2012
Autores
Branco, MC; Delgado, C;
Publicação
Journal of Public Affairs
Abstract
This paper explores the role of corporate social responsibility and the reporting thereof in the fight against corruption. A special focus is laid on the international endeavors to improve transparency through reporting, and the paper elaborates extensively on the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. Voluntary initiatives, such as the UNGC, the OECD guidelines, and the GRI guidelines, are considered to play an important role in providing the trust-based informal social norms, without which markets and societies cannot function. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
2012
Autores
Felix, C; Figueira, A;
Publicação
CSEDU 2012 - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Supported Education
Abstract
We report an integration process that involves the Moodle learning management system and an in-house developed e-portfolio system - SPD - and the institution information system. SPD is a system developed to create, evaluate and maintain digital portfolios assigned and assessed by a jury to keep a high quality level of the projects registered. The SPD system uses information imported from Moodle's database, in order to fill in its own database for users and courses and for propagating the existing session between systems. It also keeps projects ordered by development phases, determining whatever can be done and by whom, making them available for consult only after being accepted by the jury. To aid the rapid creation of projects and development of its documentation a set of pre-defined templates are made available.
2012
Autores
Ferreira, LP; Ares, E; Pelaez, G; Marcos, M; Araujo, M;
Publicação
4TH MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (MESIC 2011)
Abstract
Simulation is a technique which allows for the transfer of reality into the computer, through the creation of a model that reliably mirrors the behavior of a process (already existent or in its project phase). The work presented in this paper consists of the development of a decision-making support system, based on a real problem, with the purpose of optimizing the operation of an automobile assembly line with a four closed-loop network configuration. This layout system reflects one of the most common configurations of automobile assembly and preassembly lines formed by conveyors. A simulation model in an Arena environment was developed, which allowed for an analysis of the important aspects not yet studied in specialized literature, namely the assessment of the impact of the production sequence on the automobile assembly line. Various sequence rules were analyzed and the performance of each of the corresponding simulation models was registered. An experiment technique design was used in order to obtain the functions that describe the assembly system's behavior.
2012
Autores
Silva, MF; Tenreiro Machado, JAT;
Publicação
JOURNAL OF VIBRATION AND CONTROL
Abstract
Over the last two decades the research and development of legged locomotion robots has grown steadily. Legged systems present major advantages when compared with 'traditional' vehicles, because they allow locomotion in inaccessible terrain to vehicles with wheels and tracks. However, the robustness of legged robots, and especially their energy consumption, among other aspects, still lag behind mechanisms that use wheels and tracks. Therefore, in the present state of development, there are several aspects that need to be improved and optimized. Keeping these ideas in mind, this paper presents the review of the literature of different methods adopted for the optimization of the structure and locomotion gaits of walking robots. Among the distinct possible strategies often used for these tasks are referred approaches such as the mimicking of biological animals, the use of evolutionary schemes to find the optimal parameters and structures, the adoption of sound mechanical design rules, and the optimization of power-based indexes.
2012
Autores
Devezas, J; Figueira, A;
Publicação
IAENG International Journal of Computer Science
Abstract
We propose a method for creating news context by taking advantage of a folksonomy of web clipping based on online news. We experiment with an ontology-based named entity recognition process, describing two alternate implementation approaches, and we study two different ways of modeling the relationships induced by the coreference of named entities on news clips. We try to establish a context by identifying the community structure for a clip-centric network and for an entity-centric network, based on a small test set from the Breadcrumbs system. Finally, we compare both models, based on the detected news communities, and show the advantages of each network specilication.
2012
Autores
Soares, C; Moreira, RS; Morla, R; Torres, J; Sobral, P;
Publicação
PHM 2012 - 2012 IEEE Int. Conf.on Prognostics and Health Management: Enhancing Safety, Efficiency, Availability, and Effectiveness of Systems Through PHM Technology and Application, Conference Program
Abstract
Statistics show an aging trend in the world population, which will progressively overload existing health systems. Therefore, we believe that ubiquitous computing will play an important role in domicile settings, coping with the growing need for automated home healthcare support, especially for the sick and elderly. The integration of independently developed off-the-shelf systems (e.g., health-monitoring, entertainment, communications, home automation, etc.) may cause unplanned interactions between them (cf. feature interactions). This is a major concern since the correct/expected behavior of an isolated system may not be the same when deployed in conjunction with other systems, causing interferences, i.e., unexpected outcomes or misbehaviors. The Safe Home Care project tackles this problem to pursuit the safe deployment and reconfiguration of home healthcare smart-spaces. We propose the use of state graphs to represent off-the-shelf systems and predict the occurrence of intra-system's feature interactions. We use pre-deployment simulations to forecast feature interactions before deployment. We assess the applicability and correctness of this approach through a set of simulated home assisted living scenarios. © 2012 IEEE.
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