RCAAP Repository

The imbalance of muscle strength indicators is harmful for elite sport and, in case of significant asymmetries, it increases the probability of muscular injuries or the deterioration of the athletic performance. So it’s essential the evaluation of these imbalances in Handball, Basketball, Soccer and Volleyball athletes’. Objective: The aim of this study was to verify the existence of Isokinetic muscle imbalances in the profile of professional athletes from various modalities and examine their relationship with the sport practiced. Design: Through an observational, analytical and cross study were evaluated 86 athletes (Handball=14; Basketball=27; Football=25; Volleyball=20) using an isokinetic dynamometer Biodex Medical System 4 ®. The evaluated parameters were the Bilateral Differences and Hamstrings/Quadriceps Ratio at angular velocities of 60 °/s (4 repetitions) and 180 °/s (6 repetitions). Results: The Bilateral Differences (found) between the lower limbs are within the respected normal values (<10%). The Hamstrings / Quadriceps Ratio were higher in Football athletes and were lower in Volleyball athletes comparatively to other modalities. Conclusion: However, the motor skills of each sport do not seem to induce to significant muscular imbalances but each sport requires a specific isokinetic profile.

The rising needs for increased energy efficiency and better use of renewable energy sources bring out the necessity for improved energy management and forecasting models. Electricity consumption, in particular, is subject to large variations due to the effect of multiple variables, such as the temperature, luminosity or humidity, and of course, consumers' habits. Current forecasting models are not able to deal adequately with the influence and correlation between the multiple involved variables. Hence, novel, adaptive forecasting models are needed. This paper presents a novel approach based on multiple artificial intelligence-based forecasting algorithms. The considered algorithms are artificial neural networks, support vector machines hybrid fuzzy inference systems, Wang and Mendel's fuzzy rule learning method and a genetic fuzzy system for fuzzy rule learning based on the MOGUL methodology. These algorithms are used to forecast the electricity consumption of a real office building, using multiple input variables and consumption disaggregation.

As Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TIC) permitem novas estratégias de difusão da informação e novos modelos de comunicação, com a proposta de modificar as atitudes e o comportamento humano em relação à Educação. Actualmente a internet é fundamental como meio de comunicação e partilha de informação. Ao ensino será exigido a utilização de TIC, suportadas na internet, para estabelecer a comunicação professor-aluno e aluno-aluno, para divulgação de conteúdos das unidades curriculares, e mesmo como meio de ensino/aprendizagem. O Portal de Ensino e Aprendizagem do Projecto Electrotécnico (PEAPE) pretende ser uma ferramenta de apoio ao ensino/aprendizagem, de unidades curriculares no Âmbito do projecto electrotécnico.

Aging is a natural process of the individual and is associated with a decline in physical and mental function. Given the high prevalence of older adults worldwide, it becomes ppropriated to identify the consequences of this reduction. The falls appear as a consequence more common in this specific population, which triggers the need to identify the different risk factors, in order to prevent them and create intervention programs in that way.

Mental health professionals, as psychologists, have a demanding and emotionally exhausting profession, which makes it susceptible to occupational risks, namely psychosocial risks. Three areas of psychology practice, Clinical and Health Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology, and Education Psychology are expose to different working contexts. The purpose of this study was to evaluate psychosocial risks factors and their differences between the three psychology specialties. 339 psychologists participated in the study and results suggest significant differences in terms of high demands and work intensity, working hours, work and employment relations, ethical and values conflicts and work characteristics. In conclusion, this study allows a better understanding to provide strategies for preventing and reducing the incidence of psychosocial risks among psychologists.

The increase of variable renewable energy generation has brought several new challenges to power and energy systems. Solutions based on storage systems and consumption flexibility are being proposed to balance the variability from generation sources that depend directly on environmental conditions. The widespread use of electric vehicles is seen as a resource that includes both distributed storage capabilities and the potential for consumption (charging) flexibility. However, to take advantage of the full potential of electric vehicles’ flexibility, it is essential that proper incentives are provided and that the management is performed with the variation of generation. This paper presents a research study on the impact of the variation of the electricity prices on the behavior of electric vehicle’s users. This study compared the benefits when using the variable and fixed charging prices. The variable prices are determined based on the calculation of distribution locational marginal pricing, which are recalculated and adapted continuously accordingly to the users’ trips and behavior. A travel simulation tool was developed for simulating real environments taking into account the behavior of real users. Results show that variable-rate of electricity prices demonstrate to be more advantageous to the users, enabling them to reduce charging costs while contributing to the required flexibility for the system.

The development of control systems to sustain the level of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is an emerging issue for healthcare management. This is partly due to the perception that HAI became a serious negative impact factor on the performance of healthcare organizations and on related public health dimensions. Throughout the decade of 1990 a significant number of international programmes were developed to understand and to promote effective HAIs prevention and control systems: Patient Safety and the quality improvement of healthcare organizations became common concepts in healthcare management. However, regardless of advances in infection control systems, the rates of incidence of HAIs remained relatively unchanged in the last decades. The purpose of this study is to point out barriers that recent international literature has identified as factors hindering the successful development of control systems to prevent HAIs. The international debate on possible alternatives to strengthen this common healthcare management issue, benefits form one such update. A literature review was conducted in a 3-month period by two investigators. The BioMed Central, Pubmed, Emerald, and B-on databases were searched for articles published between January 2006 and September 2011. A standard form was created for data extraction. A total of 49 articles met inclusion criteria. Within the analysed articles, 26 were developed in Europe, 15 were developed in North America; 6 were developed in Asia, and 2 in Australia. Thirty (30) different barriers to effective HAIs control systems were identified. The barriers were clustered by dimensions and sub-dimensions. The largest number of barriers clustered, are associated with structures and processes and also barriers associated with healthcare management processes.

Motivated by increasingly strict policies aiming to reduce the pollutants emission that contribute to the greenhouse gases effect and seeking the sustainability of the electricity sector, buildings have great potential to contribute to these goals. For accounting more than a third of the world's energy consumption and combining the growing incentive in Distributed Generation (DG) and the electric vehicle (EV) industry, smart buildings will be a key development in the years to come. In this way, this work presents an introduction to the linear programming (LP) optimization method and review the main works related to the scope of Smart Buildings (SB) energy resources optimization modeled as LP, with the objective to analyze different approaches taken to meet their goals.

An important tool to manage electrical systems is the knowledge of customers' consumption patterns. Data Mining (DM) emerges as an important tool for extracting information about energy consumption in databases and identifying consumption patterns. This paper presents a short review on DM, with a focus on the characterization of electricity customers supported on knowledge discovery in database (KDD) process. The study includes several steps: first, few concepts of the KDD process are presented; following, a short review of clustering algorithms is presented including partitional, hierarchical, fuzzy, evolutionary methods, and Self-Organizing Maps; finally, the main concepts and methods for load classification, based on load shape indices are presented. The main objective of this work is to present a short review of DM techniques applied to identify typical load profiles in electrical systems and new customers' classification.

In many large-scale and time-consuming problems, the application of metaheuristics becomes essential, since these methods enable achieving very close solutions to the exact one in a much shorter time. In this work, we address the problem of portfolio optimization applied to electricity markets negotiation. As in a market environment, decision-making is carried out in very short times, the application of the metaheuristics is necessary. This work proposes a Hybrid model, combining a simplified exact resolution of the method, as a means to obtain the initial solution for a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) approach. Results show that the presented approach is able to obtain better results in the metaheuristic search process.

A new era of cleaner distributed generators, like wind and solar, dispersed along the distribution network are gaining great importance and contributing to the environment and political goals. However, the variability and intermittency of those generators pose new complexities and challenges to the network planning. This research paper proposes an innovative stochastic methodology to deal with the expansion planning of large distribution networks in a smart grid context with high penetration of distributed renewable energy sources and considering the seasonal impact. Also, new power lines locations and types, the size and the location of energy storage systems are considered in the optimization. A distribution network with 180 buses located in Portugal considering high distributed generators penetration is used to illustrate the application of the proposed methodology. The results demonstrate the advantage of the stochastic model when compared with a deterministic formulation, avoiding the need for larger investments in new lines and energy storage systems.

Due to the increment of electricity demand in different types of buildings, the methods of energy optimization are important. Lighting systems play a key role in the electricity consumption since they are appropriate for use in optimization purposes. There are several approaches for solving optimization problems, so several simulations should be performed in order to identify the best approach. This paper focuses on three optimization approaches in order to solve an optimization problem developed for the lighting system of an office building. The optimization methodologies are particle swarm optimization as a heuristic method and OMPR and Lpsolve as two deterministic methods. A case study is presented in order to evaluate and compare the performance of the methods and identify the most suitable approach for the lighting optimization problem in the office building.

Energy flexibility will play a key role in the proper functioning of energy systems, introducing a set of benefits to all involved stakeholders and changing the shape of electricity markets as we know them. It is expected that new players with different interests will emerge in this context. Particularly, the aggregators might allow end-users to be aware of their consumption flexibility value, or merely facilitate consumer's participation, for instance through the use of demand response. To this end, a prompt system response allowing the interaction between aggregators and residential users is needed. Therefore, the so-called Home Energy Management System (HEMS) becomes an active tool to communicate end-users with aggregators, performing the necessary changes in the consumption profiles in benefit of all involved parts. In this paper, a model with the objective of achieving a match between the flexibility required by an aggregator and the flexibility offered by residential users through the HEMS capability of shifting specific appliances is proposed. The model is then solved using a well-known swarm intelligence algorithm, the particle swarm optimization (PSO). An illustrative example of how the model is optimized using PSO, re-scheduling appliances to meet a flexibility curve, is presented. After that, a case study with 15 appliances based on real profiles of home devices is solved showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach to procure flexibility.

Currently, power systems (PS) already accommodate a substantial penetration of distributed generation (DG) and operate in competitive environments. In the future, as the result of the liberalisation and political regulations, PS will have to deal with large-scale integration of DG and other distributed energy resources (DER), such as storage and provide market agents to ensure a flexible and secure operation. This cannot be done with the traditional PS operational tools used today like the quite restricted information systems Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) [1]. The trend to use the local generation in the active operation of the power system requires new solutions for data management system. The relevant standards have been developed separately in the last few years so there is a need to unify them in order to receive a common and interoperable solution. For the distribution operation the CIM models described in the IEC 61968/70 are especially relevant. In Europe dispersed and renewable energy resources (D&RER) are mostly operated without remote control mechanisms and feed the maximal amount of available power into the grid. To improve the network operation performance the idea of virtual power plants (VPP) will become a reality. In the future power generation of D&RER will be scheduled with a high accuracy. In order to realize VPP decentralized energy management, communication facilities are needed that have standardized interfaces and protocols. IEC 61850 is suitable to serve as a general standard for all communication tasks in power systems [2]. The paper deals with international activities and experiences in the implementation of a new data management and communication concept in the distribution system. The difficulties in the coordination of the inconsistent developed in parallel communication and data management standards - are first addressed in the paper. The upcoming unification work taking into account the growing role of D&RER in the PS is shown. It is possible to overcome the lag in current practical experiences using new tools for creating and maintenance the CIM data and simulation of the IEC 61850 protocol – the prototype of which is presented in the paper –. The origin and the accuracy of the data requirements depend on the data use (e.g. operation or planning) so some remarks concerning the definition of the digital interface incorporated in the merging unit idea from the power utility point of view are presented in the paper too. To summarize some required future work has been identified.

As metodologias Lean tem sido implementadas em larga escala na indústria e, ao longo dos tempos, os resultados que advém da sua aplicação mostram-se bastante positivos. O objetivo principal deste projeto é tornar o processo mais fácil e eficiente reduzindo ao máximo todos os desperdícios recorrendo a metodologias lean aplicadas a uma unidade de fabrico de tintas de base aquosa. Para tal foi fundamental o estudo dos dois equipamentos que fazem parte desta secção, avaliando as cadências teóricas tanto de fabrico como de enchimento, as paragens não planeadas e as dificuldades inerentes aos processos realizados. Assim, os objetivos propostos passaram por definir as cadências teóricas de enchimento e fabrico, determinar perdas e principais problemas, procurando implementar oportunidades de melhoria, proceder à normalização de tarefas e desenvolver uma ferramenta de registo e cálculo de OEE. Neste setor ainda pouco explorado pelo departamento de melhoria contínua, os pontos de trabalho iniciais baseados no Kaizen diário encontraram algumas dificuldades nos processos com vista a possíveis melhorias tanto no que diz respeito a segurança como a eficiência do processo. Procedeu-se à análise dos mesmos de forma a caminhar para uma melhoria das condições de trabalho dos operadores e reduzir o desperdício de recursos. Implementando e aplicando metodologias Lean foi possível atingir os objetivos definidos inicialmente seguindo as boas práticas da empresa já existentes noutros setores, os resultados alcançados permitiram obter registos de rendimento do setor e a implementação de melhorias levou a melhores condições de segurança e à normalização de algumas tarefas com benefício claro para o processo.

A presente dissertação pretende descrever todo o processo de desenvolvimento do projeto realizado no âmbito da unidade curricular de Tese/Dissertação/Estágio do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, na área de especialização de Engenharia de software. Este projeto, proposto pela empresa Abaco consultores, tem como objetivo principal desenvolver uma solução que consiga prevenir e evitar acidentes de trabalho em ambientes fabris. Através do uso de dispositivos com capacidade de ligação à rede, deve ser possível fazer o monitoramento e gestão de áreas e trabalhadores, controlando, sempre, questões ambientais que possam colocar em risco tanto material como vidas humanas. Na solução inicial, este projeto estaria interligado com um serviço oferecido pela Abaco consultores denominado de Incloud for SafeMed, relacionando dados clínicos de trabalhadores com dados ambientais e físicos de um local. Para isso, o trabalhador teria de possuir um dispositivo que conseguisse ler alguns dados como frequência cardíaca ou temperatura corporal. Esta função acabou mais tarde por ser posta de parte, mudando o foco apenas para a criação de sistema de monitorização ambiental que em nada dependesse do Incloud for SafeMed. Assim, e depois de estudadas algumas tecnologias, foi desenvolvido um sistema capaz de apresentar aos clientes dados emitidos por dispositivos, através de uma aplicação web acessível em qualquer lugar. Este desenvolvimento teve como objetivo final responder à questão: É possível usar dispositivos inteligentes para evitar acidentes? Depois de realizados os testes necessários conseguiu-se concluir que o sistema criado pode evitar certos acidentes. Porém, para a inclusão do mesmo no mercado de trabalho seria necessário efetuar mais testes em ambiente real. A inclusão destas tecnologias em ambientes fabris pode minimizar ou mesmo evitar estragos de maior dimensão aquando de um acidente. No sentido de melhorar a solução final é ainda sugerido o uso de machine learning com os dados reais de leituras. Assim, além de reduzir acidentes, será possível, também, prever os mesmos e atuar de forma preventiva.

The Essential Learning Strategies for Physics and Chemistry Education (2018) defined by the Portuguese Ministry of Education presupposes that the "scientific literacy of the student (…) is based on the articulation between knowledge and know-how associated with the capacity of thinking critically and creatively” and assumes that students "develop competences to recognize, interpret and produce varied representations of scientific information and learning outcomes: reports, diagrams, graphs, tables, equations, models and computational simulations. Material Properties and Periodic Table (PT) are taught in Physics and Chemistry "to relate the electronic distribution of the atoms of the elements with their position in the PT" and "to locate in the PT the different elements of the groups". Scerri (2007) says that “The periodic table of the elements is a wonderful mnemonic and a tool that serves to organize the whole of chemistry.” The graphic information of PT demands the development of scientific literacy based on chemistry, semantic and technologic knowledge and helps to locate, decipher and read visual information in an isogramatic table organization, on vertical and horizontal coherent distribution of the elements. We used Virtual Reality to propose a pedagogic instrument as a challenge for acceding and deciphering information and as a possibility of expanding the information of the PT. The PT exploration follows a roadmap that, in particular, focuses on essential aspects of organization. This project started the creation of an application to raise the idea that the PT browser inhabits an innovative world where knowledge (even if complex) is accessible to everybody. The 3D models were produced in Autodesk Maya and then integrated with other systems in the Unity game engine for later publication in a Windows application. The minimum requirements to run this application require a PC with a high-end graphics card (GTX 1070 or equivalent).

The more we know about children mental lexicon organization, the more effective our pedagogical practices may be, which emphasizes the importance of a truly comprehensive connection between Research and Education. We will be conducting a three-step paper beginning with a brief summary of lexical semantic relations, mainly of antonymy, secondly we will explain how the project “Língua e Cidadania: das relações entre palavras ao conhecimento do mundo”/Language and citizenship: from the words relations to the world knowledge (Baptista et al., 2018) was held and how its experiments allowed to verify if primary school pupils intuitively organize their mental lexicon in a dichotomous way, mainly with comprehension and organization of narrative words in three narratives and thirdly we will explain that different strategies used for grouping words may correspond to different ways of organizing the mental lexicon and defend that language teaching should take this idea into consideration. We found very useful to propose an augmented reality application. By combining verbal and visual representations, this app caters for making the cognitive complexity of lexical antonyms obvious when manipulating the image, in a way that it enhances the possibility of occurrence of distinct words in the same context and for the same view (or not) of different perspectives.

O crescimento exponencial do fenómeno da urbanização faz com que a população que vive em áreas urbanas aumente de dia para dia e, consequentemente, os recursos urbanos existentes começam a ser escassos para tanta procura. De facto, a gestão de uma cidade enfrenta, nos dias que correm, desafios como congestionamento do transito, segurança pública ou poluição ambiental. Neste cenário surge o conceito de Smart City que pode resolver os problemas do desenvolvimento urbano, melhorar a qualidade de vida dos cidadãos e otimizar processos em várias áreas de uma cidade como o sistema de transporte público. As cidades beneficiam também do forte desenvolvimento dos dispositivos de sensorização e atuação bem como das tecnologias de comunicação. Estas ´ultimas permitem que estes equipamentos partilhem informação entre si e com o cidadão. Os dados recolhidos por estes sensores precisam de ser analisados e processados, a fim de potencializar a sua utilidade. Este trabalho tem como objetivo o desenvolvimento de um sistema de alarmística inteligente, capaz de processar, em tempo real, um grande volume de dados proveniente de diferentes fontes, produzindo como resultados alertas quando for detetada alguma anomalia na informação recebida. Este processamento consiste na comparação dos dados recebidos com padrões/regras definidas previamente, sendo que, quando algum desses padrões ´e correspondido, um alerta ´e enviado para os utilizadores interessados. A arquitetura da solução desenvolvida contempla, na sua fase inicial, um módulo que se encontra constantemente a receber dados de diversas fontes, organizando os mesmos através de operações de filtragem por tipo de informação (tráfego, ambiente, meteorologia, eventos de entretenimento, entre outros). A etapa seguinte ´e a de processamento da informação, que ´e o foco principal do presente projeto e onde são utilizadas ferramentas consistentes e capazes de processar um grande volume de dados, responsáveis também pela aplicação das regras nos eventos recebidos. Finalmente, a última fase consiste nas componentes que permitem que os utilizadores e partes interessadas consultem ou sejam notificados com os alertas produzidos no motor de processamento. Foi ainda construída uma Application Programming Interface (API) onde as entidades competentes podem ter acesso ao histórico dos resultados gerados de forma a prever comportamentos futuros. A elaboração deste projeto levou a um crescimento elevado a nível técnico, uma vez que foram estudadas e implementadas técnicas e ferramentas novas. Foram ainda consolidados alguns conceitos nomeadamente em relação às linguagens de programação utilizadas.

Com o avançar da tecnologia e o acesso à informação por parte das partes interessadas (stakeholders), as empresas deparam-se com cenários de maior exigência para a satisfação das necessidades do mercado, sem nunca esquecer a concorrência. Assim sendo, o objetivo passa por produzir o máximo com o mínimo, máxima qualidade e quantidade com os menores recursos, tempo de tarefa (lead time) e custos possíveis. A presente dissertação foi desenvolvida na Sika Portugal, S.A., no setor da embalagem, mais concretamente no departamento de produção. No seu processo produtivo, as tarefas de colocação de rótulo era feito de forma manual, consumindo recursos de mão de-obra e lead times, por tempos e custos excessivos. Posto isto, o objetivo passava por automatizar a linha de rotulagem, eliminar atividades desnecessárias e suprimir os custos a curto prazo com a uniformização de embalagens e rótulos. Para possibilitar o cumprimento das metas propostas recorreram-se às metodologias Push System e Pull system, lean thinking (ou “pensamento magro”), aliadas à Análise ABC, com a prespetiva eliminar um bottleneck para servir melhor a fase produtiva seguinte, o enchimento. O objetivo foi alcançado com menorização dos tempos e custos da tarefa. A redução do lead time obteve valores na ordem dos 50%, a eliminação de tarefas que não incrementam valor foi conseguida e ainda permitiu a libertação de um recurso humano. A impressão dos rótulos é feita, atualmente, em massa, nas impressoras das instalações da unidade fabril. Com a possibilidade de impressão “em casa” geraram-se poupanças na ordem dos ----- € (podendo ser adicionado o valor médio de --- € dos últimos anos fruto das constantes alterações nas embalagens litografadas, sejam elas de exportação para países que exijam outro idioma, pela mudança de legislação, alteração da imagem ou expiração da validade). O cálculo da menorização dos custos diariamente atinge o valor de 150 € e no período de um ano a poupança atingirá valores de ------€