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Applications: a variety of themes

Professor Liane Tarouco, from UFRGS, evaluated the projects in the field of applications. She declared that the proposals submitted offered an interesting "panorama of the diversity of studies being carried out in the country."

Two projects were presented in the field of telemedicine. Both permit using medical images in a network environment, and they make it possible for health professionals from famous specialized centers to cooperate and for poor areas to have access to better medical services. The HealthNet, from the ReMAV in Recife, is an integrated system of telediagnosis and second medical opinion. The Integrated Service of Access and Distributed Image Processing(SIADPI), jointly developed by the ReMAV in Florianópolis and the Cyclops project, permits accessing a DICOM 3 (Digital Image Communications in Medicine) image bank.

In the HealthNet the module which permits visualizing the patient's data and making a medical diagnosis has already been made and is being tested right now. The distribution module is being developed. The videoconference software, already ready and in use, is the VIC/RAT, developed in Berkeley (USA). As for the project in Florianópolis, it is about to make an experiment involving different hospitals in that area and sectors of distributed processing units through the ReMAV/FLN, with the aim of making tests in real-life situations, in which different hospitals request services of distributed image processing through the net.

Another project presented in Florianópolis was made by the ReMAV in Recife, also known as ATM Recife Network. In the field of distance education (EAD), it was called "Co-authorship of classes in the ReMAV Recife." The great aim of this project is cooperative work. The co-authorship tool was developed using CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) technology of distributed objects. The proposed solution starts from a situation in which the users of the system interact by means of objects distributed in a network, which provides them with a number of resources for their classes. The tool was tested in ATM Recife Network and the communication between the participants was established by means of multicast technology. This environment made it possible for the participants to interact in real time.

Still in the field of distance education, the study presented by CEFET-CE, in the range of the ReMAV in Fortaleza, involves the use of service quality (QoS) for the integration and management of multimedia applications for distance education in high performance networks. The lack of QoS can affect the quality of the educational system used due to the excessive waiting time in order to get data or documents, frequent interruptions and data loss in real-time applications, or the low quality in the reception of audio/video, threatening the quality of the information.

Geoprocessing was an area with two projects selected for presentation during the III WRNP2. Both were developed in Bahia. One of them was made in the ReMAV Salvador, and the other was a final project submittted to the Catholic University of Salvador in order to get a Bachelor degree in Computing.

Geoserver, the project of the Catholic University of Salvador, is a tool to publish geographical information in the web. Although there are other softwares on the market with the same functionalities and widely acknowledged by professionals, the project has its value. First, it represents the development of national technology. Besides, this tool will be made available for free to teaching and research institutions,making it easier to obtain geographical information.

The GEO-UFBA, from the ReMAV Salvador has a specific application and is divided in two projects. The SIG-UFBA will make information about the campi at UFBA available (logical network, academic infrastructure, services and data about the population on the campi). Project Campus aims at mapping biophysical and infrastructural aspects as well as characterizing the environment of UFBA's campus in an integrated way. In the site http://www.geo.rema.ufba.br/ the results can be followed.

Other applications shown in the III WRNP2 belonged to areas such as IP telephony, digital libraries and special education - learning environments for visually impaired people.

[RNP, June 08, 2001]

[RNP, 06.08.2001]