IoT and Machine Learning for Process Optimization in Agrofood Industry

A indústria 4.0 engloba as principais inovações tecnológicas dos campos de automação, controlo e tecnologia da informação, suportada nos conceitos tecnológicos, Internet das Coisas (IoT), sistemas Cloud e sistemas Cyber-Físicos, tornando os processos cada vez mais eficientes e autônomos. Neste contexto, propomos estudar e otimizar o processo de dessolventização de uma unidade fabril de produção de óleo vegetal, associada a uma cadeia de abastecimento da industria agroalimentar. Esta cadeia contêm um conjunto de dispositivos e sensores que permitem monitorizar o processo em tempo real, dando a capacidade de desenvolver modelos preditivos que otimizem o processo de extração do solvente comercial do produto final.Pretendemos demonstrar que a transformação da operação desta cadeia de abastecimento melhora a eficiência e eficácia dos processos associados, reduzindo os custos operacionais de extração de solvente, obtendo o produto final de acordo com as normas e parâmetros de qualidade e segurança.Orientadores Externos: Vasco Miguel Pires, Raquel Peixoto de Oliveir

The strategic challenges of a business centre in Yerevan, Armenia –the churn rate. Recommendations –longevity & business model and quality control

The churn rate has been increasing continuously on the last few years, at the Elite Plaza Business Center, located in Yerevan, Armenia. The team analyzed industry characteristics, external environmental factors, as well a sin sights retrieved from research interviews performed to people that operate in the Elite Plaza. After a thorough analysis, it is understood that the churn rate can be come amore serious problem if measures are not adopted. The goal of this work project was to present real-life solutions that could be applied in the Elite Plaza, to attenuate this problem

Spontaneously broken symmetry restoration of quantum fields in the vicinity of neutral and electrically charged black holes

We consider the restoration of a spontaneously broken symmetry of an interacting quantum scalar field around neutral, i.e., Schwarzschild, and electrically charged, i.e., Reissner-Nordstr\"om, black holes in four dimensions. This is done through a semiclassical self-consistent procedure, by solving the system of non-linear coupled equations describing the dynamics of the background field and the vacuum polarization. The black hole at its own horizon generates an indefinitely high temperature which decreases to the Hawking temperature at infinity. Due to the high temperature in its vicinity, there forms a bubble around the black hole in which the scalar field can only assume a value equal to zero, a minimum of energy. Thus, in this region the symmetry of the energy and the field is preserved. At the bubble radius, there is a phase transition in the value of the scalar field due to a spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism. Indeed, outside the bubble radius the temperature is low enough such that the scalar field settles with a nonzero value in a new energy minimum, indicating a breaking of the symmetry in this outer region. Conversely, there is symmetry restoration from the outer region to the inner bubble close to the horizon. Specific properties that emerge from different black hole electric charges are also noteworthy. It is found that colder black holes, i.e., more charged ones, have a smaller bubble length of restored symmetry. In the extremal case the bubble has zero length, i.e., there is no bubble. Additionally, for colder black holes, it becomes harder to excite the quantum field modes, so the vacuum polarization has smaller values. In the extremal case, the black hole temperature is zero and the vacuum polarization is never excited.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Entropy of an extremal electrically charged thin shell and the extremal black hole

There is a debate as to what is the value of the the entropy $S$ of extremal black holes. There are approaches that yield zero entropy $S=0$, while there are others that yield the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy $S=A_+/4$, in Planck units. There are still other approaches that give that $S$ is proportional to $r_+$ or even that $S$ is a generic well-behaved function of $r_+$. Here $r_+$ is the black hole horizon radius and $A_+=4\pi r_+^2$ is its horizon area. Using a spherically symmetric thin matter shell with extremal electric charge, we find the entropy expression for the extremal thin shell spacetime. When the shell's radius approaches its own gravitational radius, and thus turns into an extremal black hole, we encounter that the entropy is $S=S(r_+)$, i.e., the entropy of an extremal black hole is a function of $r_+$ alone. We speculate that the range of values for an extremal black hole is $0\leq S(r_+) \leq A_+/4$.Comment: 11 pages, minor changes, added references, matches the published versio

Leveraging brands at music festivals: NOS Alive sponsorship

The objective of this study is to understand the relation between event image and sponsor image regarding music festivals, more specifically NOS Alive (the renowned Portuguese music festival). This study will try to comprehend if this relation exists and how and if it is affected by experience and event sponsor-fit (mediators). This research is composed by two studies. Pilot study was composed by a survey, that had two hundred and eighty participants and it was conducted in the event NOS Alive, and an interview with a specialist in the area, which allowed the identification of the categories and main concepts to be analyzed in the second study. In the quantitative study, a questionnaire was created and applied, especially at a national level (two hundred and fifty-three answers) with the objective of confirm the findings of the first study and analyze the relations between the categories previously identified. Seven hypotheses were formulated and tested. According with the analysis done on this research, two models were created regarding the sponsor image of NOS (model 1) and Heineken (model 2). The findings indicate that event image affects directly and indirectly NOS image with experience and event sponsor-fit as mediators (model 1). While in model 2, event image just affects indirectly Heineken image with experience and event sponsor-fit as mediators.O objetivo deste estudo é compreender a relação entre a imagem do evento e a imagem do patrocinador para festivais de música, mais especificamente o NOS Alive (o reconhecido festival de música português). Este estudo tentará entender se essa relação existe e como ela é afetada pela experiência e pelo ajuste do patrocinador do evento (mediadores). Esta pesquisa é composta por dois estudos. O estudo piloto foi composto por uma pesquisa, que tinha duzentos e oitenta participantes e foi realizada no evento NOS Alive, e uma entrevista com um especialista da área, o que permitiu a identificação das categorias e dos principais conceitos a serem analisados no segundo estudo. No estudo quantitativo, foi criado e aplicado um questionário, especialmente a nível nacional (duzentos e cinquenta e três respostas) com o objetivo de se confirmar os resultados do primeiro estudo e analisar as relações entre as categorias anteriormente identificadas. Sete hipóteses foram formuladas e testadas. De acordo com a análise realizada nesta pesquisa, foram criados dois modelos sobre a imagem patrocinadora da NOS (modelo 1) e da Heineken (modelo 2). Os resultados indicam que a imagem do evento afeta direta e indiretamente a imagem NOS com a experiência e o ajuste do patrocinador do evento como mediadores (modelo 1). Enquanto no modelo 2, a imagem do evento apenas afeta indiretamente a imagem de Heineken com a experiência e o ajuste do patrocinador do evento como mediadores