Avaliação da sustentabilidade de estruturas e materiais de pavimentos rodoviários

Tese de Doutoramento em Engenharia CivilA noção de que os recursos que a humanidade tem usado são limitados tem levado à implementação de práticas mais sustentáveis. Dado que os pavimentos rodoviários são infraestruturas cuja construção, utilização e reabilitação provoca impactes ambientais consideráveis, torna-se indispensável a procura de novas técnicas e processos mais sustentáveis, com vista à mitigação das suas consequências. Além disso, importa perceber que os efeitos dos pavimentos rodoviários não se limitam ao período em que são construídos, mas prolongam-se durante toda a sua vida. No entanto, as metodologias de análise do ciclo de vida propostas até agora concentram-se demasiado nas fases de extração, produção, transporte e aplicação dos materiais, o que é insuficiente para estudar todo o período de vida do pavimento. Nesse sentido, pretende-se com este trabalho desenvolver uma metodologia de análise da sustentabilidade dos diferentes materiais e estruturas de pavimentos que inclua também o período de utilização dos pavimentos, considerando para tal, as operações de conservação dos pavimentos ao longo do ciclo de vida e estimativas do consumo de combustível, baseadas na resistência ao rolamento. Para avaliar a resistência ao rolamento, desenvolveu-se um protótipo capaz de determinar as diferenças de consumo de energia provocadas por diferentes superfícies de pavimentos. Os dados obtidos experimentalmente foram depois analisados através de técnicas de Data Mining, e considerados na nova metodologia de análise da sustentabilidade desenvolvida neste trabalho, através de um caso de estudo que incluiu a utilização de diferentes estruturas de pavimentos e cenários/estratégias de conservação. Os resultados obtidos confirmam a preponderância da fase de utilização dos pavimentos, quer em termos de impacte ambiental, quer em termos económicos, na avaliação do seu ciclo de vida, confirmando a importância da sua consideração nesse tipo de análises.The idea that the resources people have used are limited has led to the implementation of more sustainable practices. Being road pavements infrastructures that cause significant environmental impacts during their construction, use and rehabilitation stages, it is essential to search for new techniques and more sustainable processes for the mitigation of their consequences. Furthermore, it is important to realize that the effects of road pavements are not limited to the period in which they are constructed, but extended throughout their lifetime. However, the life cycle methodologies proposed so far are too much focused on resource extraction, production, transportation and material application, which is insufficient to study the entire life cycle of the pavement. Thus, the aim of this work was to develop a methodology for analyzing the sustainability of different materials and pavement structures that also include the pavements’ use phase, taking the conservation operations of the pavements throughout the life cycle and estimates of the fuel consumption, based on the rolling resistance, into consideration. To evaluate the rolling resistance a prototype capable of determining the energy consumption differences caused by different pavement surfaces was developed. The experimental data were then analyzed through Data Mining techniques, and considered in the new sustainability analysis methodology developed in this work through a case study involving the use of different pavement structures and conservation scenarios/strategies. The results confirm the preponderance of the pavements’ use phase, both in terms of economic and environmental impact, in the assessment of their life cycle, confirming the importance of their consideration in this type of analysis

Analysis of the Degree of Information of Dental Surgeons about Antiresorptive Drugs According to the Time Since Graduation in Dentistry

Objective: To determine the level of scientific information of dental surgeons who carry out their professional activities in Brazil about antiresorptive drugs and indicated pharmacological procedures aiming at the prevention of osteonecrosis of the jaws and the therapy of drug sequelae that may occur, considering the time since graduation in Dentistry. Material and Methods: This is a quantitative cross-sectional study in which 339 dentists were consulted using the virtual questionnaire containing topics of personal nature, elements contained in the anamnesis carried out and knowledge about antiresorptive drugs, including indications, adverse effects and treatments applied. Chi-square and Fisher\u27s exact tests were performed to analyze associations of data described by absolute and relative frequencies with professionals\u27 time since graduation. All analyses were performed using the R software, with a 5% significance level. Results: Those who revealed to have graduated for more than five years with the highest academic degree were those who demonstrated maximum knowledge of antiresorptive drugs or revealed that, somehow, they had information about them (p<0.05). Conclusion: Dental surgeons in Brazil who have more than five years since graduation have more scientific information about antiresorptive drugs and pharmacological procedures, which can positively contribute to the prevention of osteonecrosis of the jaws and treatment of drug sequelae that may occur

Water management in University of Minho sustainable politics

As Instituições de Ensino Superior têm um papel fundamental na resposta aos desafios que a humanidade se tem vindo a defrontar, principalmente no que confere ao desafio do desenvolvimento sustentável. Dentro deste paradigma, o uso sustentável da água é um tema critico por via da sua relação com o desenvolvimento humano, mas também da sua relação com o meio ambiente. Este documento apresenta uma proposta para uma gestão sustentável da água em campus universitários. Para tal, usou-se o exemplo da Universidade do Minho, enquanto instituição de referência nacional da incorporação dos desígnios da sustentabilidade nas suas políticas. Procura-se assim dar um contributo para aumentar o desempenho sustentável dos campi da Universidade do Minho.Universities have a key role in addressing the challenges that humanity have to face, in particular those related to sustainable development. Within this paradigm, the sustainable management of water is a critical issue, since it is an essential resource to human development and to the life of related ecosystems. This document presents a proposal for a sustainable water management on the Universities campus. For this matter the example of the University of Minho, a reference in the incorporation of sustainable development in institutional policies, is used. This analysis pretends to give a contribution for the improvement of the sustainable performance of University of Minho campus

Cognitive assistants

[Excerpt] 1. Introduction: Society is ageing fast. A number of studies [1, 2, 3, 4] confirm this trend and highlight a negative consequence of this trend: the increased lack of care and assistance for the elderly. Elderly care (paid and unpaid) requires a high cost for the families [3], monetarily, physically, and psychologically. This cost is hard to translate to a single value, and even harder to attain help from governmental sources or external help. Furthermore, family members who provide care to their elderly relatives often report high tension levels in their relationships, degrading the quality of life for all parties [...]This work is supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (Angelo Costa) This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN 2015-65515-C4-1-R

A persuasive cognitive assistant system

In this paper, we present a persuasive recommendation module to be included into the iGenda framework. iGenda is a cognitive assistant that helps care-receivers and caregivers in the management of their agendas. The proposed new module will allow the system to select and recommend to the users the action that potentially best suits to his/her interests. The multi-agent approach followed by the iGenda framework facilitates an easy integration of these new features.This work has been partially supported by the projects TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and TIN2014-55206-R of the Spanish government, by the grant program for the recruitment of doctors for the Spanish system of science and technology (PAID-10-14) of the Universitat Politècnica de València, and by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (A. Costa)

Using emotions in intelligent virtual environments: the EJaCalIVE framework

Nowadays, there is a need to provide new applications which allow the definition and implementation of safe environments that attends to the user needs and increases their wellbeing. In this sense, this paper introduces the EJaCalIVE framework which allows the creation of emotional virtual environments that incorporate agents, eHealth related devices, human actors, and emotions projecting them virtually and managing the interaction between all the elements. In this way, the proposed framework allows the design and programming of intelligent virtual environments, as well as the simulation and detection of human emotions which can be used for the improvement of the decision-making processes of the developed entities. The paper also shows a case study that enforces the need of this framework in common environments like nursing homes or assisted living facilities. Concretely, the case study proposes the simulation of a residence for the elderly. The main goal is to have an emotion-based simulation to train an assistance robot avoiding the complexity involved in working with the real elders. The main advantage of the proposed framework is to provide a safe environment, that is, an environment where users are able to interact safely with the system.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI Grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon. This work is also supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (A. Costa).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Detecting social emotions with a NAO robot

This article aims to give an approach of a dynamic and emotional propagation, which allows to calculate the propagation of the emotion of a group of humans and/or intelligent entities. The dynamic model is based on the Newton laws in order to calculate the emotional attraction among them. To obtain the emotions we use a NAO robot as a tool to move around of a real environment for interacting with the humans. The robot obtains the emotions through image processing. Moreover, the robot can start a dialogue game with humans in order to estimate the personality of a new individual.This work is partially supported by the MINECO project TIN2015-65515-C4-1- R and the FPI grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon

Using non-invasive wearables for detecting emotions with intelligent agents

This paper proposes the use of intelligent wristbands for the automatic detection of emotional states in order to develop an application which allows to extract, analyze, represent and manage the social emotion of a group of entities. Nowadays, the detection of the joined emotion of an heterogeneous group of people is still an open issue. Most of the existing approaches are centered in the emotion detection and management of a single entity. Concretely, the application tries to detect how music can influence in a positive or negative way over individuals’ emotional states. The main goal of the proposed system is to play music that encourages the increase of happiness of the overall patrons.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon. This work is supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (A. Cost

A dynamic emotional model for agent societies

This paper presents a first approximation of a dynamic emotional model to be employed in agent societies. The proposed model is based on the PAD emotional model and allows the representation of the emotional contagion phenomena of a heterogeneous group of agents which are capable of express emotions. Moreover, the proposal allows the definition of the social emotion of this group of agents. The model is mainly based on three elements: personality, empathy and affinity. These elements allow the characterization of each individual, causing them susceptible to vary in some degre the emotions of other individuals

A new emotional robot assistant that facilitates human interaction and persuasion

The development of robots that are truly sociable requires understanding how human interactions can be applied to the interaction between humans and robots. A sociable robot must be able to interact with people taking into account aspects like verbal and non-verbal communications (emotions, postures, gestures). This work presents a social robot which main goal is to provide assistance to older people in carrying out their daily activities (through suggestions or reminders). In addition, the robot presents non-verbal communications like perceiving emotions and displaying human identifiable emotions in order to express empathy. A prototype of the robot is being tested in a daycare center in the northern area of Portugal.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI Grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon. This work is supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (Angelo Costa)