A ansiedade antes, durante e após a performance: relatório de estágio

I (Prática Pedagógica) - Neste relatório de estágio apresenta-se uma caracterização do CRP, contextualizando um pouco da sua história, o seu funcionamento e os seus objetivos pedagógicos. Caracterizam-se, também, os alunos que participaram no estágio, destacando o seu percurso académico, as suas influências e motivações musicais. Nas práticas educativas desenvolvidas apresentam-se os princípios pedagógicos, segundo o portal Ponazapino, e os métodos de ensino lecionados durante o ano letivo que tiveram em conta o processo integrado de Ensino/Aprendizagem (Teaching and Learning). Por último apresentam-se os objetivos pedagógicos propostos para cada aluno do estágio. No final efetua-se uma análise crítica da atividade docente destacando o processo ensino/aprendizagem, a sua aplicação e benefícios no desenvolvimento integral do indivíduo.

Transport mechanism in ionic liquid membranes and the study of thiomersal biodegradation

The initial goal of this work was the development of a supported liquid membrane (SLM) bioreactor for the remediation of vaccine production effluents contaminated with a highly toxic organomercurial – thiomersal. Therefore, two main aspects were focused on: 1) the development of a stable supported liquid membrane – using room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) – for the selective transport of thiomersal from the wastewater to a biological compartment, 2) study of the biodegradation kinetics of thiomersal to metallic mercury by a Pseudomonas putida strain. The first part of the work focused on the evaluation of the physicochemical properties of ionic liquids and on the SLMs’ operational stability. The results obtained showed that, although it is possible to obtain a SLM with a high stability, water possesses nonnegligible solubility in the RTILs studied. The formation of water clusters inside the hydrophobic ionic liquid was identified and found to regulate the transport of water and small ions. In practical terms, this meant that, although it was possible to transport thiomersal from the vaccine effluent to the biological compartment, complete isolation of the microbial culture could not be guaranteed and the membrane might ultimately be permeable to other species present in the aqueous vaccine wastewater. It was therefore decided not to operate the initially targeted integrated system but, instead, the biological system by itself. Additionally, attention was given to the development of a thorough understanding of the transport mechanisms involved in the solubilisation and transport of water through supported liquid membranes with RTILs as well as to the evaluation of the effect of water uptake by the SLM in the transport mechanisms of water-soluble solutes and its effect on SLM performance. The results obtained highlighted the determinant role played by water – solubilised inside the ionic liquids – on the transport mechanism. It became clear that the transport mechanism of water and water-soluble solutes through SLMs with [CnMIM][PF6] RTILs was regulated by the dynamics of water clusters inside the RTIL, rather than by molecular diffusion through the bulk of the ionic liquid. Although the stability tests vi performed showed that there were no significant losses of organic phase from the membrane pores, the formation of water clusters inside the ionic liquid, which constitute new, non-selective environments for solute transport, leads to a clear deterioration of SLM performance and selectivity. Nevertheless, electrical impedance spectroscopy characterisation of the SLMs showed that the formation of water clusters did not seem to have a detrimental effect on the SLMs’ electrical characteristics and highlighted the potential of using this type of membranes in electrochemical applications with low resistance requirements. The second part of the work studied the kinetics of thiomersal degradation by a pure culture of P. putida spi3 strain, in batch culture and using a synthe tic wastewater. A continuous ly stirred tank reactor fed with the synthetic wastewater was also operated and the bioreactor’s performance and robustness, when exposed to thiomersal shock loads, were evaluated. Finally, a bioreactor for the biological treatment of a real va ccine production effluent was set up and operated at different dilution rates. Thus it was possible to treat a real thiomersal-contaminated effluent, lowering the outlet mercury concentration to values below the European limit for mercury effluent discharges.

Fuzzy, integer and fractional-order control: Application on a wind turbine benchmark model

This paper presents a comparison between proportional integral control approaches for variable speed wind turbines. Integer and fractional-order controllers are designed using linearized wind turbine model whilst fuzzy controller also takes into account system nonlinearities. These controllers operate in the full load region and the main objective is to extract maximum power from the wind turbine while ensuring the performance and reliability required to be integrated into an electric grid. The main contribution focuses on the use of fractional-order proportional integral (FOPI) controller which benefits from the introduction of one more tuning parameter, the integral fractional-order, taking advantage over integer order proportional integral (PI) controller. A comparison between proposed control approaches for the variable speed wind turbines is presented using a wind turbine benchmark model in the Matlab/Simulink environment. Results show that FOPI has improved system performance when compared with classical PI and fuzzy PI controller outperforms the integer and fractional-order control due to its capability to deal with system nonlinearities and uncertainties. © 2014 IEEE.

A capacity sharing and stealing strategy for open real-time systems

This paper focuses on the scheduling of tasks with hard and soft real-time constraints in open and dynamic real-time systems. It starts by presenting a capacity sharing and stealing (CSS) strategy that supports the coexistence of guaranteed and non-guaranteed bandwidth servers to efficiently handle soft-tasks’ overloads by making additional capacity available from two sources: (i) reclaiming unused reserved capacity when jobs complete in less than their budgeted execution time and (ii) stealing reserved capacity from inactive non-isolated servers used to schedule best-effort jobs. CSS is then combined with the concept of bandwidth inheritance to efficiently exchange reserved bandwidth among sets of inter-dependent tasks which share resources and exhibit precedence constraints, assuming no previous information on critical sections and computation times is available. The proposed Capacity Exchange Protocol (CXP) has a better performance and a lower overhead when compared against other available solutions and introduces a novel approach to integrate precedence constraints among tasks of open real-time systems.

Modeling and control of a dragonfly-like robot

Dragonflies demonstrate unique and superior flight performances than most of the other insect species and birds. They are equipped with two pairs of independently controlled wings granting an unmatchable flying performance and robustness. In this paper, the dynamics of a dragonfly-inspired robot is studied. The system performance is analyzed in terms of time response and robustness. The development of computational simulation based on the dynamics of the robotic dragonfly allows the test of different control algorithms. We study different movements, the dynamics, and the level of dexterity in wing motion of the dragonfly. The results are positive for the construction of flying platforms that effectively mimic the kinematics and dynamics of dragonflies and potentially exhibit superior flight performance than existing flying platforms.

Dynamic peripheral visual performance relates to alpha activity in soccer players

Many studies have demonstrated the relationship between the alpha activity and the central visual ability, in which the visual ability is usually assessed through static stimuli. Besides static circumstance, however in the real environment there are often dynamic changes and the peripheral visual ability in a dynamic environment (i.e., dynamic peripheral visual ability) is important for all people. So far, no work has reported whether there is a relationship between the dynamic peripheral visual ability and the alpha activity. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate their relationship. Sixty-two soccer players performed a newly designed peripheral vision task in which the visual stimuli were dynamic, while their EEG signals were recorded from Cz, O1, and O2 locations. The relationship between the dynamic peripheral visual performance and the alpha activity was examined by the percentage-bend correlation test. The results indicated no significant correlation between the dynamic peripheral visual performance and the alpha amplitudes in the eyes-open and eyes-closed resting condition. However, it was not the case for the alpha activity during the peripheral vision task: the dynamic peripheral visual performance showed significant positive inter-individual correlations with the amplitudes in the alpha band (8-12 Hz) and the individual alpha band (IAB) during the peripheral vision task. A potential application of this finding is to improve the dynamic peripheral visual performance by up-regulating alpha activity using neuromodulation techniques.

Fuzzy, integer and fractional-order control: application on a wind turbine benchmark model

This paper presents a comparison between proportional integral control approaches for variable speed wind turbines. Integer and fractional-order controllers are designed using linearized wind turbine model whilst fuzzy controller also takes into account system nonlinearities. These controllers operate in the full load region and the main objective is to extract maximum power from the wind turbine while ensuring the performance and reliability required to be integrated into an electric grid. The main contribution focuses on the use of fractional-order proportional integral (FOPI) controller which benefits from the introduction of one more tuning parameter, the integral fractional-order, taking advantage over integer order proportional integral (PI) controller. A comparison between proposed control approaches for the variable speed wind turbines is presented using a wind turbine benchmark model in the Matlab/Simulink environment. Results show that FOPI has improved system performance when compared with classical PI and fuzzy PI controller outperforms the integer and fractional-order control due to its capability to deal with system nonlinearities and uncertainties. © 2014 IEEE.

Validity and reliability of a health care service evaluation instrument for tuberculosis

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity and reliability of an instrument that evaluates the structure of primary health care units for the treatment of tuberculosis.METHODS This cross-sectional study used simple random sampling and evaluated 1,037 health care professionals from five Brazilian municipalities (Natal, state of Rio Grande do Norte; Cabedelo, state of Paraíba; Foz do Iguaçu, state of Parana; Sao José do Rio Preto, state of Sao Paulo, and Uberaba, state of Minas Gerais) in 2011. Structural indicators were identified and validated, considering different methods of organization of the health care system in the municipalities of different population sizes. Each structure represented the organization of health care services and contained the resources available for the execution of health care services: physical resources (equipment, consumables, and facilities); human resources (number and qualification); and resources for maintenance of the existing infrastructure and technology (deemed as the organization of health care services). The statistical analyses used in the validation process included reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis.RESULTS The validation process indicated the retention of five factors, with 85.9% of the total variance explained, internal consistency between 0.6460 and 0.7802, and quality of fit of the confirmatory factor analysis of 0.995 using the goodness-of-fit index. The retained factors comprised five structural indicators: professionals involved in the care of tuberculosis patients, training, access to recording instruments, availability of supplies, and coordination of health care services with other levels of care. Availability of supplies had the best performance and the lowest coefficient of variation among the services evaluated. The indicators of assessment of human resources and coordination with other levels of care had satisfactory performance, but the latter showed the highest coefficient of variation. The performance of the indicators “training” and “access to recording instruments” was inferior to that of other indicators.CONCLUSIONS The instrument showed feasibility of application and potential to assess the structure of primary health care units for the treatment of tuberculosis.

Real time fault injection using enhanced OCD -- a performance analysis

Fault injection is frequently used for the verification and validation of dependable systems. When targeting real time microprocessor based systems the process becomes significantly more complex. This paper proposes two complementary solutions to improve real time fault injection campaign execution, both in terms of performance and capabilities. The methodology is based on the use of the on-chip debug mechanisms present in modern electronic devices. The main objective is the injection of faults in microprocessor memory elements with minimum delay and intrusiveness. Different configurations were implemented and compared in terms of performance gain and logic overhead.

Reliability and availability in reconfigurable computing: a basis for a common solution

Dynamically reconfigurable SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) enable the implementation of reconfigurable computing systems where several applications may be run simultaneously, sharing the available resources according to their own immediate functional requirements. To exclude malfunctioning due to faulty elements, the reliability of all FPGA resources must be guaranteed. Since resource allocation takes place asynchronously, an online structural test scheme is the only way of ensuring reliable system operation. On the other hand, this test scheme should not disturb the operation of the circuit, otherwise availability would be compromised. System performance is also influenced by the efficiency of the management strategies that must be able to dynamically allocate enough resources when requested by each application. As those resources are allocated and later released, many small free resource blocks are created, which are left unused due to performance and routing restrictions. To avoid wasting logic resources, the FPGA logic space must be defragmented regularly. This paper presents a non-intrusive active replication procedure that supports the proposed test methodology and the implementation of defragmentation strategies, assuring both the availability of resources and their perfect working condition, without disturbing system operation.

Novel techniques for the design and practical realization of switched-capacitor circuits in deep-submicron CMOS technologies

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

The European challenge of KM and innovation: a skills and competence portfolio for the knowledge worker in SME's

This chapter appears in Innovations of Knowledge Management edited by Montano, D. Copyright 2004, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.

NoC contention analysis using a branch-and-prune algorithm

“Many-core” systems based on a Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture offer various opportunities in terms of performance and computing capabilities, but at the same time they pose many challenges for the deployment of real-time systems, which must fulfill specific timing requirements at runtime. It is therefore essential to identify, at design time, the parameters that have an impact on the execution time of the tasks deployed on these systems and the upper bounds on the other key parameters. The focus of this work is to determine an upper bound on the traversal time of a packet when it is transmitted over the NoC infrastructure. Towards this aim, we first identify and explore some limitations in the existing recursive-calculus-based approaches to compute the Worst-Case Traversal Time (WCTT) of a packet. Then, we extend the existing model by integrating the characteristics of the tasks that generate the packets. For this extended model, we propose an algorithm called “Branch and Prune” (BP). Our proposed method provides tighter and safe estimates than the existing recursive-calculus-based approaches. Finally, we introduce a more general approach, namely “Branch, Prune and Collapse” (BPC) which offers a configurable parameter that provides a flexible trade-off between the computational complexity and the tightness of the computed estimate. The recursive-calculus methods and BP present two special cases of BPC when a trade-off parameter is 1 or ∞, respectively. Through simulations, we analyze this trade-off, reason about the implications of certain choices, and also provide some case studies to observe the impact of task parameters on the WCTT estimates.

Road drivers performance appraisal using a MCDA method: a case study in the road transport company

Performance evaluation increasingly assumes a more important role in any organizational environment. In the transport area, the drivers are the company’s image and for this reason it is important to develop and increase their performance and commitment to the company goals. This evaluation can be used to motivate driver to improve their performance and to discover training needs. This work aims to create a performance appraisal evaluation model of the drivers based on the multi-criteria decision aid methodology. The MMASSI (Multicriteria Methodology to Support Selection of Information Systems) methodology was adapted by using a template supporting the evaluation according to the freight transportation company in study. The evaluation process involved all drivers (collaborators being evaluated), their supervisors and the company management. The final output is a ranking of the drivers, based on their performance, for each one of the scenarios used.

MCDA applied to performance appraisal of short-haul truck drivers: a case study in a portuguese trucking company

Performance appraisal increasingly assumes a more important role in any organizational environment. In the trucking industry, drivers are the company's image and for this reason it is important to develop and increase their performance and commitment to the company's goals. This paper aims to create a performance appraisal model for trucking drivers, based on a multi-criteria decision aid methodology. The PROMETHEE and MMASSI methodologies were adapted using the criteria used for performance appraisal by the trucking company studied. The appraisal involved all the truck drivers, their supervisors and the company's Managing Director. The final output is a ranking of the drivers, based on their performance, for each one of the scenarios used. The results are to be used as a decision-making tool to allocate drivers to the domestic haul service.