Estágio realizado na SNA Europe [Industries] S. A. e orientado pelo Eng.º Paulo Soares / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Metalúrgica e de Materiais. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2010

Estágio realizado na Bosch Termotecnologia, S. A. e orientado pelo Eng.º João Matos / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

Estágio realizado na Bosch Termotecnologia, S. A. e orientado pelo Eng.º Tiago Melo Sacchetti / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2009

Estágio realizado na XC Consultores e orientado pelo Eng.º António Cruz / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2010

Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is the treatment of choice to relieve joint pain and loss of mobility as a result of advanced stage osteoarthritis or other hip pathologies. Despite their general success, THAs do fail, with revision rates estimated near 5% per year. Instability, defined as the complete subluxation (dislocation) of the femoral head from the acetabular socket - which usually occurs due to implant impingement - has recently supplanted wear-induced osteolytic aseptic loosening as the leading cause of failure in THA. Soft tissue integrity has long been recognized as influencing joint stability, and therefore there has been great interest recently in improving soft tissue restoration following THA. However, there is little quantitative information related to the degree of soft tissue repair necessary to restore joint stability. Additionally, impingement events, besides their role in prelude to frank dislocation, hold potential to damage new-generation hard-on-hard bearings, due to the relatively unforgiving nature of the materials and designs. Despite the largely biomechanical nature of these impingement-related complications, they remain under-investigated relative to their burden of morbidity. In addition to impingement, failure modalities unique to hard-on-hard bearings merit careful biomechanical scrutiny. This includes investigation of catastrophic fracture in ceramic-on-ceramic bearings, as well as analysis of patient, implant and surgical variables associated with increased wear and adverse soft tissue engagement potential for metal-on-metal implants. Toward the goal of improving current biomechanical understanding of failure modalities in THA and to provide an objective basis for orthopaedic surgeons to choose the most favorable implants and to identify optimal intraoperative parameters which minimize failure propensity, a novel, anatomically-grounded finite element model was developed, and used to perform multiple parametric finite element investigations of these failure modes.

There are a variety of chromosomal abnormalities such as translocation, duplication, deletion, insertion and inversion, which may cause severe diseases, e.g., cancers and birth defects. Multi-color fluorescence in-situ hybridization (M-FISH) is an imaging technique popularly used for simultaneously detecting and visualizing these complex abnormalities in a single hybridization. In spite of the advancement of fluorescence microscopy for chromosomal abnormality detection, the quality of the fluorescence images is still limited, due to the spectral overlap, uneven intensity level across multiple channels, variations of background and inhomogeneous intensity within intra-channels. Therefore, it is critical but challenging to distinguish the different types of chromosomes accurately in order to detect the chromosomal abnormalities from M-FISH images. The main contribution of this dissertation is to develop an M-FISH image analysis pipeline by taking full advantage of spatial and spectral information from M-FISH imaging. In addition, novel image analysis approaches such as the sparse representation are applied in this work. The pipeline starts with the image preprocessing to extract the background to improve the quality of the raw images by low-rank plus group lasso decomposition. Then, the image segmentation is performed by incorporating both spatial and spectral information by total variation (TV) and row-wise constraints. Finally image classification is conducted by considering the structural information of neighboring pixels with a row-wise sparse representation model. In each step, new methods and sophisticated algorithms were developed and compared with several popularly used methods, It shows that (1) the preprocessing model improves the quality of the raw images; (2) the segmentation model outperforms than both fuzzy c-means (FCM) and improved adaptive fuzzy c-means (IAFCM) models in terms of correct ratio and false rate; and (3) the classification model corrects the misclassification to improve the accuracy of chromosomal abnormalities detection, especially for the complex inter-chromosomal rearrangements. / 1 / Jingyao Li

Ingeniero Civil Industrial / El objetivo principal de esta memoria es diseñar un sistema de gestión de la calidad en la empresa ST Computación, y en particular en su área de servicios de infraestructura. ST es una empresa del rubro de los servicios TI, es decir, pertenece a aquellas empresas a cargo del diseño, desarrollo, implementación, soporte y gestión de soluciones de desarrollo de software y hardware para la empresa. Es un sector económico cada vez más relevante, ya que corresponde a una herramienta necesaria para el desarrollo competitivo de muchos otros sectores industriales. Aun así ST, con 40 años en el mercado nacional, está en pleno crecimiento, pasando de $920 millones de margen en 2015 a $1.060 millones para 2016. Por lo mismo es que está ampliándose al mercado peruano, a la vez que crece en volumen de ventas y amplía su cartera de clientes en el territorio nacional. El rápido crecimiento ha significado para la organización dificultades en la gestión de la información, y su relación cercana con el cliente se ha traducido en muchos esfuerzos por poder satisfacer sus necesidades de manera individual. Los clientes de ST evalúan positivamente el desempeño de la empresa, sin embargo, en la dimensión cumplimiento de SLA , que es la dimensión más valorada por los clientes, ST se está quedando atrás debido a una combinación de bajos niveles de cumplimiento y déficit en la comunicación de cumplimiento a los clientes. Para resolver el problema se propone una solución integral a través de un Sistema de Gestión de la Calidad (SGC) que combina conceptos de calidad de servicio, sistemas de gestión de la calidad y mejores prácticas de gestión de servicios TI. La solución propuesta involucra la definición de roles, alcances y prácticas o actividades que se requieren para el correcto desarrollo del SGC, de manera que afecte positivamente en los niveles de calidad de servicio del área de infraestructura. En este sentido, detalla un SGC con bajos costos para la organización, capaz de impactar positivamente en los indicadores de calidad de cumplimiento de niveles de servicio.

Total body irradiation (TBI) is often used as part of the conditioning process prior to bone marrow transplants for diseases such as leukemia. By delivering radiation to the entire body, together with chemotherapy, tumour cells are killed and the patient is also immunosupressed. This reduces the risk of disease relapse and increases the chances of a successful implant respectively. TBI requires a large flat field of radiation to cover the entire body with a uniform dose. However, dose uniformity is a major challenge in TBI. (AAPM Report 17) The ICRU report 50 recommends that the dose range within the target volume remain in the range of -5% to +7%. Whilst it is generally accepted that this is not possible for TBI, it is normally clinically acceptable that ±10% of the prescribed dose to the whole body is sufficiently uniform, unless critical structures are being shielded. TBI involves complex dosimetry due to the large source to treatment axis distance (SAD), dose uniformity and flatness over the large field, bolus requirements, extra scatter from the bunker walls and floor and large field overshoot. There is also a lack of specialised treatment planning systems for TBI planning at extended SAD. TBI doses at Westmead Hospital are prescribed to midline. Corrections are made for variations in body contour and tissue density heterogeneity in the lungs using bolus material to increase dose uniformity along midline. Computed tomography (CT) data is imported into a treatment planning system. The CT gives information regarding tissue heterogeneity and patient contour. The treatment planning system uses this information to determine the dose distribution. Using the dose ratio between plans with and without heterogeneity correction the effective chest width can be calculated. The effective chest width is then used for calculating the treatment monitor units and bolus requirements. In this project the tissue heterogeneity corrections from two different treatment planning systems are compared for calculating the effective chest width. The treatment planning systems used were PinnacleTM, a 3D system that uses a convolution method to correct for tissue heterogeneity and calculate dose. The other system, RadplanTM, is a 2D algorithm that corrects for tissue heterogeneity using a modified Batho method and calculates dose using the Bentley - Milan Algorithm. Other possible differences between the treatment planning systems are also discussed. An anthropomorphic phantom was modified during this project. The chest slices were replaced with PerspexTM slices that had different sized cork and PerspexTM inserts to simulate different lung sizes. This allowed the effects of different lung size on the heterogeneity correction to be analysed. The phantom was CT scanned and the information used for the treatment plans. For each treatment planning system and each phantom plans were made with and without heterogeneity corrections. For each phantom the ratio between the plans from each system was used to calculate the effective chest width. The effective chest width was then used to calculate the number of monitor units to be delivered. The calculated dose per monitor unit at the extended TBI distance for the effective chest width from each planning system is then verified using thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) in the unmodified phantom. The original phantom was used for the verification measurements as it had special slots for TLDs. The isodose distributions produced by each planning system are then verified using measurements from Kodak EDR2 radiographic film in the anthropomorphic phantom at isocentre. Further film measurements are made at the extended TBI treatment SAD. It was found that only the width of the lungs made any significant difference to the heterogeneity correction for each treatment planning system. The height and depth of the lungs will affect the dose at the calculation point from changes to the scattered radiation within the volume. However, since the dose from scattered radiation is only a fraction of that from the primary beam, the change in dose was not found to be significant. This is because the calculation point was positioned in the middle of the lungs, so the height and depth of the lungs didn't affect the dose at the calculation point. The dose per monitor unit calculated using the heterogeneity correction for each treatment planning system varied less than the accuracy of the TLD measurements. The isodose distributions measured by film showed reasonable agreement with those calculated by both treatment planning systems at isocentre and a more uniform distribution at the extended TBI treatment distance. The verification measurements showed that either treatment planning system could be used to calculate the heterogeneity correction and hence effective chest width for TBI treatment planning.

The philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM) is relatively little known in Australia, and does not feature at policy level in the Australian Army. It has, however, been adopted by the US Department of Defense (US DoD) and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and is being investigated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). TQM is analyzed as a theory and as an organizational concept. This is supported by extensive analysis and case studies from US and Australian organizations. The public and private sector organizations examined provide indications of the worth of TQM, guidance for planning and implementation, and the facility to learn from the experiences of others. TQM cannot be undertaken without detailed, organizationally specific preparation and requires pro-active support from the highest level of the organization. This paper examines the TQM philosophy and the Australian Army and proposes a model for the development of TQM as an integral part of the organizational function of the Army. The emphasis is on general management, the level that has the responsibility for structuring and managing the Army in support of all Army functions. Research conducted by elements of the US DoD is analyzed to indicate applicability to the future requirements of the Australian Army. The paper argues that general management in the Australian Army has been affected by organizational changes over time. A management philosophy is now needed that will support, into the 21st Century, the values and roles required by the Army. TQM provides such a basis, and the proposed TQM Development Model provides in turn a sound basis for further examination of TQM by the Army.

無 / A multiple-star representation of a simple graph G assigns each vertex a union of stars in a host tree, such that vertices are adjacent if and only if their assigned sets intersect. The total star number S(G) is the minimum of the total number of stars used in any such representation of G. We obtain the maximum value of S(G) for m-edge connected graphs: m + 1, n-vertex graphs: [n² + 1)/ 4], and n-vertex outer-planar graphs: [3n /2-l]