This paper makes a brief review on 30 years of history of the wind power short-term prediction, since the first ideas and sketches on the theme to the actual state of the art on models and tools, giving emphasis to the most significant proposals and developments. The two principal lines of thought on short-term prediction (mathematical and physical) are indistinctly treated here and comparisons between models and tools are avoided, mainly because, on the one hand, a standard for a measure of performance is still not adopted and, on the other hand, it is very important that the data are exactly the same in order to compare two models (this fact makes it almost impossible to carry out a quantitative comparison between a huge number of models and methods). In place of a quantitative description, a qualitative approach is preferred for this review, remarking the contribution (and innovative aspect) of each model. On the basis of the review, some topics for future research are pointed out.

The SARS-CoV-2 spread quickly across the globe. The World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The mortality rate, hospital disorders and incalculable economic and social damages, besides the unproven efficacy of the treatments evaluated against COVID-19, raised the need for immediate control of this disease. Therefore, the current study employed in silico tools to rationally identify new possible SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) inhibitors. That is an enzyme conserved among the coronavirus species; hence, the identification of an Mpro inhibitor is to make it a broad-spectrum drug. Molecular docking studies described the binding sites and the interaction energies of 74 Mpro-ligand complexes deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). A structural similarity screening was carried out in order to identify possible Mpro ligands that show additional pharmacological properties against COVID-19. We identified 59 hit compounds and among them, melatonin stood out due to its prominent immunomodulatory and anti-inflammatory activities; it can reduce oxidative stress, defence cell mobility and efficiently combat the cytokine storm and sepsis. In addition, melatonin is an inhibitor of calmodulin, an essential intracellular component to maintain angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) on the cell surface. Interestingly, one of the most promising hits in our docking study was melatonin. It revealed better interaction energy with Mpro compared to ligands in complexes from PDB. Consequently, melatonin can have response potential in early stages for its possible effects on ACE-2 and Mpro, although it is also promising in more severe stages of the disease for its action against hyper-inflammation. These results definitely do not confirm antiviral activity, but can rather be used as a basis for further preclinical and clinical trials.

The fulfillment of this Thesis would not have been possible without the contribution of a large number of persons. The first persons I am deeply indebted to are my wife Livia Soraya and my children"s Gabriel, Bruna and Luísa. While they did not contribute to this Thesis directly, but I would like to thank them for their support and love. I would also like to thank my parents, Clarice and José Ribamar, for their important support. I owe a big thank-you to my Thesis advisor, Djamel Sadok, who offered the opportunity to join his research team a few years ago. I must say that at that time, I was not really imagining the kind of experience I was about to embark on. I appreciated very much Djamel"s very pragmatic approach to networking. Djamel is also an inexhaustible source of networking references. Through his enthusiasm and unlimited support (time, ideas and experience), he helped me to complete this Thesis. In addition to that, this work contains the fruits of many and lengthy discussions regarding the present contributions with Djamel. My sincere thanks also go to Professor Judith Kelner for giving me as well as to my family a great deal of support when we moved to Recife. She was instrumental in my participation in the GPRT group. I learned a lot from her valuable experience. I am also thankful for the excellent example she has provided as a successful researcher and Professor. The third person I would like to thank is my Thesis co-advisor Eduardo Souto. Souto has been a great friend from Manaus, where we worked together in the University"s Data Processing Center (CPD). He was key to my decision for choosing Recife as the place to do my Doctorate studies. I learned a lot from the references he pointed me to and from the many discussions we had. We collaborated on a lot of problems, especially about the design of the OADS Miner.

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Web Browser Fingerprinting is a process in which the users are, with high likelihood, uniquely identified by the extracted features from their devices, generating an identifier key (fingerprint). Although it can be used for malicious purposes, especially regarding privacy invasion, Web Browser Fingerprinting can also be used to enhance security (e.g. as a factor in two-factor authentication). This paper investigates the use of Web Audio API as a Web Browser Fingerprinting method capable of identifying the devices. The idea is to prove or not if audio can provide features capable to identify users and devices. Our initial results show that the proposed method is capable of identifying the device’s class, based on features like device’s type, web browser’s version and rendering engine.

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We introduce a set of tools and techniques for increasing the resilience and trustworthiness of identity providers (IdPs) based on OpenID. To this purpose we propose an architecture of specialized components capable of fulfilling the essential requirements for ensuring high availability, integrity and higher confidentiality guarantees for sensitive data and operations. Additionally, we also discuss how trusted components (e.g., TPMs, smart cards) can be used to provide remote attestation on the client and server side, i.e., how to measure the trustworthiness of the system. The proposed solution outperforms related work in different aspects, such as countermeasures for solving different security issues, throughput, and by tolerating arbitrary faults without compromising the system operations. We evaluate the system behavior under different circumstances, such as continuous faults and attacks. Furthermore, the first performance evaluations show that the system is capable of supporting environments with thousands of users.