Higher education institutions and international students’ hindrances: a case of students from the African Portuguese-speaking countries at two European Portuguese universities

We present a study to comprehend if the support given by higher education institution (HEI) to international students coming from the PortugueseSpeaking African Countries meets their academic and social hindrances. Our starting point was a set of semi-structured interviews focused on the perspectives of these students, their Professors and Course Directors as well as on the perspectives of HEI’ staff. Despite findings indicate a positive institutional support, it seems there is still much to do in order to do it properly with these students. These different perspectives will allow us to reflect on the impact that those actions/resources have on the path of students from Portuguese-Speaking African Countries and to systematize suggestions to enhance their experiences in HE.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Intelligent Personal Assistants Solutions in Ubiquitous Environments in the Context of Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) will create the opportunity to develop new types of businesses. Every tangible object, biologic or not, will be identified by a unique address, creating a common network composed by billions of devices. Those devices will have different requirements, creating the necessity of finding new mechanisms to satisfy the needs of all the entities within the network. This is one of the main problems that all the scientific community should address in order to make Internet of Things the Future Internet. Currently, IoT is used in a lot of projects involving Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Sensors are generally cheap and small devices able to generate useful information from physical indicators. They can be used on smart home scenarios, or even on healthcare environments, turning sensors into useful devices to accomplish the goals of many use case scenarios. Sensors and other devices with some reasoning capabilities, like smart objects, can be used to create smart environments. The interaction between the objects in those scenarios and humans can be eased by the inclusion of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPAs). Currently, IPAs have good reasoning capabilities, improving the assistance they give to their owners. Artificial intelligence (AI), new learning mechanisms, and the evolution assisted in speech technology also contributed to this improvement. The integration of IPAs in IoT scenarios can become a case of great success. IPAs will comprehend the behavior of their owners not only through direct interactions, but also by the interactions they have with other objects in the environment. This may create ubiquitous communication scenarios where humans act as passive elements, being adequately informed of all the aspects of interest that surrounds them. The communication between IPAs and other objects in their surrounding environment may use gateways for traffic forwarding. On ubiquitous environments devices can be mobile or static. For example, in smart home scenarios, objects are generally static, being always on the same position. In mobile health scenarios, objects can move from one place to another. To turn IPAs useful on all types of environments, static and mobile gateways should be developed. On this dissertation, a novel mobile gateway solution for an IPA platform inserted on an IoT context is proposed. A mobile health scenario was chosen. Then, a Body Sensor Network (BSN) is always monitoring a person, giving the real time feedback of his/her health status to another person responsible by him (designated caretaker). On this scenario, a mobile gateway is needed to forward the traffic between the BSN and the IPA of the caretaker. Therefore, the IPA is able to give warnings about the health status of the person under monitoring, in real time. The proposed system is evaluated, demonstrated, and validated through a prototype, where the more important aspects for IPAs and IoT networks are considered

Automatic error detection using program invariants for fault localization

Tese de Mestrado Integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

Pervasive decision support to predict football corners and goals by means of data mining

Football is considered nowadays one of the most popular sports. In the betting world, it has acquired an outstanding position, which moves millions of euros during the period of a single football match. The lack of profitability of football betting users has been stressed as a problem. This lack gave origin to this research proposal, which it is going to analyse the possibility of existing a way to support the users to increase their profits on their bets. Data mining models were induced with the purpose of supporting the gamblers to increase their profits in the medium/long term. Being conscience that the models can fail, the results achieved by four of the seven targets in the models are encouraging and suggest that the system can help to increase the profits. All defined targets have two possible classes to predict, for example, if there are more or less than 7.5 corners in a single game. The data mining models of the targets, more or less than 7.5 corners, 8.5 corners, 1.5 goals and 3.5 goals achieved the pre-defined thresholds. The models were implemented in a prototype, which it is a pervasive decision support system. This system was developed with the purpose to be an interface for any user, both for an expert user as to a user who has no knowledge in football games.Future work will pass for adding new variables to these models, to try different scenar ios in order to obtain models with even greater precision to be added later to the prototype. In parallel, the prototype will be converted in to a system able to disseminate all the probabilities anywhere and anytime in mobile or situated devices. This prot otype also will incorporate the other predictions made in this field related to the final result [22, 23, 24]. Acknowledgments This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/201

O rendimento social de inserção e os beneficiários ciganos: o caso do concelho de Faro

Este artigo explora as vivências do Rendimento Social de Inserção (RSI) por parte dos ciganos portugueses. O seu objetivo principal foi o de compreender como é que esta categoria de beneficiários perceciona e vive as situações de subsidiariedade. O estudo que lhe deu origem envolveu um grupo de famílias ciganas do concelho de Faro e um conjunto de técnicos sociais responsáveis pela atribuição e gestão do subsídio. Pretendeu-se também conhecer, em certa medida, as reais possibilidades de inserção social e saída do universo da pobreza através destas medidas de política social

Sustaining interaction in a mathematical community of practice

This paper focuses on an activity in which students explore sequences through a game, using ToonTalk programming and a web-based collaboration system. Our analytical framework combines theory of communities of practice with domain epistemology. We note three factors which influence the length and quality of interactions: facilitation, reciprocation and audience-awareness

Estimation of monthly stream flows based on the sequential water budget technique applied to the Thornthwaite potential evapotranspiration

In Portugal mainland, the measurement of stream flows started later then the measurement of the majority of the other hydrologic variables. Also the former measurements were not carried out systematically, thus resulting in stream flow series not only with several faults, but also with reduce length, circumstances that often compromise their utilization either for research or design purposes. Based on the records at sixteen Portuguese climatologic stations it is stressed that the sequential water budget technique applied to the Thornthwaite potential evapotranspiration may provide a stream flow evaluation model having in view the fulfilment but, especially, the extension of monthly flow data. As the number of parameters and the data requirements of the previous technique and model are relatively modest it is possible, by that way, to estimate monthly stream flows even in regions with scarce hydrologic information

The scientific performance of Portuguese pharmaceutical industry: a bibliometric analysis

The premise that leads to this investigation is that Portuguese pharmaceutical industry offers new solutions and brainpower. As this sector is usually linked to innovation and scientific progress as a way to increase competitiveness we believed that Portuguese pharmaceutical industry was more than a simple production facilities. This thesis main objective is to evaluate the scientific performance based on both qualitative and quantitative measures applying bibliometric methods. Using Scopus database, we restricted the scope of analysis to articles or reviews published in peer reviewed scientific journals in the period between 2000 and 2016. This search retrieved 435 documents, from which 94% were articles and the rest 6% reviews. We were able to define some patterns of publication among the 10 Portuguese companies considered. As expected, Bial is, by far, the company with more published articles or reviews (243), followed by Bluepharma with about one third of the documents (69 – from which 80% were published after 2011). Most of the collaborations were with national universities and most of the authors were also Portuguese enhancing the focus on national brain-power. In what concerns to quantity and quality, the total publication growth between 2008-2009, 2011- 2012 and 2014-2015 outstands among the rest of the years and the increasing quality of the journals used by Bluepharma and Hovione and the consequent growing of their citation impact should be hilighted.A premissa que leva a esta investigação é que a indústria farmacêutica portuguesa oferece novas soluções e capacidade intelectual. Estando este setor intimamente ligado à inovação e ao progresso científico como forma de aumentar a competitividade, acreditamos que a indústria farmacêutica portuguesa é mais do que simples instalações produtivas. O objetivo principal desta tese é avaliar o desempenho científico com base em medidas qualitativas e quantitativas aplicando métodos bibliométricos. Usando a base de dados Scopus, restringimos o espectro de análise a artigos ou revisões publicados em revistas científicas revistas por pares, no período compreendido entre 2000 e 2016, sendo apresentados 435 documentos, dos quais 94% eram artigos e as restantes revisões de 6%. Foi possível definir alguns padrões de publicação entre as 10 empresas portuguesas consideradas. Como esperado, a Bial é, de longe, a empresa com mais artigos ou revisões publicados (243), seguido da Bluepharma com cerca de um terço dos documentos (69 - dos quais 80% foram publicados depois de 2011). A maioria das colaborações encontradas foram com universidades nacionais e a maioria dos autores também eram portugueses realçando a aposta no capital intelectual nacional. No que diz respeito à quantidade e à qualidade, o crescimento total do número de publicações entre 2008-2009, 2011-2012 e 2014-2015 destaca-se entre o resto dos anos e a crescente qualidade das revistas utilizadas pela Bluepharma e Hovione e o consequente crescimento do número de citações por artigo deve também ser enaltecido

Intelligent decision support for university application using RIASEC codes

A study performed recently in Portugal showed that there are currently about 320,000 students attending high school. Typically, 51 % of them didn’t know concretely which course to select, five months before the application date. A significant number (about 160,000) of students needed to be guided and informed about the educational provision at the national level. In addition, 25% of the approximately 309,000 students attending Portuguese Public Higher Education (about 77,000) have changed or thought about changing course during their academic career due to some dissatisfaction related to the current course. In order to minimize these difficulties a decision model was outlined. The solution is based on the construction of a tool that, through a carefully prepared questionnaire, will identify what are the best alternatives for students’ application. Key information has been collected from the analysis of several variables in various contexts (e.g. social, economic, personal, and psychological), from scientific studies and from real facts. The resulting model is a weighted model where variables can be set by the user in order to guide the decision making process. Therefore the model is able to adapt to the intrinsic characteristics of each user. This paper focuses in the psychometric capability of the solution (which is unique in this environment) adopting the RIASEC Codes (domains) as the vocational component of the decision model