Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (ICITS 2018)

Processes are instruments for systematization of working activities that facilitate management and add value to the organization. This study describes results of mapping the processes of the Institute of Applied Social Sciences of Rio de Janeiro Federal Rural University (UFRRJ). The study is qualitative, exploratory and interventionist in nature. The data were collected by consulting the literature and documents and conducting interviews. We sought to ascertain the most suitable techniques and methods for the objectives of the study, and through interviews with managers and other staff members it was possible to assess the initial situation of the organization, its bottlenecks and critical points, and from the knowledge obtained, to implement improvements in the process. The results allow concluding that the mapping of processes contributed by enabling the sector to identify and better visualize the processes, identify failures, standardize activities and improve the quality of the services rendered.

This paper presents an evaluation of the use of mapping and process simulation software as a tool for value mapping, by means of analyzing the costs, time frames and resources involved in each activity that composes the process of procuring information and communication technology resources of a company with mixed public-private ownership in the Brazilian electric power sector. We mapped the company’s processes using the AS IS model and its simulation, and based on the results of the simulation we suggested the necessary corrections and adjustments. The simulation and analysis based on the TO BE model contributed to the visualization of new bottlenecks and problems, providing support for continuous improvements. The use of the ASTS&I model enabled running simulations before implementing the changes in the process, helping us to identify the possible problems by means of the performance indicators. The final result was redesign of the process and the generation of the TO BE model, which allows the evaluation and improvement of processes in the company studied before its practical implementation.

Due to increased demand for Technology Services in Brazilian Public Institutions, Information Technology (IT) planning activities are increasingly being used in organizations and IT services are maintained with goal differential in the market. The purpose of this article is to investigate how the ITIL implementation contributes to Brazilian National Institute of Cancer management model by using COBIT IT governance practices to measure organizational performance. For this, a qualitative field research was done, through interviews aimed at evaluating the perception of the subjects investigated on the research them. It was identified that the strategies converge when it comes to the initiative to improve administrative processes. The main conclusion is that ITIL and COBIT practices are equally relevant for improving the efficiency of governance cycle management in the institution under study.

The high utilization rate of mobile devices highlights the problem of vulnerability. As a result, new cybercrime techniques are created, in response to which new forensic techniques must be created, so we can deduct the importance of this paper. For some years now, there has been a significant growth in the use of mobile devices in daily life, since they allow to carry personal data in a practical, easy and comfortable way. These data are, in many cases, the target of malicious people, who, taking advantage of the vulnerabilities that these devices present, are capable of illegal actions, usually for unlawful purposes. The current research proposes, using a comparative method to allow us to formulate a forensic analysis to mobile devices with Android operating system; based on the chain of custody guidelines, compliance stages, and phases and to detect findings, nonconformities, locate vulnerabilities. Based on this process we can determine the origin of the leading causes of different types of events or crimes committed from a mobile device. Additionally, using a decision matrix, the best software for performing the forensic analysis is chosen and using Balanced Scorecard, indicators are evaluated.

One of the main challenges faced in implementing ERP systems is how to efficiently manage a project of this size. This article presents the case of the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio de Janeiro – IFRJ, which established a process-based project management solution to implement the ERP system, showing the preliminary results achieved and advantages expected with the conclusion of the program. The PMBOK method was chosen to implement the ERP, while concepts of business process management (BPM) are being used to support the activities carried out in the project. The adjustment and alignment of the methods have enabled the team to implement the system considering its complexity, interconnections and the particularities of the institute. The benefits attained from the modules implemented so far are improved agility of services, greater assertiveness in decision making e better performance, all achieved through the adoption of integrated project management.

This research addresses the implantation of ready-to-use enterprise applications in SMEs. The objective is to develop a description of the implantation process, identifying the actors involved and establishing the factors that affect the success of the whole process and of some of its components. The inceptive phase of the research is mainly based on a literature review. The Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework was used to classify the influence factors already from the literature. The emerging process model combines contributions from several authors and it encompasses three phases, later sub-divided in fourteen stages: Pre-Implantation, Implantation and Post-Implantation. The work described in this article corresponds to a research phase that aims at understanding the implantation process and its major problems, in SMEs. The following stage will lead to the development of solutions that will address those problems. The article ends with a general view of the work to be done in future.

Nowadays there are various software (SW) development methodologies. However, it may be complex to select a specific methodology, especially if project managers or leaders do not have sufficient experience, or if the project to be carried out has characteristics that they have not previously worked with. In this paper, we consider a set of variables and criteria to propose a model, in order to select a particular SW development methodology. It is important to recognize that, while many factors may influence the selection of a SW development methodology, there are key points to consider, such as available resources, project requirements, among others. The result of the present study is a model that guides decision making for the selection and adoption of a SW development methodology.

Data models and semantics are a key aspect for the valorization of data in cross-domain applications and to obtain knowledge/insights beyond the original applications (vertical use cases). An important role of Big Data and a key fundament of its success is this capacity to discover and extract new knowledge beyond the original use of data, in order to learn, optimize processes and understand the hidden rules of our world. This works presents the different data models from standardization bodies such as IEEE PAR2530, ITU-T FG DPM, ETSI ISG CIM and oneM2M, W3C SSN, OMA LwM2M etc. An analysis and comparative among all of them and also the opportunities to link them in order to guarantee that we can obtain the major value through co-operation among cities and different departments. This work is contextualized in the principles from the Open and Agile Smart Cites (OASC) and linked initiatives focused on data management cross-cities and large scale pilots.

This article seeks to reflect on the changes in tourism in the digitalization era. Regarding the tourism industry, the development of technology and the internet have been an asset. The adoption of information and communication technologies has led to changes in the way of communication with the individual or institutional clients and enables the adoption of innovative business models and electronic sales channels of tourism products. It is crucial the information about demand/tourists, tourist destinations, amenities, availability, pricing, geographic information and weather, supply and transport, information about companies, intermediaries and competitors; trends in the tourism market, prices, products and tourist packages, Marketing Organization of tourist destinations, trends in the industry, size and nature of tourism, as well as policies and development plans. The role of the ICT in tourism has become an essential tool in today’s world of quick information.

The biggest challenge of Web application is the inestimable losses arising from security flaws. Two approaches were advanced by a number of scholars to provide security to Web space. One of such approach is vulnerability assessment, which is a conscious effort to isolate, identify and recognize potentials vulnerabilities exploited by attackers. The second being the estimation and determination of level of risks/threats posed to Web applications by vulnerabilities obvious to the developer (or tester); this is generally referred to as penetration testing. Recently, there is Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) that combined these two schemes to improve safety and effectively combat the menace of attackers on Web applications. This paper proposed Fuzzy Classifier-based Vulnerability and Assessment Testing (FCVAPT) model to provide security for sensitive data/information in Web applications. Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and Structured Query Language (SQL) injections were selected for evaluation of proposed FCVAPT model. FCVAPT model’s classification performance for MSE, MAPE and RMSE were 33.33, 14.81% and 5.77% respectively. FCVAPT is considerably effective for detecting vulnerability and ascertaining the nature of threats/risks available to Web applications.

The rapid rise in the technology today has brought to limelight mobile devices which are now being used as a tool to commit crime. Therefore, proper steps need to be ensured for Confidentiality, Integrity, Authenticity and legal acquisition of any form of digital evidence from the mobile devices. This study evaluates some mobile forensic tools that were developed mainly for mobile devices memory and SIM cards. An experiment was designed with five android phones with different Operating System. Four tools were used to find out the capability and efficiency of the tools when used on the sampled phones. This would help the forensic investigator to know the type of tools that will be suitable for each phone to be investigated for acquiring digital evidence. The evaluation result showed that AccessData FTK imager and Paraben device seizure performs better than Encase and Mobiledit. The experimental result shows that, Encase could detect the unallocated space on the mobile deice but could retrieve an deleted data.

Cloud computing is gradually becoming accepted in different sectors and businesses are beginning to adopt the concept’s shared infrastructure and applications. The aim of this paper is to design and implement a simple prototype of a cloud based application for SMEs to manage their human resources challenges. The choice of an Employee Information Management System (EIMS) is due to the fact that one of the basic challenges of SMEs is human resource management and how to effectively manage employee information. The prototype developed in this study is targeted at the Software as a Service (SaaS) layer of the cloud framework. It leverages on existing cloud platform providers to deliver four core modules, which include: payroll management, record management, leave management and staff appraisal. Among the things this study seeks to achieve is a cheaper and cost effective solution to some basic issues affecting human resource management in SMEs.

Today small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in the economy and are considered the engines of global economic growth. In today’s environment of mature economies, stagnant markets and fierce competition, consumers are increasingly informed and demanding personalized treatment and products and services that meet their needs. In this context, SMEs can remain in the market, and maintain a competitive advantage, if they are able to respond to customers’ needs in a timely manner. That is possible if supported by the appropriate information systems and information technologies. Actually, many SMEs are far from accessing all the available data, because they have neither the knowledge nor financial capacity to acquire tools that allow you to extract knowledge from your internal and external databases. However, is possible by combining a database that provides behavioral information from your prospects and combining that data with the spatial information of those customers. This joint allows a comprehensive analysis that is possible through the use of segmentations techniques, which supports marketing campaigns in an effective way, promoting visibility in the market, and allowing acquiring or maintaining a strategic positioning, using inexpensive tools.

This paper presents an analysis of new concepts such as big data, smart data and a data lake. It is to sought integrate learning management systems with these platforms and contribute to education by making it personalised and of quality. For this study, the data and needs of a university in Ecuador have been considered. This university has set its goals to the discovery of patterns, using data mining techniques applied to cubes generated in a data warehouse. However, the institution wants to integrate all the systems and sensors that contribute to the educational development of the student. Integrating more systems into the data warehouse has compromised the veracity of the data and the processing capabilities have been surpassed by the volume of data. The paper proposes the use of one of the platforms analysed and its tools to generate knowledge and to help the students to learn.

The present research proposes a method for the construction of a corpus for the early detection of Alzheimer’s, by identifying basic patterns of emotions on video, from the collection of patient information in the form of videos, analysis and identification of emotions based on facial expressions and finally validation by two statistical measures: weighted Kappa and Kappa. Applying the method on a corpus of 40 videos, an average score of 0.60 obtained in the Kappa index and 0.67 in the weighted Kappa index, which indicates a good agreement among the observers, and provides encouraging results for the use of the corpus in automatic learning, on the patterns of emotions that allow the detection of Alzheimer’s disease.

The present research focuses on the prosume of the third wave, being an issue of worldwide interest and known as the intangible wealth of the economy, which has originated from the Internet, where users have the possibility of not only being passive consumers, but also to become active consumers or called prosumers. In this context, we intend investigate the causes that originate the low production of content in learning websites and social networks in the cantons of La Libertad and Salinas. The study use a quantitative approach and an descriptive research, concluding in the lack of educational policies and the weak culture in the use of the web by governments and higher education institutions, as well as the lack of interest and of knowledge in contributing or producing on the web by young people.

Recognition of regions is consolidated as a branch of the computer vision that so far no limitation, new developments are being developed every day methods that allow more or less precision; distinguish points, areas and elements of interest both in photographs as well as video. There are currently several comparative studies which focus on analysis of descriptors on images without regions, so the proposal of this study intended to show a comparative analysis of the methods and algorithms that are more robust with respect to descriptors focused on the detection of license plates, in the end we obtain values of robustness that they compare with studies of correspondence previous ones.

Using DSR approach, this paper proposes the design and evaluation of a model type artifact, for the alignment of software project management with business strategy in Very Small Entities (VSE). The model design phase establishes the alignment strategy and processes to value generation, as well as their indicators, using IT best practices combination. The validation phase is done through the model application in a case study, with three software projects with different levels of complexity and progress, into an Ecuadorian VSE. The Case Study evidences the following factors with the most significant effect: value generation assurance, application of alignment processes and procedures; and, early adoption of the model. So, the work contributes providing a practical tool for the practitioners and on the expansion of the existing body of knowledge concerning the alignment of Software Projects with the Business Strategy.

Hospitals have several distinct services besides in-patient and out-patient health care. This service diversity leads to huge complexity and to high cost of the hospital management. However, specific characteristics of health services, such as the diversity of professionals and their autonomy, the variety of procedures, the different types of information and often the lack of an integrated system of information, make cost calculation a big challenge. In Brazil, there are only a few hospitals that can calculate their costs and utilize them as a tool for effective management. This study presents the preliminary results of TDABC use for calculating the costs of surgical procedures at a medium-sized hospital, as well as to use business process analysis and modeling for its implementation. The results attained so far indicate that TDABC is an adequate method for calculation and effective control of costs and a tool for improving processes as well.

Easy-to-use and affordable means of production (e.g. 3D printer), access to these technologies (e.g. in makerspaces) and powerful tools for online product design led to the emergence of open source hardware (OSH). Like in open source software, projects and online platforms have been evolving around physical products from various technologies where people jointly develop and freely share designs. We also find businesses that sell products made from these designs and offer complimentary services. This decentralized and collaborative model of value creation offers new opportunities for social, economic and ecological sustainability, but also calls for a different understanding beyond traditional notions. Results from an exploratory study on OSH projects and companies revealed that licensing is a critical issue, communities and partners play a key role in the open source ecosystem and modes of value creation are either centered around design or production in combination with a mix of complimentary services.

The research work addresses mainly issues related to the adoption of models, methodologies and knowledge management tools that implement a pervasive use of the latest technologies in Semantic Web for the improvement of business processes and Enterprise 2.0 applications. The contribution of research that is intended to give, consists in the identification and definition of a uniform and general model, a “Knowledge Enterprise Model”, the original model with respect to the canonical approaches of enterprise architecture. All studies and analysis are finalized and validated by defining a methodology and related software tools to support, for the improvement of processes related to the life cycles of best practices across the enterprise.

Enhance production flow in a Company is of prior importance, not just regarding the general functioning of the underlying production system itself but also regarding all the more or less closely related issues, varying from the warehouse organization and materials handling and space management, to general productivity improvements to reach by a Company. In this paper is presented a case study regarding the analysis of production flow in a textile company in Portugal, and the main improvements proposals are exposed and briefly described.

Database marketing (DBM) refers to the use of information databases to support marketing activities in order to obtain useful information to establish and maintain a profitable interaction with the customer. This work focuses the failures of traditional approaches to the database marketing, proposing the use of techniques from artificial intelligence, in the context of business intelligence in marketing areas. Based in literature review, it’s explored a vision for the systemic use of methods and techniques of data mining in projects of DBM, and proposed a conceptual model that combines DBM activities with appropriate data mining techniques, contributing to efficiency and effectiveness of database marketing projects.

Noise pollution is a common problem in urban environments. Although the authorities in some cities have launched campaigns to monitor the problem, the resulting maps are not always easily accessible and are generally not detailed enough to understand the temporal and spatial variations in noise to which people are exposed. In this context, information technologies and systems are an added value in improving the mapping of noise pollution. The objective of this article is solve a gap in the province of Santa Elena, the absence of noise map in urban areas, and consequently the lack of knowledge of the impact of noise pollution on the population. This paper presents a model for participative sensing in noise pollution mapping system using a smartphone, allowing citizens to contribute to the collection of noise data, thus participating in a more sustainable environmental management.

Context: In experimental software engineering (ESE), experimental replication is applied to validate results of an experiment. Much information and one version of the experimental materials are required for replication. Prior to the replication execution, all or part of the materials may require changes, producing new or modified versions of these, which should be incorporated into the material of the original experiment. There is a direct relationship between the increase in the number of replications with the increase of versions of the experimental material, which commonly causes confusion and disorder for experimental administrators. Objective: The aim of this paper is to conduct a mapping study to locate articles about the use of experimental material management tools in experimental replication in ESE. Method: We applied the mapping study to search, analyze and select published papers from reported replications. Results: We analyzed a total of 592 articles published from 1998 to 2014, 24 of them have been pre-selected and 4 have finally been selected. Conclusion: The results show the limited existence of articles on this subject. In addition, our analysis has allowed to identify that most of them suffer from problems in versions management for both replication and experimental material. These data provide information of interest to start a research about adoption of the paradigm of software configuration management inside the management of the experimental material in ESE.

Even though it has been theorized that initiatives on sustainable development should pursue an equilibrium among social, environmental and economic dimensions, several studies have pointed that an unbalance exists regarding the consideration of the three dimensions. However, there is little evidence to support such unbalance. Thus, in this article, we propose a tool to determinate sustainable dimensions balance by representing sustainable efforts according to their orientation. To test our tool, we reviewed about ten years of literature from top tier journals dealing with Sustainable Supply Chain issues to establish the sustainable efforts undertaken. Our results visually unveil unbalance on research in this field and show that most research is oriented to environmental and economic aspects, leaving social issues aside.

This article describe the actual situation for the platforms designed for the IoT (internet of Things) through the denominated industry 4.0 presenting related concepts. Based on the previous information we will do a knowledge management model for the industry 4.0 acknowledging the role of the used platforms on industry.

Intelligent Transportation Systems are expected to contribute to reduce vehicle emissions. Solutions include user behavior changes, which are typically vehicle sharing programs and driving habits changes. To change driving habits, people need personalized feedback on their vehicle emissions in the routes they complete. In this work, we present a smartphone based system that returns a geopositioned emission estimation on the fly. Our estimator is based on the ARTEMIS project results. The system has been successfully tested in different routes in Malaga (Spain) in highway, rural and urban areas.

Nowadays the number of chronically idled patients has increased greatly because of unhealthy behaviors. Consequently, healthcare costs related to chronicle medical conditions have also increased. Health insurance players face new challenges on how to prevent disease burdens and how to contribute for a better quality of life and wellbeing for chronic patients. Keeping these patients aware about events requiring their immediate attention assumes therefore a key relevance, contributing simultaneously to promote an active participation of healthcare professionals in monitoring the health status and wellbeing of each chronic patient. This paper presents an information visualization engine for situational-awareness as a way to proactively monitor unhealthy risk behaviors. A metadata model was designed following a user-centric approach and addressing information visualization requirements to streamline the visual representation of events in a collaborative decision making environment. The paper presents the outcomes of a prototype configured to demonstrate how the proposed model can be applied in health insurance field.

Throughout the last decade, there has been a dramatic decline in daily physical activity among individuals which results in numerous severe health issues, including obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and high blood pressure. Pervasive applications that promote health living present a promising approach for the reduction or prevention of these health ailements. Context-awareness plays an important role in the development of these technologies. Context-aware systems can adapt to the changing context in order to better serve their users. In this paper, we propose the Extensible Context Ontology for Persuasive Physical-Activity Applications (ECOPPA), a formal context modeling scheme for applications that promote physical activity.

Monitoring the road network status of an entire country in a visual way (as traditionally) is very hard, so different mechanisms to do it in an automatic manner have been investigated. In particular, nomadic pervasive sensing platforms based on VANETs have been recently deployed. However, the level of road damage is a relative variable, and it is necessary to predict the particular impact of the same in each case, in order to prioritize the conditioning works. Therefore, in this paper a predictive model for forecasting the accident rate in mountain roads, considering the measures previously obtained through a nomadic sensing environment (and through the weather office) is defined. The model considers the type of road under study as well as different analysis scales to perform the calculations. The model is based on Taylor’s series and multivariate functions. Real data related to Valais (Switzerland) road network is employed to construct and validate the proposed model.

Artificial intelligence has gained great importance in the last decades because based on its techniques, it is possible to make autonomous systems. In addition, it is possible to make those systems able to learn based on the previous interactions with users. This paper presents one proposal for an agent to play the Quoridor game based on some improvements in the graph model of the board. It is done by using artificial intelligence techniques to provide the capacity to learn through games played against users. Thus, learning is achieved through the use of game trees, where some of the nodes are going to be stored using a graph database. Since graph databases are one of the subgroup of the noSQL databases, which focuses in the relation representation between nodes, such databases are suitable for this kind of approaches.

Creating high-precision and reliable control systems with elements of artificial intelligence is a relevant problem. In existing works, this issue has been considered. However, the important and urgent task, not yet solved, is to reduce energy consumption in relay control systems with artificial intelligence components (RCS AIC) without degrading their stability and quality. The goal of this work is estimating the energy consumption in the RCS AIC and its use for the management of the thermal facility. A model of a “smart house” heating control system has been developed, the dependences of the energy consumption on the system parameters have been obtained with use of Markov process model and a method for reducing them has been proposed. An algorithm is proposed that allows us to work out recommendations on how to change the hydraulic and temperature parameters of the heating system and the tuning parameters of the control system.

This work presents an adaptation and validation of a method for automatic crop row detection from images captured in potato fields (Solanum tuberosum) for initial growth stages based on the micro-ROI concept. The crop row detection is a crucial aspect for autonomous guidance of agricultural vehicles and site-specific treatments application. The images were obtained using a color camera installed in the front of a tractor under perspective projection. There are some issues that can affect the quality of the images and the detection procedure, among them: uncontrolled illumination in outdoor agricultural environments, different plant densities, presence of weeds and gaps in the crop rows. The adapted approach was designed to address these adverse situations and it consists of three linked phases. The main contribution is the ability to detect straight and curved crop rows in potato crops. The performance was quantitatively compared against two existing methods, achieving acceptable results in terms of accuracy and processing time.

Biometric systems are being widely used today for automated authentication purposes. In particular, vascular biometrics or vein recognition is receiving a large amount of attention because of its several advantages related to security and convenience. However, images containing vein patterns normally include more information than just those structural arrangements. Thus, we propose a finger-vein biometric system based exclusively on textural features to evaluate the usefulness of the remaining information around vein patters. Textural features are obtained through gray-level co-occurrence matrices from the wavelet detail coefficients belonging to finger-vein images. The evaluation of the proposed biometric system is based on a standardized finger-vein database and its results show favorable improvements on the finger-vein authentication accuracy when textural features are incorporated in the biometric process.

During capturing documents using camera or camera phone and scanning the documents, document skew is unavoidable. Skew in line and paragraph of handwritten document is varying for different people. Document analysis and character recognition efficiency is mainly depending on document pre-processing, document skew correction. Document skew detection and correction is one of the difficult step before document analysis. In this paper we proposing multi-level Run-Length-Smoothed Image (RLSA) skew detection and correction for kannada hand written document image. We have major two sections, first section is pre-processing techniques like Haar wavelet decomposition, maximum gradient, 4, 8 connective Laplacian methods to extract text region without losing data. Second section is multi-level skew detection, horizontal and vertical projection profile are used to detect the page boarder and further RLSA skew detection is applied to find skew angle and rotate document by desired angle, this removes the document skew occurred while capturing the image. Later, the skewed document will be further processed to remove line and paragraph skew angle by applying RLSA skew detection technique for each segmented line and rotate each line by desired angle. Performance of proposed system is performed for kannada hand written documents; the experimental results are discussed; the proposed system is encouraging.

The present article proposes a method for the estimation of geometrical properties of short natural fibers that act as reinforcing phase in polymeric composites. The extraction of the image attributes is performed based on the analysis of microscopic images taken in different sections of the material, requiring a minimal user intervention. The proposed method estimates the orientation tensor of the short fibers from geometrical characteristics such as inclination, length, width and aspect ratio, using an elliptical covering on each fiber. The method validation was performed on a polypropylene composite reinforced with 30% by weight of bamboo short fibers (guadua angustifolia species), the accuracy and precision of the proposed method proved to be adequate. The $$ a_{11} $$a11 element of the orientation tensor was evaluated and the results agree in 98% with respect to the commercial software. This technique is a fast alternative of low cost in characterization of new materials.

When many users consult service desks simultaneously, these typically saturate. This causes the customer attention to be delayed more than usual. To increase the amount of human agents is a costly process for organizations. All this has motivated the design of a knowledge-based system that automatically assists both customers and human agents at the service desk. Web technology was used to enable clients to communicate with a software agent via chat. Techniques of Natural Language Processing were used for the software agent to understand the customer requests. The domain knowledge used by the software agent to understand customer requests has been codified in an ontology. A rule-based expert system (ES) was designed to perform the diagnostic task. This paper presents a knowledge-based system allowing client to communicate with the service desk through a chat system using free text. Evaluations conducted with users have shown an improvement in the attention of service desks when the software developed is used.

This works maps the offshoring network between regions and countries worldwide through the Panama Papers. The Panama Papers 2016 divulgence is the largest leak of offshoring and tax avoidance documentation. The leaked documents contain 2.6 TB of information involving more than two hundred thousand of enterprises in more than two hundreds countries. Using the Offshore leaks database we related entities around the world through different types of relationships. These relationships were used in order to build an offshoring network at countries and geographical regions scales. The network is characterized and described using chord diagrams to map the intra and inter relation between the countries and regions, discovering which of them are the more prominent in the worldwide offshoring scenario.

Automatic cancer diagnosis can be performed based on different types of data sets. Some of them are microarray data, clinical trial data and cytopathological data. Usually class prediction is done by chosen classification method, for example a machine learning algorithm, and uses only one type of the available data. In this work an additional predictive value of a fusion of these three types of data is examined. To perform such research, authors upgrade and use their recently developed Spicy system. Different data fusion strategies have been tested on thyroid cancer data set. The workflow that has been created and the new module of a data fusion implemented in the Spicy system allows to qualify fusion of microarray data, clinical trials data and information about the Bethesda system class as a valuable method of prediction the thyroid nodule malignancy.

In this paper, we propose a Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to recommender Learning Resources in a Smart Classroom. We have proposed a Smart Environment for a Classroom in previous works, based on Multi-agent Systems, called SaCI. One of its agents is a recommender system of Learning Resources. In this paper, we define this recommender system using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps. Our recommender system exploits the knowledge, learns, discovers new information, infers preferences, among other thing. For that, it uses five types of knowledge from SaCI: students, learning resources, topics, context and criticism. The performance results of our recommender system based on FCMs are very encouraging.

One of the challenges in the public health sector is to improve individually and collectively life quality of the population. The availability of digital tools for the manipulation and visualization of information helps to address this challenge, due to the agility to understand the events, the facility to analyze situations, and the support to the decision-making process based on facts and not in assumptions. Currently, there are projects oriented to support decision-making in the health sector. However, it is not clear how they are developed, nor how information should be shown to facilitate the interaction of different types of actors. These issues motivate the present work that is a strategy for the creation of a digital public health observatory to integrate concepts, tools, methods and methodologies of Business Intelligence and Visual Analytics. The validation of this proposal in the National Institute of Health (Colombia) shown the opportunity to improve support decision-making process.

Students’ academic achievement is largely driven by their social phenomena, which is shaped by social influence and opinion dynamics. In this paper, we employed a machine learning technique to detect social influence and sentiment in text-based students’ life stories. The life stories were first pre-processed and clustered using k-means with euclidean distance. After that, we identified domestic, peer and school staff as the main influences on students’ academic development. The various influences were used as class labels for supervised classification using SMO, MNB and J48 decision tree classifiers. In addition, the stories were manually labelled with positive and negative sentiments. We employed 10-folds cross-validation in classifying the sentiments and the social influences in the story corpus. The result show that peer influence is more salient on students’ academic development followed by staff (15%) and domestic influences (12%). However, the remaining 54% of the stories contains unrelated social and other influences. Also, Students expressed more negative sentiment towards academic engagement than the positive sentiments. As per the classifier performance, SMO was found to be superior over MNB and J48 in the sentiment classification while MNB also performed slightly better than the SMO and J48 in the social influence analysis.

The development of smart devices, Internet of Things (IOT) and cloud computing is generating an expressive increase in the volume of public health data that can be collected from various sources and analyzed in an unprecedented way. The demand for Big Data analysis is increasing progressively. The development of applications that support the continuing evaluation of early detection programs is among the priorities in Brazil’s cancer control. This paper presents the development of a big data application employed on the management, processing and analysis of large-scale Brazilian cancer diseases data, and the benefits for cancer prevention and control derived from its implementation.

Electrocardiography, technique, which is an essential tool in the diagnosis of heart disease, as well as other organs, is used by doctors for over 100 years. It is used to measure electrical activity of the heart as a function of time and present it in digital or analogue form. Whilst the standard 12 lead ECG is the basic clinical method of heart diagnosis it has its drawbacks. Measuring all 12 leads is often difficult and impractical, most of all it restricts patient movement. In 1988, Gordon Dower developed a system of quasi-orthogonal lead called EASI, which uses only 5 electrodes in order to register standard 12 lead ECG signals. The main goal of this work is to present a new tool using machine learning algorithms which transforms electrocardiographic signals (ECG) performed by EASI into a standard 12-channel ECG, which therefore could be an ideal tool for diagnose of NCDs.

Cancer results from genetic aberrations that affect multiple intracellular processes, combined with evolution and clonal selection that give cancer a significant advantage over heathy cells. Identification of genes and processes that function improperly in cancer cells is a significant challenge, necessary for the proper understanding of cancerogenesis and for the development of successful treatment scenarios. This paper shows the advantages of utilizing data provided by various methods to complement the knowledge about alterations in regulatory processes associated with cancer. Using four different experiment types that focus on mutations and indels, gene expression, copy number variation and methylation, used to study the genome of over 2000 patients treated for breast, thyroid and prostate cancer, we test some of the assumptions used in cancer research associated with coverage and mutual exclusivity of alterations. We show that individual methods do not allow to observe alterations in all cancer related processes and that the exclusivity assumption is valid only for individual alteration types. We additionally show the relationship between the violation of those assumptions and clinical data, at the level of individual patients, providing a comprehensive description of the analysis strategy used and its possible impact on the interpretation of data.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack is a vulnerability typical of Web applications, where malicious scripts are injected into trusted websites. It allows attackers to execute scripts in the victims browser which can hijack user sessions, deface websites, steal cookies or redirect the user to malicious sites. This paper presents Cookie Scout, an analytical model for preventing XSS attacks, which main goal is to classify cookies according to their parameters. For this purpose we collect, analyse and classify the type of traffic in a botnet using the Browser Exploitation Framework (Beef) tool for execute attacks and malicious code remotely in a controlled testing environment. With the parameters obtained from the traffic analysis, an algorithm was designed to detect suspicious websites based on the reputation of their cookies. The results obtained showed that the parameters of the cookies were a good reference to determine malicious websites.

Software development for the communication networks ‘monitoring is usually based on Open Source software components, as an effective and low cost technological option. However, when we evaluated a product developed with Open Source components, we found that its efficiency is less than other similar Open Source software developed with proprietary tools; which is unusual or at least it isn’t expected. To the best of our knowledge this phenomenon has not been reported in the literature. Hence, our aim was to identify the circumstances that explain why the efficiency of Open Source software applications tends to be less than Open Source applications developed with proprietary software tools. A controlled experiment was performed at Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE of Ecuador to compare the performance of two software tools for communication networks’ monitoring. A post hoc analysis reveled that some causal relationships that could explain the unexpected behavior of compared applications’ efficiency. From the statistical perspective, there is no significant difference in effectiveness between Open Source and proprieta- ry applications for communication networks’ monitoring. Efficiency of the Open Source tools depends on a large extent of software components used for their integration, which apparently is not considered in the development of this kind of applications.

The market of wearable devices, which includes advanced devices such as smart watches, fitness trackers, augmented and virtual reality headsets, wearable cameras and other gadgets, is growing at a spectacularly fast pace thanks to the acceptance by users with open arms. However, there exist some concerns about how wearable devices could affect people’s privacy. This paper presents a literature review of privacy issues related to wearable devices. Due to the novelty of this topic, there is a lack of legislation and most wearable manufacturers do not respect the privacy of their customers. The main concern is related to the potential incorrect use of health data collected by wearable devices. Finally, from the information reviewed, several implications to be considered by all stakeholders are drawn.

In this paper, we describe how older adults perceive online health webpages, using a checklist and heatmaps to provide visualization of users’ gaze data. Preliminary results indicate that older adults demonstrate a consistent viewing pattern when viewing a page perceived as favorable. When viewing a page perceived as unfavorable, older adults tended to ignore many sections of the webpage. Results of this research study provide information in relation to how perceived favorability influences page viewing behavior.

This paper defines a method for evaluating the accessibility of online content editors by considering Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) and part B of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (ATAG 2.0). The method includes 63 accessibility features that should be met by the images, headings and tables, which are inserted through an online content editor. The compliance of these guidelines contributes to the creation of accessible content so that visually impaired people using assistive technologies can easily access the content. Furthermore, the results of this study provide criteria for those people who have the responsibility of selecting an accessible online content editor. The proposed method has made it possible to meet the objective set out in this research document and can be used to evaluate the accessibility of learning management systems and course management systems.

Serious games allow educating in a fun way in different areas and its development in mobile devices has been growing since the advent of smartphones. However, accessibility for people with hearing impairments has not been considered as a necessary element in the development of this type of video games. Unfortunately, there is no model for assessing the accessibility of serious games for people with hearing impairments, although some video games development companies recommend general guidelines for the construction of these applications. This paper presents a compilation and analysis of the current accessibility guidelines for the development of video games for people with hearing impairments. As a case study, an assessment of a mobile game is made to identify its level of accessibility. An analysis tool for those who wish to develop or evaluate serious games for people with hearing impairments on mobile devices is proposed.

The main reason for motor vehicular accidents is the driver drowsiness. This work shows a surveillance system developed to detect and alert the vehicle driver about the presence of drowsiness. It is used a smartphone like small computer with a mobile application using Android operating system to implement the Human Computer Interaction System. For the detection of drowsiness, the most relevant visual indicators that reflect the driver’s condition are the behavior of the eyes, the lateral and frontal assent of the head and the yawn. The system works adequately under natural lighting conditions and no matter the use of driver accessories like glasses, hearing aids or a cap. Due to a large number of traffic accidents when driver has fallen asleep this proposal was developed in order to prevent them by providing a non-invasive system, easy to use and without the necessity of purchasing specialized devices. The method gets 93.37% of drowsiness detections.

In this article it presents the development of an interactive system, which allows the user to interact with an air flow temperature control process, implemented with two control algorithms: Proportional Integral Derivative PID and Fuzzy control. It is intended to demonstrate the usefulness of an interactive system in industrial applications, it is used a low-cost embedded system the Beaglebone Black and LINUX Debian free software, also the system allows to enter the desired control parameters and to adequately observe the behavior of the process and the efficiency of the controller; for the verification of the interactive system, a model of air flow temperature control plant was constructed, which is currently used as a didactic module in the Laboratory of Process Control of the University.

This work delivers the design of an interactive system that allows end user to interact with an intuitive, friendly and efficient way within the process control world. Using Raspberry Pi 3 with a high-level language, a fuzzy control algorithm applied to a flow station is implemented, whose information will be sent in serial form to an interface developed in the LabVIEW software. This interface has three windows, in which you can modify the value of the setpoint, trends views and save historical data for the subsequent processing of such information. This will replace the expensive conventional display screens, with interfaces developed in computer. Besides, it is demonstrated its applicability and ease of communication with low-cost embedded boards, through experimental tests and usability surveys.

An Interactive system is presented for the rehabilitation of hands and wrists using the leap motion device and the Unity3D software. Two applications were created with several movements were by programming such as flexion, wrist extension, pronation, supination and adduction. Through the interfaces the users have immersion and perform the exercises correctly because at the end of the game a visual and audible feedback is presented. Five people used the system and then the SEQ usability test was applied with results of 59.6. This indicates that the system has a good acceptance and can be used for rehabilitation.

This study describes the problems of web accessibility, especially for people with disabilities, as external conditions can distort user behavior and limit the data that can be obtained. Several studies recommend combining some methods with each other to achieve better results. This article proposes a combined approach, with the application of automatic and heuristic tools to make websites more accessible. In this study, we apply the Web Site Accessibility Assessment Methodology (WCAG-EM) considered in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). From the results, we conclude that most tested websites can achieve an acceptable level of compliance. We propose that future work can focus on optimizing this combined approach, also this study can serve as a guide to help develop more inclusive websites.

Dyscalculia is a specific learning disorder, reflected in an arithmetic capacity below the expected on individuals of similar chronological age, IQ and schooling. In order to improve these abilities, several studies agree that didactic strategies with play activities help to improve the difficulties of learning to count, to do basic mathematical calculations, to define groups of objects and in spatial thinking. From this context, the objective is to develop an educational game for children suffering from dyscalculia, available to the public on the Arcade and Android platforms. For development, the agile XP methodology is applied, in addition to GameSalad Creator and Viewer, OpenProj, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Voice Record Pro, and C++ as the base programming language. The application has been submitted for validation in institutions of initial and primary education.

In this paper we present a proposal for an Intelligent Tutoring System with context-based natural language for procedural training in a 2D/3D virtual environment, in which each student will be trained takes into account his/her specific features, his/her progress in the development of the task and the environment where the task is performed. In that way, tutoring feedback will be the result of a context-aware dialogue that will be managed through a dialogue manager built on some of the well-known platforms currently available.

Mobile Assisted Language Learning consists of using the mobile devices with the purpose of supporting the acquisition of languages. We aim to investigate how different people use mobile applications (apps) on their own initiative and out of a formal educational to improve language skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing). In this exploratory work, we present how a particular user interacts with 18 different interlocutors, both English native and non-native English speakers in three months using the app Tandem to improve him/her English proficiency. We analyzed these interactions to find (i) usability issues which may interfere on the productive and satisfactory use of the app and (ii) potential learning situations, discussing about the feasibility and the efficiency of mobile learning in the language acquisition. We found 4 types of interventions that promoted some kind of learning and some difficulties related to the app’s usability.

Autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, constitute the most common disabilities from a medical point of view. In others individual fields, the Assistive Technology use constitute a current option to improve the Quality of Life. In this case, the free available specialized software covers several competences of life, like language and communication, autonomy, sensorimotor, social skills, mathematics, knowledge of the natural and social environment, and digital competences. The objective of this research was to evaluate the quality of Android apps using Mobile Application Rating Scale. A systematic search using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses was conducted using Google Play store as a base in August 2017. Evaluated apps were classified according to their respective competence of life. The results showed that the evaluated apps needed improvements in customization and interactivity. Also, an apps list based on Mobile Application Rating Scale scores, useful for therapist, parents, and people with disability has been established.

Unmanned Air Vehicles are technological tools that in recent years have raised interest in researchers and developers for their multiple civil and military applications. UAVs carry on board a large number of sensors and electronic equipment to ensure optimal operation. However, several times these devices are from different suppliers or developers making difficult to integrate them in the aircraft. To solve this integration problem, an application based on ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Load) systems is presented. ETL system extracts, processes and shares information from propulsion, communication, transponder, electro-optical and energy systems. ETL systems integrate signals with different communication protocols, providing efficiency and high speed in data processing. The ETL system is developed in embedded platform with multi-task execution capabilities and real-time information processing. ETL system integrates equipment with different communication protocols in order to facilitate operation, control, monitor and information record tasks of UAV.

This investigation presents the architecture of a tool of social networks management using Web semantic techniques; it is expected to serve as a guide for developing through free software a social networks manager. As part of the methodology, it is done an analysis of diverse tools of important path that have influence over the work of Social Media Management, to conclude in the model proposed in this investigation. At the same time, this document focuses on standing out how the three economic sectors of greater income in Ecuador (Telecommunications, Supermarkets and Financial) use the social networks to promote their organizations through the platforms of social media, allowing by this way a greater conversion ratio around the creation of new and/or potential customers. Therefore, it is demonstrated through a case study that communities of interest online are generated in favor of companies, brands or products. For the development of the case, metrics and intelligence analysis in Social Networks tools are used, getting as a result a complete detail of the influence of social networks in these sectors and the architectural model of an application that could be developed to increase the utilization of information technologies.

This article shows a proposal of the architecture that can be adopted by the supply chains immersed in the industry 4.0, that its considered like the fourth industrial revolution, where the virtual and the real world merge. The employed methodology consists in different phases that began with the review of the state of the investigation literature, making an exhaustive and methodical analysis of the proposals, advances, methodologies, future investigations, results and conclusions obtained. As second, the architecture is proposed and as third, starting out from the architecture, a mobile application is created, finishing with the validation of the architecture, checking the usability of the mobile application. The mobile application was validated through a mathematical model that measures the usability of the application. For that reason, the connection between the sensor layer and the application layer gets validated. The present investigation exposes the tools that offer guidelines to the supply chain to be included in the industry 4.0 and gain competitive advantages.

Geographic information system (GIS) is an organized integration of hardware, software and geographic data designed to recover, store, manipulate, analyze and to visualize geographically referenced information. In the software architecture for enterprise systems, it is essential the paradigm of the component orientation, which can be mature tools, modules, libraries or complete systems. This research shows a mapping study which objective is know the state of the art of the software architecture components for the GIS Web open source development. The results show that 74.19% of are integrations of existing open source components, 16.13% add tools to the software architecture, and 9.68% integrate new methods to solve or improve algorithms that are part of the architecture. This clearly indicates that further research is needed to experience new tools and/or new algorithms to solve or improve existing ones.

Research in software engineering generates results that are supposed to be useful to practitioners. However, there is little evidence of the degree of adoption by the development industry. This article presents an investigation about the practices of the software industry in Chile to obtain information on its processes, tools and methods, as well as factors of success, risk and failure in the development of a software product. For this, an ethnographic study was carried out by making short stays in a set of companies dedicated to the development of software. As a result, it was obtained that the companies perform their projects through a set of good practices, and identifying the client as a fundamental factor in the development of their projects. The study allowed knowing the gaps between national and international practices as a reference. This can help guide future industry methodological strategies.

The purpose of this research was to design and develop a mobile location computer system to monitor the location and emergency alerts for priority groups, in particular, people with disabilities, the elderly and children; through the use of electronic devices, the mobile network and several web technologies. For the analysis of the information and functional requirements of the system, bibliographical and field research was applied. It was applied surveys and interviews to the research group and experts in software design and development, with the aim of validating the functional and non-functional requirements defined for the project. Its implementation will contribute to improve the quality of life of people that belong to the priority group, providing them independence and relaxing because the application can generate alerts to their caregivers in cases of emergencies.

Most of software solutions for phylogenetic inference try to find the best phylogenetic tree according to one reconstruction criterion, maximum parsimony or maximum likelihood, making the exploration of different hypothesis based on these two features a complex process. In this work, we present a novel software tool for phylogenetic inference based on a multiobjective approach called MORPHY, which searches for a set of compromise solutions according to the criteria of maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood at the same time. This tool not only works with DNA sequences, but also allows to deal with protein coded datasets. It is implemented using the multiobjective and phylogenetic features of the software MO-Phylogenetics, and the program outputs are a set of optimized trees in Newick format. A consensus tree from all the obtained solutions can also be produced. MORPHY’s executable, source code, and sample datasets are publicly available at the web repository: https://github.com/KhaosResearch/MORPHY.

This paper proposes a novel approach to use cross-spectral images to achieve a better performance with the proposed Adaptive Harris corner detector comparing its obtained results with those achieved with images of the visible spectra. The images of urban, field, old-building and country category were used for the experiments, given the variety of the textures present in these images, with which the complexity of the proposal is much more challenging for its verification. It is a new scope, which means improving the detection of characteristic points using cross-spectral images (NIR, G, B) and applying pruning techniques, the combination of channels for this fusion is the one that generates the largest variance based on the intensity of the merged pixels, therefore, it is that which maximizes the entropy in the resulting Cross-spectral images.Harris is one of the most widely used corner detection algorithm, so any improvement in its efficiency is an important contribution in the field of computer vision. The experiments conclude that the inclusion of a (NIR) channel in the image as a result of the combination of the spectra, greatly improves the corner detection due to better entropy of the resulting image after the fusion, Therefore the fusion process applied to the images improves the results obtained in subsequent processes such as identification of objects or patterns, classification and/or segmentation.

The evolution of technology in interconnection solutions such as Networks or the Internet, have allowed many communication architectures to be born and a varied interconnectivity. Here, we present a project that relies on the mobile agent computing paradigm. A middleware using the JavaScript language that allows the execution and ability to move mobile agents through the local network and Internet. This initiative arose as a way of dealing with problems raised by the considerable amount of existing Java based mobile agents middleware, which force the installation of the Java Virtual Machine in the devices, making complicated its execution in operating systems like macOS, iOS and others non-java friendly O.S. Our middleware works steadily in all operating systems, requiring only the installation of node.js. For mobile platforms the middleware is developed using React-native that allows it to run on mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS.

Recent developments in remote sensing are significantly contributing to exploration and data acquisition through improved efficiency and risk reduction. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are involved in a wide range of remote sensing applications, as they are rapid, efficient and flexible acquisition systems. They represent a valid alternative or a complementary solution to satellite or airborne sensors. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), on the other hand, have proliferated significantly in recent years thanks to their timely, cheap and extremely rich data acquisition capacity with respect to other acquisition systems. This paper analyzes current state of the art in UAV-based remote sensing and WSN support for the generation of integrated data. An architecture is proposed for the combination of these technologies and the data acquisition, communication, fusion, and presentation processes are analyzed along with the proposal of future challenges.

Currently speech recognition and speaker identification based on a biometric parameter such as voice have been treated as two different worlds and in the market there are no integrated applications of these systems. The design of a system could mean a great contribution to the development of personalized commands, in the area of home automation and robotics, thanks to the availability of the message and the identification of the speaker. Therefore, the development of an integrated biometric voice system is proposed, based on a single voice sample for the identification of the speaker and the message. We use GOOGLE SPEECH API, as a voice text translation tool, and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients or MFCCs extracted from voice signal to identify speakers voice. Functional tests were carried with 50 randomly users, in the end of the study results show 96.4% efficiency in identification, demonstrating efficiency using MFCCs in speaker’s automatic recognition and verifying the use of GOOGLE SPEECH API as a fast, accurate and robust translation tool.

Telecommunications companies (TELCOs) in Peru offers promotions almost daily in social networks, mainly Facebook. There’s a lot of data in Facebook, written in natural language without meaning for computer, that TELCOs are not using to have Competitive Intelligence (CI). CI is a process that identifies decision makers information needs about competitors, collects data from public sources, gives meaning and analyze data to answer information needs and communicates results to decision makers.This paper proposes and implements a CI process for TELCOs that includes collection of 15,634 posts and 1,411,921 comments from Facebook, the creation process of TELCO ontology with 119 words and 27 concepts and classification of posts, a Web application to perform semantic search of posts and compare the results by TELCO including positive and negative comments to have CI for decision making. The proposed CI process can be used in other contexts with several competitors with equivalent services.

This paper presents a multicriteria group decision making method for evaluating the sustainability performance of groundwater remediation technologies. Interval-valued based intuitionistic fuzzy numbers are used to deal with the inherent vagueness and imprecision of the performance evaluation process. An efficient algorithm is developed for producing a closeness coefficient for determining the sustainability performance of the most suitable groundwater remediation technology alternative across all evaluation criteria. An example is presented for demonstrating the applicability of the method.

The mobile applications and context-aware or assistive technologies have the potential to improve living conditions in society. Nowadays the applications are of great help when the services or features that these offers are based on the context of the user, in the area of tourism many applications only offer to the people information of the place but it does not encourage the user to go to visit it, neither provides help or suggestion of which would be the best place to visit based on the current situation of the user. This work presents an application for Android operating system that uses the user context-aware, obtained through device sensors and the use of public APIs (Application Programming Interface), offering to the users suggestions of places to visit based on their context and encourage the user to visit more places, allowing them to interact quickly with the environment in which they are through the use of their mobile device.

Testbed facilities play a major role in the study and evolution of emerging technologies, such as those related to the Internet of Things. In this work we introduce the concept of modelled testbeds, which are 3D interactive representations of physical testbeds where the addition of virtual resources mimicking the physical ones is made possible thanks to back-end infrastructure. We present the architecture of the Syndesi testbed, deployed at the premises of University of Geneva, which was used for the prototype modelled testbed. We investigate several extrapolation techniques towards realistic value assignment for virtual sensor measurements. K-fold cross validation is performed in a dataset comprising of nearly 300’000 measurements of temperature, illuminance and humidity sensors collected from the physical sensors of the Syndesi testbed, in order to evaluate the accuracy of the methods. We obtain strong results including Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) levels below 7%.

The development of mobile apps during the last decade has had a significant increase just like the mobile devices themselves. However, the processes for developing those apps are still quite a few and not all of them consider the particular aspects of the mobile field. The present study proposes an integrated framework for mobile applications development based on improve that integrates the activities of the application development process with the main aspects of mobile environment, with the goal of improving the quality of the resulting applications.

Estimating distance from RSSI is not a straightforward task, especially when using consumer devices. The signal presents large levels of noise, and it is heavily affected by the conditions of the environment and by the devices themselves. In this paper we characterize experimentally different conditions of this noise, then we propose a filter to reduce it and to smooth and stabilize the signal; finally, we apply the filter to our test environment and validate its data. The experimental results showed that the filter has notorious benefits on precision when estimating distance from RSSI signal.

The District Health Information System (DHIS) is an information system that is hosted in the Khomas regional office of the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) in Namibia. Parallel to the DHIS, the MoHSS runs silo information systems in the 14 regions of Namibia which were donated by non-governmental organisations in addition to a regional DHIS. The DHIS and silo systems currently work in isolation from one another, hence this study is on finding a framework to enable semantic interoperability of data in these heterogeneous health information systems (HIS) so that the DHIS and these silo systems in the Namibian public hospitals can act as an integrated platform to share and exchange health- related information with each other. Thus, a protocol called Interlink protocol is developed in this research to enable integration. The DHIS and silo- interfaced system that will be developed in this research should be able to link or connect all the public hospitals in Namibia to the central database at the MoHSS for health information feed. The system would allow public hospitals to interlink with each other through a technology integrated platform. The study therefore seeks to interface DHIS and silo systems at a data level. The aim of this research therefore is to design and develop a framework for data semantic interoperability of DHIS and these other health information silo systems so that they can exchange health data and information.

Clinical notes provide medical information about the patient’s health. The automatic extraction of this information is relevant in order to analyze patterns for grouping patients with similar characteristics. In this paper, we used MetaMap to extract diseases present in 412 discharge summaries of obesity patients. The UMLS intra-source vocabulary relationships were used to make automatic aggregation of diseases. The results showed an average of 0.81 for recall, 0.92 for precision, and 0.84 for F-score. Finally, with the diseases extracted and aggregated three sub-graphs were identified; they correspond to patients with sleep apnea, those with heart diseases, and those with communicable diseases.

The aim of this study is to describe and compare the use of eHealth applications in selected European Union (EU) countries. Using data available from the European Hospital Survey (2012/2013), the study reported in this paper analyses the adoption of five of the most commonly used Health Applications in European Hospitals, namely Electronic Patient Records (EPR), Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS), ePrescribing, Integrated system for eReferral and Tele-monitoring. The analysis of the adoption of these applications by the Hospitals allows us to understand the position of Portugal in relation to the European average. It has been found that the Portuguese Hospitals are well positioned with regard to the adoption of these applications and in spite of this, remains a permanent concern to raise the levels of adoption of these applications through new projects in progress.

Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) presents an innovation process which radically changes radiology services both inside and outside the hospital setting. Earlier, the usual method for capturing, storing, retrieving, and viewing radiology images was hard copy film. The adoption of a new system frequently comes with challenges. In this article, the employment of PACS by the Brazilian National Cancer Institute was analyzed. Medical images were collected from several imaging equipment, stored and distributed to the physicians. Distinct of the implementation of other clinical information systems, PACS implementation was considered a success; its benefits were significant. The results of this research indicate that process innovation involves governance and group work. Collaboration is one of the major drivers of process innovation in healthcare. Open communication, social relations and networks, and close contacts between innovators are frequently mentioned as indispensable principles for an innovative organization. These practices should prevail across functional and organizational frontiers.

This article explores the possibility of using the higher-order spectra as a tool to determine the progress in rehabilitation of patients after ischemic brain stroke (IBS). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of this tool patients’ heart rate variability (HRV) recordings obtained at 1, 10 and 60 day after stroke are listed and compared to those recorded for healthy individuals. Each set of HRV signals is processed with bispectral and bicoherent analysis. In each case three statistical parameters are observed. The values of investigated parameters differ for healthy people and these affected by the IBS and the rehabilitation progress is visible based on the parameters changing their values towards these characteristic for healthy individuals. The obtained results show usefulness of higher-order spectra as a tool for assessment of the rehabilitation progress. Authors believe that further work would greatly improve potential of the described tool, allowing to increase its precision and expand the application field.

This paper outlines the development and testing of a novel mobile research application, which was specifically conceptualized and produced for sport psychology research assessing the prevalence and impact of student-athletes’ smartphone usage. Research examining athletes’ use of smartphones within and related to sport is scarce. As well, the research pertaining to smartphone usage in similar domains (i.e., physical activity and exercise), has relied heavily on retrospective, self-report data to determine smartphone usage prevalence. This study takes a step toward leveraging the smartphone as a sport psychology research tool, and toward recognizing the potential impact of smartphone usage in the sport domain. Sport psychology and computer science researchers collaborated to conceptualize, develop, and test a specialized mobile application that remotely tracks objective, detailed, smartphone usage, in real-time, via the personal smartphones of five (n = 5) student-athlete participants. The application also allows for efficient administration, completion, and storage of demographic and self-report surveys on key psychosocial, behavioral, and performance variables in student athletics. The results of this pilot study highlight preliminary smartphone usage trends of student-athletes and some key psychosocial variables related to their well-being. As well, the results underscore the capabilities of the research app to be used as a sport psychology assessment tool in an upcoming longitudinal prospective study with 500 varsity athletes.

The ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) in the child population affects between 5 and 10% and in adulthood even in the 60% of the cases. It is characterized by a difficulty that has children to maintain the voluntary attention with respect to proposed activities, both academic and character to the day-to-day. This is coupled with the lack of impulse control. The frequency of cases occurs in a proportion of 4:1, which is to say mostly among children than among girls and may be suffering from both children and adolescents and adults from all walks of social and cultural rights. That is why, by resorting to the motivation to achieve attention of this specific group of children, the proposal of this research is a multi-sensory virtual game using the Leap Motion for that in a three-dimensional plane children have the opportunity to manipulate the objects in the virtual environment to achieve concentration, learning and motivation.

The haptic devices provide three-dimensional navigation and force feedback and integrates the sense of touch. In the area of education and child growth (5 to 6 years), the components of the psychomotor skills and particularly of the visomotriz coordination, allow to children through the virtual simulation of playful character, the increase and improvement in the handling of objects, the development of thinking toward the achievement of more complex skills such as reading and writing. The objective of this research is to explore the possibility of interaction through the sensory channels of girl children of the Alpha generation, with a virtual environment through physical contact and improve the experiences of learning and enrichment of the perception of the real world based on the virtual simulation, in this case by means of a virtual game using the Sphero haptic device.

Business administration program in this millennium must prepare decision-makers to deal effectively with the organizational transformation process, through effective planning and creation of propitious conditions for achieving the corporate objectives. This article presents a learning environment created to foster the development of skills and competencies through a theoretical-practical experiment. For this purpose, a business game was developed that incorporates the lean manufacturing philosophy, and simulations were carried out in an experiential learning environment created for this purpose. The simulations applied with undergraduate business administration students at a school located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The analysis of the results shows that after playing the simulation game, the participants stated it changed their way of acting and thinking in relation to the relevant theoretical knowledge and its practical applications, with positive impacts on the learning process.

Due to the incursion of information and communication technologies in the educational context, teachers have seen the need to change their role, product because of the integration of different technologies that students use. In that sense, his pedagogical and didactic work is changing according to dynamics that are much more collaborative with his students. This paper aims to show a proposal for incursion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and other teaching methodologies in the subject mechanical processes, evaluating their implementation through an instrument of descriptive records and unstructured interviews to which some results are analyzed.

Several researchers study recommendation systems to assist users in the retrieval of relevant goods and services, mostly used in e-commerce. However, there is limited information of the impact of recommender systems in other domains like education. Thus, the objective of this study is to summarize the current knowledge that is available as regards recommendation systems that have been employed within the education domain to support educational practices. By performing a systematic mapping study, a total of 44 research papers have been selected, reviewed and analyzed from an initial set of 1181 papers. Our results provide some findings regarding how recommendation systems can be used to support main areas in education, what approaches techniques or algorithms recommender systems use and how they address different issues in the academic world. Moreover, this work has also been useful to detect some research gaps and key areas where further investigation should be performed, like the introduction of data mining and artificial intelligence in recommender system algorithms to improve personalization of academic choices.

Looking for quality issues in a system can be a very demanding activity. In this article, we propose an approach based on text mining techniques to quickly identify usability and functionality drawbacks in a learning management system - LMS. The techniques were performed to 421 comments written by university students who frequently use a LMS. Results indicate that a dendrogram is a suitable tool to have a quick look of the issues faced by LMS’ users as well as their expectations about new functionalities that the system should provide. By using these techniques, we identified more than ten usability issues and the need for seven new functionalities to be implemented in the system.

ICT integration into secondary school teachings in developing countries faces challenges. Swaziland, a small country in Southern Africa is no exception. The challenges include: teacher attitude and skill, administrative support and limited resources. This study explored determinants of ICT integration in teaching of secondary school agriculture in Swaziland, a developing country in Southern Africa. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Population of study was a census of secondary agriculture teachers and employed a survey questionnaire. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics, correlations and regression. Findings established that teachers have a positive attitude and engage in ICT integration despite the challenges. Factors influencing ICT integration: (1) Digital proficiency in using ICT tools, (2) Social influence, (3) Sharing digital content with learners, (4) Possession of personal computer, and (5) Internet connectivity. It was recommended that continued professional development be strengthened. Internet connectivity deserves special attention and upliftment for uptake of ICT integration.

In this work it’s presented the description of a Recommender Systems to be used in a learning environment. For this, it’s defined the diverse recommendation methods that can be used: Content-based Recommendations, Collaboration recommendations and Hybrid Systems. It is proposed a Teaching agent design for obtaining the most appropriate learning objects based on Multiagent Systems framework composed of a Planning Agent, a Recommendation System and a Learning Object Management System; all of them collaborating on an intelligent platform. This design can be used in intelligent classrooms because it can adapt the environment and the teaching contents according to the needs of each student.

This research work is an extension of the first study that was developed in Ecuador on the subject and that generated the analysis based on a single decade, seeks to present several moments of the rhetorical concept and its use in print advertising in Ecuador in a period of time ranging from 1908 to 1950. It will try to establish the configuration that the use of rhetoric has had in advertising in the period proposed to provide an instrument of analysis to those who investigate this subject, it is noteworthy that it is the first project of extensive research in this area in Ecuador, the first advances have been discussed and presented in previous publications with minor lapses of temporality in the analysis.

Inclusion of technology as part of business strategies has made consumers have other tools that help them to find information and making consumer decisions. It is here the importance of knowing influence of comments have in social networks in taking decisions of visits to restaurants. For this work, a qualitative method (focal group) was used in the first part and then a quantitative method was used (off line and online survey). The sample for focal group was made up by Equinoctial Technological University’s students in Santa Elena, the same ones belonged to the careers of Finance and Audit (7 students), Business and Business (1 student) and 2 graduates of the Finance and Audit. An experimental survey was conducted for 40 people and finally 342 people were surveyed in the Salinas city. The scientific method used was the hypothetical - deductive one.

This descriptive research aims to explore the student perceptions about technology and their resilience when they develop mathematical problems through digital technologies. The population was 19 students, who had allowed to use geogebra software and matrixcalc application to verify problem solving. The study is supported by the theories of self-determination, connectivism and social construction of knowledge. The methodology is a combination of proposals of Hattie et al. named by [4, 6] and of the authors. A survey with a reliability coefficient of 0.81 was distributed to students, obtaining that more than half of them perceive themselves as capable of achieving their goals, maintaining their sense of humor, feeling the family support, controlling the development of activities, considering the authorized programs that are easy to use, useful and reliable. So, the academic strategy used favors the development of academic resilience, which is consistent with the postulates of Vaquero [9].

Mobile learning or M-learning, regarded as a specific field of electronic learning, is considered to stem from the affordances of computer-mediated communication. In this way, it fosters connection and interaction “on the move”. M-learning benefits from the ubiquity of information and communication technologies (ICTs), consequently it is not bounded in space and time. However, its study goes beyond a techno-deterministic understanding of its performance. Studies on M-learning refer less to the functionality of appliances and the development of mobile applications than address the subjective perception of how this special type of educational venue leads to the acquisition of meaningful and effective learning. This study focuses on Communication Studies in higher education in Ecuador that deal with the paradox of studying the media through the media, which results in studying theories and practice of communication by using these same tools. This meta-communication dilemma becomes conflicting when confronted to the still current face-to-face jotting and listening educational model that keeps being backed by strong numbers of faculty members. By unfolding the varied affordances of M-learning, the outcomes of this study suggest that blending formal education with informal learning could lead to encouraging, accessible and cooperative meaning-making on the move.

The research aims to describe the digital capacities and the type of communication of university students, by applying virtual collaborative learning strategies. It is a descriptive investigation, carried out in two phases, supported by the theories of connectivism and social constructivism. The case study method was applied to a population of 41 students. Among the obtained results it is highlighted that the studied population has the digital capacities necessary to participate in collaborative environments related to mathematics, but that are not enough to enrich the social capital of the knowledge of the learning community. As an attitudinal indicator, the students are considered willing to work in collaborative groups using information and communication technologies but require more training to build knowledge. Finally, it is recommended that the collaborative activities are guided by the teacher so that they are more fruitful and taken advantage by the students.

Public service televisions must face a double challenge in the scope of accountability. On the one hand, the need of providing the citizens with all the data related to the institution’s daily activities. On the other hand, the requirement of making the production stages transparent in order to prove the degree of compliance and commitment to a quality service. This paper analyzes the information available on the websites of the public service televisions in the American Southern Cone, meaning Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. When it comes to performance, the fulfilment of these indicators can be concluded as unsatisfactory, even though transparency in audiovisual corporations becomes one of the most appreciated intangible values that enable the television public service to regain credibility.

This paper presents the knowledge base of the Expert System using the horizontal analysis as a way of supporting financial trends research. There must be handled knowledge of both accounting and management of television companies, as well as a knowledge engineer who analyzes the situations typically presented, and from them extracts the rules of application. The applied rules are increasing, decreasing and stationary trends, from which the results help to make decisions for the financial development of private television companies in Ecuador.

Facebook, the social network with the greatest number of users at a global level, is presented as a tool of great interaction and reach for the service of thousands of corporations, industries and media: of all sizes and characteristics, which find in this platform an ideal method to get closer to its users, clients and/or audiences. In this way, community radio unites its own characteristics that may be strengthened through the use of this digital platform, securing social cohesion and the audience participation in all daily tasks. Thus, this research revises the quantitative means of the principal parameters of integration and the use of this social network by community radio transmitters in the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) with the goal of establishing a comparative analysis between the countries it is made of.

The necessary revision of the concept of information forces its constant historical contextualization. The different stages of the international system of information and communication (ISIC) attest to this, through theories and theorists, socio-political and economic events and media realities. Through a methodological analysis of qualitative research (grounded theory), it is proposed to express new contemporary periods of ISIC, as well as its main characteristics and a possible point from which to begin an academic reflection and discussion. The result of the interdisciplinary analysis is summed up in a transition of phases that gives rise to “interdumbre”, which is a phenomenon of information structuring - characterized by a non-communicative interaction - that resurfaces as international information changes its course.

University radio is a source of knowledge, a space for expression and healthy coexistence between professors, students and society, searching for feedback and, as such, active participation. Additionally, the huge advancements in technology have permitted various Ecuadorian universities to have their own radio transmitter through the Internet. In this article, 45 indicators have been taken to analyze the digital platforms of each medium and therefore determine the influence of new technologies on University radio.

In the current context of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), little has been studied on the monetization of digital newspapers. To analyse this hypothesis, three member countries of this trade bloc, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, were taken as samples, through three digital newspapers. Following a method of mixed analysis, the observation technique was used to record web data, interview experts, and develop an observation sheet with inference parameters. This was based on the technique of content analysis of the sales strategies of newspaper companies from the digital newspapers “El Comercio” (Peru and Ecuador), and “El Tiempo de Bogotá” (Colombia). Finally, the conceptual levels of analysis of interview texts as well as digital literature and a review of the homepages of the aforementioned newspapers have been included in the theoretical framework.

When it comes to tackling the main difference between “postdrama” and “performance” based on architectural and esthetic criteria, that is, whether it is possible for the “order” (logos) of both (posdrama and performance) to be inside or outside of the artistic work, we (de)construct the two key features of the term “postdrama”: the “order” and the “chaos” of postdrama, namely where those patterns lie and what they are based on. These variables allow us to go more deeply into the identity culture of Ecuador, especially into its (non)communication, using the postdramatic categories that are specified in an informal model resulting from these inquiries.

The following article is based on the study and application of process maps to measure the effectiveness of communication and information in the organizations of Northern Ecuador. Meanwhile, a descriptive methodology supported mainly by analytical, qualitative and quantitative methods is used. The importance of the systematization of well-structured tasks in the organizational context is assessed. Hence, communication in Ecuadorian companies has somehow overcome staleness, achieving an innovation in terms of the development of strategic objectives. Behind this visible change are the information and communication technologies that allow the establishment of new and novel ways of transmitting and receiving messages. As a result of this research, a proposal is considered for the communicational management by processes, based on a global reality that leads to new mechanisms for transparent messages.

In this article entitled “Uso de la radio como estrategia interactiva para desarrollar la competencia comunicativa oral del idioma inglés, (speaking)” are outlined some experiences resulting from a research project carried out at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador Sede Ibarra, during the academic term 2016–2017, with students of eighth and fifth level of the Languages and Linguistic School. This research talks about the importance of the radio for the learners’ English speaking skill strengthening. The radio has been used as an object of study, but has not been used as a didactic strategy so it is very innovative for the educational field to access to new teaching methodologies. The quantitative method was used; fieldwork was conducted in weekly sessions. The methodology used was mixed, since data were evaluated and descriptive. Results were gathered simultaneously to the significant learning linked to innovative and interesting methodological strategies for students like the radio.

English is regarded as a primary language for communication purposes worldwide. Therefore, using it has become a global need. The present work aims to support that in the field of education - higher level - the mastering of certain communicative competences in the professional profile of the teachers of that specific area should be favored, so that the teaching process they perform generates significant learning outcomes for students and that they, in turn, can access the advantages of English speaking. At the methodological level, 142 teachers of the English area from northern Ecuador were surveyed. In addition, a panel of experts was held to endorse the competences mentioned. This work has a substantive value of usefulness for the educational, didactic and curricular development of communication in English, since the successful communication of all the speakers who attend permanently classes in this foreign language will depend to a great extent on the rigor that teachers possess.

This research aims to determine if the technical training policies proposed by the Ecuadorian government after the adoption of the methodological model of productivity and systematic competition (which originated in the German Institute of Development), were correctly distributed and implemented in one of the prioritized industries: the textile and clothing industry.

This paper presents the results of an investigation that analyzed the services of citizen participation and open government offered by the municipal governments of Ecuador in their web pages. It is a study of quantitative and descriptive approach that has studied a sample 121 web portals using a rubric designed by researchers and evaluated by experts. Heading evaluated the presence of services and tools for citizen participation (Nine in total). The most relevant results indicate that citizen participation services offered are minimal compared to the five forms of citizen participation contained in the Act of Citizen Participation, portals have moderate information about participatory budget and an incipient use of the empty chair. Open governance indicators such as perceived quality of public services are not listed on any country’s municipal website and others like the number of existing virtual courses are just outlined in two portals. The incipient degree of citizen participation suggests that the municipal e-government in Ecuador has not reached the transactional level, characterized by UNESCO for two-way communication between government and citizens. Web portals of municipalities in the Sierra region have a slightly higher development compared to that of the other regions.