A Soft Computing Approach to Quality Evaluation of General Chemistry Learning in Higher Education

In contemporary societies higher education must shape individuals able to solve problems in a workable and simpler manner and, therefore, a multidisciplinary view of the problems, with insights in disciplines like psychology, mathematics or computer science becomes mandatory. Undeniably, the great challenge for teachers is to provide a comprehensive training in General Chemistry with high standards of quality, and aiming not only at the promotion of the student’s academic success, but also at the understanding of the competences/skills required to their future doings. Thus, this work will be focused on the development of an intelligent system to assess the Quality-of-General-Chemistry-Learning, based on factors related with subject, teachers and students.

Using SPL to Develop AAL Systems Based on Self-adaptive Agents

Abstract One of the most important challenges of this decade is the Internet of Things (IoT) that pursues the integration of real-world objects in Internet. One of the key areas of the IoT is the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems, which should be able to react to variable and continuous changes while ensuring their acceptance and adoption by users. This means that AAL systems need to work as self-adaptive systems. The autonomy property inherent to software agents, makes them a suitable choice for developing self-adaptive systems. However, agents lack the mechanisms to deal with the variability present in the IoT domain with regard to devices and network technologies. To overcome this limitation we have already proposed a Software Product Line (SPL) process for the development of self-adaptive agents in the IoT. Here we analyze the challenges that poses the development of self-adaptive AAL systems based on agents. To do so, we focus on the domain and application engineering of the self-adaptation concern of our SPL process. In addition, we provide a validation of our development process for AAL systems.

Cloud Computing to Automate Information Units

This article will address the main technical aspects that facilitate the use and growth of computer technology in the cloud, which go hand in hand with the emergence of more and better services on the Internet and technological development of the broadband. Finally, we know what is the impact that the cloud computing technologies in the automation of information units.

Elastic Computing - a novel paradigm for distributed systems

This talk, which is based on our newest findings and experiences from research and industrial projects, addresses one of the most relevant challenges for a decade to come: How to integrate the Internet of Things with software, people, and processes, considering modern Cloud Computing and Elasticity principles. Elasticity is seen as one of the main characteristics of Cloud Computing today. Is elasticity simply scalability on steroids? This talk addresses the main principles of elasticity, presents a fresh look at this problem, and examines how to integrate people, software services, and things into one composite system, which can be modeled, programmed, and deployed on a large scale in an elastic way. This novel paradigm has major consequences on how we view, build, design, and deploy ultra-large scale distributed systems.

On the suboptimality of the p-version interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin method

We address the question of the rates of convergence of the p-version interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin method (p-IPDG) for second order elliptic problems with non-homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. It is known that the p-IPDG method admits slightly suboptimal a-priori bounds with respect to the polynomial degree (in the Hilbertian Sobolev space setting). An example for which the suboptimal rate of convergence with respect to the polynomial degree is both proven theoretically and validated in practice through numerical experiments is presented. Moreover, the performance of p- IPDG on the related problem of p-approximation of corner singularities is assessed both theoretically and numerically, witnessing an almost doubling of the convergence rate of the p-IPDG method.

La función tutorial ante el reto de la enseñanza online: algunas experiencias

La introducción de las TICs en los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje exige hacer frente al reto de su inserción y adaptación al mismo en el ámbito universitario, así como analizar las diversas estrategias formativas y comunicativas recomendadas para el uso de las TICs en la docencia. En este entorno resulta conveniente examinar el rol asignado al e-tutor o e-profesor y, como correlato, el papel del alumno en el marco de la enseñanza online del Derecho. Ello pasa por la identificación de las funciones que debe llevar a cabo el tutor online (lo que, en definitiva, contribuye a definir y reforzar los rasgos de esta figura) que, si bien deben adaptarse a la nueva metodología docente, no deben ser necesariamente distintas a las del tutor presencial. Este objetivo exige determinar las técnicas y competencias más adecuadas para la acción tutorial virtual y requiere una seria reflexión sobre el uso de las herramientas disponibles para este fin, cuestión conectada con las innumerables ventajas de las TICs para la comunicación profesor-alumno (sin olvidar la necesidad de superar también algunos problemas). Se trata de aprovechar el e-learning para imprimir un cambio en la metodología docente respecto del rol que está llamado a desempeñar el e-tutor. Todo ello parte de nuestra experiencia en esta materia.

A Novel Framework for Virtual Organization Creation on Cloud

Part 12: Collaboration Platforms

Cooperative learning and its influences on the diminishing of the digital divide

Digital divide is an issue that concerns our technology dominated society. The parents of ubiquitous computing dreamt of a total proliferation of information technology. But the reality we live in is not yet prepared for this future. There is current a need to develop programs in order to diminish this difference between the digitally included and the excluded one. PROEJA-Transiarte is a project ran by Universidade de Brasília in the city of Ceilândia, Federal District of Brazil. It proposes a different approach on the issue of digital divide, by introducing the cooperative creation of cyberart, based on the life stories of each participant, into the regular curriculum of EJA (Educação de Jovens e Adultos) classes, thus implementing the concept of solidary education. This research project investigated the role played by the cooperative learning the students put in practice during the workshops of the project in the diminishing of the digital exclusion a great part of the students feel. It looked into their activities, analyzing the development of their cooperation, putting it next in the context of the digital and social inclusion. After a multi-dimensional research on the theme, in the context of PROEJA-Transiarte, the conclusion shows the impact cooperative learning has in the reduction of the digital divide, analyzing the perception of the currently involved students, the researchers active in the project, or the former students that had their lives improved because of the workshops they participated in.

Three essays on liquidity

Doutoramento em Gestão.

2 D game ediror on-line : A edição de videojogos em contexto web

Descreve-se, no presente trabalho, os esforços envidados no sentido de criar uma solução informática generalista, para os problemas mais recorrentes do processo de produção de videojogos 20, baseados em sprites, a correr em plataformas móveis. O sistema desenvolvido é uma aplicação web que está inserida no paradigma cloud­computing, usufruindo, portanto, de todas as vantagens em termos de acessibilidade, segurança da informação e manutenção que este paradigma oferece actualmente. Além das questões funcionais, a aplicação é ainda explorada do ponto de vista da arquitetura da implementação, com vista a garantir um sistema com implementação escalável, adaptável e de fácil manutenção. Propõe-se ainda um algoritmo que foi desenvolvido para resolver o problema de obter uma distribuição espacial otimizada de várias áreas retangulares, sem sobreposições nem restrições a nível das dimensões, quer do arranjo final, quer das áreas arranjadas. ABSTRACT: This document describes the efforts taken to create a generic computing solution for the most recurrent problems found in the production of two dimensional, sprite­based videogames, running on mobile platforms. The developed system is a web application that fits within the scope of the recent cloud-computing paradigm and, therefore, enjoys all of its advantages in terms of data safety, accessibility and application maintainability. In addition, to the functional issues, the system is also studied in terms of its internal software architecture, since it was planned and implemented in the perspective of attaining an easy to maintain application, that is both scalable and adaptable. Furthermore, it is also proposed an algorithm that aims to find an optimized solution to the space distribution problem of several rectangular areas, with no overlapping and no dimensinal restrictions, neither on the final arrangement nor on the arranged areas.

Improving CAS Capabilities: New Rules for Computing Improper Integrals

There are diferent applications in Engineering that require to compute improper integrals of the first kind (integrals defined on an unbounded domain) such as: the work required to move an object from the surface of the earth to in nity (Kynetic Energy), the electric potential created by a charged sphere, the probability density function or the cumulative distribution function in Probability Theory, the values of the Gamma Functions(wich useful to compute the Beta Function used to compute trigonometrical integrals), Laplace and Fourier Transforms (very useful, for example in Differential Equations).

SARASOM: a supervised architecture based on the recurrent associative SOM

We present and evaluate a novel supervised recurrent neural network architecture, the SARASOM, based on the associative self-organizing map. The performance of the SARASOM is evaluated and compared with the Elman network as well as with a hidden Markov model (HMM) in a number of prediction tasks using sequences of letters, including some experiments with a reduced lexicon of 15 words. The results were very encouraging with the SARASOM learning better and performing with better accuracy than both the Elman network and the HMM.

Towards a unified management of applications on heterogeneous clouds

The diversity in the way cloud providers o↵er their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, or support di↵erent technologies, makes very difficult the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favours the well-known vendor lock-in problem. We propose a model to describe cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers- and resources-independent way, in which individual application modules, and entire applications, may be re-deployed using different services without modification. To support this model, and after the proposal of a variety of cross-cloud application management tools by different authors, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a management approach in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for deploying applications whose components are distributed on different cloud providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services.