GoalD: A Goal-Driven Deployment Framework for Dynamic and Heterogeneous Computing Environments

Context: Emerging paradigms like Internet of Things and Smart Cities utilize advanced sensing and communication infrastructures, where heterogeneity is an inherited feature. Applications targeting such environments require adaptability and context-sensitivity to uncertain availability and failures in resources and their ad-hoc networks. Such heterogeneity is often hard to predict, making the deployment process a challenging task. Objective: This paper proposes GoalD as a goal-driven framework to support autonomous deployment of heterogeneous computational resources to fulfill requirements, seen as goals, and their correlated components on one hand, and the variability space of the hosting computing and sensing environment on the other hand. Method: GoalD comprises an offline and an online stage to fulfill autonomous deployment by leveraging the use of goals. Deployment configuration strategies arise from the variability structure of the Contextual Goal Model as an underlying structure to guide autonomous planning by selecting available as well as suitable resources at runtime. Results: We evaluate GoalD on an existing exemplar from the selfadaptive systems community – the Tele Assistance Service provided by Weyns and Calinescu [1]. Furthermore, we evaluate the scalability of GoalD on a repository consisting of 430,500 artifacts. The evaluation results demonstrate the usefulness and scalability of GoalD in planning the deployment of a system with thousands of components in a few milliseconds

Serpa PDO cheese: towards identification of chemical markers involved in organoleptic attributes

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Classification of olive oils according to sensory defects using a potentiometric electronic tongue

Olive oil is a highly appreciated food product being very prone to frauds. Olive oils may be graded as extra-virgin, virgin or lampante. This classification is attributed according to legal requirements, including chemical parameters and sensorial analysis. Among the organoleptic sensations, the capability of perceiving the presence or absence of sensory defects plays a key role for olive oils grade classification. This task is time-consuming and quite expensive, requiring the use of an official taste panel, which can only evaluate a low number of samples per day. In this work, an electronic tongue is proposed to discriminate olive oils according to the defect predominantly perceived (winey-vinegary, wet-wood, rancid and fusty/muddy sediment), by a trained sensory panel. Sub-sets of potentiometric signal profiles obtained from the lipid sensor membranes of the taste electrochemical device were selected using a simulated annealing meta-heuristic algorithm, allowing establishing classification linear discriminant model, which showed a predictive success classification rate of 81% for leave-one-out or cross-validation procedure. The satisfactory predictive performance achieved pointed out the practical potential of using this artificial taste sensor as a complementary methodology for olive oil sensory analysis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Análise de risco de incêndio na igreja matriz de Pirenópolis/go: um estudo de caso

O artigo trata da aplicação do método de Análise de Risco de Incêndio Global à Igreja Nossa Senhora do Rosário – Pirenópolis/GO. O método foi aplicado considerando as características da edificação em 2002 (antes do incêndio) e em 2020. A comparação entre os resultados indica quais melhorias foram aplicadas nas medidas de segurança contra incêndio e o quanto tais medidas impactam no resultado final da análise de risco.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Análise comparativa da aplicação de métodos de avaliação de risco de incêndio

Análise da aplicação dos métodos de avaliação de risco de incêndio Gretener, FRAME e MARIEE ao edifício sede do Ministério da Infraestrutura e Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, situado na zona central de Brasília, na Esplanada dos Ministérios, bloco R, edificação tombada pelo patrimônio histórico nacional. A comparação dos resultados busca avaliar se a aplicação dos métodos é eficiente à realidade arquitetônica e de segurança contra incêndio no Brasil.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Collisional-inhomogeneity-induced generation of matter-wave dark solitons

We propose an experimentally relevant protocol for the controlled generation of matter-wave dark solitons in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). In particular, using direct numerical simulations, we show that by switching-on a spatially inhomogeneous (step-like) change of the s-wave scattering length, it is possible to generate a controllable number of dark solitons in a quasi-one-dimensional BEC. A similar phenomenology is also found in the two-dimensional setting of "disk-shaped" BECs but, as the solitons are subject to the snaking instability, they decay into vortex structures. A detailed investigation of how the parameters involved affect the emergence and evolution of solitons and vortices is provided.Comment: 8 pages, 5 Figures, Physics Letters A (in press

Planar Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics of a Charged Particle in an External Electromagnetic Field

The supersymmetric quantum mechanics of a two-dimensional non-relativistic particle subject to external magnetic and electric fields is studied in a superfield formulation and with the typical non-minimal coupling of (2+1) dimensions. Both the N=1 and N=2 cases are contemplated and the introduction of the electric interaction is suitably analysed.Comment: V3-Improved by Referees' sugestions. REVTeX4 6 pages (twocolumn option), no figures. V2-Minor changes. A previous version of this work was presented by JAHN during the II Intern. Conf. on Fundamental Interactions, June 2004, Pedra Azul-ES, Brazil. Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Matter-Wave Solitons in the Presence of Collisional Inhomogeneities: Perturbation theory and the impact of derivative terms

We study the dynamics of bright and dark matter-wave solitons in the presence of a spatially varying nonlinearity. When the spatial variation does not involve zero crossings, a transformation is used to bring the problem to a standard nonlinear Schrodinger form, but with two additional terms: an effective potential one and a non-potential term. We illustrate how to apply perturbation theory of dark and bright solitons to the transformed equations. We develop the general case, but primarily focus on the non-standard special case whereby the potential term vanishes, for an inverse square spatial dependence of the nonlinearity. In both cases of repulsive and attractive interactions, appropriate versions of the soliton perturbation theory are shown to accurately describe the soliton dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 5 fugure

Collisionally inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates in double-well potentials

In this work, we consider quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), with spatially varying collisional interactions, trapped in double well potentials. In particular, we study a setup in which such a 'collisionally inhomogeneous' BEC has the same (attractive-attractive or repulsive-repulsive) or different (attractive-repulsive) type of interparticle interactions. Our analysis is based on the continuation of the symmetric ground state and anti-symmetric first excited state of the noninteracting (linear) limit into their nonlinear counterparts. The collisional inhomogeneity produces a saddle-node bifurcation scenario between two additional solution branches; as the inhomogeneity becomes stronger, the turning point of the saddle-node tends to infinity and eventually only the two original branches remain present, which is completely different from the standard double-well phenomenology. Finally, one of these branches changes its monotonicity as a function of the chemical potential, a feature especially prominent, when the sign of the nonlinearity changes between the two wells. Our theoretical predictions, are in excellent agreement with the numerical results.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, Physica D, in pres

A systematic approach to the interrogation and sharing of standardised biofilm signatures

Publicado em "6th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics", ISBN 978-3-642-28838-8The study of microorganism consortia, also known as biofilms, is associated to a number of applications in biotechnology, ecotechnology and clinical domains. A public repository on existing biofilm studies would aid in the design of new studies as well as promote collaborative and incremental work. However, bioinformatics approaches are hampered by the limited access to existing data. Scientific publications summarise the studies whilst results are kept in researchers’ private ad hoc files. Since the collection and ability to compare existing data is imperative to move forward in biofilm analysis, the present work has addressed the development of a systematic computer-amenable approach to biofilm data organisation and standardisation. A set of in-house studies involving pathogens and employing different state-of-the-art devices and methods of analysis was used to validate the approach. The approach is now supporting the activities of BiofOmics, a public repository on biofilm signatures (http://biofomics.org).The authors thank, among others, Rosario Oliveira, Maria Joao Vieira, Idalina Machado, Nuno Cerca, Mariana Henriques, Pilar Teixeira, Douglas Monteiro, Melissa Negri, Susana Lopes, Carina Almeida and Helder Lopes, for submitting their data. The financial support from IBB-CEB, Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) and European Community fund FEDER (Program COMPETE), project PTDC/SAU-ESA/646091/2006/FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-007480, are also gratefully acknowledged