A unificação no consumo de conteúdos audiovisuais: contributos para a experiência de utilização e sugestões para operadores

As ofertas de TV paga têm vindo a sofrer um processo de homogeneização, tanto em termos de funcionalidades, como de conteúdos. Porém, nos últimos anos, fruto de grandes alterações ao nível tecnológico e dos modelos de negócio, ocorreram uma série de fragmentações que estão a originar um desequilíbrio e uma alteração importante no ecossistema televisivo. Entre estas mudanças, encontram-se novas formas de consumir conteúdos audiovisuais, pois, paralelamente às tradicionais transmissões de televisão, passam a estar disponíveis diversas outras fontes e formas de ver conteúdos a pedido, por exemplo, através das gravações automáticas ou de plataformas como a Netflix, a Disney+ e o YouTube. O próprio conceito de televisão evoluiu, para incluir novos formatos e modelos. Em simultâneo, os conteúdos passam a não estar restritos ao televisor, sendo possível aceder-lhes em diversos dispositivos, permitindo ao telespetador ver o que quer, onde quer e quando quer. Contudo, estas mudanças, embora apresentando inúmeras vantagens, trouxeram também uma complexificação da experiência de utilização, visto que obrigam o telespetador a saltar entre várias aplicações (cada uma com a sua própria interface), a usar diferentes dispositivos e a subscrever múltiplos serviços. Surge, desta forma, a oportunidade e a relevância de desenvolver um projeto de investigação com o objetivo de inovar ao nível da experiência de utilização, através da promoção da unificação de conteúdos, introduzindo novas abordagens nos modos de interação e nos modelos de negócio. Seguindo uma abordagem Design Thinking, procurou-se perceber melhor o problema e observar os comportamentos e as escolhas dos telespetadores. Deste modo, foi possível compreender que havia espaço para a unificação de conteúdos e para a personalização, iniciando-se um ciclo de geração de ideias focadas nesses conceitos, culminando na elaboração de um protótipo que lhes deu tangibilidade. Este protótipo foi sujeito a uma avaliação por peritos e, na sequência dos resultados positivos e motivantes, desenvolveram-se novas fases de prototipagem e avaliação. Estas últimas decorreram inicialmente em laboratório e, posteriormente, durante um mês, num ensaio de campo em ambiente residencial, tendo-se usado uma triangulação de inquéritos padronizados e diversos instrumentos de avaliação qualitativa, permitindo validar a abordagem seguida. Adicionalmente, foi possível avançar com a transferência, da academia para a indústria, dos conceitos de unificação investigados, atingindo-se, assim, uma validação acrescida. Finalmente, a conjugação da análise das atuais ofertas das grandes plataformas tecnológicas americanas, com as ilações obtidas anteriormente, permitiu a elaboração de um conjunto de propostas para a melhoria da experiência de utilização do telespetador e de sugestões para os operadores de TV paga, no sentido de que estes possam, com essas propostas, apresentar ofertas inovadoras e diferenciadoras no mercado.Pay-TV offers have been undergoing a process of homogenization in terms of features and content. However, in recent years, due to major changes in technology and business models, a series of fragmentations are causing an imbalance and important changes in the television ecosystem. Among these changes, catch-up TV, and platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube, have emerged as new ways to watch on-demand content, complementing the traditional broadcast TV. Enabled by these platforms, the television concept is also evolving to include new formats and models. Simultaneously, television is no longer restricted to the TV set, being now available on several devices, allowing the viewers to watch the content they want, wherever and whenever they want. However, these changes, although presenting numerous advantages, have also brought a more complex user experience, as they force the viewer to jump between several applications, use different devices and subscribe to multiple services. This presented the opportunity to start a research project aiming to innovate the user experience of the TV viewer, by promoting a content unification approach while introducing new interaction modes and business models. Following a Design Thinking methodology, the project tried to better understand the problems that TV viewers were facing and observe their behaviours and choices. This highlighted a demand for content unification and personalization approaches, enabling an ideation cycle focused on these concepts, which culminated in the elaboration of a prototype that gave tangibility to the selected ideas. This prototype was subjected to an expert evaluation and, given the positive results, granted the green light for the project to proceeded with new prototyping and evaluation phases. Those took place initially in a laboratory setup and, later, in a field trial in a residential environment, for a month. In these evaluations, a triangulation of standardized surveys and various qualitative assessment instruments were employed, and their positive results validated the approach followed by the project. In this way, it became possible to move forward with a transfer, from academia to industry, of the researched unification concepts, thus increasing the level of validation. Finally, the combination of an analysis of the current offers of the biggest American technological platforms, with the knowledge previously obtained on the present research, allowed the elaboration of a set of proposals to improve the user experience of the TV viewers, complemented with a set of suggestions to pay-TV operators, so they can, with these proposals, introduce innovative and differentiated offers to the market.Programa Doutoral em Informação e Comunicação em Plataformas Digitai

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ATLANTIC-PRIMATES: a dataset of communities and occurrences of primates in the Atlantic Forests of South America

Primates play an important role in ecosystem functioning and offer critical insights into human evolution, biology, behavior, and emerging infectious diseases. There are 26 primate species in the Atlantic Forests of South America, 19 of them endemic. We compiled a dataset of 5,472 georeferenced locations of 26 native and 1 introduced primate species, as hybrids in the genera Callithrix and Alouatta. The dataset includes 700 primate communities, 8,121 single species occurrences and 714 estimates of primate population sizes, covering most natural forest types of the tropical and subtropical Atlantic Forest of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina and some other biomes. On average, primate communities of the Atlantic Forest harbor 2 ± 1 species (range = 1–6). However, about 40% of primate communities contain only one species. Alouatta guariba (N = 2,188 records) and Sapajus nigritus (N = 1,127) were the species with the most records. Callicebus barbarabrownae (N = 35), Leontopithecus caissara (N = 38), and Sapajus libidinosus (N = 41) were the species with the least records. Recorded primate densities varied from 0.004 individuals/km 2 (Alouatta guariba at Fragmento do Bugre, Paraná, Brazil) to 400 individuals/km 2 (Alouatta caraya in Santiago, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). Our dataset reflects disparity between the numerous primate census conducted in the Atlantic Forest, in contrast to the scarcity of estimates of population sizes and densities. With these data, researchers can develop different macroecological and regional level studies, focusing on communities, populations, species co-occurrence and distribution patterns. Moreover, the data can also be used to assess the consequences of fragmentation, defaunation, and disease outbreaks on different ecological processes, such as trophic cascades, species invasion or extinction, and community dynamics. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this Data Paper when the data are used in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us of how they are using the data. © 2018 by the The Authors. Ecology © 2018 The Ecological Society of Americ

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Global variations in diabetes mellitus based on fasting glucose and haemogloblin A1c

Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) are both used to diagnose diabetes, but may identify different people as having diabetes. We used data from 117 population-based studies and quantified, in different world regions, the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, and whether those who were previously undiagnosed and detected as having diabetes in survey screening had elevated FPG, HbA1c, or both. We developed prediction equations for estimating the probability that a person without previously diagnosed diabetes, and at a specific level of FPG, had elevated HbA1c, and vice versa. The age-standardised proportion of diabetes that was previously undiagnosed, and detected in survey screening, ranged from 30% in the high-income western region to 66% in south Asia. Among those with screen-detected diabetes with either test, the agestandardised proportion who had elevated levels of both FPG and HbA1c was 29-39% across regions; the remainder had discordant elevation of FPG or HbA1c. In most low- and middle-income regions, isolated elevated HbA1c more common than isolated elevated FPG. In these regions, the use of FPG alone may delay diabetes diagnosis and underestimate diabetes prevalence. Our prediction equations help allocate finite resources for measuring HbA1c to reduce the global gap in diabetes diagnosis and surveillance.peer-reviewe

Worldwide trends in hypertension prevalence and progress in treatment and control from 1990 to 2019: a pooled analysis of 1201 population-representative studies with 104 million participants

Background Hypertension can be detected at the primary health-care level and low-cost treatments can effectively control hypertension. We aimed to measure the prevalence of hypertension and progress in its detection, treatment, and control from 1990 to 2019 for 200 countries and territories. Methods We used data from 1990 to 2019 on people aged 30–79 years from population-representative studies with measurement of blood pressure and data on blood pressure treatment. We defined hypertension as having systolic blood pressure 140 mm Hg or greater, diastolic blood pressure 90 mm Hg or greater, or taking medication for hypertension. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate the prevalence of hypertension and the proportion of people with hypertension who had a previous diagnosis (detection), who were taking medication for hypertension (treatment), and whose hypertension was controlled to below 140/90 mm Hg (control). The model allowed for trends over time to be non-linear and to vary by age. Findings The number of people aged 30–79 years with hypertension doubled from 1990 to 2019, from 331 (95% credible interval 306–359) million women and 317 (292–344) million men in 1990 to 626 (584–668) million women and 652 (604–698) million men in 2019, despite stable global age-standardised prevalence. In 2019, age-standardised hypertension prevalence was lowest in Canada and Peru for both men and women; in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and some countries in western Europe including Switzerland, Spain, and the UK for women; and in several low-income and middle-income countries such as Eritrea, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Solomon Islands for men. Hypertension prevalence surpassed 50% for women in two countries and men in nine countries, in central and eastern Europe, central Asia, Oceania, and Latin America. Globally, 59% (55–62) of women and 49% (46–52) of men with hypertension reported a previous diagnosis of hypertension in 2019, and 47% (43–51) of women and 38% (35–41) of men were treated. Control rates among people with hypertension in 2019 were 23% (20–27) for women and 18% (16–21) for men. In 2019, treatment and control rates were highest in South Korea, Canada, and Iceland (treatment >70%; control >50%), followed by the USA, Costa Rica, Germany, Portugal, and Taiwan. Treatment rates were less than 25% for women and less than 20% for men in Nepal, Indonesia, and some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. Control rates were below 10% for women and men in these countries and for men in some countries in north Africa, central and south Asia, and eastern Europe. Treatment and control rates have improved in most countries since 1990, but we found little change in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. Improvements were largest in high-income countries, central Europe, and some upper-middle-income and recently high-income countries including Costa Rica, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, and Iran. Interpretation Improvements in the detection, treatment, and control of hypertension have varied substantially across countries, with some middle-income countries now outperforming most high-income nations. The dual approach of reducing hypertension prevalence through primary prevention and enhancing its treatment and control is achievable not only in high-income countries but also in low-income and middle-income settings

Utilização de serviços Web para gestão de eventos de televisão interactiva

Nos últimos anos o desenvolvimento de software tem evoluído no sentido de tornar cada vez mais modulares e distribuíveis os seus componentes. A fase actual desta evolução dá pelo nome de Serviços Web e promete tornar a Internet num grande manancial de componentes programáveis. Outro conceito que se encontra neste momento em fase de materialização é a Televisão Interactiva, que começa a dar os primeiros passos em Portugal. Em face de uma convergência crescente entre novos e antigos media a Televisão Interactiva poderá posicionar-se como o meio sobre o qual irá convergir parte da nova tecnologia da comunicação e informação, por via da sua ubiquidade. O primeiro objectivo do trabalho aqui presente foi o de fazer uma análise destes dois conceitos, através da apresentação das várias abordagens e propostas que neste momento se encontram em fase de concretização. Ambos os conceitos encontram-se ainda em fase de amadurecimento, mas já representam áreas com grande potencial de investigação. Na segunda parte desta dissertação propomos e implementamos o sistema iTVclic, que através do uso da tecnologia de Serviços Web permite gerir toda a cadeia de gestão e envio de eventos de Televisão Interactiva. Este sistema foi projectado para trabalhar como um serviço que processa ordens provenientes de outros sistemas de informação. Foi também tida em conta a sua extensibilidade e a capacidade de adaptação a diferentes normas de eventos de Televisão Interactiva. O sistema aqui apresentado foi usado durante o piloto do serviço de Televisão Digital Interactiva promovido pela TV Cabo Portugal e que entrou recentemente em fase comercial. Este facto permite demonstrar a capacidade dos dois conceitos serem usados conjuntamente de uma forma efectiva e com resultados relevantes.In recent years the software development has evolved in a way that makes its components more modular and distributable. Web Services are the current phase of this evolution and they promise to turn the Internet into a great source of programmable components. Another concept reaching materialization at this moment is the Interactive Television, which is making its first steps in Portugal. In face of an increasing convergence between new and old media, Interactive Television will be the place to look for the new technology of communication and information, given its ubiquity. The first goal of the present work was to make an analysis of these two concepts, through the presentation of the approaches and proposals that at this moment are in concretion phase. Both the concepts are still in a development phase but already represent areas with great potential for research. In the second part of this dissertation we propose and implement the iTVclic System, which through the use of Web Services technology allows the management of all the processing chain of Interactive Television events. This system was projected to work as a service that manages orders proceeding from other information systems. It was also taken in account its extensibility and the capacity of adaptation to the different norms of Interactive Television events. The system presented here was used during the pilot of Digital Interactive Television service promoted by TV Cabo Portugal and which reached recently its commercial phase. This fact demonstrates the capability of the two concepts to be used together in an effective way and with excellent results.Mestrado em Gestão da Informaçã