Actuação de três basidiomicetas sobre a madeira de Eucalyptus globulus Labill.

Analisou-se o modo de actuação de três dos Basidiomicetos decompo- sitores da madeira do E. globulus (Coriolus versicolor, Stereum hirsutum e Daedalea quercinaj mais frequentes nas toiças provenientes da exploração daquela essência em talhadia. Tinhamos com este estudo o fim de seleccionar os fungos que poderiam vir a ser futuramente utilizados em inoculações artificiais daquela biomassa para acelerar o processo de degradação das mesmas. Pretendia-se, assim, apresentar uma alternativa à prática habitual de remoção das toiças no final da exploração. A comparação da actividade dos fungos na madeira de E. globulus (borne e cerne) foi feita através de inoculação laboratorial de provetes durante 21, 42, 63 e 84 dias e os resultados daquela actividade foram avaliados pela perda de peso dos provetes e pelas suas variações nos teores em azoto, celulose, lenhina, pentosanas e substâncias solúveis. A apreciação dos resultados obtidos permite-nos indicar o C. versicolor como o fungo mais adequado para o fim em vista, por ter sido aquele que originou maior perda de peso na madeira (borne-42% e cerne-27,5%) ao fim de 84 dias e o que se revelou capaz de despolimerizar a celulose e a lenhina no borne e no cerne. O S. hirsutum mostrou fraca actividade decompositora e esta bastante restrita ao borne. D. quercina originou um tipo de decomposição desfavorável do ponto de vista ecológico visto atacar sobretudo a celulose, com a consequente acumulação de lenhina, que é mais dificilmente degradávelinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Exploring graph topology via matrix factorization to improve Wikification

Challenges faced by authors and reviewers of encyclopedic content include the identification of which candidate concepts in one article should be linked to other articles, since concepts should be selected if they are able to provide a deeper understanding of the article topic, and ambiguity resolution. This task is called wikification. Wikification is normally addressed as a classification problem. Many supervised and semi-supervised techniques have been proposed to deal with wikification: their aim is to learn, from examples of concepts, which instances should be wikified. We observed that, although one encyclopedia can be viewed as a concept graph, supervised techniques seldom explore the richness of information provided by the graph topology: they normally only take advantage of statistical features related to concepts and the association among them. In this work, we address wikification as the problem of predicting the edges of a graph. Unlike previous approaches, our model fully explores the graph topology in the prediction task by using a matrix factorization technique. We also include in our model features related to concepts and its associations. Upon experimenting our approach with a sample of Wikipedia, we achieved gains up to 20% over a state-of-the-art baseline.CAPESCNPqFAPEA

Composition of context aware mobile services using a semantic context model

Context-awareness has been regarded as an important feature for mobile services. However, only a few services are sensible to context and the features that are context-aware are still limited. Composition of Web services has received much interest in business-to-business or enterprise application, but not so much interest in business-to- consumer applications. This paper presents iCas, a novel architecture that enables the creation of context-aware services on the fly, and discusses its main components. We compare our approach with similar systems and point out the main differences and advantages. To explore context-awareness to support service composition, iCas uses SeCoM, a semantic model to represent context. The main parts of this model are explained as well the advantages of using a semantic model to represent context. We also describe the use of our approach in an university campus to provide pedagogical features and assist the socio-pedagogical interaction of various types of users

Mobile video annotations: a case study on supporting rehabilitation exercises

Annotations enable us to highlight key points or add information to content presented, for instance, on paper or digital media. Even though smartphones and tablets facilitate video capturing, currently only few applications allow limited video annotations using the mobile device itself. Given that video annotations can assist many tasks that depend or can be enhanced by video capturing, in previous work we have contributed with a tool for allowing multimodal video annotation using mobile devices. Upon experimenting with the tool, we identified that reviewing rehabilitation exercise videos can be especially enhanced with video annotations. Professionals in the field of physiotherapy and occupational therapy can add relevant annotations for their patients to improve performance of their exercises. After an evaluation with a specialist in occupational therapy, we identified new requirements associated with the monitoring of patients. We then identified the opportunity to develop a monitoring system with the collaboration of two rehabilitation specialists. Since these two specialists work with mirror therapy, we defined requirements that are relevant for this type of therapy. The system was developed to support the monitoring of exercises combined with video recording and annotation capabilities. The system aims to support rehabilitation therapy by distance: therapists can monitor patients as they record videos that are sent for evaluation. We identified requirements that may be applied in many scenarios, however mirror therapy demanded many specific requirements related to the recording of videos.Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, grant #2011/17040-0)National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq

Filteryedping: a dwell-free eye typing technique

The ability to type using eye gaze only is extremely important for individuals with a severe motor disability. To eye type, the user currently must sequentially gaze at letters in a virtual keyboard and dwell on each desired letter for a specific amount of time to input that key. Dwell-based eye typing has two possible drawbacks: unwanted input if the dwell threshold is too short or slow typing rates if the threshold is long. We demonstrate an eye typing technique, which does not require the user to dwell on the letters that she wants to input. Our method automatically filters out unwanted letters from the sequence of letters gazed at while typing a word. It ranks candidate words based on their length and frequency and presents them to the user for confirmation. Spell correction and support for typing words not in the corpus are also included.São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (grant #2012/01510-0)CAPESCNP

Use of smartphones by older adults: characteristics and reports of students enrolled at a University of the Third Age (U3A)

Introduction: The increase in mobile device users aged > 60 years reflects a transformation in the information and communication technology (ICT) area. Supporting older adults in their digital literacy is a complex task. New skills for the digital age should be developed. Objective: To describe the sociodemographic characteristics of older adults on a digital literacy program, including patterns of use, reasons for learning, in addition to the difficulties and benefits reported regarding the use of technology. Methodology: A quantitative and qualitative study based on a digital literacy program within a U3A context involving professionals in the fields of gerontology and computing was conducted. Result: The program involved 317 older adults, most of whom were women (64.5%). Mean age of participants was 60-74 years (82%). Regarding characteristics, 44.2% were married, 40.7% had finished high school, 77.3% were retired, 65.1% earned ≤ 4 minimum wages, and 74.1% were not engaged in paid employment. Prior to participation, despite the high frequency of smartphone use (87.6%), 77.9% reported having a poor user experience. The most prevalent purposes for using smartphones were “Communication” (93.3%), “Strengthening affectional bonds with family and friends” (66.2%) and “Search for general information” (48.7%). The assessment of self-efficacy revealed that participants lacked competence for complex activities. Conclusion: The interest of older Brazilians in using smartphones is clear. Therefore, understanding previous competencies, as well as the obstacles faced by this group, is pivotal in aiding the process of digital inclusion.Introduction: The increase in mobile device users aged > 60 years reflects a transformation in the information and communication technology (ICT) area. Supporting older adults in their digital literacy is a complex task. New skills for the digital age should be developed. Objective: To describe the sociodemographic characteristics of older adults on a digital literacy program, including patterns of use, reasons for learning, in addition to the difficulties and benefits reported regarding the use of technology. Methodology: A quantitative and qualitative study based on a digital literacy program within a U3A context involving professionals in the fields of gerontology and computing was conducted. Result: The program involved 317 older adults, most of whom were women (64.5%). Mean age of participants was 60-74 years (82%). Regarding characteristics, 44.2% were married, 40.7% had finished high school, 77.3% were retired, 65.1% earned ≤ 4 minimum wages, and 74.1% were not engaged in paid employment. Prior to participation, despite the high frequency of smartphone use (87.6%), 77.9% reported having a poor user experience. The most prevalent purposes for using smartphones were “Communication” (93.3%), “Strengthening affectional bonds with family and friends” (66.2%) and “Search for general information” (48.7%). The assessment of self-efficacy revealed that participants lacked competence for complex activities. Conclusion: The interest of older Brazilians in using smartphones is clear. Therefore, understanding previous competencies, as well as the obstacles faced by this group, is pivotal in aiding the process of digital inclusion

Recursos de acessibilidade para intervenções programadas em dispositivos móveis: soluções para usuários com deficiência visual ou com baixa alfabetização

A popularização dos dispositivos móveis tem ocorrido em todas as classes sociais e tem avançado também entre pessoas com necessidades especiais. Os serviços de notificações disponíveis nos sistemas desses aparelhos atuais permitem o uso de intervenções programadas para realização de tarefas do cotidiano. Diversas pesquisas têm reportado benefícios ocasionados pelo uso de intervenções programadas baseadas em dispositivos móveis em diferentes áreas do conhecimento. No entanto, existem vários desafios quanto ao uso acessível de intervenções programadas para dispositivos móveis – destinadas a usuários com deficiência visual e baixa alfabetização. Esta pesquisa apresenta soluções com recursos baseados em áudio para possibilitar acessibilidade a usuários com essas limitações e inclui esses recursos na Plataforma Resolve, um ambiente de criação de rotinas interventivas. Pesquisamos recursos tecnológicos que possibilitasse acessibilidade por áudio a conteúdos elaborados por especialistas no planejamento de intervenções, em seguida testamos em ambiente simulado. Os resultados preliminares indicam que as soluções apresentadas são promissoras para serem usadas em intervenções programadas para usuários com deficiência visual e baixa alfabetização

MACI - modelo para autoria colaborativa de programas de intervenções para dispositivos móveis: MACI - model for collaborative authoring of intervention programs for mobile devices

Neste artigo apresentamos o modelo para a autoria colaborativa de programas de intervenções para dispositivos móveis (MACI). O modelo proposto divide o processo de monitoramento de participantes por intervenções programadas em quatro etapas sequenciais e cíclicas. Como principais características do modelo pode ser citado a sua simplicidade e a definição precisa das tarefas e objetivos de cada etapa, o que permite que sejam definidos os atores, seus papéis, as tarefas a serem realizadas e os resultados esperados. Como prova de conceito do modelo foi desenvolvida a ferramenta de autoria colaborativa para a criação de programas de intervenções programadas fundamentados no ESM (FACEE),  que aplica técnicas de Desenvolvimento de Software pelo Usuário Final (EUD) para ofertar a especialistas, com pouca ou nenhuma experiência em desenvolvimento de software, a possibilidade de criarem programas de intervenções programadas seguindo o método de amostragem de experiência (ESM)

Comportamentos de saúde e bem-estar dos estudantes do ensino superior politécnico: um diagnóstico a partir da perspetiva dos estudantes

Em boa hora o CCISP e o Fórum Nacional do Álcool e Saúde decidiram produzir o estudo que temos oportunidade de ler e de beneficiar das suas conclusões. Olhar para os comportamentos de saúde e bem-estar dos estudantes, neste caso do Ensino Politécnico, a partir da sua perspetiva e das suas perceções permite uma abordagem rica, na ‘primeira pessoa’ e com um novo ângulo de análise que constitui uma mais valia relevante, quer do ponto de vista científico, mas também das pistas que lança para uma intervenção informada e baseada na evidência por parte das instituições de Ensino Superior. Este trabalho robusto beneficia de uma vasta equipa de docentes e investigadores do Ensino Superior Politécnico, sinónimo da sua capacidade de atuar em rede, de co-construir conhecimento e de melhor conhecer a realidade que vivenciamos de uma forma tão próxima no nosso dia a dia. São mais de 20 instituições envolvidas, num universo de mais de cem mil estudantes. Enquanto Presidente do CCISP gostaria de manifestar o reconhecimento em nome de todas as instituições e de valorizar este trabalho em parceria, que acrescenta sempre. Desenhado a partir de uma rede informal, tem-se revelado um poderoso instrumento de partilha e co-desenho de novos projetos que beneficiam cada uma e todas as instituições, reflexo do espírito colaborativo existentes entre as instituições Politécnicas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio