Water treatments in semi-closed cooling circuits and their impact on the quality of effluents discharged by CERN

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

Water treatments in semi-closed cooling circuits and their impact on the quality of effluents discharged by CERN

Mestrado integrado em Engenharia do Ambiente, perfil: Gestão de Sistemas Ambientais

Prognostic modelling of breast cancer patients: a benchmark of predictive models with external validation

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

The adoption of cloud computing by SMEs: identifying and coping with external factors.

Comunicação apresentada na CAPSI 2011 - 11ª Conferência da Associação Portuguesa de Sistemas de Informação – A Gestão de Informação na era da Cloud Computing, Lisboa, ISEG/IUL-ISCTE/, 19 a 21 de Outubro de 2011.

Studying the impact of co-authorship with external researchers:the case of research community in Portugal using social network analysis.

Project work presented as a partial requirement to obtain a Master Degree in Information Management

Determinants of Portuguese external imbalances

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

Essay on external imbalances within the Euro Area

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

External brand extensions impact on Diesel's brand image

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

Adjusting to external imbalances within the EMU, the case of Portugal

From 1995 to 2010 Portugal has accumulated a negative international asset position of 110 percent of GDP. In a developed and aging economy the number is astonishing and any argument to consider it sustainable must rely on extremely favorable forecasts on growth. Portuguese policy options are reduced in number: no autonomous monetary policy, no currency to devaluate, and limited discretion in changing fiscal deficits and government debt. To start the necessary deleveraging a remaining possible policy is a budget-neutral change of the tax structure that increases private saving and net exports. An increase in the VAT and a decrease in the employer’s social security contribution tax can achieve the desired outcome in the short run if they are complemented with wage moderation. To obtain a substantial improvement in competitiveness and a large decrease in consumption, the changes in the tax rates have to be large. While a precise quantitative assessment is difficult, the initial increase in the effective VAT rate needed to allow the social security tax to decrease by 16 percentage points (pp) is approximately 10 pp. Such a large increase in the effective VAT rate could be obtained by raising most of the reduced VAT rates to the new general VAT rate of 23 percent. The empirical analysis shows that over time the suggested tax swap could generate surpluses and improve the trade balance. A temporary version of the suggested tax-swap has the attractiveness to achieve a sharper increase in the private saving rate maintaining the short run gains in competitiveness. Finally, the temporary version of the fiscal devaluation could be the basis for an automatic stabilizer to external imbalances within a monetary union.Portugal has been running large current account deficits every year since 1995. These deficits have accumulated to an astonishing 110 percent of GDP negative external asset position. The sustainability of such a large external position is questionable and must rely on fantastic productivity growth expectations. The recent global financial crisis appears to have anticipated the international investors reality check on those future expectations with the result of a large increase in the cost of external financing. Today the rebalancing of the current account through an increase in national savings and an improvement in competitiveness must be at the top of the Portuguese authorities “to do” list as the cost of a pull out from international investors is of the order of 10% of GDP. The external rebalancing is difficult as the degrees of freedom of the Portuguese authorities are limited in number: they have no autonomous monetary policy, no currency to devaluate, and little discretion in fiscal policy as deficit limits and debt targets are set by the Stability Growth Pact and the postcrisis consensus on medium-term fiscal consolidation. One possibility that remains is to change the fiscal policy mix for a given budget deficit. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of a “fiscal devaluation”1 obtained through a tax swap between employers’ social security contributions and taxes on consumption2. The paper begins by illustrating Portugal’s current account evolution during the euro period. The second section section lays out a model to offer a qualitative assessment of the dynamic outcomes of the the tax swap. I show that the suggested tax swap can in theory achieve the desired outcomes in terms of competitiveness and consumption if complemented with moderation (stickiness) in wages. I also study the effects of a temporary version of the tax swap and show that it achieves a sharper improvement in the current account that accelerate the rebalancing. The third section moves to the empirical analysis and estimates the likely effects of the tax swap for the Portuguese economy. The fourth section concludes.

Corporate social responsibility: How internal and external CSR perceptions influence employee outcomes

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

Options and Requirements for a potential market entry into Portugal with renewable energy technologies that are applicable for heating and cooling of buildings

NSBE-UNL

Evaporation from porous building materials and its cooling potential

Evaporative cooling is a traditional strategy to improve summer comfort, which has gained renewed relevance in the context of the transition to a greener economy. Here, the potential for evaporative cooling of two common porous building materials, natural stone and ceramic brick, was evaluated. The work has relevance also to the protection of built heritage becauseevaporation underlies the problems of dampness and salt crystallization, which are so harmful and frequent in this heritage. It was observed that the drying rate of the materials is, in some cases, higher than the evaporation rate of a free water surface. Surface area measurements by a three-dimensional optical technique suggested, as probable cause of this behavior, that surface irregularity gives rise to a large effective surface of evaporation in the material. Surface temperature measurements by infrared were performed afterward during evaporation experiments outside during a hot summer day in Lisbon. Their results indicate that ordinary building materials can be very efficient evaporative media and, thus, may help in achieving higher energy efficiency while maintaining a simultaneous constructive or architectural function.

Corporate social reponsability strategic corporate social responsability: External and internal outcomes

This study investigates the importance and benefits of having a strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program by testing the interrelationships between strategic CSR with three external (reputation, corporate image, and customer loyalty) and four internal (organizational commitment, job satisfaction, performance, and organizational deviance) variables. 269 clients and non-clients along with 190 employees and their direct supervisors completed the survey. Strategic CSR has shown to have a positive impact on all the variables studied with the exception of organizational deviance. Practical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.