Células solares semi-transparentes de silício amorfo micro/nanocristalino

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia dos Materiais

The role of implicit contracts: Building public works in the 1840s in Portugal

Business History, Vol 50 No 2, p147-162

Navegação de robôs móveis por marcas artificiais em ambientes semi-estruturados

Mestrado em engenharia electrotécnica e de computadores - Área de Especialização de Sistemas Autónomos

Semi-destructive in situ tests as support to the assessment of a conservation process

This paper refers to the assessment on site by semi-destructive testing (SDT) methods of the consolidation efficiency of a conservation process developed by Henriques (2011) for structural and non-structural pine wood elements in service. This study was applied on scots pine wood (Pinus sylvestris L.) degraded by fungi after treatment with a biocidal product followed by consolidation with a polymeric product. This solution avoids substitutions of wood moderately degraded by fungi, improving its physical and mechanical characteristics. The consolidation efficiency was assessed on site by methods of drill resistance and penetration resistance. The SDT methods used showed good sensitivity to the conservation process and could evaluate their effectiveness. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

CPMD-mindful task assignment for NPS-F

The multiprocessor scheduling scheme NPS-F for sporadic tasks has a high utilisation bound and an overall number of preemptions bounded at design time. NPS-F binpacks tasks offline to as many servers as needed. At runtime, the scheduler ensures that each server is mapped to at most one of the m processors, at any instant. When scheduled, servers use EDF to select which of their tasks to run. Yet, unlike the overall number of preemptions, the migrations per se are not tightly bounded. Moreover, we cannot know a priori which task a server will be currently executing at the instant when it migrates. This uncertainty complicates the estimation of cache-related preemption and migration costs (CPMD), potentially resulting in their overestimation. Therefore, to simplify the CPMD estimation, we propose an amended bin-packing scheme for NPS-F allowing us (i) to identify at design time, which task migrates at which instant and (ii) bound a priori the number of migrating tasks, while preserving the utilisation bound of NPS-F.

PEC e a vertente empresarial: impacto na gestão de tesouraria das PME

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Contabilidade e Finanças, sob orientação de Cláudia Maria Pereira Esta versão contém as críticas e sugestões dos elementos do júri.

Viscosity and self-diffusion coefficients of dialkyl adipates: a correlation scheme with predictive capabilities

A correlation and predictive scheme for the viscosity and self-diffusivity of liquid dialkyl adipates is presented. The scheme is based on the kinetic theory for dense hard-sphere fluids, applied to the van der Waals model of a liquid to predict the transport properties. A "universal" curve for a dimensionless viscosity of dialkyl adipates was obtained using recently published experimental viscosity and density data of compressed liquid dimethyl (DMA), dipropyl (DPA), and dibutyl (DBA) adipates. The experimental data are described by the correlation scheme with a root-mean-square deviation of +/- 0.34 %. The parameters describing the temperature dependence of the characteristic volume, V-0, and the roughness parameter, R-eta, for each adipate are well correlated with one single molecular parameter. Recently published experimental self-diffusion coefficients of the same set of liquid dialkyl adipates at atmospheric pressure were correlated using the characteristic volumes obtained from the viscosity data. The roughness factors, R-D, are well correlated with the same single molecular parameter found for viscosity. The root-mean-square deviation of the data from the correlation is less than 1.07 %. Tests are presented in order to assess the capability of the correlation scheme to estimate the viscosity of compressed liquid diethyl adipate (DEA) in a range of temperatures and pressures by comparison with literature data and of its self-diffusivity at atmospheric pressure in a range of temperatures. It is noteworthy that no data for DEA were used to build the correlation scheme. The deviations encountered between predicted and experimental data for the viscosity and self-diffusivity do not exceed 2.0 % and 2.2 %, respectively, which are commensurate with the estimated experimental measurement uncertainty, in both cases.

A Communication and Resources Management Scheme to Support the Smart Grid Integration of Multiplayers Access to Resources Information

The increasing and intensive integration of distributed energy resources into distribution systems requires adequate methodologies to ensure a secure operation according to the smart grid paradigm. In this context, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are an essential infrastructure. This paper presents a conceptual design of a communication and resources management scheme based on an intelligent SCADA with a decentralized, flexible, and intelligent approach, adaptive to the context (context awareness). The methodology is used to support the energy resource management considering all the involved costs, power flows, and electricity prices leading to the network reconfiguration. The methodology also addresses the definition of the information access permissions of each player to each resource. The paper includes a 33-bus network used in a case study that considers an intensive use of distributed energy resources in five distinct implemented operation contexts.

European Union emissions trading scheme impact on the Spanish electricity price during phase II and phase III implementation

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a cornerstone of the European Union's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the influence of CO2 opportunity cost on the Spanish wholesale electricity price. Our sample includes all Phase II of the EU ETS and the first year of Phase III implementation, from January 2008 to December 2013. A vector error correction model (VECM) is applied to estimate not only long-run equilibrium relations, but also short-run interactions between the electricity price and the fuel (natural gas and coal) and carbon prices. The four commodities prices are modeled as joint endogenous variables with air temperature and renewable energy as exogenous variables. We found a long-run relationship (cointegration) between electricity price, carbon price, and fuel prices. By estimating the dynamic pass-through of carbon price into electricity price for different periods of our sample, it is possible to observe the weakening of the link between carbon and electricity prices as a result from the collapse on CO2 prices, therefore compromising the efficacy of the system to reach proposed environmental goals. This conclusion is in line with the need to shape new policies within the framework of the EU ETS that prevent excessive low prices for carbon over extended periods of time.

An intelligent clustering scheme for distributed intrusion detection in vehicular cloud computing

In recent years, vehicular cloud computing (VCC) has emerged as a new technology which is being used in wide range of applications in the area of multimedia-based healthcare applications. In VCC, vehicles act as the intelligent machines which can be used to collect and transfer the healthcare data to the local, or global sites for storage, and computation purposes, as vehicles are having comparatively limited storage and computation power for handling the multimedia files. However, due to the dynamic changes in topology, and lack of centralized monitoring points, this information can be altered, or misused. These security breaches can result in disastrous consequences such as-loss of life or financial frauds. Therefore, to address these issues, a learning automata-assisted distributive intrusion detection system is designed based on clustering. Although there exist a number of applications where the proposed scheme can be applied but, we have taken multimedia-based healthcare application for illustration of the proposed scheme. In the proposed scheme, learning automata (LA) are assumed to be stationed on the vehicles which take clustering decisions intelligently and select one of the members of the group as a cluster-head. The cluster-heads then assist in efficient storage and dissemination of information through a cloud-based infrastructure. To secure the proposed scheme from malicious activities, standard cryptographic technique is used in which the auotmaton learns from the environment and takes adaptive decisions for identification of any malicious activity in the network. A reward and penalty is given by the stochastic environment where an automaton performs its actions so that it updates its action probability vector after getting the reinforcement signal from the environment. The proposed scheme was evaluated using extensive simulations on ns-2 with SUMO. The results obtained indicate that the proposed scheme yields an improvement of 10 % in detection rate of malicious nodes when compared with the existing schemes.

An efficient numerical scheme for solving multi-dimensional fractional optimal control problems with a quadratic performance index

The shifted Legendre orthogonal polynomials are used for the numerical solution of a new formulation for the multi-dimensional fractional optimal control problem (M-DFOCP) with a quadratic performance index. The fractional derivatives are described in the Caputo sense. The Lagrange multiplier method for the constrained extremum and the operational matrix of fractional integrals are used together with the help of the properties of the shifted Legendre orthonormal polynomials. The method reduces the M-DFOCP to a simpler problem that consists of solving a system of algebraic equations. For confirming the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed scheme, some test problems are implemented with their approximate solutions.

Persistence of Vectobac WDG and Metoprag S-2G against Aedes aegypti larvae using a semi-field bioassay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Persistence of Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis (Vectobac WDG) and methoprene (Metoprag S-2G) was evaluated against Aedes aegypti late third instar larvae of the Rockefeller strain in a semi-field bioassay. Tests were performed in Rio de Janeiro, using containers made of plastic, iron, concrete and asbestos, placed in a shaded area. The formulations used were 0.2 g of Vectobac-WDG and 1g of Metoprag S-2G per 100 liters of water in house storage containers. Vectobac WDG was tested twice, in March and in April/May, 2002. In March (temperature ranging from 21.5 to 39.3 ºC), 70-100% mortality was observed by the 7th day and declined abruptly thereafter. No significant differences were observed among the container types. In April/May (18.6 to 34.8 ºC) mortality was higher than 70% to 30-36 days in all cases, except in the iron container (40% mortality on the 12th day). Metoprag S-2G was evaluated in April/May, 2002, and induced mortality higher than 70% up to 15 days in the plastic and iron containers and only seven days in the concrete container. In the asbestos container, maximal mortality was achieved on day one post-treatment (66%). Our results point to a low persistence of both formulations in the weather conditions of Rio de Janeiro.

Semi-Partitioned Scheduling of Fork-Join Tasks using Work-Stealing

13th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC 2015). 21 to 23, Oct, 2015, Session W1-A: Multiprocessing and Multicore Architectures. Porto, Portugal.

On the Sensor Classification Scheme of Robotic Manipulators

This paper analyzes the signals captured during impacts and vibrations of a mechanical manipulator. The Fourier Transform of eighteen different signals are calculated and approximated by trendlines based on a power law formula. A sensor classification scheme based on the frequency spectrum behavior is presented.

Towards the Combination of Work-Stealing and Semi-Partitioned Scheduling for Parallel Tasks

Paper/Poster presented in Work in Progress Session, 28th GI/ITG International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems (ARCS 2015). 24 to 26, Mar, 2015. Porto, Portugal.