Honours students: good marks and what else?

Currently in Portugal academic excellence in higher education is given recognition through merit prizes. Because honours students can be seen as having the potential to achieve imporant levels of professional expertise, especially if they have some personal skills, it is important to know not only the marks of the students but also the personal characteristics that contribute to academic success and which may also be important for career success. Some theoretical models of giftedness and excellence agree with this idea and this work considers the latest contribution of Renzulli (2005) where it is pointed out that excellent achievements result from the combination of motivational, intellectual and creative factors as well as from co-cognitive factors which are most associated with personality functioning in a particular context. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze how honours students differ from their classmates in various psychological dimensions: Cognition-creativity, Motivation and Learning Strategies, Persistence, Social Interaction, Drive for Excellence and Cultural Interest. These dimensions were measured by the Inventory of Psychological Characteristics Associated with Academic Performance (ICPADA), which was constructed taking into consideration the previous study of Scaeger et al. (2012). The sample included 914 Portuguese higher educatoin students from a first cycle degree in the Bologna process. Participants were selected from three different fields of study: Social and Human Sciences; Science and Technology; Arts and Humanities. The data collected through the administration of the ICPADA was presented, and the results revealed a higher self-perception by honours students in all areas analyzed, with the exception of the dimension of social interaction. In addition an interaction effect was revealed for persistence, social interaction, and cultural interest. The field of study and whether the participants were honours students or not were also taken into account. Some implications for future studies are presented here along with possible interventions for honours students.

As dinâmicas de tradução nos mercados da edição: uma análise da tradução especializada em contexto académico

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Tradução e Comunicação Multilingue

Towards human-like bimanual movements in anthropomorphic robots: a nonlinear optimization approach

Previously we have presented a model for generating human-like arm and hand movements on an unimanual anthropomorphic robot involved in human-robot collaboration tasks. The present paper aims to extend our model in order to address the generation of human-like bimanual movement sequences which are challenged by scenarios cluttered with obstacles. Movement planning involves large scale nonlinear constrained optimization problems which are solved using the IPOPT solver. Simulation studies show that the model generates feasible and realistic hand trajectories for action sequences involving the two hands. The computational costs involved in the planning allow for real-time human robot-interaction. A qualitative analysis reveals that the movements of the robot exhibit basic characteristics of human movements.

De l'importance de la psychologie collective dans le sciences sociales: Serge Moscovici et les passions humaines

L'oeuvre de Moscovici se résume à une tentative de rapprochement du psychique et du social, ne serait-ce que parce que la rationalité et l'irrationalité sont transversales auz comportaments individuels et à l'activité sociale. En ce sens, l'individu n'est pas plus du ressort de la seule psychologie que la societé ne l'est de la seule sociologie. Simplifier la realité reviendrait à simplifier la connossaince de celle-ci. La psycho-sociologie de Moscovici nous invite donc à prendre en compte l'homme dans sa complétude, en tant que mixte de logique et de sentiments, de raison et de passions. On comprendra alors l'importance du paradigme écologique dans les sciences sociales comme forme de compréhension de ce qui relie l'homme à une entité plus vaste, le renvoyant aussi bien à la nature et à son ascendance animale qu'à la techinque et à sa destinée post-humaine.