Business model: What should be the strategy used by Smart Galp to implement and potentiate its value proposition in the Portuguese market?

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

Pattern operators for grid

The definition and programming of distributed applications has become a major research issue due to the increasing availability of (large scale) distributed platforms and the requirements posed by the economical globalization. However, such a task requires a huge effort due to the complexity of the distributed environments: large amount of users may communicate and share information across different authority domains; moreover, the “execution environment” or “computations” are dynamic since the number of users and the computational infrastructure change in time. Grid environments, in particular, promise to be an answer to deal with such complexity, by providing high performance execution support to large amount of users, and resource sharing across different organizations. Nevertheless, programming in Grid environments is still a difficult task. There is a lack of high level programming paradigms and support tools that may guide the application developer and allow reusability of state-of-the-art solutions. Specifically, the main goal of the work presented in this thesis is to contribute to the simplification of the development cycle of applications for Grid environments by bringing structure and flexibility to three stages of that cycle through a commonmodel. The stages are: the design phase, the execution phase, and the reconfiguration phase. The common model is based on the manipulation of patterns through pattern operators, and the division of both patterns and operators into two categories, namely structural and behavioural. Moreover, both structural and behavioural patterns are first class entities at each of the aforesaid stages. At the design phase, patterns can be manipulated like other first class entities such as components. This allows a more structured way to build applications by reusing and composing state-of-the-art patterns. At the execution phase, patterns are units of execution control: it is possible, for example, to start or stop and to resume the execution of a pattern as a single entity. At the reconfiguration phase, patterns can also be manipulated as single entities with the additional advantage that it is possible to perform a structural reconfiguration while keeping some of the behavioural constraints, and vice-versa. For example, it is possible to replace a behavioural pattern, which was applied to some structural pattern, with another behavioural pattern. In this thesis, besides the proposal of the methodology for distributed application development, as sketched above, a definition of a relevant set of pattern operators was made. The methodology and the expressivity of the pattern operators were assessed through the development of several representative distributed applications. To support this validation, a prototype was designed and implemented, encompassing some relevant patterns and a significant part of the patterns operators defined. This prototype was based in the Triana environment; Triana supports the development and deployment of distributed applications in the Grid through a dataflow-based programming model. Additionally, this thesis also presents the analysis of a mapping of some operators for execution control onto the Distributed Resource Management Application API (DRMAA). This assessment confirmed the suitability of the proposed model, as well as the generality and flexibility of the defined pattern operators

Development of biocompatible and “smart” porous structures using CO2-assisted processes

Dissertação apresentada para a obtenção do grau de Doutor em Engenharia Química, especialidade Engenharia da Reacção Química, pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

A contribuição da informática para o desenvolvimento sustentável: o exemplo do conceito de grid computing

Este trabalho foi realizado sob orientação do Prof. António Brandão Moniz para a disciplina “Factores Sociais da Inovação” do Mestrado Engenharia Informática realizado na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal)

Characterization of the volatile fraction emitted by phloems of four pinus species by solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

Pine forests constitute some of the most important renewable resources supplying timber, paper and chemical industries, among other functions. Characterization of the volatiles emitted by different Pinus species has proven to be an important tool to decode the process of host tree selection by herbivore insects, some of which cause serious economic damage to pines. Variations in the relative composition of the bouquet of semiochemicals are responsible for the outcome of different biological processes, such as mate finding, egg-laying site recognition and host selection. The volatiles present in phloem samples of four pine species, P. halepensis, P. sylvestris, P. pinaster and P. pinea, were identified and characterized with the aim of finding possible host-plant attractants for native pests, such as the bark beetle Tomicus piniperda. The volatile compounds emitted by phloem samples of pines were extracted by headspace solid-phase micro extraction, using a 2 cm 50/30 mm divinylbenzene/carboxen/polydimethylsiloxane table flex solid-phase microextraction fiber and its contents analyzed by high-resolution gas chromatography, using flame ionization and a non polar and chiral column phases. The components of the volatile fraction emitted by the phloem samples were identified by mass spectrometry using time-of-flight and quadrupole mass analyzers. The estimated relative composition was used to perform a discriminant analysis among pine species, by means of cluster and principal component analysis. It can be concluded that it is possible to discriminate pine species based on the monoterpenes emissions of phloem samples.

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.

Part I : Comparing derivatization methods for amino acids – one and two-step procedures using gas chromatography – flame ion detector (GC-FID) Part II: Story of an icon from its execution until its conservation

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Conservação e Restauro

A Inovação e os Smart Spenders

Investir em Inovação e Desenvolvimento (I&D) pode não ser o remédio para uma economia pouco desenvolvida e carente de competitividade. São inúmeros os estudos, os relatórios e os rankings que apontam para uma relação entre os investimentos em I&D e as elevadas performances económicas. No entanto, não poderá ser provada a existência de uma significativa correlação estatística. Será o investimento em inovação fundamental para o aumento da competitividade e, consequentemente, para o desenvolvimento sócio-económico? De acordo com o estudo “The Global Innovation 1000” (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2006) que analisa as 1000 empresas globais com maiores investimentos em I&D, só menos de 10% desse universo são de facto empresas eficazes na aplicação desses montantes. Definidas como “Smart Spenders” estas empresas aplicam bem o (relativamente) baixo investimento em inovação. Para os “gastadores inteligentes”, o dinheiro dispendido em inovação significa de facto, inovação eficaz. Este trabalho tem como objectivos: (1) Observar a evolução do conceito de inovação e alguns dos seus rankings; (2) Observar alguns indicadores de inovação; (3) Reconhecer que o investimento em inovação deve ser conjugado com alguns factores de gestão; (4) Analisar o conceito de “Smart Spenders”.

Characterization of Pinus spp. needles by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry: Application to plant-insect interactions

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Ciências do Ambiente pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecn

Fatigue life assessment of exhaust systems for naval gas turbines

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

PV inverters for module level applications

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Energias Renováveis – Conversão Eléctrica e Utilização Sustentáveis

WIFI indoor positioning for mobile devices, an application for the UJI Smart Campus

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

Strategic Noise Mapping with GIS for the Universitat Jaume I Smart Campus: best methodology practices

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

UJI's Smart Campus: Place Finder App

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

Preparation of gas-filled porous microparticles (GPPs) and microbubbles (MBs) by PGSS method

Dissertation to obtain the Master Degree in Biotechnology