Stability, sustainability and viability of the Portuguese Football Federation

Purpose: to evaluate and study the viability, stability and the ability of the Portuguese Football Federation (PFF) to generate sustained profits. Methodology: Data were collected based on the Audit Reports of the institution during 2012-2014 and a financial and economic analysis was performed in order to establish some indicators of solvability, profitability and financial balance. Findings: It exists a lack of consistency in managing the profits obtained. We can also suggest that should be given a greater interest to the management of their own intangible assets, as brand management, for example. Practical implications: By making known to leaders and managers of this type of institutions that exists a link between participation in international championships and increase of their profitability may encourage them to better managing these cash inputs in order to decrease the dependence of Governmental financing. We also found that the management of their own intangible assets, as brand management, for example, could probably add more positive financial results.

Realism in Gameplay: Digital Fiction and Embodiment

In this article we argue that digital simulations promote and explore complex relations between the player and the machines cybernetic system with which it relates through gameplay, that is, the real application of tactics and strategies used by participants as they play the game. We plan to show that the realism of simulation, together with the merger of artificial objects with the real world, can generate interactive empathy between players and their avatars. In this text, we intend to explore augmented reality as a means to visualise interactive communication projects. With ARToolkit, Virtools and 3ds Max applications, we aim to show how to create a portable interactive platform that resorts to the environment and markers for constructing the games scenario. Many of the conventional functions of the human eye are being replaced by techniques where images do not position themselves in the traditional manner that we observe them (Crary, 1998), or in the way we perceive the real world. The digitalization of the real world to a new informational layer over objects, people or environments, needs to be processed and mediated by tools that amplify the natural human senses.

Dynamical Stability and Predictability of Football Players: The Study of One Match

The game of football demands new computational approaches to measure individual and collective performance. Understanding the phenomena involved in the game may foster the identification of strengths and weaknesses, not only of each player, but also of the whole team. The development of assertive quantitative methodologies constitutes a key element in sports training. In football, the predictability and stability inherent in the motion of a given player may be seen as one of the most important concepts to fully characterise the variability of the whole team. This paper characterises the predictability and stability levels of players during an official football match. A Fractional Calculus (FC) approach to define a player’s trajectory. By applying FC, one can benefit from newly considered modeling perspectives, such as the fractional coefficient, to estimate a player’s predictability and stability. This paper also formulates the concept of attraction domain, related to the tactical region of each player, inspired by stability theory principles. To compare the variability inherent in the player’s process variables (e.g., distance covered) and to assess his predictability and stability, entropy measures are considered. Experimental results suggest that the most predictable player is the goalkeeper while, conversely, the most unpredictable players are the midfielders. We also conclude that, despite his predictability, the goalkeeper is the most unstable player, while lateral defenders are the most stable during the match.

The Impact of the Lisbon Football Derby on the Profile of Emergency Department Admissions

BACKGROUND: Variations in emergency department admissions have been reported to happen as a result of major sports events. The work presented assessed changes in volume and urgency level of visits to a major Emergency Department in Lisbon during and after the city's football derby. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Volume of attendances and patient urgency level, according to the Manchester Triage System, were retrospectively analyzed for the 2008-2011 period. Data regarding 24-hour periods starting 45 minutes before kick-off was collected, along with data from similar periods on the corresponding weekdays in the previous years, to be used as controls. Data samples were organized according to time frame (during and after the match), urgency level, and paired accordingly. RESULTS: A total of 14 relevant periods (7 match and 7 non-match) were analyzed, corresponding to a total of 5861 admissions. During the match time frame, a 20.6% reduction (p = 0.06) in the total number of attendances was found when compared to non-match days. MTS urgency level sub-analysis only showed a statistically significant reduction (26.5%; p = 0.05) in less urgent admissions (triage levels green-blue). Compared to controls, post-match time frames showed a global increase in admissions (5.6%; p = 0.45), significant only when considering less urgent ones (18.9%; p = 0.05). DISCUSSION: A decrease in the total number of emergency department attendances occurred during the matches, followed by a subsequent increase in the following hours. These variations only reached significance among visits triaged green-blue. CONCLUSION: During major sports events an overall decrease in emergency department admissions seems to take place, especially due to a drop in visits associated with less severe conditions.

Business models in the portuguese football clubs

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

Hair coloration by gene regulation: fact or fiction?

The unravelling of hair pigmentation genetics and robust delivery systems to the hair follicle (HF) will allow the development of a new class of colouring products. The challenge will be changing hair colour from inside out by safely regulating the activity of target genes through the specific delivery of synthetic/natural compounds, proteins, genes, or small RNAs.

Pervasive decision support to predict football corners and goals by means of data mining

Football is considered nowadays one of the most popular sports. In the betting world, it has acquired an outstanding position, which moves millions of euros during the period of a single football match. The lack of profitability of football betting users has been stressed as a problem. This lack gave origin to this research proposal, which it is going to analyse the possibility of existing a way to support the users to increase their profits on their bets. Data mining models were induced with the purpose of supporting the gamblers to increase their profits in the medium/long term. Being conscience that the models can fail, the results achieved by four of the seven targets in the models are encouraging and suggest that the system can help to increase the profits. All defined targets have two possible classes to predict, for example, if there are more or less than 7.5 corners in a single game. The data mining models of the targets, more or less than 7.5 corners, 8.5 corners, 1.5 goals and 3.5 goals achieved the pre-defined thresholds. The models were implemented in a prototype, which it is a pervasive decision support system. This system was developed with the purpose to be an interface for any user, both for an expert user as to a user who has no knowledge in football games.

Transnational identities in the fiction of Monica Ali: In the Kitchen and Alentejo Blue

Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen shows London as a cosmopolitan and postmodern city, a locus of transnational identities. Although this is not a new theme in contemporary English writing, in this novel the topic of migration is detached from the usual postcolonial loci that feature in “immigrant” or “diasporic” literature. In the novel Alentejo Blue, set in the South of Portugal, Monica Ali had already approached the question of migration from the point of view of the exiled citizen, whose situation is part of globalization processes outside of the normal push/pull (centre/periphery, east/west, north/south) conceptions of migration. The focus in the article is, thus, on the ways the new world order of economic globalization relates to the processes of immigration and the dispersal of a stable sense of individual and national identity.