Sistemas de uso e manejo do solo: acúmulo de carbono e atributos físicos

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Produção Vegetal) - FCAV

CompactRIO: advanced data acquisition systems integration in CODAC Core System

Las herramientas de configuración basadas en lenguajes de alto nivel como LabVIEW permiten el desarrollo de sistemas de adquisición de datos basados en hardware reconfigurable FPGA muy complejos en un breve periodo de tiempo. La estandarización del ciclo de diseño hardware/software y la utilización de herramientas como EPICS facilita su integración con la plataforma de adquisición y control ITER CODAC CORE SYSTEM (CCS) basada en Linux. En este proyecto se propondrá una metodología que simplificará el ciclo completo de integración de plataformas novedosas, como cRIO, en las que el funcionamiento del hardware de adquisición puede ser modificado por el usuario para que éste se amolde a sus requisitos específicos. El objetivo principal de este proyecto fin de master es realizar la integración de un sistema cRIO NI9159 y diferentes módulos de E/S analógica y digital en EPICS y en CODAC CORE SYSTEM (CCS). Este último consiste en un conjunto de herramientas software que simplifican la integración de los sistemas de instrumentación y control del experimento ITER. Para cumplir el objetivo se realizarán las siguientes tareas: • Desarrollo de un sistema de adquisición de datos basado en FPGA con la plataforma hardware CompactRIO. En esta tarea se realizará la configuración del sistema y la implementación en LabVIEW para FPGA del hardware necesario para comunicarse con los módulos: NI9205, NI9264, NI9401.NI9477, NI9426, NI9425 y NI9476 • Implementación de un driver software utilizando la metodología de AsynDriver para integración del cRIO con EPICS. Esta tarea requiere definir todos los records necesarios que exige EPICS y crear las interfaces adecuadas que permitirán comunicarse con el hardware. • Implementar la descripción del sistema cRIO y del driver EPICS en el sistema de descripción de plantas de ITER llamado SDD. Esto automatiza la creación de las aplicaciones de EPICS que se denominan IOCs. SUMMARY The configuration tools based in high-level programing languages like LabVIEW allows the development of high complex data acquisition systems based on reconfigurable hardware FPGA in a short time period. The standardization of the hardware/software design cycle and the use of tools like EPICS ease the integration with the data acquisition and control platform of ITER, the CODAC Core System based on Linux. In this project a methodology is proposed in order to simplify the full integration cycle of new platforms like CompactRIO (cRIO), in which the data acquisition functionality can be reconfigured by the user to fits its concrete requirements. The main objective of this MSc final project is to develop the integration of a cRIO NI-9159 and its different analog and digital Input/Output modules with EPICS in a CCS. The CCS consists of a set of software tools that simplifies the integration of instrumentation and control systems in the International Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER) experiment. To achieve such goal the following tasks are carried out: • Development of a DAQ system based on FPGA using the cRIO hardware platform. This task comprehends the configuration of the system and the implementation of the mandatory hardware to communicate to the I/O adapter modules NI9205, NI9264, NI9401, NI9477, NI9426, NI9425 y NI9476 using LabVIEW for FPGA. • Implementation of a software driver using the asynDriver methodology to integrate such cRIO system with EPICS. This task requires the definition of the necessary EPICS records and the creation of the appropriate interfaces that allow the communication with the hardware. • Develop the cRIO system’s description and the EPICS driver in the ITER plant description tool named SDD. This development will automate the creation of EPICS applications, called IOCs.

Egységes kockázatkezelési módszertan kialakítása a villamosenergia-ipari átviteli rendszerirányító társaságnál (Development of an integrated risk management methodology for an electricity transmission system operator (TSO) company)

A felelős vállalatirányítás egyik stratégiai jelentőségű tényezője a vállalati szintű kockázatkezelés, mely napjaink egyik legnagyobb kihívást jelentő területe a vállalatvezetés számára. A hatékony vállalati kockázatkezelés nem valósulhat meg kizárólag az általános, nemzetközi és hazai szakirodalomban megfogalmazott kockázatkezelési alapelvek követése mentén, a kockázatkezelési rendszer kialakítása során figyelembe kell venni mind az iparági, mind az adott vállalatra jellemző sajátosságokat. Mindez különösen fontos egy olyan speciális tevékenységet folytató vállalatnál, mint a villamosenergia-ipari átviteli rendszerirányító társaság (transmission system operator, TSO). A cikkben a magyar villamosenergia-ipari átviteli rendszerirányító társasággal együttműködésben készített kutatás keretében előálló olyan komplex elméleti és gyakorlati keretrendszert mutatnak be a szerzők, mely alapján az átviteli rendszerirányító társaság számára kialakítottak egy új, területenként egységes kockázatkezelési módszertant (fókuszban a kockázatok azonosításának és számszerűsítésének módszertani lépéseivel), mely alkalmas a vállalati szintű kockázati kitettség meghatározására. _______ This study handles one of today’s most challenging areas of enterprise management: the development and introduction of an integrated and efficient risk management system. For companies operating in specific network industries with a dominant market share and a key role in the national economy, such as electricity TSO’s, risk management is of stressed importance. The study introduces an innovative, mathematically and statistically grounded as well as economically reasoned management approach for the identification, individual effect calculation and summation of risk factors. Every building block is customized for the organizational structure and operating environment of the TSO. While the identification phase guarantees all-inclusivity, the calculation phase incorporates expert techniques and Monte Carlo simulation and the summation phase presents an expected combined distribution and value effect of risks on the company’s profit lines based on the previously undiscovered correlations between individual risk factors.

'Movie Recommendation Systems Using An Artificial Immune System'

We apply the Artificial Immune System (AIS)technology to the collaborative Filtering (CF)technology when we build the movie recommendation system. Two different affinity measure algorithms of AIS, Kendall tau and Weighted Kappa, are used to calculate the correlation coefficients for this movie recommendation system. From the testing we think that Weighted Kappa is more suitable than Kendall tau for movie problems.

'Movie Recommendation Systems Using An Artificial Immune System'

We apply the Artificial Immune System (AIS)technology to the collaborative Filtering (CF)technology when we build the movie recommendation system. Two different affinity measure algorithms of AIS, Kendall tau and Weighted Kappa, are used to calculate the correlation coefficients for this movie recommendation system. From the testing we think that Weighted Kappa is more suitable than Kendall tau for movie problems.

Asset Management: Identifying and Evaluating our Roadway System

Historically SCDOT ranks in the top 10 each year for highway conditions and cost-effectiveness as rated by the Reason Foundation. With billions of dollars invested and billions to be invested it makes sense to invest the public's tax dollars as wisely as possible. Therefore, assessing what we have or better yet what condition what we have is in can be vital to public safety and setting priorities. The focus of this project is on the maintenance responsibility of Roadway Inspection as outlined in SCDOT Engineering Directive Memorandum #8. This memorandum is a portion of the way SCDOT provides for the safety of the traveling public and keeps South Carolina's most expensive asset in working order.

Beneath a learning management system: understanding the human information interaction in information systems

Studies on learning management systems have largely been technical in nature with an emphasis on the evaluation of the human computer interaction (HCI) processes in using the LMS. This paper reports a study that evaluates the information interaction processes on an eLearning course used in teaching an applied Statistics course. The eLearning course is used as a synonym for information systems. The study explores issues of missing context in stored information in information systems. Using the semiotic framework as a guide, the researchers evaluated an existing eLearning course with the view to proposing a model for designing improved eLearning courses for future eLearning programmes. In this exploratory study, a survey questionnaire is used to collect data from 160 participants on an eLearning course in Statistics in Applied Climatology. The views of the participants are analysed with a focus on only the human information interaction issues. Using the semiotic framework as a guide, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and social context gaps or problems were identified. The information interactions problems identified include ambiguous instructions, inadequate information, lack of sound, interface design problems among others. These problems affected the quality of new knowledge created by the participants. The researchers thus highlighted the challenges of missing information context when data is stored in an information system. The study concludes by proposing a human information interaction model for improving the information interaction quality issues in the design of eLearning course on learning management platforms and those other information systems.

Rich media content adaptation in e-learning systems

The wide use of e-technologies represents a great opportunity for underserved segments of the population, especially with the aim of reintegrating excluded individuals back into society through education. This is particularly true for people with different types of disabilities who may have difficulties while attending traditional on-site learning programs that are typically based on printed learning resources. The creation and provision of accessible e-learning contents may therefore become a key factor in enabling people with different access needs to enjoy quality learning experiences and services. Another e-learning challenge is represented by m-learning (which stands for mobile learning), which is emerging as a consequence of mobile terminals diffusion and provides the opportunity to browse didactical materials everywhere, outside places that are traditionally devoted to education. Both such situations share the need to access materials in limited conditions and collide with the growing use of rich media in didactical contents, which are designed to be enjoyed without any restriction. Nowadays, Web-based teaching makes great use of multimedia technologies, ranging from Flash animations to prerecorded video-lectures. Rich media in e-learning can offer significant potential in enhancing the learning environment, through helping to increase access to education, enhance the learning experience and support multiple learning styles. Moreover, they can often be used to improve the structure of Web-based courses. These highly variegated and structured contents may significantly improve the quality and the effectiveness of educational activities for learners. For example, rich media contents allow us to describe complex concepts and process flows. Audio and video elements may be utilized to add a “human touch” to distance-learning courses. Finally, real lectures may be recorded and distributed to integrate or enrich on line materials. A confirmation of the advantages of these approaches can be seen in the exponential growth of video-lecture availability on the net, due to the ease of recording and delivering activities which take place in a traditional classroom. Furthermore, the wide use of assistive technologies for learners with disabilities injects new life into e-learning systems. E-learning allows distance and flexible educational activities, thus helping disabled learners to access resources which would otherwise present significant barriers for them. For instance, students with visual impairments have difficulties in reading traditional visual materials, deaf learners have trouble in following traditional (spoken) lectures, people with motion disabilities have problems in attending on-site programs. As already mentioned, the use of wireless technologies and pervasive computing may really enhance the educational learner experience by offering mobile e-learning services that can be accessed by handheld devices. This new paradigm of educational content distribution maximizes the benefits for learners since it enables users to overcome constraints imposed by the surrounding environment. While certainly helpful for users without disabilities, we believe that the use of newmobile technologies may also become a fundamental tool for impaired learners, since it frees them from sitting in front of a PC. In this way, educational activities can be enjoyed by all the users, without hindrance, thus increasing the social inclusion of non-typical learners. While the provision of fully accessible and portable video-lectures may be extremely useful for students, it is widely recognized that structuring and managing rich media contents for mobile learning services are complex and expensive tasks. Indeed, major difficulties originate from the basic need to provide a textual equivalent for each media resource composing a rich media Learning Object (LO). Moreover, tests need to be carried out to establish whether a given LO is fully accessible to all kinds of learners. Unfortunately, both these tasks are truly time-consuming processes, depending on the type of contents the teacher is writing and on the authoring tool he/she is using. Due to these difficulties, online LOs are often distributed as partially accessible or totally inaccessible content. Bearing this in mind, this thesis aims to discuss the key issues of a system we have developed to deliver accessible, customized or nomadic learning experiences to learners with different access needs and skills. To reduce the risk of excluding users with particular access capabilities, our system exploits Learning Objects (LOs) which are dynamically adapted and transcoded based on the specific needs of non-typical users and on the barriers that they can encounter in the environment. The basic idea is to dynamically adapt contents, by selecting them from a set of media resources packaged in SCORM-compliant LOs and stored in a self-adapting format. The system schedules and orchestrates a set of transcoding processes based on specific learner needs, so as to produce a customized LO that can be fully enjoyed by any (impaired or mobile) student.

Contextual intelligent load management with ANN adaptive learning module

With the current increase of energy resources prices and environmental concerns intelligent load management systems are gaining more and more importance. This paper concerns a SCADA House Intelligent Management (SHIM) system that includes an optimization module using deterministic and genetic algorithm approaches. SHIM undertakes contextual load management based on the characterization of each situation. SHIM considers available generation resources, load demand, supplier/market electricity price, and consumers’ constraints and preferences. The paper focus on the recently developed learning module which is based on artificial neural networks (ANN). The learning module allows the adjustment of users’ profiles along SHIM lifetime. A case study considering a system with fourteen discrete and four variable loads managed by a SHIM system during five consecutive similar weekends is presented.

Integration of e-learning systems with repositories of learning objects

This paper describes a communication model to integrate repositories of programming problems with other e-Learning software components. The motivation for this work comes from the EduJudge project that aims to connect an existing repository of programming problems to learning management systems. When trying to use the existing repositories of learning objects we realized that they are mainly specialized search engines and lack features for integration with other e-Learning systems. With this model we intend to clarify the main features of a programming problem repository, in order to enable the design and development of software components that use it. The two main points of this model are the definition of programming problems as learning objects and the definition of the core functions exposed by the repository. In both cases, this model follows the existing specifications of the IMS standard and proposes extensions to deal with the special requirements of automatic evaluation and grading of programming exercises. In the definition of programming problems as learning objects we introduced a new schema for meta-data. This schema is used to represent meta-data related to automatic evaluation that cannot be conveniently represented using the standard: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; or the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. In the definition of the core functions we used two different web services flavours - SOAP and REST - and described each function as an operation for each type of interface. We describe also the data types of the arguments of each operation. These data types consist mainly on learning objects and their identifications, but include also usage reports and queries using XQuery.

Integrating the LMS in service oriented e-learning systems

Learning management systems are routinely used for presenting, solving and grading exercises with large classes. However, teachers are constrained to use questions with pre-defined answers, such as multiple-choice, to automatically correct the exercises of their students. Complex exercises cannot be evaluated automatically by the LMS and require the coordination of a set of heterogeneous systems. For instance, programming exercises require a specialized exercise resolution environment and automatic evaluation features, each provided by a different type of system. In this paper, the authors discuss an approach for the coordination of a network of eLearning systems supporting the resolution of exercises. The proposed approach is based on a pivot component embedded in the LMS and has two main roles: 1) provide an exercise resolution environment, and 2) coordinate communication between the LMS and other systems, exposing their functions as web services. The integration of the pivot component in the LMS relies on Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). This paper presents an architecture to coordinate a network of eLearning systems and validate the proposed approach by creating such a network integrated with LMS from two different vendors.

Interoperability of learning objects copyright in the LUISA semantic learning management system

Semantic Web technology is able to provide the required computational semantics for interoperability of learning resources across different Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Object Repositories (LOR). The EU research project LUISA (Learning Content Management System Using Innovative Semantic Web Services Architecture) addresses the development of a reference semantic architecture for the major challenges in the search, interchange and delivery of learning objects in a service-oriented context. One of the key issues, highlighted in this paper, is Digital Rights Management (DRM) interoperability. A Semantic Web approach to copyright management has been followed, which places a Copyright Ontology as the key component for interoperability among existing DRM systems and other licensing schemes like Creative Commons. Moreover, Semantic Web tools like reasoners, rule engines and semantic queries facilitate the implementation of an interoperable copyright management component in the LUISA architecture.