Contributos para o desenvolvimento de aplicações para crianças com problemas de comunicação e integração

Communication, to express our needs and ideas, is a fundamental piece of our daily lives, enabling our interaction with others and contributing to establish social bonds. When this ability is affected, whether by contextual issues (e.g., noisy environment) or intrinsic conditions (e.g., speech articulation difficulties) it creates a challenging scenario for both the individuals and those surrounding them. Children diagnosed with Austism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a notable example of an audience facing these challenges given their frequent difficulties to communicate and socially interact with others. In this context, their challenges not only affect their ability to integrate with family and friends, but can also influence how they perform at school, an important environment for their development. In recent years, efforts have been made to propose technological solutions that contribute to support these children in their communication, but most of the work in the literature mainly focuses on the child entailing a support that does not truly addresses integration. Considering this context, we argue that these challenges need to be addressed considering the needs and motivations of children with ASD, but also keeping in mind the motivations of those around them, helping parents, teachers and friends to take part in the integration. Profiting from previous work on the characterization of the needs and motivations of children with ASD, their families, and teachers, the work carried out explores different communication-related scenarios, at school and at home, and proposes a set of requirements that should be considered to serve them. Considering these requirements, and adopting an iterative user-centered design approach, a first proof-of-concept application is proposed. AMICA, Adaptive Multimodal Integrated Communication for All, is a multi-platform, multiuser and multimodal application that aims to illustrate how some issues that affect children with ASD and those surrounding them can be addressed in order to their lives easier. At its current stage, AMICA already encompasses support for several communication features adapted to serve the child, family, friends, and teachers providing them a space for interaction. The modular multi-platform nature of the work carried out enables AMICA as a testbed for further research on different multimodal ways of communication for children with ASD (e.g., gaze or pictograms), but, also, by allowing the participation of different users, it fosters first studies on the dynamic nature of such communication.A comunicação, para expressar as nossas necessidades e ideias, é uma peça fundamental do nosso dia a dia, permitindo a nossa interação com os outros e contribuindo para estabelecer laços sociais. Quando essa capacidade é afetada, seja por questões contextuais (por exemplo, ambiente ruidoso) ou condições intrínsecas (por exemplo, dificuldades de articulação de fala), ela cria um cenário desafiante tanto para os indivíduos como para os que os rodeiam. As crianças diagnosticadas com Perturbação do Espetro do Autismo (PEA) são um exemplo notável de uma audiência que enfrenta esses desafios, devido às suas frequentes dificuldades para comunicar e interagir socialmente com os outros. Neste contexto, os seus desafios não afetam apenas a sua capacidade de integração com a família e os amigos, podendo, também, influenciar o seu desempenho na escola, um ambiente importante para o seu desenvolvimento. Nos últimos anos, têm sido feitos esforços para propor soluções tecnológicas que contribuam para apoiar essas crianças na sua comunicação, mas a maior parte do trabalho na literatura concentra-se principalmente no uso, pela criança, de apoios que não abordam verdadeiramente a integração. Considerando esse contexto, argumentamos que esses desafios precisam de ser abordados considerando as necessidades e motivações das crianças com PEA, mas também tendo em mente as motivações das pessoas ao seu redor, ajudando pais, professores e amigos a participarem na integração. Aproveitando os trabalhos anteriores sobre a caracterização das necessidades e motivações das crianças com PEA, as suas famílias e professores, o trabalho realizado explora diferentes cenários relacionados à comunicação, na escola e em casa, e propõe um conjunto de requisitos que devem ser considerados para os servir. Considerando esses requisitos e adotando uma abordagem de projeto iterativa, centrada no utilizador, uma primeira aplicação de prova de conceito é proposta. AMICA, Adaptive Multimodal Integrated Communication for All, é uma aplicação multi-plataforma, multi-utilizador e multimodal que visa ilustrar como algumas questões que afetam as crianças com PEA e aqueles que as rodeiam podem ser abordadas para tentar facilitar as suas vidas. No estado atual, a AMICA já engloba o suporte a vários recursos de comunicação adaptados para atender a criança, a família, os amigos e os professores, proporcionando-lhes um espaço de interação. A natureza modular multi-plataforma do trabalho realizado permite que AMICA seja uma base para mais pesquisas sobre diferentes formas multimodais de comunicação para crianças com PEA (por exemplo, olhar ou pictogramas), mas, também, permitindo a participação de diferentes utilizadores, promove primeiros estudos sobre a natureza dinâmica de tal comunicação.Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e Telemátic

O papel do Criminólogo na problemática do absentismo escolar

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Licenciada em CriminologiaO Absentismo Escolar é considerado um fenómeno complexo, visto que existem diversos fatores e condições sociais inerentes ao mesmo. Considera-se o Absentismo Escolar como sendo a falta de assistência à escola de forma reiterada e consecutiva, quer seja por vontade do aluno ou dos pais. É, portanto um problema que afeta negativamente a formação dos alunos e se reflete no seu desenvolvimento. O objetivo deste estudo é conhecer melhor este fenómeno apostando na prevenção, de modo a conseguir realizar uma intervenção mais eficaz. Produziu-se um estudo de carater quantitativo com alunos do 10.º, 11.º e 12.º anos da Escola Secundária de Alexandre Herculano no Porto. Utilizamos como instrumento um inquérito por questionário que nos vai permitir conhecer de uma melhor forma este fenómeno. O Criminólogo tem um papel de extrema importância nesta problemática, uma vez que vai procurar conhecer melhor o fenómeno, fazer uma análise mais detalhada sobre o mesmo para o conseguir interpretar e explicar. Tendo também um papel fundamental ao nível da prevenção do Absentismo Escolar. É expetável, que com este projeto se consiga realizar um trabalho mais eficaz no combate ao absentismo escolar. Os resultados esperados vão ao encontro dos objetivos traçados.Truancy is considered to be a complex phenomenon, because there are numerous social factors and terms inherent to this subject. Truancy can be defined by the lack of school attendance consecutively, whether by the parents’ or the students’ will. Therefore, it is an issue that affects the education of students, in a negative way, and is reflected in their development. The goal of this study is to know more about this phenomenon, and to focus on its prevention, so that a more effective intervention can take place. A quantitative study was carried out that included 10th, 11th and 12th grade students of Alexandre Herculano high school in Oporto. We used as tool a questionnaire survey that will allow us to better understand this phenomenon. The Criminologist has a decisive role in this issue because he will try to better understand the phenomenon, elaborate a detailed analysis on the subject so that he can, later on, interpret and explain it. That being said, it is easy to understand the essential role of the Criminologist when it comes to preventing truancy. With this project it is expected a more effective work on the fight against truancy. The expected results meet the goals that were set

Farmers' Demand for Information about Agribusiness

This study is focused on the habits of the Brazilian farmers that access the Internet for searching information to their economical activities. The main goal is to understand how come those agents of the agribusiness use the formal and informal (personal contact) means of communication, as well as the functions that each of those means accomplish to this public. In other words, it intends to identify the channels of communication of major importance to farmers (used more often, considered the ones of more credibility and preferred among them). That is possible by means of a questionnaire sent exclusively by e-mail, answered by Brazilian farmers. The motivation of the study is to contribute to make the communication more efficient to those who work on farms. That can produce benefits to the communication companies and to the public. The results show that the Internet is the mean of communication more often used and preferred on the process of searching information about the agribusiness among Brazilian farmers. The personal contact, not considered in the valuation about preference, appears in second position in the ranking for intensity of use. On the other hand, the radio, regional press newspapers and newsletters of class entities were the less consulted and the last ones in the ranking of preference.Agribusiness, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Does performance exclusively determine the value from shirt sponsorship in football?

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceDue to its beauty, since the first half of the 19th century that football makes millions of fans follow this show passionately, making it the most popular sport in the world nowadays (Sawe, 2018). After more than a hundred and fifty years, can be said that apart from the 22 players and the ball on the pitch, everything else had changed. Football nowadays is more than a simple sport, football means politics, social - but mainly - economic interests to society. The influence that this sport can create has made brands and companies from the most different industries and countries paying multimillionaire sponsorship contracts to ensure that these companies have some space for their logos on the football stadium, during the break time, or in some place of the team kit. The main objective of this dissertation is to (dis)prove that the shirt sponsorships values received by the football teams are only related to their sportive performance; if not, what are the variables that influence the income paid by the sponsors to the clubs

Cinemetrics: Creative Approaches to Visualize and Analyze Movie Data

In the age of visual media that we live in, there is an immensity of content being produced worldwide every day through the cinematographic and TV industries. This, alongside with the widespread availability of Internet access and social media, has democratized the appreciation, discussion and constant analyses of movies and TV shows. Since these are visual media with their own “visual language”, where creators use a lot of visual tricks to convey information, emotion, and to show a bit of their signature style, a lot of data can be extracted from them. This represents a great potential for people trying to analyze trends and patterns in video content, for example with colour palettes, length of shots, movement in scenes, audio, etc. But all this can be overwhelming without the aid of technology, and so there has also been a growth in the development of tools based in Artificial Intelligence, and Machine and Deep Learning, to be able to quickly and efficiently analyse this data and produce meaningful and insightful results that might help in the creation of new video-based media or just for anyone interested in video, like cinematographers, video editors, animators or any others. However, with large amounts of data, the results can sometimes be hard to parse by the user, and so there’s also been a trend of trying to consolidate data into graphic representations for easier analysis, giving rise to a new field called Data Visualization. With this in mind, we attempted to develop a new tool for video analysis of multimedia files based in scripts that would be able to give information about the composition of shots and scenes, such as the instants of the cuts or estimates of numbers like the total of shots, frames and more, but also to graphically present information using multimedia data visualizations.Na era visual em que vivemos, existe uma imensidão de conteúdo a ser produzido por todo o mundo, todos os dias, através das indústrias cinematográfica e televisiva. Isto, em conjunto com a difusão do acesso à Internet e das redes sociais, democratizou a apreciação, discussão e análise de filmes e programas televisivos. Dado que estes são meios visuais com a sua própria “linguagem visual", nos quais os criadores aplicam técnicas visuais para transmitirem informação, emoção, e mesmo um pouco do seu estilo e da própria marca, existe muita informação a ser extraída e avaliada. Isto representa um grande potencial para aqueles que se dedicam a analisar tendências e padrões em conteúdos de vídeo, como por exemplo a palete de cores, duração e movimento das cenas, áudio, etc. Mas pode ser uma tarefa inviável sem a ajuda de tecnologia, e por isso existe um desenvolvimento crescente de ferramentas baseadas em Inteligência Artificial, para que seja possível analisar estes dados de forma rápida e eficiente e produzir resultados significativos e conclusivos que possam ajudar na criação de novos conteúdos de vídeo e apoiar quem esteja envolvido na criação dos mesmos, como cinematógrafos, editores de vídeo, animadores, entre outros. No entanto, esta grande quantidade de dados pode gerar resultados de difícil compreensão e interpretação para o utilizador, pelo que também existe uma tendência crescente para tentar consolidar estes dados através de representações gráficas para uma fácil análise, levando à origem do conceito de “Data Visualization”. Tendo isto em conta, tentamos desenvolver uma nova ferramenta para a análise de vídeo em ficheiros multimédia baseada em "scripts", capaz de recolher informação sobre a composições de “shots” e de cenas, como os instantes dos cortes de cena ou o número estimado de "shots", fotogramas e outros, mas, ao mesmo tempo, apresentando informação através de representações gráficas

Reboot-based Recovery of Performance Anomalies in Adaptive Bitrate Video-Streaming Services

Performance anomalies represent one common type of failures in Internet servers. Overcoming these failures without introducing server downtimes is of the utmost importance in video-streaming services. These services have large user abandon- ment costs when failures occur after users watch a significant part of a video. Reboot is the most popular and effective technique for overcoming performance anomalies but it takes several minutes from start until the server is warmed-up again to run at its full capacity. During that period, the server is unavailable or provides limited capacity to process end-users’ requests. This paper presents a recovery technique for performance anomalies in HTTP Streaming services, which relies on Container-based Virtualization to implement an efficient multi-phase server reboot technique that minimizes the service downtime. The recovery process includes analysis of variance of request-response times to delimit the server warm-up period, after which the server is running at its full capacity. Experimental results show that the Virtual Container recovery process completes in 72 seconds, which contrasts with the 434 seconds required for full operating system recovery. Both recovery types generate service downtimes imperceptible to end-users

Educating for sociability and learning for citizenship: developing communicational skills and mediation in educational contexts

This text concerns a program about the Promotion of Social and Communicational Skills and Mediation (PSCSM) developed with children aged between 10 and 13 years in a non-formal educational institution. The program of intervention had, as its purpose, the promotion of social and communicational competencies and mediation, thus enabling the children involved to have a healthy and responsible sociability in the different contexts in which they find themselves: family, school, peer group, amongst others. It was developed over 13 sessions with objectives and activities intentionally planned with the view of promoting competencies of communication, co-operation, responsibility, a critical spirit, solidarity, autonomy, respect, integration, inclusion and the recognition of rights and duties. This work was carried out with an action-research methodology that resorted to various techniques and instruments to gather and record information. The results obtained showed the impact and benefits of the program and they also revealed the necessity of educational institutions investing in the promotion of an ethical literacy and the empowerment of the children and young people for healthy sociability and active citizenship

STUDY OF SEQUENTIAL EFFECTS OF BLAST WAVES IN CONFINED AND ADJACENT STRUCTURES

The study of the effect of explosive blast in confined spaces, particularly the conditions under which blast is transmitted to adjacent compartments and the effects produced, is of relevance for the vulnerability assessment of buildings, aircraft and ships, being of paramount importance in the context of national security and defence due to the permanent and diverse threats of present times. In particular it is aimed, through numerical modelling of the phenomena, to study the response of adjacent compartments, one of them subjected to an internal explosion, to identify the effect of compartment volume and material properties in the conditions that will cause rupture and loss of structural integrity and the effect in neighbouring structures of the sequential wave blast. Together with the study of the modes of collapse and rupture of materials used in naval shipbuilding, in this case the AA5083-H111 aluminium alloy, the present work will be the basis for the setting-up of a tool for the design of naval ships and vessels, providing the means to analyse and predict their vulnerability to several types of military ordnance