Architecture to Support Quality of Service in Arrowhead Systems

Presented at INForum - Simpósio de Informática (INFORUM 2015). 7 to 8, Sep, 2015. Covilhã, Portugal.

Run-time Monitoring Architecture for RealTime Systems

Presented at INForum - Simpósio de Informática (INFORUM 2015). 7 to 8, Sep, 2015. Portugal.

Crowdsourcing innovation: a proposal for a brokering architecture focused in the innovation needs of SMEs

Crowdsourcing is evolving into powerful outsourcing options for organizations by providing access to the intellectual capital within a vast knowledge community. Innovation brokering services have emerged to facilitate crowdsourcing projects by connecting up companies with potential solution providers within the wider ‘crowd’. Most existing innovation brokering services are primarily aimed at larger organizations, however, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) offer considerable potential for crowdsourcing activity since they are typically the innovation and employment engines in society; they are typically more nimble and responsive to the business environment than the larger companies. SMEs have very different challenges and needs to larger organizations since they have fewer resources, a more limited knowledge and skill base, and immature management practices. Consequently, innovation brokering for SMEs require considerably more support than for larger organizations. This paper identifies the crowdsourcing innovation brokerage facilities needed by SMEs, and presents an architecture that encourages knowledge sharing, development of community, support in mixing and matching capabilities, and management of stakeholders’ risks. Innovation brokering is emerging as a novel business model that is challenging concepts of the traditional value chain and organizational boundaries.

An agent based architecture for material handling systems

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Service-oriented architecture for device lifecycle support in industrial automation

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores Especialidade: Robótica e Manufactura Integrada

The stone and the cross. Indo-Portuguese Jesuit Architecture in Ethiopia. 1603-33

A fundação de uma missão jesuita no Norte da Etiópia em 1603, na província do Tigré, pelo enérgico Pe. Pero Pais, S. J. teólogo, construtor e historiador vindo de Goa, tomou um forte impulso com a aliança pretendida com os Portugueses pelo imperador Susénios (1619-20) para o apoio militar contra os muçulmanos; e, sobretudo, após a sua conversão oficial à Igreja Católica Romana, em 1626. Uma dúzia de inovadores edifícios foram então construídos pelos Jesuítas na região paradisíaca em torno do Lago Tana: basílicas, igrejas, palácios e jardins, complexos palatinos e eclesiásticos, colégios, etc. A tipologia em cruz latina e ornatos incisos é deliberadamente diferente das igrejas ortodoxas etíopes, circulares e em madeira. A técnica de construção em pedra e cal, ignorada na Etiópia, significou uma revolução. No presente texto procura-se determinar a quem deve ser atribuído este inédito surto construtivo, deixando de lado as teorias tradicionais de pedreiros vindos de Portugal ou de construtores locais. Com base na evidência estilística e em referências de textos da época, atribui-se a inovação a padres e “irmãos” jesuitas com experiência de arquitectos na Índia portuguesa e a construtores de Goa e de Diu, definindo a arte portuguesa na Etiópia como uma província da arquitectura indo-portuguesa na Índia, prosseguida após a expulsão dos Jesuítas (1633) com os “castelos portugueses”, ou paços acastelados da nova capital, Gondar.

Reconfigurable photonic logic architecture

The amorphous silicon photo-sensor studied in this thesis, is a double pin structure (p(a-SiC:H)-i’(a-SiC:H)-n(a-SiC:H)-p(a-SiC:H)-i(a-Si:H)-n(a-Si:H)) sandwiched between two transparent contacts deposited over transparent glass thus with the possibility of illumination on both sides, responding to wave-lengths from the ultra-violet, visible to the near infrared range. The frontal il-lumination surface, glass side, is used for light signal inputs. Both surfaces are used for optical bias, which changes the dynamic characteristics of the photo-sensor resulting in different outputs for the same input. Experimental studies were made with the photo-sensor to evaluate its applicability in multiplexing and demultiplexing several data communication channels. The digital light sig-nal was defined to implement simple logical operations like the NOT, AND, OR, and complex like the XOR, MAJ, full-adder and memory effect. A pro-grammable pattern emission system was built and also those for the validation and recovery of the obtained signals. This photo-sensor has applications in op-tical communications with several wavelengths, as a wavelength detector and to execute directly logical operations over digital light input signals.

An agent based architecture to support monitoring in plug and produce manufacturing systems using knowledge extraction

In recent years a set of production paradigms were proposed in order to capacitate manufacturers to meet the new market requirements, such as the shift in demand for highly customized products resulting in a shorter product life cycle, rather than the traditional mass production standardized consumables. These new paradigms advocate solutions capable of facing these requirements, empowering manufacturing systems with a high capacity to adapt along with elevated flexibility and robustness in order to deal with disturbances, like unexpected orders or malfunctions. Evolvable Production Systems propose a solution based on the usage of modularity and self-organization with a fine granularity level, supporting pluggability and in this way allowing companies to add and/or remove components during execution without any extra re-programming effort. However, current monitoring software was not designed to fully support these characteristics, being commonly based on centralized SCADA systems, incapable of re-adapting during execution to the unexpected plugging/unplugging of devices nor changes in the entire system’s topology. Considering these aspects, the work developed for this thesis encompasses a fully distributed agent-based architecture, capable of performing knowledge extraction at different levels of abstraction without sacrificing the capacity to add and/or remove monitoring entities, responsible for data extraction and analysis, during runtime.

Architecture and mosaics in recently discovered Palaeochristian basilicas

The excavations of the Dericik Early Christian Basilicas revealed the importance of the surrounding area of Bursa for understanding Early Christianity between the Late Roman and Early Byzantine periods. In the salvage excavations of 2001, the basic plan of the basilica (nave, narthex, presbyterium and apse) was revealed. The most important artefacts uncovered in that year were the mosaic pavements with geometric and plant ornaments and a grave located in the North Eastern corner of the church. The mosaic of the basilica was laid with the opus tessellatum technique on a thick mortar foundation with white, red, yellow, olive green and dark blue tesserae. A refrigerium scene is represented in the middle of the narthex mosaic. The mosaic in the centre of the nave is divided into parts, one of which with figures of birds inside octagons. In the transitional area between the nave and apse, three heavily damaged inscriptions have been conserved each of three or four lines, one of them indicating the wish of Epituchanos, diakôn, a church member.

Portuguese plain architecture: history opening a closed sequence

The paper will address George Kubler’s Portuguese Plain Architecture [PPA] (1972) and its effect in Portuguese architectural practice. Kubler’s philosophy of art history implied that closed sequences of objects could be opened by several reasons. Thus, it will be argued that there is an effect upon Portuguese architecture post 1974, that is apparent by the reemergence of some of the form classes treated by Kubler. This was mostly achieved through the popularity of Kubler’s book within architectural practice, scholarship and moreover by the establishment of the term “Plain Architecture” in portuguese architectural vocabulary. Plain Architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries shared some qualities with the architecture to be built in post‑revolutionary Portugal, most importantly the effect that could be achieved with low budget buildings that were responding to a situation of crisis, and simultaneously exhaled aristocratic sparsity. The connection of PPA with the ideological attributes of early modernism and the political context of the time catalysed the reemergence of a new order of Portuguese Plain that resonates still in contemporary architecture.

Recensão: Michelangelo Sabatino, "Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy"

Recensão de: Michelangelo Sabatino, "Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy", Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011

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.

Semantic architecture for sensors

Based on the report for the unit “Sociology of New Information Technologies” of the Master on Computer Sciences at FCT/University Nova Lisbon in 2015-16. The responsible of this curricular unit is Prof. António Moniz

A novel architecture of a bidirectional bridgeless interleaved converter for EV battery chargers

This paper presents a novel architecture of a bidirectional bridgeless interleaved converter for battery chargers of electric vehicles (EVs). The proposed converter is composed by two power stages: an ac-dc converter that is used to interface the power grid and the dc-link, and a dc-dc converter that is used to interface the dc-link and the batteries. The ac-dc converter is an interleaved bridgeless bidirectional boost-type converter and the dc-dc converter is a bidirectional buck-boost-type converter. The proposed converter works with sinusoidal grid current and with high power factor for all operating power levels, and in both grid-to-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation modes. In the paper is described in detail the proposed converter for EV battery chargers: the circuit topology, the principle of operation, the power control theory, and the current control strategy. Several simulation results for both G2V and V2G operation modes are presented.