Bridging environmental conflicts with social metabolism : forestry expansion and socioeconomic change

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

Sistema de apoio à navegação baseado em automatic identification system

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Engenharia Electrotécnica e Computadores

Automatic musical instrument recognition for multimedia indexing

Trabalho apresentado no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Questing one Brazilian query: reporting 16 cases of Q fever from Minas Gerais, Brazil

Q fever has been considered non-existing in Brazil where reports of clinical cases still cannot be found. This case-series of 16 patients is a result of a systematic search for such illness by means of clinical and serologic criteria. Serologic testing was performed by the indirect microimmunofluorescence technique using phase I/II C. burnetii antigens. Influenza-like syndrome was the most frequent clinical form (eight cases - 50%), followed by pneumonia, FUO (fever of unknown origin), mono-like syndrome (two cases - 12.5% each), lymphadenitis (one case - 6.3%) and spondylodiscitis associated with osteomyelitis (one case - 6.3%). The ages varied from four to 67 years old with a median of 43.5. All but one patient had positive serologic tests for phase II IgG whether or not associated with IgM positivity compatible with acute infection. One patient had both phase I and phase II IgG antibodies compatible with chronic Q fever. Seroconvertion was detected in 10 patients. Despite the known limitations of serologic diagnosis, the cases here reported should encourage Brazilian doctors to include Q fever as an indigenous cause of febrile illness.

Automatic syllabification for danish text-to-speech systems

In this paper, a rule-based automatic syllabifier for Danish is described using the Maximal Onset Principle. Prior success rates of rule-based methods applied to Portuguese and Catalan syllabification modules were on the basis of this work. The system was implemented and tested using a very small set of rules. The results gave rise to 96.9% and 98.7% of word accuracy rate, contrary to our initial expectations, being Danish a language with a complex syllabic structure and thus difficult to be rule-driven. Comparison with data-driven syllabification system using artificial neural networks showed a higher accuracy rate of the former system.

An automatic voice pleasantness classification system based on prosodic and acoustic patterns of voice preference

In the last few years the number of systems and devices that use voice based interaction has grown significantly. For a continued use of these systems the interface must be reliable and pleasant in order to provide an optimal user experience. However there are currently very few studies that try to evaluate how good is a voice when the application is a speech based interface. In this paper we present a new automatic voice pleasantness classification system based on prosodic and acoustic patterns of voice preference. Our study is based on a multi-language database composed by female voices. In the objective performance evaluation the system achieved a 7.3% error rate.

A qualitive reasoning approach for improving query results for sketch based queries by topological analysis of spatial aggregation

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

EXPANSION OF VISCERAL LEISHMANIASIS IN THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL: REPORT OF THE FIRST AUTOCHTHONOUS CASE IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF VOLTA REDONDA AND THE DIFFICULTY OF DIAGNOSIS

Visceral Leishmaniasis has been showing remarkable epidemiological changes in recent decades, with marked expansion and an emergence of cases in urban areas of the North, Southeast and Midwest regions of Brazil. The Kala-azar cases reported here, despite being very characteristic, presented a great difficulty of diagnosis, because the disease is not endemic in Volta Redonda. The child underwent two hospitalizations in different hospitals, but got the correct diagnosis only after 11 months of symptom onset. In this report we discuss the main differential diagnoses and call attention to the suspected symptoms of visceral leishmaniasis in patients with prolonged fever, hepatosplenomegaly and pancytopenia, even in areas not traditionally endemic for the disease.

Automatic Small Bowel Tumor Diagnosis by Using Multi-Scale Wavelet-Based Analysis in Wireless Capsule Endoscopy Images

BACKGROUND: Wireless capsule endoscopy has been introduced as an innovative, non-invasive diagnostic technique for evaluation of the gastrointestinal tract, reaching places where conventional endoscopy is unable to. However, the output of this technique is an 8 hours video, whose analysis by the expert physician is very time consuming. Thus, a computer assisted diagnosis tool to help the physicians to evaluate CE exams faster and more accurately is an important technical challenge and an excellent economical opportunity. METHOD: The set of features proposed in this paper to code textural information is based on statistical modeling of second order textural measures extracted from co-occurrence matrices. To cope with both joint and marginal non-Gaussianity of second order textural measures, higher order moments are used. These statistical moments are taken from the two-dimensional color-scale feature space, where two different scales are considered. Second and higher order moments of textural measures are computed from the co-occurrence matrices computed from images synthesized by the inverse wavelet transform of the wavelet transform containing only the selected scales for the three color channels. The dimensionality of the data is reduced by using Principal Component Analysis. RESULTS: The proposed textural features are then used as the input of a classifier based on artificial neural networks. Classification performances of 93.1% specificity and 93.9% sensitivity are achieved on real data. These promising results open the path towards a deeper study regarding the applicability of this algorithm in computer aided diagnosis systems to assist physicians in their clinical practice.

GEOGRAPHICAL EXPANSION OF CANINE VISCERAL LEISHMANIASIS IN RIO DE JANEIRO STATE, BRAZIL

SUMMARY Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) is a vector-borne disease that affects humans, and domestic and wild animals. It is caused by the protozoan Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum (syn = Leishmania chagasi). The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) is considered the main reservoir of the etiologic agent of VL in domestic and peridomestic environments. In the past three years, although control actions involving domestic dogs are routinely performed in endemic areas of the Rio de Janeiro State, new cases of canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) have been reported in several municipalities. The objective of this short communication was to describe the geographical expansion of CVL in the Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, through its reports in the scientific literature and studies performed by our group. From 2010 to 2013, autochthonous and allochthonous cases of CVL were reported in the municipalities of Mangaratiba, Marica, Niteroi, Barra Mansa, Cachoeiras de Macacu, Volta Redonda, Resende and Rio de Janeiro. These reports demonstrate that CVL is in intense geographical expansion around the state; therefore, a joint effort by public agencies, veterinarians and researchers is needed in order to minimize and/or even prevent the dispersion of this disease.

Risk and return: The international expansion of EDP Renováveis

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

The international expansion strategy of Striyah in Poland

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

Expressiveness improvements of OutSystems DSL query primitives

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Customer Lifetime Value: a framework for application in the insurance industry - Building a Business Process to Generate and Maintain an Automatic Estimation Agent

Research Project submited as partial fulfilment for the Master Degree in Statistics and Information Management

Description of a possible clonal expansion of Plasmodium vivax in Manaus - Amazonas - Brazil

Atypical P. vivax cases reported in Manaus municipality led us to detect a genetic isolate of P. vivax. Variable regions of SSUrRNA were examined from the initial time of infection and in the two recrudescences/relapses from a patient exhibiting chloroquine and primaquine resistance. A unique isolate, found at all stages of infection, suggests the presence of a clonal expansion.