Um modelo de confiança para o ambiente de computação em nuvem

Este artigo apresenta uma proposta de um modelo de gestão contendo requisitos relacionados com a confiabilidade dos sistemas no ambiente de Computação em Nuvem (CN). A proposta teve como base uma revisão da literatura sobre os problemas, desafios e estudos que estão em curso relacionados com a segurança e confiabilidade de aplicações e Sistemas de Informações (SI) neste ambiente tecnológico. Nesta revisão bibliográfica são abordados os entraves e desafios atualmente existentes na visão de conceituados autores sobre o tema. Estas questões foram abordadas e estruturadas na forma de um modelo, denominado de “Modelo de Confiança para o ambiente de Computação em Nuvem”. Trata-se de uma proposta proativa que tem por objetivo organizar e discutir soluções de gestão para o ambiente de CN com uma maior confiabilidade para a operacionalização das aplicações de SI, tanto por parte dos provedores como também dos seus clientes.

A trust model for cloud computing environment

This paper presents a proposal for a management model based on reliability requirements concerning Cloud Computing (CC). The proposal was based on a literature review focused on the problems, challenges and underway studies related to the safety and reliability of Information Systems (IS) in this technological environment. This literature review examined the existing obstacles and challenges from the point of view of respected authors on the subject. The main issues are addressed and structured as a model, called "Trust Model for Cloud Computing environment". This is a proactive proposal that purposes to organize and discuss management solutions for the CC environment, aiming improved reliability of the IS applications operation, for both providers and their customers. On the other hand and central to trust, one of the CC challenges is the development of models for mutual audit management agreements, so that a formal relationship can be established involving the relevant legal responsibilities. To establish and control the appropriate contractual requirements, it is necessary to adopt technologies that can collect the data needed to inform risk decisions, such as access usage, security controls, location and other references related to the use of the service. In this process, the cloud service providers and consumers themselves must have metrics and controls to support cloud-use management in compliance with the SLAs agreed between the parties. The organization of these studies and its dissemination in the market as a conceptual model that is able to establish parameters to regulate a reliable relation between provider and user of IT services in CC environment is an interesting instrument to guide providers, developers and users in order to provide services and secure and reliable applications.

Step towards of a homemade business intelligence solution: A case study in textile industry

Nowadays, organizations are increasingly looking to invest in business intelligence solutions, mainly private companies in order to get advantage over its competitors, however they do not know what is necessary. Business intelligence allows an analysis of consolidated information in order to obtain more specific outlets and certain indications in order to support the decision making process. You can take the right decision based on the data collected from different information systems present in the organization and outside of them. The textile sector is a sector where concept of Business Intelligence it is not many explored yet. Actually there are few textile companies that have a BI platform. Thus, the article objective is present an architecture and show all the steps by which companies need to spend to implement a successful free homemade Business Intelligence system. As result the proposed approach it was validated using real data aiming assess the steps defined.

Pervasive business intelligence platform to improve the quality of decision process in primary and secondary education – A Portuguese case study

Business Intelligence (BI) can be seen as a method that gathers information and data from information systems in order to help companies to be more accurate in their decision-making process. Traditionally BI systems were associated with the use of Data Warehouses (DW). The prime purpose of DW is to serve as a repository that stores all the relevant information required for making the correct decision. The necessity to integrate streaming data became crucial with the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision process. In primary and secondary education, there is a lack of BI solutions. Due to the schools reality the main purpose of this study is to provide a Pervasive BI solution able to monitoring the schools and student data anywhere and anytime in real-time as well as disseminating the information through ubiquitous devices. The first task consisted in gathering data regarding the different choices made by the student since his enrolment in a certain school year until the end of it. Thereafter a dimensional model was developed in order to be possible building a BI platform. This paper presents the dimensional model, a set of pre-defined indicators, the Pervasive Business Intelligence characteristics and the prototype designed. The main contribution of this study was to offer to the schools a tool that could help them to make accurate decisions in real-time. Data dissemination was achieved through a localized application that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.

Predicting plateau pressure in intensive medicine for ventilated patients

Barotrauma is identified as one of the leading diseases in Ventilated Patients. This type of problem is most common in the Intensive Care Units. In order to prevent this problem the use of Data Mining (DM) can be useful for predicting their occurrence. The main goal is to predict the occurence of Barotrauma in order to support the health professionals taking necessary precautions. In a first step intensivists identified the Plateau Pressure values as a possible cause of Barotrauma. Through this study DM models (classification) where induced for predicting the Plateau Pressure class (>=30 cm

OPM3® Portugal project: information systems and technologies organizations: outcome analysis

Increasing the maturity in Project Management (PM) has become a goal for many organizations, leading them to adopt maturity models to assess the current state of its PM practices and compare them with the best practices in the industry where the organization is inserted. One of the main PM maturity models is the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®), developed by the Project Management Institute. This paper presents the Information Systems and Technologies organizations outcome analysis, of the assesses made by the OPM3® Portugal Project, identifying the PM processes that are “best” implemented in this particular industry and those in which it is urgent to improve. Additionally, a comparison between the different organizations’ size analyzed is presented.

Fundamental concepts in multibody dynamics

In this chapter, the fundamental ingredients related to formulation of the equations of motion for multibody systems are described. In particular, aspects such as degrees of freedom, types of coordinates, basic kinematics joints and types of analysis in multibody systems are briefly characterized. Illustrative examples of application are also presented to better clarify the fundamental issues for spatial rigid multibody systems, which are of crucial importance in the formulation development of mathematical models of mechanical systems, as well as its computational implementation.

Influence of chitosan coating on protein-based nanohydrogels properties and in vitro gastric digestibility

Chitosan coating was applied in Lactoferrin (Lf)-Glycomacropeptide (GMP) nanohydrogels by layer-by-layer coating process. A volume ratio of 0.1 of Lf-GMP nanohydrogels (0.2 mg.mL-1, at pH 5.0) to chitosan (1 mg.mL-1, at pH 3) demonstrated to be the optimal condition to obtain stable nanohydrogels with size of 230 ± 12 nm, a PdI of 0.22 ± 0.02 and a -potential of 30.0 ± 0.15 mV. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed that the application of chitosan coating in Lf-GMP did not affect the spherical shape of nanohydrogels and confirmed the low aggregation of nanohydrogels in solution. The analysis of chemical interactions between chitosan and Lf-GMP nanohydrogels were performed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and by circular dichroism (CD) that revealed that a specific chemical interaction occurring between functional groups of protein-based nanohydrogels and active groups of the chitosan was established. The effect of chitosan coating on release mechanisms of Lf-GMP nanohydrogels at acid conditions (pH 2, 37 ºC) was evaluated by the encapsulation of a model compound (caffeine) in these systems. Linear Superposition Model was used to fit the experimental data and revealed that Fick and relaxation mechanisms are involved in caffeine release. It was also observed that the Fick contribution increase with the application of chitosan coating. In vitro gastric digestion was performed with Lf-GMP nanohydrogels and Lf-GMP nanohydrogels with chitosan coating and it was observed that the presence of chitosan improve the stability of Lf and GMP (proteins were hydrolysed at a slower rate and were present in solution by longer time). Native electrophoreses revealed that the nanohydrogels without coating remained intact in solution until 15 min and with chitosan coating remained intact until 60 min, during gastric digestion.

Antibiofilm strategies in the food industry

Biofilms in food processing plants represent not only a problem to human health but also cause economic losses by technical failure in several systems. In fact, many foodborne outbreaks have been found to be associated with biofilms. Biofilms may be prevented by regular cleaning and disinfection, but this does not completely prevent biofilm formation. Besides, due to their diversity and to the development of specialized phenotypes, it is well known that biofilms are more resistant to cleaning and disinfection than planktonic microorganisms. In recent years, a considerable effort has been made in the prevention of microbial adhesion and biofilm formation on food processing surfaces and novel technologies have been introduced. In this context, this chapter discusses the main conventional and emergent strategies that have been employed to prevent bacterial adhesion to food processing surfaces and thus to efficiently maintain good hygiene throughout the food industries.

Numerical methods in multibody system dynamics

"Series: Solid mechanics and its applications, vol. 226"

Contribution for a better ecological understanding of the freshwater phase of sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) in the Minho River watershed

Dissertação de mestrado em Ecology

Critical events in mechanically ventilated patients

Mechanical Ventilation is an artificial way to help a Patient to breathe. This procedure is used to support patients with respiratory diseases however in many cases it can provoke lung damages, Acute Respiratory Diseases or organ failure. With the goal to early detect possible patient breath problems a set of limit values was defined to some variables monitored by the ventilator (Average Ventilation Pressure, Compliance Dynamic, Flow, Peak, Plateau and Support Pressure, Positive end-expiratory pressure, Respiratory Rate) in order to create critical events. A critical event is verified when a patient has a value higher or lower than the normal range defined for a certain period of time. The values were defined after elaborate a literature review and meeting with physicians specialized in the area. This work uses data streaming and intelligent agents to process the values collected in real-time and classify them as critical or not. Real data provided by an Intensive Care Unit were used to design and test the solution. In this study it was possible to understand the importance of introduce critical events for Mechanically Ventilated Patients. In some cases a value is considered critical (can trigger an alarm) however it is a single event (instantaneous) and it has not a clinical significance for the patient. The introduction of critical events which crosses a range of values and a pre-defined duration contributes to improve the decision-making process by decreasing the number of false positives and having a better comprehension of the patient condition.

Predicting triage waiting time in maternity emergency care by means of data mining

Healthcare organizations often benefit from information technologies as well as embedded decision support systems, which improve the quality of services and help preventing complications and adverse events. In Centro Materno Infantil do Norte (CMIN), the maternal and perinatal care unit of Centro Hospitalar of Oporto (CHP), an intelligent pre-triage system is implemented, aiming to prioritize patients in need of gynaecology and obstetrics care in two classes: urgent and consultation. The system is designed to evade emergency problems such as incorrect triage outcomes and extensive triage waiting times. The current study intends to improve the triage system, and therefore, optimize the patient workflow through the emergency room, by predicting the triage waiting time comprised between the patient triage and their medical admission. For this purpose, data mining (DM) techniques are induced in selected information provided by the information technologies implemented in CMIN. The DM models achieved accuracy values of approximately 94% with a five range target distribution, which not only allow obtaining confident prediction models, but also identify the variables that stand as direct inducers to the triage waiting times.

Optimization techniques to detect early ventilation extubation in intensive care units

The decision support models in intensive care units are developed to support medical staff in their decision making process. However, the optimization of these models is particularly difficult to apply due to dynamic, complex and multidisciplinary nature. Thus, there is a constant research and development of new algorithms capable of extracting knowledge from large volumes of data, in order to obtain better predictive results than the current algorithms. To test the optimization techniques a case study with real data provided by INTCare project was explored. This data is concerning to extubation cases. In this dataset, several models like Evolutionary Fuzzy Rule Learning, Lazy Learning, Decision Trees and many others were analysed in order to detect early extubation. The hydrids Decision Trees Genetic Algorithm, Supervised Classifier System and KNNAdaptive obtained the most accurate rate 93.2%, 93.1%, 92.97% respectively, thus showing their feasibility to work in a real environment.

Operation modes for the electric vehicle in smart grids and smart homes : present and proposed modes

This paper presents the main operation modes for an electric vehicle (EV) battery charger framed in smart grids and smart homes, i.e., are discussed the present-day and are proposed new operation modes that can represent an asset towards EV adoption. Besides the well-known grid to vehicle (G2V) and vehicle to grid (V2G), this paper proposes two new operation modes: Home-to-vehicle (H2V), where the EV battery charger current is controlled according to the current consumption of the electrical appliances of the home (this operation mode is combined with the G2V and V2G); Vehicle-for-grid (V4G), where the EV battery charger is used for compensating current harmonics or reactive power, simultaneously with the G2V and V2G operation modes. The vehicle-to-home (V2H) operation mode, where the EV can operate as a power source in isolated systems or as an off-line uninterruptible power supply to feed priority appliances of the home during power outages of the electrical grid is presented in this paper framed with the other operation modes. These five operation modes were validated through experimental results using a developed 3.6 kW bidirectional EV battery charger prototype, which was specially designed for these operation modes. The paper describes the developed EV battery charger prototype, detailing the power theory and the voltage and current control strategies used in the control system. The paper presents experimental results for the various operation modes, both in steady-state and during transients.