An online platform for real-time sensor data collection, visualization, and sharing

Sharing sensor data between multiple devices and users can be^challenging for naive users, and requires knowledge of programming and use of different communication channels and/or development tools, leading to non uniform solutions. This thesis proposes a system that allows users to access sensors, share sensor data and manage sensors. With this system we intent to manage devices, share sensor data, compare sensor data, and set policies to act based on rules. This thesis presents the design and implementation of the system, as well as three case studies of its use.

Hudumia: a platform to support spontaneous volunteers' situational awareness, coordination and safety underemergency scenarios

Spontaneous volunteers always emerge under emergency scenarios and are vital to a successful community response, yet some uncertainty subsists around their role and its inherent acceptance by official entities under emergency scenarios. In our research we have identified that most of the spontaneous volunteers do have none or little support from official entities, hence they end up facing critical problems as situational awareness, safety instructions and guidance, motivation and group organization. We argue that official entities still play a crucial role and should change some of their behaviors regarding spontaneous volunteerism. We aim with this thesis to design a software architecture and a framework in order to implement a solution to support spontaneous volunteerism under emergency scenarios along with a set of guidelines for the design of open information management systems. Together with the collaboration from both citizens and emergency professionals we have been able to attain several important contributions, as the clear identification of the roles taken by both spontaneous volunteers and professionals, the importance of volunteerism in overall community response and the role which open collaborative information management systems have in the community volunteering efforts. These conclusions have directly supported the design guidelines of our software solution proposal. In what concerns to methodology, we first review literature on technologies support to emergencies and how spontaneous volunteers actually challenge these systems. Following, we have performed a field research where we have observed that the emerging of spontaneous volunteer’s efforts imposes new requirements for the design of such systems, which leaded to the creation of a cluster of design guidelines that supported our software solution proposal to address the volunteers’ requirements. Finally we have architected and developed an online open information management tool which has been evaluated via usability engineering methods, usability user tests and heuristic evaluations.

Breadcrumbs: location and context aware mobile platform for story sharing

With the current proliferation of sensor equipped mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, location aware services are expanding beyond the mere efficiency and work related needs of users, evolving in order to incorporate fun, culture and the social life of users. Today people on the move have more and more connectivity and are expected to be able to communicate with their usual and familiar social networks. That means communications not only with their peers and colleagues, friends and family but also with unknown people that might share their interests, curiosities or happen to use the same social network. Through social networks, location aware blogging, cultural mobile applications relevant information is now available at specific geographical locations and open to feedback and conversations among friends as well as strangers. In fact, nowadays smartphone technologies aloud users to post and retrieve content while on the move, often relating to specific physical landmarks or locations, engaging and being engaged in conversations with strangers as much as their own social network. The use of such technologies and applications while on the move can often lead people to serendipitous discoveries and interactions. Throughout our thesis we are engaging on a two folded investigation: how can we foster and support serendipitous discoveries and what are the best interfaces for it? In fact, to read and write content while on the move is a cognitively intensive task. While the map serves the function of orienting the user, it also absorbs most of the user’s concentration. In order to address this kind of cognitive overload issue with Breadcrumbs we propose a 360 degrees interface that enables the user to find content around them by means of scanning the surrounding space with the mobile device. By using a loose metaphor of a periscope, harnessing the power of the smartphone sensors we designed an interactive interface capable of detecting content around the users and display it in the form of 2 dimensional bubbles which diameter depends on their distance from the users. Users will navigate the space in relation to the content that they are curious about, rather than in relation to the traditional geographical map. Through this model we envisage alleviating a certain cognitive overload generated by having to continuously confront a two dimensional map with the real three dimensional space surrounding the user, but also use the content as a navigational filter. Furthermore this alternative mean of navigating space might bring serendipitous discovery about places that user where not aware of or intending to reach. We hence conclude our thesis with the evaluation of the Breadcrumbs application and the comparison of the 360 degrees interface with a traditional 2 dimensional map displayed on the devise screen. Results from the evaluation are compiled in findings and insights for future use in designing and developing context aware mobile applications.

JCML: A specification language for the runtime verification of Java Card programs

COSTA, Umberto Souza; MOREIRA, Anamaria Martins; MUSICANTE, Matin A.; SOUZA NETO, Plácido A. JCML: A specification language for the runtime verification of Java Card programs. Science of Computer Programming. [S.l]: [s.n], 2010.

Specification and Runtime Verification of Java Card Programs

COSTA, Umberto Souza da; MOREIRA, Anamaria Martins; MUSICANTE, Martin A. Specification and Runtime Verification of Java Card Programs. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. [S.l:s.n], 2009.

Qualidade física e fisiológica de sementes da leguminosa forrageira Macrotyloma axillare cv. Java

É de interesse prático, quando se dispõe de diferentes lotes de sementes, conhecer a qualidade fisiológica intrínseca a cada um. Objetivou-se determinar a qualidade fisiológica de lotes de sementes da leguminosa forrageira tropical, Macrotyloma axillare cv. Java, com utilização de diferentes metodologias para realização dos testes germinação e vigor. Determinou-se a pureza física dos lotes, o peso de mil sementes, a germinação com e sem escarificação (TG) e o vigor (índice de velocidade de germinação (IVG), primeira contagem, envelhecimento acelerado e condutividade elétrica) de três lotes de sementes. Diferenças na qualidade fisiológica inicial de sementes escarificadas foram observadas pelo teste de germinação. Pelos resultados dos testes de primeira contagem e IVG não foi possível detectar diferenças na qualidade fisiológica das sementes; o envelhecimento acelerado das sementes escarificadas pode ser realizado a 41º C por 72 horas ou a 45º C por 48 horas; o teste de condutividade elétrica mostrou-se adequado para diferenciar os lotes, a partir de 48 horas de embebição.

Uma perspectiva de extensão do modelo de aceitação de tecnologia para explicar o uso de linguagens de desenvolvimento WEB: pesquisa com desenvolvedores Pyton e Java

The spread of the Web boosted the dissemination of Information Systems (IS) based on the Web. In order to support the implementation of these systems, several technologies came up or evolved with this purpose, namely the programming languages. The Technology Acceptance Model TAM (Davis, 1986) was conceived aiming to evaluate the acceptance/use of information technologies by their users. A lot of studies and many applications have used the TAM, however, in the literature it was not found a mention of the use of such model related to the use of programming languages. This study aims to investigate which factors influence the use of programming languages on the development of Web systems by their developers, applying an extension of the TAM, proposed in this work. To do so, a research was done with Web developers in two Yahoo groups: java-br and python-brasil, where 26 Java questionnaires and 39 Python questionnaires were fully answered. The questionnaire had general questions and questions which measured intrinsic and extrinsic factors of the programming languages, the perceived usefulness, the perceived ease of use, the attitude toward the using and the programming language use. Most of the respondents were men, graduate, between 20 and 30 years old, working in the southeast and south regions. The research was descriptive in the sense of its objectives. Statistical tools, descriptive statistics, main components and linear regression analysis were used for the data analysis. The foremost research results were: Java and Python have machine independence, extensibility, generality and reliability; Java and Python are more used by corporations and international organizations than supported by the government or educational institutions; there are more Java programmers than Python programmers; the perceived usefulness is influenced by the perceived ease of use; the generality and the extensibility are intrinsic factors of programming languages which influence the perceived ease of use; the perceived ease of use influences the attitude toward the using of the programming language

Thermochronology of the South American platform in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, through apatite fission tracks

The fission-track method (FTM) in apatite was applied to 45 samples collected in the Serra da Mantiqueira (Mantiqueira mountain range), the Serra do Mar (Mar mountain range), regions next to these mountain ranges and the coastal region between Ubatuba and Santos in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, to study the thermochronology of the South American Platform in southeast Brazil and its influence on Santos and Campos basins. The data presented in this work complement the previously presented data on the same region (Tello Saenz et al., 2003. J. S. Am. Earth Sci. 15, 765-774) with 31 new samples analyzed. The weighted mean of the corrected ages from high Mantiqueira (around 1000 m), (121 +/- 6) Ma, coincides with the South Atlantic opening. The fact that its thermal history starts at a relatively low temperature (similar to 80 degrees C) suggests that the age of similar to 120 Ma would be the formation age of Serra da Mantiqueira due to a rapid pulse, in which tracks had no time to be retained at the closure temperature, that is similar to 120 degrees C. The Serra do Mar presents a more complicated thermal history, with several reactivations indicated by the changes in the slope of its cooling curve. The thermal histories obtained in the regions next to these mountain ranges are compatible with the results mentioned above. The Santos Basin has unconformities that agree with changes in the slope thermal histories of the studied region. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Rheological, Mechanical and Adhesive Properties of Surfactant-Containing Systems Designed as a Potential Platform for Topical Drug Delivery

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Simulation Tools for Power Electronics Courses Based on Java Technologies

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Java applets para um software educacional distribuído em eletrônica de potência

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Ensino e orientação para projeto de conversores CC-CC através de aplicativos em java

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

JCML - Java Card Modeling Language: Definição e Implementação

Formal methods should be used to specify and verify on-card software in Java Card applications. Furthermore, Java Card programming style requires runtime verification of all input conditions for all on-card methods, where the main goal is to preserve the data in the card. Design by contract, and in particular, the JML language, are an option for this kind of development and verification, as runtime verification is part of the Design by contract method implemented by JML. However, JML and its currently available tools for runtime verification were not designed with Java Card limitations in mind and are not Java Card compliant. In this thesis, we analyze how much of this situation is really intrinsic of Java Card limitations and how much is just a matter of a complete re-design of JML and its tools. We propose the requirements for a new language which is Java Card compliant and indicate the lines on which a compiler for this language should be built. JCML strips from JML non-Java Card aspects such as concurrency and unsupported types. This would not be enough, however, without a great effort in optimization of the verification code generated by its compiler, as this verification code must run on the card. The JCML compiler, although being much more restricted than the one for JML, is able to generate Java Card compliant verification code for some lightweight specifications. As conclusion, we present a Java Card compliant variant of JML, JCML (Java Card Modeling Language), with a preliminary version of its compiler

BSmart: desenvolvimento rigoroso de aplicações Java Card com base no método formal B

Java Card technology allows the development and execution of small applications embedded in smart cards. A Java Card application is composed of an external card client and of an application in the card that implements the services available to the client by means of an Application Programming Interface (API). Usually, these applications manipulate and store important information, such as cash and confidential data of their owners. Thus, it is necessary to adopt rigor on developing a smart card application to improve its quality and trustworthiness. The use of formal methods on the development of these applications is a way to reach these quality requirements. The B method is one of the many formal methods for system specification. The development in B starts with the functional specification of the system, continues with the application of some optional refinements to the specification and, from the last level of refinement, it is possible to generate code for some programming language. The B formalism has a good tool support and its application to Java Card is adequate since the specification and development of APIs is one of the major applications of B. The BSmart method proposed here aims to promote the rigorous development of Java Card applications up to the generation of its code, based on the refinement of its formal specification described in the B notation. This development is supported by the BSmart tool, that is composed of some programs that automate each stage of the method; and by a library of B modules and Java Card classes that model primitive types, essential Java Card API classes and reusable data structures

JFloat: uma biblioteca de ponto flutuante para a linguagem Java com suporte a arredondamento direcionado

This work presents JFLoat, a software implementation of IEEE-754 standard for binary floating point arithmetic. JFloat was built to provide some features not implemented in Java, specifically directed rounding support. That feature is important for Java-XSC, a project developed in this Department. Also, Java programs should have same portability when using floating point operations, mainly because IEEE-754 specifies that programs should have exactly same behavior on every configuration. However, it was noted that programs using Java native floating point types may be machine and operating system dependent. Also, JFloat is a possible solution to that problem