Obres per al violí en un llibre d'orgue del segle XVII: el manuscrit 387 de la Biblioteca de Catalunya

El present treball dóna a conèixer un conjunt d'obres de cambra, per a violí, integrades en un manuscrit per a orgue copiat entre els anys 1694 i 1697. Entre les gairebé cinc-centes composicions per a orgue que conté, la majoria compostes per Joan Cabanilles (1644-1712), es troba un conjunt de set composicions instrumentals a dues i tres veus, del compositor romà Francesco Foggia (1604-1688). Pel gran interès que aquestes obres tenen, es dóna aquí notícia d'elles, amb una breu descripció de la font i del material objecte d'estudi, així com la transcripció crítica de la primera obra del conjunt (la Tocata ytaliana para violín y violón), a manera d'avanç, abans d'editar l'estudi complet i edició crítica detallada de tot el fons documental d'aquestes obres, actualment en curs.This work presents a set of chamber pieces for the violin contained in a manuscript for the organ copied between 1694 and 1697. Among the almost 500 compositions for the organ contained therein, most composed by Joan Cabanilles (*1644; †1712), is a set of seven instrumental compositions for two and three voices by the Roman composer Francesco Foggia (*1604; †1688). Because of the great interest these works represent, information is provided on them including a brief description of the source and the material under study, as well as a critical transcription of the first piece in the set (the Tocata ytaliana para violín y violón). This is a preliminary publication before the complete study and a detailed critical edition are published of all the documents related to these pieces, currently being produced

Delay tolerant networks with traffic differentiation capabilities

Dissertação de mestrado em Engineering of Computer Networks and Telematic ServicesIn the last few decades, an increasing growth of Internet usage was witnessed worldwide. However, infrastructures do not always allow the existence of Internet connectivity everywhere. Therefore, to address this issue, the concept of Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) was developed. DTNs purpose is to provide a different level of intermittent connectivity, dissimulating connection problems that arise in complex connectivity scenarios. Examples of such scenarios are, for instance, cities, where cars exchange information about their location; in underdeveloped countries, where Internet is inexistent; in freeways, where is not viable to provide infrastructures for a continuous connectivity, but cars, tolls, and services need to be aware of each other. Thus, DTNs constitute a possible solution for all the aforementioned communication environments. However, DTNs still faces some obstacles in terms of delivering a service with quality as it lacks specific mechanisms, such as traffic differentiation. Traffic differentiation is essential to provide different levels of service quality regarding delivering of messages. Current proposals to improve service delivery through traffic differentiation on DTNs are still under development or lack the proper testing and simulation. The main focus of these proposals is on buffer management mechanisms at each DTN node, instead of message prioritisation mechanisms. Message prioritisation allows some messages to be prioritised over others, improving the delivery rate and, therefore, increasing the probability of a message being correctly delivered. The present thesis implements traffic differentiation in DTNs based on prioritisation strategies, assuming a clear alternative to other buffer management proposals and message prioritisation. Using The One simulation tool, three popular DTNs routing protocols (Epidemic, Spray & Wait, and PRoPHET) are adapted to comply with traffic differentiation. The DTNs traffic prioritisation objective is achieved by designing, implementing and testing four distinct algorithms that classify and order messages according to their priority levels. These algorithms are based and extend some traditional traffic differentiation mechanisms, namely the well-known Priority Queuing and Weighted Round Robin strategies. Results from the simulation tests corroborate that the delivery rate of the messages is affected according to their priorities. Specifically, the simulation shows an increase in the delivery rate of high priority messages, with low impact on the total number of messages delivered, comparatively to the same scenario without differentiation capabilities. To conclude, DTNs can effectively benefit from traffic differentiation based on message prioritisation techniques, being a promising approach to improve service quality levels in such scenarios.Nas últimas décadas assistiu-se a um aumento crescente no uso da internet. Contudo, as infra-estruturas nem sempre permitem uma ligação à internet. Assim, para enfrentar este desafio, o conceito de Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) foi desenvolvido. O objetivo das DTN é providenciar diferentes níveis de ligação intermitente, atenuando os problemas de ligação que surgem em cenários de conectividade complexa. Exemplos de tais cenários incluem, cidades, onde carros trocam informação da sua localização; países em vias de desenvolvimento, onde a internet é inexistente; em auto-estradas, onde não é viável conceber infra-estruturas que permitam uma conectividade permanente, mas onde carros, portagens e serviços necessitam de comunicar. Deste modo, as DTNs constituem uma solução possível para os ambientes indicados. Contudo, as DTNs ainda enfrentam alguns obstáculos na prestação de um serviço de qualidade, visto faltarem mecanismos específicos, como a diferenciação de tráfego. A diferenciação de tráfego é essencial para oferecer diferentes níveis de serviço de qualidade em termos de entrega de mensagens. As abordagens existentes para diferenciação de tráfego em DTNs ainda estão em fase de desenvolvimento. Estas focam-se principalmente nos mecanismos de gestão do buffer a cada nodo da DTN, em vez de ao nível de mecanismo de priorização das mensagens. A priorização de mensagens permite que algumas recebam prioridade em detrimento de outras, melhorando a taxa de entrega, aumentando a probabilidade desta ser entregue corretamente. Esta tese implementa diferenciação de tráfego em DTNs baseando-se em estratégias de priorização, assumindo-se como uma alternativa a outras abordagens de gestão de buffer e priorização de mensagens. Usando a ferramenta de simulação “The One”, foram adaptados três protocolos de routing DTN (Epidemic, Spray & Wait, and PRoPHET) de modo a obedecerem à diferenciação de tráfego. Este objetivo é alcançado pelo desenho, implementação e experimentação de quatro algoritmos que classificam as mensagens de acordo com o seu nível de prioridade, baseando-se em mecanismos tradicionais de diferenciação de tráfego, i.e. as estratégias de Priority Queuing e Weighted Round Robin. Os resultados demonstram que a taxa de entrega de mensagens é influenciada de acordo com as prioridades. Nomeadamente, há um aumento na taxa de entrega de mensagens com prioridade alta, com pouco impacto no número total de mensagens entregues, comparativamente com o mesmo cenário sem mecanismos de diferenciação. Em suma, as DTN podem beneficiar da diferenciação de tráfego baseado em técnicas de priorização de mensagens, representando uma abordagem à melhoria da qualidade de serviço bastante promissora

The gesture's narrative : contemporary music for percussion

Musical performance gestures are recognized by the majority of theoreticians as a critical factor of a musical performance. The aim of the musical performance may consist in not only communicating the musical signs that form a musical piece, but conveying the meaningful succession of gestures, facial expressions and body movements. This meaningful succession, or otherwise the “gesture´s narrative” is assumed to be quite important for the process of directing the audience towards the intended interpretation. Recording music allowed audiences to listen to music without having to go to a musical event for this purpose. On the one hand, this made the listening experience more intense, allowing to concentrate on the aural information exclusively, but, on the other hand, it also imposed restrictions on people’s perception, as the syncretic listening and seeing experience became separated into constituents. Gestures can be considered as operating features of a person’s perception-action system. It presupposes significance of a meaning that involves more than just a physical movement. Movements can be subdivided into specific patterns and conceptualized. Conceptualized gestures are kept in people’s minds as single units, and the subdivision operations are carried out both by performers and the audience. Musical communication through gestures is therefore not about movement only, it should be viewed as structured interactions. For this research, solo percussion contemporary music performance will be analyzed. Overall, percussive music performance is extremely wide, and is accompanied by bright visual images provided by musicians themselves. From this perspective, observation over percussionists’ playing manner and it´s audience provides the researcher an opportunity to understand a narrative ability of music through musicians’ gestures. The quantitative research design divided in three experiments was chosen for the purpose of this study, which can be referred to as the description of the objective reality by using numbers in order to construct meaningful models reflecting various relationships between objects or phenomena. These numerical entities are not the reality itself, but a way of representing it. Moreover, the chosen experimental design gives an opportunity to not only establish the existence of certain effects of one variable on the other one, but also study the magnitude of these effects, considering the major two research questions: Is it possible to detect a percussive gesture’s narrative ? How does the percussive gesture influences the perception of musical narrative?Os gestos que produzem o som são reconhecidos pela maioria dos teóricos como um factor determinante da performance musical e da sua percepção. A conexão entre os gestos, sons e percepção de determinado discurso musical foi já abordada por um amplo número de cientistas, ainda que não haja um claro consenso quanto à medida em que essa conexão é fundamental ou quanto às operações cognitivas subjacentes à percepção de uma peça musical. O objetivo da interpretação em música consistirá não apenas em comunicar os sinais musicais que formam uma obra, mas também em transmitir a sucessão significativa de gestos, expressões e movimentos do corpo. Esta sucessão significativa, ou de outra forma exposto, a “narrativa do gesto” é considerada muito importante para o processo de condução de um público para a interpretação pretendida. O avanço da tecnologia neste estádio de desenvolvimento da sociedade, criou excelentes oportunidades para permitir a separação de atividades auditivas e visuais da música. A gravação e posterior difusão musical, permitiu que o público consumisse música sem ter que, para essa finalidade, presenciar um evento musical. Por um lado, esse fenómeno tornou a experiência de escuta mais frequente e porventura mais focada, permitindo ao ouvinte concentrar-se na informação auditiva exclusivamente. Mas, por outro lado, também impôs restrições a uma experiência musical sincrética com o ouvir e ouvir e ver, a separaram-se em constituintes dentro do fenómeno musical. Os gestos podem ser considerados características de funcionamento do sistema de percepção/ acção de um ser humano. Pressupõe isso a atribuição de expressão a um significado que envolve mais do que apenas um movimento físico. Os movimentos podem ser subdivididos em padrões específicos e conceptualizados. Estes gestos conceptualizados são mantidos como unidades singulares, e as operações de subdivisão significantes são levadas a cabo tanto pelos performers como pelo seu público. A comunicação musical através de gestos, não deve, portanto, ser olhada apenas sobre os aspectos do movimento, mas sim como uma interação estruturada e musicalmente contextualizada. Os processos descritos acima resultam em grande parte do ambiente de envolvimento do individuo ouvinte e dependem fortemente da sua singularidade e contexto cultural. Nem todos os movimentos poderão ser chamados gestos performativos para além daqueles aqueles cuja acção é de natureza intencionalmente expressiva ou inerente à produção de som. Nesta pesquisa, a performance de música contemporânea para percussão solo será analisada. De uma maneira geral, o desempenho dos percussionistas é, do ponto de vista visual, extremamente rico na formação de gestos. Nessa perspectiva, a observação de uma audiência sujeita à sua presença, com e sem contacto visual com a sua acção, fornece uma oportunidade de aproximação ao estudo do gesto e da sua narrativa, do ponto de vista da percepção do discurso musical. Um desenho de pesquisa quantitativa dividida em três experiências, foi o caminho escolhido para o presente estudo. Produziu-se uma descrição da realidade objectiva usando números, de modo a construir modelos significativos que pudessem reflectir as várias relações entre objectos ou fenómenos . Estas entidades numéricas não serão assim uma realidade em si, mas uma maneira possível de a representar . O processo de experimentação, dividido em três partes, dá-nos a oportunidade para perceber não só a existência dos efeitos de uma variável sobre a outra (visual e auditiva), mas também permite uma reflexão sobre a magnitude desses efeitos, tentando assim responder ás questões que levam a esta investigação: É possivel detectar uma narrativa no gesto percussivo? Como é que o gesto percussivo influencia a percepção do discurso musical

Cognitive and physical effort of surgeons using master/slave surgical systems for minimally invasive surgery

Tese de mestrado integrado, Engenharia Biomédica e Biofísica (Engenharia Clínica e Instrumentação Médica) Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2020The integration of technology in health care has been increasing over the years, allowing more and better diagnoses and treatments in various areas of health. One of these areas is the surgery area, with da Vinci system being one of the most successful and most commercialized. Despite all the advantages, there are some disadvantages such as a limited number of degrees of freedom, the possibility of collision between the different robotic arms, among others. Therefore, the SMARTsurg (Smart Wearble Robotic Teleoperated Surgery) project was developed for the purpose of correcting these problems, proposing a wearable robotic system for minimally invasive surgeries, offering surgeons more natural movements. However, to verify that this is a necessary improvement, it is necessary to understand how these changes affects the performance and condition of surgeons. Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to compare the muscular and mental effort of surgeons when performing tasks using the da Vinci system and the SMARTsurg system. Biological signals such as electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) were studied to verify how these signals changed using each of the systems. Using these biosignals it was possible to evaluate muscle and mental fatigue in the participants of this study. The experimental trials with the da Vinci system took place at Southmead Hospital Bristol, where the fatigue of clinicians was tested, performing a series of surgical training tasks in the simulator embedded in the da Vinci systems. For the SMARTsurg system, the trials took place at the Bristol Robotics Lab, having been tested volunteers from the lab without any experience in robotic surgical systems and one of the subjects who participated in the trial in the hospital. Also here, subjects were asked to perform small surgical training tasks, similar to those of the da Vinci system. The analysis of the results showed that it was only possible to verify muscle fatigue in participants using the da Vinci system, and it was not possible to determine any type of mental fatigue using any of the systems. Nevertheless, it will be necessary to do more experiments to verify a broader trend in the data, and it was possible to determine with this dissertation the validity of the use of two wireless devices available in the market to infer conclusions about human physiological changes

Comparative multivariate forecast performance for the G7 Stock Markets: VECM Models vs deep learning LSTM neural networks

[EN] The prediction of stock prices dynamics is a challenging task since these kind of financial datasets are characterized by irregular fluctuations, nonlinear patterns and high uncertainty dynamic changes.The deep neural network models, and in particular the LSTM algorithm, have been increasingly used by researchers for analysis, trading and prediction of stock market time series, appointing an important role in today’s economy.The main purpose of this paper focus on the analysis and forecast of the Standard & Poor’s index by employing multivariate modelling on several correlated stock market indexes and interest rates with the support of VECM trends corrected by a LSTM recurrent neural network.Mendes, D.; Ferreira, NR.; Mendes, V. (2020). Comparative multivariate forecast performance for the G7 Stock Markets: VECM Models vs deep learning LSTM neural networks. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 163-171. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2020.2020.11616OCS16317

Data frequency and forecast performance for stock markets: A deep learning approach for DAX index

[EN] Due to non-stationary, high volatility, and complex nonlinear patterns of stock market fluctuation, it is demanding to predict the stock price accurately. Nowadays, hybrid and ensemble models based on machine learning and economics replicate several patterns learned from the time series. This paper analyses the SARIMAX models in a classical approach and using AutoML algorithms from the Darts library. Second, a deep learning procedure predicts the DAX index stock prices. In particular, LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) and BiLSTM recurrent neural networks (with and without stacking), with optimised hyperparameters architecture by KerasTuner, in the context of different time-frequency data (with and without mixed frequencies) are implemented. Nowadays great interest in multi-step-ahead stock price index forecasting by using different time frequencies (daily, one-minute, five-minute, and ten-minute granularity), focusing on raising intraday stock market prices. The results show that the BiLSTM model forecast outperforms the benchmark models –the random walk and SARIMAX - and slightly improves LSTM. More specifically, the average reduction error rate by BiLSTM is 14-17% compared to SARIMAX. According to the scientific literature, we also obtained that high-frequency data improve the forecast accuracy by 3-4% compared with daily data since we have some insights about volatility driving forces.Mendes, DA.; Ferreira, N.; Mendes, V. (2023). Data frequency and forecast performance for stock markets: A deep learning approach for DAX index. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 39-40. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/201760394

Direct off-line robot programming via a common CAD package

This paper focuses on intuitive and direct off-line robot programming from a CAD drawing running on a common 3-D CAD package. It explores the most suitable way to represent robot motion in a CAD drawing, how to automatically extract such motion data from the drawing, make the mapping of data from the virtual (CAD model) to the real environment and the process of automatic generation of robot paths/programs. In summary, this study aims to present a novel CAD-based robot programming system accessible to anyone with basic knowledge of CAD and robotics. Experiments on different manipulation tasks show the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed approach