Determining WWW User's Next Access and Its Application to Pre-fetching

World-Wide Web (WWW) services have grown to levels where significant delays are expected to happen. Techniques like pre-fetching are likely to help users to personalize their needs, reducing their waiting times. However, pre-fetching is only effective if the right documents are identified and if user's move is correctly predicted. Otherwise, pre-fetching will only waste bandwidth. Therefore, it is productive to determine whether a revisit will occur or not, before starting pre-fetching. In this paper we develop two user models that help determining user's next move. One model uses Random Walk approximation and the other is based on Digital Signal Processing techniques. We also give hints on how to use such models with a simple pre-fetching technique that we are developing.CNP

Shadows and strong gravitational lensing: a brief review

For ultra compact objects (UCOs), Light Rings (LRs) and Fundamental Photon Orbits (FPOs) play a pivotal role in the theoretical analysis of strong gravitational lensing effects, and of BH shadows in particular. In this short review, specific models are considered to illustrate how FPOs can be useful in order to understand some non-trivial gravitational lensing effects. This paper aims at briefly overviewing the theoretical foundations of these effects, touching also some of the related phenomenology, both in General Relativity (GR) and alternative theories of gravity, hopefully providing some intuition and new insights for the underlying physics, which might be critical when testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures; Review paper in the General Relativity and Gravitation (GRG) Topical Collection "Testing the Kerr spacetime with gravitational-wave and electromagnetic observations" (Guest Editor: Emanuele Berti); v2: Typo corrected and two references adde

MANNA FROM HEAVEN: THE EXUBERANCE OF FOOD AS A TOPIC FOR RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION

Organizations have, in the past, often been discussed as if they were Cartesian mentalities, planning agendas, learning from doing, processing information, reducing equivocality, mimicking and copying, floating disembodiedly apart from the actors who work in these organizations. We are offered representations of organizations as organically grounded metaphors that minimize the biological facticity of employees: namely, their need for food. While the inputs to organizations conceived as if they were quasi-systems are well explored, and the emotional and ‘irrational’ side of organizations is increasingly explored, the necessity of inputs to the biological systems that staff them is not. Nonetheless, despite the lack of explicit scholarly attention to food at work, its importance guarantees its hidden presence in the organizational literature, often in the context of more “serious” themes. We identify four approaches to the relationship between food, work and organization. For dessert, we propose a research menu that aims to uncover several possibilities for making the role of food in organizational life more explicit.

How pervasive and mobile computing can help organizations to include people with visual disabilities on their client-approach strategy?

Organizations have in-built social responsibility to society. The evolution of technology have enable organizations to interact in an innovatively and more close approach to their clients. But this evolution has not included people with special needs like blind people. And, even those organizations that have enable some kind of support-approach to blind people, have typically disjointed, incomplete and typically parallel approaches; compared to their massclient standard approach. This paper discusses the potential of Pervasive and Mobile Computing to support, not just an innovative and unified approach, but also a real possibility of promoting real inclusion of blind people in what concerns to the delivery of information and services organizations offer. This paper also represents a reflection and a mind shaking attempt, while the authors are working in allowing blind people an autonomous buying process, in hypermarkets, supported by the use of wireless networks and modern mobile devices, with multiple technologies support, like Wi-Fi and inertial and magnetic sensors

A importância da atribuição do galardão de Reserva Mundial de Surf na Ericeira

A costa portuguesa é um recurso incomensurável graças à sua longa extensão, perfazendo um total de aproximadamente 1860 Km, distribuídos por Portugal Continental (943 Km), Arquipélago dos Açores (667 Km) e o Arquipélago da Madeira( 250Km). Esta singularidade dotou o país de uma oferta diversificada de produtos turísticos sendo o Sol e Mar, Cruzeiros e Turismo Náutico (desportos náuticos e atividades Marítimo-turísticas) um recurso turístico de aposta e uma nova área de negócio, aumentando a procura e/ou incentivando o investimento público/privado. Entre os vários desportos náuticos, destaca-se a importância que a modalidade de ondas (reconhecidas pela Internacional Surf Association – ISA como o Surf, o Bodyboard, o Longboard, o Kneebooard, o Tandem, o Skimboard, o Bodysurf, o Tow-in, o Tand up Paddle Surfe o Stand up Paddle Racing) tem ganho nos eixos Cascais-Estoril, Setúbal-Tróia e Ericeira-Nazaré-Peniche, reforçada com a atribuição do galardão de Reserva Mundial de Surf à Ericeira, no ano de 2011; a primeira da Europa e a Segunda do Mundo. Esta atribuição gerou uma nova dinâmica na economia local e regional, asseverando uma atratividade ao sector, ancorado numa estratégica comercial dirigida não só ao mercado internacional como também ao mercado interno, promovendo um conjunto de eventos relacionados quer com o desenvolvimento das potencialidades do território e ambiente (terra e mar), quer com a capacidade de inovação. Atrair investimento à região sob o mote da modalidade de ondas e estimular a procura (interna/externa) são cruciais para a economia local e a criação de emprego

A ubiquidade e a contextualização no acesso à informação e serviços turísticos

Com a distinção da região do Alto Douro Vinhateiro a Património da Humanidade, na categoria de Paisagem Cultural, em dezembro de 2001, a região teve eco internacional, alcançando nova visibilidade. A natureza pristina convida o visitante a conhecer todo este património, transformando-o num recurso turístico que necessita de ser explicado e/ou interpretado (a história, as tradições, os artefactos, a arte, entre outros) de forma célere assente no pressuposto da ubiquidade de acesso à informação

An architecture for interoperability and ubiquity of medical information

In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all the patient’s information, this information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems

Promoting ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems using an soa based architecture

Health information systems are of extreme importance and they became an intrinsic part of the healthcare sector. However, in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, it is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information; for the information must be reliable and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous health information systems and the need for ubiquity of medical information. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work is based on the authors’ knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

A SOA based architecture to promote ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems

In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information, the information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work was based on the author’s knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

Gestão de big data: novos paradigmas

A popularidade crescente de aplicações Web de acesso massivo que armazenam e analisam grandes quantidades de dados, sendo o Facebook, o Twitter, a Amazon e a Google alguns exemplos proeminentes de tais aplicações, apresentam novas exigências que desafiam os tradicionais SGBDR. Motivados principalmente por questões de escalabilidade, uma nova geração de bases de dados, apelidadas de NoSQL, tem vindo a ganhar alguma força. Neste artigo serão apresentadas as principais características dessas bases de dados. As bases de dados NoSQL são comparadas com os tradicionais SGBDR e conceitos importantes serão explanados.The growing popularity of massively accessed web applications that store and analyze large amounts of data, being Facebook, twitter and google search some prominent examples of such applications, have posed new requirements that greatly challenge traditional RDBMS. Driven primarily by scalability issues, a new generation of databases, called NoSQL, has gained some strength. This paper presents the main characteristics of these databases. NoSQL databases are compared with traditional RDBMS and important concepts are explained.UNIAG, R&D unit funded by the FCT – Portuguese Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio