A calculus for modeling and analyzing conversations in service-oriented computing

Dissertação apresentada para a obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Informática pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Sistema para a monitorização ativa com recurso ao cloud computing

O desenvolvimento de aplicações para dispositivos móveis já não é uma área recente, contudo continua a crescer a um ritmo veloz. É notório o avanço tecnológico dos últimos anos e a crescente popularidade destes dispositivos. Este avanço deve-se não só à grande evolução no que diz respeito às características destes dispositivos, mas também à possibilidade de criar aplicações inovadoras, práticas e passíveis de solucionar os problemas dos utilizadores em geral. Nesse sentido, as necessidades do quotidiano obrigam à implementação de soluções que satisfaçam os utilizadores, e nos dias de hoje, essa satisfação muitas vezes passa pelos dispositivos móveis, que já tem um papel fundamental na vida das pessoas. Atendendo ao aumento do número de raptos de crianças e à insegurança que se verifica nos dias de hoje, as quais dificultam a tarefa de todos os pais/cuidadores que procuraram manter as suas crianças a salvo, é relevante criar uma nova ferramenta capaz de os auxiliar nesta árdua tarefa. A partir desta realidade, e com vista a cumprir os aspetos acima mencionados, surge assim esta dissertação de mestrado. Esta aborda o estudo e implementação efetuados no sentido de desenvolver um sistema de monitorização de crianças. Assim, o objetivo deste projeto passa por desenvolver uma aplicação nativa para Android e um back-end, utilizando um servidor de base de dados NoSQL para o armazenamento da informação, aplicando os conceitos estudados e as tecnologias existentes. A solução tem como principais premissas: ser o mais user-friendly possível, a otimização, a escalabilidade para outras situações (outros tipos de monitorizações) e a aplicação das mais recentes tecnologias. Assim sendo, um dos estudos mais aprofundados nesta dissertação de mestrado está relacionado com as bases de dados NoSQL, dada a sua importância no projeto.

Convergence of Smart Grid ICT architectures for the last mile

The evolution of the electrical grid into a smart grid, allowing user production, storage and exchange of energy, remote control of appliances, and in general optimizations over how the energy is managed and consumed, is also an evolution into a complex Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system. With the goal of promoting an integrated and interoperable smart grid, a number of organizations all over the world started uncoordinated standardization activities, which caused the emergence of a large number of incompatible architectures and standards. There are now new standardization activities which have the goal of organizing existing standards and produce best practices to choose the right approach(es) to be employed in specific smart grid designs. This paper follows the lead of NIST and ETSI/CEN/CENELEC approaches in trying to provide taxonomy of existing solutions; our contribution reviews and relates current ICT state-of-the-art, with the objective of forecasting future trends based on the orientation of current efforts and on relationships between them. The resulting taxonomy provides guidelines for further studies of the architectures, and highlights how the standards in the last mile of the smart grid are converging to common solutions to improve ICT infrastructure interoperability.

Development of paper-based color test-strip for drug detection in aquatic environment: Application to oxytetracycline

The wide use of antibiotics in aquaculture has led to the emergence of resistant microbial species. It should be avoided/minimized by controlling the amount of drug employed in fish farming. For this purpose, the present work proposes test-strip papers aiming at the detection/semi-quantitative determination of organic drugs by visual comparison of color changes, in a similar analytical procedure to that of pH monitoring by universal pH paper. This is done by establishing suitable chemical changes upon cellulose, attributing the paper the ability to react with the organic drug and to produce a color change. Quantitative data is also enabled by taking a picture and applying a suitable mathematical treatment to the color coordinates given by the HSL system used by windows. As proof of concept, this approach was applied to oxytetracycline (OXY), one of the antibiotics frequently used in aquaculture. A bottom-up modification of paper was established, starting by the reaction of the glucose moieties on the paper with 3-triethoxysilylpropylamine (APTES). The so-formed amine layer allowed binding to a metal ion by coordination chemistry, while the metal ion reacted after with the drug to produce a colored compound. The most suitable metals to carry out such modification were selected by bulk studies, and the several stages of the paper modification were optimized to produce an intense color change against the concentration of the drug. The paper strips were applied to the analysis of spiked environmental water, allowing a quantitative determination for OXY concentrations as low as 30 ng/mL. In general, this work provided a simple, method to screen and discriminate tetracycline drugs, in aquaculture, being a promising tool for local, quick and cheap monitoring of drugs.

Investigation on AUTOSAR-Compliant Solutions for Many-Core Architectures

As of today, AUTOSAR is the de facto standard in the automotive industry, providing a common software architec- ture and development process for automotive applications. While this standard is originally written for singlecore operated Elec- tronic Control Units (ECU), new guidelines and recommendations have been added recently to provide support for multicore archi- tectures. This update came as a response to the steady increase of the number and complexity of the software functions embedded in modern vehicles, which call for the computing power of multicore execution environments. In this paper, we enumerate and analyze the design options and the challenges of porting AUTOSAR-based automotive applications onto multicore platforms. In particular, we investigate those options when considering the emerging many- core architectures that provide a more scalable environment than the traditional multicore systems. Such platforms are suitable to enable massive parallel execution, and their design is more suitable for partitioning and isolating the software components.

Distributed Sensing of Fluid Dynamic Phenomena with the XDense Sensor Grid Network

IEEE International Conference on Cyber Physical Systems, Networks and Applications (CPSNA'15), Hong Kong, China.

A Novel Run-Time Monitoring Architecture for Safe and Efficient Inline Monitoring

20th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe 2015 (Ada-Europe 2015), Madrid, Spain.

Sulfadiazine-selective determination in aquaculture environment: Selective potentiometric transduction by neutral or charged ionophores

Solid-contact sensors for the selective screening of sulfadiazine (SDZ) in aquaculture waters are reported. Sensor surfaces were made from PVC membranes doped with tetraphenylporphyrin-manganese(III) chloride, α-cyclodextrin, β-cyclodextrin, or γ-cyclodextrin ionophores that were dispersed in plasticizer. Some membranes also presented a positive or a negatively charged additive. Phorphyrin-based sensors relied on a charged carrier mechanism. They exhibited a near-Nernstian response with slopes of 52 mV decade−1 and detection limits of 3.91 × 10−5 mol L−1. The addition of cationic lipophilic compounds to the membrane originated Nernstian behaviours, with slopes ranging 59.7–62.0 mV decade−1 and wider linear ranges. Cyclodextrin-based sensors acted as neutral carriers. In general, sensors with positively charged additives showed an improved potentiometric performance when compared to those without additive. Some SDZ selective membranes displayed higher slopes and extended linear concentration ranges with an increasing amount of additive (always <100% ionophore). The sensors were independent from the pH of test solutions within 2–7. The sensors displayed fast response, always <15 s. In general, a good discriminating ability was found in real sample environment. The sensors were successfully applied to the fast screening of SDZ in real waters samples from aquaculture fish farms. The method offered the advantages of simplicity, accuracy, and automation feasibility. The sensing membrane may contribute to the development of small devices allowing in locus measurements of sulfadiazine or parent-drugs.

XDense: A Dense Grid Sensor Network for Distributed Feature Extraction

XXXIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores e Sistemas Distribuídos (SBRC 2015). 15 to 19, May, 2015, III Workshop de Comunicação em Sistemas Embarcados Críticos. Vitória, Brasil.

A system model and stack for the parallelization of time-critical applications on many-core architectures

3rd Workshop on High-performance and Real-time Embedded Systems (HIRES 2015). 21, Jan, 2015. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Staphylococcus aureus ampicillin-resistant from the odontological clinic environment

The aim of this research was to evaluate the prevalence of Sthaphylococcus spp. and S. aureus in the odontological clinic environment (air), their production of beta-lactamase and antibacterial susceptibility to the major antibiotics utilized in medical particle. During 12 months of samples collect were isolated 9775 CFU by MSA medium suggesting a high amount of Staphylococcus spp. in the clinic environment which can appear through aerosols. A total of 3149 colonies (32.2%) were suggestive of pathogenic staphylococci. Gram coloration, catalase test, colony-mallow growing on chromogenic medium, and coagulase test confirmed the identity of 44 (0.45%) S. aureus isolates. Of these, 35 isolates (79.5%) showed production of beta-lactamase by CefinaseTM discs and resistance to ampicillin, erythromycin (7 isolates) and tetracycline (1 isolate) suggesting the existence of multiresistant isolates. The evaluation of the oxacillin MIC by Etest® assays showed susceptibility patterns suggesting the inexistence of the mecA gene in chromosomal DNA. These results point out to the need of a larger knowledge on the contamination means and propagation of this microorganism into the odontological clinic.

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.

XDense: A Dense Grid Sensor Network for Distributed Feature Extraction

XXXIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores e Sistemas Distribuídos (SBRC 2015), III Workshop de Comunicação em Sistemas Embarcados Críticos. Vitória, Brasil.