Development of integrated separation processes with green solvents

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Química Sustentável

Petri net model decomposition - a model based approach supporting distributed execution

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia Electrotécnica, Especialidade de Sistemas Digitais, pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Systems biotechnology of baculovirus-producing insect cells

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Ciências da Engenharia e Tecnologia, especialidade Biotecnologia

Computational modeling of prefrontal cortex circuits

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Biology

As redes sociais e a participação política no âmbito do marketing político do Governo Federal Brasileiro entre 2011 e 2014 : atuação do Ministério da Educação no Facebook

A democracia contemporânea vem, ao longo das últimas décadas, recebendo cada vez mais influência dos meios de comunicação em seus processos. Com o surgimento e propagação da Internet, os governos tem precisado se adaptar e se preocupar com a transparência de suas ações e com as inúmeras vozes de atores sociais cada vez mais conectados, informados e munidos de ferramentas, por meio das quais, podem realizar comunicações de grande alcance de forma rápida e eficaz, sem o intermédio de grandes meios de comunicação. Com o objetivo de observar a relação entre o governos e cidadãos por meio das redess sociais online – um dos principais meios por onde a sociedade, hoje, tem se comunicado e se mobilizado sobre inúmeras, inclusive, políticas – esse estudo analisou como o Ministério da Educação do Brasil (MEC), órgão responsável pelo planejamento e desenvolvimento de políticas públicas para educação no país, trabalha sua comunicação com o cidadão por meio do Facebook e como utiliza essa ferramenta no processo de implementação e avaliação de suas políticas. O trabalho foi realizado por meio do estudo exploratório e da análise qualitativa dos dados colhidos na página MEC no Facebook entre anos de 2011 e 2014, período do primeiro mandato da presidente Dilma Rousseff. Com a análise, observou-se que o MEC modificou bastante a forma como se comunica por esta rede social, recebendo, inclusive, aparente melhor infra-estrutura para esta tarefa. Sua mudança de postura no Facebook deixa claro o interesse e a busca pela participação dos cidadadãos no desevolvimento de suas políticas públicas. Por outro lado, mostra que essa participação é, de certa forma, limitada pela atitude do MEC de não desenvolver diálogo com o cidadão, mantendo-os sempre a certa distância.

Purification of complex biopharmaceuticals with new processes, advanced analytics and computer-aided process design tools

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Biotecnologia

Management Structure and Work Team Processes; Responsibilities and Responsiveness

This paper explores the management structure of the team-based organization. First it provides a theoretical model of structures and processes of work teams. The structure determines the team’s responsibilities in terms of authority and expertise about specific regulation tasks. The responsiveness of teams to these responsibilities are the processes of teamwork, in terms of three dimensions, indicating to what extent teams indeed use the space provided to them. The research question that this paper addresses is to what extent the position of responsibilities in the team-based organization affect team responsiveness. This is done by two hypotheses. First, the effect of the so-called proximity of regulation tasks is tested. It is expected that the responsibility for tasks positioned higher in the organization (i.e. further from the team) generally has a negative effect on team responsiveness, whereas tasks positioned lower in the organization (i.e. closer to the team) will have a positive effect on the way in which teams respond. Second, the relationship between the number of tasks for which the team is responsible with team responsiveness is tested. Theory suggests that teams being responsible for a larger number of tasks perform better, i.e. show higher responsiveness. These hypotheses are tested by a study of 109 production teams in the automotive industry. The results show that, as the theory predicts, increasing numbers of responsibilities have positive effects on team responsiveness. However, the delegation of expertise to teams seems to be the most important predictor of responsiveness. Also, not all regulation tasks show to have effects on team responsiveness. Most tasks do not show to have any significant effect at all. A number of tasks affects team responsiveness positively, when their responsibility is positioned lower in the organization, but also a number of tasks affects team responsiveness positively when located higher in the organization, i.e. further from the teams in the production. The results indicate that more attention can be paid to the distribution of responsibilities, in particular expertise, to teams. Indeed delegating more expertise improve team responsiveness, however some tasks might be located better at higher organizational levels, indicating that there are limitations to what responsibilities teams can handle.

Future gender relations in global restructuring processes case study evidence from knowledge-intensive, manufacturing and service occupations

Global restructuring processes have not only strong implications for European working and living realities, but also have specific outcomes with regard to gender relations. The following contribution analyses in which way global restructuring shapes current gender relations in order to identify important trends and developments for future gender (in)equalities at the workplace. On the basis of a large qualitative study on global restructuring and impacts on different occupational groups it argues that occupational belonging in line with skill and qualification levels are crucial factors to assess the further development of gender relations at work. Whereas global restructuring in knowledge-based occupations may provide new opportunities for female employees, current restructuring is going to deteriorate female labour participation in service occupations. In contrast, manufacturing occupations can be characterised by persistent gender relations, which do not change in spite of major restructuring processes at the work place. Taking the institutional perspective into account, it seems to be crucial to integrate the occupational perspective in order to apply adequate policy regulations to prevent the reinforcement of gender related working patterns in the near future.

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

Electron and photon induced processes in SF5CF3

The photo-absorption cross section of trifluoromethyl sulphur pentafluoride, SF5CF3 has been measured using synchrotron radiation in the range of 4–11 eV (310 nm > l > 110 nm) and comparison made with electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS). The measured VUV cross sections are used to derive the photolysis rate of SF5CF3 in the terrestrial atmosphere. It is estimated that the lifetime for this molecule is the order of a 1000 years and the calculated global warming potential (GWP) is found to be between 17000 and 18100, making it one of the most potent global warming gases in the terrestrial atmosphere.

Post-processing Techniques in Free Boundary Flows during Liquid Composite Moulding Processes

Post-processing a finite element solution is a well-known technique, which consists in a recalculation of the originally obtained quantities such that the rate of convergence increases without the need for expensive remeshing techniques. Postprocessing is especially effective in problems where better accuracy is required for derivatives of nodal variables in regions where Dirichlet essential boundary condition is imposed strongly. Consequently such an approach can be exceptionally good in modelling of resin infiltration under quasi steady-state assumption by remeshing techniques and with explicit time integration, because only the free-front normal velocities are necessary to advance the resin front to the next position. The new contribution is the post-processing analysis and implementation of the freeboundary velocities of mesolevel infiltration analysis. Such implementation ensures better accuracy on even coarser meshes, which in consequence reduces the computational time also by the possibility of employing larger time steps.

A proteomic approach toward the selection of proteins with enhanced intrinsic conformational stability

Journal of Proteome Research (2006)5: 2720-2726

Development of thermoresponsive (polysulfone/polyacrylonitrile) - based membranes for bioseparation processes

Mestrado integrado em Engenharia Química e Bioquímica

Decision making processes based on innovation indicators: which implications for technology assessment?

Based on the report for “Project IV” unit of the PhD programme on Technology Assessment. This thesis research has the supervision of António Moniz (FCT-UNL and ITAS-KIT) and Manuel Laranja (ISEG-UTL). Other members of the thesis committee are Stefan Kuhlmann (Twente University), Leonhard Hennen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology-ITAS), Tiago Santos Pereira (Universidade de Coimbra/CES) and Cristina Sousa (FCT-UNL).

Continuous catalyst free production of biodiesel from agro industrial waste with green solvents

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Química e Bioquímica