Notas leitura / Recensão crítica

Recensão crítica à obra de Federico Pistono, "Robots will steal your job, but that’s ok : how to survive the economic collapse and be happy. 2ª ed. 2014Esta recensão crítica vai analisar em detalhe e do ponto de vista da ciência da computação alguns dos temas propostos por Federico Pistono nos capítulos 4 Revista de Ciências da Computação, 2013, nº8 60 (Information Technology) a 7 (Evidence of Automation)1. Nomeadamente, efetuaremos uma análise mais aprofundada sobre duas tecnologias que são hoje uma aposta explícita da IBM[3] e que ilustram bem os desafios dos sistemas informáticos para a próxima década. Terminaremos com algumas considerações sobre a importância que a cultura “Open Source” (traduzida por “código aberto”, mas mostrando que o termo tem implicações mais abrangentes), e como, tal como referido no livro de Federico Pistono, essa cultura de partilha pode ser a chave para evitar o colapso da civilização humana. O objectivo é possibilitar ao leitor formar a sua própria conclusão sobre a pertinência do tema e do livro aqui analisado

Sequential pattern mining of price interactions

Conferência realizada em Angra do Heroísmo, Açores, de 9-12 de Setembro de 2013The computational analysis of large quantities of data is an important asset for the economic study of interactions among social agents. However, most of available frequent pattern discovery techniques result in a huge number of rules and scalability problems that end up requiring unnecessary subjectivity in data interpretation. This work presents Ramex-Forum, a visualization technique that can highlight important relations often hidden in economic data. A case study using recent asset prices on global economic data confi rm the usefulness of the approach for expressing economic influence cues as poly-trees

An application of a multicriteria model to assess the quality of local governance

This article presents a method to assess the quality of local governance practices. The multicriteria decision analysis modeling approach is illustrated through a real application (Portuguese municipalities). To define the criteria, performance descriptors, and reference levels in each dimension of local governance, and to account for the differences in preference of scoring in each criterion, the judgments of legitimate stakeholders were considered through decision conferencing. The constructed “Municipal Governance Indicator” is calculated for the case of Lisbon to show the outputs of the model and its potential usefulness

Ramex-forum: sequential patterns of prices in the petroleum production chain

We present a sensibility analysis and new visualizations using an improved version of the Ramex-Forum algorithm applied to the study of the petroleum production chain. Di erent combinations of parameters and new ways to visualize data will be used. Results will highlight the importance of Ramex-Forum and its proper parameterizations for analyzing relevant relations among price variations in petroleum and other similar markets.This research is supported by the GoBusiness Research project (http://www. gobusinessfinance.ch/en/research). The authors would like to thank GoB- usiness Finance for providing the data, nancial knowledge and funds for the present work

Ramex-Forum: a tool for displaying and analysing complex sequential patterns of financial products

Financial data provides a valuable up‐to‐date knowledge of the world economy. However, it is presented in extremely large data volumes, in diverse formats, and is constantly being updated at a high speed. The Ramex‐Forum algorithm is oriented to guide financial experts in finding new and relevant information.We present a sensitivity analysis and newvisualizations using an improved version of the Ramex‐Forum algorithm. The proposed algorithm is applied to two case studies – the petroleum production chain and the European financial institutions risk analysis. Different combinations of parameters and new ways to visualize data are used. Results highlight the importance of Ramex‐Forum for analysing relevant relationships in price variations in financial markets.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Efeito de um treino de força em seco no desempenho em jovens nadadores

Em natação a performance depende da força e potência muscular (Newton et al., 2002) e a capacidade de exercer força na água é fundamental, especialmente em distâncias curtas (Morouço et al., 2011). Assim, os programas de treino de força em seco são comuns em natação ainda que o consenso sobre os benefícios específicos para o nadador ainda não tenha sido alcançado (Tanaka et al., 1993; Trappe and Pearson, 1994; Girold et al., 2007). Por um lado, várias investigações apresentaram melhorias na performance de nado após um programa de treino de força em seco (Strass, 1988; Girold et al., 2007; Aspenes et al., 2009; Girold et al., 2012). Por outro lado, várias investigações não apresentaram melhorias na performance de nado após um programa de treino de força em seco (Tanaka et al., 1993; Trappe and Pearson, 1994; Garrido et al., 2010; Sadowski et al., 2012). As razões para os resultados menos positivos podem dever-se a falhas nos protocolos de intervenção, tais como: especificidade do meio aquático (incapacidade de replicar os movimentos aquáticos em meio terrestre e a falta da resistência da água); escolha de exercícios pouco específicos ou que não solicitem os mesmos grupos musculares que o nado; velocidade de execução e cargas dos exercícios; amostra e os momentos das avaliações. As investigações com jovens nadadores são ainda mais escassas do que com adultos, o que revela alguma necessidade de investigação em torno deste assunto. Assim, os objetivos deste estudo foram examinar os efeitos de um programa de treino de força em seco: (i) na performance de nado e (ii) produção de força na água

Stochastic urban pluvial flood hazard maps based upon a spatial-temporal rainfall generator

It is a common practice to assign the return period of a given storm event to the urban pluvial flood event that such storm generates. However, this approach may be inappropriate as rainfall events with the same return period can produce different urban pluvial flooding events, i.e., with different associated flood extent, water levels and return periods. This depends on the characteristics of the rainfall events, such as spatial variability, and on other characteristics of the sewer system and the catchment. To address this, the paper presents an innovative contribution to produce stochastic urban pluvial flood hazard maps. A stochastic rainfall generator for urban-scale applications was employed to generate an ensemble of spatially—and temporally—variable design storms with similar return period. These were used as input to the urban drainage model of a pilot urban catchment (~9 km2) located in London, UK. Stochastic flood hazard maps were generated through a frequency analysis of the flooding generated by the various storm events. The stochastic flood hazard maps obtained show that rainfall spatial-temporal variability is an important factor in the estimation of flood likelihood in urban areas. Moreover, as compared to the flood hazard maps obtained by using a single spatially-uniform storm event, the stochastic maps generated in this study provide a more comprehensive assessment of flood hazard which enables better informed flood risk management decisions

Stock market series analysis using self-organizing maps

In this work a new clustering technique is implemented and tested. The proposed approach is based on the application of a SOM (self-organizing map) neural network and provides means to cluster U-MAT aggregated data. It relies on a flooding algorithm operating on the U-MAT and resorts to the Calinski and Harabask index to assess the depth of flooding, providing an adequate number of clusters. The method is tuned for the analysis of stock market series. Results obtained are promising although limited in scope.Neste trabalho é implementada e testada uma nova técnica de agrupamento. A abordagem proposta baseia-se na aplicação de uma rede neuronal SOM (mapa auto-organizado) e permite agrupar dados sobre a matriz de distancias (U-MAT). É utilizado um algoritmo de alagamento ("flooding") sobre a U-MAT e o índice de Calinski e Harabasz avalia a profundidade do alagamento determinando-se, assim, o número de grupos mais adequado. O método é desenhado especificamente para a análise de séries temporais da bolsa de valores. Os resultados obtidos são promissores, embora se registem ainda limitações

Coordinated Multi-Point MIMO Processing for 4G

The concept of cooperative Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO), also referred to as network MIMO, or as Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission (CoMP), was standardized in 3GPP Release 11. The goal of CoMP is to improve the coverage of high data rates and cell-edge throughput, and also to increase system throughput. In this paper we analyze only the latter scenario, using system level simulations in accordance with 3GPP guidelines. It is shown that the use of joint coordinated multipoint transmission achieves additional throughput gains. However, the gains depend on the scheduling type. This paper also indicates that the criterion of fairness is an important parameter when the number of users is high