Migracion, prácticas artísticas y artivismos

Una de las potencialidades del arte es devenir una herramienta para enfocar determinados conflictos desde nuevos ángulos y articular preguntas que impacten en la comunidad. Aquí el arte se funde con la filosofía, la sociología, la antropología, con el activismo, y con la propia vida. A partir de tales parámetros, se esbozarán diversas propuestas artísticas que ilustran cómo distintos creadores abordan –desde distintos ángulos– el fenómeno de la migración Dentro de la amplia miríada de perspectivas desde las que se puede tratar la migración es interesante resaltar el trabajo de varios artistas que se transforman en altavoces de las experiencias de otras personas, tal y como ejemplifican los proyectos de Pep Dardanyà, Marisa González, He Chengyue y Josep María Martín. Desde un ángulo radicalmente distinto, Santiago Sierra y el colectivo Yes lab reproducen y llevan al límite las mismas dinámicas de explotación que critican, y para finalizar, bajo el prisma de la experiencia vivida, la artista Fiona Tan explora su propio proceso migratorio e investiga la construcción de la identidad.

Migracion, prácticas artísticas y artivismos

Una de las potencialidades del arte es devenir una herramienta para enfocar determinados conflictos desde nuevos ángulos y articular preguntas que impacten en la comunidad. Aquí el arte se funde con la filosofía, la sociología, la antropología, con el activismo, y con la propia vida. A partir de tales parámetros, se esbozarán diversas propuestas artísticas que ilustran cómo distintos creadores abordan –desde distintos ángulos– el fenómeno de la migración Dentro de la amplia miríada de perspectivas desde las que se puede tratar la migración es interesante resaltar el trabajo de varios artistas que se transforman en altavoces de las experiencias de otras personas, tal y como ejemplifican los proyectos de Pep Dardanyà, Marisa González, He Chengyue y Josep María Martín. Desde un ángulo radicalmente distinto, Santiago Sierra y el colectivo Yes lab reproducen y llevan al límite las mismas dinámicas de explotación que critican, y para finalizar, bajo el prisma de la experiencia vivida, la artista Fiona Tan explora su propio proceso migratorio e investiga la construcción de la identidad.

Porto: cidade amiga das pessoas idosas: um estudo centrado na visão de prestadores de serviços a pessoas idosas das freguesias de Cedofeita, Paranhos, St. Ildefonso, Bonfim e Campanhã

O envelhecimento da população é um fenómeno das sociedades contemporâneas simultâneo à crescente modificação do meio urbano. De modo a responder a estas alterações a Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS) lançou o projeto Cidade Amiga das Pessoas Idosas que preconiza a adaptação das estruturas e serviços para que estes sejam acessíveis e promovam a inclusão dos cidadãos idosos. A presente investigação, de natureza qualitativa e exploratória, tem como objetivo verificar se a cidade do Porto possui características de uma cidade amiga das pessoas idosas através da visão de prestadores de serviços a pessoas idosas das freguesias de Paranhos, Cedofeita, St. Ildefonso, Bonfim e Campanhã. Pretende, assim, ser um contributo para o desenvolvimento do projeto Cidade Amiga das Pessoas Idosas na cidade portuense. Para tal, realizam-se 3 focus groups com prestadores de serviços selecionados a partir de uma amostragem por conveniência, onde se utiliza um guião de entrevista semi-estruturado com as seguintes categorias: espaços exteriores e edifícios, transportes, habitação, participação social, respeito e inclusão social, participação cívica e emprego, comunicação e informação e apoio comunitário e serviços de saúde. É possível verificar que os participantes partilham, de forma geral, uma imagem positiva da cidade do Porto, contudo, têm tendência a iniciar o discurso pelas características negativas da cidade. Colaboram também com sugestões de melhoria para a cidade. Pela perspetiva dos participantes é possível verificar que aspetos relacionados com espaços exteriores e edifícios, respeito e inclusão social e apoio comunitário e serviços de saúde se destacam pela negativa, enquanto aspetos intimos à participação social das pessoas idosas bem como, à comunicação e informação na cidade do Porto são na generalidade elogiados. Desta forma, indicam como positivo o aparecimento de novas iniciativas como as Universidades Seniores ou o projeto “Afetos” desenvolvido pela Misericórdia; as ofertas dirigidas à população sénior desenvolvidas pelas Juntas de Freguesia e a presença de jornais de distribuição gratuita, em espaços públicos. Por oposição, identificam como pouco amigo das pessoas idosas os passeios pouco largos, com obstáculos e pouco cuidados; a falta de casas de banho públicas; o desinvestimento em atividades intergeracionais e a carência de lares públicos na cidade.

Tourism mobile and recommendation systems - a state of the art

Recommendation systems have been growing in number for the last fifteen years. To evolve and adapt to the demands of the actual society, many paradigms emerged giving birth to even more paradigms and hybrid approaches. Mobile devices have also been under an incredible growth rate in every business area, and there are already lots of mobile based systems to assist tourists. This explosive growth gave birth to different mobile applications, each having their own advantages and disadvantages. Since recommendation and mobile systems might as well be integrated, this work intends to present the current state of the art in tourism mobile and recommendation systems, as well as to state their advantages and disadvantages.

Recommendation & mobile systems - a state of the art for tourism

Recommendation systems have been growing in number over the last fifteen years. To evolve and adapt to the demands of the actual society, many paradigms emerged giving birth to even more paradigms and hybrid approaches. These approaches contain strengths and weaknesses that need to be evaluated according to the knowledge area in which the system is going to be implemented. Mobile devices have also been under an incredible growth rate in every business area, and there are already lots of mobile based systems to assist tourists. This explosive growth gave birth to different mobile applications, each having their own advantages and disadvantages. Since recommendation and mobile systems might as well be integrated, this work intends to present the current state of the art in tourism mobile and recommendation systems, as well as to state their advantages and disadvantages.

PSiS Mobile

In this paper, we present a state of the art on applications of mobile devices to support decision of a tourist running on a trip. We focus on two types of applications, tourism recommendation and tourism guide, making a brief description of the main characteristics of each one of them. We also refer the main problems encountered on the development of applications for mobile devices, and present PSiS (Personalized Sightseeing Tours Recommendation System) Mobile, our proposal to a mobile recommendation and planning support system, which is designed to provide an effective support during the tourist visit, providing contextaware information and recommendations about places of interest (POI) to visit, based on tourist preferences and his current context.

Methodology for in-game certification in serious games

Serious games are starting to attain a higher role as tools for learning in various contexts, but in particular in areas such as education and training. Due to its characteristics, such as rules, behavior simulation and feedback to the player's actions, serious games provide a favorable learning environment where errors can occur without real life penalty and students get instant feedback from challenges. These challenges are in accordance with the intended objectives and will self-adapt and repeat according to the student’s difficulty level. Through motivating and engaging environments, which serve as base for problem solving and simulation of different situations and contexts, serious games have a great potential to aid players developing professional skills. But, how do we certify the acquired knowledge and skills? With this work we intend to propose a methodology to establish a relationship between the game mechanics of serious games and an array of competences for certification, evaluating the applicability of various aspects in the design and development of games such as the user interfaces and the gameplay, obtaining learning outcomes within the game itself. Through the definition of game mechanics combined with the necessary pedagogical elements, the game will ensure the certification. This paper will present a matrix of generic skills, based on the European Framework of Qualifications, and the definition of the game mechanics necessary for certification on tour guide training context. The certification matrix has as reference axes: skills, knowledge and competencies, which describe what the students should learn, understand and be able to do after they complete the learning process. The guides-interpreters welcome and accompany tourists on trips and visits to places of tourist interest and cultural heritage such as museums, palaces and national monuments, where they provide various information. Tour guide certification requirements include skills and specific knowledge about foreign languages and in the areas of History, Ethnology, Politics, Religion, Geography and Art of the territory where it is inserted. These skills are communication, interpersonal relationships, motivation, organization and management. This certification process aims to validate the skills to plan and conduct guided tours on the territory, demonstrate knowledge appropriate to the context and finally match a good group leader. After defining which competences are to be certified, the next step is to delineate the expected learning outcomes, as well as identify the game mechanics associated with it. The game mechanics, as methods invoked by agents for interaction with the game world, in combination with game elements/objects allows multiple paths through which to explore the game environment and its educational process. Mechanics as achievements, appointments, progression, reward schedules or status, describe how game can be designed to affect players in unprecedented ways. In order for the game to be able to certify tour guides, the design of the training game will incorporate a set of theoretical and practical tasks to acquire skills and knowledge of various transversal themes. For this end, patterns of skills and abilities in acquiring different knowledge will be identified.

Dermic diffusion and stratum corneum: a state of the art review of mathematical models

Transdermal biotechnologies are an ever increasing field of interest, due to the medical and pharmaceutical applications that they underlie. There are several mathematical models at use that permit a more inclusive vision of pure experimental data and even allow practical extrapolation for new dermal diffusion methodologies. However, they grasp a complex variety of theories and assumptions that allocate their use for specific situations. Models based on Fick's First Law found better use in contexts where scaled particle theory Models would be extensive in time-span but the reciprocal is also true, as context of transdermal diffusion of particular active compounds changes. This article reviews extensively the various theoretical methodologies for studying dermic diffusion in the rate limiting dermic barrier, the stratum corneum, and systematizes its characteristics, their proper context of application, advantages and limitations, as well as future perspectives.

Quality-of-service in wireless sensor networks: state-of-the-art and future directions

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of today’s most prominent instantiations of the ubiquituous computing paradigm. In order to achieve high levels of integration, WSNs need to be conceived considering requirements beyond the mere system’s functionality. While Quality-of-Service (QoS) is traditionally associated with bit/data rate, network throughput, message delay and bit/packet error rate, we believe that this concept is too strict, in the sense that these properties alone do not reflect the overall quality-ofservice provided to the user/application. Other non-functional properties such as scalability, security or energy sustainability must also be considered in the system design. This paper identifies the most important non-functional properties that affect the overall quality of the service provided to the users, outlining their relevance, state-of-the-art and future research directions.

Scheduling arbitrary-deadline sporadic task systems on multiprocessors

A new algorithm is proposed for scheduling preemptible arbitrary-deadline sporadic task systems upon multiprocessor platforms, with interprocessor migration permitted. This algorithm is based on a task-splitting approach - while most tasks are entirely assigned to specific processors, a few tasks (fewer than the number of processors) may be split across two processors. This algorithm can be used for two distinct purposes: for actually scheduling specific sporadic task systems, and for feasibility analysis. Simulation- based evaluation indicates that this algorithm offers a significant improvement on the ability to schedule arbitrary- deadline sporadic task systems as compared to the contemporary state-of-art. With regard to feasibility analysis, the new algorithm is proved to offer superior performance guarantees in comparison to prior feasibility tests.

On the development of a test-bed application for the ART-WiSe architecture

The ART-WiSe (Architecture for Real-Time communications in Wireless Sensor Networks) framework aims at the design of new communication architectures and mechanisms for time-sensitive Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). We adopted a two-tiered architecture where an overlay Wireless Local Area Network (Tier 2) serves as a backbone for a WSN (Tier 1), relying on existing standard communication protocols and commercial-off-the-shell (COTS) technologies – IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee for Tier 1 and IEEE 802.11 for Tier 2. In this line, a test-bed application is being developed for assessing, validating and demonstrating the ART-WiSe architecture. A pursuit-evasion application was chosen since it fulfils a number of requirements, namely it is feasible and appealing and imposes some stress to the architecture in terms of timeliness. To develop the testbed based on the previously referred technologies, an implementation of the IEEE 8021.5.4/ZigBee protocols is being carried out, since there is no open source available to the community. This paper highlights some relevant aspects of the ART-WiSe architecture, provides some intuition on the protocol stack implementation and presents a general view over the envisaged test-bed application.

An IEEE 802.15.4 protocol implementation (in nesC/TinyOS): reference guide v1.0

This technical report is to provide a reference guide to the implementation of the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol in nesC/TinyOS for the MICAz motes. The implementation is provided as a tool that can be used to implement, test and evaluate the current functionalities defined in the protocol standard as well as to enable the development of functionalities not yet implemented and new add-ons to the protocol.