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Publications

2015

A DCAP for the social and solidarity economy

Authors
Malta, Mariana Curado; Baptista, Ana Alice; Parente, Cristina;

Publication

Abstract
This article presents a work-in-progress version of a Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP) developed to serve the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). Studies revealed that this community is interested in implementing both internal interoperability between their Web platforms to build a global SSE e-marketplace, and external interoperability among their Web platforms and external ones. The Dublin Core Application Profile for Social and Solidarity Economy (DCAP-SSE) serves this purpose. SSE organisations are submerged in the market economy but they have specificities not taken into account in this economy. The DCAP-SSE integrates terms from well-known metadata schemas, Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies or ontologies, in order to enhance interoperability and take advantage of the benefits of the Linked Open Data ecosystem. It also integrates terms from the new essglobal RDF vocabulary which was created with the goal to respond to the SSE-specific needs. The DCAP-SSE also integrates five new Vocabulary Encoding Schemes to be used with DCAP-SSE properties. The DCAP development was based on a method for the development of application profiles (Me4MAP). We believe that this article has an educational value since it presents the idea that it is important to base DCAP developments on a method. This article shows the main results of applying such a method.

2015

Endothelial Dysfunction and Nailfold Videocapillaroscopy Pattern as Predictors of Digital Ulcers in Systemic Sclerosis: a Cohort Study and Review of the Literature

Authors
Silva, I; Teixeira, A; Oliveira, J; Almeida, I; Almeida, R; Aguas, A; Vasconcelos, C;

Publication
CLINICAL REVIEWS IN ALLERGY & IMMUNOLOGY

Abstract
Raynaud's phenomenon and digital ulcers (DUs) are frequent among systemic sclerosis (SSc) patients. Our aim was to investigate the diagnostic and predictive value for DU of endothelial dysfunction biomarkers (flow-mediated dilatation (FMD), serum levels of endothelin-1 (ET-1), and ADMA), angiogenic/angiostatic biomarkers (vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), endoglin, and endostatin), and nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC). We compared our results with a literature review. In a cohort study of 77 SSc patients, we followed two groups of patients: (i) na < ve DU patients (39) and (ii) active DU at baseline (38 patients) for 3 years. Telangiectasia (p < 0.001) and diffuse disease subset (p = 0.001) were significantly more frequent in patients with active DU at enrolment. Additionally, NVC late scleroderma pattern (AUC 0.846, 95%CI 0.760-0.932), lower values of FMD (AUC 0.754, 95%CI 0.643-0.864), increased serum levels of ET-1 (AUC 0.758, 95%CI 0.649-0.866), ADMA (AUC 0.634, 95%CI 0.511-0.757), and endoglin as well as low VEGF serum levels (AUC 0.705, 95%CI 0.579-0.830) were significantly associated to new DU events in the 3-year follow-up. Cox regression analysis showed that FMD > 9.41 % (HR 0.37, 95%CI 0.14-0.99); ET-1 > 11.85 pmol/L (HR 3.81, 95%CI 1.41-10.26) and late NVC pattern (HR 2.29, 95%CI 0.97-5.38) were independent predictors of DU recurrence. When estimating the probability of occurrence of first DU in na < ve DU patients, only late NVC pattern (HR 12.66, 95%CI 2.06-77.89) was an independent predictor factor. In conclusion, late scleroderma patterns in NVC are the best independent predictors of SSc patients who are at risk of developing DU. Endothelial dysfunction assessed by FMD and ET-1 was also found to be an independent predictor of DU recurrence in a 3-year follow-up.

2015

DipBlue: A Diplomacy Agent with Strategic and Trust Reasoning

Authors
Ferreira, Andre; Cardoso, HenriqueLopes; Reis, LuisPaulo;

Publication
ICAART 2015 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, Volume 1, Lisbon, Portugal, 10-12 January, 2015.

Abstract
Diplomacy is a multi-player strategic and zero-sum board game, free of random factors, and allowing negotiation among players. The majority of existing artificial players (bots) for Diplomacy do not exploit the strategic opportunities enabled by negotiation, instead trying to decide their moves through solution search and the use of complex heuristics. We present DipBlue, an approach to the development of an artificial player that uses negotiation in order to gain advantage over its opponents, through the use of peace treaties, formation of alliances and suggestion of actions to allies. A simple trust assessment approach is used as a means to detect and react to potential betrayals by allied players. DipBlue was built to work with DipGame, a multi-agent systems testbed for Diplomacy, and has been tested with other players of the same platform and variations of itself. Experimental results show that the use of negotiation increases the performance of bots involved in alliances, when full trust is assumed. In the presence of betrayals, being able to perform trust reasoning is an effective approach to reduce their impact. Copyright

2015

Data Quality in HL7 Messages - A Real Case Analysis

Authors
Ferreira, R; Correia, ME; Rocha Gonçalves, F; Cruz Correia, R;

Publication
2015 IEEE 28TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER-BASED MEDICAL SYSTEMS (CBMS)

Abstract
The development of eHealth technologies over the last few years has been pushing healthcare institutions to evolve their own infrastructures. Along with this evolution, critical systems now need to use communication standards such as HL7 or DICOM in order to exchange information in a more meaningful and efficient way. However, healthcare institutions often experience complications when different systems communicate directly even when using communication standards. We aim to assess the quality of the data present in HL7 messages exchanged between different critical systems in a large healthcare facility and therefore propose an integration infrastructure that allows a real time and centralized way to manage, route and monitor the integration flows between various systems.

2015

A Centralized Approach to the Coordination of Marine Robots

Authors
Ferreira, BM; Matos, AC; Cruz, NA; Moreira, AP;

Publication
CONTROLO'2014 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11TH PORTUGUESE CONFERENCE ON AUTOMATIC CONTROL

Abstract
This paper presents a centralized coordination scheme for multiple marine vehicles. The only requirements for proper operation of this method are the presence of bidirectional communication links with a virtual leader and bounded reference tracking errors. By relying on a, lower level, individual position tracking control, coordination is achieved by means of a centralized potential-field that uniquely defines the desired formation geometry as well as its position. The formation can be driven along a path that does not necessarily need to be predefined. Instead, a virtual leader defines the formation position at each instant of time. Furthermore, the possibility of setting stationary points over the path followed by the formation is guaranteed. The approach is illustrated in practice with autonomous surface vehicles in real environment, subjected to disturbances such as wind and waves.

2015

CIDRarchy: CIDR-based ns-3 routing protocol for large scale network simulation

Authors
da Silva, PM; Dias, J; Ricardo, M;

Publication
SimuTools

Abstract
ns-3 is the successor of ns-2, the most popular network simulator. Network simulators such as ns-3 play an important role on understanding, designing, and building Internet systems. But simulations are only as good as their models, and the simulation of large scale Internet systems using accurate and complex models is a challenging task. ns-3 simulates realistically the network stack but the scale and complexity of the Internet topology is, from our point of view, limited by the IP forwarding operations. This work proposes CIDRarchy, an IPv4 routing protocol for ns-3 that uses CIDR as the base to create an hierarchical Internet-like network topology that enables (1) IP forwarding with constant time complexity and automatic IPv4 address assignment, and (2) the implementation of an ns-3 helper to ease network topology creation. We implemented CIDRarchy, evaluated its performance, and obtained simulation time reduction over existing ns-3 routing protocols implementations that can reach over one order of magnitude.

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