Handling mobility on a QoS-Aware servicebased framework for mobile systems

Mobile applications are becoming increasingly more complex and making heavier demands on local system resources. Moreover, mobile systems are nowadays more open, allowing users to add more and more applications, including third-party developed ones. In this perspective, it is increasingly expected that users will want to execute in their devices applications which supersede currently available resources. It is therefore important to provide frameworks which allow applications to benefit from resources available on other nodes, capable of migrating some or all of its services to other nodes, depending on the user needs. These requirements are even more stringent when users want to execute Quality of Service (QoS) aware applications, such as voice or video. The required resources to guarantee the QoS levels demanded by an application can vary with time, and consequently, applications should be able to reconfigure themselves. This paper proposes a QoS-aware service-based framework able to support distributed, migration-capable, QoS-enabled applications on top of the Android Operating system.

A framework for QoS-Aware service-based mobile systems

In this paper we propose a framework for the support of mobile application with Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, such as voice or video, capable of supporting distributed, migration-capable, QoS-enabled applications on top of the Android Operating system.

Isolated and synergistic effects of PM10 and average temperature on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality

OBJECTIVE To analyze the effect of air pollution and temperature on mortality due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. METHODS We evaluated the isolated and synergistic effects of temperature and particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter < 10 µm (PM10) on the mortality of individuals > 40 years old due to cardiovascular disease and that of individuals > 60 years old due to respiratory diseases in Sao Paulo, SP, Southeastern Brazil, between 1998 and 2008. Three methodologies were used to evaluate the isolated association: time-series analysis using Poisson regression model, bidirectional case-crossover analysis matched by period, and case-crossover analysis matched by the confounding factor, i.e., average temperature or pollutant concentration. The graphical representation of the response surface, generated by the interaction term between these factors added to the Poisson regression model, was interpreted to evaluate the synergistic effect of the risk factors. RESULTS No differences were observed between the results of the case-crossover and time-series analyses. The percentage change in the relative risk of cardiovascular and respiratory mortality was 0.85% (0.45;1.25) and 1.60% (0.74;2.46), respectively, due to an increase of 10 μg/m3 in the PM10 concentration. The pattern of correlation of the temperature with cardiovascular mortality was U-shaped and that with respiratory mortality was J-shaped, indicating an increased relative risk at high temperatures. The values for the interaction term indicated a higher relative risk for cardiovascular and respiratory mortalities at low temperatures and high temperatures, respectively, when the pollution levels reached approximately 60 μg/m3. CONCLUSIONS The positive association standardized in the Poisson regression model for pollutant concentration is not confounded by temperature, and the effect of temperature is not confounded by the pollutant levels in the time-series analysis. The simultaneous exposure to different levels of environmental factors can create synergistic effects that are as disturbing as those caused by extreme concentrations.

Função renal em pacientes com leishmaniose muco-cutânea tratados com antimoniais pentavalentes

Avaliou-se a função renal em 10 pacientes com leishmaniose muco-cutânea tratados com glucantime (antimoniato de Meglumine, Rhodia) ou Pentostam (estibogluconato de sólio, Wellcome). Durante o uso das drogas, verificou-se a existência de um defeito na capacidade concentrante do rim, obtendo-se menores valores da osmolaridade urinária máxima e de depuração negativa máxima de água livre, neste período, em relação aos testes efetuados antes do tratamento. A capacidade de concentração urinária normalizou-se em 5, de 8 pacientes estudados no período de 15 a 30 dias, após a suspensão dos medicamentos, embora com valores de osmolaridade urinária máxima inferiores aos obtidos antes do tratamento. Em dois pacientes surgiu proteínúria, acima de 150 mg/dia, com o uso dos antimoniais, normalizando-se posteriormente. A depuração de creatinina endógena não se alterou significativamente com o uso das drogas. Os resultados sugerem que os antimoniais pentavalentes podem levar a uma disfunção tubular renal, caracterizada por um defeito na capacidade de concentrar a urina, reversível após a retirada dos medicamentos.

Delayed results of treatment of paracoccidioidomycosis with amphotericin B plus sulfamides versus amphotericin B alone

A delayed evaluation of two groups of patients with paracoccidioidomycosis was carried out. Both groups were treated with amphotericin B, "but one of them was submitted to maintenance treatment with sulfonamides. Statistical analysis showed that treatment is more effective when patients are maintained with sulfonamide drugs.

A metodologia BIM-FM aplicada a um caso prático

O crescente aumento da consciencialização da importância da fase de operação e manutenção, bem como a amplificação que a metodologia Building Information Modelling (BIM) tem obtido nos últimos anos, sugere uma necessidade de alterar a atual abordagem da gestão das instalações de forma a dotá-la das mais recentes inovações tecnológicas como seja a utilização do BIM. Os Building Information Models apresentam as características ideais para a integração da gestão das instalações, não só pela visualização do edifício, mas sobretudo pela potencialidade que a base de dados oferece, com informação referente a cada um dos componentes presentes e suas relações. O âmbito deste trabalho envolve assim a integração da gestão das instalações com o modelo BIM criado, representativo do edifício em estudo. Este trabalho começa com as definições do âmbito e dos objetivos que são propostos no Capítulo 1. No Capítulo 2, é elaborada uma pesquisa sobre o estado da arte atual de cada uma das metodologias BIM e FM, de forma a tomar conhecimento dos seus conceitos principais. Foi feito também um levantamento no campo do BIM-FM de forma a apurar as atuais soluções tecnológicas existentes, a forma como é feita a sua troca de informação e também alguns casos em que esta metodologia foi aplicada. Com base na informação recolhida sobre as metodologias e também nos casos práticos estudados, é realizado no Capítulo 3, capítulo central deste trabalho, a aplicação prática. A realização desta aplicação é dividida por 3 fases principais. Numa primeira fase é especificada e recolhida a informação necessária de ser obtida para a realização do modelo e a posterior aplicação do FM. A escolha da informação a recolher é feita ponderando todos os fatores existentes, mas de forma a cumprir os requisitos pedidos. Numa segunda fase, assente na compilação de informação recolhida anteriormente, realiza-se o modelo do edifício. A modelação, de forma a seguir o método de trabalho BIM é realizada por especialidades, sendo numa primeira fase realizada a especialidade de arquitetura e posteriormente, utilizando esse modelo como base, é feita a modelação das especialidades de águas, águas residuais, AVAC e eletricidade. Esta escolha foi também estimulada pela organização do software utilizado para a modelação, por módulos. Na última fase da aplicação do caso prático a informação inserida na fase de modelação do edifício é exportada para o software de FM, neste caso em específico, o IBM Maximo. Para a exportação destes dados foi utilizado o formato Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie), de forma a garantir a integridade e conformidade da informação transferida. No Capítulo 4 deste trabalho são abordadas as especificidades relativas à informação existente, à modelação e à troca de dados entre o software de modelação e o software utilizado na gestão do edifício. São também sugeridos alguns temas para futuros desenvolvimentos com o intuito de ampliação dos campos de FM com o uso do modelo. O BIM-FM é um tema emergente na atualidade do BIM, sendo a sua utilização encarada como uma mais-valia ao processo BIM. A compilação da informação durante a fase de projeto e execução, aliada à existência do modelo torna a implementação do FM com o modelo BIM como uma sequência natural.

Como os políticos portugueses utilizam a internet em campanha eleitoral

Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Comunicação

Pentavalent antimonial nephrotoxicity in the rat

Aspects of the renal function were assessed in rats treated with the pentavalent antimonials Glucantime (Meglumine Antimoniate, Rhodia) or Pentostam (Sodium Stibogluconate, Wellcome). In dose of 30 mg of Sb v (Glucantime or Pentostam) by 100 mg of weight by day for 30 days, renal functional changes were observed consisting of disturbances in urine concentrating capacity. Such disturbances were expressed by significantly low values of urine osmolality as compared to the basal values previous to the drugs. The decrease in urine osmolality was associated to a significant increase in urinary flow and in negative free-water clearance. There was no alteration in osmolar clearance and in fractional excretion of sodium. These observations suggest an interference of the drugs in the action of the antidiuretic hormone. The disturbance in urine concentration was reversible after a seven days period without the drugs administration. No significant histopathological alterations were observed in the kidneys of the rats treated with the drugs. On the other hand, the rats treated with a high dose of Pentostam (200 mg/100 grams of weight/day) showed the functional and the histopathological alterations of the acute tubular necrosis.

Performance evaluation of a cooperative reputation system for vehicular delay-tolerant networks

In the last decade, both scientific community and automotive industry enabled communications among vehicles in different kinds of scenarios proposing different vehicular architectures. Vehicular delay-tolerant networks (VDTNs) were proposed as a solution to overcome some of the issues found in other vehicular architectures, namely, in dispersed regions and emergency scenarios. Most of these issues arise from the unique characteristics of vehicular networks. Contrary to delay-tolerant networks (DTNs), VDTNs place the bundle layer under the network layer in order to simplify the layered architecture and enable communications in sparse regions characterized by long propagation delays, high error rates, and short contact durations. However, such characteristics turn contacts very important in order to exchange as much information as possible between nodes at every contact opportunity. One way to accomplish this goal is to enforce cooperation between network nodes. To promote cooperation among nodes, it is important that nodes share their own resources to deliver messages from others. This can be a very difficult task, if selfish nodes affect the performance of cooperative nodes. This paper studies the performance of a cooperative reputation system that detects, identify, and avoid communications with selfish nodes. Two scenarios were considered across all the experiments enforcing three different routing protocols (First Contact, Spray and Wait, and GeoSpray). For both scenarios, it was shown that reputation mechanisms that punish aggressively selfish nodes contribute to increase the overall network performance.

CPMD-mindful task assignment for NPS-F

The multiprocessor scheduling scheme NPS-F for sporadic tasks has a high utilisation bound and an overall number of preemptions bounded at design time. NPS-F binpacks tasks offline to as many servers as needed. At runtime, the scheduler ensures that each server is mapped to at most one of the m processors, at any instant. When scheduled, servers use EDF to select which of their tasks to run. Yet, unlike the overall number of preemptions, the migrations per se are not tightly bounded. Moreover, we cannot know a priori which task a server will be currently executing at the instant when it migrates. This uncertainty complicates the estimation of cache-related preemption and migration costs (CPMD), potentially resulting in their overestimation. Therefore, to simplify the CPMD estimation, we propose an amended bin-packing scheme for NPS-F allowing us (i) to identify at design time, which task migrates at which instant and (ii) bound a priori the number of migrating tasks, while preserving the utilisation bound of NPS-F.

An optimal boundary fair scheduling

Nowadays, many real-time operating systems discretize the time relying on a system time unit. To take this behavior into account, real-time scheduling algorithms must adopt a discrete-time model in which both timing requirements of tasks and their time allocations have to be integer multiples of the system time unit. That is, tasks cannot be executed for less than one time unit, which implies that they always have to achieve a minimum amount of work before they can be preempted. Assuming such a discrete-time model, the authors of Zhu et al. (Proceedings of the 24th IEEE international real-time systems symposium (RTSS 2003), 2003, J Parallel Distrib Comput 71(10):1411–1425, 2011) proposed an efficient “boundary fair” algorithm (named BF) and proved its optimality for the scheduling of periodic tasks while achieving full system utilization. However, BF cannot handle sporadic tasks due to their inherent irregular and unpredictable job release patterns. In this paper, we propose an optimal boundary-fair scheduling algorithm for sporadic tasks (named BF TeX ), which follows the same principle as BF by making scheduling decisions only at the job arrival times and (expected) task deadlines. This new algorithm was implemented in Linux and we show through experiments conducted upon a multicore machine that BF TeX outperforms the state-of-the-art discrete-time optimal scheduler (PD TeX ), benefiting from much less scheduling overheads. Furthermore, it appears from these experimental results that BF TeX is barely dependent on the length of the system time unit while PD TeX —the only other existing solution for the scheduling of sporadic tasks in discrete-time systems—sees its number of preemptions, migrations and the time spent to take scheduling decisions increasing linearly when improving the time resolution of the system.

Size matters when we talk about corporate social responsibility: the case of portuguese companies

Social responsibility arises as a measure of the corporate policy that goes beyond the production activity, thus covering also the social and environmental activities. This issue has been gaining importance over time. The number of companies that are implementing socially responsible actions has been growing steadily even though it is still centered on large and medium sized companies. Social responsibility is an accessible theme to any company of any size, once the social and environmental issues are resolved through concrete actions, but in the small and micro-sized companies there are factors that inhibit such actions. Some of these factors are: reduced investment capacity; minimal expectations of medium to long term returns; or even the short-term management focus that is aimed at survival. Such facts can be verified in the case of Portuguese companies, where out of the 41 companies certified by SA 8000 only 5 are micro-sized or small and even these are linked to large organizations.

The impact of the implementation of the Basel III recommendations on the capital of portuguese banks

This paper analyses the impact of the implementation of the Basel III recommendations, using the standard method, in Portugal. For our study, we used the annual reports of 31st of December of 2012, and found out that out of the fourteen banks that published annual reports, only six satisfied the minimum ratios laid out by BCBS. Till 2012, Portuguese banks used an internal ratings method based on the Basel II recommendations known as notice 6/2010 of the Portuguese central bank, Banco de Portugal. As the implementation of the recommendations of Basel III in the EU via the Credit Review Directive IV is scheduled for 2014 and later years, Portuguese banks may severely contract credit upon implementation, as that is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way for banks to satisfy the minimum ratio requirements as compared to an increase of capital or credit spreads.

Modelo de monitorização e acompanhamento da avaliação ambiental estratégica através do Balanced Scorecard

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ordenamento do Território e Planeamento Ambiental

Sustentabilidade e a elaboração do relatório de sustentabilidade baseado na realidade das empresas portuguesas

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada ao Instituto Superior de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria, sob orientação da Exma. Senhora Doutora Susana Adelina Moreira Carvalho Bastos