A aprendizagem no quotidiano dos indivíduos seniores: o contributo do meio e das instituições

Esta investigação assumiu, como objetivo, a identificação e caraterização das aprendizagens presentes no quotidiano dos indivíduos idosos, residentes em meio rural e urbano e em condições de institucionalização ou não. Tratou-se de um estudo exploratório, de natureza qualitativa, onde foi aplicado um inquérito por entrevista a uma amostra de 16 indivíduos. A entrevista tinha questões relativas à caracterização dos indivíduos, às atividades que os mesmos desenvolviam e às aprendizagens concretizadas nessas atividades. Os dados foram tratados através da análise de conteúdo. O presente estudo foi realizado na região Alentejo, sendo os concelhos de Évora e Mourão os selecionados, para realização da mesma. Este estudo mostrou que existiam algumas diferenças decorrentes dos contextos de vida dos indivíduos, nomeadamente, no que respeita às instituições de meio urbano vs meio rural, uma vez que os indivíduos institucionalizados no meio urbano encontram mais oportunidades de aprendizagens nas atividades que lhe são propostas; "The Learning daily lives of senior individuals : the contribution of the institutions and the environment " Abstract: This reseach assumed as a main goal identify and characterize the learnings on the seniors nowadays who live on the rural and urban middle and in institutionalized conditions or not. Was based on an exploratory study of a qualitative nature, applied on a survey per interview with a 16 individual as a sample. On the interview were questions related with the seniors characterization, with their developed activities na with guarantees of learnings on those activities. The data were treated according the contente analysis. This study was conducted in the region of Alentejo, and the municipalities of Évora and Mourão. The research shows several differences between the contexts used. Those differences stand on the rural and urban institutions, because urban institutionalized seniors find more learning opportunities on proposed activities than rural institutionalized seniors.

Medidas de simplificação na administração fiscal e qualidade do serviço prestado: Reflexão sobre a evolução recente

Dada a crescente complexidade da relação fisco/contribuinte, das questões de natureza económica que lhe estão subjacentes, do peso que a fiscalidade tem nas mesmas, da sua relação com o direito, seja no âmbito do exercício do poder de autoridade em sede fiscal por parte do Estado, seja quanto à salvaguarda do exercício das garantias dos contribuintes, das relações que toda esta matéria motiva a montante e a jusante e da forma como a mesma interage, a temática da simplificação, da qualidade e dos custos indexados tem vindo gradualmente a merecer particular atenção por parte de governantes, profissionais e estudiosos da matéria. Assim, no âmbito do tema que nos propomos apresentar, atentos o vasto universo de situações possíveis e passíveis de enquadrar e considerar neste trabalho, cuja abordagem aqui se pretende explanar, será nosso objectivo centrarmo-nos no essencial, nas situações decorrentes das medidas de simplificação que têm vindo a ser implementadas ao nível da Administração Fiscal, em resultado da prática e dos procedimentos adoptados pela Direcção Geral dos Impostos (DGCI), no âmbito da implementação de medidas de política delineadas a nível governamental e cujos objectivos se têm vindo a consubstanciar na pretendida redução de custos de cumprimento e de custos de administração. Por consequência, está em equação a matéria relativa aos denominados custos de contexto face a assumidos objectivos ao nível da pretendida melhoria da qualidade no serviço a prestar ao cidadão contribuinte por parte da DGCI e do reforço da competitividade fiscal, afigurando-se também interessante abordar um ponto diferente nesta temática e que resulta do risco associado à implementação das referidas medidas, tanto na óptica do sujeito administrado como da própria administração, e à noção que o mesmo incorpora em sede de auditoria tributária e dos custos daí resultantes. ABSTRACT: Due to the growing complexity of the relation between tax authority and the taxpayer, the underlying economical questions, the importance of the fiscal issues, its relation with law, be in the context of the exercise of the power of authority in fiscal field by the State, be in the subject of the guarantees of the taxpayers, the relations as for which all these matter causes and in the form as it interacts, the issue of simplification, of quality and of indexed costs has been coming to deserve gradually particular attention by rulers, professionals and scholars. Attentive to the vast universe of possibilities that fit the theme and that could be considered in this work, our objective will be centered in the situations resulting :from the measures of simplification that have been coming to be implemented at the level of the Fiscal Administration, resulting from the practice and the proceedings adopted by the Direcção-Geral dos Impostos (DGCI), in the context of the implementation of policies outlined at a government level and whose objectives are in line with the pretended lessening of accomplishment and administration costs. Consequently, the matter in equation is the so-called costs of context considering the assumed objectives at the level of the pretended improvement of the quality in the service to the taxpayer by the DGCI and the reinforcement of the fiscal competitiveness, seeming also interesting to analise the risk associated to the implementation of the above-mentioned measures, in the point of view of the administered subject as of the Administration itself, and in the underlying notion in the tax auditing area and the resultant costs.

Scheduling the repair of aircraft components - a case study

In aircraft components maintenance shops, components are distributed amongst repair groups and their respective technicians based on the type of repair, on the technicians skills and workload, and on the customer required dates. This distribution planning is typically done in an empirical manner based on the group leader’s past experience. Such a procedure does not provide any performance guarantees, leading frequently to undesirable delays on the delivery of the aircraft components. Among others, a fundamental challenge faced by the group leaders is to decide how to distribute the components that arrive without customer required dates. This paper addresses the problems of prioritizing the randomly arriving of aircraft components (with or without pre-assigned customer required dates) and of optimally distributing them amongst the technicians of the repair groups. We proposed a formula for prioritizing the list of repairs, pointing out the importance of selecting good estimators for the interarrival times between repair requests, the turn-around-times and the man hours for repair. In addition, a model for the assignment and scheduling problem is designed and a preliminary algorithm along with a numerical illustration is presented.

Abstraction and use of groundwater for heating buildings in a hard rock environment

In order to turn more efficient the heating of class rooms in the lower floor of the old building of the University of Évora (a XVI century building), five drillings were organised inside the area of the university (Figure 1). The purpose was to use the temperature differential of groundwater in relation to air, by means of a heat exchanger, and use this process to heat the rooms using less energy, turning the heating process less expensive. The wells were drilled in fractured rocks (gneisses), and the purpose was to locate them at least around 100 m one from each other, whilst trying to have a hydraulic connection in-between. From the five initial wells, four were successful in terms of productivity, but just two of them (RA1 and RA2) proved to be hydraulically connected. The wells were equipped with screens for all their drilled depth (100 m), except for the first six meters and some two or three pipes of six meters each, to allow space for the installation for submersible pumps. The length of the installed screens guarantees a good efficiency of the system. In the wells with no connection, the heating system can work using each single well for abstraction and injection, but the process is much less efficient than in the cases where interaction between wells is possible through the rock’s fracture network.