Using choreographies to support the gamification process on the development of an application to reduce electricity costs

Building automation systems contribute to reduce electricity costs by managing distributed energy resources in an efficient way. However, a large share of consumption cannot be optimized through automation alone, since it mainly depends on human interactions. Gamification can be used as one form of changing users’ behaviours [1], but its implementation does require assumptions on the behaviour patterns that need to be identified, encouraged, or discouraged. To tackle this problem, we propose a framework that joins building automation solutions with gamification techniques to enable behavioural demand response.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Learning for text mining : tackling the cost of feature and knowledge engineering.

Over the last decade, the state-of-the-art in text mining has moved towards the adoption of machine learning as the main paradigm at the heart of approaches. Despite significant advances, machine learning based text mining solutions remain costly to design, develop and maintain for real world problems. An important component of such cost (feature engineering) concerns the effort required to understand which features or characteristics of the data can be successfully exploited in inducing a predictive model of the data. Another important component of the cost (knowledge engineering) has to do with the effort in creating labelled data, and in eliciting knowledge about the mining systems and the data itself. I present a series of approaches, methods and findings aimed at reducing the cost of creating and maintaining document classification and information extraction systems. They address the following questions: Which classes of features lead to an improved classification accuracy in the document classification and entity extraction tasks? How to reduce the amount of labelled examples needed to train machine learning based document classification and information extraction systems, so as to relieve domain experts from this costly task? How to effectively represent knowledge about these systems and the data that they manipulate, in order to make systems interoperable and results replicable? I provide the reader with the background information necessary to understand the above questions and the contributions to the state-of the- art contained herein. The contributions include: the identification of novel classes of features for the document classification task which exploit the multimedia nature of documents and lead to improved classification accuracy; a novel approach to domain adaptation for text categorization which outperforms standard supervised and semi-supervised methods while requiring considerably less supervision; and a well-founded formalism for declaratively specifying text and multimedia mining systems

Sustainable last mile in e-commerce: a literature review

The interest in last mile, considered the most important factor in e-commerce, has grown as online sales have increased. This interest has been reflected in the literature. However, there is not an overview of this whole research field. The purpose of this article is to provide a complete view of the topics in the field of sustainable last mile in e-commerce. To achieve this, a literature review was carried out in which 58 articles were identified. Afterwards, these papers were classified according to their topic and research method, providing a complete vision of the field of analysis. As a result, 11 topics were identified, the most studied being the Quantification of the effect on sustainability of the last mile in e-commerce. In addition, four future lines for research were established

The ontology: Chimaera or Pegasus

In the context of the needs of the Semantic Web and Knowledge Management, we consider what the requirements are of ontologies. The ontology as an artifact of knowledge representation is in danger of becoming a Chimera. We present a series of facts concerning the foundations on which automated ontology construction must build. We discuss a number of different functions that an ontology seeks to fulfill, and also a wish list of ideal functions. Our objective is to stimulate discussion as to the real requirements of ontology engineering and take the view that only a selective and restricted set of requirements will enable the beast to fly

An incremental tri-partite approach to ontology learning

In this paper we present a new approach to ontology learning. Its basis lies in a dynamic and iterative view of knowledge acquisition for ontologies. The Abraxas approach is founded on three resources, a set of texts, a set of learning patterns and a set of ontological triples, each of which must remain in equilibrium. As events occur which disturb this equilibrium various actions are triggered to re-establish a balance between the resources. Such events include acquisition of a further text from external resources such as the Web or the addition of ontological triples to the ontology. We develop the concept of a knowledge gap between the coverage of an ontology and the corpus of texts as a measure triggering actions. We present an overview of the algorithm and its functionalities

Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction, Followed by Gas Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry for the Simultaneous Quantification of Ethinyl Estradiol and Drospirenone in Contraceptive Formulations

[EN]Contraceptive tablets typically contain a combination of two synthetic versions of an estrogen and a progestogen, which work together to inhibit the ovulation process. An accurate and precise quantification of these components is essential for contraceptive producers. In this study, we have developed the first gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method for the simultaneous quantification of 17α-ethinyl estradiol (EE) and drospirenone (DP) in contraceptive formulations. Under the final working conditions, analytes were extracted from the solid by ultrasound-assisted extraction (15 min) in methanol. The resulting suspension was diluted in ethyl acetate, subjected to centrifugation and, finally, the supernatant was directly injected into the GC–MS system. No derivatization reagents were utilized. To correct for instrumental variations, calibration was performed using the internal standard method, with cholesterol as the internal standard. A good linearity was achieved throughout the calibration range for both EE (3–12 µg mL−1) and DP (300–1200 µg mL−1), with R2 values exceeding 0.99. Trueness, assessed in terms of percentages of recovery, was also found to be satisfactory for both analytes, with recovery rates of 106 ± 8% for EE and 93 ± 9% for DP. Furthermore, intra-day and inter-day precision studies yielded relative standard deviation values below 6% for both analytes. In terms of sensitivity, the instrumental limits of detection were 0.25 µg mL−1 for EE and 6.6 µg mL−1 for DP, and the instrumental limits of quantification 0.82 µg mL−1 for EE and 22 µg mL−1 for DP. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of contraceptive tablets from three different pharmaceutical companies. No differences were observed between the measured and the declared amount of active principle per tablet, demonstrating the applicability of the procedure. In addition, a stability study conducted on both the standards and sample extracts demonstrated that they can be stored at room temperature for a minimum period of seven days.Junta de Castilla y Leó

Economia e felicidade : o impacto da confiança na felicidade dos portugueses

Mestrado em Economia e Políticas PúblicasNos últimos anos a procura por indicadores de Bem-estar alternativos ao PIB tem despertado o interesse por parte de economistas, e não só, na Felicidade e Bem-estar subjectivo. O número de artigos científicos publicados nesta área tem vindo a aumentar gradualmente, havendo vários autores que defendem uma mudança de paradigma com uma adopção da Felicidade como objectivo de Bem-estar de uma nação. Face a este crescente interesse, cabe-nos nesta dissertação analisar o que é que Felicidade e Bem-estar subjectivo acrescentam à Economia, em que medida diferem da sua abordagem ao problema do Bem-estar, que descobertas e resultados podem ser relevantes para a Economia e Políticas Públicas, e também que críticas e problemas tem de enfrentar quem procura enveredar por esta via de investigação. Um dos contributos mais importantes da investigação em Felicidade e Bem-estar subjectivo é o de permitir analisar o impacto de variáveis não monetárias no Bem-estar. Uma dessas variáveis é a confiança. Aplicando o método de investigação em Felicidade, tem surgido alguma literatura que analisa as relações entre este factor e o bem-estar. Seguindo de perto alguma dessa literatura, no capítulo 2 desta dissertação procurar-se-á aplicar o método de investigação em Felicidade ao estudo dos níveis de confiança dos portugueses, e a sua relação com a felicidade. Nesta análise descobrimos que ter um nível baixo de confiança social implica ter um nível médio de felicidade inferior em 1 ponto, numa escala de 0-10, em relação a quem tem um nível moderado de confiança social.In the last years, the search for alternatives to GDP as a Well-Being indicator has increased economists' and other researchers' interest in Happiness and Subjetive Well- Being. The number of scientific papers published in this field has been gradually increasing and some of the authors working in it defend a paradigmatic change to Happiness as a nation's Well-Being goal. In face of this increasing interest, in this dissertation we'll try to analyze what Happiness and Subjective well-being are, how they contribute to Economic Science, what discoveries and results can be relevant to Economics and Public Policy and also what criticism and problems do Happiness proponents have to face. One of the major contributions of Happiness and Subjetive Well-Being is to give important tools for the analysis of the impact of non-monetary variables on Well-Being. One of those variables is trust. Using Happiness research some literature has come forth analyzing the relations between this variable and Well-Being. Following some of that literature, in chapter 2 of this dissertation, we'll try to apply Happiness investigation method to the study of trust levels for the portuguese population and its relation with happiness levels. In this analysis we found that having a low level of social trust implies, on average, having a happiness level lower in 1 point, in a 0-10 scale, in comparisson with a person who has a moderate level of social trust.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Trânsito de potência DC difuso com despacho incorporado

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores (Energia). Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Gallium nanoparticles colloids synthesis for UV bio-optical sensors

F. Nucciarelli, I. Bravo, L. Vázquez, E. Lorenzo, J. L. Pau, "Gallium nanoparticles colloids synthesis for UV bio-optical sensors", SPIE Optics + Optoelectronics Proc. SPIE 10231 (16 May 2017) Copyright 2017 Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. Proceedings of the Optical Sensors Conference (Prague, Czech Republic) doi: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2265883A new method for the synthesis of colloidal gallium nanoparticles (Ga NPs) based on the thermal evaporation of Ga on an expendable aluminum zinc oxide (AZO) layer is presented here. The growth of AZO layers was investigated on different substrates at room temperature and 300 °C. By means of physical evaporation process, nanoparticles were deposited with a distribution ranging from 10 nm to 80 nm in diameter. A study of their endurance in acidic environment was carried out in order to assure the NPs shape and size stability during the etching process. Smaller particles start to disappear between 1h and 2h immersion time in a pH=1 solution, while bigger particles reduce their dimension. The NPs were dispersed in tetrahydrofuran (THF) organic solvent and optically characterized, showing strong UV absorption with a band centered at 280 nm. The colloids size distribution of as-evaporated samples was compared with the distribution obtained in droplets of the solution after drop-casting. By Dipole Discrete Approximation simulations, a close relationship between the UV absorption and the NPs with diameter smaller than ∼40 nm was found. Because of the gallium oxide (Ga1-xOx) outer shell that surrounds the Ga NPs, an enhancement of their hydrophobicity occurs. Hence, the low agglomeration state between NPs in tetrahydrofuran allows to obtain narrow absorption band in the optical spectrumWe are also grateful to the international PROMIS project, framed in the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641899. This research is supported by the MINECO (CTQ2014-53334-C2-2-R and MAT2016-80394-R) and Comunidad de Madrid (NANOAVANSES ref. S2013/MIT-3029) Projec