Planning Bill (4): Implementation, Performance and Decision making: Issues of Capacity, Delivery and Quality

This paper examines issues of capacity, delivery and quality in relation to the Planning Bill. It is one of four papers and follows a common format highlighting the key issues arising in the Bill; summarising the findings of the public consultation and the Government’s response; reviewing comparable arrangements in comparable jurisdictions and highlighting potential contentious issues.

Executing bag of distributed tasks on the cloud: Investigating the trade-offs between performance and cost

Bag of Distributed Tasks (BoDT) can benefit from decentralised execution on the Cloud. However, there is a trade-off between the performance that can be achieved by employing a large number of Cloud VMs for the tasks and the monetary constraints that are often placed by a user. The research reported in this paper is motivated towards investigating this trade-off so that an optimal plan for deploying BoDT applications on the cloud can be generated. A heuristic algorithm, which considers the user's preference of performance and cost is proposed and implemented. The feasibility of the algorithm is demonstrated by generating execution plans for a sample application. The key result is that the algorithm generates optimal execution plans for the application over 91% of the time.

A governance approach to integrated rural tourism: factors influencing organisational performance and tourism support of local development organisations

Ao longo das últimas três décadas, o envolvimento das comunidades na formulação de políticas locais tem vindo a ganhar cada vez mais atenção como uma abordagem sustentável para o desenvolvimento rural na União Europeia (UE) e no mundo. Emergendo da globalização, novas estruturas de governação têm desafiado a base territorial restricta da autoridade do Estado soberano através do envolvimento de uma rede complexa e de autoorganização de atores governamentais e não-governamentais na tomada de decisões coletivas. A reestruturação territorial e institucional das zonas rurais, associada à expansão da governança rural, ganhou atenção considerável na literatura. No entanto, o potencial de empregar princípios de governança como fatores que determinam as direções de desenvolvimento rural através de desempenho organizacional e apoio no turismo não tem sido amplamente explorado na literatura. Deste modo, o principal objetivo desta tese consiste no emprego de ‘integração’, ‘participação’ e ‘empowerment’ como fatores críticos que influenciam os rumos do desenvolvimento rural (1) através do desempenho organizacional das organizações de governança rural e (2) apoio no turismo de organizações de desenvolvimento rural tendo em vista a validação da abordagem de governança para o turismo integrado. Ao longo deste duplo objectivo geral, a tese é dividida numa componente qualitativa de ‘desempenho’ e numa componente quantitativa de ‘apoio’. Seguindo uma abordagem sistemática baseada num sistema conceptual, foram realizadas 38 entrevistas em profundidade com pessoas chave envolvendo gestores do programa LEADER da UE na Hungria (34% do número total de Grupos de Ação Local [GAL]), seguido por um levantamento de campo transversal realizado através de um sistema de recolha de dados na Internet, tendo resultado em 662 questionários válidos para uma taxa de resposta de 63.6%. Os resultados da componente “desempenho” revelaram padrões na implementação dos princípios de governança, que por sua vez permitiram a identificação de fatores que permitem e restringem o desempenho organizacional. Os resultados da componente “apoio” permitiram destacar que o ponto de vista de redes de desenvolvimento local nos princípios de governança não é homogéneo. Diferenças significativas foram encontradas entre organizações responsáveis pelo planeamento e os grupos de aconselhamento. Contudo, os resultados sugeriram que a dimensão sustentável de turismo rural integrado é um prognosticador da contribuição do turismo para o desenvolvimento global da comunicade e para o apoio do turismo ao longo das redes de desenvolvimento local. Este estudo responde a uma necessidade crescente de investigação, que resulta da proliferação à escala mundial de formações de governança em sistemas de administração pública, tanto no lado dos investigadores como no lado dos praticantes.

Staging the Alphabet: Text, Performance and the Feminine

My central concern in this thesis is to develop an artistic language that arises from the use of the Greek and Latin alphabet as well as from Greek and English words. In my native country, Greece, there is a tradition of great symbolic significance attached to letters and numbers. By examining the visual, the semiological as well as the psychological aspects of symbolism, I created artistic works that were based on the use of type and text in contemporary fine arts, through the female subjectivity.

The effect of carbohydrate mouth rinsing on fencing performance and cognitive function following a fatigue inducing simulated bout of fencing in national level foil fencers

Delivered at The Physiological Society's Biomedical Basis of Elite Performance conference, Nottingham, 6-8 March 2016

Dietary biodiesel-derived crude glycerol in gilthead seabream juveniles (Sparus aurata): effects on growth performance and metabolism

In the European Union the turn towards renewable energy sources has increased the production of biodiesel from rapeseed oil, leaving glycerol (also known as glycerin) as a valuable by-product. For every litre of biodiesel produced, approximately 79 g of crude glycerol are generated. As the biodiesel production grows, the quantity of crude glycerol generated will be considerable and its utilization will become an urgent topic. One possibility is the use of crude glycerol on animal feeds. Glycerol has been evaluated as a dietary energy source for several farm animals, including fish. A study was undertaken to assess the effect of dietary biodiesel-derived glycerol (from rapeseed oil) on the overall growth performance, digestive capacity and metabolic nutrient utilization in juvenile gilthead seabream fed a low fishmeal level diet. Two practical diets were formulated to be isonitrogenous (crude protein, 45.4% DM), isolipidic (18.5% DM) and isoenergetic (gross energy, 21.3 kJ/g DM). The control diet (CTRL) was formulated with intermediate levels of marine-derived proteins (19%). In the same basal formulation, 5% glycerol (GLY) was incorporated at the expenses of wheat. Each dietary treatment was tested in triplicate tanks over 63 days, with 20 gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata), with a mean initial body weight (IBW) of 27.9  0.12 g. At the end of the trial, fish fed the CTRL diet reached a final body weight of 84.3  2.2 g (more than 3-fold increase of initial body weight). Fish fed the GLY diet showed a significantly higher (P<0.05) growth, expressed in terms of final body weight and specific growth rate. Voluntary feed intake was similar between the two treatments, but both feed efficiency and protein efficiency ratio were significantly improved (P<0.05) in fish fed the GLY diet. Dietary glycerol had no effect (P>0.05) on the apparent digestibility of protein. In comparison to the control treatment, dietary glycerol significantly improved (P<0.05) protein and fat retention. Activities of digestive enzymes were significantly affected by the various dietary treatments. Fish fed the GLY diet showed an enhanced activity of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and pepsin, while activities of lipase and leucine-alanine peptidase (LAP) were little affected by dietary glycerol. Fish show the ability to use crude glycerol as a dietary energy substrate.

Reducing job-irrelevant bias in performance and appraisals: compliance and beyond

Job-irrelevant discrimination seems as ubiquitous as the performance appraisals in which it is commonly detected. This paper explores both compliance-based and more proactive approaches that deal with the various possible sources of discrimination in performance appraisal ratings. The suggestions lead to a code of practice for performance management in firms across cultures and national boundaries.

Safety climate and its relationship with furniture companies’ safety performance and workers’ risk acceptance

This study aims to analyse the relationship between safety climate and the level of risk acceptance, as well as its relationship with workplace safety performance. The sample includes 14 companies and 403 workers. The safety climate assessment was performed by the application of a Safety Climate in Wood Industries questionnaire and safety performance was assessed with a checklist. Judgements about risk acceptance were measured through questionnaires together with four other variables: trust, risk perception, benefit perception and emotion. Safety climate was found to be correlated with workgroup safety performance, and it also plays an important role in workers’ risk acceptance levels. Risk acceptance tends to be lower when safety climate scores of workgroups are high, and subsequently, their safety performance is better. These findings seem to be relevant, as they provide Occupational, Safety and Health practitioners with a better understanding of workers’ risk acceptance levels and of the differences among workgroups.

Full-scale biological phosphorus removal: quantification of storage polymers, microbial performance and metabolic modelling

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