Ética e responsabilidade social das organizações perante os Técnicos Oficiais de Contas

Mestrado em Contabilidade

Implementation of proton therapy in the portuguese context of radiotherapy

Cancer is a national and international health care concern. It’s important to find strategies for early diagnosis as well as for the optimization of the various therapeutic options currently existing in Portugal. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Portugal, the choice of this study, is due to the importance of radiotherapy approach in cancer treatment and because is the therapy used in 40% of oncology patients. Radiation therapy has evolve data technological level, that allows new treatment techniques that are more efficient and that also promotes greater professional satisfaction. The hadrons are charged particles, used in cancer therapy. These particles can bring a paradigm shift regarding the therapeutic approach in radiotherapy. The technique used is proton therapy, that reveal to be more accurate, efficacious and less toxic to surrounding tissue. Proton therapy may be a promising development in the field of oncology and how the treatment is given in radiotherapy. Although there is awareness of the benefits of proton therapy in oncology it’s also important to take in consideration the costs of these therapy, because they are considerably higher than conventional treatments of radiotherapy. Given the lack of a proton therapy service in Portugal, this study aims to be a documentary analysis of clinical records that will achieve the following objectives: to identify the number of cancer patients diagnosed in 2010 in Portugal and to calculate the estimated number of patients that could have been treated with proton therapy according to the Health Council of the Netherlands registration document.

A Voltage Limiter Circuit for Indoor Light Energy Harvesting Applications

A voltage limiter circuit for indoor light energy harvesting applications is presented. This circuit is a part of a bigger system, whose function is to harvest indoor light energy, process it and store it, so that it can be used at a later time. This processing consists on maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and stepping-up, of the voltage from the photovoltaic (PV) harvester cell. The circuit here described, ensures that even under strong illumination, the generated voltage will not exceed the limit allowed by the technology, avoiding the degradation, or destruction, of the integrated die. A prototype of the limiter circuit was designed in a 130 nm CMOS technology. The layout of the circuit has a total area of 23414 mu m(2). Simulation results, using Spectre, are presented.

Side information creation for efficient Wyner-Ziv video coding: Classifying and reviewing

Video coding technologies have played a major role in the explosion of large market digital video applications and services. In this context, the very popular MPEG-x and H-26x video coding standards adopted a predictive coding paradigm, where complex encoders exploit the data redundancy and irrelevancy to 'control' much simpler decoders. This codec paradigm fits well applications and services such as digital television and video storage where the decoder complexity is critical, but does not match well the requirements of emerging applications such as visual sensor networks where the encoder complexity is more critical. The Slepian Wolf and Wyner-Ziv theorems brought the possibility to develop the so-called Wyner-Ziv video codecs, following a different coding paradigm where it is the task of the decoder, and not anymore of the encoder, to (fully or partly) exploit the video redundancy. Theoretically, Wyner-Ziv video coding does not incur in any compression performance penalty regarding the more traditional predictive coding paradigm (at least for certain conditions). In the context of Wyner-Ziv video codecs, the so-called side information, which is a decoder estimate of the original frame to code, plays a critical role in the overall compression performance. For this reason, much research effort has been invested in the past decade to develop increasingly more efficient side information creation methods. This paper has the main objective to review and evaluate the available side information methods after proposing a classification taxonomy to guide this review, allowing to achieve more solid conclusions and better identify the next relevant research challenges. After classifying the side information creation methods into four classes, notably guess, try, hint and learn, the review of the most important techniques in each class and the evaluation of some of them leads to the important conclusion that the side information creation methods provide better rate-distortion (RD) performance depending on the amount of temporal correlation in each video sequence. It became also clear that the best available Wyner-Ziv video coding solutions are almost systematically based on the learn approach. The best solutions are already able to systematically outperform the H.264/AVC Intra, and also the H.264/AVC zero-motion standard solutions for specific types of content. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Study of the one dimensional and transient bioheat transfer equation: Multi-layer solution development and applications

: In this work we derive an analytical solution given by Bessel series to the transient and one-dimensional (1D) bioheat transfer equation in a multi-layer region with spatially dependent heat sources. Each region represents an independent biological tissue characterized by temperature-invariant physiological parameters and a linearly temperature dependent metabolic heat generation. Moreover, 1D Cartesian, cylindrical or spherical coordinates are used to define the geometry and temperature boundary conditions of first, second and third kinds are assumed at the inner and outer surfaces. We present two examples of clinical applications for the developed solution. In the first one, we investigate two different heat source terms to simulate the heating in a tumor and its surrounding tissue, induced during a magnetic fluid hyperthermia technique used for cancer treatment. To obtain an accurate analytical solution, we determine the error associated with the truncated Bessel series that defines the transient solution. In the second application, we explore the potential of this model to study the effect of different environmental conditions in a multi-layered human head model (brain, bone and scalp). The convective heat transfer effect of a large blood vessel located inside the brain is also investigated. The results are further compared with a numerical solution obtained by the Finite Element Method and computed with COMSOL Multi-physics v4.1 (c). (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Start-up circuit for low-power indoor light energy harvesting applications

A start-up circuit, used in a micro-power indoor light energy harvesting system, is described. This start-up circuit achieves two goals: first, to produce a reset signal, power-on-reset (POR), for the energy harvesting system, and secondly, to temporarily shunt the output of the photovoltaic (PV) cells, to the output node of the system, which is connected to a capacitor. This capacitor is charged to a suitable value, so that a voltage step-up converter starts operating, thus increasing the output voltage to a larger value than the one provided by the PV cells. A prototype of the circuit was manufactured in a 130 nm CMOS technology, occupying an area of only 0.019 mm(2). Experimental results demonstrate the correct operation of the circuit, being able to correctly start-up the system, even when having an input as low as 390 mV using, in this case, an estimated energy of only 5.3 pJ to produce the start-up.

Explorador integrado de serviços de armazenamento na cloud: cloud cockpit

Projeto para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Biblioteca de navegação autónoma baseada em campos de potencial

Trabalho de Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Contributo do iPad® para o desenvolvimento de crianças com necessidades educativas especiais

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Educação, Especialidade Intervenção Precoce

Reputação e recomendação como serviços para transportes públicos

Projecto Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Conservação e manutenção nos pavimentos rodoviários e a sua importância

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Área de Especialização em Vias de Comunicação e Transportes

Estudo laboratorial e em condições reais sobre o aglomerado de cortiça expandida aplicado como revestimento exterior

Trabalho Final de Mestrado elaborado no Laboratório de Engenharia Civil para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil na Área de Especialização de Edificações no âmbito do protocolo de cooperação entre o ISEL e o LNEC

BIT: Biosignal Igniter Toolkit

The study of biosignals has had a transforming role in multiple aspects of our society, which go well beyond the health sciences domains to which they were traditionally associated with. While biomedical engineering is a classical discipline where the topic is amply covered, today biosignals are a matter of interest for students, researchers and hobbyists in areas including computer science, informatics, electrical engineering, among others. Regardless of the context, the use of biosignals in experimental activities and practical projects is heavily bounded by the cost, and limited access to adequate support materials. In this paper we present an accessible, albeit versatile toolkit, composed of low-cost hardware and software, which was created to reinforce the engagement of different people in the field of biosignals. The hardware consists of a modular wireless biosignal acquisition system that can be used to support classroom activities, interface with other devices, or perform rapid prototyping of end-user applications. The software comprehends a set of programming APIs, a biosignal processing toolbox, and a framework for real time data acquisition and postprocessing. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

As emoções e o desenvolvimento da criatividade dos alunos de 3º ciclo, no âmbito da Composição Coreográfica, na Escola Vocacional de Dança das Caldas da Rainha

Relatório Final de Estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Dança, com vista à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ensino de Dança.

Towards the detection of deception in interactive multimedia environments

A classical application of biosignal analysis has been the psychophysiological detection of deception, also known as the polygraph test, which is currently a part of standard practices of law enforcement agencies and several other institutions worldwide. Although its validity is far from gathering consensus, the underlying psychophysiological principles are still an interesting add-on for more informal applications. In this paper we present an experimental off-the-person hardware setup, propose a set of feature extraction criteria and provide a comparison of two classification approaches, targeting the detection of deception in the context of a role-playing interactive multimedia environment. Our work is primarily targeted at recreational use in the context of a science exhibition, where the main goal is to present basic concepts related with knowledge discovery, biosignal analysis and psychophysiology in an educational way, using techniques that are simple enough to be understood by children of different ages. Nonetheless, this setting will also allow us to build a significant data corpus, annotated with ground-truth information, and collected with non-intrusive sensors, enabling more advanced research on the topic. Experimental results have shown interesting findings and provided useful guidelines for future work. Pattern Recognition