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INESCC-DL - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais

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  • Text Mining Applied to Electronic Medical Records
    Publication . Pereira, Luis; Rijo, Rui, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Silva, Catarina; Martinho, Ricardo
    The analysis of medical records is a major challenge, considering they are generally presented in plain text, have a very specific technical vocabulary and are nearly always unstructured. It is an interdisciplinary work that requires knowledge from several fields. The analysis may have several goals, such as assistance on clinical decision, classification of medical procedures, and to support hospital management decisions. This work presents the concepts involved, the relevant existent related work, and the main open issues for future research within the analysis of electronic medical records, using data and text mining techniques. It provides a comprehensive contextualization to all those who wish to perform an analytical work of medical records, enabling the identification of fruitful research fields. With the digitalization of medical records and the large amount of medical data available, this is an area of wide research potential.
  • No polarization–Expected Values of Climate Change Impacts among European Forest Professionals and Scientists
    Publication . Persson, Johannes; Blennow, Kristina; Gonçalves, Luisa; Borys, Alexander; Dutcă, Ioan; Hynynen, Jari; Janeczko, Emilia; Lyubenova, Mariyana; Martel, Simon; Merganic, Jan; Merganičová, Katarína; Peltoniemi, Mikko; Petr, Michal; Reboredo, Fernando H.; Vacchiano, Giorgio; Reyer, Christopher P. O.
    The role of values in climate-related decision-making is a prominent theme of climate communication research. The present study examines whether forest professionals are more driven by values than scientists are, and if this results in value polarization. A questionnaire was designed to elicit and assess the values assigned to expected effects of climate change by forest professionals and scientists working on forests and climate change in Europe. The countries involved covered a north-to-south and west-to-east gradient across Europe, representing a wide range of bio-climatic conditions and a mix of economic-social-political structures. We show that European forest professionals and scientists do not exhibit polarized expectations about the values of specific impacts of climate change on forests in their countries. In fact, few differences between forest professionals and scientists were found. However, there are interesting differences in the expected values of forest professionals with regard to climate change impacts across European countries. In Northern European countries, the aggregated values of the expected effects are more neutral than they are in Southern Europe, where they are more negative. Expectations about impacts on timber production, economic returns, and regulatory ecosystem services are mostly negative, while expectations about biodiversity and energy production are mostly positive.
  • The Effect of a Naturally Ventilated Roof on the Thermal Behaviour of a Building under Mediterranean Summer Conditions
    Publication . Ramos, João; Aires, Luis
    With the increasing cost associated with energy consumption, climate change and the greater awareness of the population to issues related to energy and environmental efficiency, energy conservation in buildings has been encouraged, along with the development of several solutions based on a more sustainable construction. Building cooling is the most challenging issue in the Mediterranean climate. The roof is one of the main elements of the building’s opaque envelope, where the choice of materials and the implementation of appropriate passive technologies determine the thermal performance of a building. The present work aims to assess the impact of natural ventilation of a roof cavity on the thermal environment of a dwelling house under Mediterranean summer conditions. An experimental study was developed in a small-scale prototype of a typical dwelling house, comprising a ceramic tile roof with vented eaves and insulated sub-tile panels according to the construction solution of the Humbelino Monteiro SA company. The thermal performance of this roof solution was assessed under real climatic conditions based on continuous measurements of the air velocity inside the air gap, the temperature of the air and the surface temperature of all roof layers. Weather conditions were also monitored continuously. Connected with the heat transfer mechanisms, the obtained temperature and air velocity profiles data were analysed and discussed.
  • Data Integration in the Brazilian Public Health System for Tuberculosis: Use of the Semantic Web to Establish Interoperability
    Publication . Pellison, Felipe Carvalho; Rijo, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Lima, Vinicius Costa; Crepaldi, Nathalia Yukie; Bernardi, Filipe Andrade; Galliez, Rafael Mello; Kritski, Afrânio; Abhishek, Kumar; Alves, Domingos
    Background: Interoperability of health information systems is a challenge due to the heterogeneity of existing systems at both the technological and semantic levels of their data. The lack of existing data about interoperability disrupts intra-unit and inter-unit medical operations as well as creates challenges in conducting studies on existing data. The goal is to exchange data while providing the same meaning for data from different sources. Objective: To find ways to solve this challenge, this research paper proposes an interoperability solution for the tuberculosis treatment and follow-up scenario in Brazil using Semantic Web technology supported by an ontology. Methods: The entities of the ontology were allocated under the definitions of Basic Formal Ontology. Brazilian tuberculosis applications were tagged with entities from the resulting ontology. Results: An interoperability layer was developed to retrieve data with the same meaning and in a structured way enabling semantic and functional interoperability. Conclusions: Health professionals could use the data gathered from several data sources to enhance the effectiveness of their actions and decisions, as shown in a practical use case to integrate tuberculosis data in the State of São Paulo.
  • Quantifying Marine Macro Litter Abundance on a Sandy Beach Using Unmanned Aerial Systems and Object-Oriented Machine Learning Methods
    Publication . Gonçalves, Gil; Andriolo, Umberto; Gonçalves, Luisa; Sobral, Paula; Bessa, Filipa
    Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have recently been proven to be valuable remote sensing tools for detecting marine macro litter (MML), with the potential of supporting pollution monitoring programs on coasts. Very low altitude images, acquired with a low-cost RGB camera onboard a UAS on a sandy beach, were used to characterize the abundance of stranded macro litter. We developed an object-oriented classification strategy for automatically identifying the marine macro litter items on a UAS-based orthomosaic. A comparison is presented among three automated object-oriented machine learning (OOML) techniques, namely random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and k-nearest neighbor (KNN). Overall, the detection was satisfactory for the three techniques, with mean F-scores of 65% for KNN, 68% for SVM, and 72% for RF. A comparison with manual detection showed that the RF technique was the most accurate OOML macro litter detector, as it returned the best overall detection quality (F-score) with the lowest number of false positives. Because the number of tuning parameters varied among the three automated machine learning techniques and considering that the three generated abundance maps correlated similarly with the abundance map produced manually, the simplest KNN classifier was preferred to the more complex RF. This work contributes to advances in remote sensing marine litter surveys on coasts, optimizing the automated detection on UAS-derived orthomosaics. MML abundance maps, produced by UAS surveys, assist coastal managers and authorities through environmental pollution monitoring programs. In addition, they contribute to search and evaluation of the mitigation measures and improve clean-up operations on coastal environments.
  • Efficiency in an Intensive Energy Industrial Consumer
    Publication . Galvão, J.; Nabais, A.; Galvão, M.; Candeias, J.; Pereira, Thiago; Ramos, J.
    Energy efficiency actions were made in a glass production industry such as reduction in the energy consumption that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All measures were applied regarding European Union-EU guidelines and legislation.
  • Wireless Environmental Monitoring and Control in Poultry Houses: A Conceptual Study
    Publication . Godinho, António; Vitorino, Romeu; Sérgio Manuel da Silva; Paulo Jorge Coelho
    Modern commercial poultry farming typically occurs indoors, where partial or complete environmental control is employed to enhance production efficiency. Maintaining optimal conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, and ammonia levels, is essential for ensuring bird comfort and maximizing productivity. Monitoring the conditions of poultry houses requires reliable and intelligent management systems. This study introduces a Wireless Monitoring and Control System developed to regulate environmental conditions within poultry facilities. The system continuously monitors key parameters via a network of distributed sensor nodes, which transmit data wirelessly to a centralized control unit using Wi-Fi. The control unit processes the incoming data, stores it in a database, and adjusts actuators accordingly to maintain ideal conditions. A web-based dashboard allows users to monitor and control the environment in real time. Field testing confirmed the system’s effectiveness in keeping conditions optimal, supporting poultry welfare and operational efficiency.
  • Development of CART model for prediction of tuberculosis treatment loss to follow up in the state of São Paulo, Brazil: A case–control study
    Publication . Yamaguti, Verena Hokino; Alves, Domingos; Rijo, Rui, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Miyoshi, Newton Shydeo Brandão; Ruffino-Netto, Antônio
    Background: Tuberculosis is the leading cause of infectious disease-related death, surpassing even the immunodeficiency virus. Treatment loss to follow up and irregular medication use contribute to persistent morbidity and mortality. This increases bacillus drug resistance and has a negative impact on disease control. Objective: This study aims to develop a computational model that predicts the loss to follow up treatment in tuberculosis patients, thereby increasing treatment adherence and cure, reducing efforts regarding treatment relapses and decreasing disease spread. Methods: This is a case-controlled study. Included in the data set were 103,846 tuberculosis cases from the state of São Paulo. They were collected using the TBWEB, an information system used as a tuberculosis treatment monitor, containing samples from 2006 to 2016. This set was later resampled into 6 segments with a 1-1 ratio. This ratio was used to avoid any bias during the model construction. Results: The Classification and Regression Trees were used as the prediction model. Training and test sets accounted for 70% in the former and 30% in the latter of the tuberculosis cases. The model displayed an accuracy of 0.76, F-measure of 0.77, sensitivity of 0.80 and specificity of 0.71. The model emphasizes the relationship between several variables that had been identified in previous studies as related to patient cure or loss to follow up treatment in tuberculosis patients. Conclusion: It was possible to construct a predictive model for loss to follow up treatment in tuberculosis patients using Classification and Regression Trees. Although the fact that the ideal predictive ability was not achieved, it seems reasonable to propose the use of Classification and Regression Trees models to predict likelihood of treatment follow up to support healthcare professionals in minimising the loss to follow up.
  • Synthetic image generation for effective deep learning model training for ceramic industry applications
    Publication . Gaspar, Fábio; Daniel Carreira; Rodrigues, Nuno; Miragaia, Rolando; Ribeiro, José; Costa, Paulo; Pereira, António
    In the rapidly evolving field of machine learning engineering, access to large, high-quality, and well-balanced labeled datasets is indispensable for accurate product classification. This necessity holds particular significance in sectors such as the ceramics industry, in which effective production line activities are paramount and deep learning classification mechanisms are particularly relevant for streamlining processes; but real-world image samples are scarce and difficult to obtain, hindering dataset building and consequently model training and deployment. This paper presents a novel approach for dataset building in the context of the ceramic industry, which involves employing synthetic images for building or complementing datasets for image classification problems. The proposed methodology was implemented in CeramicFlow, an innovative computer graphics rendering pipeline designed to create synthetic images by employing computer-aided design models of ceramic objects and incorporating domain randomization techniques. As a result, a fully synthetic image dataset named Synthetic CeramicNet was created and validated in real-world ceramic classification problems. The results demonstrate that synthetic images provide an adequate basis for datasets and can significantly reduce reliance on real-world data when developing deep learning approaches for image classification problems in the ceramic industry. Furthermore, the proposed approach can potentially be applied to other industrial fields.
  • The role of beliefs, expectations and values in decision-making favoring climate change adaptation - Implications for communications with European forest professionals
    Publication . Blennow, K.; Persson, J.; Gonçalves, Luísa M.S.; Borys, A.; Dutcă, I.; Hynynen, J.; Janeczko, E.; Lyubenova, M.; Merganič, J.; Merganičová, K.; Peltoniemi, M.; Petr, M.; Reboredo, F.; Vacchiano, G.; Reyer, C. P. O.
    Beliefs, expectations and values are often assumed to drive decisions about climate change adaptation. We tested hypotheses based on this assumption using survey responses from 508 European forest professionals in ten countries. We used the survey results to identify communication needs and the decision strategies at play, and to develop guidelines on adequate communications about climate change adaptation. We observed polarization in the positive and negative values associated with climate change impacts accepted by survey respondents. We identified a mechanism creating the polarization that we call the 'blocked belief' effect. We found that polarized values did not correlate with decisions about climate change adaptation. Strong belief in the local impacts of climate change on the forest was, however, a prerequisite of decision-making favoring adaptation. Decision-making in favor of adaptation to climate change also correlated with net values of expected specific impacts on the forest and generally increased with the absolute value of these in the absence of 'tipping point' behavior. Tipping point behavior occurs when adaptation is not pursued in spite of the strongly negative or positive net value of expected climate change impacts. We observed negative and positive tipping point behavior, mainly in SW Europe and N-NE Europe, respectively. In addition we found that advice on effective adaptation may inhibit adaptation when the receiver is aware of effective adaptation measures unless it is balanced with information explaining how climate change leads to negative impacts. Forest professionals with weak expectations of impacts require communications on climate change and its impacts on forests before any advice on adaptation measures can be effective. We develop evidence-based guidelines on communications using a new methodology which includes Bayesian machine learning modeling of the equivalent of an expected utility function for the adaptation decision problem.