Desde o seu nascimento, a Ciência da Informação vem estudando métodos para o tratamento automático da informação. Esta pesquisa centrou-se na Recuperação de Informação, área que envolve a aplicação de métodos computacionais no tratamento e recuperação da informação, para avaliar em que medida a Ciência da Computação contribui para o avanço da Ciência da Informação. Inicialmente a Recuperação de Informação é contextualizada no corpo interdisciplinar da Ciência da Informação e são apresentados os elementos básicos do processo de recuperação de informação. Os modelos computacionais de recuperação de informação são analisados a partir da categorização em “quantitativos” e “dinâmicos”. Algumas técnicas de processamento da linguagem natural utilizadas na recuperação de informação são igualmente discutidas. No contexto atual da Web são apresentadas as técnicas de representação e recuperação da informação desde os mecanismos de busca até a Web Semântica. Conclui-se que, apesar da inquestionável importância dos métodos e técnicas computacionais no tratamento da informação, estas se configuram apenas como ferramentas auxiliares, pois utilizam uma conceituação de “informação” extremamente restrita em relação àquela utilizada pela Ciência da Informação; Since its birth...

Ontologias têm sido propostas como uma alternativa para a criação de representações da realidade adequadas a computadores. Ao buscar pelo termo "ontologia" em um mecanismo de busca, abordagens bastante diferenciadas são encontradas. De fato, o termo "ontologia" tem sido empregado na Filosofia, Ciência da Computação e Ciência da Informação com diferentes particularidades. Para fazer bom uso do que as teorias ontológicas têm a oferecer é preciso entender o que tais teorias abordam e quais as suas origens. Esse artigo busca esclarecer o que significa estudar ontologias e quais as conexões o assunto pode fomentar entre diferentes campos de pesquisa. Inicia-se revisitando o sentido do termo no campo de pesquisa onde ele foi criado, a Filosofia, para em seguida buscar entender o seu uso atual em outros campos. Propõe-se então que o estudo de ontologias é um assunto genuíno e relevante de pesquisa em Ciência da Informação. Finalmente, conclui-se oferecendo uma visão sobre as oportunidades de pesquisa interdisciplinar no assunto.

O interesse central deste trabalho foi compreender a forma pela qual as organizações interferem no desenvolvimento local. O caminho para a compreensão foi traçado mediante a problematização da articulação entre dimensões globais e locais do contexto organizacional, usando como base a Teoria Institucional. Descrever e analisar o modo pelo qual a articulação entre o contexto institucional de referência da produção científica e tecnológica e as formas de inserção das universidades na localidade interfere no desenvolvimento local foi o objetivo que orientou a pesquisa. A questão do desenvolvimento local foi abordada à luz da estrutura centro-periferia do sistema mundial e das peculiaridades do subdesenvolvimento. Para posicionar os agentes no campo científico e no campo de poder local recorreu-se à teoria dos campos sociais, de Bourdieu. Sob abordagem predominantemente qualitativa, hipotetizou-se que a articulação entre o contexto institucional de referência da produção científica e tecnológica das universidades e sua inserção na localidade interfere no desenvolvimento local na medida em que se traduz em posicionamento no campo científico e no campo de poder local. Realizou-se um estudo comparativo de casos...

One of the current challenges of Ubiquitous Computing is the development of complex applications, those are more than simple alarms triggered by sensors or simple systems to configure the environment according to user preferences. Those applications are hard to develop since they are composed by services provided by different middleware and it is needed to know the peculiarities of each of them, mainly the communication and context models. This thesis presents OpenCOPI, a platform which integrates various services providers, including context provision middleware. It provides an unified ontology-based context model, as well as an environment that enable easy development of ubiquitous applications via the definition of semantic workflows that contains the abstract description of the application. Those semantic workflows are converted into concrete workflows, called execution plans. An execution plan consists of a workflow instance containing activities that are automated by a set of Web services. OpenCOPI supports the automatic Web service selection and composition, enabling the use of services provided by distinct middleware in an independent and transparent way. Moreover, this platform also supports execution adaptation in case of service failures...

The development of interactive systems involves several professionals and the integration between them normally uses common artifacts, such as models, that drive the development process. In the model-driven development approach, the interaction model is an artifact that includes the most of the aspects related to what and how the user can do while he/she interacting with the system. Furthermore, the interactive model may be used to identify usability problems at design time. Therefore, the central problematic addressed by this thesis is twofold. In the first place, the interaction modeling, in a perspective that helps the designer to explicit to developer, who will implement the interface, the aspcts related to the interaction process. In the second place, the anticipated identification of usability problems, that aims to reduce the application final costs. To achieve these goals, this work presents (i) the ALaDIM language, that aims to help the designer on the conception, representation and validation of his interactive message models; (ii) the ALaDIM editor, which was built using the EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) and its standardized technologies by OMG (Object Management Group); and (iii) the ALaDIM inspection method, which allows the anticipated identification of usability problems using ALaDIM models. ALaDIM language and editor were respectively specified and implemented using the OMG standards and they can be used in MDA (Model Driven Architecture) activities. Beyond that...

Intendding to understand how the human mind operates, some philosophers and psycologists began to study about rationality. Theories were built from those studies and nowadays that interest have been extended to many other areas such as computing engineering and computing science, but with a minimal distinction at its goal: to understand the mind operational proccess and apply it on agents modelling to become possible the implementation (of softwares or hardwares) with the agent-oriented paradigm where agents are able to deliberate their own plans of actions. In computing science, the sub-area of multiagents systems has progressed using several works concerning artificial intelligence, computational logic, distributed systems, games theory and even philosophy and psycology. This present work hopes to show how it can be get a logical formalisation extention of a rational agents architecture model called BDI (based in a philosophic Bratman s Theory) in which agents are capable to deliberate actions from its beliefs, desires and intentions. The formalisation of this model is called BDI logic and it is a modal logic (in general it is a branching time logic) with three access relations: B, D and I. And here, it will show two possible extentions that tranform BDI logic in a modal-fuzzy logic where the formulae and the access relations can be evaluated by values from the interval [0...

The use of middleware technology in various types of systems, in order to abstract low-level details related to the distribution of application logic, is increasingly common. Among several systems that can be benefited from using these components, we highlight the distributed systems, where it is necessary to allow communications between software components located on different physical machines. An important issue related to the communication between distributed components is the provision of mechanisms for managing the quality of service. This work presents a metamodel for modeling middlewares based on components in order to provide to an application the abstraction of a communication between components involved in a data stream, regardless their location. Another feature of the metamodel is the possibility of self-adaptation related to the communication mechanism, either by updating the values of its configuration parameters, or by its replacement by another mechanism, in case of the restrictions of quality of service specified are not being guaranteed. In this respect, it is planned the monitoring of the communication state (application of techniques like feedback control loop), analyzing performance metrics related. The paradigm of Model Driven Development was used to generate the implementation of a middleware that will serve as proof of concept of the metamodel...

The Multiobjective Spanning Tree is a NP-hard Combinatorial Optimization problem whose application arises in several areas, especially networks design. In this work, we propose a solution to the biobjective version of the problem through a Transgenetic Algorithm named ATIS-NP. The Computational Transgenetic is a metaheuristic technique from Evolutionary Computation whose inspiration relies in the conception of cooperation (and not competition) as the factor of main influence to evolution. The algorithm outlined is the evolution of a work that has already yielded two other transgenetic algorithms. In this sense, the algorithms previously developed are also presented. This research also comprises an experimental analysis with the aim of obtaining information related to the performance of ATIS-NP when compared to other approaches. Thus, ATIS-NP is compared to the algorithms previously implemented and to other transgenetic already presented for the problem under consideration. The computational experiments also address the comparison to two recent approaches from literature that present good results, a GRASP and a genetic algorithms. The efficiency of the method described is evaluated with basis in metrics of solution quality and computational time spent. Considering the problem is within the context of Multiobjective Optimization...

The vascular segmentation is important in diagnosing vascular diseases like stroke and is hampered by noise in the image and very thin vessels that can pass unnoticed. One way to accomplish the segmentation is extracting the centerline of the vessel with height ridges, which uses the intensity as features for segmentation. This process can take from seconds to minutes, depending on the current technology employed. In order to accelerate the segmentation method proposed by Aylward [Aylward & Bullitt 2002] we have adapted it to run in parallel using CUDA architecture. The performance of the segmentation method running on GPU is compared to both the same method running on CPU and the original Aylward s method running also in CPU. The improvemente of the new method over the original one is twofold: the starting point for the segmentation process is not a single point in the blood vessel but a volume, thereby making it easier for the user to segment a region of interest, and; the overall gain method was 873 times faster running on GPU and 150 times more fast running on the CPU than the original CPU in Aylward; Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior; A segmentação vascular é importante no diagnóstico de doenças como o acidente vascular cerebral e é dificultada por ruídos na imagem e vasos muito finos que não são vistos. Uma maneira de realizar a segmentação é extraindo a centerline do vaso com height ridges...

The development of smart card applications requires a high level of reliability. Formal methods provide means for this reliability to be achieved. The BSmart method and tool contribute to the development of smart card applications with the support of the B method, generating Java Card code from B specifications. For the development with BSmart to be effectively rigorous without overloading the user it is important to have a library of reusable components built in B. The goal of KitSmart is to provide this support. A first research about the composition of this library was a graduation work from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, made by Thiago Dutra in 2006. This first version of the kit resulted in a specification of Java Card primitive types byte, short and boolean in B and the creation of reusable components for application development. This work provides an improvement of KitSmart with the addition of API Java Card specification made in B and a guide for the creation of new components. The API Java Card in B, besides being available to be used for development of applications, is also useful as a documentation of each API class. The reusable components correspond to modules to manipulate specific structures, such as date and time. These structures are not available for B or Java Card. These components for Java Card are generated from specifications formally verified in B. The guide contains quick reference on how to specify some structures and how some situations were adapted from object-orientation to the B Method. This work was evaluated through a case study made through the BSmart tool...

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior; A avaliação formativa da aprendizagem é um processo que verifica se as ações pedagógicas produziram resultados efetivos nos aprendizes em tempo de reverter quadros de deficiência de aprendizagem. No entanto, essa avaliação, mesmo sendo importante, é rejeitada por muitos professores sob o argumento de serem complexas e inviáveis e, por muitos alunos, por serem consideradas cansativas. A sua instrumentação convencional é também outro entrave à sua prática tendo em vista os formulários impressos maçantes e de logística difícil. Mesmo as avaliações formativas automatizadas são cansativas, porque apenas transportam o documento em papel para uma tela de computador. Nesse sentido, esta pesquisa apresenta uma proposta de um framework conceitual com a descrição de componentes que apoiam a instrumentação de avaliações formativas em jogos digitais com a finalidade de torná-las mais factíveis e estimulantes na prática pedagógica. O framework incorpora procedimentos e técnicas em quatro momentos fundamentais da avaliação formativa: nas definições do instrumento de avaliação, da coleta e análise de dados e da regulação da aprendizagem. Essas técnicas e procedimentos devem integrar o projeto de desenvolvimento do jogo digital para que esses disponibilizem a sua interface na coleta de dados de aquisição de conhecimento dos alunos enquanto jogam. Por ser um framework aberto...

There is a growing interest of the Computer Science education community for including testing concepts on introductory programming courses. Aiming at contributing to this issue, we introduce POPT, a Problem-Oriented Programming and Testing approach for Introductory Programming Courses. POPT main goal is to improve the traditional method of teaching introductory programming that concentrates mainly on implementation and neglects testing. POPT extends POP (Problem Oriented Programing) methodology proposed on the PhD Thesis of Andrea Mendonça (UFCG). In both methodologies POPT and POP, students skills in dealing with ill-defined problems must be developed since the first programming courses. In POPT however, students are stimulated to clarify ill-defined problem specifications, guided by de definition of test cases (in a table-like manner). This paper presents POPT, and TestBoot a tool developed to support the methodology. In order to evaluate the approach a case study and a controlled experiment (which adopted the Latin Square design) were performed. In an Introductory Programming course of Computer Science and Software Engineering Graduation Programs at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The study results have shown that...

The main goal of Regression Test (RT) is to reuse the test suite of the latest version of a software in its current version, in order to maximize the value of the tests already developed and ensure that old features continue working after the new changes. Even with reuse, it is common that not all tests need to be executed again. Because of that, it is encouraged to use Regression Tests Selection (RTS) techniques, which aims to select from all tests, only those that reveal faults, this reduces costs and makes this an interesting practice for the testing teams. Several recent research works evaluate the quality of the selections performed by RTS techniques, identifying which one presents the best results, measured by metrics such as inclusion and precision. The RTS techniques should seek in the System Under Test (SUT) for tests that reveal faults. However, because this is a problem without a viable solution, they alternatively seek for tests that reveal changes, where faults may occur. Nevertheless, these changes may modify the execution flow of the algorithm itself, leading some tests no longer exercise the same stretch. In this context, this dissertation investigates whether changes performed in a SUT would affect the quality of the selection of tests performed by an RTS...

The Course Scheduling is a hard resolution problem, found in most of the learning institutions. Just like the others timetabling problems, the Course Scheduling have a strong associative characteristic, that means that its resolution is made of associations between events and resources. In the educational case, the lectures are events, while the teachers workload are resources. Techniques and methods have being used on the solution of these kind of problems, however is small the number of universities using software based solutions. This work is a starting point to software based solutions applied to the Federal University of Goiás.; O Agendamento Semanal de Aulas é um problema de difícil resolução enfrentado em grande maioria das instituições de ensino. Assim como os demais problemas de timetabling, possui como característica principal a sua natureza associativa, ou seja, sua resolução envolve a associação entre uma certa quantidade de recursos e eventos que utilizarão tais recursos. Especificamente em relação ao problema em questão, as aulas a serem ministradas podem ser caracterizadas como eventos, enquanto que a carga horária dos professores envolvidos podem ser vistas como recursos disponíveis (Programação de Horários de Aulas). Técnicas e métodos de grande relevância na ciência da computação estão relacionados na pesquisa e na solução destes tipos de problemas...

The number of people joining the Computer Science course, in the last years, is decreasing. Among those who enter, just a few are able to graduate, because there is a great retention rate and dropout, particularly among the introductory courses in algorithms and programming. The use of games as a motivational factor is a subject much studied in recent years, achieving good results for this problem. However, for the implementation of games in education, using a constructionist approach, students are required to build games. Several tools are available for this job, but there is a big difference in usability between the educational tools (that focus on educational programming) and those specific for creating games. This work proposes a framework for building games, being supported by an extensible application through scripts which allow it to be adapted for use in various disciplines throughout the course, and not only in introductory courses.; A quantidade de pessoas que ingressam no curso de Ciência da Computação a cada ano está diminuindo. Dentre aqueles que entram, poucos conseguem se formar. Há uma grande taxa de retenção e desistência, principalmente entre as disciplinas introdutórias de algoritmos e programação. Dessa forma...

According to Mark Weiser, ubiquitous computing focuses on seamlessly integrating computing tasks into people’s daily lives. Because of current technology limitations, the realization of ubiquitous computing observes a limited set of aspects of ubiquitous computing, such as, mobility and context, which are based on services that integrate the users with the resources that are present on a delimited ubiquitous environment (such as in smart spaces). Instead, we explored a different approach, in which services are used not to integrate an individual user with the environment, but to integrate the users present in the environment with one another. One way to realize this aspect is by using content sharing, first-class application dat, that serve as integration medium between users. However, due to the environment complexity and lack of middleware platforms, applications that follow this approach are repeatedly built from scratch using raw techniques. Aiming to provide an infrastructure for the development of this kind of applications, we propose Content Sharing for Smart Spaces (C3S), a middleware that offers a high-level programming model using primitives that are based on a set of content sharing semantics and ubiquitous application concepts. The primitives express a small set of behaviors...

Scientific studies about bibliographic productions in specific areas of science are becoming common, mainly in the last decade. Such investigations usually make use of bibliometric indices to evaluate relevance of the actors that take part in scientific production process, such as: authors, institutions, venues, and subfields of the scientific area being considered. Many studies have investigated the scientific production in computer science under different views. In this work, its presented an analysis about the production of scientific article in computer science and an analysis of citations among subfields, derived from article citation network. The work present novelty not only because it considers many common sense fields in computer science, but also because it presents citation related measures chronologically. The following bibliometric measures were used: number of publications in each subfield, number of citations received by a subfield, Impact Factor, PageRank, and a measure of diversity of subfields that cite a given subfield. Most of those metrics were proposed to study articles, web pages or scientific journals and they had to be adapted to be applied to the subfield analysis. This work has derived many interesting information to computer science community. It presents an historical evolution of the computer science subfields...

Authority files maintain entity registries and are generally used by digital libraries for elaborating disambiguation tools for author names or titles of publishing venues. An authority file with detailed and consistent information on publication venues allows the improvement of such tools. This work has the objective of enriching an authority file of Computer Science publication venue. The proposal is of obtaining additional information in order to complement this already existing authority archive, by automatically extracting information from web pages, obtained by means of consultations to a research engine. The approach contemplates the steps for submitting consultations, classifying documents and extracting information of relevant documents. The classification of the pages is an important task in this work. Two approaches were implemented and experimentally evaluated: classification based only on content, and classification based on gender and content. The first obtained the best results for page conference. From the relevant pages, we extracted data such as year, edition number and date, in addition to name and abbreviation, seeking an unknown variant in written form. The experiments conducted demonstrate good results in the collection of conference information...

The way to deal with information assets means nowadays the main factor not only for the success but also for keeping the companies in the global world. The number of information security incidents has grown for the last years. The establishment of information security policies that search to keep the security requirements of assets in the desired degrees is the major priority for the companies. This dissertation suggests a unified process for elaboration, maintenance and development of information security policies, the Processo Unificado para Políticas de Segurança da Informação - PUPSI. The elaboration of this proposal started with the construction of a structure of knowledge based on documents and official rules, published in the last two decades, about security policies and information security. It's a model based on the examined documents which defines the needed security policies to be established in the organization, its work flow and identifies the sequence of hierarchy among them. It's also made a model of the entities participating in the process. Being the problem treated by the model so complex, which involves all security policies that the company must have. PUPSI has an interative and developing approach. This approach was obtained from the instantiation of the RUP - Rational Unified Process model. RUP is a platform for software development object oriented...

Computer Science is basis of many web systems, and is also responsible for a growing number of jobs and wealth creation. The aim of this study was to understand the consumer behavior (undergraduate students) decision making of Higher Education Institutions at the stages of information search and evaluation of alternatives. The sample consisted of 208 questionnaires collected through quantitative research. The Internet was the most used tool for the process of information search. In the evaluation of alternatives, the choice of course is related to professional factors, social elements, and personal convenience, and that the choice of Faculty is decided thought the evaluation of the value of the diploma in the market, brand reputation, quality of education, teachers and infrastructure. The article provides empirical evidence of consumer behavior, proposing an explanatory model about the choice of Higher Education Institutions and a hypothetical model the impact of student satisfaction in their behavioral intentions.; DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8077.2012v14n34p131 A computação, além de ser base dos diversos sistemas web, é responsável por um número crescente de empregos e pela geração de riqueza. O objetivo deste trabalho é avaliar o comportamento do consumidor (alunos de graduação) na escolha do curso de Ciência da Computação nas fases de busca de informação e avaliação das alternativas. A amostra contou com 208 questionários por meio de pesquisa quantitativa. A internet foi a ferramenta mais utilizada no processo de busca de informação. Na avaliação das  alternativas...