A framework to operate transformations between distinct models differing in modelling concepts

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

A new MDA-SOA based framework for intercloud interoperability

Cloud computing has been one of the most important topics in Information Technology which aims to assure scalable and reliable on-demand services over the Internet. The expansion of the application scope of cloud services would require cooperation between clouds from different providers that have heterogeneous functionalities. This collaboration between different cloud vendors can provide better Quality of Services (QoS) at the lower price. However, current cloud systems have been developed without concerns of seamless cloud interconnection, and actually they do not support intercloud interoperability to enable collaboration between cloud service providers. Hence, the PhD work is motivated to address interoperability issue between cloud providers as a challenging research objective. This thesis proposes a new framework which supports inter-cloud interoperability in a heterogeneous computing resource cloud environment with the goal of dispatching the workload to the most effective clouds available at runtime. Analysing different methodologies that have been applied to resolve various problem scenarios related to interoperability lead us to exploit Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) methods as appropriate approaches for our inter-cloud framework. Moreover, since distributing the operations in a cloud-based environment is a nondeterministic polynomial time (NP-complete) problem, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based job scheduler proposed as a part of interoperability framework, offering workload migration with the best performance at the least cost. A new Agent Based Simulation (ABS) approach is proposed to model the inter-cloud environment with three types of agents: Cloud Subscriber agent, Cloud Provider agent, and Job agent. The ABS model is proposed to evaluate the proposed framework.

Fostering e-participation sustainability through a BPM-driven semantic model

According to a recent Eurobarometer survey (2014), 68% of Europeans tend not to trust national governments. As the increasing alienation of citizens from politics endangers democracy and welfare, governments, practitioners and researchers look for innovative means to engage citizens in policy matters. One of the measures intended to overcome the so-called democratic deficit is the promotion of civic participation. Digital media proliferation offers a set of novel characteristics related to interactivity, ubiquitous connectivity, social networking and inclusiveness that enable new forms of societal-wide collaboration with a potential impact on leveraging participative democracy. Following this trend, e-Participation is an emerging research area that consists in the use of Information and Communication Technologies to mediate and transform the relations among citizens and governments towards increasing citizens’ participation in public decision-making. However, despite the widespread efforts to implement e-Participation through research programs, new technologies and projects, exhaustive studies on the achieved outcomes reveal that it has not yet been successfully incorporated in institutional politics. Given the problems underlying e-Participation implementation, the present research suggested that, rather than project-oriented efforts, the cornerstone for successfully implementing e-Participation in public institutions as a sustainable added-value activity is a systematic organisational planning, embodying the principles of open-governance and open-engagement. It further suggested that BPM, as a management discipline, can act as a catalyst to enable the desired transformations towards value creation throughout the policy-making cycle, including political, organisational and, ultimately, citizen value. Following these findings, the primary objective of this research was to provide an instrumental model to foster e-Participation sustainability across Government and Public Administration towards a participatory, inclusive, collaborative and deliberative democracy. The developed artefact, consisting in an e-Participation Organisational Semantic Model (ePOSM) underpinned by a BPM-steered approach, introduces this vision. This approach to e-Participation was modelled through a semi-formal lightweight ontology stack structured in four sub-ontologies, namely e-Participation Strategy, Organisational Units, Functions and Roles. The ePOSM facilitates e-Participation sustainability by: (1) Promoting a common and cross-functional understanding of the concepts underlying e-Participation implementation and of their articulation that bridges the gap between technical and non-technical users; (2) Providing an organisational model which allows a centralised and consistent roll-out of strategy-driven e-Participation initiatives, supported by operational units dedicated to the execution of transformation projects and participatory processes; (3) Providing a standardised organisational structure, goals, functions and roles related to e-Participation processes that enhances process-level interoperability among government agencies; (4) Providing a representation usable in software development for business processes’ automation, which allows advanced querying using a reasoner or inference engine to retrieve concrete and specific information about the e-Participation processes in place. An evaluation of the achieved outcomes, as well a comparative analysis with existent models, suggested that this innovative approach tackling the organisational planning dimension can constitute a stepping stone to harness e-Participation value.

Iberian peninsula ecosystem carbon fluxes: a model-data integration study

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia do Ambiente pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa,Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Development of a fuzzy qualitative risk assessment model applied to construction industry

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Industrial

An intertemporal pricing model for CO2 allowances: The impact of the clean development mechanism

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Corporate strategy development: International distance model for the Brazilian market

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Development of suberin films driven by an ionic liquid-based depolymerisation process

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Chemistry

Contribution to drug discovery and development for tauopathies using yeast as a model

This work aimed to contribute to drug discovery and development (DDD) for tauopathies, while expanding our knowledge on this group of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using yeast, a recognized model for neurodegeneration studies, useful models were produced for the study of tau interaction with beta-amyloid (Aβ), both AD hallmark proteins. The characterization of these models suggests that these proteins co-localize and that Aβ1-42, which is toxic to yeast, is involved in tau40 phosphorylation (Ser396/404) via the GSK-3β yeast orthologue, whereas tau seems to facilitate Aβ1-42 oligomerization. The mapping of tau’s interactome in yeast, achieved with a tau toxicity enhancer screen using the yeast deletion collection, provided a novel framework, composed of 31 genes, to identify new mechanisms associated with tau pathology, as well as to identify new drug targets or biomarkers. This genomic screen also allowed to select the yeast strain mir1Δ-tau40 for development of a new GPSD2TM drug discovery screening system. A library of unique 138 marine bacteria extracts, obtained from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge hydrothermal vents, was screened with mir1Δ-tau40. Three extracts were identified as suppressors of tau toxicity and constitute good starting points for DDD programs. mir1Δ strain was sensitive to tau toxicity, relating tau pathology with mitochondrial function. SLC25A3, the human homologue of MIR1, codes for the mitochondrial phosphate carrier protein (PiC). Resorting to iRNA, SLC25A3 expression was silenced in human neuroglioma cells, as a first step towards the engineering of a neural model for replicating the results obtained in yeast. This model is essential to understand the mechanisms of tau toxicity at the mitochondrial level and to validate PiC as a relevant drug target. The set of DDD tools here presented will foster the development of innovative and efficacious therapies, urgently needed to cope with tau-related disorders of high human and social-economic impact.

Development and modulation of magnetic responsive supported ionic liquid membranes

The work presented in this thesis aims at developing a new separation process based on the application of supported magnetic ionic liquid membranes, SMILMs, using magnetic ionic liquids, MILs. MILs have attracted growing interest due to their ability to change their physicochemical characteristics when exposed to variable magnetic field conditions. The magnetic responsive behavior of MILs is thus expected to contribute for the development of more efficient separation processes, such as supported liquid membranes, where MILs may be used as a selective carrier. Driven by the MILs behavior, these membranes are expected to switch reversibly their permeability and selectivity by in situ and non-invasive adjustment of the conditions (e.g. intensity, direction vector and uniformity) of an external applied magnetic field. The development of these magnetic responsive membrane processes were anticipated by studies, performed along the first stage of this PhD work, aiming at getting a deep knowledge on the influence of magnetic field on MILs properties. The influence of the magnetic field on the molecular dynamics and structural rearrangement of MILs ionic network was assessed through a 1H-NMR technique. Through the 1H-NMR relaxometry analysis it was possible to estimate the self-diffusion profiles of two different model MILs, [Aliquat][FeCl4] and [P66614][FeCl4]. A comparative analysis was established between the behavior of magnetic and non-magnetic ionic liquids, MILs and ILs, to facilitate the perception of the magnetic field impact on MILs properties. In contrast to ILs, MILs show a specific relaxation mechanism, characterized by the magnetic dependence of their self-diffusion coefficients. MILs self-diffusion coefficients increased in the presence of magnetic field whereas ILs self-diffusion was not affected. In order to understand the reasons underlying the magnetic dependence of MILs self-diffusion, studies were performed to investigate the influence of the magnetic field on MILs’ viscosity. It was observed that the MIL´s viscosity decreases with the increase of the magnetic field, explaining the increase of MILs self-diffusion according to the modified Stokes- Einstein equation. Different gas and liquid transport studies were therefore performed aiming to determine the influence of the magnetic behavior of MILs on solute transport through SMILMs. Gas permeation studies were performed using pure CO2 andN2 gas streams and air, using a series of phosphonium cation based MILs, containing different paramagnetic anions. Transport studies were conducted in the presence and absence of magnetic field at a maximum intensity of 1.5T. The results revealed that gas permeability increased in the presence of the magnetic field, however, without affecting the membrane selectivity. The increase of gas permeability through SMILMs was related to the decrease of the MILs viscosity under magnetic field conditions.(...)