"Managing the impact of tourism in historic urban destinations. A sustainability approach: Case study of Sintra"

In this Work Project, it will be assessed how Sintra’s sustainability is affected by the consequences of the visitor flow on its urban historical center. Two research questions will support this case study: What is the main problem affecting Sintra as a tourism destination? How sustainable will Sintra be in the next 10-15 years? The main findings suggest Sintra faces an intense seasonal pressure on its historical city center and its sustainability might be seriously affected in the near future, whereby three domains of the destination deserve a serious strategy reassessment: promotion, management, and supply.

The economic impact of the event Volta a Portugal em Bicicleta 2015

This thesis is a Field Lab project requested by the organizer of the Volta a Portugal em Bicicleta 2015, Podium Events. Its purpose is to determine the economic impact of the event for the 21 host economies and Portugal as a whole. The Volta started in Viseu and ended in Lisboa, and lasted for two weeks from the 29th July until the 8th August. Results were computed by accessing data provided by the different economic agents involved in the event (spectators, attendees and organizer), through face-to-face surveys and contact via e-mail. The Volta generated a total economic impact of €76.261.876. Keywords: Cycling,

The economic impact of the event Volta a Portugal em Bicicleta 2015

This thesis is a Field Lab project requested by the organizer of the Volta a Portugal em Bicicleta 2015, Podium Events. Its purpose is to determine the economic impact of the event for the 21 host economies and Portugal as a whole. The Volta started in Viseu and ended in Lisboa, and lasted for two weeks from the 29th July until the 8th August. Results were computed by accessing data provided by the different economic agents involved in the event (spectators, attendees and organizer), through face-to-face surveys and contact via e-mail. The Volta generated a total economic impact of €76.261.876.

Impact of social economic indicators on RSI incidence and success

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

The impact of the economic crisis on the quality of health services

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 impact of global forces on the individual: empirical evidence from the German clothing industry

Starting from theoretical perspectives on globalisation, the following article analyses how current working conditions are affected by globalisation processes. For this purpose, recent developments in the German clothing sector are traced back to the power of economic globalisation processes. Characterising the German clothing sector as pioneer in economic globalisation, we use empirical findings to illustrate how current processes of globalisation influence the work place: At organisational level, corporate strategies aim at rationalisation, standardisation and flexibilisation of work in order to response to the economic pressure of global markets. At individual level these strategies, in turn, speed up working processes and intensify working processes for the employees. Although these developments form strong trends, we conclude that the local embeddedness of companies is still of high importance with regard to organisational and individual consequences of globalisation.

Impact of health conditions on absenteeism from work

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

The impact of high involvement human resources practices on resistance to change: The mediator effect of commitment to change and the influence of ethical leadership

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 impact of job insecurity on adaptive performance via burnout

Difficult and unpredictable times, due to economic instability, lead employees to feel high job insecurity. Organizations’ only way to subsistence is to search innovative ways of solving problems and find creative solutions. This study focuses on the impact that job insecurity has on adaptive performance, a recent measure integrating the response of creativity, reactivity in the face of emergencies, interpersonal adaptability, training effort, and handling work stress, and, mediated by burnout. From the responses of two questionnaires (????????1=252; ????????2=145), we conclude that job insecurity leads to exhaustion, but not to disengagement. In turn, it is the latter that demonstrates to have negative relations with some measures of adaptive performance. Thus, it is crucial to understand how organizations can minimize the inherent process.

An economic appraisal of the wealth-health gradient

In this study we aim to investigate the health discrepancies arising from unequal economic status, known as the “wealth-health gradient”. Our sample comprises 47,163 individuals from 14 European countries in the SHARE Wave 4 (2011), representing the population aged 50 and older. Through a cross-sectional OLS regression model, we have tested the impact of country-level indicators to infer their effect on personal health and on the magnitude of the gradient. The results find that private expenditure yields, on average, a higher, but fast decreasing, health benefit than public expenditure; and that income inequality is irrelevant for reducing health inequalities.

Professions and inter-disciplinary teamwork in socially embedded bureaucracies: Synthesis and hypotheses on the impact of informal and formal organization

In order to maximize their productivity, inter-disciplinary multi-occupation teams of professionals need to maximize inter-occupational cooperation in team decision making. Cooperation, however, is challenged by status anxiety over organizational careers and identity politics among team members who differ by ethnicity-race, gender, religion, nativity, citizenship status, etc. The purpose of this paper is to develop hypotheses about how informal and formal features of bureaucracy influence the level of inter-occupation cooperation achieved by socially diverse, multi-occupation work teams of professionals in bureaucratic work organizations. The 18 hypotheses, which are developed with the heuristic empirical case of National Science Foundation-sponsored university school partnerships in math and science curriculum innovation in the United States, culminate in the argument that cooperation can be realized as a synthesis of tensions between informal and formal features of bureaucracy in the form of participatory, high performance work systems.

The impact of CdSe/ZnS Quantum Dots in cells of Medicago sativa in suspension culture

Abstract Background: Nanotechnology has the potential to provide agriculture with new tools that may be used in the rapid detection and molecular treatment of diseases and enhancement of plant ability to absorb nutrients, among others. Data on nanoparticle toxicity in plants is largely heterogeneous with a diversity of physicochemical parameters reported, which difficult generalizations. Here a cell biology approach was used to evaluate the impact of Quantum Dots (QDs) nanocrystals on plant cells, including their effect on cell growth, cell viability, oxidative stress and ROS accumulation, besides their cytomobility. Results: A plant cell suspension culture of Medicago sativa was settled for the assessment of the impact of the addition of mercaptopropanoic acid coated CdSe/ZnS QDs. Cell growth was significantly reduced when 100 mM of mercaptopropanoic acid -QDs was added during the exponential growth phase, with less than 50% of the cells viable 72 hours after mercaptopropanoic acid -QDs addition. They were up taken by Medicago sativa cells and accumulated in the cytoplasm and nucleus as revealed by optical thin confocal imaging. As part of the cellular response to internalization, Medicago sativa cells were found to increase the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in a dose and time dependent manner. Using the fluorescent dye H2DCFDA it was observable that mercaptopropanoic acid-QDs concentrations between 5-180 nM led to a progressive and linear increase of ROS accumulation. Conclusions: Our results showed that the extent of mercaptopropanoic acid coated CdSe/ZnS QDs cytotoxicity in plant cells is dependent upon a number of factors including QDs properties, dose and the environmental conditions of administration and that, for Medicago sativa cells, a safe range of 1-5 nM should not be exceeded for biological applications.

The impact of pharmaceutical policy measures: a structural-break approach

Pharmaceutical spending in many other countries has had a steep increase in the last decade. The Portuguese Government has adopted several measures to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure growth, ranging from increased co-payments to price decreases determined administratively. Promotion of generic consumption has also ranked high in political priorities. We assess the overall impact of the several policy measures on total pharmaceutical spending, using monthly data over the period January 1995 – August 2008. Endogenous structural breaks (time-series) methods were employed. Our findings suggest that policy measures aimed at controlling pharmaceutical expenditure have been, in general, unsuccessful. Two breaks were identified. Both coincide with administratively determined price decreases. Measures aimed at increasing competition in the market had no visible effect on the dynamics of Government spending in pharmaceutical products. In particular, the introduction of reference pricing had only a transitory effect of less than one year, with historical growth resuming quickly. The consequence of it is a transfer of financial burden from the Government to the patients, with no apparent effect on the dynamics of pharmaceutical spending. This strongly suggests that pharmaceutical companies have been able to adjust to policy measures, in order to sustain their sales. It remains a challenge for the future to identify firms’ strategies that supported continued growth of sales, despite the several policy measures adop