847 research outputs found
Crystalline Silicon PV Module under Effect of Shading Simulation of the Hot-Spot Condition
This paper centers on the silicon crystalline PV module technology subjected to operation conditions with some cells partially or fully shaded. A shaded cell under hot-spot condition operating at reverse bias are dissipating power instead of delivering power. A thermal model allows analyzing the temperature increase of the shaded cells of the module under hot-spot condition with or without protection by a bypass diode. A comparison of the simulation results for a crystalline PV module without shading and with partial or full shading is presented
IT Governance Mechanisms at Universities: An Exploratory Study
The pervasive use of technology has created a critical dependency on IT that requires particular attention to IT Governance (ITG). A set of ITG mechanisms involving structures, processes and relational mechanisms can be considered to implement IT governance and enhance business/IT alignment. Universities are organizations with a specific context and depend on IT for the success in teaching and learning, research and service. However, ITG implementation in universities has not received much attention and research in this type of organization is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the most appropriate set of ITG mechanisms for universities. Semi-structured interviews with CIOs in ten universities from five countries were carried out. This research proposes six new ITG mechanisms to be added to the current set of ITG mechanisms. This research concludes by presenting the limitations and future work
Information technology governance for higher education institutions: a multi-country study
Information Technology governance (ITG) calls for the definition and implementation of formal practices at the highest level in the organization, involving structures, processes and relational practices for the creation of business value from IT investments. However, determining the right ITG practices remains a complex endeavor. Previous studies identify IT governance practices used in the health and financial sectors. As universities have many unique characteristics, it is highly unlikely that the ITG experiences of the financial and health industry can be directly applied to universities. This study, using Design Science Research (DSR), develops a baseline with advised practices for the university sector. The analysis of thirty-four case studies from the literature review provides a set of practices as a starting point for the development of the baseline model proposal through multiple case studies involving interviews with IT directors, in ten universities in five countries: eight new practices emerge in this study. The model proposed was evaluated by experts. The result is a baseline model with adequate practices for IT governance in universities as well as a set of guidelines for its implementation. Findings revealed that is possible to extend the ITG practices’ baseline when looking at specific contexts.This work has been supported by CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil Process n.º10415/13-0 and by FCT Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020
Trajectory-Aware Rate Adaptation for Flying Networks
Despite the trend towards ubiquitous wireless connectivity, there are
scenarios where the communications infrastructure is damaged and wireless
coverage is insufficient or does not exist, such as in natural disasters and
temporary crowded events. Flying networks, composed of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAV), have emerged as a flexible and cost-effective solution to provide
on-demand wireless connectivity in these scenarios. UAVs have the capability to
operate virtually everywhere, and the growing payload capacity makes them
suitable platforms to carry wireless communications hardware. The state of the
art in the field of flying networks is mainly focused on the optimal
positioning of the flying nodes, while the wireless link parameters are
configured with default values. On the other hand, current link adaptation
algorithms are mainly targeting fixed or low mobility scenarios.
We propose a novel rate adaptation approach for flying networks, named
Trajectory Aware Rate Adaptation (TARA), which leverages the knowledge of
flying nodes' movement to predict future channel conditions and perform rate
adaptation accordingly. Simulation results of 100 different trajectories show
that our solution increases throughput by up to 53% and achieves an average
improvement of 14%, when compared with conventional rate adaptation algorithms
such as Minstrel-HT
Effective IT governance mechanisms in higher education institutions: An empirical study
Particular attention to IT Governance is required when the pervasive use of technology has created critical dependencies on IT for organizational performance and prosperity. This study attempts to assess the importance of specific mechanisms for the effectiveness of IT governance in the context of higher educational institutions. Using a qualitative approach with in-depth interviews and document analysis to collect data, a study was carried out across several countries. A mechanism in each type (structure, process, and relational) emerge as quite important: IT Strategy Committee (structure), IT Strategic Planning (process) and IT Leadership (relational).CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil Process n.º10415/13-0 and by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/201
Book of Abstracts 15th International Symposium on Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering and 3rd Conference on Imaging and Visualization
In this edition, the two events will run together as a single conference, highlighting the strong connection with the Taylor & Francis journals: Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering (John Middleton and Christopher Jacobs, Eds.) and Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging and Visualization (JoãoManuel R.S. Tavares, Ed.).
The conference has become a major international meeting on computational biomechanics, imaging andvisualization. In this edition, the main program includes 212 presentations. In addition, sixteen renowned researchers will give plenary keynotes, addressing current challenges in computational biomechanics and biomedical imaging.
In Lisbon, for the first time, a session dedicated to award the winner of the Best Paper in CMBBE Journal will take place.
We believe that CMBBE2018 will have a strong impact on the development of computational biomechanics and biomedical imaging and visualization, identifying emerging areas of research and promoting the collaboration and networking between participants. This impact is evidenced through the well-known research groups, commercial companies and scientific organizations, who continue to support and sponsor the CMBBE meeting
series. In fact, the conference is enriched with five workshops on specific scientific topics and commercial software.info:eu-repo/semantics/draf
Aerobic biological treatment of wastewaters containing dichloromethane
BACKGROUND: Volatilization has been advanced as one of the predominant phenomena contributing to volatile organic carbon emissions from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In this study, strategies for minimizing such air stripping losses when treating a liquid stream containing dichloromethane (DCM), aiming at decreasing
the overall emission inventory from WWTPs, were investigated. RESULTS: System R1, consisting of a continuous flow stirred tank reactor (CSTR) treating a liquid stream
containing DCM at a concentration of 12 mmol dm−3 presented a biodegradation efficiency (BE) of 68%, based upon chloride release, with 10% of measurable losses, mainly due to volatilization, and 22% of unmeasurable
losses. System R2 introduced operational designs aiming at decreasing DCM volatilization. In Experiment R2.1, a
biotrickling filter, through which the air stripped from the CSTR was driven, was introduced leading to a reduction from 10% to 7% on the measurable losses. In Experiment R2.2, the air stripped from the CSTR was recirculated at a flow rate of 2.4 dm3 h−1 through the reactormedium before entering the biotrickling filter. The BE was improved from 69% to 82% and the losses associated with air stripping were successfully reduced to 2%. The proposed design, including air recirculation and the biotrickling filter, increased the ratio between the biodegradation rate and the
volatilization rate from 7 to 41.
CONCLUSIONS: Recirculation of the gaseous effluent through the reactor medium, which allowed for higher residence time within the bioreactor, was shown to be a successful strategy for improving the treatment process,
thus minimizing DCM volatilization losses
Reconstruction of panoramic dental Iimages through Bézier function optimization
The authors were grateful to CAPES, CNPq, and FAPESP for their financial support.Computed tomography (CT) and X-ray images have been extensively used as a valuable diagnostic tool in dentistry for surgical planning and treatment. Nowadays, dental cone beam CT has been extensively used in dental clinics. Therefore, it is possible to employ three-dimensional (3D) data from the CT to reconstruct a two-dimensional (2D) panoramic dental image that provides a longitudinal view of the mandibular region of the patient, avoiding an additional exposure to X-ray. In this work, we developed a new automatic method for reconstructing 2D panoramic images of the dental arch based on 3D CT images, using Bézier curves and optimization techniques. The proposed method was applied to five patients, some of them with missing teeth, and smooth panoramic images with good contrast were obtained.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Carcinoma epidermóide primário em cisto desmóide de ovário
Carcinoma epidermóide primário em cisto desmóide de ovári
Libertas: Privacy-Preserving Computation for Decentralised Personal Data Stores
Data-driven decision-making and AI applications present exciting new
opportunities delivering widespread benefits. The rapid adoption of such
applications triggers legitimate concerns about loss of privacy and misuse of
personal data. This leads to a growing and pervasive tension between harvesting
ubiquitous data on the Web and the need to protect individuals. Decentralised
personal data stores (PDS) such as Solid are frameworks designed to give
individuals ultimate control over their personal data. But current PDS
approaches have limited support for ensuring privacy when computations combine
data spread across users. Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC) is a well-known
subfield of cryptography, enabling multiple autonomous parties to
collaboratively compute a function while ensuring the secrecy of inputs (input
privacy). These two technologies complement each other, but existing practices
fall short in addressing the requirements and challenges of introducing MPC in
a PDS environment. For the first time, we propose a modular design for
integrating MPC with Solid while respecting the requirements of
decentralisation in this context. Our architecture, Libertas, requires no
protocol level changes in the underlying design of Solid, and can be adapted to
other PDS. We further show how this can be combined with existing differential
privacy techniques to also ensure output privacy. We use empirical benchmarks
to inform and evaluate our implementation and design choices. We show the
technical feasibility and scalability pattern of the proposed system in two
novel scenarios -- 1) empowering gig workers with aggregate computations on
their earnings data; and 2) generating high-quality differentially-private
synthetic data without requiring a trusted centre. With this, we demonstrate
the linear scalability of Libertas, and gained insights about compute
optimisations under such an architecture
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