Após a redução dos estrógenos no período da menopausa algumas mulheres passam a perder massa óssea acima de 1% ao ano chegando ao final de cinco anos com perda superior a 25%. Neste sentido, fatores como idade avançada, baixa ingestão de cálcio e menopausa precoce favorecem o aparecimento da osteoporose. Métodos preventivos como orientação nutricional para uma dieta adequada e o apoio da tecnologia por meio de aplicativos que avaliam o consumo alimentar são essenciais. Desta forma, objetivou-se neste estudo desenvolver um aplicativo em plataforma Android® voltado à avaliação das condições nutricionais e orgânicas envolvidas na saúde óssea e grau de risco para o desenvolvimento de osteoporose em mulheres pós-menopáusicas. Para o alcance deste objetivo procedeu-se um estudo com 72 mulheres com idade entre 46 a 79 anos, provenientes do programa de exercícios físicos para a saúde óssea do Laboratório de Pesquisas em Bioquímica e Densitometria da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Os dados foram coletados no segundo semestre de 2014 por meio de exames de Densitometria Óssea e Composição Corporal, Exames de Sangue, dados Antropométricos e Avaliação Nutricional. Foram incluídas no estudo mulheres com diagnóstico atualizado de osteopenia ou osteoporose primária, com idade igual ou superior a 45 anos em fase pós-menopáusica. Para a avaliação da densidade mineral óssea e composição corporal utilizou-se o aparelho de Absortometria de Dupla Energia de Raios-X (DXA) da marca HologicTM modelo Discovery A. Para a avaliação antropométrica foi incluído a Massa Corporal, Estatura, Circunferência Abdominal, Circunferência da Cintura e Circunferência do Quadril. O instrumento para avaliação de consumo alimentar utilizado foi o Recordatório de 24 horas de um dia (R24h). A estimativa da ingestão de energia e nutrientes foi realizada a partir da tabulação dos alimentos ingeridos no Software Diet Pro 4®. Em uma sub amostra com 30 mulheres com osteopenia/osteoporose foram realizados os exames de cálcio sérico e fosfatase alcalina. Os resultados demonstraram no grupo de mulheres (n=30) ingestão média de cálcio de 570mg/dia (±340). A análise do cálcio sérico apresentou média dentro da normalidade (10,20mg/dl±0,32) e valores médios e fosfatase alcalina ligeiramente aumentados (105,40 U/L±23,70). Ainda, houve importante correlação entre o consumo de ideal de proteínas e o consumo de cálcio diário (0,375 p valor 0,05). Com base nestes achados, foi desenvolvido um aplicativo fase inicial na plataforma Android® do sistema operacional do Google®, sendo denominado de OsteoNutri. Optou-se pela utilização Java Eclipse® onde nele foram executados a versão Android® do projeto; escolha de ícones de aplicação e configuração do editor visual para construção dos layouts do aplicativo. Foi utilizado o DroidDraw® para desenvolvimento das três interfaces gráficas do aplicativo. Para os testes práticos utilizou-se um celular compatível com a versão que foi criada (4.4 ou superior). O protótipo foi desenvolvido em conjunto com o Grupo de Desenvolvimento Aplicativos e Instrumentação (GDAI) da Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. Portanto, este aplicativo pode ser considerado uma importante ferramenta no controle dietético, possibilitando controle mais próximo de consumo de Cálcio e Proteínas dietéticas. / Following a drop in estrogen in the period of menopause some women begin to lose bone mass more than 1% per year reaching the end of five years with loss greater than 25%. In this regard, factors such as older age, low calcium intake and premature menopause favor the onset of osteoporosis. Preventive methods such as nutritional counseling to a proper diet and the support of technology through applications that assess dietary intake are essential. Thus, this study aimed to develop an application for Android® platform focused on the evaluation of nutritional and organic conditions involved in bone health and risks for developing osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. To achieve this goal we proceeded to a study of 72 women aged 46-79 years, from the physical exercise for bone health of the Laboratory for Research in Biochemistry and Densitometry the Federal Technological University of Paraná program. Data were collected in the second half of 2014 through tests Bone Densitometry and Body Composition, Blood Tests, Anthropometric data and Nutrition Assessment. The study included women with a current diagnosis of osteopenia or osteoporosis primary, aged more than 45 years postmenopausal. For the assessment of bone mineral density and body composition used the device Absorptiometry Dual Energy X-ray (DXA) brand Hologic Discovery TM Model A. For anthropometric assessment was included to body mass, height, abdominal circumference, Waist circumference and hip circumference. The instrument for assessing food consumption was used Recall 24 hours a day (24HR). The estimated intake of energy and nutrients was carried from the tabulation of the food eaten in the Software Diet Pro 4®. In a sub sample of 30 women with osteopenia / osteoporosis serum calcium and alkaline phosphatase tests were performed. The results demonstrated a group of women (n = 30) average calcium intake of 570mg / day (± 340). The analysis showed a mean serum calcium within the normal range (10,20mg / dl ± 0.32) and average values and slightly increased alkaline phosphatase (105.40 U / L ± 23.70). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between the consumption of protein and the optimal daily intake of calcium (0.375 p-value 0.05). Based on these findings, we developed an application early stage in Android® platform operating system Google®, being called OsteoNutri. We chose to use Java Eclipse® where it was executed Android® version of the project; choice of application icons and setting the visual editor for building the application layouts. The DroidDraw® was used for development of the three application GUIs. For practical tests we used a cell compatible with the version that was created (4.4 or higher). The prototype was developed in conjunction with the Group and Instrumentation Applications Development (GDAI) of the Federal Technological University of Paraná. So this application can be considered an important tool in dietary control, allowing closer control consumption of calcium and dietary proteins.

The main purpose of this project is to build a bank system that offers a friendly and simple interface to let users easily manage their lightweight currencies. The Lightweight Currency Protocol (LCP) was originally proposed to solve the problem of fairness in resource cooperatives. However, there are other possible applications of the protocol, including the control of spam and as a general purpose medium of exchange for low value transactions. This project investigates the implementation issues of the LCP, and also investigates LCP bank services to provide human interface to currency operations.

The purpose of this project is to design, build, and implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for a bank. CRM BANKING is an online application that caters to strengthening and stabilizing customer relationships in a bank.

The study investigated the use of mobile phones in disseminating information on agriculture to the farming community of Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe, with a view to improving the coverage gap created by the available initiatives. Relevant literature on the available and successful mobile phones agricultural information dissemination platforms were extensively reviewed, taking into consideration the Mashonaland West Province farmers’ information needs. Formats, channels and sources currently being used to transmit agricultural information to farmers were investigated. Barriers to the use of mobile phones in transmitting agricultural information were as well investigated. Data was gathered on the farmers’ access to mobile phones and ownership of mobile phones. The survey research methodology was used for data collection because the research involved a large sample in a widespread geographical area. Quantitative research approach was used and questionnaires were used for data collection. The respondents for the study comprised farmers, network providers and other agricultural stakeholders in the province. A sample of 384 farmers, and 13 network providers and other stakeholders participated in the survey. Quantitative data was analysed using the the SPSS software while the little qualitative data which was available was analysed through content analysis. The findings of the study indicated that farmers in Mashonaland West Province of Zimbabwe were willing to get updates on agricultural information via cell phones. However, majority of the farmers could not afford the high mobile data tariffs being charged by network service providers, and the costs of subscription charged by the available agricultural information dissemination platforms. The study mainly recommended that the government should establish mobile phone agricultural information dissemination platforms that can be accessed by farmers for free or that which will charge affordable rates. The study adds to the existing knowledge on how mobile phones can be used in disseminating agricultural information to farmers. / Information Science / D. Inf. (Information Science)

CAPES / As tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TIC’s) estão presentes diariamente na vida da sociedade e provocam mudanças no seu modo de viver. As TIC’s possibilitam a criação de novos produtos e serviços para melhorar a vida das pessoas. Elas têm sido utilizadas no trabalho, nos relacionamentos, serviços públicos, entretenimento e lazer com o objetivo de mitigar a exclusão social, melhorar o desempenho econômico, criar oportunidades de emprego, melhorar a qualidade de vida e promover a participação social. Neste contexto de desenvolvimentos tecnológicos e hiperconectividade combinado com as preocupações referentes a um crescimento urbano sustentável, governabilidade eficaz e melhores formas de analisar e explorar dados, diversas pesquisas emergem levando em consideração os conceitos sobre cidades inteligentes, cidades digitais e cidades virtuais. Observando-se os benefícios proporcionados pelas cidades inteligentes, digitais e virtuais (na perspectiva de um jogo digital) e pelo fato de que não há atualmente conhecimentos consolidados, tampouco uma plataforma computacional com os recursos necessários para integrar aplicações associadas ao ambiente físico de vivência dos cidadãos que envolvem aspectos de caráter social, governamental, comercial, educacional, científico e de entretenimento, este trabalho busca responder a seguinte pergunta: é possível desenvolver uma cidade virtual na perspectiva de um jogo digital com o propósito de ser uma plataforma para execução de aplicações que trazem benefícios para a vida dos cidadãos de uma região? A partir desta pergunta, surgiu a presente dissertação organizada em quatro camadas de interesses: tecnológica, ética, sociocultural e ações públicas, originando desta forma a Curitiba-ViewPort (C-VP). Em relação ao desenvolvimento da camada tecnológica (foco desta dissertação), o projeto foi dividido em quatro atividades principais: modelagem gráfica, criação da base de dados, desenvolvimento de um servidor Web Services e finalmente, o desenvolvimento do jogo propriamente dito. Levando em consideração o protótipo desenvolvido e os resultados obtidos, a C-VP mostrou-se capaz de ser uma cidade virtual na perspectiva de um jogo digital com o propósito de ser uma plataforma para execução de aplicações, respondendo desta forma, a pergunta que originou esta dissertação. / Information and communication technologies (ICT’s) are present daily in the life of society and cause changes in the way they live. ICT’s enable the creation of new products and services to improve people’s lives. It has been used in work, relationships, public services, entertainment and leisure with the aim of mitigate social exclusion, improving economic performance, creating employment opportunities, improving quality of life and promoting social participation. In this context of technological developments and hyperconnectivity combined with concerns about sustainable urban growth, effective governance and better ways of analyzing and exploring data, a variety of research emerges taking into account the concepts of smart cities, digital cities and virtual cities. Noting the benefits provided by smart, digital and virtual cities (from the perspective of a digital game) and the fact that there is currently no consolidated knowledge, nor a computational platform with the necessary resources to integrate applications associated with the physical environment of citizens that involve social, governmental, commercial, educational, scientific and entertainment aspects, this work seeks to answer the following question: is it possible to develop a virtual city in the perspective of a digital game with the purpose of being a platform for execution of applications that bring benefits to the lives of citizens of a region? From this question, the present dissertation was organized in four layers of interests: technological, ethical, sociocultural and public actions. In relation to the development of the technological layer (focus of this dissertation), the project was divided into four main activities: graphic modeling, database creation, web server development and finally the development of the game itself . Taking into account the developed prototype and the results obtained, the C-VP proved to be a virtual city in the perspective of a digital game with the purpose of being a platform for application execution, thus answering the question that originated this dissertation.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Evolutionary testing (ET) techniques (e.g., mutation, crossover, and natural selection) have been applied successfully to many areas of software engineering, such as error/fault identification, data mining, and software cost estimation. Previous research has also applied ET techniques to performance testing. Its application to performance testing, however, only goes as far as finding the best and worst case, execution times. Although such performance testing is beneficial, it provides little insight into performance characteristics of complex functions with multiple branches. This thesis therefore provides two contributions towards performance testing of software systems. First, this thesis demonstrates how ET and genetic algorithms (GAs), which are search heuristic mechanisms for solving optimization problems using mutation, crossover, and natural selection, can be combined with a constraint solver to target specific paths in the software. Secondly, this thesis demonstrates how such an approach can identify local minima and maxima execution times, which can provide a more detailed characterization of software performance. The results from applying our approach to example software applications show that it is able to characterize different execution paths in relatively short amounts of time. This thesis also examines a modified exhaustive approach which can be plugged in when the constraint solver cannot properly provide the information needed to target specific paths.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Derived from the field of art curation, digital provenance is an unforgeable record of a digital object's chain of successive custody and sequence of operations performed on the object. It plays an important role in accessing the trustworthiness of the object, verifying its reliability and conducting audit trails of its lineage. Digital provenance forms an immutable directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure. Since history of an object cannot be changed, once a provenance chain has been created it must be protected in order to guarantee its reliability. Provenance can face attacks against the integrity of records and the confidentiality of user information, making security an important trait required for digital provenance. The digital object and its associated provenance can have different security requirements, and this makes the security of provenance different from that of traditional data. Research on digital provenance has primarily focused on provenance generation, storage and management frameworks in different fields. Security of digital provenance has also gained attention in recent years, particularly as more and more data is migrated in cloud environments which are distributed and are not under the complete control of data owners. However, there still lacks a viable secure digital provenance scheme which can provide comprehensive security for digital provenance, particularly for generic and dynamic ones. In this work, we address two important aspects of secure digital provenance that have not been investigated thoroughly in existing works: 1) capturing the DAG structure of provenance and 2) supporting dynamic information sharing. We propose a scheme that uses signature-based mutual agreements between successive users to clearly delineate the transition of responsibility of the digital object as it is passed along the chain of users. In addition to preserving the properties of confidentiality, immutability and availability for a digital provenance chain, it supports the representation of DAG structures of provenance. Our scheme supports dynamic information sharing scenarios where the sequence of users who have custody of the document is not predetermined. Security analysis and empirical results indicate that our scheme improves the security of the typical secure provenance schemes with comparable performance.