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Mobile Digital TV (MDTV), the hybrid of Digital Television (DTV) and mobile devices (such as mobile phones), has introduced a new way for people to watch DTV and has brought new opportunities for development in the DTV industry. Nowadays, the development of the next generation MDTV service has progressed in terms of both hardware layers and software, with interactive services/applications becoming one of the future MDTV service trends. However, current MDTV interactive services still lack in terms of attracting the consumers and the service creation and implementation process relies too much on commercial solutions, resulting in most parts of the process being proprietary. In addition, this has increased the technical demands for developers as well as has increased substantially the cost of producing and maintaining MDTV services. In light of the aforementioned situation, the Thesis has contributed to this field, by proposing an innovative MDTV service creation and consumption system based on XHTML and Java ME. On the head-end it introduces a semi-automatic creation mechanism to facilitate a less technical and more efficient interactive service creation process. This enables designers and creative individuals to be actively involved in the MDTV service creation process and to develop interactive-rich MDTV service. On the client-end it employs an open-source software environment as the interactive service MDTV consumption platform, rendering the MDTV service implementation process as less proprietary as possible. Furthermore, the Thesis offers a discussion on the different MDTV interactive application models currently used and based on the proposed software, a novel MDTV service presentation method is further introduced and adopted instead of the Rich Media and ECMAScript based methods. Finally, a series of qualitative testing procedures have been implemented with regards to conducting an essential evaluation on the operability of the proposed software system.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative rod, aerobic, non-fermenting, oxidase positive, pigment producing, and nutritionally versatile bacterium. Infections by P. aeruginosa are the most important cause of morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised patients, given virulence factor production that suppresses antibiotic therapy and promotes persistent infection. This research is the first comprehensive report of the pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway for all phases of growth in minimal and rich media coupled with the evaluation of virulence factor production of P. aeruginosa in comparison to four other bacterial species (Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Burkholderia cepacia, and Escherichia coli wild-type strains). Cellular growth and passing genetic information to the next generation depend on the synthesis of purines and pyrimidines, the precursors of DNA and RNA. The pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway is essential and found in most organisms, with the exception of a few parasites that depend upon the pyrimidine salvage pathway for growth. Both the pyrimidine biosynthetic and salvage enzymes are targets for chemotherapeutic agents. In our laboratory, research on pyrimidine auxotrophic mutants showed the role of the pyrimidine biosynthetic pathway and its intermediates on P. aeruginosa metabolism and impaired virulence factors production. The present research shows that pyrimidine enzymes are active in all phases of growth, including the production of two forms of ATCase in the late log phase in P. aeruginosa. This finding may be explained by the displacement of the inactive PyrC' by the active PyrC or PyrC2 to form a new and larger pyrBC encoded ATCase. Pseudomonas aeruginosa wild-type appears to produce by far the most virulence factors, haemolysin, iron chelation, rhamnolipid, adherence, and three types of motility (swimming, swarming, and twitching) investigated in this study, when compared to the other four wild-type strains. Growth analysis was carried out as typically done in minimal medium but also in rich medium to simulate conditions in the blood and lung tissues of humans as P. aeruginosa infections develop.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:06:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 6293.pdf: 6594637 bytes, checksum: 313540db5bd44c0b02cd3d086cf8c310 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-29 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / Since its creation television has undergone major paradigm shifts, from black and white images to color displays, from analog systems to digital transmissions, from low quality display to high quality displays, from passive programs for fully interactive programs. Currently the term Social TV is gaining popularity in television and innovating once again the way people watch TV, combining computing and communication mechanisms to provide new ways to entertain and inform the viewer. The object of this work lies in the context of Social TV, explores the concept of support agents that have the role to stimulate social interactions, having the aim of enrich the quality of experience in watching television. This paper proposes a model of interaction between the agent and the viewers in Social TV systems and tests with users using a tool developed for the interaction model. Finally the paper compares the results of interactions to investigate the influence generated by inserting the support agent in an environment of Social TV. / Desde sua criação a televisão sofreu algumas mudanças de paradigmas, de imagens em preto e branco para telas coloridas, de sistemas analógicos para transmissões digitais, de qualidade de exibição de baixa resolução para sistemas de alta qualidade de imagem, de programas passivos para programas totalmente interativos. Atualmente o termo TV Social vem ganhando popularidade no meio televisivo e inovando mais uma vez a forma como as pessoas assistem televisão, combinando mecanismos de comunicação e computação para fornecer novas formas de entreter e informar o telespectador. O objeto de estudo deste trabalho situa-se no contexto de TV Social, explora o conceito de Agentes Incentivadores que possuem o papel de estimular interações sociais, possuindo a finalidade de alcançar enriquecimento da qualidade de experiência em assistir televisão. O trabalho propõe um modelo de interação entre o Agente Incentivador e os telespectadores de um sistema de TV Social e realiza testes com usuários utilizando a ferramenta de interação desenvolvida para o modelo. Por fim o trabalho analisa os resultados das interações para averiguar a influência gerada pela inserção do agente incentivador em um ambiente de TV Social.