgin materials and not accounting how much out there can be reused and reinserted in the chain. The world produces over 2 billion tons of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) every year and Brazil contributes with 80 million tons to this amount, of which only 3% is recycled. Strategies like Reducing/Reusing/Recycling/Recover (4R’s) must be attached to our thoughts and actions. Also, maximizing exergetic efficiency and minimizing entropy generation can lead to more powerful solutions to this global problem, once the world can be seen as a living organism, where matter and energy are consumed as well as waste, heat and entropy are rejected. In this work, the MSW management system of Araranguá – Santa Catarina State, Brazil is evaluated in terms of exergy and a control volume around the city’s urban center was defined. Streams of fuels such as gasoline, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, diesel oil, ethanol and also electricity into the city’s control volume were considered as exergetic inflow. The outlet solid mass flow was calculated by the passage of solid waste across the control volume boundary, on its way to the landfill. Two scenarios were considered: (i) the current one with no solid waste segregation, inconsiderable recycling rate and transportation by trucks; (ii) the ideal one, but feasible scenario, which considers a proper waste separation with the highest material recycling and waste-to-energy generation. The analysis has shown that a correct waste separation can lead to an increase of 1.4% in the exergetic efficiency, which represents 47,137 GJ of exergy potentially recovered and around US $ 300,000 saved in a year, related to less diesel oil consumption and to MSW management system enhancement. The results show that waste-to-energy solutions can be very powerful and effective regarding the world’s solid waste treatment, for cities like Araranguá

A Comparison of Histogram and Template Matching for Face Verification

Face identification and verification are parts of a face recognition process. The verification of faces involves the comparison of an input face to a known face to verify the claim of identity of an individual. Hence, the verification process must determine the similarity between two face images, a face object image and a target face image. In order to determine the similarity of faces, different techniques can be used, such as methods based on templates and histograms. In real-world applications, captured face images may suffer variations due to disturbing factors such as image noise, changes in illumination, scaling, rotation and translation. Because of these variations, face verification becomes a complex process. In this context, a comparison between histogram and template matching methods is done in this work using images with variations. Different experiments were conducted to analyze the behavior of these methods and to define which method performs better in artificially generated images. 1

As raízes de uma planta que hoje é o Brasil: os índios e o Estado-Nação na era Vargas

Este artigo examina a construção do Índio por funcionários e intelectuais durante o Estado Novo (1937-1945) e os esforços de povos indígenas para empregar essas imagens. Funcionários do Estado - preocupados com unificação nacional, defesa territorial e configuração racial - sustentaram o Índio como um ícone que trouxe contribuições inestimáveis à formação histórica e cultural brasileira. O proto-patriota, entretanto, só pôde ser completamente redimido pela tutela governamental. Confrontados com um projeto estatal ambigüo, grupos indígenas deram várias respostas.<br>This article looks at the construction of the Indian by government officials and intellectuals during the Estado Novo (1937-45), and the efforts of indigenous peoples to engage these images. State officials - concerned with national consolidation, territorial defense, and racial pedigree - upheld the Indian as na icon who had made invaluable contributions to Brazilian historical and cultural formation. The proto-patriot, however, could only be fully redeemed through government tutelage. Confronted by na ambiguos state project, indigenous groups demonstrated varied responses