A Tradução para teatro

O texto dramático distingue-se das demais manifestações literárias pelo facto de se destinar não só a ser lido mas também a ser visto, isto é, ele pressupõe, logo à partida, um espectador. Em qualquer peça de teatro, não só temos presente um leitor/ouvinte implícito, como também um espectador implícito, daí a profusão de didascálias, que não são mais que indicações do autor relativamente a aspectos tão díspares como a identificação de personagens, tom de voz, cinética e gestualidade, bem como a todo o universo circundante em que as personagens se movem e agem, tais como ruídos exteriores, estados de espírito, tempo e espaço. Estas didascálias não visam apenas fornecer ao eventual encenador da peça e aos actores indicações proscénicas, elas têm também, por vezes, uma função equivalente à desempenhada pelos comentários metanarrativos na diegese, dirigindo-se explicitamente ao leitor, com fins explicativos, preditativos e persuasivos, entre outros.

Solving a signalized traffic intersection problem with an hyperbolic penalty function

Mathematical Program with Complementarity Constraints (MPCC) finds many applications in fields such as engineering design, economic equilibrium and mathematical programming theory itself. A queueing system model resulting from a single signalized intersection regulated by pre-timed control in traffic network is considered. The model is formulated as an MPCC problem. A MATLAB implementation based on an hyperbolic penalty function is used to solve this practical problem, computing the total average waiting time of the vehicles in all queues and the green split allocation. The problem was codified in AMPL.

Post-surgical wound infections involving Enterobacteriaceae with reduced susceptibility to ß-lactams in two Portuguese hospitals

The post-surgical period is often critical for infection acquisition. The combination of patient injury and environmental exposure through breached skin add risk to pre-existing conditions such as drug or depressed immunity. Several factors such as the period of hospital staying after surgery, base disease, age, immune system condition, hygiene policies, careless prophylactic drug administration and physical conditions of the healthcare centre may contribute to the acquisition of a nosocomial infection. A purulent wound can become complicated whenever antimicrobial therapy becomes compromised. In this pilot study, we analysed Enterobacteriaceae strains, the most significant gram-negative rods that may occur in post-surgical skin and soft tissue infections (SSTI) presenting reduced β-lactam susceptibility and those presenting extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBL). There is little information in our country regarding the relationship between β-lactam susceptibility, ESBL and development of resistant strains of microorganisms in SSTI. Our main results indicate Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. are among the most frequent enterobacteria (46% and 30% respectively) with ESBL production in 72% of Enterobacteriaceae isolates from SSTI. Moreover, coinfection occurred extensively, mainly with Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (18% and 13%, respectively). These results suggest future research to explore if and how these associations are involved in the development of antibiotic resistance.

TRAILER Project (Tagging, Recognition, Acknowledgment of Informal Learning Experiences) a methodology to make learners' informal learning activities visible to the institutions

The application of information technologies (specially the Internet, Web 2.0 and social tools) make informal learning more visible. This kind of learning is not linked to an institution or a period of time, but it is important enough to be taken into account. On the one hand, learners should be able to communicate to the institutions they are related to, what skills they possess, whether they were achieved in a formal or informal way. On the other hand the companies and educational institutions need to have a deeper knowledge about the competencies of their staff. The TRAILER project provides a methodology supported by a technological framework to facilitate communication about informal learning between businesses, employees and learners. The paper presents the project and some of the work carried out, an exploratory analysis about how informal learning is considered and the technological framework proposed. Whilst challenges remain in terms of establishing the meaningfulness of technological engagement for employees and businesses, the continuing transformation of the social, technological and educational environment is likely to lead to greater emphasis for the effective exploitation of informal learning.

Endothelialization of chitosan porous conduits via immobilization of a recombinant fibronectin fragment (rhFNIII7–10)

The present study aimed to develop a pre-endothelialized chitosan (CH) porous hollowed scaffold for application in spinal cord regenerative therapies. CH conduits with different degrees of acetylation (DA; 4% and 15%) were prepared, characterized (microstructure, porosity and water uptake) and functionalized with a recombinant fragment of human fibronectin (rhFNIII7–10). Immobilized rhFNIII7–10 was characterized in terms of amount (125I-radiolabelling), exposure of cell-binding domains (immunofluorescence) and ability to mediate endothelial cell (EC) adhesion and cytoskeletal rearrangement. Functionalized conduits revealed a linear increase in immobilized rhFNIII7–10 with rhFNIII7–10 concentration, and, for the same concentration, higher amounts of rhFNIII7–10 on DA 4% compared with DA 15%. Moreover, rhFNIII7–10 concentrations as low as 5 and 20 lgml 1 in the coupling reaction were shown to provide DA 4% and 15% scaffolds, respectively, with levels of exposed cell-binding domains exceeding those observed on the control (DA 4% scaffolds incubated in a 20 lgml 1 human fibronectin solution). These grafting conditions proved to be effective in mediating EC adhesion/cytoskeletal organization on CH with DA 4% and 15%, without affecting the endothelial angiogenic potential. rhFNIII7–10 grafting to CH could be a strategy of particular interest in tissue engineering applications requiring the use of endothelialized porous matrices with tunable degradation rates.

Harmónicos em Instalações Eléctricas. Causas, efeitos e normalização

Jean Baptiste Joseph, barão de Fourier, publicou em Paris no ano de 1822 a sua ópera magna “Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur”. Nesta obra Fourier demonstrava que a condução do calor nos corpos sólidos podia ser descrita através de uma série infinita de senos e co‐senos. O trabalho estimulou investigações nos mais variados campos da ciência e da técnica, tendo ressaltado que o tipo de formulação matemática empregada por Fourier era um pré‐requisito para a solução de fenómenos que exibiam natureza periódica. O método de exprimir funções periódicas em termos de somas de senos e co‐senos recebe o nome de Análise Harmónica. O princípio de Fourier é basicamente o seguinte: sendo dado um sinal (função) periódico representá‐lo como série de senos e co‐senos. Obviamente que se o sinal já for um seno ou co‐seno nada mais haverá para dizer (eventualmente, um termo médio não‐nulo); mas o nosso intuito é o de extrair informação de onde a haja, i.e., de funções não‐sinusoidais. Aos vários termos da série de Fourier, cada um deles de argumento múltiplo inteiro do período da função original, dá‐se‐lhes o nome de harmónicos, sendo a ordem destes precisamente o valor desse múltiplo.

Job phasing aware preemption deferral

Preemptions account for a non-negligible overhead during system execution. There has been substantial amount of research on estimating the delay incurred due to the loss of working sets in the processor state (caches, registers, TLBs) and some on avoiding preemptions, or limiting the preemption cost. We present an algorithm to reduce preemptions by further delaying the start of execution of high priority tasks in fixed priority scheduling. Our approaches take advantage of the floating non-preemptive regions model and exploit the fact that, during the schedule, the relative task phasing will differ from the worst-case scenario in terms of admissible preemption deferral. Furthermore, approximations to reduce the complexity of the proposed approach are presented. Substantial set of experiments demonstrate that the approach and approximations improve over existing work, in particular for the case of high utilisation systems, where savings of up to 22% on the number of preemption are attained.

EMMON: a WSN system architecture for large scale and dense real-time embedded monitoring

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted growing interest in the last decade as an infrastructure to support a diversity of ubiquitous computing and cyber-physical systems. However, most research work has focused on protocols or on specific applications. As a result, there remains a clear lack of effective, feasible and usable system architectures that address both functional and non-functional requirements in an integrated fashion. In this paper, we outline the EMMON system architecture for large-scale, dense, real-time embedded monitoring. EMMON provides a hierarchical communication architecture together with integrated middleware and command and control software. It has been designed to use standard commercially-available technologies, while maintaining as much flexibility as possible to meet specific applications requirements. The EMMON architecture has been validated through extensive simulation and experimental evaluation, including a 300+ node test-bed, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest single-site WSN test-bed in Europe to date.

Data mining languages for business intelligence

Doctoral Thesis in Information Systems and Technologies Area of Engineering and Manag ement Information Systems

Some reflections on acquisition, processing and analysis of statistical data in forest soils

Beyond the classical statistical approaches (determination of basic statistics, regression analysis, ANOVA, etc.) a new set of applications of different statistical techniques has increasingly gained relevance in the analysis, processing and interpretation of data concerning the characteristics of forest soils. This is possible to be seen in some of the recent publications in the context of Multivariate Statistics. These new methods require additional care that is not always included or refered in some approaches. In the particular case of geostatistical data applications it is necessary, besides to geo-reference all the data acquisition, to collect the samples in regular grids and in sufficient quantity so that the variograms can reflect the spatial distribution of soil properties in a representative manner. In the case of the great majority of Multivariate Statistics techniques (Principal Component Analysis, Correspondence Analysis, Cluster Analysis, etc.) despite the fact they do not require in most cases the assumption of normal distribution, they however need a proper and rigorous strategy for its utilization. In this work, some reflections about these methodologies and, in particular, about the main constraints that often occur during the information collecting process and about the various linking possibilities of these different techniques will be presented. At the end, illustrations of some particular cases of the applications of these statistical methods will also be presented.

Enhancing informal learning recognition through TRAILER project

International Workshop on solutions that Enhance Informal LEarning Recognition – WEILER 2013

Riesz potential versus fractional Laplacian

This paper starts by introducing the Grünwald–Letnikov derivative, the Riesz potential and the problem of generalizing the Laplacian. Based on these ideas, the generalizations of the Laplacian for 1D and 2D cases are studied. It is presented as a fractional version of the Cauchy–Riemann conditions and, finally, it is discussed with the n-dimensional Laplacian.

Milk intake is inversely related to body mass index and body fat in girls

Dairy foods comprise a range of products with varying nutritional content. The intake of dairy products (DPs) has been shown to have beneficial effects on body weight and body fat. This study aimed to examine the independent association between DP intake, body mass index (BMI), and percentage body fat (%BF) in adolescents. A cross-sectional, school-based study was conducted with 1,001 adolescents (418 boys), ages 15–18 years, from the Azorean Archipelago, Portugal. Anthropometric measurements were recorded (weight and height), and %BF was assessed using bioelectric impedance analysis. Adolescent food intake was measured using a self-administered, semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. Data were analyzed separately for girls and boys, and separate multiple linear regression analysis was used to estimate the association between total DP, milk, yogurt, and cheese intake, BMI, and %BF, adjusting for potential confounders. For boys and girls, respectively, total DP consumption was 2.6 ± 1.9 and 2.9 ± 2.5 servings/day (P = 0.004), while milk consumption was 1.7 ± 1.4 and 2.0 ± 1.7 servings/day (P = 0.001), yogurt consumption was 0.5 ± 0.6 and 0.4 ± 0.7 servings/day (P = 0.247), and cheese consumption was 0.4 ± 0.6 and 0.5 ± 0.8 servings/day (P = 0.081). After adjusting for age, birth weight, energy intake, protein, total fat, sugar, dietary fiber, total calcium intake, low-energy reporters, parental education, pubertal stage, and physical activity, only milk intake was negatively associated with BMI and %BF in girls (respectively, girls: β = −0.167, P = 0.013; boys: β = −0.019, P = 0.824 and girls: β = −0.143, P = 0.030; boys: β = −0.051, P = 0.548). Conclusion: We found an inverse association between milk intake and both BMI and %BF only in girls.

Riesz potential versus fractional Laplacian

This paper starts by introducing the Grünwald–Letnikov derivative, the Riesz potential and the problem of generalizing the Laplacian. Based on these ideas, the generalizations of the Laplacian for 1D and 2D cases are studied. It is presented as a fractional version of the Cauchy–Riemann conditions and, finally, it is discussed with the n-dimensional Laplacian.