IT for more effective team collaboration

ICT bring new possibilities in support of team cooperation, above all in creation and sharing of common content. On base of comparison of various systems for support of the cooperation it was found out that some systems purposefully solve a flow of time planning in a firm environment (e.g. Novell GroupWise), others supports in various way a cooperation in common contents space (discussion groups, Wiki, WCMS). Changes in approach to cooperation management appear in the social network. A substantial phenomenon of the present systems for cooperation support is their virtuality. The common space is „somewhere“ and a user can share (use) it from anywhere, if he/she is connected to the internet. An example still more often used is Google Apps.Collaborative software, groupware, GroupWise, Moodle Forums, Wiki, CMS, social networks, Google docs, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, GA, IN,

Population Projections: New Opportunities for Software Development

The major principles of the development of platform independent software for population projections based on WEB technology are discussed, and a prototype WEB-based demographic server is developed. The possibilities of using the WEB approach for broader issues of demographic analysis and training are discussed. The paper was initially presented by the author at the workshop "Rethinking International Population Projections" organized by IIASA (6-8 June 1996 Laxenburg, Austria). Although almost two years have since passed and WEB technology has become much more powerful, some of the ideas discussed in the paper still await implementation

A virtual reality-based cognitive telerehabilitation system for use in the covid-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s lives and the way in which certain services are provided. Such changes are not uncommon in healthcare services and they will have to adapt to the new situation by increasing the number of services remotely offered. Limited mobility has resulted in interruption of treatments that traditionally have been administered through face-to-face modalities, especially those related to cognitive impairments. In this telerehabilitation approach, both the patient and the specialist physician enter a virtual reality (VR) environment where they can interact in real time through avatars. A spaced retrieval (SR) task is implemented in the system to analyze cognitive performance. An experimental group (n = 20) performed the SR task in telerehabilitation mode, whereas a control group (n = 20) performed the SR task through a traditional face-to-face mode. The obtained results showed that it is possible to carry out cognitive rehabilitation processes through a telerehabilitation modality in conjunction with VR. The costeffectiveness of the system will also contribute to making healthcare systems more efficient, overcoming both geographical and temporal limitations

Otimização do modo de registo de dados durante a técnica de Perfusão Isolada dos Membros

Cancer is a disease in which the cells of our organism, due to mutations in their DNA, divide without control and acquire malignant properties and, during this process of uncontrolled division, invade other tissues and don’t die. Cancer cells have the ability to spread through the body using the circulatory and lymphatic systems, giving rise to metastases. With regard to cutaneous neoplasms, the therapy chosen for surgically dispersed and unresectable metastases involved amputation of the sick limb, however, many complications and short time intervals between treatment and the appearance of new lesions were associated. In 1957, an innovative technique emerges and proves to be extremely effective and avoids limb amputation: Isolated Limb Perfusion performed with Melphalan and TNF-α. The main objective of this procedure is to isolate the limb affected by the disease from the systemic circulation so that it is possible to administer very high doses of chemotherapy without any collateral damage. In this sense, it is necessary to have a control of blood leaks from the limb to the systemic circulation, in order to ensure that no other organ or tissue is compromised. The Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) of Porto is one of the worldwide institutions that practice this type of surgical interventions, reporting an annual increase in the number of occurrences year after year. Consequently, this progressive increase and coupled with the fact that this leak control is impractical and time-consuming, led this institution to join Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) to develop an application that, in combination with an extracorporeal counter equipment called Neoprobe Gamma Detector System is able to record the values obtained automatically and allow monitoring possible leaks

Training Future Engineers to Be Ghostbusters: Hunting for the Spectral Environmental Radioactivity

Although environmental radioactivity is all around us, the collective public imagination often associates a negative feeling to this natural phenomenon. To increase the familiarity with this phenomenon we have designed, implemented, and tested an interdisciplinary educational activity for pre-collegiate students in which nuclear engineering and computer science are ancillary to the comprehension of basic physics concepts. Teaching and training experiences are performed by using a 4" x 4" NaI(Tl) detector for in-situ and laboratory {\gamma}-ray spectroscopy measurements. Students are asked to directly assemble the experimental setup and to manage the data-taking with a dedicated Android app, which exploits a client-server system that is based on the Bluetooth communication protocol. The acquired {\gamma}-ray spectra and the experimental results are analyzed using a multiple-platform software environment and they are finally shared on an open access Web-GIS service. These all-round activities combining theoretical background, hands-on setup operations, data analysis, and critical synthesis of the results were demonstrated to be effective in increasing students' awareness in quantitatively investigating environmental radioactivity. Supporting information to the basic physics concepts provided in this article can be found at http://www.fe.infn.it/radioactivity/educational

Analysis of Feature-Completeness in Android Cross-Platform Frameworks

In cross-platform mobile development research, we frequently encounter mentions of limitations and constraints potentially imposed by technical tools and development frameworks.This is especially prominent in the context of programmatic device- and platform feature access, including features such as GPS, Internet and device camera access.Although the majority of the literature does not empirically validate these claims, they have reached acceptance in both practitioners' communities and academic research.By downloading a sample of 300,000 Android applications available on the Google Play Store and analysing them, we set forth to find which platform- and device features are the most commonly included in deployed apps.Based on the results, we map the features to their availability in five major cross-platform development frameworks, thus provide an overview of feature completeness and potential shortcomings in these popular frameworks.Our findings indicate that the scrutinised frameworks range from 86.37% to 95.46% feature-completeness and can thus facilitate the development of mobile apps relying on features that are commonly found in our assessed sample of Android apps

Researching co-viewing on social media and instant messaging applications: ethics and challenges

This article discusses the ethical concerns and challenges that should be considered while studying the practice of co-viewing on social media and instant messaging applications. Co-viewing practices refer to the intertwined activities that happen while viewers sit together in front of a TV set, watching and making meaning from television content. Connected platforms amplify the possibilities for co-viewing, by allowing people to experience a digital co-presence. Users that engaged in connected co-viewing in unofficial Facebook and WhatsApp groups dedicated to the brazilian telenovela Babilônia (airing in 2015) are used to exemplify the need to establish informed consent and avoid harming the participants when carrying out research online. The research reveals that ethical decision-making with respect to users’ data and viewpoints had to be considered, not only at the beginning stages of research, but assessed and considered throughout each step of the study