Os preços de transferência e o âmbito de intervenção do auditor: abordagem e enquadramento

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do obtenção do grau de Mestre em Auditoria Auditoria, sob orientação de Adalmiro Álvaro Malheiro de Castro Andrade

Application of wetland systems in the treatment of acid rock mine drainage

The presented work was conducted within the Dissertation / Internship, branch of Environmental Protection Technology, associated to the Master thesis in Chemical Engineering by the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto and it was developed in the Aquatest a.s, headquartered in Prague, in Czech Republic. The ore mining exploitation in the Czech Republic began in the thirteenth century, and has been extended until the twentieth century, being now evident the consequences of the intensive extraction which includes contamination of soil and sub-soil by high concentrations of heavy metals. The mountain region of Zlaté Hory was chosen for the implementation of the remediation project, which consisted in the construction of three cells (tanks), the first to raise the pH, the second for the sedimentation of the formed precipitates and a third to increase the process efficiency in order to reduce high concentrations of metals, with special emphasis on iron, manganese and sulfates. This project was initiated in 2005, being pioneer in this country and is still ongoing due to the complex chemical and biological phenomenon’s inherent to the system. At the site where the project was implemented, there is a natural lagoon, thereby enabling a comparative study of the two systems (natural and artificial) regarding the efficiency of both in the reduction/ removal of the referred pollutants. The study aimed to assist and cooperate in the ongoing investigation at the company Aquatest, in terms of field work conducted in Zlaté Hory and in terms of research methodologies used in it. Thereby, it was carried out a survey and analysis of available data from 2005 to 2008, being complemented by the treatment of new data from 2009 to 2010. Moreover, a theoretical study of the chemical and biological processes that occurs in both systems was performed. Regarding the field work, an active participation in the collection and in situ sample analyzing of water and soil from the natural pond has been attained, with the supervision of Engineer, Irena Šupiková. Laboratory analysis of water and soil were carried out by laboratory technicians. It was found that the natural lagoon is more efficient in reducing iron and manganese, being obtained removal percentages of 100%. The artificial lagoon had a removal percentage of 90% and 33% for iron and manganese respectively. Despite the minor efficiency of the constructed wetland, it must be pointed out that this system was designed for the treatment and consequent reduction of iron. In this context, it can conclude that the main goal has been achieved. In the case of sulphates, the removal optimization is yet a goal to be achieved not only in the Czech Republic but also in other places where this type of contamination persists. In fact, in the natural lagoon and in the constructed wetland, removal efficiencies of 45% and 7% were obtained respectively. It has been speculated that the water at the entrance of both systems has different sources. The analysis of the collected data shows at the entrance of the natural pond, a concentration of 4.6 mg/L of total iron, 14.6 mg/L of manganese and 951 mg/L of sulphates. In the artificial pond, the concentrations are 27.7 mg/L, 8.1 mg/L and 382 mg/L respectively for iron, manganese and sulphates. During 2010 the investigation has been expanded. The study of soil samples has started in order to observe and evaluate the contribution of bacteria in the removal of heavy metals being in its early phase. Summarizing, this technology has revealed to be an interesting solution, since in addition to substantially reduce the mentioned contaminants, mostly iron, it combines the low cost of implementation with an reduced maintenance, and it can also be installed in recreation parks, providing habitats for plants and birds.

The dark side of DEMMON: what is behind the scene in engineering large-scale wireless sensor networks

Most research work on WSNs has focused on protocols or on specific applications. There is a clear lack of easy/ready-to-use WSN technologies and tools for planning, implementing, testing and commissioning WSN systems in an integrated fashion. While there exists a plethora of papers about network planning and deployment methodologies, to the best of our knowledge none of them helps the designer to match coverage requirements with network performance evaluation. In this paper we aim at filling this gap by presenting an unified toolset, i.e., a framework able to provide a global picture of the system, from the network deployment planning to system test and validation. This toolset has been designed to back up the EMMON WSN system architecture for large-scale, dense, real-time embedded monitoring. It includes network deployment planning, worst-case analysis and dimensioning, protocol simulation and automatic remote programming and hardware testing tools. This toolset has been paramount to validate the system architecture through DEMMON1, the first EMMON demonstrator, i.e., a 300+ node test-bed, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest single-site WSN test-bed in Europe to date.

Six sigma methodologies: implementation and impacts on Portuguese small and medium companies (SMES)

Artigo elaborador no âmbito dos trabalhos decorrentes à dissertação de Mestrado do Aluno David Leite, no Mestrado em Gestão Integrada Qualidade, Ambiente e Segurança, ESTGF-IPP, Oreintados pelos Professores Luís Fonseca (ISEP-IPP) e Vanda Lima (ESTGF-IPP).

How to teach mathematics with MOODLE

The aim of this article is to present a Project in the Oporto’s Institute of Accounting and Administration, which pretends to contribute for a change in the way of teaching and learning Mathematics. One of the main objectives of this project is to innovate the teaching and learning processes, exploring technologies as a pedagogical resource and to induce higher motivation to students, improve the rate of success and make available to students a set of materials adapted to their needs. This concern is justified due to the fact that students have a weak preparation, without consolidated basis. Since the year 2007/2008 the courses were adjusted to the Bologna process, which requires several changes in teacher’s and student’s roles, methodologies and assessment. The number of weekly classes has been reduced, so it was necessary to develop new strategies and methodologies to support the student. With the implementation of the Bologna Process in the Accounting degree, we felt a great need to provide other types of activities to students. To complement our theoretical and practical classes we have developed a project called MatActiva based on the Moodle platform offered by PAOL - Projecto de Apoio On-Line (Online Support Project). Moodle allows us to use the language TEX to create materials that use mathematical symbols. Using this functionality, we created a set of easy to use interactive resources. In MatActiva project, the students have access to a variety of different materials. We have followed a strategy that makes the project compatible with the theoretical and practical subjects/classes, complementing them. To do so, we created some resources, for instance multiple-choice tests, which are the most accessed by the students. These tests can be realized and corrected on-line and for each wrong answer there is a feedback with the resolution. We can find other types of resources: diagnostic tests, theoretical notes. There are not only the pre-requirements for subjects mathematics, but also materials to help students follow up the programs. We also developed several lessons. This activity consists of a number of pages, where each page has contents and leads to other pages, based on the student's progress. The teacher creates the choices and determines the next page that the student will see, based upon their knowledge. There is also an area of doubts, where the students can place all the mathematical doubts they have, and a teacher gives the answers or clues to help them in their work. MatActiva also offers an area where we can find some humour, curiosities, contests and games including mathematical contents to test the math skills, as well as links to pages about mathematical contents that could be useful for the study. Since ISCAP receives ERASMUS students and some of them attend mathematics, we developed some materials in English, so they can also use MatActiva. The main objectives of our project are not only to bring success in the subjects of mathematics, but also to motivate the students, encourage them to overcome theirs difficulties through an auto-study giving them more confidence and improve their relationship with the mathematics as well as the communication between students and teachers and among students.

Eastwards / westwards: which direction for gender studies in the 21st century?

Eastwards / Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the XXIst Century? is a collection of essays which focus on themes and methods that characterize current research into gender in Asian countries in general. In this collection, ideas derived from Gender Studies elsewhere in the world have been subjected to scrutiny for their utility in helping to describe and understand regional phenomena. But the concepts of Local and Global – with their discoursive productions – have not functioned as a binary opposition: localism and globalism are mutually constitutive and researchers have interrogated those spaces of interaction between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’, bearing in mind their own embeddedness in social and cultural structures and their own historical memory. Contributors to this collection provided a critical transnational perspective on some of the complex effects of the dynamics of cultural globalization, by exploring the relation between gender and development, language, historiography, education and culture. We have also given attention to the ideological and rhetorical processes through which gender identity is constructed, by comparing textual grids and patterns of expectation. Likewise, we have discussed the role of ethnography, anthropology, historiography, sociology, fiction, popular culture and colonial and post-colonial sources in (re)inventing old/new male/female identities, their conversion into concepts and circulation through time and space. This multicultural and trans-disciplinary selection of essays is totally written in English, fully edited and revised, therefore, it has a good potential for an immediate international circulation. This project may trace new paths and issues for discussion on what concerns the life, practices and narratives by and about women in Asia, as well as elsewhere in the present day global experience. Academic readership: Researchers, scholars, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, doctoral students and general non-fiction readers, with a special interest in Gender Studies, Asia, Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Historiography, Politics, Race, Feminism, Language, Linguistics, Power, Political and Feminist Agendas, Popular Culture, Education, Women’s Writing, Religion, Multiculturalism, Globalisation, Migration. Chapter summary: 1. “Social Gender Stereotypes and their Implication in Hindi”, Anjali Pande, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. This essay looks at the subtle ways in which gender identities are constructed and reinforced in India through social norms of language use. Language itself becomes a medium for perpetuating gender stereotypes, forcing its speakers to confirm to socially defined gender roles. Using examples from a classroom discussion about a film, this essay will highlight the underlying rigid male-female stereotypes in Indian society with their more obvious expressions in language. For the urban woman in India globalisation meant increased economic equality and exposure to changed lifestyles. On an individual level it also meant redefining gender relations and changing the hierarchy in man-­woman relationships. With the economic independence there is a heightened sense of liberation in all spheres of social life, a confidence to fuzz the rigid boundaries of gender roles. With the new films and media celebrating this liberated woman, who is ready to assert her sexual needs, who is ready to explode those long held notions of morality, one would expect that the changes are not just superficial. But as it soon became obvious in the course of a classroom discussion about relationships and stereotypes related to age, the surface changes can not become part of the common vocabulary, for the obvious reason that there is still a vast gap between the screen image of this new woman and the ground reality. Social considerations define the limits of this assertiveness of women, whereas men are happy to be liberal within the larger frame of social sanctions. The educated urban woman in India speaks in favour of change and the educated urban male supports her, but one just needs to scratch the surface to see the time tested formulae of gender roles firmly in place. The way the urban woman happily balances this emerging promise of independence with her gendered social identity, makes it necessary to rethink some aspects of looking at gender in a gradually changing, traditional society like India. 2. “The Linguistic Dimension of Gender Equality”, Alissa Tolstokorova, Kiev Centre for Gender Information and Education, Ukraine. The subject-matter of this essay is gender justice in language which, as I argue, may be achieved through the development of a gender-related approach to linguistic human rights. The last decades of the 20th century, globally marked by a “gender shift” in attitudes to language policy, gave impetus to the social movement for promoting linguistic gender equality. It was initiated in Western Europe and nowadays is moving eastwards, as ideas of gender democracy progress into developing countries. But, while in western societies gender discrimination through language, or linguistic sexism, was an issue of concern for over three decades, in developing countries efforts to promote gender justice in language are only in their infancy. My argument is that to promote gender justice in language internationally it is necessary to acknowledge the rights of women and men to equal representation of their gender in language and speech and, therefore, raise a question of linguistic rights of the sexes. My understanding is that the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights in 1996 provided this opportunity to address the problem of gender justice in language as a human rights issue, specifically as a gender dimension of linguistic human rights. 3. “The Rebirth of an Old Language: Issues of Gender Equality in Kazakhstan”, Maria Helena Guimarães, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. The existing language situation in Kazakhstan, while peaceful, is not without some tension. We propose to analyze here some questions we consider relevant in the frame of cultural globalization and gender equality, such as: free from Russian imperialism, could Kazakhstan become an easy prey of Turkey’s “imperialist dream”? Could these traditionally Muslim people be soon facing the end of religious tolerance and gender equality, becoming this new old language an easy instrument for the infiltration in the country of fundamentalism (it has already crossed the boarders of Uzbekistan), leading to a gradual deterioration of its rich multicultural relations? The present structure of the language is still very fragile: there are three main dialects and many academics defend the re-introduction of the Latin alphabet, thus enlarging the possibility of cultural “contamination” by making the transmission of fundamentalist ideas still easier through neighbour countries like Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan (their languages belong to the same sub-group of Common Turkic), where the Latin alphabet is already in use, and where the ground for such ideas shown itself very fruitful. 4. “Construction of Womanhood in the Bengali Language of Bangladesh”, Raasheed Mahmood; University of New South Wales, Sydney. The present essay attempts to explore the role of gender-based language differences and of certain markers that reveal the status accorded to women in Bangladesh. Discrimination against women, in its various forms, is endemic in communities and countries around the world, cutting across class, race, age, and religious and national boundaries. One cannot understand the problems of gender discrimination solely by referring to the relationship of power or authority between men and women. Rather one needs to consider the problem by relating it to the specific social formation in which the image of masculinity and femininity is constructed and reconstructed. Following such line of reasoning this essay will examine the nature of gender bias in the Bengali language of Bangladesh, holding the conviction that as a product of social reality language reflects the socio-cultural behaviour of the community who speaks it. This essay will also attempt to shed some light on the processes through which gender based language differences produce actual consequences for women, who become exposed to low self-esteem, depression and systematic exclusion from public discourse. 5. “Marriage in China as an expression of a changing society”, Elisabetta Rosado David, University of Porto, Portugal, and Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia, Italy. In 29 April 2001, the new Marriage Law was promulgated in China. The first law on marriage was proclaimed in 1950 with the objective of freeing women from the feudal matrimonial system. With the second law, in 1981, values and conditions that had been distorted by the Cultural Revolution were recovered. Twenty years later, a new reform was started, intending to update marriage in the view of the social and cultural changes that occurred with Deng Xiaoping’s “open policy”. But the legal reform is only the starting point for this case-study. The rituals that are followed in the wedding ceremony are often hard to understand and very difficult to standardize, especially because China is a vast country, densely populated and characterized by several ethnic minorities. Two key words emerge from this issue: syncretism and continuity. On this basis, we can understand tradition in a better way, and analyse whether or not marriage, as every social manifestation, has evolved in harmony with Chinese culture. 6. “The Other Woman in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: The Case of Portuguese India”, Maria de Deus Manso, University of Évora, Portugal. This essay researches the social, cultural and symbolic history of local women in the Portuguese Indian colonial enclaves. The normative Portuguese overseas history has not paid any attention to the “indigenous” female populations in colonial Portuguese territories, albeit the large social importance of these social segments largely used in matrimonial and even catholic missionary strategies. The first attempt to open fresh windows in the history of this new field was the publication of Charles Boxer’s referential study about Women in lberian Overseas Expansion, edited in Portugal only after the Revolution of 1975. After this research we can only quote some other fragmentary efforts. In fact, research about the social, cultural, religious, political and symbolic situation of women in the Portuguese colonial territories, from the XVI to the XX century, is still a minor historiographic field. In this essay we discuss this problem and we study colonial representations of women in the Portuguese Indian enclaves, mainly in the territory of Goa, using case studies methodologies. 7. “Heading East this Time: Critical Readings on Gender in Southeast Asia”, Clara Sarmento, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal. This essay intends to discuss some critical readings of fictional and theoretical texts on gender condition in Southeast Asian countries. Nowadays, many texts about women in Southeast Asia apply concepts of power in unusual areas. Traditional forms of gender hegemony have been replaced by other powerful, if somewhat more covert, forms. We will discuss some universal values concerning conventional female roles as well as the strategies used to recognize women in political fields traditionally characterized by male dominance. Female empowerment will mean different things at different times in history, as a result of culture, local geography and individual circumstances. Empowerment needs to be perceived as an individual attitude, but it also has to be facilitated at the macro­level by society and the State. Gender is very much at the heart of all these dynamics, strongly related to specificities of historical, cultural, ethnic and class situatedness, requiring an interdisciplinary transnational approach.

Advances in smart grids - benefits on sharing background experiences from Portugal, Central Europe and Brazil

This paper presents ELECON - Electricity Consumption Analysis to Promote Energy Efficiency Considering Demand Response and Non-technical Losses, an international research project that involves European and Brazilian partners. ELECON focuses on energy efficiency increasing through consumer´s active participation which is a key area for Europe and Brazil cooperation. The project aims at significantly contributing towards the successful implementation of smart grids, focussing on the use of new methods that allow the efficient use of distributed energy resources, namely distributed generation, storage and demand response. ELECON puts together researchers from seven European and Brazilian partners, with consolidated research background and evidencing complementary competences. ELECON involves institutions of 3 European countries (Portugal, Germany, and France) and 4 Brazilian institutions. The complementary background and experience of the European and Brazilian partners is of main relevance to ensure the capacities required to achieve the proposed goals. In fact, the European Union (EU) and Brazil have very different resources and approaches in what concerns this area. Having huge hydro and fossil resources, Brazil has not been putting emphasis on distributed renewable based electricity generation. On the contrary, EU has been doing huge investments in this area, taking into account environmental concerns and also the economic EU external dependence dictated by huge requirements of energy related products imports. Sharing these different backgrounds allows the project team to propose new methodologies able to efficiently address the new challenges of smart grids.

Research on using the decision tree method in order to select the best alternative for the pharmacies supply

Introduction / Aims: Adopting the important decisions represents a specific task of the manager. An efficient manager takes these decisions during a sistematic process with well-defined elements, each with a precise order. In the pharmaceutical practice and business, in the supply process of the pharmacies, there are situations when the medicine distributors offer a certain discount, but require payment in a shorter period of time. In these cases, the analysis of the offer can be made with the help of the decision tree method, which permits identifying the decision offering the best possible result in a given situation. The aims of the research have been the analysis of the product offers of many different suppliers and the establishing of the most advantageous ways of pharmacy supplying. Material / Methods: There have been studied the general product offers of the following medical stores: A&G Med, Farmanord, Farmexim, Mediplus, Montero and Relad. In the case of medicine offers including a discount, the decision tree method has been applied in order to select the most advantageous offers. The Decision Tree is a management method used in taking the right decisions and it is generally used when one needs to evaluate the decisions that involve a series of stages. The tree diagram is used in order to look for the most efficient means to attain a specific goal. The decision trees are the most probabilistic methods, useful when adopting risk taking decisions. Results: The results of the analysis on the tree diagrams have indicated the fact that purchasing medicines with discount (1%, 10%, 15%) and payment in a shorter time interval (120 days) is more profitable than purchasing without a discount and payment in a longer time interval (160 days). Discussion / Conclusion: Depending on the results of the tree diagram analysis, the pharmacies would purchase from the selected suppliers. The research has shown that the decision tree method represents a valuable work instrument in choosing the best ways for supplying pharmacies and it is very useful to the specialists from the pharmaceutical field, pharmaceutical management, to medicine suppliers, pharmacy practitioners from the community pharmacies and especially to pharmacy managers, chief – pharmacists.

Optimization techniques for power distribution planning with uncertainties: a comparative study

Important research effort has been devoted to the topic of optimal planning of distribution systems. The non linear nature of the system, the need to consider a large number of scenarios and the increasing necessity to deal with uncertainties make optimal planning in distribution systems a difficult task. Heuristic techniques approaches have been proposed to deal with these issues, overcoming some of the inherent difficulties of classic methodologies. This paper considers several methodologies used to address planning problems of electrical power distribution networks, namely mixedinteger linear programming (MILP), ant colony algorithms (AC), genetic algorithms (GA), tabu search (TS), branch exchange (BE), simulated annealing (SA) and the Bender´s decomposition deterministic non-linear optimization technique (BD). Adequacy of theses techniques to deal with uncertainties is discussed. The behaviour of each optimization technique is compared from the point of view of the obtained solution and of the methodology performance. The paper presents results of the application of these optimization techniques to a real case of a 10-kV electrical distribution system with 201 nodes that feeds an urban area.

Clinical Education - a fundamental curricular unit for all health practitioners

Clinical education is recognized as being crucial for the training of health professionals. This subject is debated amongst teachers, students and professionals. Besides the clinical and research skills, we look for other competencies such as oratory, creative thinking or leadership. We present the results of a study with 4th graders. It’s a exploratory study; the main purpose was to evaluate the outcomes of a unit of clinical education prepared according a new set of competencies and methodologies. The competencies were seen as valuable. Organization, leading or supporting a colleague, rethinking a program to serve client and family are equally important.

Reported missing - learners in SLA/EFL research

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Detectives with pimples: how teen noir is crossing the frontiers of the traditional noir films

In the last ten years, teen noir movies and series — such as Donnie Darko (2001), Brick (2005), or Veronica Mars (2004-2007) — have become increasingly popular among audiences, both in the USA and in Europe, and aroused the curiosity of critics. These teen noir adventures present darker themes and technical features that distinguish them from numerous productions aiming at young adults. Their narrative and aesthetic characteristics reinvent and subvert the tradition of classic noir movies of the forties and fifties, thus generating a sense of novelty. In this article, I focus my attention on Veronica Mars, a famous teen noir series, created by Rob Thomas, to examine: a) the teen noir themes; b) the new profile and role of the private investigator; c) the empowerment of girls/young women; d) razor-sharp dialogues; e) intertextual references to old- school noir movies. In order to do so, resort to the research of specialists in the field of neo noir, such as Mark Conrad, Foster Hirsch, or Roz Kaveney. My main goal is to prove that a new (sub)genre is slowly emerging and revivifying teen cinema.

The importance of qualitative methodology in management empirical research

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of qualitative research within the scope of management scientific studies, referring to its philosophy, nature and instruments. It also confronts it with quantitative methodology, approaching its differences as well as its complementariness and synergies, with the purpose of explaining, from a more analytic point of view, the relevance of qualitative methodology in the course of an authentic and real research despite its complexity. Design/methodology/approach: Regardless of its broad application, one may attest the scarcity literature that focuses on qualitative research applied to the management scientific area, as opposed to the large amount that refers to quantitative research. Findings: The paper shows the influence that qualitative research has on management scientific research. Originality/value:. Qualitative research assumes an important role within qualitative research by allowing for the study and analysis of certain types of phenomena that occur inside organisations, and in respect of which quantitative studies cannot provide an answer.

Preparatory and field work phases in the qualitative empirical research process in management: the case studies approach

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to promote qualitative methodology within the scientific community of management. The specific objective is oriented to propose an empirical research process based on case study method. This is to ensure rigor in the empirical research process, that future research may follow a similar procedure to that is proposed. Design/methodology/approach: Following a qualitative methodological approach, we propose a research process that develops according to four phases, each with several stages. This study analyses the preparatory and field work phases and their stages. Findings: The paper shows the influence that case studies have on qualitative empirical research process in management. Originality/value:. Case study method assumes an important role within qualitative research by allowing for the study and analysis of certain types of phenomena that occur inside organisations, and in respect of which quantitative studies cannot provide an answer.

Ethernet goes real-time: a survey on research and technological developments

Ethernet is the most popular LAN technology. Its low price and robustness, resulting from its wide acceptance and deployment, has created an eagerness to expand its responsibilities to the factory-floor, where real-time requirements are to be fulfilled. However, it is difficult to build a real-time control network using Ethernet, because its MAC protocol, the 1-persistent CSMA/CD protocol with the BEB collision resolution algorithm, has unpredictable delay characteristics. Many anticipate that the recent technological advances in Ethernet such as the emerging Fast/Gigabit Ethernet, micro-segmentation and full-duplex operation using switches will also enable it to support time-critical applications. This technical report provides a comprehensive look at the unpredictability inherent to Ethernet and at recent technological advances towards real-time operation.