José Eustáquio Rangel de Queiroz

A Multidimensional Approach for the Evaluation of Mobile Application User Interfaces

This paper focuses on a hybrid approach for the evaluation of mobile application UI, based upon a set of well known techniques for usability evaluation. Two perspectives of the problem are focused: (i) the users perspective , which is expressed by users perception of the application; and (ii) the specialists perspective , which is expressed by his/her considerations from the point of view of the user-application interaction, and from the point of view of the HCI community as well. Further comparisons between a lab and field evaluation approaches are given for a case study involving an Internet tablet. Conclusions are given concerning on how to apply the experience acquired by evaluating conventional UI in the mobile technology domain.

Redução assimilatória de NO-3 em plantas de cajueiros cultivados em meio salinizado

Com o objetivo de se avaliar os efeitos e mecanismos iniciais da acao da salinidade sobre a reducao de NO-3 e a acumulacao de solutos nitrogenados, plantas de cajueiro (Anacardium occidentale L.), CCP - 1001, com 42 dias de idade foram cultivadas em solucao nutritiva contendo 100 mmol L-1 de NaCl, durante 8 dias, em casa de vegetacao. A transpiracao foi o principal fator de regulacao da atividade de redutase de NO-3 (RN) que foi fortemente reduzida nas folhas. Contrariamente, a atividade de glutamina sintetase (GS) aumentou nas folhas em resposta a salinidade. Esta tendencia de aumento da atividade de GS nas folhas foi acompanhada pelas concentracoes de aminoacidos soluveis totais, particularmente prolina e proteinas soluveis totais. Por outro lado, o aumento nas concentracoes das fracoes orgânicas de N, nas folhas, foi seguido por decrescimos nas concentracoes de clorofilas e por acrescimos nas concentracoes de NH+4 . E provavel que o aumento da atividade de GS nas folhas de plantas de cajueiro, tenha sido induzido por um adicional suprimento de NH+4 e glutamato, a partir do catabolismo de aminoacidos e de proteinas e por aumentos na atividade fotorrespiratoria.

Plant growth, accumulation and solute partitioning of four forest species under salt stress

Em condicoes de estresse salino a acumulacao de Na+ e Cl-, na parte aerea e nas raizes, difere substancialmente entre plantas glicofitas; este fato deve-se, principalmente, a diversidade genetica existente e tem sido utilizado como indicador da resposta das plantas a salinidade. Este estudo objetivou avaliar a acumulacao e a distribuicao de Na+ e Cl-, bem como o efeito da salinidade sobre o ganho de massa seca e a distribuicao de K+, na parte aerea e raizes, em plantas jovens de Prosopis juliflora, Leucaena leucocephala, Piptadenia macrocarpa e Mimosa hostilis, com um mes de idade, cultivadas durante 30 dias em areia e irrigadas com solucao nutritiva contendo 100 mol m-3 NaCl, em casa de vegetacao. A acumulacao de Na+ e Cl-, e nao a distribuicao desses ions entre parte aerea e raizes, foi dependente da especie de planta. Em todas as especies estudadas a acumulacao de Cl- na parte aerea e nas raizes foi maior que a de Na+. A excecao da parte aerea, todas as plantas apresentaram reducao significativa no conteudo de K+ nas raizes em resposta a salinidade. A habilidade dessas plantas em proteger o metabolismo do efeito deleterio da salinidade pode resultar, em parte, de uma alta relacao K+/Na+. Desta forma, a Leucaena leucocephala apresentou a maior reducao na producao da massa seca total (60%) e a menor relacao K+/Na+ na parte aerea (0,40) enquanto que a Prosopis juliflora apresentou a menor reducao na massa seca total (15%) e uma relacao K+/Na+ na parte aerea, aproximadamente tres vezes maior. Esses resultados sugerem que maiores relacoes K+/Na+ desempenham um importante papel na adaptacao da planta aos estresses ionico e osmotico.

Remote Eye Tracking Systems: Technologies and Applications

Eye tracking is an active multidisciplinary research field, which has shown great progress in the last decades. Eye tracking is the process of monitoring eye movements in order to determine the point of gaze or to analyze motion patterns of an eye relative to the head or the environment. This process provides essential information to tasks such as face detection, usability testing, biometric identification, human behavior studies and human-computer interaction, among others. The term \textit{remote} is used whenever the eye tracker components do not have any physical contact with the users body. In general, highly accurate commercial eye trackers are expensive. However, nowadays it is possible to develop low-cost remote eye tracking systems with off-the-shelf hardware components. By this perspective, an overview of eye tracking technologies and applications is given in this paper, and the state-of-the-art work in the field is discussed as well. Moreover, hardware components and underlying computer vision processes are also presented in this paper.

Extending SOA with Semantic Mediators

Mediators are critical for service scenarios, since providers and consumers frequently have opposite goals, e.g. to maximize profit with minimal resource (provider perspective) against to maximize satisfaction with minimal cost (consumer perspective). Nonetheless, semantic mediation is not explicitly taken into account in the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). In this paper, it is presented an extension of SOA which includes the mediator as first-level entity, besides the client, the provider, and the registry of the services. The assignment of semantics to information that is processed by the mediator through ontologies, and the formalization of mediators behavior are included among the advantages of the proposal.

Combining Multiple Image Features to Guide Automatic Portrait Cropping for Rendering Different Aspect Ratios

Nowadays there exists a large variety of aspect ratios used for both image rendering (e.g. print media, TV, cinema screens etc.) and image acquisition devices (e.g. still and video cameras, scanners etc.). In order to maintain the image’s original aspect ratio when adjusting for a different media, some level of cropping may be required, but the automatic zoom and crop method may not produce satisfactory results regarding image contents. This paper proposes an automatic method that analyses images and estimates the relevant content areas, avoiding distortions and main subject chopping. The analysis is performed by four feature extractors, each producing a grayscale image which indicates relevant image areas. The outputs of these extractors are then combined by means of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization. Experiments involving a subjective evaluation of a set of automatically cropped images have shown that 77% of the 35 human observers considered images adjusted by the proposed approach better than or similar to the outputs of the automatic zoom and crop method.

DESCARTE DE LIXO EM ÁREA DE PRESERVAÇÃO AMBIENTAL: O CASO DA RESERVA ECOLÓGICA ESTADUAL DA MATA DO PAU FERRO, AREIA - PB

POLLINATOR FORAGING STRATEGY IN Galactia peduncularis (BENTH.) TAUB. (LEGUMINOSAE: PAPILIONOIDEA) IN THE PARQUE ESTADUAL DA SERRA DE CALDAS NOVAS BRAZIL The way the animals look for food is an important characteristic of their behavior. The optimal foraging theory is based on the existence of a balance between costs and benefits of these behavioral decisions. The present study aimed to evaluate the behavior of the pollinator in response to increased availability of floral resources. The experiment was conducted in a recently burned Cerrado area (Campo rupestre) in the State Park of Serra de Caldas Novas , located in the municipalities of Caldas Novas and Rio Quente Brazil. The species chosen to test our hypothesis was Galactia peduncularis (Benth.) Taub. (Leguminosae: Papilionoidea). 17 pairs of specimens were selected with a number of flowers, and the individuals of each pair were spaced by about 2m. In these pairs, one of them was considered the focal, and the other, the isolated. To test possible differences in pollination between isolated plants and focus, we performed two randomization tests: a test binary (TB), where all pairs were analyzed and verified the number of times where the focus on the individual floral visits were higher than the number of visits in isolated. According to the data analyzed, floral visitors preferred to use plants that could provide a greater amount of floral resources so that the number of visitors varied positively with the increment of flowers. Plants with many flowers can provide a greater amount of food in one location so that visitors do not need to flower around for long distances in search of meeting their energy needs.

Towards a Multidimensional Approach for the Evaluation of Multimodal Application User Interfaces

This paper focuses on a multidimensional approach for evaluating multimodal UI based upon a set of well known techniques for usability evaluation. Each technique evaluates the problem from a different perspective which combines user opinion, standard conformity assessment, and user performance measurement. The methods presentation and the evaluation analysis will be supported by a discussion of the results obtained from the methods application to a case study involving a Smartphone. The main objective of the study was to investigate the need for adapting a multidimensional evaluation approach for desktop applications to the context of multimodal devices and applications.

Expert system for supporting conformity inspections of software application interfaces to the ISO 9241

Usability assessment of products based on the ISO 9241 standard has been usually carried out by using printed parts of this standard and its checklists. In this paper it is proposed a tool for supporting conformity inspections of software application user interfaces based upon ISO 9241. The proposed expert system -- X-SCI (eXpert Software Conformity Inspection) -- aims to give support to user interface designers and evaluators in ISO 9241 standard inspection processes. It will treat differently these categories of professionals by assigning different degrees of certainty to their choices in each stage of the inspection.

A New NPR Approach for Image Stylization: Combining Edges, Color Reduction and Facial Exaggerations

This paper presents an innovative non-photorealistic rendering approach which combines three techniques for the stylization of digital images. These techniques consist of: (i) an existing state-of-the art edge-based sketching; (ii) a proposed novel color reduction and stylization process; and (iii) a proposed novel caricature generation process (when faces are visible). By comparing the outputs of the approach with existing photo-to-cartoon rendering systems, for a set of test images, it was possible to see that the appeal of the resulting images was noticeably better for the proposed approach.