Influence of Lean and Green on supply chain performance: an interpretive structural modelling model

This work aims to identify and rank a set of Lean and Green practices and supply chain performance measures on which managers should focus to achieve competitiveness and improve the performance of automotive supply chains. The identification of the contextual relationships among the suggested practices and measures, was performed through literature review. Their ranking was done by interviews with professionals from the automotive industry and academics with wide knowledge on the subject. The methodology of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) is a useful methodology to identify inter relationships among Lean and Green practices and supply chain performance measures and to support the evaluation of automotive supply chain performance. Using the ISM methodology, the variables under study were clustered according to their driving power and dependence power. The ISM methodology was proposed to be used in this work. The model intends to provide a better understanding of the variables that have more influence (driving variables), the others and those which are most influenced (dependent variables) by others. The information provided by this model is strategic for managers who can use it to identify which variables they should focus on in order to have competitive supply chains.

SmART: an application reconfiguration framework

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática.

A reliability-based measure of robustness for concrete structures subjected to corrosion

This work is a contribution to the definition and assessment of structural robustness. Special emphasis is given to reliability of reinforced concrete structures under corrosion of longitudinal reinforcement. On this communication several authors’ proposals in order to define and measure structural robustness are analyzed and discussed. The probabilistic based robustness index is defined, considering the reliability index decreasing for all possible damage levels. Damage is considered as the corrosion level of the longitudinal reinforcement in terms of rebar weight loss. Damage produces changes in both cross sectional area of rebar and bond strength. The proposed methodology is illustrated by means of an application example. In order to consider the impact of reinforcement corrosion on failure probability growth, an advanced methodology based on the strong discontinuities approach and an isotropic continuum damage model for concrete is adopted. The methodology consist on a two-step analysis: on the first step an analysis of the cross section is performed in order to capture phenomena such as expansion of the reinforcement due to the corrosion products accumulation and damage and cracking in the reinforcement surrounding concrete; on the second step a 2D deteriorated structural model is built with the results obtained on the first step of the analysis. The referred methodology combined with a Monte Carlo simulation is then used to compute the failure probability and the reliability index of the structure for different corrosion levels. Finally, structural robustness is assessed using the proposed probabilistic index.

Economic analysis in health care regulation : three essays

ABSTRACT - It is the purpose of the present thesis to emphasize, through a series of examples, the need and value of appropriate pre-analysis of the impact of health care regulation. Specifically, the thesis presents three papers on the theme of regulation in different aspects of health care provision and financing. The first two consist of economic analyses of the impact of health care regulation and the third comprises the creation of an instrument for supporting economic analysis of health care regulation, namely in the field of evaluation of health care programs. The first paper develops a model of health plan competition and pricing in order to understand the dynamics of health plan entry and exit in the presence of switching costs and alternative health premium payment systems. We build an explicit model of death spirals, in which profitmaximizing competing health plans find it optimal to adopt a pattern of increasing relative prices culminating in health plan exit. We find the steady-state numerical solution for the price sequence and the plan’s optimal length of life through simulation and do some comparative statics. This allows us to show that using risk adjusted premiums and imposing price floors are effective at reducing death spirals and switching costs, while having employees pay a fixed share of the premium enhances death spirals and increases switching costs. Price regulation of pharmaceuticals is one of the cost control measures adopted by the Portuguese government, as in many European countries. When such regulation decreases the products’ real price over time, it may create an incentive for product turnover. Using panel data for the period of 1997 through 2003 on drug packages sold in Portuguese pharmacies, the second paper addresses the question of whether price control policies create an incentive for product withdrawal. Our work builds the product survival literature by accounting for unobservable product characteristics and heterogeneity among consumers when constructing quality, price control and competition indexes. These indexes are then used as covariates in a Cox proportional hazard model. We find that, indeed, price control measures increase the probability of exit, and that such effect is not verified in OTC market where no such price regulation measures exist. We also find quality to have a significant positive impact on product survival. In the third paper, we develop a microsimulation discrete events model (MSDEM) for costeffectiveness analysis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus treatment, simulating individual paths from antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation to death. Four driving forces determine the course of events: CD4+ cell count, viral load resistance and adherence. A novel feature of the model with respect to the previous MSDEMs is that distributions of time to event depend on individuals’ characteristics and past history. Time to event was modeled using parametric survival analysis. Events modeled include: viral suppression, regimen switch due virological failure, regimen switch due to other reasons, resistance development, hospitalization, AIDS events, and death. Disease progression is structured according to therapy lines and the model is parameterized with cohort Portuguese observational data. An application of the model is presented comparing the cost-effectiveness ART initiation with two nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI) plus one non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor(NNRTI) to two NRTI plus boosted protease inhibitor (PI/r) in HIV- 1 infected individuals. We find 2NRTI+NNRTI to be a dominant strategy. Results predicted by the model reproduce those of the data used for parameterization and are in line with those published in the literature.

Target-specific multiphysics modeling for thermal medicine applications

Dissertation to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering

E-Health individual adoption - empirical model based on UTAUT 2.

The future of health care delivery is becoming more citizen-centred, as today’s user is more active, better informed and more demanding. The European Commission is promoting online health services and, therefore, member states will need to boost deployment and use of online services. This makes e-health adoption an important field to be studied and understood. This study applied the extended unified theory of acceptance and usage technology (UTAUT2) to explain patients’ individual adoption of e-health. An online questionnaire was administrated Portugal using mostly the same instrument used in UTAUT2 adapted to e-health context. We collected 386 valid answers. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and habit had the most significant explanatory power over behavioural intention and habit and behavioural intention over technology use. The model explained 52% of the variance in behavioural intention and 32% of the variance in technology use. Our research helps to understand the desired technology characteristics of ehealth. By testing an information technology acceptance model, we are able to determine what is more valued by patients when it comes to deciding whether to adopt e-health systems or not.

Climate change impacts on portuguese energy system in 2050

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil Gestão e Sistemas Ambientais

Traceability support in software product lines

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática.

Context-aware multi-factor authentication

Trabalho apresentado no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Sucesso terapêutico no controlo da tuberculose em Portugal : determinantes do resultado do tratamento e a sua capacidade preditiva

RESUMO - Enquadramento/objectivos: Apesar do elevado nível de comprometimento em estratégias eficazes para o controlo da tuberculose, em todo o mundo, esta constitui ainda um sério problema de Saúde Pública, com uma estimativa global de 9,4milhões de casos novos em 2008 e 1,8milhões de mortes/ano. O reduzido conhecimento das barreiras e facilitadores para o sucesso terapêutico constitui um importante obstáculo na procura de soluções eficazes de melhoramento da qualidade dos programas de controlo da tuberculose. Este estudo procura contribuir para a identificação atempada de doentes com perfis preditivos de insucesso terapêutico, através da identificação inicial de potenciais determinantes do resultado, com base num modelo epidemiológico e estatístico. Métodos: Foi desenvolvido um estudo de caso-controlo para a população de casos notificados ao Programa Nacional de Controlo da Tuberculose (n=24491), entre 2000-2007. Os factores preditivos de insucesso terapêutico foram identificados na análise bivariada e multivariada, com um nível de significância de 5%; a regressão logística foi utilizada para estimar a odds ratio de insucesso terapêutico, em comparação com o sucesso terapêutico, para diversos factores identificados na literatura, e para os quais os dados se encontravam disponíveis. Resultados: A dependência alcoólica (OR=2,889), o país de origem (OR=3,910), a situação sem-abrigo (OR=3.919), a co-infecção pelo VIH (OR=5,173), a interrupção (OR=60.615) ou falha terapêutica no tratamento anterior (OR=67.345) e a duração do tratamento inferior a 165 dias (OR=1930,133) foram identificados como factores preditivos de insucesso terapêutico. A duração do tratamento inferior a 165 dias provou ser o mais importante determinante do resultado terapêutico. Conclusões: Os resultados sugerem que um doente imigrante, em situação de sem-abrigo, dependente alcoólico, com tratamentos anteriores para a tuberculose e co-infectado pelo VIH apresenta uma elevada probabilidade de insucesso terapêutico. Assim, deverão ser definidas estratégias específicas, centradas no doente por forma a impedir este resultado. A base de dados (SVIG-TB), provou ser uma ferramenta de qualidade para a investigação sobre diversos aspectos do controlo da tuberculose. ------------------------------- ABSTRACT - Background/Objective: Despite the high commitment in good strategies for tuberculosis control worldwide, this is still a serious Public Health problem, with global estimates of 9,4million new cases in 2008 and 1,8million deaths/year. The poor understanding of the barriers and facilitators to treatment success is a major obstacle to find effective solutions to improve the quality of tuberculosis programs. This study tries to contribute to the timely identification of patients with predictive profiles of unsuccessful treatment outcomes, through the initial identification of characteristics probably affecting treatment outcome, found on the basis of an epidemiological and statistical model. Methods: A case-control study was conducted for the population of cases notified to the National Program for Tuberculosis Control (n=24 491), between 2000-2007. Predictive factors for unsuccessful outcome were assessed in a bivariate and multivariate analysis, using a significance level of 5%; a logistic regression was used to estimate the odds-ratio of unsuccessful, as compared to successful outcome, for several factors identified in the literature and to which data was available. Results: Alcohol abuse (OR=2,889), patient´s foreign origin (OR=3,910), homelessness (OR=3,919), HIV co-infection (OR=5,173), interruption (OR=60,615) or unsuccessful outcome in the previous treatment (OR=67,345) and treatment duration below 165 days (OR=1930,133) were identified as predictive of unsuccessful outcomes. A low treatment duration proved to be the most powerful factor affecting treatment outcome. Conclusions: Results suggest that a foreign-born patient, alcohol abuser, who has had a previous treatment for tuberculosis and is co-infected with HIV is very likely to have an unsuccessful outcome. Therefore, specific, patient-centered strategies should be taken to prevent an unsuccessful outcome. The database (SVIG-TB), has proved to be a quality tool on research of various aspects of tuberculosis control.

The effects of OF ETF creation on the price efficiency of underlying stocks

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

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

Supercomplexes of Prokaryotic Aerobic Respiratory Chains-Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis supramolecular assemblies

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biochemistry.

Smart-RBAC

Generally, smart campus applications do not consider the role of the user with his/her position in a university environment, consequently irrelevant information is delivered to the users. This dissertation proposes a location-based access control model, named Smart-RBAC, extending the functionality of Role-based Access Control Model (RBAC) by including user’s location as the contextual attribute, to solve the aforementioned problem. Smart-RBAC model is designed with a focus on content delivery to the user in order to offer a feasible level of flexibility, which was missing in the existing location-based access control models. An instance of the model, derived from Liferay’s RBAC, is implemented by creating a portal application to test and validate the Smart-RBAC model. Additionally, portlet-based applications are developed to assess the suitability of the model in a smart campus environment. The evaluation of the model, based on a popular theoretical framework, demonstrates the model’s capability to achieve some security goals like “Dynamic Separation of Duty” and “Accountability”. We believe that the Smart-RBAC model will improve the existing smart campus applications since it utilizes both, role and location of the user, to deliver content.

Effects of quantitative easing on the USA economy: A test for policy effectiveness

The catastrophic disruption in the USA financial system in the wake of the financial crisis prompted the Federal Reserve to launch a Quantitative Easing (QE) programme in late 2008. In line with Pesaran and Smith (2014), I use a policy effectiveness test to assess whether this massive asset purchase programme was effective in stimulating the economic activity in the USA. Specifically, I employ an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL), in order to obtain a counterfactual for the USA real GDP growth rate. Using data from 1983Q1 to 2009Q4, the results show that the beneficial effects of QE appear to be weak and rather short-lived. The null hypothesis of policy ineffectiveness is not rejected, which suggests that QE did not have a meaningful impact on output growth.