Recommending media content based on machine learning methods

Disserta����o para obten����o do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Inform��tica

The clothing industry as a globalized sector: implications for work organisation, quality of work and job content

The clothing sector in several countries is still seen, in many aspects as a traditional sector with some average characteristics, nevertheless is a very important sector in terms of labour market. Globalization and de-localization are having a strong impact in the organisation of work and in occupational careers. Very few companies are able to keep a position in the market without changes in organisation of work and workers, founding different ways to face this reality according to size, capital and position. We could find two main paths: one where companies outsource production to another territory, close and/ or dismissal the workers; other path, where companies up skilled their capacities. This paper will present some results from the European project WORKS ��� Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society (6th Framework Programme), focusing the Portuguese case studies in several clothing companies in a comparative analysis with some other European countrie

Brokerage Platform for Media Content Recommendation

Near real time media content personalisation is nowadays a major challenge involving media content sources, distributors and viewers. This paper describes an approach to seamless recommendation, negotiation and transaction of personalised media content. It adopts an integrated view of the problem by proposing, on the business-to-business (B2B) side, a brokerage platform to negotiate the media items on behalf of the media content distributors and sources, providing viewers, on the business-to-consumer (B2C) side, with a personalised electronic programme guide (EPG) containing the set of recommended items after negotiation. In this setup, when a viewer connects, the distributor looks up and invites sources to negotiate the contents of the viewer personal EPG. The proposed multi-agent brokerage platform is structured in four layers, modelling the registration, service agreement, partner lookup, invitation as well as item recommendation, negotiation and transaction stages of the B2B processes. The recommendation service is a rule-based switch hybrid filter, including six collaborative and two content-based filters. The rule-based system selects, at runtime, the filter(s) to apply as well as the final set of recommendations to present. The filter selection is based on the data available, ranging from the history of items watched to the ratings and/or tags assigned to the items by the viewer. Additionally, this module implements (i) a novel item stereotype to represent newly arrived items, (ii) a standard user stereotype for new users, (iii) a novel passive user tag cloud stereotype for socially passive users, and (iv) a new content-based filter named the collinearity and proximity similarity (CPS). At the end of the paper, we present off-line results and a case study describing how the recommendation service works. The proposed system provides, to our knowledge, an excellent holistic solution to the problem of recommending multimedia contents.

Coordinated Maneuver for Gradient Search Using Multiple AUV's

OCEANS 2003. Proceedings (Volume:1 )

Hybrid Maneuver for Gradient Search with Multiple Coordinated AUVs

This work presents a hybrid maneuver for gradient search with multiple AUV's. The mission consists in following a gradient field in order to locate the source of a hydrothermal vent or underwater freshwater source. The formation gradient search exploits the environment structuring by the phenomena to be studied. The ingredients for coordination are the payload data collected by each vehicle and their knowledge of the behaviour of other vehicles and detected formation distortions.

Platform for Smart Car to Car Content Delivery: Results of CISTER Research Centre within CarCoDe project

Poster presented in Redes de Veiculos nas sociedades do futuro (RVSF 2015). 3, Jun, 2015. Castelo Branco, Portugal.

Screening for pulmonary tuberculosis in Teres��polis, RJ, Brazil: the search for respiratory symptomatic patients in emergency service of "Hospital das Cl��nicas de Teres��polis Costantino Ottaviano, Funda����o Educacional Serra dos ��rg��os"

The aim of the present study was to investigate the detection percentage of tuberculosis among patients that are respiratory symptomatic (TB suspects). In this work, we present the preliminary results of research carried out at "Hospital das Cl��nicas de Teres��polis Costantino Ottaviano da Funda����o Educacional Serra dos ��rg��os (FESO)" from November 2003 to April 2004. Among the 40 respiratory symptomatic individuals identified and referred to the Tuberculosis Control Program in Teres��polis, two (5.0%) were characterized as smear-positive. These results confirm reports in the literature and underscore the need for and importance of this strategy.

Two divergent ways to manage HR and to get to the top: an exploratory study in micro firms

Aim of the paper: The purpose of this paper is to examine human resources management practices (HRM practices) in small firms and to improve the understanding of the relationship between this kind of practices and business growth. This exploratory study is based on the resource-based view of the firm and empirical work carried out in two small firms by relating HRM practices with the firms��� results. Contribution to the literature: This is an in-depth study of HRM practices and its impact on performance growth in micro firms, isolating and controlling for most of the contextual and internal variables considered in the literature that relate HRM to growth. Firm growth analysis was broadened by the use of several dependent variables: employment growth and operational and financial performance growth. Some hypotheses for further research in identifying HRM practices in small business and its relation with firm growth are suggested. Methodology: Case study methodology was used to study two firms. The techniques used to collect data were semi-structured interviews to the owner and all the employees, unstructured observation at the firms��� facilities (during two days), entrepreneur profile definition (survey answer) and document data collection (on demographic characterization and performance results). Data was analyzed through content analysis methodology, and categories derived from the interviews��� protocols and literature. Results and implications: Results revealed that despite the firms��� organizational characteristics similarities, they differ significantly in owners��� motivation to grow, HRM practices and organizational performance and growth. Future studies should pay special attention to owner willingness to grow, to firms��� years of experience in business, to staff���s years of experience in their field of work and turnover. HRM practices in micro/small firms should be better defined and characterized. The external image of management posture relating to longitudinal financial results and growth should also be explored.

Development of an Unmanned Capsule for large-scale maritime search and rescue

This paper describes the development and testing of a robotic capsule for search and rescue operations at sea. This capsule is able to operate autonomously or remotely controlled, is transported and deployed by a larger USV into a determined disaster area and is used to carry a life raft and inflate it close to survivors in large-scale maritime disasters. The ultimate goal of this development is to endow search and rescue teams with tools that extend their operational capability in scenarios with adverse atmospheric or maritime conditions.

Effects of Soil Compaction and Organic Carbon Content on Preferential Flow in Loamy Field Soils

Abstract: Preferential flow and transport through macropores affect plant water use efficiency and enhance leaching of agrochemicals and the transport of colloids, thereby increasing the risk for contamination of groundwater resources. The effects of soil compaction, expressed in terms of bulk density (BD), and organic carbon (OC) content on preferential flow and transport were investigated using 150 undisturbed soil cores sampled from 15 �� 15���m grids on two field sites. Both fields had loamy textures, but one site had significantly higher OC content. Leaching experiments were conducted in each core by applying a constant irrigation rate of 10 mm h���1 with a pulse application of tritium tracer. Five percent tritium mass arrival times and apparent dispersivities were derived from each of the tracer breakthrough curves and correlated with texture, OC content, and BD to assess the spatial distribution of preferential flow and transport across the investigated fields. Soils from both fields showed strong positive correlations between BD and preferential flow. Interestingly, the relationships between BD and tracer transport characteristics were markedly different for the two fields, although the relationship between BD and macroporosity was nearly identical. The difference was likely caused by the higher contents of fines and OC at one of the fields leading to stronger aggregation, smaller matrix permeability, and a more pronounced pipe-like pore system with well-aligned macropores.

From Mind to Body: Is Mental Practice Effective on Strength Gains? A Meta-Analysis

Mental practice is an internal reproduction of a motor act (whose intention is to promote learning and improving motor skills). Some studies have shown that other cognitive strategies also increase the strength and muscular resistance in healthy people by the enhancement of the performance during dynamic tasks. Mental training sessions may be primordial to improving muscle strength in different subjects. The aim of this study was to systematically review and meta-analiyze studies that assessed whether mental practice is effective in improving muscular strength. We conducted an electronic-computed search in Pub-Med/Medline and ISI Web of Knowledge, Scielo and manual searchs, searching papers written in English between 1991 and 2014. There were 44 studies in Pub-Med/Medline, 631 in ISI Web of Knowledge, 11 in Scielo and 3 in manual searchs databases. After exclusion of studies for duplicate, unrelated to the topic by title and summary, different samples and methodologies, a meta-analysis of 4 studies was carried out to identify the dose-response relationship. We did not find evidence that mental practice is effective in increasing strength in healthy individuals. There is no evidence that mental practice alone can be effective to induce strength gains or to optimize the training effects.

Tuning metadata for better movie content-based recommendation systems

The increasing number of television channels, on-demand services and online content, is expected to contribute to a better quality of experience for a costumer of such a service. However, the lack of efficient methods for finding the right content, adapted to personal interests, may lead to a progressive loss of clients. In such a scenario, recommendation systems are seen as a tool that can fill this gap and contribute to the loyalty of users. Multimedia content, namely films and television programmes are usually described using a set of metadata elements that include the title, a genre, the date of production, and the list of directors and actors. This paper provides a deep study on how the use of different metadata elements can contribute to increase the quality of the recommendations suggested. The analysis is conducted using Netflix and Movielens datasets and aspects such as the granularity of the descriptions, the accuracy metric used and the sparsity of the data are taken into account. Comparisons with collaborative approaches are also presented.

A Multi���Agent Brokerage Platform for Media Content Recommendation

Near real time media content personalisation is nowadays a major challenge involving media content sources, distributors and viewers. This paper describes an approach to seamless recommendation, negotiation and transaction of personalised media content. It adopts an integrated view of the problem by proposing, on the business-to-business (B2B) side, a brokerage platform to negotiate the media items on behalf of the media content distributors and sources, providing viewers, on the business-to-consumer (B2C) side, with a personalised electronic programme guide (EPG) containing the set of recommended items after negotiation. In this setup, when a viewer connects, the distributor looks up and invites sources to negotiate the contents of the viewer personal EPG. The proposed multi-agent brokerage platform is structured in four layers, modelling the registration, service agreement, partner lookup, invitation as well as item recommendation, negotiation and transaction stages of the B2B processes. The recommendation service is a rule-based switch hybrid filter, including six collaborative and two content-based filters. The rule-based system selects, at runtime, the filter(s) to apply as well as the final set of recommendations to present. The filter selection is based on the data available, ranging from the history of items watched to the ratings and/or tags assigned to the items by the viewer. Additionally, this module implements (i) a novel item stereotype to represent newly arrived items, (ii) a standard user stereotype for new users, (iii) a novel passive user tag cloud stereotype for socially passive users, and (iv) a new content-based filter named the collinearity and proximity similarity (CPS). At the end of the paper, we present off-line results and a case study describing how the recommendation service works. The proposed system provides, to our knowledge, an excellent holistic solution to the problem of recommending multimedia contents.

Chronic hepatitis C: hepatic iron content does not correlate with response to antiviral therapy

The complex interaction between hepatitis C virus infection, iron homeostasis and the response to antiviral treatment remains controversial. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of hepatic iron concentration (HIC) on the sustained virological response (SVR) to antiviral therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C. A total of 50 patients who underwent pretreatment liver biopsy with assessment of HIC by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy and were subsequently submitted to antiviral treatment with interferon/peginterferon and ribavirin were included in the study. Patients with alcoholism, history of multiple blood transfusion, chronic kidney disease, hemolytic anemia and parenteral iron therapy were excluded. The iron related markers and HIC were compared between those who achieved an SVR and non-responders (NR) patients. The mean age was 45.7 years and the proportion of patients' gender was not different between SVR and NR patients. The median serum iron was 138 and 134 ��g/dL (p = 0.9), the median serum ferritin was 152.5 and 179.5 ng/mL (p = 0.87) and the median HIC was 9.9 and 8.2 ��mol/g dry tissue (p = 0.51), for SVR and NR patients, respectively. Thus, hepatic iron concentration, determined by a reliable quantitative method, was not a negative predictive factor of SVR in patients with chronic hepatitis C presenting mild to moderate hepatic iron accumulation.

An��lise da estrutura e da fun����o da prote��na morfogen��tica RodZ de Bacillus subtilis

Resumo: RodZ �� um componente do sistema morfogen��tico das c��lulas bacterianas. �� uma prote��na transmembranar que localiza em bandas ao longo do eixo longitudinal da c��lula. Em Bacillus subtilis, RodZ consiste numa por����o citoplasm��tica, RodZn, e em uma parte extra-citoplasm��tica, RodZc. RodZn cont��m um dom��nio em helixturn- helix (HTH), enquanto que RodZc pode ser dividido num dom��nio coiled-coil e num dom��nio terminal C, de fun����o desconhecida. Um segmento transmembranar (TM) ��nico separa RodZn de RodZc. A elimina����o de rodZ causa alongamento do nucle��ide e leva �� produ����o de c��lulas polares nucleadas. Aqui, mostramos que RodZn �� estruturado, est��vel e em h��lice ��. Descobrimos que as substitui����es Y32A e L33A na suposta h��lice de reconhecimento (���3) do motivo HTH, bem como as substitui����es Y49A e F53A, fora do motivo HTH (���4), causam divis��o assim��trica, mas apenas as ��ltimas levam �� deslocaliza����o sub-celular de RodZ. Sugerimos que as h��lices ���3 e ���4 s��o utilizadas para uma interac����o prote��na-prote��na ou prote��na- DNA essencial para divis��o celular enquanto que ���4 deve contactar um componente do citosqueleto, possivelmente MreB, uma vez que a correcta localiza����o sub-celular de RodZ depende desta prote��na. Em todos os mutantes as c��lulas polares s��o anucleadas, pelo que conclu��mos que o alongamento do nucle��ide n��o �� um pr��requisito para divis��o assim��trica. RodZc �� largamente n��o estruturado mas com conte��do de folha ���, sendo estabilizado pelo dom��nio coiled-coil. Mostramos uma rela����o hom��loga entre RodZc e a bomba de transporte Na+/Ca2+ NCX1 e identific��mos dois res��duos no dom��nio C, G265 e N275, essenciais para a manuten����o da forma celular. Estes res��duos fazem parte de um motivo em gancho que pode actuar como um local de interac����o com um ligando desconhecido. RodZn e RodZc s��o monom��ricos em solu����o. Contudo, na membrana, RodZ interage consigo pr��pria num sistema de dois h��bridos (Split-Ubiquitin) em levedura, sugerindo que possa formar mult��meros in vivo.-----------ABSTRACT: RodZ is a transmembrane component of the bacterial core morphogenic apparatus. RodZ localizes in bands long the longitudinal axis of the cell, and it is though to functionally link the cell wall to the actin cytoskeleton. In Bacillus subtilis, RodZ consists of a cytoplasmic moiety, RodZn, and an extracytoplasmic moiety, RodZc. RodZn contains a predicted helix-turn-helix domain, whereas RodZc is thought to contain a coiled-coil region and a terminal C domain of unknown function. A single transmembrane domain separates RodZn from RodZc. Deletion of rodZ causes elongation of the nucleoid and leads to the production of polar minicells containing DNA. Here, we have studied the structure and function of RodZn and RodZc. We show that RodZn is a stable, folded, ���-helical domain. We discovered that the Y32A and L33A substitutions within the presumptive recognition helix (���3) of the HTH motif, as well as the Y49A and F53A substitutions outside of the HTH motif (in ���4) cause asymmetric cell division. However, only the substitutions in ���4 cause sub-celular delocalization of RodZ. We suggest that ���3 and ���4 are used for a protein-protein or protein-DNA interaction important for cell division, whereas ���4 is likely to contact a cytoskeletal component, presumably MreB. The polar cells formed by all the mutants are anucleate. We conclude that nucleoid elongation is not a prerequisite for asymmetric division. RodZc appears to be a largely unstructured domain, with some ���-sheet content, and is stabilized by the coiled-coil region. We show a homology relationship between RodZc and the NCX1 Na+/Ca2+ transporter and we found two residues within the C domain, G265 and N275, that are important for cell shape determination. These residues are predicted to be essential determinants of a claw-like motif, which may act as a binding site for an unknown ligand. Both the isolated RodZn and RodZc proteins are monomeric in solution. However, because full-length RodZ interacts with itself in a split-ubiquitin yeast two-hybrid assay, we suggest that it may dimerize or form higher order multimers in vivo.