Waste marble dust blended cement

Marble processing activities generates a.significant amount of waste in dust form. This waste, which is nowadays one of the environmental problems worldwide, presents great potential of being used as mineral addition in blended cements production. This paper shows preliminary results of an ongoing project which ultimate goal is to investigate the viability of using waste marble dust (WMD), produced by marble Portuguese industry, as cement replacement material. In order to evaluate the effects of the WMD on mechanical behaviour, different mortar blended cement mixtures were tested. These mixtures were prepared with different partial substitution level of cement with WMD. Strength results of WMD blended cements were compared to control cements with same level of incorporation of natural limestone used to produce commercial Portland-limestone cements. The results obtained show that WMD blended cements perform better than limestone blended cements for same replacement level up to 20% w/w. Therefore, WMD reveals promising attributes for blended cements production

ITSM automation - Using machine learning to predict incident resolution category

Problem resolution is a key issue in the IT service industry, and it is still difficult for large enterprises to guarantee the service quality of the Incident Management (IM) process because of the difficulty in handling frequent incidents timely, even though IT Service Management (ITSM) standard process have already been established (Zhao & Yang, 2013). In this work, we propose an approach to predict the incident solution category, by exploring and combining the application of natural language processing techniques and machine learning algorithms on a real dataset from a large organization. The tickets contain information across a vast range of subjects from inside the organization with a vocabulary specific to these subjects. By exploring the text-based attributes, our findings show that the full description of an incident is better than the short description and after stop words removal, the use of additional preprocessing techniques and the addition of tickets nominal attributes such as have no impact to the classification performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Preliminary analysis of the competitiveness determinants in wine industry in the São Francisco Valley, Brazil.

In the current contemporary world scene, the science, technology and innovation are key elements for economic and social growth and democratization of opportunities of a nation. The Brazilian wine sector, especially the Sao Francisco Valley, has been increasing its role as agent in regional development and national agribusiness which, despite the challenges of typicality and uniqueness of the tropical viticulture practiced in the region, combined with increasing competition in their markets, also plays an important role by reducing social and economic inequality between the regions of Brazil

BioRePortAP, an electronic clinical record coupled with a database : an example of its use in a single

Aims: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of the treatment of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) patients with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists in the Rheumatology Department of Hospital de Santa Maria using the BioRePortAP. Methods: The Portuguese Society of Rheumatology (SPR) developed an electronic medical chart coupled with a database for the follow up of PsA patients, the BioRePortAP, which was launched in May 2009. This evaluation was based on all the PsA patients that were on active treatment with TNF antagonists in September 2009 and were registered in the BioRePortAP. All the previous data on these patients were introduced in BioRePortAP using the prospective paper based follow up protocol that this Department was using since 1999. Only patients with more than 9 months of treatment were analyzed. Results: Forty-two patients with PsA, actively treated with anti-TNF agents in September 2009, for at least 9 months, were analyzed in BioRePortAP. Twenty-three patients were male (55%) and nineteen were female (45%). The average age of these patients was 49.8±10.9 years old, the average disease duration was of 10.7±5.6 years and the mean duration of biological therapy was of 37.8±27.8 months. For the 81% of patients with peripheral joint disease there was a mean reduction of more than 80% in the swollen and tender joint counts, and almost 50% in the health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) value. In the 19% of the patients with axial involvement the reduction of BASDAI and BASFI was not statistically significative. On top of that, PASI score suffered a reduction of 64%. Fourteen patients (33.3%) had to switch their TNF antagonist treatment. 58.8% of the switches were due to adverse effects and 41.2% due to therapy failure. Regarding the 56 adverse reactions registered, only one was a severe reaction. The remaining adverse reactions were not severe and 67% of them were due to infections. Discussion: The results of this first report of the use of the BioRePortAP in clinical practice confirm the efficacy and safety of TNF antagonist treatment in PsA. The results shown here elucidate the potential applications of BioRePortAP as a tool for efficacy and safety assessment of PsA patients treated with biotechnological drugs

The LSTS open-source communication and autonomy software: enabling networked vehicle systems to find track, and sample dynamic features of the ocean

Peer Reviewe

Ensaios de caracterização do comportamento estrutural de construções existentes em adobe

Em Portugal a construção em adobe foi muito utilizada até meados do século XX sobretudo na região de Aveiro. Actualmente cerca de 25% das construções existentes na cidade são de adobe. Estes números sobem para 40% se referidos à região de Aveiro. O adobe foi utilizado nas mais variadas construções, desde edifícios rurais, edifícios urbanos de maior porte, muros, poços de água, igrejas e armazéns. De destacar inúmeros edifícios de elevado valor histórico e patrimonial que foram também construídos em adobe, como por exemplo alguns edifícios de Arte Nova. Muito deste património de construções existentes em adobe na região de Aveiro apresenta uma pronunciada degradação estrutural, e em muitos casos encontra-se mesmo no limiar da ruína, devido sobretudo à falta de manutenção e conservação destas construções. Da falta de sensibilidade no passado para a preservação deste património, por um lado, e por outro da falta de conhecimento relativo ao comportamento destes materiais, resultou o estado actual das construções existentes em adobe. Para colmatar a falta de informação técnica acerca das propriedades mecânicas e comportamento dos elementos em adobe, a Universidade de Aveiro tem vindo a desenvolver nos últimos anos estudos e ensaios de caracterização deste tipo de construção na região, nomeadamente pela realização de levantamentos dimensionais, estudo da composição dos diferentes blocos de adobe e das argamassas de junta e reboco, e do seu comportamento mecânico. Foram recolhidas amostras de adobe de muros e de casas representativas da construção na região de Aveiro. Os provetes extraídos destas amostras foram ensaiados à compressão simples e à compressão diametral. Foram também construídos muretes à escala e estes foram ensaiados à compressão perpendicular às juntas de assentamento e na direcção diagonal. Para além dos ensaios laboratoriais foram efectuados ensaios mecânicos “in situ” sobre paredes existentes de adobe. Os resultados obtidos com os ensaios efectuados servem de suporte para futuras intervenções de reabilitação e eventual reconstrução. Estes resultados servem de suporte à caracterização da construção existentes, à interpretação das patologias estruturais verificadas, à calibração dos modelos numéricos para simulação do comportamento destas construções, na avaliação da segurança estrutural e no dimensionamento de eventuais soluções de reforço. Pretende-se com este artigo apresentar e discutir os resultados principais dos ensaios realizados