Fuzzy angel: uma arquitetura distribuída de telemedicina para monitoramento de pacientes com esclerose lateral amiotrófica

The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive muscle weakness that leads the patient to death, usually due to respiratory complications. Thus, as the disease progresses the patient will require noninvasive ventilation (NIV) and constant monitoring. This paper presents a distributed architecture for homecare monitoring of nocturnal NIV in patients with ALS. The implementation of this architecture used single board computers and mobile devices placed in patient’s homes, to display alert messages for caregivers and a web server for remote monitoring by the healthcare staff. The architecture used a software based on fuzzy logic and computer vision to capture data from a mechanical ventilator screen and generate alert messages with instructions for caregivers. The monitoring was performed on 29 patients for 7 con-tinuous hours daily during 5 days generating a total of 126000 samples for each variable monitored at a sampling rate of one sample per second. The system was evaluated regarding the rate of hits for character recognition and its correction through an algorithm for the detection and correction of errors. Furthermore, a healthcare team evaluated regarding the time intervals at which the alert messages were generated and the correctness of such messages. Thus, the system showed an average hit rate of 98.72%, and in the worst case 98.39%. As for the message to be generated, the system also agreed 100% to the overall assessment, and there was disagreement in only 2 cases with one of the physician evaluators.

PUBLICIDADE E O POLITICAMENTE CORRETO: INTERDISCURSIVIDADES NA CONSTRUÇÃO SOCIAL DO SENTIDO

Ao que se percebe, paradigmas até então vigentes passam a ser considerados singulares e ditatoriais. Em contrapartida, estabelece-se uma nova acepção, cujo norte é o pensar “politicamente correto”. Entendendo a publicidade como um produto sociocultural, essa pesquisa inicialmente é bibliográfica visando à conceituação e análise de questões inerentes ao seu tema. Com este contexto devidamente apreendido, uma análise pragmática do discurso foi realizada em um corpus de anúncios publicitários veiculados entre 2009 e 2014, no meio televisivo brasileiro de formato aberto. Nossa investigação se concentrou nos modos com que os elementos postulados pelo pensamento politicamente correto vêm sendo incorporados ao gênero publicitário em construções de sentido. Pudemos observar uma tendência de repreensão de determinados grupos a conteúdos publicitários que tocam em temáticas muito específicas, com interpretações marcadas por um alto grau de subjetividade; e o que se busca muitas vezes, através de um empoderamento permitido por nosso contexto atual, é mesmo a supressão de determinadas temáticas dentro da comunicação publicitária.

ADCP current profiles and conductivity and temperature collected at two points of Camarinal Sill, Strait of Gibraltar

The present study addresses the hypothesis that the Western Alborán Gyre in the Alborán Sea (the westernmost Mediterranean basin adjacent to the Strait of Gibraltar) influences the composition of the outflow through the Strait of Gibraltar. The process invoked is that strong and well-developed gyres help to evacuate the Western Mediterranean Deep Water from the Alboran basin, thus increasing its presence in the outflow, whereas weak gyres facilitates the outflow of Levantine and other Intermediate waters. To this aim, in situ observations collected at Camarinal (the main) and Espartel (the westernmost) sills of the Strait have been analyzed along with altimetry data, which were employed to obtain a representative proxy of the strength of the gyre. An encouraging correlation of the expected sign was observed between the time series of potential temperature at Espartel sill, which is show to keep information on the outflow composition, and the proxy of the Western Alborán Gyre, which strongly suggests the correctness of the hypothesis, although the weakness of the involved signals does not allow for drawing definitive conclusions.

La voz del otro: rompiendo con la tradición del museo

Existe una actitud predominante en el mundo de los museos según la cual las diversas culturas se presentan y se respetan de manera adecuada, dándose un diálogo efectivo entre los museos y las comunidades culturales a las que sirven. Sin embargo, el presente trabajo disiente de dicha creencia, expone sus motivos, y sugiere una trayectoria por la que los museos pueden acercarse con éxito a tales objetivos. Lo que está en juego aquí es el ethos contemporáneo e histórico de los museos y su concepto de la identidad propia, lo que interfiere con su capacidad para incluir a “los otros”, excepto en sus propios términos. El propósito del museo en este sentido es mantener su voz preeminente y su prerrogativa intelectual en sus comunicaciones con el público al que sirve. La idea de que hay múltiples voces que necesitan ser escuchadas no es un concepto fácil de contemplar para los museos, y un paso positivo en aquella dirección representaría un cambio importante con consecuencias de largo alcance.

Building Support Vector Machines in the Context of Regularised Least Squares

This paper formulates a linear kernel support vector machine (SVM) as a regularized least-squares (RLS) problem. By defining a set of indicator variables of the errors, the solution to the RLS problem is represented as an equation that relates the error vector to the indicator variables. Through partitioning the training set, the SVM weights and bias are expressed analytically using the support vectors. It is also shown how this approach naturally extends to Sums with nonlinear kernels whilst avoiding the need to make use of Lagrange multipliers and duality theory. A fast iterative solution algorithm based on Cholesky decomposition with permutation of the support vectors is suggested as a solution method. The properties of our SVM formulation are analyzed and compared with standard SVMs using a simple example that can be illustrated graphically. The correctness and behavior of our solution (merely derived in the primal context of RLS) is demonstrated using a set of public benchmarking problems for both linear and nonlinear SVMs.

Efficient simulations with electronic open boundaries

We present a reformulation of the hairy-probe method for introducing electronic open boundaries that is appropriate for steady-state calculations involving nonorthogonal atomic basis sets. As a check on the correctness of the method we investigate a perfect atomic wire of Cu atoms and a perfect nonorthogonal chain of H atoms. For both atom chains we find that the conductance has a value of exactly one quantum unit and that this is rather insensitive to the strength of coupling of the probes to the system, provided values of the coupling are of the same order as the mean interlevel spacing of the system without probes. For the Cu atom chain we find in addition that away from the regions with probes attached, the potential in the wire is uniform, while within them it follows a predicted exponential variation with position. We then apply the method to an initial investigation of the suitability of graphene as a contact material for molecular electronics. We perform calculations on a carbon nanoribbon to determine the correct coupling strength of the probes to the graphene and obtain a conductance of about two quantum units corresponding to two bands crossing the Fermi surface. We then compute the current through a benzene molecule attached to two graphene contacts and find only a very weak current because of the disruption of the π conjugation by the covalent bond between the benzene and the graphene. In all cases we find that very strong or weak probe couplings suppress the current.

Algorithmique et complexité des systèmes à compteurs

Réalisé en cotutelle avec l'École normale supérieure de Cachan – Université Paris-Saclay

Iowa Statewide Highway Transportation Study: Trip Data Analysis, Vol. 1-D, 1974

The object of this report is to present the data and conclusions drawn from the analysis of the origin and destination information. Comments on the advisability and correctness of the approach used by Iowa are encouraged.

Type-Aware Programming Models for Distributed Applications

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

Compiling Exceptions Correctly

Exceptions are an important feature of modern programming languages, but their compilation has traditionally been viewed as an advanced topic. In this article we show that the basic method of compiling exceptions using stack unwinding can be explained and verified both simply and precisely, using elementary functional programming techniques. In particular, we develop a compiler for a small language with exceptions, together with a proof of its correctness.

PCA-ANFIS based prediction for water Injection effectiveness cycle in oil fields.

By proposing a numerical based method on PCA-ANFIS(Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System), this paper is focusing on solving the problem of uncertain cycle of water injection in the oilfield. As the dimension of original data is reduced by PCA, ANFIS can be applied for training and testing the new data proposed by this paper. The correctness of PCA-ANFIS models are verified by the injection statistics data collected from 116 wells inside an oilfield, the average absolute error of testing is 1.80 months. With comparison by non-PCA based models which average error is 4.33 months largely ahead of PCA-ANFIS based models, it shows that the testing accuracy has been greatly enhanced by our approach. With the conclusion of the above testing, the PCA-ANFIS method is robust in predicting the effectiveness cycle of water injection which helps oilfield developers to design the water injection scheme.

PCA-FNN based performance prediction for water injection in oilfields.

In order to solve the problem of uncertain cycle of water injection in the oilfield, this paper proposed a numerical method based on PCA-FNN, so that it can forecast the effective cycle of water injection. PCA is used to reduce the dimension of original data, while FNN is applied to train and test the new data. The correctness of PCA-FNN model is verified by the real injection statistics data from 116 wells of an oilfield, the result shows that the average absolute error and relative error of the test are 1.97 months and 10.75% respectively. The testing accuracy has been greatly improved by PCA-FNN model compare with the FNN which has not been processed by PCA and multiple liner regression method. Therefore, PCA-FNN method is reliable to forecast the effectiveness cycle of water injection and it can be used as an decision-making reference method for the engineers.

English: its role as the language of comity in an employment programme for Canadian immigrants.

This study explores the experiences of a culturally and linguistically diverse group of immigrant adult students as they attended a 12-week employment preparation course for newcomers to Canada. The main aim of the course was to equip the immigrants with knowledge and skills, including English for employment purposes, which are necessary to be competitive in the labour market. Using ethnographic methods, mainly participant observation with audio recording, to collect data, this paper analyses the communicative strategies that this group of multilingual speakers and their Canadian teachers deployed to discursively construct a ‘heterotopia’ defined here as ‘intensely affective spaces that redefine the experiential feeling of being and becoming’. Analysis of transcribed audio recordings reveals that despite differences in communication conventions and sociocultural backgrounds, the research participants from Congo, Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Jordan and the Philippines managed to establish a socially cohesive team that emphasises shared relational identity and in-group membership. The findings show how they creatively mobilised previously acquired pragmatic strategies and resources from their L1 to suit the demands of the ongoing interaction in English. It is suggested that language teaching in the context of preparing immigrants for labour market integration entails a pedagogical approach that foregrounds the affordances of English not only as the language of employment but perhaps more importantly as the ‘language of comity’. It is therefore suggested that the teaching of the host country’s language should focus less on grammatical correctness and focus more on providing the adult learners with opportunities to activate existing pragmatic resources and strategies which have to do with establishing rapport and friendly relations.

A functional specification and validation model for networks on chip in the ACL2 logic

International audience

A distributed, compact routing protocol for the Internet

The Internet has grown in size at rapid rates since BGP records began, and continues to do so. This has raised concerns about the scalability of the current BGP routing system, as the routing state at each router in a shortest-path routing protocol will grow at a supra-linearly rate as the network grows. The concerns are that the memory capacity of routers will not be able to keep up with demands, and that the growth of the Internet will become ever more cramped as more and more of the world seeks the benefits of being connected. Compact routing schemes, where the routing state grows only sub-linearly relative to the growth of the network, could solve this problem and ensure that router memory would not be a bottleneck to Internet growth. These schemes trade away shortest-path routing for scalable memory state, by allowing some paths to have a certain amount of bounded “stretch”. The most promising such scheme is Cowen Routing, which can provide scalable, compact routing state for Internet routing, while still providing shortest-path routing to nearly all other nodes, with only slightly stretched paths to a very small subset of the network. Currently, there is no fully distributed form of Cowen Routing that would be practical for the Internet. This dissertation describes a fully distributed and compact protocol for Cowen routing, using the k-core graph decomposition. Previous compact routing work showed the k-core graph decomposition is useful for Cowen Routing on the Internet, but no distributed form existed. This dissertation gives a distributed k-core algorithm optimised to be efficient on dynamic graphs, along with with proofs of its correctness. The performance and efficiency of this distributed k-core algorithm is evaluated on large, Internet AS graphs, with excellent results. This dissertation then goes on to describe a fully distributed and compact Cowen Routing protocol. This protocol being comprised of a landmark selection process for Cowen Routing using the k-core algorithm, with mechanisms to ensure compact state at all times, including at bootstrap; a local cluster routing process, with mechanisms for policy application and control of cluster sizes, ensuring again that state can remain compact at all times; and a landmark routing process is described with a prioritisation mechanism for announcements that ensures compact state at all times.