This web page has information about my background, family, work, ideas, and hobbies. It is permanently under construction -- it never ends. Please obey legal terms and copyrighted materials. Additional information about my work can be found at the Texas A&M University's personal web page, Animal Science Department's personal web page, and Mathematical Nutrition Models website. My Weebly website has links to all websites I have developed so far... You can also find some random thoughts at WordPress blog.



Araça fruit

Hometown

I was born on May 10, 1969, in Araçatuba, São Paulo (SP), Brazil. The history of Araçatuba is directly linked to the development of the northwest railroad in 1908 in the São Paulo state. The city was named after a yellow fruit called araça, which was named by an Indian tribe called Tupi, and the suffix tuba meaning "a lot of" in Tupi. Thus, Araçatuba in Tupi language means "a lot of araça fruit." More about araça fruit can be found here.

The city of Araçatuba has an annual average temperature of 27 °C (81 °F) and is located 532 km from the city of São Paulo, which is the capital of the São Paulo state. The economy of Araçatuba is driven by beef cattle and sugarcane productions. For more information about the city of Araçatuba click here.

 

Education

From 1976 to 1983, I attended the Escola Estadual de Primeiro Grau "Luiz Gama" (Elementary and Middle Schools) and from 1984 to 1986, I completed my high school at the Colégio Objetivo in Araçatuba, SP. These were the golden years of my education. This was the period of great friendship and common goals such as enrolling in a University within the following three years, which happened in 1987 for me. Everyone had a different background. As a group, we held each other during difficult times with a lot of fun, games, parties, pizzadas, travels, and much more. I met great people and created lifetime friendships, including Celso Akira Kajimoto, Luis Henrique Benez, Marco Antonio Coelho Goiato, Mauricio Minoru Saito, Celso Hiyodo, Cesar Mondini de Oliveira, Martha Fares de Campos, Régis Gaide Pistori, and many more. I enjoyed a lot the classes of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology. The extracurricular classes of computing and chess were particularly very helpful to alleviate the stress of the vestibular (a placement test to ingress into a university in Brazil).

ESALQ

In 1987, I enrolled in the University of São Paulo campus of Piracicaba, SP (Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz” – ESALQ/USP) to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Agronomy Engineering, which was conferred to me in 1991. I think this choice was a nice follow up to my high school studies because of the broadness, fundamental theory, and practical applications of the disciplines offered at ESALQ/USP. The first 2 years were composed of basic classes. I started engaging more and more the studies during the last 2 years when we had more applied classes. I was excited about classes on animal science, soil science, and economics. Although apparently these courses are not related, they were presented as integrated systems, biosystems, systems research, and systems thinking. I only came to understand their linkage later in life. Dynamic, systematic integration topics intrigue me.

During my Bachelor of Science (BS) at ESALQ/USP, my interest in computing increased and I continued learning more about hardware and software by taking several extra-curricular courses and an internship at CIAGRI (Centro de Informática do Campus "Luiz de Queiroz"). The courses offered at that time were related to the primordial of office computing, including text editors (e.g. Chi Writer, WordStar, Word, WordPerfect 5.2), spreadsheets (e.g. Quattro Pro, Lotus 1-2-3), programming languages (e.g. MASM, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran), high quality graphic editors (e.g. Harvard Graphics), statistical analysis packages (e.g. SAS, SANEST), networking (e.g. LanNetwork), Unix, among many more. The internship was mostly related to solving computer problems (i.e. crashes), "I-lost-everything" and "I-did-not-save-my-work" type of problems created a lot of havoc among users of CIAGRI. We are trained to do the "how-to" of these different software packages. In a sense, the interns (we) were computer nerds supposed to help computer users... I guess we had to be a geek to solve these problems, and we enjoyed it. Can you imagine the knowledge of computing during those years? Furthermore, everyone was trying to do his or her work on computers. Well, it was fun and I think we made through that time fine. Actually, during this time in my academic life, I met my beloved wife... She was an intern too! What a coincidence.

From 1993 to 1995, I completed a Master of Science (MS) degree program in Animal and Forage Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Celso Boin. My MS degree, which was partially funded by the Fundação Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), was related to the development and evaluation of growth curves of purebred and crossbred Guzerah cows with and without supplementation during dry seasons for 4 consecutive years. This was my first research task dealing with mathematics and operational research. I also expanded my list of great friendship during my BS and MS: Luiz Antônio "ktatau" Garcia Borges, Luís Gustavo "flexa" Barioni, Marcelo "mague" Pereira de Carvalho, and many others. My thank you video (in Portuguese) to the 50 years of the post-graduate program of the Animal and Forage Sciences. The complete student's testimony is here.

From 1996 to 1997, I developed a spreadsheet named Sistema de Estimativa de Energia e Proteína e Avaliação de Dietas (SEEPAD) to compute the requirements of energy and protein for cattle and to evaluate, balance, and optimize cattle rations. The SEEPAD was based on the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System (CNCPS) v. 3 and it was my initial work on the adaptation of the CNCPS for tropical conditions. I also developed the first version of the Ração de Lucro Máximo (RLM) and participated in the second version. The RLM was a simpler software than SEEPAD at that time because it was originally designed to optimize rations only, while the SEEPAD had other features similar to the CNCPS v. 3, including detailed environment, ration ingredients, and animal descriptions, a mechanistic rumen sub-model, several options for linear and nonlinear optimization, and the capability to perform several simulations at once. As a matter of fact, the RLM used the maximum profit optimization included in the SEEPAD software as shown here. These projects were funded by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP). Dr. Celso Boin served as my supervisor and Dr. Dante P. D. Lanna was the grant coordinator for this project.

Cornell

In the second semester of 1997, I began a Philosophy Doctor (PhD) degree program at Cornell University with a major in Animal Nutrition and minors in Animal Science and Agricultural Engineering under the guidance of Dr. Danny G. Fox. I was interested in the modeling and simulation of nutrient fluxes and requirements of energy and nutrients of ruminants. Most of my PhD projects stemmed from my previous background in operational research, mathematics and calculus, modeling, digestion and nutrition, and cattle feeding and management in tropical ecosystems. My PhD degree was funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). I obtained my PhD degree in 2001.

I accepted a post-doctorate position at Cornell University to further develop the Cornell Value Discovery System (CVDS), a dynamic growth model for cattle. During that time, I started working on a model to determine forage intake by nursing beef calves. In 2002, I joined the faculty of the Cornell University in a Research Associate position. As a Research Associate I performed several modeling and simulation work, including the revision of the CNCPS rumen model to include ruminal pH and volatile fatty acids (VFA) prediction, revised the CNCPS feed library, revised the growth model, developed optimization procedures for diet formulation, improved the nitrogen utilization model, and developed a CVDS for beef and dairy cows. Some of these accomplishments can be found at the Mathematical Nutrition Models web page.

 

Interests

 


classic guitar

Classic guitar. I started studying classic guitar during my Middle School (1976 - 1983) and stopped during my first year at High School (1984 - 1986).

 

 

 


chess

Chess. I was introduced to chess during my high school years. We frequently met to play and to study chess together. I became interested in specific openings, including the Sicilian defense (1. e4 c5) and the Ruy Lopez (1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, 3. Bb5). The chess24 lists several championships and broadcasts games live.

Click here for more about chess...

 

 


computing

Computers. My first computer was a TRS-80 Prológica CP 300 (see Museu da Computação e Informática for more details). Then I upgraded the CP 300 to another TRS-80: Prológica CP 500 (see Museu da Computação e Informática for more details) in 1982. The history of Microprocessors, Personal Computers, IBM PC, Apple, Amiga, Commodore 64, and others were nicely documented by Ken Polsson. More about TRS-80 at Ira Goldkland's web page, Emulators of TRS-80 can be found here. A timeline of microcomputer evolution and several other links related to old computers can be found here. Some nice computer museums: Personal Computer Museum, Obsolete Computer Museum, and Computer History Museum. Check also the Radio Shack catalogs! Don't forget to visit the Vintage Computer Federation and to become a member. What are the greatest home computers of all times?

Click here for more about TRS-80...

Have you ever used punched cards? Do you miss them? Why not endeavor on an adventure in this website to revive some thrilling and wild thoughts about punched cards.

Then, the era of IBM PC-XT arrived. It did not take too long for the PC 286; it arrived in 1984. In 1987, IBM released the PC 386, then the 386SX, 386DX, and 486 in 1989. Pentium was released in 1994 and several improvements followed. Of course, MS-DOS and MS Windows platforms were released to keep up with the expanding capability of the hardware. For fans of MS-DOS v 5.0... try DOSBOX.

Click here for more about IBM-PC, the MS-DOS era...

I was able to get formally trained in several computer programming languages, including Assembly, BASIC, Pascal, Fortran. I started using GWBASIC (click here to download GWBASIC and other resources) and QuickBasic at MS-DOS level, and then I migrated to VisualBasic and more recently VisualBasic .NET in Microsoft Windows platform. Of course, the programming became much easier, more productive, and more powerful with VisualBasic, but programming in BASIC for DOS was fantastic and challenging. Recently, Microsoft released the SmallBasic to introduce youngsters to the incredible world of programming. Some have re-programmed DOS-based BASIC into SmallBasic, including the classic games by David H. Ahl, including the BASIC Computer Games, More BASIC Computer Games, Big Computer Games, and BASIC Computer Adventures. Click here for the 10 programming language and their inventor name, and here for the comparison of modern programming languages.

Click here for MSX...

Raspberry Pi. How to build a cluster.


cosmos

Cosmos and the Universe. The award-winning 1980 TV series Cosmos by Carl Edward Sagan and the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick sparked all sorts of questions such as who and what are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the cosmos? What will be in the future? Can we time travel? Have we been visited? I became aware of Cosmos and 2001 during my high school years.

The Cosmos series is an extraordinary collection of scientific facts and dogmas about us. Why to watch Cosmos by Carl Sagan? The complete Cosmos series can be watched at Hulu or Twitch. Interviews with Carl Sagan are available about his books The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark and Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. They illustrate his scientific thinking and hopes for the future. A tribute to Carl Sagan's Cosmos can be watched on YouTube.

The 2001: A Space Odyssey movie featured two songs: Zarathustra and The Blue Danube.

In 1976, Carl Sagan talked about the Solar Sail, which could travel across the universe on the radiation and particles that come out of the sun; Sagen referred to it as solar wind. Because of its constant acceleration, Sagan said, it could go to the inner parts of the solar system at a much faster speed than rockets. Amazing. Today, it is becoming a reality. Check it out. See Carl's broadcast of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Bill Nye talks about the LightSail. Check the Sail Planetary. Check the Carl Sagan's Cosmos Marathon.

 


judo

Judo. I trained Judo during my Elementary and Middle School years (1976 - 1983) and during my first year at the High School (1984 - 1986). My decision was initially influenced by cousins, but as time passed by, I started to like this martial art. Judo is a great martial art that taught me mental control, formalism, discipline, and respect to others. I believe that Judo is an art and sport that can help enhance self-control and minimize anxiety. The official 67 throws of Kodocan Judo and more information about the throws can be found here.

The International Judo Federation has detailed information about championships worldwide.

 


mathematics

Mathematics. Zé Luiz was one of three mathematics teachers I met during High School. He introduced me to the beauty of mathematics, which helped me to build the basis for my interest in mathematics. During my third year at High School, Zé Luiz invited me to assist him during his office hours in solving math problems (I actually got paid to assist him with other students... isn't this great?). I had the chance to chat with him during the office hours when no students showed up. This was the most rewarding experience I had. It was during this extra teaching and friendly conversations that he taught me the intricate world of the Nim game (click here to download a version of the Nim game (v. 1.9.1.0) for PC). The Nim game seems simple but requires extra thinking... why you don't try to beat it?

The MathPage has some nice information about mathematics for beginners.

 


reading

Reading. I believe that you are what you read, not only what you eat! An eclectic reading satisfies your hungry for knowledge and at the same time, it opens up your mind for different perspectives. I guess my reading adventures began when I got my first library card at the Araçatuba Municipal Library. I still remember as if it were today... I wanted to bring home many books, but there was a limit of amount and loan time: two books per week. That helped because it forced me to read books in the library. I guess that is why I read several books; otherwise, they would likely being collecting dust at home. Nowadays, there are several places to find and read good books online. The Internet Text Archive is one of them. Also, do not forget to check on the Cornell University Library.

The first books I read were related to the life and work of philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. This ignited my interest in philosophy. Then I got interested in the mechanisms of memory and reminiscence. Later, I came across the book "The power of your subconscious mind" by Joseph Murphy.

Click here for a list of selected books. A great tool to search for books is BookAse. The HathiTrust is "partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future".

My readings have been all over the place in the sense my interest changes from one day to another and sometimes even within a day.

Are you interested in Gregg shorthand writing? Check this website out.

 


tennies

Tennis. I have practiced tennis since 1989. During this period, I have met several people and have learned a lot about this sport. The Grand Slams are Australia Open (January), Roland Garros (May - June), Wimbledon (June - July), and US Open (August - September).

The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) maintains a world tour website with up to date information about tennis games around the world. Selected 1,000-points (Master's) tennis tournaments include:

 


ufo

Unidentified Flying Object (UFO). The superstition in UFO (i.e. OVNI = objeto voador não identificado) exists because we don't know for sure our cosmological origins. The next excerpt from Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Chap. 4) illustrates our obsession for UFO and how far our imagination goes.

"... Why should beings [aliens] so advanced in physics and engineering - crossing vast interstellar distances, walking like ghosts through walls - be so backward when it comes to biology? Why, if the aliens are trying to do their business in secret, wouldn't they perfectly expunge all memories of the abductions? Too hard for them to do? Why are the examining instruments macroscopic and so reminiscent of what can be found at the neighborhood medical clinic? Why go to all the trouble of repeated sexual encounters between aliens and humans? Why not steal a few egg and sperm cells, read the full genetic code, and then manufacture as many copies as you like with whatever genetic variations happen to suit your fancy? Even we humans, who as yet cannot quickly cross interstellar space or slither through walls, are able to clone cells..." These questions posed by Dr. Sagan are intriguing and thought-provoking.

Recently, MSNBC posted information about the Eight UFO cases that generate buzz. Nova's Aliens web site features interviews with believers and skeptical about UFO. The MSN News listed 18 famous UFO sightings. The MSN News also featured an article on April 6, 2015 suggesting that Aliens are Enormous based on Science.

We are also witnessing a period of disclosures of several secret/classified documents around the world. British officials released on March 3rd, 2011 about 8,500 pages of previously classified reports that documented sightings of unidentified flying objects by the military and members of the public dating back to the 1950s (go to MSNBC). Files were posted on The National Archives (old ones were here). The highlights guide contains detailed information of the documents released in March 2011.

 


ufo

Motion Pictures (i.e., Movies). My first camcorder was Sony CX 130. Some great movies are listed below.

 

 

 


ufo

Stingless bees. These amazing little creatures produce honey, similar to the honeybee (Apis mellifera), but they are stingless bees. The Sydney Stingless Bees has many photos of stingless bees.

 

 

 


ufo

Photography. I was always passionate about photography. Perhaps more casual photography and I never invested on "great" cameras. I had many point-and-shot cameras (Nikon Coolpix 3200, Sony DSC-W170, Sony DSC-WX1, Sony DSC-WX10, and Sony DSC-WX300) before decided to move on to more serious cameras (Canon Rebel G, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT). Recently, I decided to purchase a more decent camera: Canon EOS 7D.

 

 


ufo

Electronic Books. I became fascinated with electronic books (e-books) since the development of the portable document file format (PDF for short). Then, the release of the iBooks in 2010 by Apple, and subsequent release of the iBooks Author in 2012 to allow anyone to create interactive e-books for reading in iBooks, was a huge step forward to provide enthusiasts the ultimate tool in which the imagination was the only limit in developing nice-looking e-books. I started my own iBook collections in 2012 (the list is here).

 

 

more Quotes

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Copyright © 2005-2024 by Luis Orlindo Tedeschi