Although South America lost more megafaunal genera than any other continent during the Late-Quaternary Extinction event (LQE), little is known about the chronology, causes or dynamics of these extinctions, especially in the northern part of the continent. Fossil deposits in…

Background: Clinical examinations increasingly consist of composite tests to assess all aspects of the curriculum recommended by the General Medical Council.
Setting: A final undergraduate medical school examination for 214 students.
Aim: To estimate the overall reliability of a composite…

The chemical composition of the essential oils from leaves and stems of Eugenia sulcata Spring ex Mart., obtained by hydrodistillation, was analyzed by GC-MS and quantified by CG-FID. In all, 37 components were identified and sesquiterpenes represented the largest fraction…

This article presents a procedure for constructing a taxonomy of COTS products in the field of Requirements Engineering (RE). The taxonomy and the obtained information reach transcendental benefits to the selection of systems and tools that aid to RE-related actors…

This paper presents a neuro-fuzzy network where all its parameters can be tuned simultaneously using Genetic Algorithms. The approach combines the merits of fuzzy logic theory, neural networks and genetic algorithms. The proposed neuro-fuzzy network does not require a priori…

Complex control tasks may be solved by dividing them into a more specific and more easily handled subtasks hierarchy. Several authors have demonstrated that the incremental layered evolution paradigm allows obtaining controllers capable of solving this type of tasks. In…

This work is focussed on the development and analysis of a new class of algorithms, called cellular memetic algorithms (cMAs), which will be evaluated here on the satisfiability problem (SAT). For describing a cMA, we study the effects of adding…

In the design of activities for Web-Based Education Systems, the concept of Didactic Object or Learning Object, has appeared as the axis of a new paradigm concerned with the reusability of contents and activities, due to its organization from a…

Since huge amounts of spatial data can be easily collected from various applications, ranging from remote sensing technology to geographical information system, the extraction and comprehension of spatial knowledge is a more and more important task. Many excellent studies on…

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on pensions and saving by studying the influence of funded pension systems on the gross national saving rate using a sample of 48 developed and developing countries over the 1980-2004 period. To the…