Spatio-temporal analyses of the relationship between armed conflict and climate change in the eastern Africa

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Green innovation: How firms leverage capabilities, resources and complementary assets

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

Dimensions of source credibility in the case of user-generated advertisements

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 integration of online advertising: The effects of source expertise and certainty level of the message on consumer involvement and persuasion in the context of user-generated advertising

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

Business planning in nonprofit: Laying the ground for customer relationship management in Instituto de Empreendedorismo Social

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

Business planning in nonprofit: laying the ground for customer relationship management in Instituto de Empreendedorismo Social

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

Compact ion-source based on superionic rubidium silver iodide (RbAg4I5) solid electrolyte

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Física

Implementação de uma solução open source de Business Intelligence com metodologia Ágil

A importância dos sistemas de data warehousing e business intelligence é cada vez mais pronunciada, no sentido de dotar as organizações com a capacidade de guardar, explorar e produzir informação de valor acrescido para os seus processos de tomada de decisão. Esta realidade é claramente aplicável aos sectores da administração pública portuguesa e, muito em particular, aos organismos com responsabilidades centrais no Ministério da Saúde. No caso dos Serviços Partilhados do Ministério da Saúde (SPMS), que tem como missão prover o SNS de sistemas centrais de business intelligence, o apelo dos seus clientes, para que possam contar com capacidades analíticas nos seus sistemas centrais, tem sido sentido de forma muito acentuada. Todavia, é notório que, tanto os custos, como a complexidade, de grande parte destes projetos têm representado uma séria ameaça à sua adoção e sucesso. Por um lado, a administração pública tem recebido um forte encorajamento para integrar e adotar soluções de natureza open source (modelo de licenciamento gratuito), para os seus projetos de sistemas de informação. Por outro lado, temos vindo a assistir a uma vaga de aceitação generalizada de novas metodologias de desenvolvimento de projetos informáticos, nomeadamente no que diz respeito às metodologias Agéis, que se assumem como mais flexíveis, menos formais e com maior grau de sucesso. No sentido de averiguar da aplicabilidade do open source e das metodologias Ágeis aos sistemas de business intelligence, este trabalho documenta a implementação de um projeto organizacional para a SPMS, com recurso a ferramentas open source de licenciamento gratuito e através de uma metodologia de desenvolvimento de natureza Ágil.

Determinants of mother-baby relationship evaluated during pregnancy

ABSTRACT Background Mental health promotion is supported by a strong body of knowledge and is a matter of public health with the potential of a large impact on society. Mental health promotion programs should be implemented as soon as possible in life, preferably starting during pregnancy. Programs should focus on malleable determinants, introducing strategies to reduce risk factors or their impact on mother and child, and also on strengthening protective factors to increase resilience. The ambition of early detecting risk situations requires the development and use of tools to assess risk, and the creation of a responsive network of services based in primary health care, especially maternal consultation during pregnancy and the first months of the born child. The number of risk factors and the way they interact and are buffered by protective factors are relevant for the final impact. Maternal-fetal attachment (MFA) is not yet a totally understood and well operationalized concept. Methodological problems limit the comparison of data as many studies used small size samples, had an exploratory character or used different selection criteria and different measures. There is still a lack of studies in high risk populations evaluating the consequences of a weak MFA. Instead, the available studies are not very conclusive, but suggest that social support, anxiety and depression, self-esteem and self-control and sense of coherence are correlated with MFA. MFA is also correlated with health practices during pregnancy, that influence pregnancy and baby outcomes. MFA seems a relevant concept for the future mother baby interaction, but more studies are needed to clarify the concept and its operationalization. Attachment is a strong scientific concept with multiple implications for future child development, personality and relationship with others. Secure attachment is considered an essential basis of good mental health, and promoting mother-baby interaction offers an excellent opportunity to intervention programmes targeted at enhancing mental health and well-being. Understanding the process of attachment and intervening to improve attachment requires a comprehension of more proximal factors, but also a broader approach that assesses the impact of more distal social conditions on attachment and how this social impact is mediated by family functioning and mother-baby interaction. Finally, it is essential to understand how this knowledge could be translated in effective mental health promoting interventions and measures that could reach large populations of pregnant mothers and families. Strengthening emotional availability (EA) seems to be a relevant approach to improve the mother-baby relationship. In this review we have offered evidence suggesting a range of determinants of mother-infant relationship, including age, marital relationship, social disadvantages, migration, parental psychiatric disorders and the situations of abuse or neglect. Based on this theoretical background we constructed a theoretical model that included proximal and distal factors, risk and protective factors, including variables related to the mother, the father, their social support and mother baby interaction from early pregnancy until six months after birth. We selected the Antenatal Psychosocial Health Assessment (ALPHA) for use as an instrument to detect psychosocial risk during pregnancy. Method Ninety two pregnant women were recruited from the Maternal Health Consultation in Primary Health Care (PHC) at Amadora. They had three moments of assessment: at T1 (until 12 weeks of pregnancy) they filed out a questionnaire that included socio-demographic data, ALPHA, Edinburgh post-natal Depression Scale (EDPS), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Sense of Coherence (SOC); at T2 (after the 20th weeks of pregnancy) they answered EDPS, SOC and MFA Scale (MFAS), and finally at T3 (6 months after birth), they repeated EDPS and SOC, and their interaction with their babies was videotaped and later evaluated using EA Scales. A statistical analysis has been done using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, univariate logistic regression and multiple linear regression. Results The study has increased our knowledge on this particular population living in a multicultural, suburb community. It allow us to identify specific groups with a higher level of psychosocial risk, such as single or divorced women, young couples, mothers with a low level of education and those who are depressed or have a low SOC. The hypothesis that psychosocial risk is directly correlated with MFAS and that MFA is directly correlated with EA was not confirmed, neither the correlation between prenatal psychosocial risk and mother-baby EA. The study identified depression as a relevant risk factor in pregnancy and its higher prevalence in single or divorced women, immigrants and in those who have a higher global psychosocial risk. Depressed women have a poor MFA, and a lower structuring capacity and a higher hostility to their babies. In average, depression seems to reduce among pregnant women in the second part of their pregnancy. The children of immigrant mothers show a lower level of responsiveness to their mothers what could be transmitted through depression, as immigrant mothers have a higher risk of depression in the beginning of pregnancy and six months after birth. Young mothers have a low MFA and are more intrusive. Women who have a higher level of education are more sensitive and their babies showed to be more responsive. Women who are or have been submitted to abuse were found to have a higher level of MFA but their babies are less responsive to them. The study highlights the relevance of SOC as a potential protective factor while it is strongly and negatively related with a wide range of risk factors and mental health outcomes especially depression before, during and after pregnancy. Conclusions ALPHA proved to be a valid, feasible and reliable instrument to Primary Health Care (PHC) that can be used as a total sum score. We could not prove the association between psychosocial risk factors and MFA, neither between MFA and EA, or between psychosocial risk and EA. Depression and SOC seems to have a clear and opposite relevance on this process. Pregnancy can be considered as a maturational process and an opportunity to change, where adaptation processes occur, buffering risk, decreasing depression and increasing SOC. Further research is necessary to better understand interactions between variables and also to clarify a better operationalization of MFA. We recommend the use of ALPHA, SOC and EDPS in early pregnancy as a way of identifying more vulnerable women that will require additional interventions and support in order to decrease risk. At political level we recommend the reinforcement of Immigrant integration and the increment of education in women. We recommend more focus in health care and public health in mental health condition and psychosocial risk of specific groups at high risk. In PHC special attention should be paid to pregnant women who are single or divorced, very young, low educated and to immigrant mothers. This study provides the basis for an intervention programme for this population, that aims to reduce broad spectrum risk factors and to promote Mental Health in women who become pregnant. Health and mental health policies should facilitate the implementation of the suggested measures.

Towards printed carbon nanotube transistors on paper substrates

This thesis reports the work performed in the optimization of deposition parameters of Multi – Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNT) targeting the development of a Field Effect Transistors (FET) on paper substrates. The CNTs were dispersed in a water solution with sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) through ultrasonication, ultrasonic bath and a centrifugation to remove the supernatant and have a homogeneous solution. Several deposition tests were performed using different types of CNTs, dis-persants, papers substrates and deposition techniques, such as spray coating and inkjet printing. The characterization of CNTs was made by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Hall Effect. The most suitable CNT coatings able to be used as semiconductor in FETs were deposited by spray coat-ing on a paper substrate with hydrophilic nanoporous surface (FS2) at 100 ºC, 4 bar, 10 cm height, 5 second of deposition time and 90 seconds of drying between steps (4 layers of CNTs were deposited). Planar electrolyte gated FETs were produced with these layers using gold-nickel gate, source and drain electrodes. Despite the small current modulation (Ion/Ioff ratio of 1.8) one of these devices have p-type conduction with a field effect mobility of 1.07 cm2/V.s.

Proportion, (dis)Harmonies, Identities

Number, dimension, geometric constructions, and the relationship between dimensions, proportion, are expressions of harmony and rhythm and considered a source of beauty in the things of nature, like crystals, plants, and animals, but also in human artefacts, as buildings and art in general. This is an old idea, which corresponds to the Pythagorean notion that the world is a harmonious mathematical creation and that in order to attend such harmony, the things we do have to obey the same mathematical laws. Proportion (dis)Harmonies and Identities, aims to promote awareness and reflection on the importance of this issue with the dissemination of researches of various fields of knowledge.

Relationship between national culture, democracy and environmental performance: A panel data analysis

This paper demonstrates the significance of culture in examining the relationshipbetween democratic capital and environmental performance.The aim is to examine the relationship among scores on the Environmental Performance Index and the two dimensions of cross cultural variation suggested by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel. Significantional interrelationships among democracy, cultural and environmental sustaintability measures could be found, following the regression results. Firstly, higher levels of democratic capital stock are associated with better environmental performance. Secondly importance to distinguish between cultural groups could be confirmed.

Banks and sovereigns: An econometric analysis of an entangled relationship

In this discussion OLS regressions are used to study the factors that influence sovereign yield spreads and domestic bank indeces for a set of euro area countries. The results show that common factors explain changes in bank indeces better than in the yields. Moreover, although there is some country differentiation, a common pattern among all is visible. A contemporary spillover effect between banks and sovereigns emerged after bank bailouts and became stronger with the burst of the sovereign debt crisis. The vicious cycle between the two has contributed to the escalation of spreads and to painful austerity measures.

A mediated moderation study to explain the negative relationship between job insecurity and employee supportive voice

Double degree

Customer relationship management at Siemens Healthcare – a diagnosis and proposal for strategy and market segmentation

Towards a holistic perspective of CRM, this project aims to diagnose and propose a strategy and market segmentation for Siemens Healthcare. The main underlying principle is to apply a full customer-centric outlook taking own business properties into consideration while preserving Siemens Healthcare’s culture and vision. Mainly focused on market segmentation, this project goes beyond established boundaries by employing an unbiased perspective of CRM while challenging current strategy, goals, processes, tools, initiatives and KPIs. In order to promote a sustainable business excellence strategy, this project aspires to streamline CRM strategic importance and driving the company one step forward.