Federated architecture for biomedical data integration

The last decades have been characterized by a continuous adoption of IT solutions in the healthcare sector, which resulted in the proliferation of tremendous amounts of data over heterogeneous systems. Distinct data types are currently generated, manipulated, and stored, in the several institutions where patients are treated. The data sharing and an integrated access to this information will allow extracting relevant knowledge that can lead to better diagnostics and treatments. This thesis proposes new integration models for gathering information and extracting knowledge from multiple and heterogeneous biomedical sources. The scenario complexity led us to split the integration problem according to the data type and to the usage specificity. The first contribution is a cloud-based architecture for exchanging medical imaging services. It offers a simplified registration mechanism for providers and services, promotes remote data access, and facilitates the integration of distributed data sources. Moreover, it is compliant with international standards, ensuring the platform interoperability with current medical imaging devices. The second proposal is a sensor-based architecture for integration of electronic health records. It follows a federated integration model and aims to provide a scalable solution to search and retrieve data from multiple information systems. The last contribution is an open architecture for gathering patient-level data from disperse and heterogeneous databases. All the proposed solutions were deployed and validated in real world use cases.

Gestão de energia em ambiente industrial

A Sociedade da Água de Luso, S.A., localizada no concelho de Mealhada, é uma empresa do setor do engarrafamento de águas minerais naturais, de nascente e de consumo humano. Esta realiza as suas atividades, tendo em consideração a eficiência energética, ao longo do seu processo produtivo. Desta forma, o trabalho desenvolvido teve como objetivo o acompanhamento da implementação do sistema de monitorização e recolha de dados, que posteriormente foi útil na redução dos consumos energéticos (consumo de ar comprimido). Para além disto, também foi proposta uma medida de eficiência energética que visa a redução de energia elétrica na área da iluminação. O sistema de monitorização e recolha de dados e a criação de uma equipa de redução do consumo de ar comprimido permitiram a identificação das áreas de atuação, a monitorização das metas estipuladas no âmbito da equipa e a detecção de anomalias. A medida de eficiência energética aplicada incide na substituição de lâmpadas fluorescentes tubulares T8 por lâmpadas fluorescentes tubulares T5. Assim, a implementação deste sistema e a aplicação das medidas de eficiência energética na rede de ar comprimido no âmbito da equipa permitiram uma redução de 0,03 kWh/hL o que significa uma poupança de 5.600 € em quinze semanas. Ao nível da iluminação as medidas sugeridas permitem uma redução de 8.945 kWh/ano o que corresponde a uma poupança de 1.055 €/ano.

Context-awareness privacy in data communications

Internet users consume online targeted advertising based on information collected about them and voluntarily share personal information in social networks. Sensor information and data from smart-phones is collected and used by applications, sometimes in unclear ways. As it happens today with smartphones, in the near future sensors will be shipped in all types of connected devices, enabling ubiquitous information gathering from the physical environment, enabling the vision of Ambient Intelligence. The value of gathered data, if not obvious, can be harnessed through data mining techniques and put to use by enabling personalized and tailored services as well as business intelligence practices, fueling the digital economy. However, the ever-expanding information gathering and use undermines the privacy conceptions of the past. Natural social practices of managing privacy in daily relations are overridden by socially-awkward communication tools, service providers struggle with security issues resulting in harmful data leaks, governments use mass surveillance techniques, the incentives of the digital economy threaten consumer privacy, and the advancement of consumergrade data-gathering technology enables new inter-personal abuses. A wide range of fields attempts to address technology-related privacy problems, however they vary immensely in terms of assumptions, scope and approach. Privacy of future use cases is typically handled vertically, instead of building upon previous work that can be re-contextualized, while current privacy problems are typically addressed per type in a more focused way. Because significant effort was required to make sense of the relations and structure of privacy-related work, this thesis attempts to transmit a structured view of it. It is multi-disciplinary - from cryptography to economics, including distributed systems and information theory - and addresses privacy issues of different natures. As existing work is framed and discussed, the contributions to the state-of-theart done in the scope of this thesis are presented. The contributions add to five distinct areas: 1) identity in distributed systems; 2) future context-aware services; 3) event-based context management; 4) low-latency information flow control; 5) high-dimensional dataset anonymity. Finally, having laid out such landscape of the privacy-preserving work, the current and future privacy challenges are discussed, considering not only technical but also socio-economic perspectives.

LAP1 interactome and its functional features throughout spermatogenesis

The lamina-associated polypeptide 1 (LAP1) is a type II transmembrane protein of the inner nuclear membrane encoded by the human gene TOR1AIP1. LAP1 is involved in maintaining the nuclear envelope structure and appears be involved in the positioning of lamins and chromatin. In the nuclear envelope, LAP1 is suggested to exist as a complex with A-type and B-type lamins, torsins and emerin. The presence of such complexes suggests that LAP1 may cooperate functionally with these proteins in tissues where they play a critical role. Therefore, the identification of LAP1 binding partners and the signalling pathways where LAP1 participates, is crucial for a better understanding of LAP1 functions. The work described in this thesis addresses novel human LAP1 associated proteins found through bioinformatic tools. Public databases allowed for the discovery of the LAP1 interactome, which was manually curated, identifying several functionally relevant proteins. Subsequently, the integration of multiple bioinformatic tools established novel functions to LAP1 such as DNA damage response and telomere association. In conjunction, bioinformatic results also reinforced the association of LAP1 with mitosis, and the already identified role of LAP1 in nuclear morphology. Interestingly, this association of LAP1 with the regulation of the nuclear envelope structure and mitosis progression, shares functional elements with spermatogenesis. Therefore, this work additionally described the localization of LAP1 and some of its interactors throughout the spermatogenic cycle, in mouse and human testis. The results established that the activity of LAP1 during the mouse spermatogenic cycle is most evident from stage VIII until the end of spermiogenesis, which is characteristic of manchette development. Concomitantly, some LAP1 interactors studied in this work share a similar localization, namely, PP1γ2, Lamin B1 and Lamin A/C. The results obtained from the study of LAP1 throughout different periods of the male reproductive system attributed potential new biological functions to LAP1. Thereby, this work can be the foundation of future studies regarding LAP1 and the regulation of multiple cellular processes and disease conditions.