In Search of the Origins of Modernism: Venice and the Crisis of Classical Architecture in the mid-eighteenth century

This paper attempts to prove that in the years 1735 to 1755 Venice was the birthplace and cradle of Modern architectural theory, generating a major crisis in classical architecture traditionally based on the Vitruvian assumption that it imitates early wooden structures in stone or in marble. According to its rationalist critics such as the Venetian Observant Franciscan friar and architectural theorist Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) and his nineteenth-century followers, classical architecture is singularly deceptive and not true to the nature of materials, in other words, dishonest and fallacious. This questioning did not emanate from practising architects, but from Lodoli himself– a philosopher and educator of the Venetian patriciate – who had not been trained as an architect. The roots of this crisis lay in a new approach to architecture stemming from the new rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment age with its emphasis on reason and universal criticism.

Os médicos do trabalho e a nova organização da saúde e segurança do trabalho : quais as consequências na prática profissional? António de Sousa Uv

RESUMO - Em 1994/1995 o modelo legal de organização de serviços de Medicina do Trabalho instituído na década de 1960 foi substituído por uma nova superestrutura de serviços de Segurança, Higiene e Saúde dos Trabalhadores (SHST) nos locais de trabalho. O presente estudo pretende descrever e analisar em que medida o novo enquadramento jurídico de SHST, iniciado em 1994/1995 e correspondente genericamente à fase da Nova Saúde Ocupacional, foi acompanhado de alterações: (1) na percepção do grau de satisfação dos médicos do trabalho quanto ao seu papel e estatuto profissionais e (2) nas repercussões na sua prática profissional. O presente estudo (empírico, descritivo e comparativo) abrangeu um grupo de médicos do trabalho diplomados pela Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública (n = 153), de quem se recolheu, através de um questionário aplicado em 1993 e 2000, a opinião sobre as mudanças organizacionais da SHST. O papel e funções dos médicos do trabalho e as garantias de exercício profissional não se alteraram de forma importante, tendo a prática profissional da medicina do trabalho na modalidade «medicina do trabalho de empresa» (serviços internos e externos) diminuído, apesar de continuar a ser a forma de exercício predominante dos médicos do trabalho. O tempo dedicado à sua actividade situou-se num valor médio próximo das 20 horas semanais, sem alterações importantes entre 1993 e 2000. Concluiu-se que, no essencial, a publicação da nova legislação sobre organização de cuidados de MT/SHST/SO em 1994 e 1995 não reforçou significativamente as condições gerais de exercício da medicina do trabalho.

Hand gesture recognition system based in computer vision and machine learning

"Lecture notes in computational vision and biomechanics series, ISSN 2212-9391, vol. 19"

Generic system for human-computer gesture interaction: applications on sign language recognition and robotic soccer refereeing

Hand gestures are a powerful way for human communication, with lots of potential applications in the area of human computer interaction. Vision-based hand gesture recognition techniques have many proven advantages compared with traditional devices, giving users a simpler and more natural way to communicate with electronic devices. This work proposes a generic system architecture based in computer vision and machine learning, able to be used with any interface for human-computer interaction. The proposed solution is mainly composed of three modules: a pre-processing and hand segmentation module, a static gesture interface module and a dynamic gesture interface module. The experiments showed that the core of visionbased interaction systems could be the same for all applications and thus facilitate the implementation. For hand posture recognition, a SVM (Support Vector Machine) model was trained and used, able to achieve a final accuracy of 99.4%. For dynamic gestures, an HMM (Hidden Markov Model) model was trained for each gesture that the system could recognize with a final average accuracy of 93.7%. The proposed solution as the advantage of being generic enough with the trained models able to work in real-time, allowing its application in a wide range of human-machine applications. To validate the proposed framework two applications were implemented. The first one is a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language. The second one is an online system able to help a robotic soccer game referee judge a game in real time.

Vision-based portuguese sign language recognition system

Vision-based hand gesture recognition is an area of active current research in computer vision and machine learning. Being a natural way of human interaction, it is an area where many researchers are working on, with the goal of making human computer interaction (HCI) easier and natural, without the need for any extra devices. So, the primary goal of gesture recognition research is to create systems, which can identify specific human gestures and use them, for example, to convey information. For that, vision-based hand gesture interfaces require fast and extremely robust hand detection, and gesture recognition in real time. Hand gestures are a powerful human communication modality with lots of potential applications and in this context we have sign language recognition, the communication method of deaf people. Sign lan- guages are not standard and universal and the grammars differ from country to coun- try. In this paper, a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language is presented and described. Experiments showed that the system was able to reliably recognize the vowels in real-time, with an accuracy of 99.4% with one dataset of fea- tures and an accuracy of 99.6% with a second dataset of features. Although the im- plemented solution was only trained to recognize the vowels, it is easily extended to recognize the rest of the alphabet, being a solid foundation for the development of any vision-based sign language recognition user interface system.

Generic system for human-computer gesture interaction

Hand gestures are a powerful way for human communication, with lots of potential applications in the area of human computer interaction. Vision-based hand gesture recognition techniques have many proven advantages compared with traditional devices, giving users a simpler and more natural way to communicate with electronic devices. This work proposes a generic system architecture based in computer vision and machine learning, able to be used with any interface for humancomputer interaction. The proposed solution is mainly composed of three modules: a pre-processing and hand segmentation module, a static gesture interface module and a dynamic gesture interface module. The experiments showed that the core of vision-based interaction systems can be the same for all applications and thus facilitate the implementation. In order to test the proposed solutions, three prototypes were implemented. For hand posture recognition, a SVM model was trained and used, able to achieve a final accuracy of 99.4%. For dynamic gestures, an HMM model was trained for each gesture that the system could recognize with a final average accuracy of 93.7%. The proposed solution as the advantage of being generic enough with the trained models able to work in real-time, allowing its application in a wide range of human-machine applications.

Fisheries and fishing effort at the Indigenous Reserves Ashaninka/Kaxinawá, river Breu, Brazil/Peru

This article aimed to describe the subsistence fisheries of traditional populations of three ethnic groups, one Ashaninka and two Kaxinawá, lying on the banks of the River Breu. Initially, monitors were trained to fill logbooks with data from fisheries of the villages during an annual cycle (august/1995 august/1996). Based on these data, it was realized an inventory of the most common fish species caught as well as one about the fishing environment. The following results were obtained: i) Indians prefer to use pools, locally known as "poços", for fishing; ii) the most common caught species are the "mandis" (35%, Pimelodidae), armored catfishes (Loricariidae), specially Hypostomus sp. (25%), the "curimatá" (9%, Prochilodus sp.) and the "saburus" (8%, Curimatidae), among others; iii) the fishing gears that lead to a high rate of fishing are the native "tingui", nets and bow and arrows; iv) fisheries are more intensive during summer; v) the fishing effort and their associated factors statistically significant in predicting the catches in the Indian Reserve were f1 = number of fishermen, f2 = (number of fishermen*total time devoted to fishing), f3 = [(number of fishermen)*(total time devoted to fishing)-(the time displacement)] and the factor villages and fishing gears; vi) although almost all the fisheries are done by walking to the fishing places, catches increase when paddle boats are used; and vii) the most active fishermen belong to Kaxinawá tribe.

Mapping numbers onto space in preschool children and adults

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia - Especialidade em Psicologia Experimental e Ciências Cognitivas

Da 'portugalidade' à lusofonia

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Comunicação (Especialidade em Teoria da Cultura)

Monovarietal extra-virgin olive oil classification: a fusion of human sensory attributes and an electronic tongue

Olive oil quality grading is traditionally assessed by human sensory evaluation of positive and negative attributes (olfactory, gustatory, and final olfactorygustatory sensations). However, it is not guaranteed that trained panelist can correctly classify monovarietal extra-virgin olive oils according to olive cultivar. In this work, the potential application of human (sensory panelists) and artificial (electronic tongue) sensory evaluation of olive oils was studied aiming to discriminate eight single-cultivar extra-virgin olive oils. Linear discriminant, partial least square discriminant, and sparse partial least square discriminant analyses were evaluated. The best predictive classification was obtained using linear discriminant analysis with simulated annealing selection algorithm. A low-level data fusion approach (18 electronic tongue signals and nine sensory attributes) enabled 100 % leave-one-out cross-validation correct classification, improving the discrimination capability of the individual use of sensor profiles or sensory attributes (70 and 57 % leave-one-out correct classifications, respectively). So, human sensory evaluation and electronic tongue analysis may be used as complementary tools allowing successful monovarietal olive oil discrimination.

Segmentação do tecido tumoral cerebral em imagens de ressonância magnética

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Biomédica (área de especialização em Eletrónica Médica)

Formação e avaliação de desempenho: contributos para o desenvolvimento profissional

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Educação (Especialidade em Desenvolvimento Curricular)

Hand gesture recognition system based in computer vision and machine learning: Applications on human-machine interaction

Tese de Doutoramento em Engenharia de Eletrónica e de Computadores

O contributo das redes sociais no processo de rebranding

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Publicidade e Relações Públicas)

Cutinase promotes dry esterification of cotton cellulose

Cutinase from Thermobifida fusca was used to esterify the hydroxyl groups of cellulose with the fatty acids from triolein. Cutinase and triolein were pre-adsorbed on cotton and the reaction proceeded in a dry state during 48 hours at 35ºC. The cutinase-catalyzed esterification of the surface of cotton fabric resulted in the linkage of the oleate groups to the glycoside units of cotton cellulose. The superficial modification was confirmed by performing ATR-FTIR on treated cotton samples and by MALDI-TOF analysis of the liquors from the treatment of the esterified cotton with a crude cellulase mixture. Modified cotton fabric also showed a significant increase of hydrophobicity. This work proposes a novel bio-based approach to obtain hydrophobic cotton. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.