Pay as You Go: A Generic Crypto Tolling Architecture

The imminent pervasive adoption of vehicular communication, based on dedicated short-range technology (ETSI ITS G5 or IEEE WAVE), 5G, or both, will foster a richer service ecosystem for vehicular applications. The appearance of new cryptography based solutions envisaging digital identity and currency exchange are set to stem new approaches for existing and future challenges. This paper presents a novel tolling architecture that harnesses the availability of 5G C-V2X connectivity for open road tolling using smartphones, IOTA as the digital currency and Hyperledger Indy for identity validation. An experimental feasibility analysis is used to validate the proposed architecture for secure, private and convenient electronic toll payment

Optimization Study For The Cross-Section Of A Concrete Gravity Dam: Genetic Algorithm Model And Application

Concrete gravity dams have trapezoidal shape in their cross section and shall guarantee the global stability against acting loads like hydrostatic and uplift pressures through his gravitational actions (self-weight and others). This study focuses on the shape optimization of concrete gravity dams using genetic algorithms. In this case, the dam cross section area is considered as the objective function and the design variables are the geometric parameters of the gravity dam. The optimum cross-section of a concrete gravity dam is achieved by the Genetic Algorithm (GA) through a Matlab routine developed by the author. Sliding, overturning and floating verifications are implemented in the program. In order to assess the efficiency of the proposed methodology for gravity dams optimization, one application is presented adopting the concrete gravity dam of Belo Monte Hydropower Plant (HPP), considering normal loading condition and others assumptions presented.Peer Reviewe

The Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) Questionnaire Identifies Quality of Instruction as a Key Factor Predicting Academic Achievement

OBJECTIVE: This study analyzes the reliability of the PHEEM questionnaire translated into Portuguese. We present the results of PHEEM following distribution to doctors in three different medical residency programs at a university hospital in Brazil. INTRODUCTION: Efforts to understand environmental factors that foster effective learning resulted in the development of a questionnaire to measure medical residents' perceptions of the level of autonomy, teaching quality and social support in their programs. METHODS: The questionnaire was translated using the modified Brislin back-translation technique. Cronbach's alpha test was used to ensure good reliability and ANOVA was used to compare PHEEM results among residents from the Surgery, Anesthesiology and Internal Medicine departments. The Kappa coefficient was used as a measure of agreement, and factor analysis was employed to evaluate the construct strength of the three domains suggested by the original PHEEM questionnaire. RESULTS: The PHEEM survey was completed by 306 medical residents and the resulting Cronbach's alpha was 0.899. The weighted Kappa was showed excellent reliability. Autonomy was rated most highly by Internal Medicine residents (63.7% ± 13.6%). Teaching was rated highest in Anesthesiology (66.7% ± 15.4%). Residents across the three areas had similar perceptions of social support (59.0% ± 13.3% for Surgery; 60.5% ± 13.6% for Internal Medicine; 61.4% ± 14.4% for Anesthesiology). Factor analysis suggested that nine factors explained 58.9% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that PHEEM is a reliable instrument for measuring the quality of medical residency programs at a Brazilian teaching hospital. The results suggest that quality of teaching was the best indicator of overall response to the questionnaire

Interesses e valores de alunos do ensino profissional

[Resumo] A presente investigaçao pretendeu estudar a relaçao entre os interesses e os valores dos alunos do ensino profissional de nível II!. O Inventário de Interesses Vocacionais e a Escala de Valores WIS foram aplicados a 379 alunos de ambos os sexos que frequentavam diferentes cursos técnicos, em quatro escolas profissionais do districto de Leiria. Os resultados confirmam a existencia de diferen<;as significativas entre os interesses (Investigador, Artístico, Social, Empreendedor, Convencional e Realista) para cada urna das áreas de forma<;ao. Ao nível dos valores verificámos algumas diferenças significativas entre o sexo masculino e o sexo feminino e entre as diversas áreas de formaçao. As correlaçoes entre os interesses e os valores sao na generalidade baixas, no entanto, verificase a existencia de relaçoes significativas, no sentido esperado, nomeadamente entre a escala que avalia os interesses empreendedores e as escalas que avaliam os valores Autoridade, Prestígio, Promoçao e Económico, e entre a escala que avalia os interesses Artísticos e a Criatividad

Do ensino superior para o trabalho: contributo dos estágios para inserção profissional

O presente trabalho visou analisar o papel dos estágios na transição para o trabalho, entendendo-se a inserção profissional como um processo temporalmente alargado constituído por três fases interdependentes: a formação académica, a procura de uma actividade remunerada e a adaptação ao mundo laboral. Mais especificamente, pretendeu-se estudar o impacto dos estágios curriculares na promoção de variáveis psicológicas centrais nesta transição – exploração vocacional, auto-eficácia e objectivos de investimento profissional – numa amostra de 337 finalistas do ensino superior português. Os resultados encontrados evidenciaram que os estudantes que tiveram a oportunidade de realizar um estágio curricular apresentaram maiores níveis de exploração vocacional, de auto-eficácia, bem como objectivos de investimento profissional mais robustos, quando comparados com aqueles que não realizaram estágio

Word Embedding Evaluation in Downstream Tasks and Semantic Analogies

Language Models have long been a prolific area of study in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). One of the newer kinds of language models, and some of the most used, are Word Embeddings (WE). WE are vector space representations of a vocabulary learned by a non-supervised neural network based on the context in which words appear. WE have been widely used in downstream tasks in many areas of study in NLP. These areas usually use these vector models as a feature in the processing of textual data. This paper presents the evaluation of newly released WE models for the Portuguese language, trained with a corpus composed of 4.9 billion tokens. The first evaluation presented an intrinsic task in which WEs had to correctly build semantic and syntactic relations. The second evaluation presented an extrinsic task in which the WE models were used in two downstream tasks: Named Entity Recognition and Semantic Similarity between Sentences. Our results show that a diverse and comprehensive corpus can often outperform a larger, less textually diverse corpus, and that passing the text in parts to the WE generating algorithm may cause loss of quality

Designing with biological generative systems : choice by emotion

Consumers as co-producers or co-designers are frequently presented as the solution for mass-customization, but the success of these systems as enhancing emotional bonds between user and object seems to be questionable. Making choices may not be enough to generate a bigger connection between people and their things. Artifacts produced using biological systems with generative potential, where nature’s randomness and physiological processes have an important role in the definition of form, may have the capacity to foster the emotional connections that are missing, arising from nurturing and from an understanding of their morphogenesis, from the proximity and time required for their growth and development

Home-based cardiac rehabilitation and virtual reality: effect on balance and kyphotic index

The virtual reality is a possibility in a context of cardiac rehabilitation. To analyse the effect of a six-month home-based maintenance phase cardiac rehabilitation specific exercise programme, performed in a virtual reality (Kinect) or conventional (booklet) environment on balance and kyphotic index of subjects with coronary artery disease.: A randomized controlled trial was conducted with subjects from a hospital in Porto, Portugal, who had completed the training phase of cardiac rehabilitation. Subjects were randomly assigned to either intervention group 1(IG1), whose programme encompassed the use of Kinect (n=11); or intervention group 2 (IG2), a paper booklet (n=11); or a control group (CG), only subjected to the usual care (n=11). The three groups received education on cardiovascular risk factors. At baseline, 3 and 6 months was measured the balance, static (One-Leg-Standing Test) and dynamic (Star Excursion Balance Test), and the kyphotic index (Flexicurve). Descriptive and inferential statistical measures were used, significance level of 0.05.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio