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Publications

Publications by CRAS

2013

The European Project Semester at ISEP Learning to Learn Engineering

Authors
Malheiro, B; Silva, M; Ribeiro, MC; Guedes, P; Ferreira, P;

Publication
2013 1ST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PORTUGUESE SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION (CISPEE)

Abstract
The European Project Semester at ISEP (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme addressed to engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities. The students, organized in multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real world multidisciplinary problems, accounting for 30 ECTU. The EPS package, although focused on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). This paper presents the study plan, resources, operation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering education practices and promote the internationalization of ISEP. The results show that the EPS@ISEP students acquire during one semester the scientific, technical and soft competences necessary to propose, design and implement a solution for a multidisciplinary problem.

2013

Personalised Advertising Supported by Agents

Authors
Veloso, B; Sousa, L; Malheiro, B;

Publication
Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence - 10th International Conference, DCAI 2013, Salamanca, Spain, May 22-24, 2013

Abstract
This paper reports the development of a B2B platform for the personalization of the publicity transmitted during the program intervals. The platform as a whole must ensure that the intervals are filled with ads compatible with the profile, context and expressed interests of the viewers. The platform acts as an electronic marketplace for advertising agencies (content producer companies) and multimedia content providers (content distribution companies). The companies, once registered at the platform, are represented by agents who negotiate automatically the price of the interval timeslots according to the specified price range and adaptation behaviour. The candidate ads for a given viewer interval are selected through a matching mechanism between ad, viewer and the current context (program being watched) profiles. The overall architecture of the platform consists of a multiagent system organized into three layers consisting of: (i) interface agents that interact with companies; (ii) enterprise agents that model the companies, and (iii) delegate agents that negotiate a specific ad or interval. The negotiation follows a variant of the Iterated Contract Net Interaction Protocol (ICNIP) and is based on the price/s offered by the advertising agencies to occupy the viewer's interval. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

2013

Support System for Rational Use of Electric Energy

Authors
Teixeira, T; Malheiro, B;

Publication
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2013 8TH IBERIAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES (CISTI 2013)

Abstract
This paper presents the system developed to promote the rational use of electric energy among consumers and, thus, increase the energy efficiency. The goal is to provide energy consumers with an application that displays the energy consumption/production profiles, sets up consuming ceilings, defines automatic alerts and alarms, compares anonymously consumers with identical energy usage profiles by region and predicts, in the case of non-residential installations, the expected consumption/production values. The resulting distributed system is organized in two main blocks: front-end and back-end. The front-end includes user interface applications for Android mobile devices and Web browsers. The back-end provides data storage and processing functionalities and is installed in a cloud computing platform -the Google App Engine - which provides a standard Web service interface. This option ensures interoperability, scalability and robustness to the system.

2013

Using integro-differential operators on low cost underwater autonomous vehicles

Authors
Oliveira, PM; Lobo, V;

Publication
2013 OCEANS - SAN DIEGO

Abstract
When operating low cost autonomous vehicles, we are often faced with the need to apply integro-differential operators to numerical sequences. The need may arise in many different contexts, from vehicle navigation to data collection/estimation, and is strongly reinforced by constraints to the number of deployable sensors. Integration and, particularly, differentiation of discrete data sequences are, however, error prone operations. Even in the absence of noise, the traditional approaches introduce distortions and artifacts in the output data, mostly due to the mismatch between their underlying polynomial model and the spectral contents of the collected data. This article presents an alternative way to apply integro-differential operators to discrete data streams. The operators are applied in a strictly band-limited way, in both time and frequency, and no extraneous artifacts are introduced in the data. No assumptions or models are used, other than assuming that the original data stream was correctly sampled. As such, the procedure can be safely applied to data streams sampled at rates close to Nyquist, without the usual performance degradation.

2013

Discrete wavelet analysis of the influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on Baltic Sea level

Authors
Bastos, A; Trigo, RM; Barbosa, SM;

Publication
TELLUS SERIES A-DYNAMIC METEOROLOGY AND OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract
Mean sea level (MSL) in the Baltic Sea is influenced by several factors and therefore presents a complex behaviour over a wide range of time-scales. This work performs a multi-scale analysis of MSL variability in the Baltic Sea using discrete wavelet analysis. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is well known for having a strong influence in MSL variability over the Baltic; however, the relationship between MSL and NAO at different time-scales is still little understood. In this work a comparison of MSL and NAO variability is performed for a wide range of temporal scales, uncovering distinct relationships in high-frequency and long-term temporal variability. The annual and sub-annual scales are found to account for more than 50% of the total MSL variability. The MSL annual cycle is analysed and a shift from low to high amplitude values is identified in the 1970s for most stations. MSL is found to be anti-correlated to NAO at short time-scales while on the long-term NAO and MSL appear to be positively correlated for most stations. The physical mechanisms behind these distinct relationships deserve deeper study.

2013

Differentiation between the effect of temperature and pressure on radon within the subsurface geological media

Authors
Zafrir, H; Barbosa, SM; Malik, U;

Publication
RADIATION MEASUREMENTS

Abstract
Long-term continuous in-situ radon field monitoring was carried out in the southern region of Israel, at the Amram Mountain research tunnel in Elat and in shallow boreholes in the Gevanim valley in Makhtesh Ramon. This work shows that long-term radon monitoring based on simultaneous alpha and gamma measurement enables to differentiate between the impact of ambient temperature and pressure on radon transportation within porous media both in sites isolated from outer meteorological influence as in the Amram tunnel and in sites open to the influence of environmental conditions as in the Gevanim boreholes array. It was found that if the monitoring site is a closed measuring space with undisturbed environmental conditions, the radon in the air space will reach equilibrium with the radon in the rock. Then the radon time series as measured by both gamma and alpha detectors exhibit the same temporal variations. The results in this case indicate that the diurnal, intra-seasonal and seasonal variations in the radon concentration are clearly associated with the ambient temperature gradient outside the rock air interface, 100 m above the tunnel. In shallow, open boreholes, no equilibrium between the radon within the porous media and the radon in the open borehole air is necessarily established and the results of radon monitoring are different. Gamma detectors that measure the changes in radon concentrations in the porous rock indicated a clear correlation between radon concentrations and the daily variations of external surface temperature, from about 1 m up to 85 m. Yet the alpha detectors that measure the changes in radon concentrations in very shallow borehole air (about 1 m) reveal a clear anti-correlation with atmospheric pressure waves at semi-daily, daily, and intra-seasonal time scales. At depths of several tens of meters, outer pressure waves induce anti-correlated radon variations lasting the same time, but destroy the ordered radon daily periodicity in the measuring air space, although almost not disturbing the daily radon variation within the surrounding porous media.

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