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A. F. Oliveira

Publications and source records attributed to A. F. Oliveira.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Detection of Muscle Fatigue Using Variable Bit Flow Modulation and Cross Correlation of Electromyographic Signals

The surface electromyography (sEMG) analysis can provide information on muscle fatigue status by estimation of muscle fibre conduction velocity (MFCV), a measure of the travelling speed of motor unit action potentials in muscle tissue. This paper proposes a technique for MFCV estimation using cross-correlation methods and variable bitstream modulation. The technique displays an estimate based on a set of data generated by the gain variation modulation, providing an average estimate of the MFCV. The observed trend of MFCV decrease correlates with the fatigue state of the observed muscle. Finally, the values found were compared with information from the literature, validating the method and showing the advantages of using variable modulation.

eess.SP

North-South non-Gaussian asymmetry in PLANCK CMB maps

We report the results of a statistical analysis performed with the four foreground-cleaned Planck maps by means of a suitably defined {\it local-variance} estimator. Our analysis shows a clear dipolar structure in Planck's {\it variance map} pointing in the direction $(l,b) \,\simeq\, (220^{\circ},-32^{\circ})$, thus consistent with the North-South asymmetry phenomenon. Surprisingly, and contrary to previous findings, removing the CMB quadrupole and octopole makes the asymmetry stronger. Our results show a maximal statistical significance, of $98.1\%$ CL, in the scales ranging from $\ell=4$ to $\ell=500$. Additionally, through exhaustive analyses of the four foreground-cleaned and individual frequency Planck maps, we find unlikely that residual foregrounds could be causing this dipole variance asymmetry. Moreover, we find that the dipole gets lower amplitudes for larger masks, evidencing that most of the contribution to the variance dipole comes from a region near the galactic plane. Finally, our results are robust against different foreground cleaning procedures, different Planck masks, pixelization parameters, and the addition of inhomogeneous real noise.

astro-ph.CO

Fitting isochrones to open cluster photometric data III. Estimating metallicities from UBV photometry

The metallicity is a critical parameter that affects the correct determination fundamental characteristics stellar cluster and has important implications in Galactic and Stellar evolution research. Fewer than 10 % of the 2174 currently catalog open clusters have their metallicity determined in the literature. In this work we present a method for estimating the metallicity of open clusters via non-subjective isochrone fitting using the cross-entropy global optimization algorithm applied to UBV photometric data. The free parameters distance, reddening, age, and metallicity simultaneously determined by the fitting method. The fitting procedure uses weights for the observational data based on the estimation of membership likelihood for each star, which considers the observational magnitude limit, the density profile of stars as a function of radius from the center of the cluster, and the density of stars in multi-dimensional magnitude space. We present results of [Fe/H] for nine well-studied open clusters based on 15 distinct UBV data sets. The [Fe/H] values obtained in the ten cases for which spectroscopic determinations were available in the literature agree, indicating that our method provides a good alternative to determining [Fe/H] by using an objective isochrone fitting. Our results show that the typical precision is about 0.1 dex.

astro-ph.SR