Intention recognition, commitment and their roles in the evolution of cooperation

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Informática

Designing and implementing a performance: The case of Estomeo – Dental Industry

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Evolution in public procurement and the impact of e-procurement platforms: A case study

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The Evolution of Population Distribution on the Iberian Peninsula: A Transnational Approach (1877–2001)

Surpassing the national perspective usually adopted, the authors confirmed the existence of a pattern of population distribution common to the whole Iberian Peninsula in the long run. This pattern is clearly associated with geographical factors. These variables seem to have more weight in explaining changes between 1877/78 and 1940 than in the period from 1940 to 2001. The observation of the cross-border region has shown that proximity to the frontier has not generated any distinct pattern of population density on either side of the boundary line. The spatial coherence of the observed phenomena throughout the Peninsula and of its evolution, independent of the border between states, reinforces the importance of geographic factors in their explanation. At the same time, this verification opens up new issues related to the effect of national political and economic policies.

Italian interlocking directorates: structure, evolution and cross-country comparisons

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The Evolution of Function in the Rab family of Small GTPases

Dissertation presented to obtain the PhD degree in Computational Biology.

Evolution of Diplodocid Sauropod dinosaurs with emphasis on specimens from Howe Ranch, Wyoming (USA)

Diplodocidae are among the best known sauropod dinosaurs. Several species were described in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Since then, numerous additional specimens were recovered in the USA, Tanzania, Portugal, as well as possibly Spain, England, and Asia. To date, the clade includes about 12 to 15 different species, some of them with questionable taxonomic status (e.g. ‘Diplodocus’ hayi or Dyslocosaurus polyonychius). However, intrageneric relationships of the multi-species, iconic genera Apatosaurus and Diplodocus are still poorly known. The way to resolve this issue is a specimen-based phylogenetic analysis, which was done for Apatosaurus, but is here performed for the first time for the entire clade of Diplodocidae. New material from different localities and stratigraphic levels on the Howe Ranch (Shell,Wyoming, USA) sheds additional light on the evolution of Diplodocidae. Three new specimens are described herein, considerably increasing our knowledge of the anatomy of the group. The new specimens (SMA 0004, SMA 0011, and SMA 0087) represent two, to possibly three new diplodocid species. They preserve material from all parts of the skeleton, including two nearly complete skulls, as well as fairly complete manus and pedes, material which is generally rare in diplodocids. Thereby, they considerably increase anatomical overlap between the sometimes fragmentary holotype specimens of the earlier described diplodocid species, allowing for significant results in a specimenbased phylogenetic analysis. Furthermore, clavicles and interclavicles are identified, the latter for the first time in dinosaurs. Their presence seems restricted to early sauropods, flagellicaudatans, and early Macronaria, and might thus be a retained plesiomorphy, with the loss of these bones being synapomorphic for Titanosauriformes and possibly Rebbachisauridae. The new material allows to test previous hypotheses of diplodocid phylogeny. In order to do so, any type specimen previously proposed to belong to Diplodocidae was included in the study, as are relatively complete referred specimens, in order to increase the degree of overlapping material. For specimens subsequently suggested to be non-diplodocid sauropods, their hypothesized sister taxa were included as outgroups. The current phylogenetic analysis thus includes 76 operational taxonomic units, 45 of which belong to Diplodocidae. The specimens were scored for 477 morphological characters, representing one of the most extensive phylogenetic analyses done within sauropod dinosaurs. The resulting cladogram recovers the classical arrangement of diplodocid relationships. Basing on a newly developed numerical approach to reduce subjectivity in the decision of specific or generic separation, species that have historically been included into well-known genera like Apatosaurus or Diplodocus, were detected to be actually generically different. Thereby, the famous genus Brontosaurus is resuscitated, and evidence further suggests that also Elosaurus parvus (previously referred to Apatosaurus) or ‘Diplodocus’ hayi represent unique genera. The study increases our knowledge about individual variation, and helps to decide how to score multi-species genera. Such a specimen-based phylogenetic analysis thus proves a valuable tool to validate historic species in sauropods, and in paleontology as a whole.

Morphological diversification through the evolution of developmental hierarchies

Changes in development impact the final form of organisms and compose the natural variation that is the raw material for evolution. Development is hierarchically structured in progressive series of cell fate determination and differentiation. How does variation in different stages of development contribute to morphological diversification?

Spatial analysis of crime evolution in Portugal between 1995 and 2013

The main objective of this survey was to perform descriptive analysis of crime evolution in Portugal between 1995 and 2013. The main focus of this survey was to analyse spatial crime evolution patterns in Portuguese NUTS III regions. Most important crime types have been included into analysis. The main idea was to uncover relation between local patterns and global crime evolution; to define regions which have contributed to global crime evolution of some specific crime types and to define how they have contributed. There were many statistical reports and scientific papers which have analysed some particular crime types, but one global spatial-temporal analysis has not been found. Principal Component Analysis and multidimensional descriptive data analysis technique STATIS have been the base of the analysis. The results of this survey has shown that strong spatial and temporal crime patterns exist. It was possible to describe global crime evolution patterns and to define crime evolution patterns in NUTS III regions. It was possible to define three to four groups of crimes where each group shows similar spatial crime dynamics.

Evolution of reputation in networks: A mean field game approach

This work models the competitive behaviour of individuals who maximize their own utility managing their network of connections with other individuals. Utility is taken as a synonym of reputation in this model. Each agent has to decide between two variables: the quality of connections and the number of connections. Hence, the reputation of an individual is a function of the number and the quality of connections within the network. On the other hand, individuals incur in a cost when they improve their network of contacts. The initial value of the quality and number of connections of each individual is distributed according to an initial (given) distribution. The competition occurs over continuous time and among a continuum of agents. A mean field game approach is adopted to solve the model, leading to an optimal trajectory for the number and quality of connections for each individual.

Historic and potential technology transition paths of grid battery storage: Co-evolution of energy grid, electric mobility and batteries

Scarcity of fuels, changes in environmental policy and in society increased the interest in generating electric energy from renewable energy sources (RES) for a sustainable energy supply in the future. The main problem of RES as solar and wind energy, which represent a main pillar of this transition, is that they cannot supply constant power output. This results inter alia in an increased demand of backup technologies as batteries to assure electricity system safety. The diffusion of energy storage technologies is highly dependent on the energy system and transport transition pathways which might lead to a replacement or reconfiguration of embedded socio-technical practices and regimes (by creating new standards or dominant designs, changing regulations, infrastructure and user patterns). The success of this technology is dependent on hardly predictable future technical advances, actor preferences, development of competing technologies and designs, diverging interests of actors, future cost efficiencies, environmental performance, the evolution of market demand and design and evolution of our society.

Impact of chromossomal structure on the evolution of Schizosaccharomyces pombe undergoing Mutation Accumulation

Large chromosomal rearrangements are common in natural populations and thought to be involved in speciation events. In this project, we used experimental evolution to determine how the speed of evolution and the type of accumulated mutations depend on the ancestral chromosomal structure and genotype. We utilized two Wild Type strains and a set of genetically engineered Schizosaccharomyces pombe strains, different solely in the presence of a certain type of chromosomal variant (inversions or translocations), along with respective controls. Previous research has shown that these chromosomal variants have different fitness levels in several environments, probably due to changes in the gene expression along the genome. These strains were propagated in the laboratory at very low population sizes, in which we expect natural selection to be less efficient at purging deleterious mutations. We then measured these strains’ changes in fitness throughout this accumulation of deleterious mutations, comparing the evolutionary trajectories in the different rearrangements to understand if the chromosomal structure affected the speed of evolution. We also tested these mutations for possible epistatic effects and estimated their parameters: the number of arising deleterious mutations per generation (Ud) and each one’s mean effect (sd).

Technological evolution

The evolution of a technology and the understanding of the moment in its life cycle is of the utmost importance to the entry strategy devised by any company. Having the entry of EDP Brazil on the micro-generation market as background, the present workproject attempts to summarize the most important topics in management literature concerning the theory of technology life-cycles and the updated literature on developments of photovoltaic technology to infer the current positioning of this technology in the theoretical models. The need for this type of work stems from the very common lack of bridging between the academic research of economic aspects relevant to the evolution of technologies and the agents of research on specific technological issues. When this occurs, namely due to the external nature of research to companies, thereby escaping the harsh economic controls of a profit seeking enterprise, the evolution many times lacks the appropriate framework to be studied on a more forward looking manner and to allow for management decisions to be based on.

Developmental and paleontological insights into skull bone homology and evolution

The Gallus gallus (chicken) embryo is a central model organism in evolutionary developmental biology. Its anatomy and developmental genetics have been extensively studied and many relevant evolutionary implications have been made so far. However, important questions regarding the developmental origin of the chicken skull bones are still unresolved such that no solid homology can be established across organisms. This precludes evolutionary comparisons between this and other avian model systems in which skull anatomy has evolved significantly over the last millions of years.(...)