Avatar modeling: a telepresence study with natural user interface

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Modeling of integrated inductors for RF circuit design

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica

Multiresponsive supramolecular systems for information processing at the molecular level

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Química Sustentável

Lightweight monitoring of transactional memory programs

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Valuation of marine and coastal ecosystems: The role of ecological-economic modeling

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

Analysis of urban land use and land cover changes: a case of study in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

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

Cost efficiency in the Portuguese water sector: The case of multimunicipal systems operating at the bulk level

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

Computational modeling of prefrontal cortex circuits

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biology

Quality of process modeling using BPMN: a model-driven approach

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Informática

Predictive analytical and numerical modeling for orthogonal cutting

In this thesis, a predictive analytical and numerical modeling approach for the orthogonal cutting process is proposed to calculate temperature distributions and subsequently, forces and stress distributions. The models proposed include a constitutive model for the material being cut based on the work of Weber, a model for the shear plane based on Merchants model, a model describing the contribution of friction based on Zorev’s approach, a model for the effect of wear on the tool based on the work of Waldorf, and a thermal model based on the works of Komanduri and Hou, with a fraction heat partition for a non-uniform distribution of the heat in the interfaces, but extended to encompass a set of contributions to the global temperature rise of chip, tool and work piece. The models proposed in this work, try to avoid from experimental based values or expressions, and simplifying assumptions or suppositions, as much as possible. On a thermo-physical point of view, the results were affected not only by the mechanical or cutting parameters chosen, but also by their coupling effects, instead of the simplifying way of modeling which is to contemplate only the direct effect of the variation of a parameter. The implementation of these models was performed using the MATLAB environment. Since it was possible to find in the literature all the parameters for AISI 1045 and AISI O2, these materials were used to run the simulations in order to avoid arbitrary assumption.

Achieving better service level results, through improvements in procedures

This project aims to prepare Worten Empresas (WE) fulfilling the increasing market demand through process changings, focusing on the Portuguese market, particularly on internal B2B clients1. Several methods were used to measure the current service level provided - process mapping, resources assessment, benchmark and a survey. The results were then used to compare against service level actually desired by WE’s customer, and then to identify the performance gaps in response times and quality of the follow-up during the sales process. To bridge the identified gaps, both a set of recommendations and an implementation plan were suggested to improve and monitor customer experience. This study concluded that it is possible to fulfill the increasing level of demand and at the same time improve customer satisfaction by implementing changes at the operations level.

Application of geographic information system and modelling in health impact assessment for urban road mobility in Vietnam

Transport is an essential sector in modern societies. It connects economic sectors and industries. Next to its contribution to economic development and social interconnection, it also causes adverse impacts on the environment and results in health hazards. Transport is a major source of ground air pollution, especially in urban areas, and therefore contributing to the health problems, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, cancer, and physical injuries. This thesis presents the results of a health risk assessment that quantifies the mortality and the diseases associated with particulate matter pollution resulting from urban road transport in Hai Phong City, Vietnam. The focus is on the integration of modelling and GIS approaches in the exposure analysis to increase the accuracy of the assessment and to produce timely and consistent assessment results. The modelling was done to estimate traffic conditions and concentrations of particulate matters based on geo-references data. A simplified health risk assessment was also done for Ha Noi based on monitoring data that allows a comparison of the results between the two cases. The results of the case studies show that health risk assessment based on modelling data can provide a much more detail results and allows assessing health impacts of different mobility development options at micro level. The use of modeling and GIS as a common platform for the integration of different assessments (environmental, health, socio-economic, etc.) provides various strengths, especially in capitalising on the available data stored in different units and forms and allows handling large amount of data. The use of models and GIS in a health risk assessment, from a decision making point of view, can reduce the processing/waiting time while providing a view at different scales: from micro scale (sections of a city) to a macro scale. It also helps visualising the links between air quality and health outcomes which is useful discussing different development options. However, a number of improvements can be made to further advance the integration. An improved integration programme of the data will facilitate the application of integrated models in policy-making. Data on mobility survey, environmental monitoring and measuring must be standardised and legalised. Various traffic models, together with emission and dispersion models, should be tested and more attention should be given to their uncertainty and sensitivity

Flexible multivariate GARCH modeling with an application to international stock markets

This paper offers a new approach to estimating time-varying covariance matrices in the framework of the diagonal-vech version of the multivariate GARCH(1,1) model. Our method is numerically feasible for large-scale problems, produces positive semidefinite conditional covariance matrices, and does not impose unrealistic a priori restrictions. We provide an empirical application in the context of international stock markets, comparing the nev^ estimator with a number of existing ones.

Fair value measurement: Is the debate around level II and level III assets and liabilities relevant

Double Degree. 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 and a Masters Degree in Business Engineering from Louvain school of Management