Ontology-based representation and generation of workflows for micro-task human-machine computation

Doctoral Program in Computer Science

Apoio à decisão na análise inteligente de reclamações

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação

Ontological representation of tumor-node-metastasis classification and an ontology-driven classifier: a study on colorectal cancer

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Biomédica (área de especialização em Informática Médica)

A calculadora gráfica na promoção da escrita matemática na aprendizagem de modelos contínuos não lineares: um estudo com alunos do 11.º ano de Matemática B

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ensino de Matemática no 3.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e no Ensino Secundário

Child abuse monitor system model: a health care critical knowledge monitor system

The Childhood protection is a subject with high value for the society, but, the Child Abuse cases are difficult to identify. The process from suspicious to accusation is very difficult to achieve. It must configure very strong evidences. Typically, Health Care services deal with these cases from the beginning where there are evidences based on the diagnosis, but they aren’t enough to promote the accusation. Besides that, this subject it’s highly sensitive because there are legal aspects to deal with such as: the patient privacy, paternity issues, medical confidentiality, among others. We propose a Child Abuses critical knowledge monitor system model that addresses this problem. This decision support system is implemented with a multiple scientific domains: to capture of tokens from clinical documents from multiple sources; a topic model approach to identify the topics of the documents; knowledge management through the use of ontologies to support the critical knowledge sensibility concepts and relations such as: symptoms, behaviors, among other evidences in order to match with the topics inferred from the clinical documents and then alert and log when clinical evidences are present. Based on these alerts clinical personnel could analyze the situation and take the appropriate procedures.

Cost-effective and lightweight mobile units for MixAR: A comparative trial among different setups

Cultural heritage has arousing the interest of the general public (e.g. tourists), resulting in the increasing number of visitations to archaeological sites. However, many buildings and monuments are severely damaged or completely destroyed, which doesn’t allow to get a full experience of “travelling in time”. Over the years, several Augmented Reality (AR) approaches were proposed to overcome these issues by providing three-dimensional visualization of reconstructed ancient structures in situ. However, most of these systems were made available through heavy and expensive technological bundles. Alternatively, MixAR intends to be a lightweight and cost-effective Mixed Reality system which aims to provide the visualization of virtual ancient buildings reconstructions in situ, properly superimposed and aligned with real-world ruins. This paper proposes and compares different AR mobile units setups to be used in the MixAR system, with low-cost and lightweight requirements in mind, providing different levels of immersion. It was propounded four different mobile units, based on: a laptop computer, a single-board computer (SBC), a tablet and a smartphone, which underwent a set of tests to evaluate their performances. The results show that mobile units based on laptop computer and SBC reached a good overall performance while mobile units based on tablet and smartphone did not meet such a satisfactory result even though they are acceptable for the intended use.

MixAR mobile prototype: visualizing virtually reconstructed ancient structures in situ

Archeology and related areas have a special interest on cultural heritage sites since they provide valuable information about past civilizations. However, the ancient buildings present in these sites are commonly found in an advanced state of degradation which difficult the professional/expert analysis. Virtual reconstructions of such buildings aim to provide a digital insight of how these historical places could have been in ancient times. Moreover, the visualization of such models has been explored by some Augmented Reality (AR) systems capable of providing support to experts. Their compelling and appealing environments have also been applied to promote the social and cultural participation of general public. The existing AR solutions regarding this thematic rarely explore the potential of realism, due to the following lacks: the exploration of mixed environments is usually only supported for indoors or outdoors, not both in the same system; the adaptation of the illumination conditions to the reconstructed structures is rarely addressed causing a decrease of credibility. MixAR [1] is a system concerned with those challenges, aiming to provide the visualization of virtual buildings augmented upon real ruins, allowing soft transitions among its interiors and exteriors and using relighting techniques for a faithful interior illumination, while the user freely moves in a given cultural heritage site, carrying a mobile unit. Regarding the focus of this paper, we intend to report the current state of MixAR mobile unit prototype, which allows visualizing virtual buildings – properly aligned with real-world structures – based on user's location, during outdoor navigation. In order to evaluate the prototype performance, a set of tests were made using virtual models with different complexities.

Improving selective collection of urban waste using a business intelligence system

Today recovering urban waste requires effective management services, which usually imply sophisticated monitoring and analysis mechanisms. This is essential for the smooth running of the entire recycling process as well as for planning and control urban waste recovering. In this paper we present a business intelligence system especially designed and im- plemented to support regular decision-making tasks on urban waste management processes. The system provides a set of domain-oriented analytical tools for studying and characterizing poten- tial scenarios of collection processes of urban waste, as well as for supporting waste manage- ment in urban areas, allowing for the organization and optimization of collection services. In or- der to clarify the way the system was developed and the how it operates, particularly in process visualization and data analysis, we also present the organization model of the system, the ser- vices it disposes, and the interface platforms for exploring data.

Improving quality of medical service with mobile health software

An increasing number of m-Health applications are being developed benefiting health service delivery. In this paper, a new methodology based on the principle of calm computing applied to diagnostic and therapeutic procedure reporting is proposed. A mobile application was designed for the physicians of one of the Portuguese major hospitals, which takes advantage of a multi-agent interoperability platform, the Agency for the Integration, Diffusion and Archive (AIDA). This application allows the visualization of inpatients and outpatients medical reports in a quicker and safer manner, in addition to offer a remote access to information. This project shows the advantages in the use of mobile software in a medical environment but the first step is always to build or use an interoperability platform, flexible, adaptable and pervasive. The platform offers a comprehensive set of services that restricts the development of mobile software almost exclusively to the mobile user interface design. The technology was tested and assessed in a real context by intensivists.

Da gestão da informação à gestão do conhecimento: uma proposta para a e-Administração em Portugal

O trabalho proposto tem como objetivo apresentar um projeto de elaboração de um sistema de informação que visa gerir o desenvolvimento de uma ontologia promovida pelo organismo de coordenação da política arquivística para a classificação e avaliação da informação na Administração Central e Local, em Portugal. Entre os produtos propostos a partir do referido sistema, conta-se um website no qual é possível consultar toda a informação contida na ontologia, bem como descarregar versões da mesma, com níveis diferentes de semântica. A referida ontologia foi promovida pelo órgão coordenador da política arquivística portuguesa, e tem por base uma Lista consolidada (LC) de processos de processos de negócio da Administração Pública (AP). Esta lista de natureza incremental e colaborativa foi desenvolvida a partir da identificação de uma macroestrutura representativa das funções exercidas pela AP, a Macroestrutura Funcional (MEF). Concretizado este produto e colocado à disposição da comunidade, na página oficial da Direção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas (DGLAB), importa potenciar a sua aplicabilidade. Neste sentido, encontra-se em curso um projeto que envolve os autores, em contexto universitário, orientado para o desenvolvimento de um vocabulário formal, um modelo de dados que represente este conjunto de conceitos referentes aos processos de negócio e aos relacionamentos entre eles. Pretende-se que esta ontologia possa vir a ser disponibilizada em listas ou diretórios de ontologias com mecanismos de pesquisa (bibliotecas de ontologias) de modo a incrementar a sua utilização na web semântica, para além da sua utilização como esquema de classificação em sistemas eletrónicos de gestão de arquivos (SEGA), businesse intelligence systems e sistemas de gestão do conhecimento. Com esta comunicação pretende-se dar a conhecer à comunidade de profissionais um projeto de aplicação transversal para todas as entidades públicas e para as empresas com interesse na área.

Assessment of liposome disruption to quantify drug delivery in vitro

Efficient liposome disruption inside the cells is a key for success with any type of drug delivery system. The efficacy of drug delivery is currently evaluated by direct visualization of labeled liposomes internalized by cells, not addressing objectively the release and distribution of the drug. Here, we propose a novel method to easily assess liposome disruption and drug release into the cytoplasm. We propose the encapsulation of the cationic dye Hoechst 34,580 to detect an increase in blue fluorescence due to its specific binding to negatively charged DNA. For that, the dye needs to be released inside the cell and translocated to the nucleus. The present approach correlates the intensity of detected fluorescent dye with liposome disruption and consequently assesses drug delivery within the cells.

Measuring end-to-end delay in real-time auralisation systems

One of the major challenges in the development of an immersive system is handling the delay between the tracking of the user’s head position and the updated projection of a 3D image or auralised sound, also called end-to-end delay. Excessive end-to-end delay can result in the general decrement of the “feeling of presence”, the occurrence of motion sickness and poor performance in perception-action tasks. These latencies must be known in order to provide insights on the technological (hardware/software optimization) or psychophysical (recalibration sessions) strategies to deal with them. Our goal was to develop a new measurement method of end-to-end delay that is both precise and easily replicated. We used a Head and Torso simulator (HATS) as an auditory signal sensor, a fast response photo-sensor to detect a visual stimulus response from a Motion Capture System, and a voltage input trigger as real-time event. The HATS was mounted in a turntable which allowed us to precisely change the 3D sound relative to the head position. When the virtual sound source was at 90º azimuth, the correspondent HRTF would set all the intensity values to zero, at the same time a trigger would register the real-time event of turning the HATS 90º azimuth. Furthermore, with the HATS turned 90º to the left, the motion capture marker visualization would fell exactly in the photo-sensor receptor. This method allowed us to precisely measure the delay from tracking to displaying. Moreover, our results show that the method of tracking, its tracking frequency, and the rendering of the sound reflections are the main predictors of end-to-end delay.

3D representation of the urban evolution of Braga using the cityengine tool

The morphological evolution of the city of Braga has been the subject of several studies focusing on different urban areas in different periods. Using the accumulated knowledge provided by the available archaeological, historical and iconographic data of Braga, from the Roman times to the nineteenth century, we intend to present a working methodology for 3D representation of urban areas and its evolution, using the CityEngine ESRI tool. Different types of graphic and cartographic data will be integrated in an archaeological information system for the characterization of urban buildings. Linking this information system to the rules of characterization of urban spaces through the CityEngine tool, we can create the 3D urban spaces and their changes. The building characterization rules include several parameters of architectural elements that can be dynamically changed according the latest information. This methodology will be applied to the best known areas within of the city allowing the creation of different and dynamic layouts. Considerations about the concepts, challenges and constraints of using the CityEngine tool for recording and representing urban evolution knowledge will be discussed.

MicroRNA-375 plays a dual role in prostate carcinogenesis

Background: Prostate cancer (PCa), a highly incident and heterogeneous malignancy, mostly affects men from developed countries. Increased knowledge of the biological mechanisms underlying PCa onset and progression are critical for improved clinical management. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) deregulation is common in human cancers, and understanding how it impacts in PCa is of major importance. MiRNAs are mostly downregulated in cancer, although some are overexpressed, playing a critical role in tumor initiation and progression. We aimed to identify miRNAs overexpressed in PCa and subsequently determine its impact in tumorigenesis. Results: MicroRNA expression profiling in primary PCa and morphological normal prostate (MNPT) tissues identified 17 miRNAs significantly overexpressed in PCa. Expression of three miRNAs, not previously associated with PCa, was subsequently assessed in large independent sets of primary tumors, in which miR-182 and miR-375 were validated, but not miR-32. Significantly higher expression levels of miR-375 were depicted in patients with higher Gleason score and more advanced pathological stage, aswellaswithregionallymph nodesmetastases. Forced expression of miR-375 in PC-3 cells, which display the lowest miR-375 levels among PCa cell lines, increased apoptosis and reduced invasion ability and cell viability. Intriguingly, in 22Rv1 cells, which displayed the highest miR-375 expression, knockdown experiments also attenuated the malignant phenotype. Gene ontology analysis implicated miR-375 in several key pathways deregulated in PCa, including cell cycle and cell differentiation. Moreover, CCND2 was identified as putative miR-375 target in PCa, confirmed by luciferase assay. Conclusions: A dual role for miR-375 in prostate cancer progression is suggested, highlighting the importance of cellular context on microRNA targeting.

An interactive web-based tool for breast reduction surgery simulation

In this work, we present a 3D web-based interactive tool for numerical modeling and simulation approach to breast reduction surgery simulation, to assist surgeons in planning all aspects related to breast reduction surgery before the actual procedure takes place, thereby avoiding unnecessary risks. In particular, it allows the modeling of the initial breast geometry, the definition of all aspects related to the surgery and the visualization of the post-surgery breast shape in a realistic environment.