Video Conferencing Evaluation Considering Scalable Video Coding and SDN Network

Video conferencing is very common nowadays, and it may contemplate heterogenous devices (e.g., smartphones, notebooks, game consoles) and networks in the same session. Developing video conferencing systems for this myriad of devices with different capabilities requires special attention from system designer. Scalable video coding (SVC) is a prominent option to mitigate this heterogeneity issue, but traditional Internet protocol (IP) networks may not fully benefit from such a technology. In contrast, software-defined networking (SDN) may allow better utilization of SVC and improvements on video conferencing components. This paper evaluates the performance of video conferencing systems adopting SVC, SDN and ordinary IP networks, taking into account throughput, delay and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) as the metrics of interest. The experiments are based on Mininet framework and distinct network infrastructures are also considered. Results indicate SDN with SVC may deliver better video quality with reduced delay and increased throughput

Modeling Strategies to Improve the Dependability of Cloud Infrastructures

Cloud computing presents some challenges that need to be overcome, such as planning infrastructures that maintain availability when failure events and repair activities occur. Cloud infrastructure planning that addresses the dependability aspects is an essential activity because it ensures business continuity and client satisfaction. Redundancy mechanisms cold standby, warm standby and hot standby can be allocated to components of the cloud infrastructure to maintain the availability levels agreed in service level agreement (SLAs). Mathematical formalisms based on state space such as stochastic Petri nets and based on combinatorial as reliability block diagrams can be adopted to evaluate the dependability of cloud infrastructures considering the allocation of different redundancy mechanisms to its components. This chapter shows the adoption of the mathematical formalisms stochastic Petri nets and reliability block diagrams to dependability evaluation of cloud infrastructures with different redundancy mechanisms

Intervenção psicossocial junto de crianças que vivem em situação de pobreza

Dissertação de Mestrado em Psicologia da Educação.O presente trabalho surge em virtude de não existirem, nas IPSS micaelenses, projetos direcionados para crianças que vivem em situação de pobreza, dado que viver num meio familiar que tem baixos rendimentos ou mesmo escassez de recursos, pode originar uma série de reações como o stress, o medo, entre outros. Tudo isto, tende a afetar o indivíduo, sendo já possível observar os sinais destas perturbações quando a criança inicia o ensino pré-escolar, pois as crianças vítimas desta situação, apresentam diversas vezes comportamentos destrutivos, dificuldades de aprendizagem, de concentração ou até determinadas doenças mentais. (Shonkoff, 2011). Propõe-se, deste modo, apresentar um projeto de intervenção social em ordem a diagnosticar e a contrariar os problemas elencados. Este trabalho procura ainda, além de diagnosticar, intervir para apoiar o desenvolvimento psicossocial das crianças.ABSTRACT: This study arises from the realization that in S. Miguel there is a lack of IPSSs with projects focused on children living in poverty. Living in a family environment with a low income or resource scarcity may cause a series of emotional reactions such as stress, fear, anxiety and low-self-esteem, amongst others, which tend to strongly affect the individual, especially children, whose emotional instability is possible to observe even at pre-school age. Moreover, children who come from poor environments usually show repeatedly destructive behaviours, learning difficulties, lack of concentration, or certain mental illnesses. (Shonkoff, 2011:982). Therefore, our purpose is to present a project of social intervention in order to diagnose and counteract the problems listed

Projeto Mandamus: a inteligência artificial a serviço do processo judicial

O início do séc. XXI foi marcado pela Quarta Revolução Industrial, caracterizada pelo desenvolvimento de máquinas e sistemas inteligentes, entre outros aspectos. Os impactos dessa revolução alcançaram o Poder Judiciário Brasileiro, que vem utilizando os sistemas de inteligência artificial para mapear e desenvolver soluções para problemas específicos, com o objetivo de oferecer uma prestação jurisdicional mais célere. Uma das soluções criadas foi o Projeto Mandamus, desenvolvido por meio de um convênio entre a Universidade de Brasília – UnB e o Tribunal de Justiça de Roraima – TJRR. O propósito foi criar uma central inteligente de mandados para aprimorar as etapas de citação e intimação em algumas classes processuais. Neste artigo buscou-se analisar o problema de pesquisa identificado no projeto, bem como detalhar os passos seguidos para o desenvolvimento da solução tecnológica que criou dois robôs responsáveis pela classificação de decisões proferidas para, então, gerar mandados automaticamente e distribuí-los de forma eficiente, o que facilitou, otimizou e melhorou a economicidade dos órgãos judiciais

Uma proposta de reorganização do posto de coleta e da atenção dada ao aleitamento materno em um hospital amigo da criança no município de Natal/RN

TCC(especialização) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Ciências da Saúde. Programa de Pós-graduação em Enfermagem. Linhas de Cuidado em Saúde Materna, Neonatal e do LactanteO presente trabalho trata-se de um projeto de intervenção a ser realizado no Hospital Amigo da Criança denominado Unidade Materno Infantil de Saúde Integrada das Quintas, no município de Natal/RN, tendo como objetivos: Capacitar as equipes de enfermagem no apoio, incentivo e promoção ao aleitamento materno, orientar e acompanhar a equipe de enfermagem na organização, conforme normativas atuais do posto de coleta de leite humano, instituir protocolos para ordenha, manter periodicidade de contato com o banco de leite de referência, melhorar o manejo do leite cru e pasteurizado e capacitar a equipe de enfermagem do hospital com treinamento em aleitamento materno como preconiza a Iniciativa Hospital Amigo da Criança. O trabalho realizar-se-á do mês de Maio a Setembro de 2014 e contará com o apoio da comissão de aleitamento materno da Unidade, terá como programação o desenvolvimento de capacitações para as categorias que estão envolvidas com o processo de aleitamento materno contabilizando 10 horas de duração para os encontros, e ao final, a entrega de certificado de participação aos que foram instruídos. A iniciativa espera incentivar profissionais a direcionarem um olhar mais responsável e compromissado a esta finalidade, que as diretrizes preconizadas pela Iniciativa Hospital Amigo da Criança possam ser cumpridas, que o nosso projeto de intervenção possa trazer uma forma mais adequada de trabalho àqueles que ainda não internalizaram a proposta que preconiza o Ministério da Saúde e que se possa despertar nos que atuam nesta instituição um desejo de doação a esta causa

Flood risk assessment for road infrastructures using Bayesian networks: case study of Santarem - Portugal

Assessing flood risks on road infrastructures is critical for the definition of mitigation strategies and adaptation processes. Some efforts have been made to conduct a regional flood risk assessment to support the decision-making process of exposed areas. However, these approaches focus on the physical damage of civil infrastructures without considering indirect impacts resulting from social aspects or traffic delays due to the functionality loss of transportation infrastructures. Moreover, existing methodologies do not include a proper assessment of the uncertainties involved in the risk quantification. This work aims to provide a consistent quantitative flood risk estimation and influence factor modelling for road infrastructures. To this end, a Flood Risk Factor (FRF) is computed as a function of hazard, vulnerability, and infrastructure importance factors. A Bayesian Network (BN) is constructed for considering the interdependencies among the selected input factors, as well as accounting for the uncertainties involved in the modelling process. The proposed approach allows weighting the relevant factors differently to compute the FRF and improves the understanding of the causal relations between them. The suggested method is applied to a case study located in the region of Santarem Portugal, allowing the identification of the sub-basins where the road network has the highest risks and illustrating the potential of Bayesian inference techniques for updating the model when new information becomes available

A Strategy for Performance Evaluation and Modeling of Cloud Computing Services

On-demand services and reduced costs made cloud computing a popular mechanism to provide scalable resources according to the user’s expectations. This paradigm is an important role in business and academic organizations, supporting applications and services deployed based on virtual machines and containers, two different technologies for virtualization. Cloud environments can support workloads generated by several numbers of users, that request the cloud environment to execute transactions and its performance should be evaluated and estimated in order to achieve clients satisfactions when cloud services are offered. This work proposes a performance evaluation strategy composed of a performance model and a methodology for evaluating the performance of services configured in virtual machines and containers in cloud infrastructures. The performance model for the evaluation of virtual machines and containers in cloud infrastructures is based on stochastic Petri nets. A case study in a real public cloud is presented to illustrate the feasibility of the performance evaluation strategy. The case study experiments were performed with virtual machines and containers supporting workloads related to social networks transactions

GIS-based methodology for prioritization of preparedness interventions on road transport under wildfire events

Climate change is leading to a rise in the occurrence and intensity of wildfires, exacerbated by the growing encroachment of communities into the natural environment, posing challenges to our global capacity to respond to wildfires. During wildfire events, road transport infrastructure becomes crucial for the evacuation of people and accessibility to an emergency by first responders. Nevertheless, resilience management of transportation infrastructure affected by wildfires is poorly considered, despite its relevant role and high exposure to wildfires. Therefore, this study proposes a new methodology to estimate the priority level for wildfire preparation by combining exposure and criticality of road transportation infrastructure to wildfire hazards with consideration of different wildfire categories. The analysis is conducted at the system level considering interdependencies and redundancies among infrastructure components and using a geographic information system (GIS) to automate the modelling process and visualization of results. The proposed methodology is applied to a case study in the Leiria region of Portugal, demonstrating its utility in prioritizing economic resources and decision-making for areas requiring preparation. This approach can serve as a resilience-based tool for decision-making, supporting the implementation of effective adaptation strategies to enhance wildfire resilience.This work was partly financed by FCT/MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) under the R&D Unit Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering (ISISE), under reference UIDB/04029/2020, and under the Associate Laboratory Advanced Production and Intelligent Systems ARISE under reference LA/P/0112/2020. This work is financed by national funds through the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundaç˜ao para a ciˆencia e tecnologia, FCT, Portugal), under grant agreement 2020.05755.BD attributed to the first author

TRANSTORNOS MENTAIS E A PSICOLOGIA APLICADA AO DIREITO

The Penal Code, a priori, considering the legal applicability in relation to the accused who has mental disorders, establishes semi-imputability and this is applied in part according to art. 45 of Law 11.343/06, considering that those accused of a crime and who have any mental disorder are directed to psychiatric treatment. In this sense, Psychology in the legal field is increasingly present and much is due to the need for an interdisciplinary action arising from the demanding effective dialogue between Psychology and Law, especially in cases that require attention, such as individuals who have a mental disorder that , according to legal scholars, are considered unimputable before the judiciary. Therefore, the present work will address the mental disorder and the relationship with psychology applied to law.El Código Penal, a priori, considerando la aplicabilidad legal en relación con el imputado que tiene trastornos mentales, establece la semiimpugnabilidad y esto se aplica en parte de acuerdo con el art. 45 de la Ley 11.343/06, considerando que los acusados de algún delito y que tienen algún trastorno mental son dirigidos a un tratamiento psiquiátrico. En este sentido, la psicología en el ámbito jurídico está cada vez más presente y mucho se debe a la necesidad de una acción interdisciplinaria desde la exigente diálogo efectivo entre la Psicología y el derecho, especialmente en casos que requieren atención, como los individuos que tienen trastornos mentales que, según los doctrinadores del derecho, se consideran atribuibles al poder judicial. Por ello, el presente trabajo abordará el trastorno mental y la relación con la psicología aplicada al derecho.O Código Penal, a priori, considerando a aplicabilidade legal em relação ao acusado que possua transtornos mentais, estabelece a semi-imputabilidade e esta é aplicada em parte de acordo com o art. 45 da Lei 11.343/06, tendo em vista que os acusados por algum crime e que possua qualquer transtorno mental são direcionados a um tratamento psiquiátrico. Nesse sentido, a Psicologia no âmbito jurídico está cada vez mais presente e muito se deve a necessidade de uma atuação interdisciplinar proveniente da exigente interlocução efetiva entre a Psicologia e o Direito, principalmente em casos que requerem atenção, como os indivíduos que possuem transtorno mental que, segundo doutrinadores do Direito, são considerados inimputáveis diante do judiciário. Portanto, o presente trabalho abordará sobre o transtorno mental e a relação com a psicologia aplicada ao direito