Cognitive computing meets the internet of things

Abstract: This paper discusses the blend of cognitive computing with the Internet-of-Things that should result into developing cognitive things. Today’s things are confined into a data-supplier role, which deprives them from being the technology of choice for smart applications development. Cognitive computing is about reasoning, learning, explaining, acting, etc. In this paper, cognitive things’ features include functional and non-functional restrictions along with a 3 stage operation cycle that takes into account these restrictions during reasoning, adaptation, and learning. Some implementation details about cognitive things are included in this paper based on a water pipe case-study

Trading of credit indices : behaviour analysis

Este documento foi realizado com o âmbito de analisar o comportamento do mercado dos Credit Default Swaps, com especial atenção para o trading de Índices de Crédito. Para efeitos deste estudo foi escolhido o seguinte Índice: iTraxx Financials Senior, com maturidade a 5 anos (índice europeu, criado pela Markit). A um primeiro nível foi investigado se os Spreads do índice refletem a perceção de risco. Estudos passados apontam para a conclusão de que os índices de crédito são uma ferramente bastante viável para entender a qualidade de crédito de uma entidade. Esta questão é testada através da seguinte maneira: verificar se a volatilidade dos retornos apresenta as seguintes características – Volatility Clustering, Memória Longa e Excesso de Kurtosis – estas encontram-se tipicamente nas séries financeiras. De facto, conclui-se que um aumento do Spread é interpretado pelo mercado como uma deterioração da qualidade de crédito (da entidade de referência). Numa segunda fase e após realizada uma análise preliminar é ainda testado se essa volatilidade apresenta outras características, tais como: Aversão ao Risco e Leverage Effects (estas características estão presentes no mercado acionista, por exemplo). Esta análise é realizada com recurso a um modelo T-GARCH. Após esta análise conclui-se que os investidores presentes neste mercado (dos índices de crédito) não são avessos ao risco e não têm o tradicional repúdio por “más notícias” sobre o sistema financeiro. De facto a ausência de Leverage Effects é coerente com a participação de agentes que têm a ganhar com essas “más notícias”.This document was written with the aim of analysing the behaviour of the Credit Default Swaps market, particularly the trading of Credit Indices. To do so it was chosen the following index: iTraxx Financials Senior, with 5-year maturity (European index, originally created by Markit). The econometric analysis is conducted with the help of a T-GARCH model. On a first level it is investigated if the index spreads reflect the perceived credit risk of market participants. Past studies point out that the spreads of Credit Indices are in fact a good measure to understand the credit quality of an entity. This question is address by testing if the volatility of the index returns has the following properties: Volatility Clustering, Long Memory and Excess Kurtosis (these are typically present on financials time series). In fact, an increase of the Spread is perceived as a deterioration of the reference entity credit quality. On a second level and after a preliminary analysis it is tested if these returns have the following characteristics: Risk Aversion and Leverage Effects (these are present on the stock market, for example). In order to do so it is estimated a T-GARCH model. It is concluded that investors who trade in Credit Indices market are not risk averse and they do not fear “bad news” about the financial markets. In fact, these findings are in line with the theory that states that investors tend to win with the presence of these “bad news”

Educational Process Mining based on Moodle courses: a review of literature

With the prevalence of E-Learning, it is important to analyze how students progress in this environment. These systems collect data about the students’ learning path, and Process Mining (PM) can provide a detailed model of this path. Based on the analysis of ten Educational Process Mining (EPM) case studies involving Moodle event logs, this article aims to contribute a literature review on EPM’s research. Beyond a theoretical introduction to PM and its implications for educational data, the review concludes on what PM tools and techniques are used, as well as the challenges faced in practice. The technical options include software, process discovery algorithms and representation models. These results aim to create a list of available options for future EPM endeavors, in addition to a list of issues to consider in future research involving Moodle

Proibição de naked SCDS : liquidez e aversão ao risco

Com este trabalho pretendemos avaliar a eficácia e a necessidade da regulação “Short Selling and Certain Aspects of Credit Default Sawps” da União Europeia, a qual proíbe os naked sovereign CDS, nomeadamente no que respeita ao comportamento explosivo dos spreads dos SCDSs e bonds de países da Área Económica Europeia, após estes experienciarem situações de grande stress financeiro. Fazendo uso do teste PSY, teste de comportamentos exuberantes de mercado, ou de excesso de reação nos spreads dos CDSs que assenta na nova metodologia desenvolvida por Phillips, Shi e Yu (2015), observamos a existência de bolhas financeiras, ou seja, de comportamentos explosivos nos spreads, antes e após a introdução do novo quadro regulatório em Chipre, Grécia e Portugal no período compreendido entre Janeiro de 2008 e Março de 2012. Sendo que, o objetivo da regulação era evitar o comportamento explosivo dos spreads em situações de grande stress financeiro, como as experienciadas pelos países escolhidos para análise, de forma a evitar espirais de preço negativas das sovereign bonds, concluímos pela ineficácia do tipo de regulação adotado pela União Europeia e questionamos a necessidade da mesma, face aos resultados obtidos.With this thesis we intend to evaluate the effectiveness and the need for a European Union´s regulation called "Short Selling and Certain Aspects of Credit Default Sawps", which prohibits naked sovereign CDS, in particular with regard to the explosive behavior of SCDS spreads and bonds spreads of countries within the European Economic Area, after these experienced situations of great financial disstress. Making use of PSY test, a test to observe exuberant behavior in the market, or a test to observe excess reaction in CDS spreads which is based on a new methodology developed by Phillips, Shi and Yu (2015), we observed the existence of financial bubbles, ie explosive spreads behavior, before and after the introduction of the new regulatory framework in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal in the window period between January 2008 and March 2012. Since the purpose of the regulation was to avoid the explosive behavior of spreads in situations of great financial disstress, as the ones experienced by the countries chosen for analysis, in order to prevent negative price spirals of sovereign bonds, we concluded for the ineffectiveness of the type of regulation adopted by the European Union and questioned the need for it, given the results obtained

Market exuberance in sovereign credit default swaps: assessing the EU regulatory framework and trading profit opportunities

Sovereign credit default swaps (SCDSs) have been at the core of the Euro Area (EA) debt crisis, particularly in its periphery. Both EU politicians and a wide range of EU academics have asked for tighter regulation of these over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, following similar pressures to the ones that had resulted from the 2008 financial crisis for corporate reference entities. As such, the SCDSs regulatory framework experienced a number of changes from 2009 to 2014, in the EU. This paper provides a seminal assessment on whether these new rules have succeeded in preventing SCDSs exuberance episodes in the EU. Using daily data for 5 years maturity Greek SCDSs, comprising the period between the latest regulatory reform, in September 2014, and mid-March 2015, we find clear evidence of explosive behavior in SCDSs spreads, and even in upfront quotes. The authors take advantage of the new Phillips et al. (2015a, 2015b) test for multiple exuberance episodes, which had rarely been used in derivatives markets, and conduct an event study to conclude that Greek elections, in early 2015, and the associated turmoil has led to a surge in momentum trading, with significant potential returns for SCDSs buyers. The regulatory measures aiming at deleveraging these markets, standardizing contracts, and dissociating sovereign and banking risk, do not seem to have achieved their purposes, as the political and financial anxiety in Greece, starting in December 2014, has led to explosive behavior episodes in the market for Greek SCDSs, of the type regulators had tried to avoid.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Transformative Concept: From Data Being Passive Objects to Data Being Active Subjects

The exploitation of potential societal benefits of Earth observations is hampered by users having to engage in often tedious processes to discover data and extract information and knowledge. A concept is introduced for a transition from the current perception of data as passive objects (DPO) to a new perception of data as active subjects (DAS). This transition would greatly increase data usage and exploitation, and support the extraction of knowledge from data products. Enabling the data subjects to actively reach out to potential users would revolutionize data dissemination and sharing and facilitate collaboration in user communities. The three core elements of the transformative DAS concept are: (1) intelligent semantic data agents (ISDAs) that have the capabilities to communicate with their human and digital environment. Each ISDA provides a voice to the data product it represents. It has comprehensive knowledge of the represented product including quality, uncertainties, access conditions, previous uses, user feedbacks, etc., and it can engage in transactions with users. (2) A knowledge base that constructs extensive graphs presenting a comprehensive picture of communities of people, applications, models, tools, and resources and provides tools for the analysis of these graphs. (3) An interaction platform that links the ISDAs to the human environment and facilitates transaction including discovery of products, access to products and derived knowledge, modifications and use of products, and the exchange of feedback on the usage. This platform documents the transactions in a secure way maintaining full provenance

Comparative classification of student's academic failure through Social Network Mining and Hierarchical Clustering

Student academic failure are caused by several factors such as: family relationship, study time, absence, parent education, travel time and etc. This study observe several factors which are related to student academic failure by calculating the centrality degree between students to find the correlation between failure factors for each students. Furthermore, each student will be measured by measuring the geodesic distance for each factors for hierarchical clustering. The flow betwenness measure and hierarchical clustering show the promising result, where students who has similar factors value are tends to be grouped together in the same cluster. The student with high value of flow betwenness is considered as broker of network and play vital character inside network. The result of study is believed can bring important and useful information toward the student performance analysis for future better education

Aprendizagem ubíqua na modalidade b-learning: estudo de caso do mestrado de Tecnologia Educativa da UMinho

Atualmente, a tendência já não é oferecer cursos só com presença física, pois a formação via ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem (AVA) tende a aumentar, recaindo a preferência em modalidades mistas (b-learning), integrando ainda o m-learning (mobile learning) e o u-learning (ubiquitous learning). Este texto aborda esta temática, fundamentada em pesquisa sobre o Mestrado de Tecnologia Educativa, área de especialização do Mestrado em Ciências da Educação da Universidade, que funciona na modalidade b-learning. Pretende-se estudar a edição do mestrado do ano letivo de 2013-15 que teve também a particularidade da aprendizagem ubíqua, pois os estudantes estão concentrados em dois grandes polos: Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal) e São Francisco de Paula (Rio Grande do Sul), no polo da Universidade Aberta do Brasil-UAB, com apoio da Prefeitura e da Secretaria Municipal de Educação. Para o efeito, utilizamos a investigação qualitativa onde, para além de observação e notas de campo, se recorreu a um questionário para recolher a opinião dos mestrandos sobre aspetos de organização e funcionamento pedagógico do curso.Prefeitura de São Francisco de Paulainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio