The Ox Dance (Boi-Bumbá) festival, held yearly during the last three evenings of June in the town of Parintins, Amazonas, is the most spectacular folk festival staged in Northern Brazil. In recent decades, it has assumed massive proportions, combining traditional cultural themes with spectacular visual qualities, thematic innovations, and many sociological changes. This paper analyzes the festi...

Model-driven development (MDD) has been gaining importance as an approach to resolving lifecycle challenges of large-scale distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems (e.g., joint emergency response systems, avionics, and automotive systems), including design, development, testing, maintenance and evolution. DRE systems are characterized by their stringent requirements for quality of servi...

A computer-assisted laser scanning microscope equipped for confocal laser scanning and color video microscopy was used to examine Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts in two agricultural soils, a barnyard sediment, and calf fecal samples. An agar smear technique was developed for enumerating oocysts in soil and barnyard sediment samples. Enhanced counting efficiency and sensitivity (detection limit, ...