A framework for supporting knowledge representation – an ontological based approach

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Linked Data based Health Information Representation, Visualization and Retrieval System on the Semantic Web

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

The palm tree Copernicia cerifera (carnaúba) as an ecotope of Rhodnius nasutus in rural areas of the State of Piauí Northeastern Brazil

The C. cerifera palm tree (carnaúba) is widely distributed in the Northeastem Brazil, including the State of Piauí. This investigation revealed that R. nasutus is the ortly triatomine species captured on that palm tree, in five different localities. 78% of palm trees were infested with triatomines, and 4.0% were infected with flagellates morphologically and biologically indistinguishable from Trypanosoma cruzi. Birds, rodents and marsupials were found as major blood meai sources for R. nasutus.

Cartographic representation of spatiotemporal phenomena

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Uncertainty, generalization, and neural representation of relevant variables for decision making

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biology, Computational Biology.

Staging the Scientist: The Representation of Science and its Processes in American and British Drama

Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estudos Ingleses e Norte Americanos

A volumetric hybrid representation for obstacle detection in all-terrain robots

This dissertation presents an approach aimed at three-dimensional perception’s obstacle detection on all-terrain robots. Given the huge amount of acquired information, the adversities such environments present to an autonomous system and the swiftness, thus required, from each of its navigation decisions, it becomes imperative that the 3-D perceptional system to be able to map obstacles and passageways in the most swift and detailed manner. In this document, a hybrid approach is presented bringing the best of several methods together, combining the lightness of lesser meticulous analyses with the detail brought by more thorough ones. Realizing the former, a terrain’s slope mapping system upon a low resolute volumetric representation of the surrounding occupancy. For the latter’s detailed evaluation, two novel metrics were conceived to discriminate the little depth discrepancies found in between range scanner’s beam distance measurements. The hybrid solution resulting from the conjunction of these two representations provides a reliable answer to traversability mapping and a robust discrimination of penetrable vegetation from that constituting real obstructions. Two distinct robotic platforms offered the possibility to test the hybrid approach on very different applications: a boat, under an European project, the ECHORD Riverwatch, and a terrestrial four-wheeled robot for a national project, the Introsys Robot.

Res Publica: Citizenship and Political Representation in Portugal, 1820-1926

The term res publica (literally “thing of the people”) was coined by the Romans to translate the Greek word politeia, which, as we know, referred to a political community organised in accordance with certain principles, amongst which the notion of the “good life” (as against exclusively private interests) was paramount. This ideal also came to be known as political virtue. To achieve it, it was necessary to combine the best of each “constitutional” type and avoid their worst aspects (tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy). Hence, the term acquired from the Greeks a sense of being a “mixed” and “balanced” system. Anyone that was entitled to citizenship could participate in the governance of the “public thing”. This implied the institutionalization of open debate and confrontation between interested parties as a way of achieving the consensus necessary to ensure that man the political animal, who fought with words and reason, prevailed over his “natural” counterpart. These premises lie at the heart of the project which is now being presented under the title of Res Publica: Citizenship and Political Representation in Portugal, 1820-1926. The fact that it is integrated into the centenary commemorations of the establishment of the Republic in Portugal is significant, as it was the idea of revolution – with its promise of rupture and change – that inspired it. However, it has also sought to explore events that could be considered the precursor of democratization in the history of Portugal, namely the vintista, setembrista and patuleia revolutions. It is true that the republican regime was opposed to the monarchic. However, although the thesis that monarchy would inevitably lead to tyranny had held sway for centuries, it had also been long believed that the monarchic system could be as “politically virtuous” as a republic (in the strict sense of the word) provided that power was not concentrated in the hands of a single individual. Moreover, various historical experiments had shown that republics could also degenerate into Caesarism and different kinds of despotism. Thus, when absolutism began to be overturned in continental Europe in the name of the natural rights of man and the new social pact theories, initiating the difficult process of (written) constitutionalization, the monarchic principle began to be qualified as a “monarchy hedged by republican institutions”, a situation in which not even the king was exempt from isonomy. This context justifies the time frame chosen here, as it captures the various changes and continuities that run through it. Having rejected the imperative mandate and the reinstatement of the model of corporative representation (which did not mean that, in new contexts, this might not be revived, or that the second chamber established by the Constitutional Charter of 1826 might not be given another lease of life), a new power base was convened: national sovereignty, a precept that would be shared by the monarchic constitutions of 1822 and 1838, and by the republican one of 1911. This followed the French example (manifested in the monarchic constitution of 1791 and in the Spanish constitution of 1812), as not even republicans entertained a tradition of republicanism based upon popular sovereignty. This enables us to better understand the rejection of direct democracy and universal suffrage, and also the long incapacitation (concerning voting and standing for office) of the vast body of “passive” citizens, justified by “enlightened”, property- and gender-based criteria. Although the republicans had promised in the propaganda phase to alter this situation, they ultimately failed to do so. Indeed, throughout the whole period under analysis, the realisation of the potential of national sovereignty was mediated above all by the individual citizen through his choice of representatives. However, this representation was indirect and took place at national level, in the hope that action would be motivated not by particular local interests but by the common good, as dictated by reason. This was considered the only way for the law to be virtuous, a requirement that was also manifested in the separation and balance of powers. As sovereignty was postulated as single and indivisible, so would be the nation that gave it soul and the State that embodied it. Although these characteristics were common to foreign paradigms of reference, in Portugal, the constitutionalization process also sought to nationalise the idea of Empire. Indeed, this had been the overriding purpose of the 1822 Constitution, and it persisted, even after the loss of Brazil, until decolonization. Then, the dream of a single nation stretching from the Minho to Timor finally came to an end.

The Triplaria tree (Triplaris spp) and Pseudomyrmex ants: a symbiotic relationship with risks of attack for humans

The authors report a massive attack by Pseudomyrmex ants on a human who touched a Triplaria - novice tree (Triplaris spp). The ants naturally live in these trees and their stings cause intense pain and discrete to moderate local inflammation. The problem is common in some Brazilian regions and can be prevented by identifying the trees.

The Vase’s Representation (Cantharus, Crater) on the Roman Mosaic in Portugal: A Significant Formal and Iconographic Path from Classic Antiquity to Late Antiquity

11TH INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON ANCIENT MOSAICS OCTOBER 16TH  20TH, 2009, BURSA TURKEY Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval World: Questions of Iconography, Style and Technique from the Beginnings of Mosaic until the Late Byzantine Era

Popular music exhibitions in Portugal: practices of representation from 2007 to 2013

This thesis focuses on the representation of Popular Music in museums by mapping, analyzing, and characterizing its practices in Portugal at the beginning of the 21st century. Now that museums' ability to shape public discourse is acknowledged, the examination of popular music's discourses in museums is of the utmost importance for Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies as well as for Museum Studies. The concept of 'heritage' is at the heart of this processes. The study was designed with the aim of moving the exhibiting of popular music in museums forward through a qualitative inquiry of case studies. Data collection involved surveying pop-rock music exhibitions as a qualitative sampling of popular music exhibitions in Portugal from 2007 to 2013. Two of these exhibitions were selected as case studies: No Tempo do Gira-Discos: Um Percurso pela Produção Fonográfica Portuguesa at the Museu da Música in Lisbon in 2007 (also Faculdade de Letras, 2009), and A Magia do Vinil, a Música que Mudou a Sociedade at the Oficina da Cultura in Almada in 2008 (and several other venues, from 2009 to 2013). Two specific domains were observed: popular music exhibitions as instances of museum practice and museum professionals. The first domain encompasses analyzing the types of objects selected for exhibition; the interactive museum practices fostered by the exhibitions; the concepts and narratives used to address popular music discursively, as well as the interpretative practices they allow. The second domain, focuses museum professionals and curators of popular music exhibitions as members of a group, namely their goals, motivations and perspectives. The theoretical frameworks adopted were drawn from the fields of ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and museum studies. The written materials of the exhibitions were subjected of methods of discourse analysis methods. Semi-structured interviews with curators and museum professional were also conducted and analysed. From the museum studies perspective, the study research suggests that the practice adopted by popular music museums largely matches that of conventional museums. From the ethnomusicological and popular music studies stand point, the two case studies reveal two distinct conceptual worlds: the first exhibition, curated by an academic and an independent researcher, points to a mental configuration where popular music is explained through a framework of genres supported by different musical practices. Moreover, it is industry actors such as decision makers and gatekeepers that govern popular music, which implies that the visitors' romantic conception of the musician is to some extent dismantled; the second exhibition, curated by a record collector and specialist, is based on a more conventional process of the everyday historical speech that encodes a mismatch between “good” and “bad music”. Data generated by a survey shows that only one curator, in fact that of my first case study, has an academic background. The backgrounds of all the others are in some way similar to the curator of the second case study. Therefore, I conclude that the second case study best conveys the current practice of exhibiting Popular Music in Portugal.

Tool for spatial and dynamic representation of artistic performances

This proposal aims to explore the use of available technologies for video representation of sets and performers in order to serve as support for composition processes and artistic performer rehearsals, while focusing in representing the performer’s body and its movements, and its relation with objects belonging to the three-dimensional space of their performances. This project’s main goal is to design and develop a system that can spatially represent the performer and its movements, by means of capturing processes and reconstruction using a camera device, as well as enhance the three-dimensional space where the performance occurs by allowing interaction with virtual objects and by adding a video component, either for documentary purposes, or for live performances effects (for example, using video mapping video techniques in captured video or projection during a performance).

PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A LARGE-SCALE TREE INVENTORY OF UPLAND RAIN FOREST IN THE CENTRAL AMAZON

A large-scale inventory of trees > 10cm DBH was conducted in the upland "terra firme" rain forest of the Distrito Agropecuário da SUFRAMA (Manaus Free Zone Authority Agricultural District) approximately 65Km north of the city of Manaus (AM), Srasil. Thegeneral appearance and structure of the forest is described together with local topography and soil texture. Thepreliminary results of the Inventory provide a minimum estimate of 698 tree species in 53 families in the 40Km radius sampled, including 17 undescribed species. Themost numerically abundant families, Lecythidaceae, Leguminosae, 5apotaceae and Burseraceae as also among the most species rich families. One aspect of this diverse assemblage is the proliferation of species within certain genera, Including 26 genera In 17 families with 6 or more species or morphospecies. Most species have very low abundances of less than 1 tree per hectare. While more abundant species do exist at densities ranging up to a mean of 12 trees per ha, many have clumped distributions leading to great variation in local species abundance. The degree of similarity between hectare samples based int the Coefficient of Community similarity Index varies widely over different sample hectares for five ecologically different families. Soil texture apparently plays a significant role In determining species composition in the different one hectare plots examined while results for other variable were less consistent. Greater differences in similarity indices are found for comparisons with a one hectare sample within the same formation approximately 40Km to the south. It is concluded that homogeneity of tree community composition within this single large and diverse yet continuous upland forest formation can not be assumed.

Arthropods obtained from the Amazonian tree species "Cupiuba" (Goupia glabra) by repeated canopy fogging with natural Pyrethrum

Two canopies of a widely distributed Amazonian tree species, Goupia glabra Aubl. (Celastraceae, height 38 and 45m) were fogged several times with 1% natural pyrethrum during the rainy and dry seasons (1991-1994) in the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve near Manaus/Brazil. Between 50 and 158 ind./m2 of arthropods were obtained per tree and fogging event. Hymenoptera, mostly Formicidae, and Diptcra dominated. A total of 95 ant species occurred on a single tree. Most ants were permanently foraging in the canopy and their recolonization after fogging seems to follow stochastic pathways. Data indicated an interaction between - 1) predating Formicidae and gall building Cecidomyiidae and - 2) Cecidomyiidae and the parasitic Hymenoptera.

Ontology-based representation and generation of workflows for micro-task human-machine computation

Doctoral Program in Computer Science