Cookies
O website necessita de alguns cookies e outros recursos semelhantes para funcionar. Caso o permita, o INESC TEC irá utilizar cookies para recolher dados sobre as suas visitas, contribuindo, assim, para estatísticas agregadas que permitem melhorar o nosso serviço. Ver mais
Aceitar Rejeitar
  • Menu
Publicações

2021

Metabarcoding with MinION: Speeding up the detection of invasive aquatic species using environmental DNA and nanopore sequencing

Autores
Egeter, B; Veríssimo, J; Lopes-Lima, M; chaves, c; Pinto, J; Riccardi, N; Beja, P; Fonseca, NA;

Publicação
ARPHA Conference Abstracts

Abstract
Traditional detection of aquatic invasive species, via morphological identification is often time-consuming and can require a high level of taxonomic expertise, leading to delayed mitigation responses. Environmental DNA (eDNA) detection approaches of multiple species using Illumina-based sequencing technology have been used to overcome these hindrances, but sample processing is often lengthy. More recently, portable nanopore sequencing technology has become available, which has the potential to make molecular detection of invasive species more widely accessible and to substantially decrease sample turnaround times. However, nanopore-sequenced reads have a much higher error rate than those produced by Illumina platforms, which has so far hindered the adoption of this technology. We provide a detailed laboratory protocol and bioinformatic tools to increase the reliability of nanopore sequencing to detect invasive species, and we test its application using invasive bivalves. We sampled water from sites with pre-existing bivalve occurrence and abundance data, and contrasting bivalve communities, in Italy and Portugal. We extracted, amplified and sequenced eDNA with a turnaround of 3.5 days. The majority of processed reads were = 99 % identical to reference sequences. There were no taxa detected other than those known to occur. The lack of detections of some species at some sites could be explained by their known low abundances. The approach is now being tested on other target taxa such as fish and other vertebrates.

2021

Large-Scale Agile Frameworks: A Comparative Review

Autores
Almeida, F; Espinheira, E;

Publicação
Journal of Applied Sciences, Management and Engineering Technology

Abstract
This study aims to identify and systematically compare the main large-scale agile frameworks that companies can adopt to manage the work of large-scale and distributed teams. Through this, companies can more consciously perform a better-informed decision on the choice of the framework that best fits the practices and challenges of their organizations. This work employs a qualitative approach supported by an exploratory analysis that identifies and explores the processes of migration to a large-scale agile. In the first phase, fifteen assessment criteria for scaling agile are discussed. In a second phase, these criteria are used to perform a comparative analysis of six large-scale agile frameworks (i.e., DAD, LeSS, Nexus, SAFe, Scrum at Scale, and Spotify). The findings reveal there isn't a dominant large-scale agile framework in all dimensions. However, it is possible to identify frameworks like Nexus and Spotify that target smaller teams and offer low technical complexity. These frameworks easily accommodate changes, while there are other frameworks like SAFe and DAD that offer high levels of scalability but require more demanding and deep efforts in changing work processes in an organization.

2021

Joint energy and capacity equilibrium model for centralized and behind-the-meter distributed generation

Autores
Martinez, SD; Campos, FA; Villar, J; Rivier, M;

Publicação
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ELECTRICAL POWER & ENERGY SYSTEMS

Abstract
This paper presents a conjectured-price-response equilibrium approach for modeling both centralized generation (CG) and behind-the-meter distributed generation (BMDG). A Nash game is set up with two constraints linking the CG and BMDG decisions to satisfy both the electricity demand in an energy market and the firm capacity in a capacity market. CG agents maximize their market profits while BMDG customers minimize their net supply costs, making decisions on their annual capacity investments and hourly productions decisions. Customers' costs account for 1) the energy bought from the grid minus the BMDG energy surpluses sold; 2) the payment of the grid access tariff (power and energy-based terms) and 3) the BMDG capacity investments' costs. The equilibrium conditions enable to represent different degrees of oligopoly using conjectural variations in both the energy and capacity markets. This work proves that such an equilibrium problem can be solved through an equivalent, yet simpler-to-solve, quadratic minimization problem. Some case examples compare the results of the proposed joint energy and capacity equilibrium with those from an energy-only equilibrium. Among other conclusions, these cases show that the proposed equilibrium sends adequate economic signals to the consumers to taper off the total system peak demand, whenever the weight of the power-based term of the access tariff is not extremely high.

2021

Prediction of bank frauds by SMS or voice, from cell phone data analysis: A Systematic Literature Review

Autores
Cossa, OF; Sousa, N; Goncalves, R; Martins, J; Branco, F;

Publicação
PROCEEDINGS OF 2021 16TH IBERIAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES (CISTI'2021)

Abstract
In recent years there has been a marked increase in bank fraud by SMS (Short Messaging System) and voice. One of the factors contributing to increase in cases of SMS fraud is the low cost of acquiring large volumes of messages, the reliability (the message will reach the recipient) and the fact that it does not need the Internet to reach the victim. In relation to financial fraud by voice, these can be used to persuade victims to make bank transfers to fraudulent accounts, with the promise of receiving large sums in prizes. The prevention of these types of fraud is not a trivial task, as it requires the application of appropriate techniques and methods depending on their nature. This article presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) from 2015 to 2020, with the aim of analyzing the state of the art on bank frauds committed by SMS or voice. The SLR allowed the identification of the most common types of bank fraud by SMS or voice, and the respective detection techniques.

2021

A Hybrid Metaheuristics Parameter Tuning Approach for Scheduling through Racing and Case-Based Reasoning

Autores
Pereira, I; Madureira, A; Silva, ECE; Abraham, A;

Publicação
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL

Abstract
In real manufacturing environments, scheduling can be defined as the problem of effectively and efficiently assigning tasks to specific resources. Metaheuristics are often used to obtain near-optimal solutions in an efficient way. The parameter tuning of metaheuristics allows flexibility and leads to robust results, but requires careful specifications. The a priori definition of parameter values is complex, depending on the problem instances and resources. This paper implements a novel approach to the automatic specification of metaheuristic parameters, for solving the scheduling problem. This novel approach incorporates two learning techniques, namely, racing and case-based reasoning (CBR), to provide the system with the ability to learn from previous cases. In order to evaluate the contributions of the proposed approach, a computational study was performed, focusing on comparing our results previous published results. All results were validated by analyzing the statistical significance, allowing us to conclude the statistically significant advantage of the use of the novel proposed approach.

2021

Fairness models for multi-agent kidney exchange programmes *

Autores
Klimentova, X; Viana, A; Pedroso, JP; Santos, N;

Publicação
OMEGA-INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

Abstract
Nowadays there are several countries running independent kidney exchange programmes (KEPs). These programmes allow a patient with kidney failure, having a willing healthy but incompatible donor, to receive a transplant from a similar pair where the donor is compatible with him. Since in general larger patient-donor pools allow for more patients to be matched, this prompts independent programmes (agents) to merge their pools and collaborate in order to increase the overall number of transplants. Such collaboration does however raise a problem: how to assign transplants to agents so that there is a balance between the contribution each agent brings to the merged pool and the benefit it gets from the collaboration. In this paper we propose a new Integer Programming model for multi-agent kidney exchange programmes (mKEPs). It considers the possible existence of multiple optimal solutions in each matching period of a KEP and, in consecutive matching periods, selects the optimal solution among the set of alternative ones in such a way that in the long-term the benefit each agent gets from participating in the mKEP is balanced accordingly to a given criterion. This is done by use of a memory mechanism. Extensive computational tests show the benefit of mKEPs, when compared to independent KEPs, in terms of potential increase in the number of transplants. Furthermore, they show that, under different policies, the number of additional transplants each agent receives can vary significantly. More importantly, results show that the proposed methodology consistently obtains more stable results than methodologies that do not use memory.

  • 1077
  • 4387