Ferramenta de Data Mining para Dados Educacionais

Data mining representa o processo desenvolvido para examinar grandes quantidades de dados e também se refere a uma coleção de ferramentas usadas para executar o seu processo. As regras de associação são uma tarefa importante no processo de data mining que consiste em retirar informação sobre as relações presentes nos dados analisados. Existem vários algoritmos para o tratamento e exploração das regras de associação que, por norma, geram um número de regras substancialmente grande, tornando assim o processo de pósprocessamento das regras uma tarefa mais complicada e morosa. Na presente dissertação foi efetuado um estudo sobre o processo de data mining na educação, o processo de extração de regras de associação e os seus algoritmos e, no final, foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta que permite gerar e explorar regras de associação a partir de um conjunto de dados. A ferramenta desenvolvida, denominada Ferramenta de Exploração de Regras de Associação (FERA), tem como objetivo auxiliar o utilizador a gerar regras mais interessantes, visualizando as regras geradas através de gráficos e navegando por essas mesmas regras. A ferramenta é facilmente extensível, dispondo de vários tipos de visualização, dando a possibilidade ao utilizador de guardar a informação gerada. Na presente dissertação é efetuado uma avaliação da ferramenta desenvolvida a dados educacionais, de forma a demonstrar a utilidade desta e o seu propósito.Data mining represents the process designed to examine large amounts of data and refers to a collection of tools used to run your process. The Association Rules are an important task in the data mining process, which consists of extracting information about the relationships present in the analyzed data. There are several algorithms for handling and exploiting Association Rules which, as a rule, generate a substantially large number of rules, thus making the process of post-processing rules a more complicated and time-consuming task. In this dissertation, a study was carried out on the data mining process in education, the process of extracting Association Rules and their algorithms and, in the end, a tool was developed that allows generating and exploring Association Rules from a set of data. The developed tool, called FERA, aims to help the user to generate more interesting rules, visualizing the rules generated by graphs and navigating the same rules. The tool is easily extensible, having several types of visualization, allowing the user to save the generated information. In this dissertation is made an evaluation of the application on educational data, in order to demonstrate the benefit of it and its purpose

Multidimensional assessment study of the elderly living alone in the county of Alfândega da Fé – Northeast of Portugal

Indexada ao LatindexEm Portugal a taxa de idosos que vive na comunidade é cerca de 96%. A taxa de idosos que vivem sós é cerca de 16%. Importa conhecer a situação destes idosos para desenvolver estratégias que visem o seu bem-estar. O estudo teve como objetivo efetuar a avaliação multidimensional dos idosos que vivem sós no concelho de Alfândega da Fé (dados sociodemográficos; situação socioeconómica; situação habitacional; avaliação funcional; risco geriátrico; avaliação de violência e maus-tratos). O concelho de Alfandega da Fé tem 1661 idosos (INE, 2012) destes 260 vivem sozinhos. A amostra deste estudo é de 208 idosos. O instrumento de avaliação foi aplicado através de entrevista presencial. O tratamento estatístico dos dados inclui: indicadores de estatística descritiva (médias e frequências) de todas as variáveis estudadas; em função dos dados obtidos, foi considerado pertinente fazer um estudo do nível de depressão geriátrica, da avaliação do estado mental e do nível de dependência segundo o género e o grupo etário (jovens idosos, idosos e muito idosos) do idoso. O estudo confirma a importâncias dos familiares, vizinhos e amigos no enquadramento social dos idosos. Foram identificados níveis elevados de alteração da saúde mental (depressão sobretudo) e níveis igualmente elevados de dependência. De uma forma geral as mulheres idosas apresentam indicadores mais desfavoráveis.In Portugal the rate of elderly living in the community is about 96%. The rate of older people living alone is about 20%. Therefore it is important to know the situation of the elderly in order to develop strategies to improve their support and well-being. The aim of the study was to carry out the multidimensional assessment of the elderly living alone in the county of Alfândega da Fé – Northeast of Portugal: demographic data; socio-economic situation; housing; functional evaluation; geriatric risk; assessment on violence and physical abuse. The county of Alfândega da Fé has 1661 elderly people (INE, 2012), and about 16% (260) live alone. The sample is 208 elderly. The inquiry was applied by a direct interview. Statistical analysis includes descriptive and inferential statistics. The geriatric depression, mental state and dependency level were studied according to gender and age. The study confirms the importance of family, neighbors and friends for the support of the elderly. High levels of mental disorders were identified (depression mostly) and also high levels of dependency. In general, women have more unfavorable indicators

A TECNOLOGIA E AS RELAÇÕES TRABALHISTAS: UBER E OS NOVOS PARADIGMAS NA ESTRUTURA LABORATIVA

Com o avanço das tecnologias da informação e da comunicação, emergem novas formas de prestação de serviços que se adaptam a essas inovações. Essas modalidades de trabalho se alinham com a tendência de flexibilização das relações laborais, desafiando os vínculos entre trabalhadores e intermediários, frequentemente representados por plataformas digitais. O objetivo central é compreender as transformações nas relações de trabalho no contexto das plataformas digitais, com destaque para a Uber, e investigar sua possível adequação ao sistema jurídico trabalhista brasileiro. Para atingir esse objetivo, este estudo adota uma abordagem qualitativa de natureza jurídico-exploratória com método indutivo, por meio de uma pesquisa bibliográfica e documental relacionada à temática da "uberização". Os dados foram coletados e organizados a partir de fontes secundárias e documentais, incluindo artigos científicos, livros, jurisprudência e normas legais. Este estudo preenche uma lacuna ao analisar as características laborais da relação entre a plataforma digital Uber e seus motoristas, destacando elementos fáticos-jurídicos que caracterizam a relação de emprego. Demonstra-se que essa relação se enquadra nos critérios estabelecidos pela legislação trabalhista brasileira. A pesquisa oferece uma compreensão mais profunda das implicações jurídicas da "uberização" no cenário brasileiro. Além disso, aponta para a necessidade de revisitar e adaptar as normas trabalhistas às inovações trazidas por esse fenômeno, visando garantir a justiça nas relações laborais e a proteção dos direitos dos trabalhadores na era da economia de plataformas. Esta pesquisa contribui para a teoria ao ampliar a compreensão das transformações nas relações de trabalho na era da "uberização”

Pathogenicity of Beauveria bassiana and production of cuticle-degrading enzymes in the presence of Diatraea saccharalis cuticle

The sugarcane borer, Diatraea saccharalis, is one of the worst pests in Brazilian sugarcane crop, causing high levels of financial losses every year. Beauveria bassiana is an entomopathogenic fungus widely used in the biological control of several agricultural pests. The aims of this study were to: (1) evaluate the pathogenicity of B. bassiana strains against D. saccharalis (2) investigate the production of proteases and chitinase by B. bassiana in the presence of the cuticle of sugarcane borer; and, (3) evaluate the relation between the production of enzymes and pathogenicity of the strains. All isolates tested were pathogenic to D. saccharalis and the mortality ranged from 36 to 88%. The production of enzymes was higher in the medium containing cuticle, showing that the process is stimulated by specific components found in the cuticle of the host. Pr1 activity was higher than Pr2 and both were produced at 24 h. The highest production of chitinase was obtained at 96 h of culture for all strains tested. Levels of specific cuticle-degrading enzymes such as proteases correlated positively with specific virulence parameters. B. bassiana URM2915 showed promising features to be used in a biological control program of D. saccharalis.Key words: Biological control, sugarcane, subtilisin-like protease, trypsin-like protease, chitinase

Ultrasonication processing for the production of plant-based nanoemulsions

Plant-derived proteins have been emerging and growing in interest over the past few years, due to their interesting properties and the trend to replace animal-derived proteins [1]. Ultrasonication processing can be used to develop nanoemulsions based on plant proteins that are kinetically stabilized by their small dimension, unlike classic emulsions [2]. In this work, oil-in-water nanoemulsions were produced through high-speed homogenization, followed by ultrasonic homogenization (US), using different plant-derived proteins, including potato (Solanum tuberosum), lupin (Lupinus angustifolius), pea (Pisum sativum), chickpea (Cicer arietinum) and faba bean (Vicia faba) protein as emulsifiers. A central composite rotatable experimental design was used to evaluate the influence of three independent variables: water/oil ratio (65-75% of water), protein content (1-6%) and US time (1-7 min) on the size average (by intensity) and polydispersity index (PDI) of the nanoemulsions. A total of 17 experiments were performed with 14 three-level experimental points, and 3 replicates at the central point. The effect of the US time (0, 3, 4.5 and 6 min) in the potato and lupin proteins primary and secondary structures were analysed through SDS-PAGE electrophoresis and circular dichroism, respectively. Results showed that the use of potato, lupin and pea proteins lead to the formation of stable nanoemulsions, while chickpea and faba bean proteins resulted in non-stable nanoemulsions, with phase separation. The smallest mean droplet size for potato protein was 439.9 nm and PDI value 0.464 [21:73 (w/w) oil/water ratio, 6% of protein and 6 min of US]. The smallest mean droplet size for lupin protein was 505.5 nm and PDI value 0.434, and for pea protein the droplet size was 551.3 nm and PDI value 0.249 [23.6:73 (w/w) oil/water ratio, 3.4% of protein and 6 min of US]. Electrophoresis results show that for native potato and lupin samples the ultrasonication did not induce significant changes in the protein pattern, indicating that the US treatment did not modify the primary structure. Regarding the second structure, US did not change the secondary structure of potato protein but induced a slight increase of -helix for all US treatments for lupin protein. Stable nanoemulsions can be developed using plant-derived proteins and ultrasonication, foreseeing different applications in the food industry.This study was supported by the project cLabel+ (POCI-01-0247-FEDER-046080) cofinanced by Compete 2020, Lisbon 2020, Portugal 2020 and the European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Markerless gait analysis vision system for real-time gait monitoring

On this paper a vision-based contact and markerless method for gait evaluation is proposed, and validated in different experimental setups against commercial motion capture systems (Vicon) and inertial gait analysis tools (GaitShoes). While the development goal is its integration on the ASBGo Smart Walker platform, only an inexpensive depth camera is required. It is shown to have reasonable results when computing gait metrics in real time, in different experimental setups, from different walker types, vision hardware and walking scenarios. Performance is evaluated through RMSD values for several gait metrics. Results illustrate that the proposed approach can be a valuable non-invasive, contactless and low cost alternative to gait analysis systems used in clinical rehabilitation environments.This work has been supported by the FEDER Funds through COMPETE 2020 — Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacão (POCI) and P2020 with the Reference Project EML under Grant POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033067; COMPETE 2020 — Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacão (POCI) with the Reference Project under Grant POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941

Planejamento orçamentário para a educação: superando um desafio

Objetivo: Este caso de ensino foi preparado a partir de observações de questões vivenciadas pelo município de Cachoeiro de Santa Cruz e adaptadas para efeitos didáticos, com o objetivo de auxiliar na construção de um planejamento orçamentário governamental efetivo. Sua finalidade é fomentar a reflexão a respeito das limitações e potencialidades da gestão orçamentária municipal e, ainda, propor soluções aos fundos destinados à educação básica e fundamental, em cenários de restrição de ordem material e financeira. Metodologia: A proposta apresenta mecanismos para a construção do planejamento, com o intuito de mitigar os problemas relacionados à falta de vagas, à contratação e manutenção de pessoal capacitado e ao investimento em um ensino de qualidade. Os dados, secundários, foram obtidos no site do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (IDEB) do Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira (INEP) e no Portal da Transparência da Prefeitura Municipal. Todos os dados numéricos foram retirados e intencionalmente modificados do Relatório Orçamentário do ano de 2017. Resultados: Espera-se que, com a aplicação deste caso de ensino, os alunos desenvolvam conhecimentos, habilidades e atitudes que instiguem análise e pensamento crítico sobre o cenário descrito, permitindo que os participantes assumam uma postura assertiva e tomem decisões mais apropriadas quanto a gestão orçamentária. Contribuições do Estudo: O caso foi elaborado para a utilização em disciplinas de Finanças Públicas e Gestão Orçamentária, aplicável a cursos de graduação e pós-graduação em Administração, Ciências Contábeis, Economia e áreas afins, com o intuito de discutir questões e fomentar o interesse dos participantes quanto à melhor forma de se construir um planejamento orçamentário governamental adequado

Budget Planning for education: overcoming a challenge

Purpose: This teaching case was prepared from observations of issues experienced by the municipality of Cachoeiro de Santa Cruz, and adapted for didactic purposes, with the objective of assisting in the construction of an effective government budget planning. Its purpose is to foster reflection on the limitations and potentialitys of municipal budget management and also to propose solutions to funds for basic and fundamental education, in scenarios of material and financial restrictions. Methodology: The proposal presents mechanisms for the construction of planning, in order to mitigate the problems related to the lack of vacancies, the hiring and maintenance of qualified personnel and the investment in quality education. Secondary data were obtained from the website of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB), the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira (INEP) and the Transparency Portal of the City Hall. All numerical data were intentionally extracted and modified from the 2017 Budget Report. Results: With the application of this teaching case, students are expected to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that prompt analysis and critical thinking about the described scenario, allowing participants to take an assertive stance and appropriate decisions budget management. Contributions of the Study: The case was developed for application in the Public Finance and Budget Management disciplines, both for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Administration, Accounting, Economics and other related areas, in purpose to discuss issues and encourage the interest of the participants as to the best way to build a appropriate government budget planning

Spatial variation of the soil loss for erosion in different geomorphic surfaces

The objective of this research was to study the influence of the geomorphic surfaces in the spatial variations of the soil loss by erosion in the Pereira Barreto region, São Paulo State, Brazil. Soil samples were collected in 67 points, in a depth of 0.0-0.2m, located in a 350m regular grid to measure the particle size distribution and organic matter content. The local erosion factors were determined: erosivity (R), erodibility (K), topographical factor (LS), use and tillage (C), and conservation tillage (P), natural potential of erosion (PNE), soil loss with and without conservation tillage (A), soil loss tolerance (T) and erosion risk (RE). The variables A, PNE and RE presented great spatial correlation with the topographical factor (LS), indicating the influence of the relief on the erosion factors. The soil losses (A and A *) presented coherent behavior with the concept of geomorphic surfaces, evidencing the dependence relationships of the soil erosion process to the geomorphic environmental.O objetivo deste trabalho foi estudar a influência das superfícies geomórficas na variação espacial da perda de solo por erosão na região de Pereira Barreto, São Paulo (SP). Os solos foram amostrados nos pontos de cruzamento de uma malha, georreferenciados, com intervalos de 350m, na profundidade de 0,0-0,2m, totalizando 67 pontos. Foram feitas determinações da composição granulométrica e do conteúdo de matéria orgânica. Foram avaliados os fatores de erosão locais, tais como erosividade (R), erodibilidade (K), fator topográfico (LS), uso e manejo (C), práticas conservacionistas (P), potencial natural de erosão (PNE), perda de solo com e sem práticas conservacionistas (A e *A), tolerância de perda de solo (T) e risco de erosão (RE). As variáveis A, PNE e RE apresentaram forte correlação espacial com o fator topográfico (LS), indicando a forte relação do relevo sobre os fatores de erosão. As perdas de solo (A e *A) apresentaram comportamento coerente com a conceituação de superfícies geomórficas, evidenciando as relações de dependência do processo erosivo do solo aos ambientes geomórficos.2485249

Aripiprazole offsets mutant ATXN3-induced motor dysfunction by targeting dopamine D2 and serotonin 1A and 2A receptors in C. elegans

The atypical antipsychotic aripiprazole is a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug for the treatment of psychotic, mood, and other psychiatric disorders. Previous drug discovery efforts pinpointed aripiprazole as an effective suppressor of Machado–Joseph disease (MJD) pathogenesis, as its administration resulted in a reduced abundance and aggregation of mutant Ataxin-3 (ATXN3) proteins. Dopamine partial agonism and functional selectivity have been proposed as the main pharmacological mechanism of action of aripiprazole in the treatment of psychosis; however, this mechanism remains to be determined in the context of MJD. Here, we focus on confirming the efficacy of aripiprazole to reduce motor dysfunction in vivo, using a Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model of MJD, and on unveiling the drug targets required for its positive action against mutant ATXN3 pathogenesis. We employed pharmacogenetics and pharmacological approaches to identify which dopamine and serotonin receptors are critical for aripiprazole-mediated improvements in motor function. We demonstrated that dopamine D2-like and serotonin 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors play important roles in this process. Our findings strengthen the relevance of dopaminergic and serotoninergic signaling modulation against mutant ATXN3-mediated pathogenesis. The identification of aripiprazole’s cellular targets, relevant for MJD and perhaps other neurodegenerative diseases, may pave the way for prospective drug discovery and development campaigns aiming to improve the features of this prototypical compound and reduce side effects not negligible in the case of aripiprazole.This work was funded by FEDER through the Competitiveness Internationalization Operational Program (POCI) and by National funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), under the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-0 31987, NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000013, and NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000023, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Program (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by ICVS Scientific Microscopy Platform, member of the national infrastructure PPBI—Portuguese Platform of Bioimaging (PPBI-POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022122; by National funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)—project UIDB/50026/2020 and UIDP/50026/2020). Additionally, this project was supported by the National Ataxia Foundation (NAF). A.J., J.P.-S., D.V.-C., and J.D.S. were supported by the FCT individual fellowships SFRH/BD/76613/2011, PD/BDE/127834/2016, SFRH/BD/147826/2019, and PD/BD/128074/2016, respectively