pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Implementation of information systems security policies: a survey in small and medium sized enterprises

Information has become organizations’ most valuable asset, thus being a potential target to threats intending to explore their vulnerabilities and cause considerable damage. Therefore, there is a need to implement policies regarding information systems security (ISS) in an attempt to reduce the chances of fraud or information loss. Thus, it is important to find the critical success factors to the implementation of a security policy as well as to assess the level of importance of each one of them. This paper contributes to the identification of such factors by presenting the results of a survey regarding information systems security policies in small and medium sized enterprises (SME). We discuss the results in the light of a literature framework and identify future works aiming to enhance information security in organizations
OPM3® Portugal project: information systems and technologies organizations: outcome analysis

Increasing the maturity in Project Management (PM) has become a goal for many organizations, leading them to adopt maturity models to assess the current state of its PM practices and compare them with the best practices in the industry where the organization is inserted. One of the main PM maturity models is the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®), developed by the Project Management Institute. This paper presents the Information Systems and Technologies organizations outcome analysis, of the assesses made by the OPM3® Portugal Project, identifying the PM processes that are “best” implemented in this particular industry and those in which it is urgent to improve. Additionally, a comparison between the different organizations’ size analyzed is presented
Applying action research in the formulation of information security policies

Information Systems Security (ISS) is crucial in all and each of the services provided by organizations. This paper focuses on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) as although all organizations have their own requirements as far as information security is concerned, SMEs offer one of the most interesting cases for studying the issue of information security policies. Within the organizational universe, SMEs assume a unique relevance due to their high number, which makes information security efficiency a crucial issue. There are several measures which can be implemented in order to ensure the effective protection of information assets, among which the adoption of ISS policies stands out. This article aims to constitute an empirical study on the applicability of the Action Research (AR) method in information systems, more specifically through the formulation of an ISS policy in SMEs. The research question is to what extent this research method is adequate to reach the proposed goal
Media Brokerage: Agent-Based SLA Negotiation

Media content personalisation is a major challenge involving viewers as well as media content producer and distributor businesses. The goal is to provide viewers with media items aligned with their interests. Producers and distributors engage in item negotiations to establish the corresponding service level agreements (SLA). In order to address automated partner lookup and item SLA negotiation, this paper proposes the MultiMedia Brokerage (MMB) platform, which is a multiagent system that negotiates SLA regarding media items on behalf of media content producer and distributor businesses. The MMB platform is structured in four service layers: interface, agreement management, business modelling and market. In this context, there are: (i) brokerage SLA (bSLA), which are established between individual businesses and the platform regarding the provision of brokerage services; and (ii) item SLA (iSLA), which are established between producer and distributor businesses about the provision of media items. In particular, this paper describes the negotiation, establishment and enforcement of bSLA and iSLA, which occurs at the agreement and negotiation layers, respectively. The platform adopts a pay-per-use business model where the bSLA define the general conditions that apply to the related iSLA. To illustrate this process, we present a case study describing the negotiation of a bSLA instance and several related iSLA instances. The latter correspond to the negotiation of the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for a specific end viewer
Big data for stock market by means of mining techniques

Predict and prevent future events are the major advantages to any company. Big Data comes up with huge power, not only by the ability of processes large amounts and variety of data at high velocity, but also by the capability to create value to organizations. This paper presents an approach to a Big Data based decision making in the stock market context. The correlation between news articles and stock variations it is already proved but it can be enriched with other indicators. In this use case they were collected news articles from three different web sites and the stock history from the New York Stock Exchange. In order to proceed to data mining classification algorithms the articles were labeled by their sentiment, the direct relation to a specific company and geographic market influence. With the proposed model it is possible identify the patterns between this indicators and predict stock price variations with accuracies of 100 percent. Moreover the model shown that the stock market could be sensitive to news with generic topics, such as government and society but they can also depend on the geographic cover
Big data in cloud : a data architecture

Nowadays, organizations have at their disposal a large volume of data with a wide
variety of types. Technology-driven organizations want to capture process and analyze this data
at a fast velocity, in order to better understand and manage their customers, their operations and
their business processes. As much as data volume and variety increases and as faster analytic
results are needed, more demanding is for a data architecture. This data architecture should
enable collecting, storing, and analyzing Big Data in Cloud Environment. Cloud Computing,
ensures timeliness, ubiquity and easy access by users. This paper proposes to develop a data
architecture to support Big Data in Cloud and, finally, validate the architecture with a proof of
concept.This work was financed by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia for the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/201
Learning Text Patterns using Separate-and-Conquer Genetic Programming

The problem of extracting knowledge from large volumes of unstructured textual information has become increasingly important. We consider the problem of extracting text slices that adhere to a syntactic pattern and propose an approach capable of generating the desired pattern automatically, from a few annotated examples. Our approach is based on Genetic Programming and generates extraction patterns in the form of regular expressions that may be input to existing engines without any post-processing. Key feature of our proposal is its ability of discovering automatically whether the extraction task may be solved by a single pattern, or rather a set of multiple patterns is required. We obtain this property by means of a separate-and-conquer strategy: once a candidate pattern provides adequate performance on a subset of the examples, the pattern is inserted into the set of final solutions and the evolutionary search continues on a smaller set of examples including only those not yet solved adequately. Our proposal outperforms an earlier state-of-the-art approach on three challenging datasets
Marine Anthropogenic Litter

This book describes how manmade litter, primarily plastic, has spread into the remotest parts of the oceans and covers all aspects of this pollution problem from the impacts on wildlife and human health to socio-economic and political issues. Marine litter is a prime threat to marine wildlife, habitats and food webs worldwide.\ud
\ud
The book illustrates how advanced technologies from deep-sea research, microbiology and mathematic modelling as well as classic beach litter counts by volunteers contributed to the broad awareness of marine litter as a problem of global significance. The authors summarise more than five decades of marine litter research, which receives growing attention after the recent discovery of great oceanic garbage patches and the ubiquity of microscopic plastic particles in marine organisms and habitats.\ud
\ud
In 16 chapters, authors from all over the world have created a universal view on the diverse field of marine litter pollution, the biological  impacts, dedicated research activities,  and the various national and international legislative efforts to combat this environmental problem.  They recommend future research directions necessary for a comprehensive understanding of this environmental issue and the development of efficient management strategies. This book addresses scientists, and it provides a solid knowledge base for policy makers, NGOs, and  the broader public
Methodology Used for the Detection and Identification of Microplastics—A Critical Appraisal

Microplastics in aquatic ecosystems and especially in the marine environment represent a pollution of increasing scientific and societal concern, thus, meanwhile a substantial number of studies on microplastics exist. Although first steps towards a standardisation of methodologies used for the detection and identification of microplastics in environmental samples are made, the comparability of data on microplastics is currently hampered by a huge variety of different methodologies which result in the generation of data of extremely different quality and resolution. This chapter reviews the methodology presently used for assessing the concentration of microplastics in the marine environment with focus on the most convenient techniques and approaches. After an overview of non-selective sampling approaches, sample processing and treatment in the laboratory, the reader is introduced to the currently applied techniques for the identification and quantification of microplastics. The subsequent case study on microplastics in sediment samples from the North Sea measured with focal plane array (FPA)-based micro-Fourier transform infrared (micro-FTIR) spectroscopy shows that only 1.4 % of the particles visually resembling microplastics were of synthetic polymer origin. This finding emphasizes the importance of verifying the synthetic polymer origin of potential microplastics. Thus, a burning issue concerning current microplastic research is the generation of standards that allow for the assessment of reliable data on concentrations of microscopic plastic particles and the involved polymers with analytical laboratory techniques such as micro-FTIR or micro-Raman spectroscopy
Pervasive business intelligence platform to improve the quality of decision process in primary and secondary education – A Portuguese case study

Business Intelligence (BI) can be seen as a method that gathers
information and data from information systems in order to help companies to be
more accurate in their decision-making process. Traditionally BI systems were
associated with the use of Data Warehouses (DW). The prime purpose of DW is to
serve as a repository that stores all the relevant information required for making the
correct decision. The necessity to integrate streaming data became crucial with the
need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision process. In primary
and secondary education, there is a lack of BI solutions. Due to the schools reality
the main purpose of this study is to provide a Pervasive BI solution able to
monitoring the schools and student data anywhere and anytime in real-time as well
as disseminating the information through ubiquitous devices. The first task
consisted in gathering data regarding the different choices made by the student since
his enrolment in a certain school year until the end of it. Thereafter a dimensional
model was developed in order to be possible building a BI platform. This paper
presents the dimensional model, a set of pre-defined indicators, the Pervasive
Business Intelligence characteristics and the prototype designed. The main
contribution of this study was to offer to the schools a tool that could help them to
make accurate decisions in real-time. Data dissemination was achieved through a
localized application that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013
Predicting plateau pressure in intensive medicine for ventilated patients

Barotrauma is identified as one of the leading diseases in Ventilated
Patients. This type of problem is most common in the Intensive Care Units. In order
to prevent this problem the use of Data Mining (DM) can be useful for predicting
their occurrence. The main goal is to predict the occurence of Barotrauma in order
to support the health professionals taking necessary precautions. In a first step
intensivists identified the Plateau Pressure values as a possible cause of
Barotrauma. Through this study DM models (classification) where induced for
predicting the Plateau Pressure class (>=30 cm2O) in a real environment and
using real data. The present study explored and assessed the possibility of
predicting the Plateau pressure class with high accuracies. The dataset used only
contained data provided by the ventilators. The best models are able to predict the
Plateau Pressure with an accuracy ranging from 95.52% to 98.71%.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013. The authors would like to thank FCT (Foundation of Science and Technology, Portugal) for the financial support through the contract PTDC/EEI-SII/1302/2012 (INTCare II)
Perceptions and understandings on the need of change: viewpoints across management levels

The need of change in two Portuguese Textile and Clothing Industry
companies is discussed using a qualitative analysis of content transcribed
interviews through webQDA. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to
several top managements level of both companies. From the interviews it has
been possible to understand how the companies intend to contribute to change,
their attitudes and perceptions and the benefits expected. The results of this
study demonstrated that it is important to involve the different management
levels in the process of change. The key-factors that influence change as
motivation, involvement, information dissemination for a successfully change
were identified as important. However, the findings also show that the
interviewees understand that change involves risk and it has both advantages
and disadvantages.(undefined
Procedural personas as critics for dungeon generation

This paper introduces a constrained optimization method which uses\ud
procedural personas to evaluate the playability and quality of evolved dungeon\ud
levels. Procedural personas represent archetypical player behaviors, and their\ud
controllers have been evolved to maximize a specific utility which drives their\ud
decisions. A “baseline” persona evaluates whether a level is playable by testing\ud
if it can survive in a worst-case scenario of the playthrough. On the other hand, a\ud
Monster Killer persona or a Treasure Collector persona evaluates playable levels\ud
based on how many monsters it can kill or how many treasures it can collect, respectively.\ud
Results show that the implemented two-population genetic algorithm\ud
discovers playable levels quickly and reliably, while the different personas affect\ud
the layout, difficulty level and tactical depth of the generated dungeons.The research was supported, in part, by the FP7 ICT project C2Learn (project no:\ud
318480) and by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665).peer-reviewe
A benchmark for virtual camera control

Automatically animating and placing the virtual camera in a dynamic environment is a challenging task. The camera is expected to maximise and maintain a set of properties — i.e. visual composition — while smoothly moving through the environment and avoiding obstacles. A large number of different solutions to the problem have been proposed so far including, for instance, evolutionary techniques, swarm intelligence or ad hoc solutions. However, the large diversity of the solutions and the lack of a common benchmark, made any comparative analysis of the different solutions extremely difficult. For this reason, in this paper, we propose a benchmark for the problem of virtual camera control and we analyse a number of different problems in different virtual environments. Each of these scenarios is described through a set of complexity measures and, as a result of this analysis, a subset of scenarios is selected as the core of the benchmark.peer-reviewe
Applying ant colony optimization to dynamic binary-encoded problems

Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms have proved to be able to adapt to dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) when stagnation behaviour is addressed. Usually, permutation-encoded DOPs, e.g., dynamic travelling salesman problems, are addressed using ACO algorithms whereas binary-encoded DOPs, e.g., dynamic knapsack problems, are tackled by evolutionary algorithms (EAs). This is because of the initial developments of the algorithms. In this paper, a binary version of ACO is introduced to address binary-encoded DOPs and compared with existing EAs. The experimental results show that ACO with an appropriate pheromone evaporation rate outperforms EAs in most dynamic test cases
FFRob: An Efficient Heuristic for Task and Motion Planning

Manipulation problemsinvolvingmany objects present substantial challenges for motion planning algorithms due to the high dimensionality and multi-modality of the search space. Symbolic task planners can efficiently construct plans involving many entities but cannot incorporate the constraints from geometry and kinematics. In this paper, we show how to extend the heuristic ideas from one of the most successful symbolic planners in recent years, the FastForward (FF) planner, to motion planning, and to compute it efficiently. We use a multi-query roadmap structure that can be conditionalized to model different placements of movable objects. The resulting tightly integrated planner is simple and performs efficiently in a collection of tasks involving manipulation of many objects.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant No. 019868)United States. Office of Naval Research. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (grant N00014-09-1-1051)United States. Air Force. Office of Scientific Research (grant AOARD-104135)Singapore. Ministry of Educatio
Maximum-Reward Motion in a Stochastic Environment: The Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics Perspective

We consider the problem of computing the maximum-reward motion in a reward field in an online setting. We assume that the robot has a limited perception range, and it discovers the reward field on the fly. We analyze the performance of a simple, practical lattice-based algorithm with respect to the perception range. Our main result is that, with very little perception range, the robot can collect as much reward as if it could see the whole reward field, under certain assumptions. Along the way, we establish novel connections between this class of problems and certain fundamental problems of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics . We demonstrate our results in simulation examples
Large population asymptotics for interacting diffusions in a quenched random environment

20 pages. Proceedings for the PSPDE-II conference (Braga, dec 2013).International audienceWe review some recent results on large population behavior of interacting diffusions in a random environment. Emphasis is put on the quenched influence of the environment on the macroscopic behavior of the system (law of large numbers and fluctuations). We address the notion of (non-)self-averaging phenomenon for this class of models. A guiding thread in this survey is the Kuramoto synchronization model which has met in recent years a growing interest in the literature
Dynamical properties of a cosmological model with diffusion

The description of the dynamics of particles undergoing diffusion in general relativity has been an object of interest in the last years. Most recently a new cosmological model with diffusion has been studied in which the evolution of the particle system is described by a Fokker-Planck equation. This equation is then coupled to a modified system of Einstein equations, in order to satisfy the energy conservation condition. Continuing with this work, we study in the present paper a spatially
homogeneous and isotropic spacetime model with diffusion velocity. We write the system of ordinary differential equations of this particular model and obtain the solutions for which the scale factor in the RobertsonWalker metric is linear in time. We analyse the asymptotic behavior of the subclass of spatially flat solutions. The system representing the homogeneous and isotropic model with diffusion is rewritten using dynamical variables. For the subclass of spatially flat solutions we were able to determine all equilibrium points and analyse their local stability properties.http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319166360#otherVersion=9783319166377Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT
Kinetic theory of simple reacting spheres : an application to coloring processes

We consider a simplified version of the kinetic model of simple reacting spheres (SRS) for a quaternary reactive mixture of hard-spheres in the dilute-gas limit. The model mimics a coloring process occurring with probability aR, described by the reversible chemical law A1 + A2 = A3 + A4. We provide the linearized collisional operators of our model and investigate some of their mathematical properties. In particular we obtain an explicit and symmetric representation of the elastic and reactive kernels and use this to prove the compactness of the linearized collisional operator in (L2(R^3))^4.http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319166360#otherVersion=9783319166377Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT
Multidimensional periodic Schrödinger operator: Perturbation theory and applications

Veliev, Oktay (Dogus Author)The book describes the direct problems and the inverse problem of the multidimensional Schrödinger operator with a periodic potential. This concerns perturbation theory and constructive determination of the spectral invariants and finding the periodic potential from the given Bloch eigenvalues. The unique method of this book derives the asymptotic formulas for Bloch eigenvalues and Bloch functions for arbitrary dimension. Moreover, the measure of the iso-energetic surfaces in the high energy region is construct and estimated. It implies the validity of the Bethe-Sommerfeld conjecture for arbitrary dimensions and arbitrary lattices. Using the perturbation theory constructed in this book, the spectral invariants of the multidimensional operator from the given Bloch eigenvalues are determined. Some of these invariants are explicitly expressed by the Fourier coefficients of the potential. This way the possibility to determine the potential constructively by using Bloch eigenvalues as input data is given. In the end an algorithm for the unique determination of the potential is given