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Publications

Publications by CSE

2022

Immersive multisensory virtual reality technologies for virtual tourism A study of the user's sense of presence, satisfaction, emotions, and attitudes

Authors
Melo, M; Coelho, H; Goncalves, G; Losada, N; Jorge, F; Teixeira, MS; Bessa, M;

Publication
MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) technologies have been used successfully in tourism marketing. While most conventional VR applications are of an audiovisual nature, the constant evolution of these technologies allows providing enriched multisensory VR content that can further increase the potential of VR applied to the tourism field. To generate insights into the impact of such VR technologies, this manuscript investigates the impact of such multisensory VR setups and gender on the user's sense of presence, satisfaction, emotions, and attitudes. A user study with a gender-balanced sample (N = 80) was carried where two VR setups (audiovisual vs multisensory) were compared taking into account the user's gender. Results revealed that the female sample scored significantly higher spatial presence across VR setups and reported more involvement and overall presence in the audiovisual condition. In addition, correlations were found between the pairs Spatial Presence-Emotions, Spatial Presence-Enjoyment, Satisfaction-Involvement, Satisfaction-Enjoyment, and Satisfaction and Usefulness to perceive the destination. Results also suggest that multisensory stimulus can mitigate possible gender differences in passive VR scenarios. We concluded that the capability of the VR system to make users feel physically present in the virtual environment contributes significantly to the development of positive emotions and enjoyment, which can contribute positively to the user's consumer behaviour towards the touristic products and services.

2022

Flexible Fine-grained Data Access Management for Hyperledger Fabric

Authors
Parente, J; Alonso, AN; Coelho, F; Vinagre, J; Bastos, P;

Publication
2022 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BLOCKCHAIN COMPUTING AND APPLICATIONS (BCCA)

Abstract
As blockchains go beyond cryptocurrencies into applications in multiple industries such as Insurance, Healthcare and Banking, handling personal or sensitive data, data access control becomes increasingly relevant. Access control mechanisms proposed so far are mostly based on requester identity, particularly for permissioned blockchain platforms, and are limited to binary, all-or-nothing access decisions. This is the case with Hyperledger Fabric's native access control mechanisms and, as permission updates require consensus, these fall short regarding the flexibility required to address GDPR-derived policies and client consent management. We propose SDAM, a novel access control mechanism for Fabric that enables fine-grained and dynamic control policies, using both contextual and resource attributes for decisions. Instead of binary results, decisions may also include mandatory data transformations as to conform with the expressed policy, all without modifications to Fabric. Results show that SDAM's overhead w.r.t baseline Fabric is acceptable. The scalability of the approach w.r.t to the number of concurrent clients is also evaluated and found to follow Fabric's.

2022

Advanced Persistent Threatscampaigns and Attribution(Literature Review)

Authors
Brandao, P; São Mamede, H; Correia, M;

Publication
SSRN Electronic Journal

Abstract

2022

Assessing the Influence of Multimodal Feedback in Mobile-Based Musical Task Performance

Authors
Clement, A; Bernardes, G;

Publication
MULTIMODAL TECHNOLOGIES AND INTERACTION

Abstract
Digital musical instruments have become increasingly prevalent in musical creation and production. Optimizing their usability and, particularly, their expressiveness, has become essential to their study and practice. The absence of multimodal feedback, present in traditional acoustic instruments, has been identified as an obstacle to complete performer-instrument interaction in particular due to the lack of embodied control. Mobile-based digital musical instruments present a particular case by natively providing the possibility of enriching basic auditory feedback with additional multimodal feedback. In the experiment presented in this article, we focused on using visual and haptic feedback to support and enrich auditory content to evaluate the impact on basic musical tasks (i.e., note pitch tuning accuracy and time). The experiment implemented a protocol based on presenting several musical note examples to participants and asking them to reproduce them, with their performance being compared between different multimodal feedback combinations. Collected results show that additional visual feedback was found to reduce user hesitation in pitch tuning, allowing users to reach the proximity of desired notes in less time. Nonetheless, neither visual nor haptic feedback was found to significantly impact pitch tuning time and accuracy compared to auditory-only feedback.

2022

Cloud-Based Privacy-Preserving Medical Imaging System Using Machine Learning Tools

Authors
Alves, J; Soares, B; Brito, C; Sousa, A;

Publication
PROGRESS IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, EPIA 2022

Abstract
Healthcare environments are generating a deluge of sensitive data. Nonetheless, dealing with large amounts of data is an expensive task, and current solutions resort to the cloud environment. Additionally, the intersection of the cloud environment and healthcare data opens new challenges regarding data privacy. With this in mind, we propose MEDCLOUDCARE (MCC), a healthcare application offering medical image viewing and processing tools while integrating cloud computing and AI. Moreover, MCC provides security and privacy features, scalability and high availability. The system is intended for two user groups: health professionals and researchers. The former can remotely view, process and share medical imaging information in the DICOM format. Also, it can use pre-trained Machine Learning (ML) models to aid the analysis of medical images. The latter can remotely add, share, and deploy ML models to perform inference on DICOM images. MCC incorporates a DICOM web viewer enabling users to view and process DICOM studies, which they can also upload and store. Regarding the security and privacy of the data, all sensitive information is encrypted at rest and in transit. Furthermore, MCC is intended for cloud environments. Thus, the system is deployed using Kubernetes, increasing the efficiency, availability and scalability of the ML inference process.

2022

Designing Microservice Systems Using Patterns: An Empirical Study on Quality Trade-Offs

Authors
Vale, G; Correia, FF; Guerra, EM; Rosa, TD; Fritzsch, J; Bogner, J;

Publication
IEEE 19TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE (ICSA 2022)

Abstract
The promise of increased agility, autonomy, scalability, and reusability has made the microservices architecture a de facto standard for the development of large-scale and cloud-native commercial applications. Software patterns are an important design tool, and often they are selected and combined with the goal of obtaining a set of desired quality attributes. However, from a research standpoint, many patterns have not been widely validated against industry practice, making them not much more than interesting theories. To address this, we investigated how practitioners perceive the impact of 14 patterns on 7 quality attributes. Hence, we conducted 9 semi-structured interviews to collect industry expertise regarding (1) knowledge and adoption of software patterns, (2) the perceived architectural trade-offs of patterns, and (3) metrics professionals use to measure quality attributes. We found that many of the trade-offs reported in our study matched the documentation of each respective pattern, and identified several gains and pains which have not yet been reported, leading to novel insight about microservice patterns.

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