Co-Authorship of scientists in the energy field: an exploratory study of the ETDE World Energy Database (ETDEWEB) using Social Network Analysis

Paper presented at the 5th European Conference Economics and Management of Energy in Industry, Vilamoura, Algarve. Apr. 14-17, 2009, 11p. URL: http:// www.cenertec.pt/ecemei/

Co-Authorship of scientists in the energy field: a study of the ETDE World Energy Database (ETDEWEB) using social network analysis

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Gestão de Informação

Incoherences of the Art World

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Fundação Millennium bcp

Omni-channel retail strategies in the luxury world

It’s impossible to neglect the changes that internet and e-commerce caused in the retail sector, by increasing customers’ expectations and forcing retailers to adapt the business to the new digital era. Internet is characterized by the increase in accessibility to everyone, which can be good or not so. For instance, luxury products rely on the sense of exclusivity, instead of being accessible to everyone. Hence, internet represents a challenge for luxury brands once, although they are able to provide a fullness service to their customers, they need to maintain the exclusiveness in which luxury is sustained. Consequently, the appearance of omni-channel was more than a challenge for the luxury sector, in particular, given the need to provide a full integrated experience through different channels. The aim of this dissertation is to find out how important is omni-channel, even in the luxury industry, and how it’s actually implemented based on the case of one of the most successful companies on luxury fashion e-commerce industry – Farfetch. Even though the company started in London, its founder is a Portuguese entrepreneur, and it’s in Portugal where most of its employees work, divided in two offices – Guimarães e Porto. Therefore, a literature review was written on relevant concepts and ideas about luxury, e-commerce and the different channels’ approaches. There were formulated five propositions that were after discussed according to the information gathered about the company and its strategies. In the end, it was possible to identify which propositions are in accordance with theory and which are not, as well as understand which are the most important strategies and trends about omni-channel in the luxury fashion e-commerce sector.

O terrorismo e o impacto nos Direitos Humanos

Terrorism is at the center of speeches in contemporary societies. Terrorism has caused a great instability in Western society, but if before the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism was just a threat to the West, the Arab world of today suffers this same reality. Human rights conquered in the past, are being constantly violated and forgotten by the countries that make them flag of their ideals as the US, that this fight against terrorism already violated in every way those rights. Human rights are the fundamental pillars to be able to live in society and serve to protect the humanity of the atrocities that have been committed in the past with the great wars. Human rights are the fundamental pillars to be able to live in society and serve to protect the humanity of the atrocities that have been committed in the past with the great wars. Atrocities as torture, which is prohibited by several international documents and yet these inhumane practices continue to be used as a means of combating terrorism. Democracies are fragmented and the great challenge facing this century is finding means to contain the growth of these Islamic radicals, without jeopardizing the universally known human values.

Cognitive models for the concept of angle

Tese de doutoramento em Filosofia

Algorithm for the Parkinson’s disease behavioural models characterization using a biosensor

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Biomédica

ISEGI-NOVA AR Project - Augmented Reality Aplied to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa

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

War and propaganda in the XXth Century

Propaganda represented the sacrifice of soldiers in war and praised the power of the country. It has been around these images that all over the world entire populations were mobilized on the expectation of victory. Through the static image of printed posters or the newspaper news projected in cinemas all over the globe, governments sought to promote a patriotic spirit, encouraging the effort of individual sacrifice by sending a clear set of messages that directly appealed to the voluntary enlistment in the armies, messages that explained the important of rationing essential goods, of the intensification of food production or the purchase of war bonds, exacerbating feelings, arousing emotions and projecting an image divided between the notion of superiority and the idea of fear of the opponent. From press, in the First World War, to radio in World War II, to television and cinema from the 1950s onwards, propaganda proved to be a weapon as deadly as those managed by soldiers in the battlefield. That’s why it is essential to analyse and discuss the topic of War and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century. This conference is organized by the IHC and the CEIS20 and is part of the Centennial Program of the Great War, organized by the IHC, and the International Centennial Program coordinated by the Imperial War Museum in London.

Relações sinuosas: Portugal e o mundo árabe, 1950-1973

Nas três últimas décadas do colonialismo português, as políticas destinadas às populações muçulmanas da Guiné e de Moçambique passaram da hostilidade mais ou menos aberta para uma estratégia de sedução, com vista a promover um “Islão português” e a usar certos sectores muçulmanos no combate aos movimentos nacionalistas. Esta transição teve também uma componente transnacional, na medida em que se quis alargar a intervenção portuguesa a um espaço estratégico designado como “mundo islâmico”. O presente artigo procura analisar essa intervenção, debruçando-se sobre o pensamento geopolítico que a informou e as suas aplicações diplomáticas, em particular no relacionamento com os países árabes.

Expanding the magic circle in pervasive casual play

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Informática

InStory – The Making of na Interactive Digital Narrative

Em cooperação com Glorianna Davenport do M.I.T. Media Lab

New Opportunities for Development Journalism: Enlarging the Public Sphere with ICTs

The present study examines new opportunities offered by the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance the development journalism practice, in order to enlarge the public sphere and empower ordinary people to participate more actively in public debate on issues affecting their development. The analysis of the achievements and challenges faced by 32 radio stations under the UNESCO project “Empowering Local Radios with ICTs” offers an overview of the introduction of ICTs in different contexts, within and among seven countries in Sub- Saharan Africa. Even though the lack of ICTs access and knowledge is still a concern in the developing world, especially in rural areas, these new tools can be adapted to each context and foster a more pluralistic and participative media in order to address people’s needs and promote social change.

Efficient paraconsistent reasoning with rules and ontologies for the semantic web

Ontologies formalized by means of Description Logics (DLs) and rules in the form of Logic Programs (LPs) are two prominent formalisms in the field of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. While DLs adhere to the OpenWorld Assumption and are suited for taxonomic reasoning, LPs implement reasoning under the Closed World Assumption, so that default knowledge can be expressed. However, for many applications it is useful to have a means that allows reasoning over an open domain and expressing rules with exceptions at the same time. Hybrid MKNF knowledge bases make such a means available by formalizing DLs and LPs in a common logic, the Logic of Minimal Knowledge and Negation as Failure (MKNF). Since rules and ontologies are used in open environments such as the Semantic Web, inconsistencies cannot always be avoided. This poses a problem due to the Principle of Explosion, which holds in classical logics. Paraconsistent Logics offer a solution to this issue by assigning meaningful models even to contradictory sets of formulas. Consequently, paraconsistent semantics for DLs and LPs have been investigated intensively. Our goal is to apply the paraconsistent approach to the combination of DLs and LPs in hybrid MKNF knowledge bases. In this thesis, a new six-valued semantics for hybrid MKNF knowledge bases is introduced, extending the three-valued approach by Knorr et al., which is based on the wellfounded semantics for logic programs. Additionally, a procedural way of computing paraconsistent well-founded models for hybrid MKNF knowledge bases by means of an alternating fixpoint construction is presented and it is proven that the algorithm is sound and complete w.r.t. the model-theoretic characterization of the semantics. Moreover, it is shown that the new semantics is faithful w.r.t. well-studied paraconsistent semantics for DLs and LPs, respectively, and maintains the efficiency of the approach it extends.

The role of qualitative data and systems thinking in addressing service decline in market towns

Retail services are a main contributor to municipal budget and are an activity that affects perceived quality-of-life, especially for those with mobility difficulties (e.g. the elderly, low income citizens). However, there is evidence of a decline in some of the services market towns provide to their citizens. In market towns, this decline has been reported all over the western world, from North America to Australia. The aim of this research was to understand retail decline and enlighten on some ways of addressing this decline, using a case study, Thornbury, a small town in the Southwest of England. Data collected came from two participatory approaches: photo-surveys and multicriteria mapping. The interpretation of data came from using participants as analysts, but also, using systems thinking (systems diagramming and social trap theory) for theory building. This research moves away from mainstream economic and town planning perspectives by making use of different methods and concepts used in anthropology and visual sociology (photo-surveys), decision-making and ecological economics (multicriteria mapping and social trap theory). In sum, this research has experimented with different methods, out of their context, to analyse retail decline in a small town. This research developed a conceptual model for retail decline and identified the existence of conflicting goals and interests and their implications for retail decline, as well as causes for these. Most of the potential causes have had little attention in the literature. This research also identified that some of the measures commonly used for dealing with retail decline may be contributing to the causes of retail decline itself. Additionally, this research reviewed some of the measures that can be used to deal with retail decline, implications for policy-making and reflected on the use of the data collection and analysis methods in the context of small to medium towns.