Abstract
Different activities are performed by people during the day and many aspects of life are associated with places of human mobility patterns. Among those activities, there are some that are recurrent and demand displacement of the individual between regular places like going to work, going to school, going back home from wherever the individual is located. To accomplish these recurrent daily activities, people tend to follow regular paths with similar temporal and spatial characteristics. In this paper, we propose a method for discovering common pathways across users’ habits. By using density-based clustering algorithms, we detect the users’ most preferable locations and apply a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) over these locations to automatically separate the trajectories that follow patterns of days and hours, in order to discover the representations of individual’s habits. Over the set of users’ habits, we search for the trajectories that are more common among them by using the Longest Common Sub-sequence (LCSS) algorithm considering the distance that pairs of users travel on the same path. To evaluate the proposed method we use a real-world GPS dataset. The results show that the method is able to find common routes between users that have similar habits paving the way for future recommendation, prediction and carpooling research techniques. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Abstract
The Overhead Power Distribution Lines present a wide range of insulator components, which have different shapes and types of building materials. These components are usually exposed to weather and operational conditions that may cause deviations in their shapes, colors or textures. These changes might hinder the development of automatic systems for visual inspection. In this perspective, this work presents a robust methodology for image classification, which aims at the efficient distribution insulator class identification, regardless of its degradation level. This work can be characterized by the following steps: implementation of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN); transfer learning; attribute vector acquisition and design of hybrid classifier architectures to improve the discrimination efficiency. In summary, a previously trained CNN goes through a fine tuning stage for later use as a feature extractor for training a new set of classifiers. A comparative study was conducted to identify which classifier architecture obtained the best discrimination performance for non-conforming components. The proposed methodology showed a significant improvement in classification performance, obtaining 95% overall accuracy in the identification of non-conforming component classes. © 2019,IEEE

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Abstract
Medical training is an intricate and long process, which is compulsory to medical practice and often lasts up to twelve years for some specialties. Health stakeholders recognise that an adequate planning is crucial for health systems to deliver necessary care services. However, proper planning needs to account for complexity related with the setting of medical school vacancies and of residency programs, which are highly influenced by multiple stakeholders with diverse perspectives and views, as well as by the specificities of medical training. Aiming at building comprehensive models with a potential to assist health decision-makers, this article develops a multi-methodological framework to assist the planning of medical training under such a complex environment. It combines the structuring of the objectives and specificities of the medical training problem with a Soft Systems Methodology through the CATWOE (Customer, Actor, Transformation, Weltanschauung, Owner, Environment) approach, and the formulation of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model that considers all relevant aspects. Considering the specificities of countries based on a National Health Service structure, a multi -objective planning model emerges, informing on how many vacancies should be opened/closed per year in medical schools and in each specialty. This model aims at (i) minimizing imbalances between medical demand and supply; (ii) minimizing costs; and (iii) maximizing equity across medical specialties. A case study in Portugal is explored so as to illustrate the applicability of the proposed multi-methodology, showing the relevance of proper structuring for planning models having the potential to inform health decision-makers and planners in practice.

Abstract
In 1997, Eliyahu Goldratt proposed a method called critical chain project management (CCPM) to minimize the inefficiencies identified in traditional project management. The project management community accepted the proposed method as a viable alternative. However, to allow its implementation with a multiproject system, more research was necessary. Seeking to identify the key factors that influence the performance of the multiproject system applying the CCPM method, we performed a case study. Logistic regression analysis showed that applying the CCPM method in a multiproject system allows for better time estimation of activities and facilitates the allocation of critical resources.