Use of Chatbots in the Covid-19: A Systematic Literature Review

Artificial-Intelligence (AI) is becoming more widespread in several areas, from economics and government to consumer-services and even healthcare. In fact, in the latter, there was a big use increase in the past three years, also due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several solutions have been implemented to tackle the several challenges imposed by this new disease, being one of such solutions chatbots. In this article, we present the results of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that identifies the Chatbots applications in COVID-19 disease. In this SLR, we identified 9987 papers from which we selected 30 studies, on which we performed a full-text analysis. From our research, we could conclude that several solutions were implemented, with good acceptance by citizens, despite several limitations, such as limited time to develop the solutions (which narrowed some features, such as AI voice conversation), lack of global implementation and infrastructure limitations

Literacy and Health Wearables

The increasing use of smart health devices is causing relevant behavioral changes, introducing new forms of health promotion. However, most of these interventions are the result of a self-personal, derived from each one's knowledge of their state of health and considering the goals that each one establishes for themselves. These devices usually have software applications designed to collect and display data, with the aim of reaching many users, irrespective of their literacy, health condition and socio-demographic characteristics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Hybrid Recommender Strategy on an Expanded Content Manager in Formal Learning

The main topic of this paper is to find ways to improve learning in a formal Higher Education Area. In this environment, the teacher publishes or suggests contents that support learners in a given course, as supplement of classroom training. Generally, these materials are pre-stored and not changeable. These contents are typically published in learning management systems (the Moodle platform emerges as one of the main choices) or in sites created and maintained on the web by teachers themselves. These scenarios typically include a specific group of students (class) and a given period of time (semester or school year). Contents reutilization often needs replication and its update requires new edition and new submission by teachers. Normally, these systems do not allow learners to add new materials, or to edit existing ones. The paper presents our motivations, and some related concepts and works. We describe the concepts of sequencing and navigation in adaptive learning systems, followed by a short presentation of some of these systems. We then discuss the effects of social interaction on the learners’ choices. Finally, we refer some more related recommender systems and their applicability in supporting learning. One central idea from our proposal is that we believe that students with the same goals and with similar formal study time can benefit from contents' assessments made by learners that already have completed the same courses and have studied the same contents. We present a model for personalized recommendation of learning activities to learners in a formal learning context that considers two systems. In the extended content management system, learners can add new materials, select materials from teachers and from other learners, evaluate and define the time spent studying them. Based on learner profiles and a hybrid recommendation strategy, combining conditional and collaborative filtering, our second system will predict learning activities scores and offers adaptive and suitable sequencing learning contents to learners. We propose that similarities between learners can be based on their evaluation interests and their recent learning history. The recommender support subsystem aims to assist learners at each step suggesting one suitable ordered list of LOs, by decreasing order of relevance. The proposed model has been implemented in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), and we present the system’s architecture and design. We will evaluate it in a real higher education formal course and we intend to present experimental results in the near future

Sistemas de abastecimento de água e saneamento básico

O presente relatório de estágio enquadra-se no âmbito do Trabalho Final de Mestrado (TFM) do curso de Engenharia Civil, área de especialização de Hidráulica, do Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, e baseia-se na temática dos sistemas de abastecimento de água e drenagem de águas residuais. O estágio, intitulado de “Sistemas de Abastecimento de Agua e Saneamento Básico”, decorreu numa empresa de consultaria de engenharia denominada ENGIDRO – Estudos de Engenharia, Lda., vocacionada para a realização de estudos e projectos na área de Hidráulica, com particular incidência na Hidráulica Urbana e Saneamento Básico. O estágio iniciou-se com um adequado enquadramento profissional na empresa e incidiu principalmente no desenvolvimento de trabalhos de concepção e dimensionamento, a nível de projectos de execução, de sistemas de abastecimento de água e de saneamento básico, para 21 localidades da província de Lunda Sul, em Angola, com prestação de serviços para o Governo Provincial de Lunda Sul – Direcção Provincial da Energia e Aguas, juntamente com empresa CENGA – Consultores de Engenharia de Angola, S.A. Na prestação de serviços à entidade contratante foram efectuados trabalhos de campo, que consistiram principalmente em reconhecimentos do terreno, levantamentos topográficos e recolha de informação relevante sobre elementos condicionantes dos projectos (origens e disponibilidades de água, natureza e declive dos terrenos, tipos de infra-estruturas locais) e trabalhos de gabinete para compilação e análise da informação recolhida na elaboração dos projectos de execução, incluindo pecas desenhadas (desenhos pormenorizados) e peças escritas (memórias descritivas e justificativas, medições e orçamentos). Sendo os projectos destinados a aglomerados populacionais pouco desenvolvidos e com carências e condicionantes de diversa ordem (falta de energia eléctrica, de acessos, de telecomunicações, de meios técnicos e materiais, entre outros), prestou-se especial atenção aos aspectos da concepção, privilegiando soluções de baixa tecnologia, mais fáceis de explorar e manter com os recursos locais disponíveis.This report is part of the internship for the final project of the masters degree in Civil Engineering, hydraulics area of expertise, from the ISEL and was based on the theme of water supply systems and wastewater drainage. The internship, titled "Systems of Water Supply and Sanitation" was held in a consulting engineering firm called ENGIDRO – Estudos de Engenharia, Lda., dedicated to studies and projects in the area of hydraulics, with particular focus on urban hydraulicsand sanitation. The internship began with an appropriate professional introduction in the company and focused mainly on the development in design and sizing of water supply and sanitation systems to 21 villages in the province of Lunda Sul in Angola, with services to the Provincial Government of Lunda Sul - Provincial Energy and Water, alongwith company CENGA – Consultores de Engenharia de Angola, S.A. In providing services to the customer, fieldwork consisted mainly in reconnaissance of the land, surveying and collecting relevant information on determining factors of the projects (sources and water availability, nature and slope of land, typesof local infrastructure) and office work for compilation and analysis of information gathered in the preparation of project implementation, including plans (detailed drawings) and written documents (descriptive documents, measurements and budgets). Since the projects are aimed for undeveloped populations with several needs and constraints (lack of electricity, access, telecommunications, technical and material means, among others), special attention was given to aspects of design, privileged solutions lowtech, easier to operate and maintain with local resources available. With the guidance and coordination of the engineer Luís Mendes it waspossible to perform the work and activities inherent to the internship, accurately and efficiently, with the crucial collaboration of a multidisciplinary team

Does the age of entry in primary school affect student’s achievement?

The school starting age is one the factors that influence student’s educational attainment. Using a large dataset containing information of students from public schools in Portugal, it was possible to establish a positive relation between the entry age and educational outcomes, such as retentions and exam’s grades. However, deferring a child’s entry by one year does not seem to provide large benefits for students. This paper complements the analysis by understanding the main characteristics that lead to child’s deferment and reinforces the idea that educational policy is a complex issue for Governments to deal with

Multilabel classification of unstructured data using Crunchbase

Our work compares different methods and models for multilabel text classification using information collected from Crunchbase, a large database that holds information of more than 600000 companies. Each company is labeled with one more categories, from a subset of 46 possible, and the proposed models predict the categories based solely on the company textual description. A number of natural language processing strategies have been tested for feature extraction, including stemming, lemmatization, and Part-of-Speech Tagging. This is a highly unbalanced dataset, where the frequency of each category ranges from 0.7% to 28%. The first experiment, is a Multiclass classification problem that tries to find the most probable category using only one model for all categories, with an overall score of 67% using SVM, Naive Bayes and Fuzzy Fingerprints. The second experiment uses makes use of multiple classifiers, one for each category, and tries to predict the complete set of categories for each company, with an overal score of 73% precision and 47% recall. The resulting models may constitute an important asset for automatic classification of texts, not only consisting of company descriptions, but also other texts, such as web pages, text blogs, news pages, etc.Este trabalho compara diferentes métodos e modelos para classificação de texto utilizando informação proveniente do Crunchbase, uma grande base de dados que contém dados sobre mais de 600000 empresas. Cada empresa está associada a uma ou mais categorias, de 46 possiveis, e os modelos propostos utilizam apenas a descrição de cada empresa para prever a sua categoria. Foram aplicadas várias técnicas de processamento de linguagem natural para extração de informação incluindo "stemming", lematização e "Part-of-Speech Tagging". Este "dataset" é altamente desiquilibrado, a frequência de cada categoria vai desde 0.7% a 28%. A primeira experiência, é um problema multiclasse que tenta encontrar qual a categoria mais provável para uma empresa utilizando apenas um modelo para todas as categorias, obtendo um resultado global de 67% de "accuracy" utilizando SVM, Naive Bayes e Fuzzy Fingerprints. A segunda experiência utiliza vários classificadores, um por cada categoria, para atribuir todas as categorias de uma determinada empresa obtendo resultados de 73% de precisão e 47% de "recall". Os modelos resultantes do nosso trabalho podem ser um ativo importante para a classificação automática de texto, não só para descrições de empresas mas também para outros textos, como páginas de Internet, blogs, notícias, entre outros

Estratégia Hibrida de Recomendações sobre um Gestor de Conteúdos Ampliado em Ensino Formal

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar um Modelo para Recomendação Personalizada de conteúdos de aprendizagem, baseado numa estratégia de recomendação híbrida e no perfil de cada aluno. Incluímos uma proposta para a similaridade entre alunos que reflete os seus interesses em termos das avaliações pretendidas e da proximidade das sequências de atividades de aprendizagem dos diversos alunos. Este modelo prevê, igualmente, a inclusão de novos conteúdos por parte dos alunos e a definição de relacionamentos com os conteúdos existentes. São abordadas as motivações que nos levaram à presente proposta, alguns conceitos e trabalhos relacionados, assim como a arquitetura e desenho da solução, entretanto alvo de protótipo. Por fim são tecidas algumas conclusões

Impact of the HRM content (i.e. practices) and process (i.e. strength) on individual and organizational outcomes, in the hotel industry

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsThis study aims to explore the impact of the HRM content (i.e. HRM practices) on individual (proximal) and organizational (distal) outcomes, in the hotel industry context, as well as the influence of the HRM process (i.e. HRM strength) as a mediator in the link between HRM practices and individual and organizational outcomes. A total of 202 responses from non-supervisory employees and 38 from supervisors, from 7 hotels in Algarve, were collected and analysed. HRM practices were grouped into three HRM bundles, through an exploratory factor analysis – Internal Labour Market, Employee Involvement and Meritocracy and Security. These HRM bundles were found to have a significant association with both proximal and distal outcomes. Specifically, Internal Labour Market was associated with Job Satisfaction, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, Work Engagement and Innovative Behaviour; Employee Involvement was associated with Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment towards the Organization, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, Work Engagement and Innovative Behaviour; and Meritocracy and Security was only significant with Organizational Commitment towards the Organization, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour and Innovative Behaviour. Both Internal Labour Market and Meritocracy and Security positively affect Organizational Innovation. Some of the relationships obtained were mediated by Strength of the HRM system, but not all. Strength of the HRM system reveals itself as a signalling mechanism to increase visibility and relevance of some bundles of HRM practices. Implications of these findings are also discussed

Enhancing Carbon Sequestration in Mediterranean Agroforestry Systems: A Review

ReviewThe agroforestry systems with a high potential for C sequestration are those degraded by poor management strategies. Studies on changes in soil C status in these ecosystems mostly take into account labile C pools. Labile and stable soil organic matter (SOM) fractions are affected by soil management and land-use changes. Stable C pools are essential to understanding effects of land-use on soil C storage in the long term. The SOM stability is partly enhanced by the interaction of SOM with minerals and its inclusion into soil aggregates. Recalcitrant substances (e.g., lignin and chitin) also contribute to the passive SOM fraction. Macroaggregates mostly reflect the influence of plant roots and coarse intra-aggregate particulate SOM (POM), whereas microaggregates reflect the influence of fine interaggregate POM, clay concentration and humified SOM fraction. Often, POM is more sensitive to soil management changes than total SOM. Glomalin is a recalcitrant protein consisting of chitin produced by mycorrhizal fungi to protect hyphae. Glomalin has implications on C sequestration in agroforestry soils, but further research is needed before any prediction can be made. One challenge is reducing the CO2 emission from roots, and increasing the recalcitrant root Cinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Understanding memorable enogastronomic experiences: A qualitative approach

The objectives of this chapter are to: - Introduce those factors that make a memorable enogastronomic experience for tourists visiting a destination; - Present qualitative findings that reveal that gastronomy and wines play a major role in the way that visitors experience a destination and indicate that some travellers would return to the same destination to savour its unique gastronomy.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio