Manual de dimensionamento de estruturas metálicas
Silva, Luís Simões da
2007
Search results
68 records were found.
Tese de Doutoramento apresentada à Escola de Engenharia da Universidade do Minho.
Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada à Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto.
DiSAC : Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Serviços Aplicações e Conteúdos Digitais
Descrição baseada em: Vol. 50, nº 2 (Fev. 1986)-
Tese de mestrado em Engenharia Electrótecnica e Computadores, Universidade do Porto, 2000
Tese de Doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação, Universidade do Minho, 2010
This poster presents an information system that is being used in Escola Superior de Tecnologia de Castelo Branco to perform the pedagogical assessment of their teachers. The process, almost fully automated, begins by sending an access code by
email to each student, which allows him to fill an Internet based questionnaire for each discipline he is registered. Each questionnaire data is then stored in a database for further automated analysis. The statistical results for each teacher, which are confidential, are automatically sent to him by email.
Global results are both sent to responsible entities and published in the Intranet.
Uma das principais questões no desenvolvimento de infra-estruturas de ecrãs públicos interactivos está relacionada com o escalonamento da informação que deve ser apresentada. O escalonamento deve considerar, não apenas a informação, mas também os espectadores potenciais com o contexto do ambiente. A definição, representação e gestão do contexto assume um papel importante e tem influência no escalonamento. Neste artigo é observado o modelo de contexto baseado em ontologia que serve de base ao escalonamento da informação. O modelo proposto permite analisar e inferir em situações de contexto complexas, context reasoning e permite o tratamento de situações relacionadas com a indisponibilidade, ambiguidade e imprecisão da informação.
Dynamic sources, which make regularly updated data available for use by other applications, are
increasingly a key enabling feature of the web. They are extensively used in all sorts of social media
applications where they are re-combined in multiple ways to generate new aggregate services. Public
situated displays are an emergent area where dynamic sources can also play a key role in providing situated
and frequently updated content. However, the specificities of public displays raise the need for automated
selection of the most relevant sources to present. This study addresses relevance from the perspective of
timeliness. We propose a timeliness model that supports the most common types of dynamic source. To
validate that model, we set an experiment with a public display exhibiting content from dynamic sources
and receiving from users feedback on its timeliness. The results from this experiment suggest a reasonable
match between our model and the users’ perspectives on timeliness. The results also show that the model is
able to make comparative calculations of timeliness for different types of dynamic source. These results
enable us to conclude that timeliness functions may help to significantly increase the relevance of content
automatically selected from dynamic sources.
“Copyright © [2009] IEEE. Reprinted from 5th International Conference on Signal-Image Technology & Internet-Based Systems. ISBN:978-1-4244-5740-3. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.”
Nowadays web based applications represent an important role in business success, fast global advertisement
of products, easy management and internal organization and fast information access are values that
have shown decisive for a correct and supported organizations development. This essay describes a
project work carried out in the academic environment, with open source tools, in order to develop a classified
advertisement platform using web technologies, namely JSP, XML and JavaBeans. The application
aims at supplying a set of functionalities related to students and products management, businesses management
and the presentation of products between the students themselves. Thus this article presents the
methodology followed since the modeling of the application process and the development of a data model
that corresponds to the identified needs during the modeling phase of the processes, until the system implementation.
Public situated displays can represent an important mechanism to
enhance users’ experiences and reflect the information and the interactions
associated with their environment and the people on it. However, this type of
embodiment requires the display system to be able to perform unassisted
scheduling based on the current state of the environment in which it is
integrated. In this paper, we explore this problem domain and the various ways
in which it can be approached. This analysis is organised around three main
parts of this problem: which dynamic information to consider, how to introduce
domain knowledge for enabling rational choices and how to model the
scheduling process itself. We also describe our own approach to these issues, a
context-sensitive MAUT scheduler that selects the next item to be presented by
determining the one with the highest utility considering the current context of
the display.
“Copyright © [2010] IEEE. Reprinted from 4th International Conference on Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems. ISBN:978-1-4244-5917-9. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.”
Traditionally, context-aware applications are developed
using one of the following approaches: each application
communicates directly with sources of context information;
applications are developed with the aid of reusable libraries for
processing context information or applications have their own
context models. These approaches not only require effort on the
part of those who develop them, but also create dependency
between the developed context-aware applications and the
systems developed for obtaining and providing the context
information, thus hindering their reuse in other applications. In
this paper we present a system that autonomously characterizes
the physical, social and organizational context of a public space
and delivers this information to context-aware applications.
Experiments show that it provides relevant and useful context
information that can be used by context-aware applications to
improve their services.
Public displays are an increasingly ubiquitous element of our sociodigital
landscape with a strong potential to become key building blocks for AmI.
For that purpose, they should have the ability to dynamically and autonomously
select content from web sources according to the relevance of their content to the
continuous flow of social settings around the display. In this paper, we explore the
creation of a public display system that evaluates the relevance of content from
web sources and selects the most relevant content according to a dynamic tag
cloud that incorporates static place definitions, but is also sensitive to the people
around the display. We have developed and evaluate a dynamic content selection
system based on those principles. The results show that place visitors recognize
the sensitivity of the system to their demands and that a place tag cloud can provide
an important element for the interpretation of place and for the combination
of the interests expressed by the place owner and the multiple place visitors.
A public display that is able to present the right information at the right time is a very compelling concept. However, realising or even approaching this ability to autonomously select appropriate content based on some interpretation of the surrounding social context represents a major challenge. This article provides an overview of the key challenges involved and an exploration of some of the main alternatives available. It also
describes a novel place-based content adaptation system that autonomously selects from
web sources the content deemed more relevant according to a dynamic place model. This
model is based on a tag cloud that combines content suggestions expressed by multiple
place visitors with those expressed by the place owner. Evaluation results have shown that
a place tag cloud can provide a valuable approach to this issue and that people recognize
and understand the sensitivity of the system to their demands.
To provide the best training in software engineering, several approaches and strategies are carried out. Some of them are more theoretical, learned through books and manuals, while others have a practical focus and often done in collaboration with companies. In this paper, we share an approach based on a balanced mix to foster the assimilation of knowledge, the approximation with what is done in software companies and student motivation. A survey was also carried out involving students who had successfully completed the subject in past academic years; some had already graduated, and others are still students. We analyse the results of the survey and share some of the experiences and lessons learned.
To provide the best training in software engineering, several approaches and strategies are carried out. Some of them are more theoretical, learned through books and manuals, while others have a practical focus and often done in collaboration with companies. In this paper, we share an approach based on a balanced mix to foster the assimilation of knowledge, the approximation with what is done in software companies and student motivation. Two questionnaires were also carried out, one involving students, who had successfully completed the subject in past academic years (some had already graduated, and others are still students), and other questionnaire involving companies, in the field of software development, which employ students from our school. The analysis of the perspectives of the different stakeholders allows an overall and holistic) view, and a general understanding, of the effectiveness of the software engineering teaching approach. We analyse the results of the questionnaires and share some of the experiences and lessons learned.
Nowadays there are a vast number of devices and technologies available for the common citizen to
improve their communication with others. This fosters the design and implementation of systems that explore
the available features of these devices. This paper presents a system that allows to inform, on a personalized
way, the actors of an education institution on a free way using popular communication standards. Features like
the system’s architecture, prototype and system’s evaluation are explained in the paper. Results show that this
system can be an important complement to other popular systems in education environments (e.g. e-mail, chats,
Wikis, forums, e-learning platforms etc.).
This paper describes a web-based system which allows the user to manage and to do real time monitoring the access to the educational building spaces, using two data nets.
The first one is based on the CAN bus for data acquisition and actuation tasks to which are connected control devices like, magnetic cards readers, door locks and sensors. The second one is an Internet/Intranet infrastructure and uses standard web technologies like PHP and Java to provide an effective control and real time monitoring. This system is implemented on the Linux operating system using the Apache HTTP server and make use of standard technologies in use on the Web, to make an effective campus-wide security system. To close the gap between these two nets we used a CAN/Intranet gateway.
In this paper the system layout and its main components are described.
In recent years, there has been enormous research interest in natural resources monitoring. So, there is a need to develop easily accessible, cheap and reliable information systems for monitoring and early warning, which could be used in most natural resources. This paper presents an ongoing information system development that aims the monitoring and supervising of some parameters on water supply, such as quality and quantity. To implement our system we use several technologies in order to monitoring about 100 water tanks in an area of ±1000 Km2. In these technologies is included GSM communication, web infrastructure and sensing equipment that allows the access of information from any place of the world. In paper sections the main blocks of the system architecture are described in detail.
Nowadays there are a vast number of devices and technologies available for the common citizen to improve their communication with others. This fosters the design and implementation of systems that explore the available features of these devices. In this paper, we propose a Bluetooth-based interactive system for delivering personalized information in high education institutions. The system allows informing, on a personalized way, the actors of an education institution on a free way using popular communication standards. The scenario we promote in the paper is mainly focused on learning environments, however the framework is also applicable in other shared public and semi-public spaces such as offices, homes, companies and many others. One of the most important contributions of this work is to combine public displays and personal mobile devices for delivering personalized information according to the students’ location. A prototype has been built and discussed with demonstrative user scenarios. Early results show that teachers and students found some advantages in this system comparing to traditional approaches. This system can effectively support a wide range of activities for students. It provides to each student the possibility to have a personal interaction with the technology in an authentic and appropriate use context. Features like the system’s architecture, prototype and system’s evaluation are explained in the paper. Results show that this system can be an important complement to other popular systems in education environment (e.g. e-mail, chats, Wikis, forums, e-learning platforms etc.).
The development time in industrial informatics systems, within industry environments, is a very important
issue for competitiveness. The usage of adequate targetspecific
programming languages is very important because
they can facilitate and improve developers’ productivity, allowing solutions to be expressed in the idiom and at the level
of abstraction of the problem’s domain.
In this paper we present a target-specific programming
language, which was designed to improve the design cycle of
code generation, for an industrial embedded system. The native assembly code, the new language structure and their
constructs, are presented in the paper. The proposed targetspecific language is expressed using words and terms that are
related to the target’s domain and consequently it is now easier
to program, understand and to validate the desired code. It is also demonstrated the language efficiency by comparing some
code described using the new language against the previous
used code. The design cycle is improved with the usage of the
target-specific language because both description and debug
time are significantly reduced with this new software tool. This
is also a case of university-industry partnership.
The dissemination of large displays and personal mobile computing devices has created new
opportunities for the joint use of these devices. Together these devices can enrich public spaces, promoting new
and more engagement interaction mechanisms, giving users relevant information and providing important
resources that can promote conversations and group activities. In this paper we explore the joint use of public
displays and personal mobile computing devices, as equipments for the dissemination of personalized
information that is delivered to users according to their interests and expectations. Three main aspects
characterize our proposal. First, it encloses in the same system two types of devices for delivering information:
mobile devices and large public displays. Second, the user only receives information of his interest point of view
and the information is delivered through the most proper device. Third, our proposal combines into the same
system two different perspectives: informative, providing users with information about their subscriptions and
socializing, i.e. presenting, in a public display, information about the place, about users’ interests and about
interests of other people that visits the same place. We have developed and evaluate a partial prototype based on
those principles. The results show that the system is easy-to-use, that it can support a wide range of activities and
that the users recognize an added value of the system comparing to traditional approaches.
Tag clouds have become very popular as visual representations of the main topics in document sets or as
navigation tools that can provide quick access to resources related with specific topics. However, their
ability to represent the information environment associated with any meaningful reality in a way that is
collectively visible, actionable and easily understood may also be very relevant, even when the reality being
represented is no longer a set of documents or resources, but a stream of interactions occurring within a
particular ubiquitous computing environment. In this paper, we explore the use of tag clouds within the
context of situated displays and services. We hypothesise that such tag clouds may have a role as dynamic
representations of place and also as interaction controls, supporting the same comprehension and navigation
functions of classical tag clouds. We describe two case studies in which this concept of situated tag cloud
has been experimented in real-world settings. The case studies demonstrate two different applications of the
tag cloud concept as the basis for place description and situated interaction. The results obtained from the
case studies suggest that situated tag clouds can indeed provide valuable representations of place and
situations and can also support simple interaction models, allowing people to reason about the system
behaviour and how it is being influenced by new interactions.
More and more, the modern citizen resorts to access to information for his professional activity, social activity or leisure. For this, is essential the use of devices with computational power, such as smartphones. The tourism sector is a sector of great social and economic importance and is one of the sectors where there has been a growth in the use of mobile applications to support several activities. In this sector, mobile applications can be useful for tourists in general, but also for those who have some kind of disability or restriction. For these, mobile applications can help to obtain the information and recommendation of points of interest that are in accordance with their interests and are suitable to their restrictions. This paper describes the development of a mobile application for presentation and personalized recommendation of points of interest for inclusive tourism. The goal is an application to run on smartphone with Android OS able to provide the user with information compatible with their own profile. This application stands out by allowing an automatic filtering of information, considering the location and profile of the user, and providing him with more personalized information, relevant and appropriate to his situation, and thus contributing to a better inclusion. This paper describes the most relevant aspects of the development of the application.
“© © 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”
In higher education, as in other levels of education, there are different teaching strategies (expository with interaction, use of technological resources, problem-solving, project-based, game-based, etc.) in which success always depends on the involvement of students, the commitment of teachers, and much of the interaction between them in the task of contributing together so that the teaching-learning process is as fruitful as possible for the student. This task is not always easy for the teacher, because they have to divide the teaching activity with other tasks, because the number of students in charge is large, because each student has different characteristics and competences, etc. Correctly monitoring the different learning speeds of each student requires frequent collection of appropriate information, metrics and respective analysis. In this context, continuous assessment is a good approach, but it requires tools that, without consuming too much useful class time, allow the teacher to collect information about the perception and retention of knowledge by the students, and through the analysis of this information, allows them to adapt the strategies in order to reinforce the matters in which there are more difficulties or to increase the teaching pace in the case of matters already assimilated. It is also important that the collection of this information during class is done in a non-intrusive and in a motivating way, exploring the means currently available to students, namely in terms of technology.
With the tool presented in this paper, the teacher has at their disposal the means to check if at a given moment their students are assimilating the material taught, what percentage of them are having learning difficulties, if in a period of time they have evolved in terms of knowledge acquired, if students still remember what they have learned since a past period, etc. In this way, the syllabus planning and execution of a given subject can be improved in terms of focus and time slots for explanation of certain topics, reinforcement of exercises, evaluation emphasis, etc. With this tool, it is possible to simplify the sampling of the learning progress, and thus adopt strategies that bring gains in agility to the teaching-learning process.
Low-code development platforms are designed to accelerate software development with a minimum of hand coding. They have allowed professionals with distinct backgrounds to become software developers. This brings more professionals to IT areas, reskilling some of them from different areas of knowledge but, at the same time, it has also brought to the software development area many professionals without a strong background in this area. Although testing should be performed in all applications, regardless of the programming language or the platform used, this reinforces the need for testing low-code developed applications. In this work, we study the test automation process on the OutSystems low-code development platform. The focus is on Unit, Integration/API and System/End-to-End testing levels. Examples illustrate that the implementation of best practices during the development process can have a significant influence on the test automation process. However, it is important to know whether the workload associated with the implementation of the best practices can undermine the benefits of using a low-code platform and it is important to consider that not all test automation tools have the same behavior.
Following the recent trends in software engineering regarding the growing adoption of agile methodologies and low-code development platforms, and considering the results of surveys, we carried out on students, alumni and some IT companies, we adapted the software engineering teaching of a computer engineering course to the needs and new trends of the IT industry. The Scrum methodology and the OutSystems low-code development platform were used in a project-based learning approach for teaching agile software engineering practices. This approach was complemented with the presentation and discussion of several topics during the theoretical classes, lectures given by professionals from IT companies and study visits to an IT company that uses agile methodologies and low-code platforms. This approach aims to enhance the technical skills, namely development skills on a widely used low-code platform and other software engineering skills, but also to reinforce some non-technical skills of students like teamwork and communication, today highly valued by IT companies. The first results are quite positive.
There is currently a high demand for professionals with digital skills in the areas of Information and Communication Technologies. As such, in future this trend is expected to increase. Higher education institutions are unable to train adequate numbers of qualified people to respond to employers' requests. In other areas, it is expected that increasing computerization and automation will have a significant impact on reducing certain types of jobs, which highlights the need and importance for many workers to develop new digital skills in order to be better prepared to face future challenges. It also seems clear that many of the needs may be met by people who, while not having a higher education in ICT fields, such as that taught in higher education institutions, these can be suppressed by people with specific training which is more focused on a particular technology or focused on certain development niches. In this context, low-code development platforms can play an important role in training or retraining people from areas with lower market demand for ICT areas. Their characteristics and potential make them suitable for technicians with higher qualifications in other areas, and other professionals, to acquire new skills through retraining or supplementing / recycling pre-acquired basic knowledge that may become productive labour in the IT world.
In this paper we describe a strategy, and several case studies, where a low-code development platform is used to reskill STEM professionals and/or professionals who, having basic IT knowledge are in precarious activities, to perform ICT professional activity. This strategy not only contributes to the needs of IT professionals but also enables many professionals to make timely retraining into areas of greater competitiveness, greater job stability and better working conditions. Throughout the paper, we present case studies that are part of this strategy and that have had positive results. These case studies include Enterprise-Higher Education collaborative training, reskilling for unemployed people with higher education in other areas, and training for those who are active, working in areas where labour needs are likely to decrease in the mid-term. The paper also identifies the benefits and contributions resulting from the use of the OutSystems low-code platform to implement this strategy.
Implementing best practices during the software development process can significantly influence the test automation process. This is true in all software applications, regardless of the platform or the programming language used, but it is even more important when the software is developed using low-code development platforms. These platforms are commonly used together with agile methodologies, and they are designed to accelerate software development with a minimum of hand-coding. Generally, when using these platforms and methodologies, the focus is on verbal and informal communication rather than documentation. The focus is on getting high-quality source code, adequate test sets, and greater interaction with the end customer. This highlights the need to use best practices in software development to achieve better quality software and facilitate the test automation process. In this work, we analyse the test automation on low-code development platforms and, more specifically, how the best practices for OutSystems development influence the test automation process. A survey on the opinion and practice of OutSystems platform professionals, 27 respondents, is also analysed and discussed. The goal is to understand how they recognise the influence that best development practices have on the testing automation process and how they apply these best practices in their daily activities.
There are many uses for machine learning in everyday life and there is a steady increase in the field of medicine; the use of such technologies facilitates the tiresome work of health professionals by either automating repetitive tasks or making them simpler. Bed-related disorders are a great example where tedious tasks could be facilitated by machine learning algorithms, as suggested by many authors, by providing information on the posture of a particular bedded patient to health professionals. To assess the already existing studies in this field, this study provides a systematic review where the literature is analyzed to find correlations between the various factors involved in the making of such a system and how they perform. The overall findings suggest that there is only a significant relationship between the postures considered for classification and the resulting accuracy, despite some other factors such as the amount of data available providing some differences according to the type of algorithm used, with neural networks needing larger datasets. This study aims to increase awareness in this field and give future researchers information based on previous works’ strengths and limitations while giving some suggestions based on the literature review.
This paper presents a target-specific programming
language (TSL) that was designed to improve the design cycle of
code generation for an industrial embedded system. The native
assembly code, the new language structure and their constructs, are
presented in the paper. The proposed TSL is expressed using words
and terms that are related to the target’s domain and consequently it
is now easier to program, understand and to validate the desired code.
It is also demonstrated the language efficiency by comparing some
code described using the new language against the previous used
code. The design cycle is improved with the usage of the TSL
because description time and debug time are significantly reduced
with this new software tool. This is also a case of university-industry
partnership.
This article describes a web-based system to control and manage the access to the ESTCB, which it is under development as a student’s final project. Beyond an important pedagogical and technological value, we believe that this work is an important step towards offering strong and efficient security management for access control systems. We make use of standard technologies in use on the Web, to make an effective campus-wide security system. The system management and configuration, the consultation of access information for schedules, users, spaces, among others, will be carried out
through the Internet. The proposed model is based on the use of two data nets: a CAN field bus to which are connected magnetic cards readers, door locks and sensors of each access place and the Ethernet that establishes connection between different CAN field bus and servers, which contain information about users and access rules.
No desenvolvimento de aplicações sensíveis ao contexto é
importante que existam aplicações/plataformas que sejam
responsáveis pela descoberta e processamento das informações do
contexto e que disponibilizem essa informação para ser usada por
essas aplicações. Neste trabalho é apresentado um sistema
autónomo para caracterização do contexto de um local, com
informação sobre a sua localização, sobre as condições ambientais
e sobre a natureza da instituição onde se encontra esse espaço, e
que permite disponibilizar essa informação para que possa ser
facilmente usada por outras aplicações. As avaliações preliminares
mostram que o sistema permite obter informações de contexto
relevantes relacionadas com o local e com as características e
natureza da instituição onde este se insere. Esta framework pode
ser útil para facilitar a obtenção de informação de contexto em
espaços públicos e na sua disponibilização para ser usada por
aplicações sensíveis ao contexto.
Information and Communications Technology is a growing area with a growing demand for employees. However, there is a shortage of professionals in this area and integrated strategies are required to foster the access of more people to these areas and provide training to develop the necessary skills.
In this paper we present a short course that was designed to retrain unemployed people, mainly with already a higher education level in the area of the science technology engineering and math (STEM), to be Information and communications technology (ICT) professionals. After this training, trainees will have the opportunity to significantly increase the likelihood of being able to obtain employment in ICT areas. The course described involves public entities (including a higher education institution) and a private company, which is also a demonstration of synergies between academia and business. In the paper, the context that led to the appearance of the course, the fundamentals that supported the syllabus design, the partners involved, the objectives of the several subjects, the profile of the trainees and the results already achieved are described. To explain the fundamentals of the course syllabus we explain the most original features of the course regarding the usefulness of taking advantage of the abstraction allowed by the new low-code platforms, what seem to be appropriate and facilitator for retraining professionals from STEM to ICT. This approach, using a low code platform for retraining professionals to ICT, presents in our point of view, advantages over other approaches. In short, in the paper we intend to share the work done during the design and follow-up of the course, as well as the preliminary results obtained in the meantime.
Mobile devices are part of the everyday life of the modern citizen. Currently these devices are used for simple dayto- day tasks, where we need information available on the web or on the mobile device itself (smartphone, tablet, etc.). One area where a number of mobile applications have emerged is urban mobility, for route planning and the use of transport networks. However, few applications have addressed this issue considering the needs of users with some type of disability. This paper describes the development of an Android app intended to be used to provide information on urban mobility, including transport accessibility features. It is intended that this mobile application will provide its users with information about the public transport of a certain city and its schedules including routes covered by each transport and the accessibility of each of them. The application intends to allow to choose the best options, according to the profile of the user its geographical location and the accessibility features of the means of transport of that geographical area.
Tourism is an important economic sector, which reaches significant relevance in low-density rural areas, where it can be a driver of other sectors of activity that guarantee jobs and small and medium-sized local companies. However, in these regions, most points of tourist interest are scattered, do not have a support structure to receive visitors and, consequently, are difficult to explore for tourism in a profitable way. This article describes a platform that uses technology to expand and enhance opportunities for exploring tourist points and interest in low-density rural territories. This platform provides features for tour operators to publicize and make their points of interest available to tourists, allowing tourists to access certain points of interest automatically using IoT devices, after validation. This possibility is particularly important in low-density territories. This article describes the platform and the results of a preliminary evaluation, at the level of acceptance tests, which allowed to obtain feedback on the interest and usefulness that the application may have.
Bedded or lying-people pressure-map datasets can be used to identify patients’ in-bed postures and can be very useful in numerous healthcare applications. However, the construction of these datasets is not always easy, and many researchers often resort to existing datasets to carry out their experiments and validate their solutions. This systematic review aimed to identify and characterise pressure-map datasets on lying-people- or bedded-people positions. We used a systematic approach to select nine studies that were thoroughly reviewed and summarised them considering methods of data collection, fields considered in the datasets, and results or their uses after collection. As a result of the review, six research questions were answered that allowed a characterisation of existing datasets regarding of the types of data included, number and types of poses considered, participant characteristics and size of the dataset, and information on how the datasets were built. This study might represent an important basis for academics and researchers to understand the information collected in each pressure-map dataset, the possible uses of such datasets, or methods to build new datasets.
“© © 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”
With the universal use of mobile computing devices, there has been a notable increasein the number of mobile applications developed for educational purposes. Gamification strategiesoffer a new set of tools to educators and, combined with the location services provided by thosedevices, allow the creation of innovative location-based mobile learning experiences. In this literaturereview, we conduct an analysis of educational mobile location-based games. The review includesarticles published from January of 2010 to October of 2020, and from 127 records screened, 26 articleswere analysed in full-text form. This analysis allowed us to answer the following six predefinedresearch questions: Who are the target audiences for location-based games? In which subjects arelocation-based games most used? Which strategies are implemented with mobile devices to improvethe student’s learning process? What are the main impacts of location-based games on students’learning? What are the main challenges to the development of location-based games for education?What future tendencies and research opportunities can be identified from the analysis of the currentstate of the art?
Reducing the gap between Software Engineering education and the needs in the software industry is a goal for Academia. Advancement in terms of cutting-edge technical skills and good soft skills preparation is the desired goal to shorten the onboarding in the labour market. Generally, in computer science or computer engineering courses, separate subjects exist to teach requirements engineering, analysis and design, coding, or validation. However, integrating all these phases normally requires experience in developing a complete project. The approach presented in this paper has involved the staff of a software company in collaboration with the staff of an academic Institution and resulted in a student's involvement in a full-stack software development project. The student was involved in an agile team composed of teachers and Information Technology (IT) professionals. Scrum framework was followed, and the product was developed using a low-code development platform. Results show that this agile and full stack approach allows students to develop cutting-edge technical and non- technical skills. The paper presents the approach, the achieved results, some lessons learned and some guidelines for the future.
Tourism is an important economic sector with particular importance for several countries and regions. For low-density rural territories, this sector can be an important driver of other sectors that guarantee jobs and local small and medium enterprises. However, in these regions mostly points of interest are dispersed and do not have a support structure to receive visitors and consequently most computer applications to support tourism are not suitable for these situations. This work describes a platform that uses technology to enhance the potential of opportunities to explore tourist attractions in low-density rural territories. This approach considers the particularities of these territories and the characteristics of existing points of interest. It provides mechanisms for tourism operators to make their points of interest available to be visited by tourists, without the need to spend a lot of resources and without the need of constant support from the tourism operators responsible for these points of interest. This approach may contribute to enhancing existing heritage in low-density rural territories, bringing new opportunities and unique experiences without requiring much human labor and enhancing the tourism benefit in low-density rural territories.
The analysis of movements used in physiotherapy areas related to the elderly is becoming increasingly important due to factors such as the increase in the average life expectancy and the rate of elderly people over the whole population. In this systematic review, we try to determine how the inertial sensors embedded in mobile devices are exploited for the measurement of the different parameters involved in the Timed-Up and Go test. The results show the mobile devices equipped with onboard motion sensors can be exploited for these types of studies: the most commonly used sensors are the magnetometer, accelerometer and gyroscope available in consumer off-the-shelf smartphones. Other features typically used to evaluate the Timed-Up and Go test are the time duration, the angular velocity and the number of steps, allowing for the recognition of some diseases as well as the measurement of the subject’s performance during the test execution.
Plant diseases and pests significantly influence food production and the productivity and economic profitability of agricultural crops. This has led to great interest in developing technological solutions to enable timely and accurate detection. This systematic review aimed to find studies on the automation of processes to detect, identify and classify diseases and pests in agricultural crops.
The goal is to characterize the class of algorithms, models and their characteristics and understand the efficiency of the various approaches and their applicability. The literature search was conducted in two citation databases. The initial search returned 278 studies and, after removing duplicates and applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 48 articles were included in the review. As a result, seven research questions were answered that allowed a characterization of the most studied crops, diseases and pests, the datasets used, the algorithms, their inputs and the levels of accuracy that have been achieved in automatic identification and classification of diseases and pests. Some trends that have been most noticed are also highlighted.
The way patient information is presented has been proven to have an
important impact on patient care. This paper presents a software component to be
integrated in a virtual patient record used in a Portuguese hospital. This component
supports genetic oncology consultations and aims to help the physician needs
to visualize the patient's family tree in order to diagnose hereditary cancers in both
patient and patient descendants. This system allows the physician to view relevant
medical information of the elements of the family of a given patient, add new
tests, as well as record new cancer situations that occur in any member of the patient’s
family. Besides the graphical display of the patients’ family tree, the system
also allows to differentiate between different groups of cancer by using symbols
and colours, register new cancer occurrences within that family network, as well
as information related to tests performed by them.
This is a pre-copyedited version of a contribution published in Rocha A., Adeli H., Reis L.P., Costanzo S. (eds) Trends and Advances in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST'18 2018 published by Springer. The definitive authenticated version is available online via https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77712-2_16
“This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Information Technology & Tourism. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40558-018-0110-2”.
Recent years have seen an increasing realization of the importance and potential of accessible tourism. To support it, the ICT industries have provided many different applications, especially for mobile computing frameworks. An analysis of these applications allows us to identify some issues that are not yet fully addressed. These include the absence of collaborative features; the lack of involvement of all stakeholders; the inexistence of synergies; the lack of widely accessible geographic databases and the limited scope of focus within the disability range. To tackle some of these issues, we propose a common framework for development of tourism accessible related applications. This framework stores and manages tourism information and makes this information available to be used by mobile applications developers through specific web services. This approach can represent an important contribution to accessible tourism, by decreasing the cost and facilitating the development of new applications supporting new products and services.
Uma área onde a educação para a saúde pode ter um
papel importante diz respeito à exposição excessiva ao sol, e outros
elementos climáticos, especialmente por grupos de pessoas mais
sensíveis como é o caso das crianças. Embora sejam conhecidos
bastantes benefícios para a saúde humana com a exposição solar
também é verdade que, em situações extremas, podem surgir
doenças relacionadas com a exposição a estes elementos. É, por
isso, importante criar mecanismos de monitorização para que as
crianças possam estar a salvo de riscos de saúde que possam advir
da exposição aos mesmos. Neste artigo é apresentado o
desenvolvimento de um dispositivo que permite monitorizar
alguns parâmetros associados à saúde e condições a que uma
criança pode estar exposta e, consoante essas condições, permite
alertar para o risco a que esta se encontra exposta. Os pontos fortes
do protótipo apresentado, no que respeita à saúde das crianças,
centram-se, não só nos avisos que a alteração das cores do alerta
luminoso lhes fornecerá relativamente à radiação solar UV,
temperatura corporal, e temperatura ambiente como também na
aprendizagem dos cuidados e das medidas de proteção a adotar,
em tempo real e face às condições específicas do momento. Para os
adultos, o protótipo mostra-se também ser interessante, de acordo
com as respostas aos inquéritos, e vantajoso na medida em que os
pode ajudar, em determinadas circunstâncias, no
acompanhamento e monitorização constante das crianças. Mas,
acima de tudo, promove sensibilização para a importância de ter
cuidados com a saúde, em especial com as crianças.
Electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalography (EEG) are powerful tools in medicine for the analysis of various diseases. The emergence of affordable ECG and EEG sensors and ubiquitous mobile devices provides an opportunity to make such analysis accessible to everyone. In this paper, we propose the implementation of a neural network-based method for the automatic identification of the relationship between the previously known conditions of older adults and the different features calculated from the various signals. The data were collected using a smartphone and low-cost ECG and EEG sensors during the performance of the timed-up and go test. Different patterns related to the features extracted, such as heart rate, heart rate variability, average QRS amplitude, average R-R interval, and average R-S interval from ECG data, and the frequency and variability from the EEG data were identified. A combination of these parameters allowed us to identify the presence of certain diseases accurately. The analysis revealed that the different institutions and ages were mainly identified. Still, the various diseases and groups of diseases were difficult to recognize, because the frequency of the different diseases was rare in the considered population. Therefore, the test should be performed with more people to achieve better results.
“© © 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”
The use of smartphones, coupled with different sensors, makes it an attractive solution for measuring different physical and physiological features, allowing for the monitoring of various parameters and even identifying some diseases. The BITalino device allows the use of different sensors, including Electroencephalography (EEG) and Electrocardiography (ECG) sensors, to study different health parameters. With these devices, the acquisition of signals is straightforward, and it is possible to connect them using a Bluetooth connection. With the acquired data, it is possible to measure parameters such as calculating the QRS complex and its variation with ECG data to control the individual’s heartbeat. Similarly, by using the EEG sensor, one could analyze the individual’s brain activity and frequency. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for recognition of the diseases related to ECG and EEG data, with sensors available in off-the-shelf mobile devices and sensors connected to a BITalino device. The data were collected during the elderly’s experiences, performing the Timed-Up and Go test, and the different diseases found in the sample in the study. The data were analyzed, and the following features were extracted from the ECG, including heart rate, linear heart rate variability, the average QRS interval, the average R-R interval, and the average R-S interval, and the EEG, including frequency and variability. Finally, the diseases are correlated with different parameters, proving that there are relations between the individuals and the different health conditions.
Physical education in schools aims to promote physical activity, socialisation, and interaction among students. Today, it is considered a very important subject for development and health. It encompasses several sports modalities, always with the purpose of promoting physical activity and motor development of those who practice. Orienteering is one of the modalities that has recently gained fame. Orienteering is a sport modality that integrates physical, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. It consists, as the name implies, of navigating to a certain area, using a map and a compass, aiming for the shortest possible route between several points marked on a map. The work described in this paper presents a case of the introduction of new digital technologies in this modality to simplify the administration of these events in a school environment and to promote interest in the practice of this sport modality. The web application that allows the creation and addition of the orienteering event, the visualisation of detailed information in an after-event context, and the registration and management of new organisers or orienteers will be presented throughout the paper. It also presents the mobile application that allows the organisers to start and finish events, manage orienteers of a given event, view the current position of orienteers, and view the results of past events. The mobile application presents a static orienteering map to the orienteer. The visit of the orienteer to each control point (assigned on the orienteering map by the organisers) is verified using the georeferencing features of the device. These tools facilitate the management of these events by organisers as well as their analyses through automatically generated information. It also makes the practice of this modality more appealing to students because it introduces a type of gamification. Moreover, it also benefits from being paperless because it makes it unnecessary to print maps for the execution of an event and because the administration of an event can be done without the need to mark the control points in the terrain.
With the evolution of the time and together with the evolution of ubiquitous systems with high processing capacity, various forms of use and that allow the realisation of several studies and the joining of areas of knowledge quite heterogeneous as computer science and physiotherapy. The use of martphones,
in conjunction with inertial sensors, represents not only an excellent opportunity for the development of support and research applications but also a way to create cheaper solutions close to people. In this study, we also propose that as an experimental form the use of this type of sensors to capture movements
using the timed up and go test and with the objectives and to create tools that allow the detection of diseases related to the action in elderly individuals. This paper presents the results of the data capture with different perspectives and using various features such as the time of the test the time of getting up from the chair, sitting in the chair, reaction to sound signalling during the trial, time reversal and the time it takes for the individual to sit down.
Nowadays, cardiac and brain disorders are dispersed over the world, where an early detection allows the treatment and prevention of other related healthcare problems. Technologically, this detection is difficult to perform, and the use of technology and artificial intelligence techniques may automate the accurate detection of different diseases. This paper presents the research on the different techniques and parameters for the detection of diseases related to Electrocardiography (ECG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Previously experiments related to the performance of the Timed-Up and Go test with elderly people acquired different signals from people with different diseases. This study identifies different parameters and methods that may be used for the identification of different diseases based on the acquired data.
“© © 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”
Several approaches have been proposed to reduce the gap between software engineering education and the needs and practices of the software industry. Many of them aim to promote a more active learning attitude in students and provide them with more realistic experiences, thus recreating industry software development environments and collaborative development and, in some cases, with the involvement of companies mainly acting as potential customers. Since many degree courses typically offer separate subjects to teach requirements engineering, analysis and design, coding, or validation, the integration of all these phases normally necessitates experience in a project context and is usually carried out in a final year project. The approach described in this article benefits from the close involvement of a software house company which goes beyond the common involvement of a potential customer. Students are integrated into distributed teams comprising students, teachers and IT professionals. Teams follow the agile Scrum methodology and use the OutSystems low-code development platform providing students with the experience of an almost real scenario. The results show that this approach complements the knowledge and practice acquired in course subjects, develops the students’ technical and non-technical skills, such as commitment, teamwork, and communication, and initiates them in the methodologies and development strategies used in these companies. The feedback from the teachers involved, software companies and students was very positive.
We present a dataset related to the acquisition of different sensors data during the performance of the Timed-Up and Go test with the mobile device positioned in a waistband for the acquisition of accelerometer and magnetometer data, and a BITalino device positioned in a chest band for the acquisition of Electrocardiography and Electroencephalography for further processing. The data acquired from the BITalino device is acquired simultaneously by a Bluetooth connection with the same mobile application. The data was acquired in five institutions, including Centro Comunitário das Lameiras, Lar Nossa Senhora de Fátima, Centro Comunitário das Minas da Panasqueira, Lar da Misericórdia da Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Fundão, and Lar da Aldeia de Joanes da Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Fundão from Fundão and Covilhã municipalities (Portugal). This article describes the data acquired from a several subjects from the different institutions for the acquisition of accelerometer and magnetometer data, where each person performed the Timed-Up and Go test three times, where each output from the sensors was acquired with a sampling rate of 100 Hz. Related to the data acquired by the sensors connected to the BITalino device, 31 persons performed the different experiments related to the Timed-Up and Go Test. Following the data acquired from Electroencephalography and Electrocardiography sensors, only the data acquired from 14 individuals was considered valid. The data acquired by a BITalino device has a sampling rate of 100 Hz. These data can be reused for testing machine learning methods for the evaluation of the performance of the Timed-Up and Go test with older adults.
Pressure ulcers are associated with significant morbidity, resulting in a decreased quality of life for the patient, and contributing to healthcare professional burnout, as well as an increase of health service costs. Their prompt diagnosis and treatment are important, and several studies have proposed solutions to help healthcare professionals in this process. This work analyzes studies that use machine-learning algorithms for risk assessment and management of preventive treatments for pressure ulcers. More specifically, it focuses on the use of machine-learning algorithms that combine information from intrinsic and extrinsic pressure-ulcer predisposing factors to produce recommendations/alerts to healthcare professionals. The review includes articles published from January 2010 to June 2021. From 60 records screened, seven articles were analyzed in full-text form. The results show that most of the proposed algorithms do not use information related to both intrinsic and extrinsic predisposing factors and that many of the approaches separately address one of the following three components: data acquisition; data analysis, and production of complementary support to well-informed clinical decision-making. Additionally, only a few studies describe in detail the outputs of the algorithm, such as alerts and recommendations, without assessing their impacts on healthcare professionals’ activities
Pressure ulcers are a critical issue not only for patients, decreasing their quality of life, but also for healthcare professionals, contributing to burnout from continuous monitoring, with a consequent increase in healthcare costs. Due to the relevance of this problem, many hardware and software approaches have been proposed to ameliorate some aspects of pressure ulcer prevention and monitoring. In this article, we focus on reviewing solutions that use sensor-based data, possibly in combination with other intrinsic or extrinsic information, processed by some form of intelligent algorithm, to provide healthcare professionals with knowledge that improves the decision-making process when dealing with a patient at risk of developing pressure ulcers. We used a systematic approach to select 21 studies that were thoroughly reviewed and summarized, considering which sensors and algorithms were used, the most relevant data features, the recommendations provided, and the results obtained after deployment. This review allowed us not only to describe the state of the art regarding the previous items, but also to identify the three main stages where intelligent algorithms can bring meaningful improvement to pressure ulcer prevention and mitigation. Finally, as a result of this review and following discussion, we drew guidelines for a general architecture of an intelligent pressure ulcer prevention system.
The number of older adults is increasing worldwide, and it is expected that by 2050 over 2 billion individuals will be more than 60 years old. Older adults are exposed to numerous pathological problems such as Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, post-stroke, and orthopedic disturbances. Several physiotherapy methods that involve measurement of movements, such as the Timed-Up and Go test, can be done to support efficient and effective evaluation of pathological symptoms and promotion of health and well-being. In this systematic review, the authors aim to determine how the inertial sensors embedded in mobile devices are employed for the measurement of the different parameters involved in the Timed-Up and Go test. The main contribution of this paper consists of the identification of the different studies that utilize the sensors available in mobile devices for the measurement of the results of the Timed-Up and Go test. The results show that mobile devices embedded motion sensors can be used for these types of studies and the most commonly used sensors are the magnetometer, accelerometer, and gyroscope available in off-the-shelf smartphones. The features analyzed in this paper are categorized as quantitative, quantitative + statistic, dynamic balance, gait properties, state transitions, and raw statistics. These features utilize the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors and facilitate recognition of daily activities, accidents such as falling, some diseases, as well as the measurement of the subject's performance during the test execution.
Due to the increasing age of the European population, there is a growing interest in performing research that will aid in the timely and unobtrusive detection of emerging diseases. For such tasks, mobile devices have several sensors, facilitating the acquisition of diverse data. This study focuses on the analysis of the data collected from the mobile devices sensors and a pressure sensor connected to a Bitalino device for the measurement of the Timed-Up and Go test. The data acquisition was performed within different environments from multiple individuals with distinct types of diseases. Then this data was analyzed to estimate the various parameters of the Timed-Up and Go test. Firstly, the pressure sensor is used to extract the reaction and total test time. Secondly, the magnetometer sensors are used to identify the total test time and different parameters related to turning around. Finally, the accelerometer sensor is used to extract the reaction time, total test time, duration of turning around, going time, return time, and many other derived metrics. Our experiments showed that these parameters could be automatically and reliably detected with a mobile device. Moreover, we identified that the time to perform the Timed-Up and Go test increases with age and the presence of diseases related to locomotion.
Inertial sensors are commonly embedded in several devices, including smartphones, and other specific devices. This type of sensors may be used for different purposes, including the recognition of different diseases. Several studies are focused on the use of accelerometer for the automatic recognition of different diseases, and it may powerful the different treatments with the use of less invasive and painful techniques for patients. This paper is focused in the systematic review of the studies available in the literature for the automatic recognition of different diseases with accelerometer sensors. The disease that is the most reliably detectable disease using accelerometer sensors, available in 54% of the analyzed studies, is the Parkinson’s disease. The machine learning methods implements for the recognition of Parkinson’s disease reported an accuracy of 94%. Other diseases are recognized in less number that will be subject of further analysis in the future.
The Timed-Up and Go test is a very used test in the physiotherapy area. For the measurement of the results of the test, we propose to use a smartphone with several embedded sensors, including accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, a Bitalino device with the Electromyography (EMG) and Electrocardiography (ECG) sensors, and a second Bitalino device with a pressure sensor connected and positioned in the back of the chair. This architecture allows to capture several types of data from the sensors easily. In this paper, we present a structured method to implement the measurement of the different parameters involved in the Timed-up and Go test, for acquiring, processing and cleaning the collected measurements. This data will help in the classification of the test results initially, and later on to discover more complex patterns and related conditions, such as equilibrium changes, neurological pathologies, degenerative pathologies, lesions of lower limbs and chronic venous diseases.
In recent years the Internet of Things, in addition to use cases in 'smart cities', has also increasingly been used in precision agriculture. As in the rest of the world, it has been a growing reality in Portugal. In an agricultural environment, where energy resources can be scarce and dispersed, the implementation of a LoRa network with autonomous sensor nodes must consider the limitations imposed by the energy consumed by the sensor node, when powered by a battery and a solar panel. For this, experimental tests must be carried out so that there is enough data for the implementation and optimization of the devices. This article presents a work focused on the study of the autonomy and energy efficiency of the sensor device, using algorithms capable of managing energy consumption as a function of the luminosity of the place. Preliminary results attest to the relevance of this approach, keeping the sensor node in operation without interruptions.
Pressure ulcers are a critical issue for patients and healthcare professionals, requiring their frequent monitoring, with a consequent impact on healthcare costs. This problem has been gaining attention and approaches have been proposed, using sensor-based systems, to facilitate this monitoring and help health caregivers to achieve greater effectiveness in the treatment of this type of ulcer. In this paper, the architecture, and the prototype of a new system for pressure ulcer monitoring and prevention are presented. It considers information related to both intrinsic and extrinsic predisposing factors and it addresses the components of data acquisition, data analysis, and production of complementary support to well-informed clinical decision-making. The system includes a pressure ulcer management portal and a mobile application, that allows caregivers to manage clinical information about pressure ulcers of the patients and uses data acquired from a pressure sensor sheet under the mattress to provide useful information for monitoring the patients. Considering the situation of each patient, the system will produce indicators/alerts to healthcare professionals, simultaneously improving pressure-ulcer patient care quality and safety and minimizing the burnout in healthcare professionals.
