Estrutura Conceptual do Relato Financeiro : Da Definição de um Domínio à Sua Análise para uma Sociedade em Rede

Considerando a língua como um produto da sociedade, mas também como um meio fundamental para o estabelecimento de relações entre os homens, procuramos perceber o seu lugar na sociedade globalizada, com o objectivo de desenvolver uma metodologia de análise terminológica que contribua para uma maior qualidade da comunicação especializada na sociedade em rede. Este trabalho está organizado em duas partes, sendo a primeira dedicada à reflexão sobre o papel da língua na sociedade em rede, focando questões essenciais em torno da tensão existente entre o multilinguismo e a hegemonia do inglês enquanto lingua franca, sobretudo no espaço europeu. Interessa-nos, por um lado, reflectir sobre a definição de políticas linguísticas, concretamente na Europa multilingue dos 28, e, por outro, salientar o papel preponderante que a língua tem na transmissão do conhecimento. A segunda parte deste trabalho concretiza a investigação efectuada na primeira com base na análise do relato financeiro, um domínio do saber que não só é inerentemente multilingue ¾ porque a sua aplicação é transnacional ¾ mas também reflecte a tensão identificada na primeira parte, na medida em que o inglês assume, no mundo dos negócios em geral e nos mercados financeiros em particular, o papel hegemónico de lingua franca. A abordagem terminológica que defendemos é semasiológica para fins onomasiológicos, pelo que partimos da análise do texto de especialidade, organizado em corpora de especialidade. Discutimos subsequentemente os resultados da nossa análise com os especialistas que os irão validar e cuja colaboração em diversos vi momentos do processo de análise terminológica e conceptual é fundamental para garantir a qualidade dos recursos terminológicos produzidos. Nesta óptica, exploramos um corpus de textos legislativos no âmbito do Sistema de Normalização Contabilística (SNC), de modo a delinearmos uma metodologia de trabalho que, no futuro, conduzirá à construção de uma base de dados terminológica do relato financeiro. Concomitantemente, efectuamos também um estudo sobre a Estrutura Conceptual do SNC, para o qual elaboramos uma comparação ao nível da tradução especializada no relato financeiro, com base num corpus paralelo composto pela legislação contabilística internacional endossada pela União Europeia. Utilizamos o corpus paralelo constituído por textos redigidos originalmente em inglês e traduzidos para português, em articulação com o corpus de especialidade criado com a legislação relativa ao normativo contabilístico português, para testar uma metodologia de extracção de equivalentes. Defendemos, por fim, que a harmonização no relato financeiro para além de se reger por políticas contabilísticas comuns, deve ter subjacentes questões terminológicas. É necessário, portanto, harmonizar a terminologia do relato financeiro, possibilitando aos especialistas uma comunicação em português isenta da interferência do inglês herdado das normas internacionais, através dos dois processos que identificamos: a tradução e a adaptação das Normas Internacionais de Contabilidade.

A importância da comunicação estratégica na alteração de comportamentos na sociedade : o caso Sociedade Ponto Verde

A comunicação estratégica poderá ser entendida como a comunicação alinhada com a estratégia global de uma organização para alcançar o seu posicionamento estratégico. Ou seja, para alcançar o sucesso, uma organização precisa de ter uma comunicação consistente com a sua identidade e, ao mesmo tempo, adequada ao seu público-alvo e ao tipo de sector onde se insere. Só desta forma consegue conquistar a confiança e fidelidade dos consumidores, essenciais para o alcance dos objectivos. Em relação à alteração comportamentos, é essencial que as empresas costruam uma estratégia de comunicação coerente e consistente, adaptando as mensagens e os públicos-alvo escolhidos. Neste âmbito da alteração de comportamentos, estudou-se neste trabalho a Sociedade Ponto Verde (SPV), uma associação portuguesa sem fins lucrativos, que actua no âmbito da gestão e reciclagem de resíduos de embalagens. Procurou estudar-se a evolução da sua comunicação ao longo dos anos e a forma como adaptou as suas mensagens, de forma a conseguir incutir na sociedade portuguesa a importância do comportamento de reciclagem de resíduos. Neste estudo, procedeu-se a uma análise individualizada de cada uma das campanhas de comunicação da SPV e, posteriormente, aplicou-se um inquérito por questionário, para verificar a eficácia das mesmas campanhas perante o público-alvo. A metodologia utilizada neste trabalho consistiu na distribuição de um inquérito por questionário online, que permitiu recolher uma amostra probabilística por conveniência. Em seguida, recolhidos e tratados os dados referentes às 482 respostas recebidas, utilizou-se o programa SPSS (Stastitical Package for the Social Sciences) para analisar, tratar e discutir os resultados obtidos. Estes resultados demonstraram que, de facto, não houve uma grande percentagem de inquiridos que se lembram das campanhas da SPV. Os resultados são positivos e não desmentem a qualidade e coerência das mensagens, mas a verdade é que a percentagem de indivíduos que não se lembra de algumas campanhas chega a ser elevada (em especial nas campanhas iniciais da organização, quando existia falta de uma estratégia coerente). Justifica-se este facto, em parte, pelo excesso de informação e estímulos a que as pessoas estão sujeitas, pelo que a informação que retêm não fica para sempre, acabando por dar lugar a outras informações. Os indivíduos são inconscientemente selectivos com a informação que processam e guardam, pois não seria possível guardar toda a informação que lhes é transmitida. No que diz respeito à comunicação estratégica que visa alterar uma atitude e, posteriormente, um comportamento, conclui-se que, no geral, o comportamento das pessoas inquiridas aparenta ter sido influenciado pela comunicação da SPV, caso contrário, as respostas afirmativas quanto à reciclagem e de concordância com algumas das afirmações teriam sido inferiores. Ou seja, mesmo reconhecendo o carácter um pouco enviesado da amostra (não deverá ser considerada representativa da população portuguesa), é possível dizer que a estratégia de comunicação da SPV (em especial a partir de 2005) foi eficiente. Palavras-

Garland, since 1776- a unique ownership structure

The case is based on Garland, a 240 years old Portuguese family business, now owned by the Dawson family. It focuses on a decision made 50 years ago, aligned with what had been the company’s history, about the ownership rules for family members, which influences the ownership structure of the firm. It addresses the main issues about ownership in family businesses, and tackles the problem of succession planning and fair process. It contains a teaching note to support the utilization of the case in a classroom context, with learning objectives, target audience, a teaching plan, questions and proposed answers, and theory that relates to the case. It is also complemented with an epilogue and an overview of the case.

How do global born companies ignite their internationalization and survive in international markets?

Over the last decades, the born global firms or the international new ventures (“INVs”) have assumed a growing role in international business, including in Portugal. The rise of this new type of multinational has challenged several theories concerning the development of multinational companies and the origin of companies’ competitive advantage. This qualitative, case-based research explores the most relevant traits shown by some Portuguese born-global firms. More concretely, the aim of this work is to compare some Portuguese international new ventures in order to understand the role of leadership, culture and strategy in their rapid internationalization and the source of their lasting competitive advantage. It was noticed that these firms’ lasting competitive advantage results from a singular combination of resources and dynamic capabilities that evolves over time. Moreover, it was found that these firms’ foreign subsidiaries and local networks may be essential to enhance the firms competitive advantage as it provides each firm a distinctive source of knowledge and capabilities. As a consequence, the effective assimilation of such resources and capabilities in these firms’ may become crucial for their lasting success. In addition, the leadership, strategy and culture in these firms seem to be quite aligned and form a quite virtuous cycle that contributed to the firms rapid internationalization and for the way the firms developed their own resources and dynamic capabilities and adapted to external environment.

Release of insulin from PLGA-alginate dressing stimulates regenerative healing of burn wounds in rats

Burn wound healing involves a complex set of overlapping processes in an environment conducive to ischemia, inflammation, and infection costing $7.5 billion/year in the US alone, in addition to the morbidity and mortality that occur when the burns are extensive. We previously showed that insulin, when topically applied to skin excision wounds, accelerates re-epithelialization, and stimulates angiogenesis. More recently, we developed an alginate sponge dressing (ASD) containing insulin encapsulated in PLGA microparticles that provides a sustained release of bioactive insulin for >20days in a moist and protective environment. We hypothesized that insulin-containing ASD accelerates burn healing and stimulates a more regenerative, less scarring, healing. Using a heat-induced burn injury in rats, we show that burns treated with dressings containing 0.04mg insulin/cm2, every three days for 9 days, have faster closure, faster rate of disintegration of dead tissue, and decreased oxidative stress.In addition, in insulin-treated wounds the pattern of neutrophil inflammatory response suggests faster clearing of the burn dead tissue. We also observe faster resolution of the pro-inflammatory macrophages. We also found that insulin stimulates collagen deposition and maturation with the fibers organized more like a basket weave (normal skin) than aligned and crosslinked (scar tissue). In summary , application of ASD-containing insulin-loaded PLGA particles on burns every three days stimulates faster and more regenerative healing. These results suggest insulin as a potential therapeutic agent in burn healing and, because of its long history of safe use in humans, insulin could become one of the treatments of choice when repair and regeneration are critical for proper tissue function.

Risk assessment in a research laboratory during sol–gel synthesis of nano-TiO2

The occupational risks in the nanotechnology research laboratories are an important topic since a great number of researchers are involved in this area. The risk assessment performed by both qualitative and quantitative methods is a necessary step for the management of the occupational risks. Risk assessment could be performed by qualitative methods that gather consensus in the scientific community. It is also possible to use quantitative methods, based in different technics and metrics, as indicative exposure limits are been settled by several institutions. While performing the risk assessment, the information on the materials used is very important and, if it is not updated, it could create a bias in the assessment results. The exposure to TiO2 nanoparticles risk was assessed in a research laboratory using a quantitative exposure method and qualitative risk assessment methods. It was found the results from direct-reading Condensation Particle Counter (CPC) equipment and the CB Nanotool seem to be related and aligned, while the results obtained from the use of the Stoffenmanager Nano seem to indicate a higher risk level.

Cost-effective and lightweight mobile units for MixAR: A comparative trial among different setups

Cultural heritage has arousing the interest of the general public (e.g. tourists), resulting in the increasing number of visitations to archaeological sites. However, many buildings and monuments are severely damaged or completely destroyed, which doesn’t allow to get a full experience of “travelling in time”. Over the years, several Augmented Reality (AR) approaches were proposed to overcome these issues by providing three-dimensional visualization of reconstructed ancient structures in situ. However, most of these systems were made available through heavy and expensive technological bundles. Alternatively, MixAR intends to be a lightweight and cost-effective Mixed Reality system which aims to provide the visualization of virtual ancient buildings reconstructions in situ, properly superimposed and aligned with real-world ruins. This paper proposes and compares different AR mobile units setups to be used in the MixAR system, with low-cost and lightweight requirements in mind, providing different levels of immersion. It was propounded four different mobile units, based on: a laptop computer, a single-board computer (SBC), a tablet and a smartphone, which underwent a set of tests to evaluate their performances. The results show that mobile units based on laptop computer and SBC reached a good overall performance while mobile units based on tablet and smartphone did not meet such a satisfactory result even though they are acceptable for the intended use.

MixAR mobile prototype: visualizing virtually reconstructed ancient structures in situ

Archeology and related areas have a special interest on cultural heritage sites since they provide valuable information about past civilizations. However, the ancient buildings present in these sites are commonly found in an advanced state of degradation which difficult the professional/expert analysis. Virtual reconstructions of such buildings aim to provide a digital insight of how these historical places could have been in ancient times. Moreover, the visualization of such models has been explored by some Augmented Reality (AR) systems capable of providing support to experts. Their compelling and appealing environments have also been applied to promote the social and cultural participation of general public. The existing AR solutions regarding this thematic rarely explore the potential of realism, due to the following lacks: the exploration of mixed environments is usually only supported for indoors or outdoors, not both in the same system; the adaptation of the illumination conditions to the reconstructed structures is rarely addressed causing a decrease of credibility. MixAR [1] is a system concerned with those challenges, aiming to provide the visualization of virtual buildings augmented upon real ruins, allowing soft transitions among its interiors and exteriors and using relighting techniques for a faithful interior illumination, while the user freely moves in a given cultural heritage site, carrying a mobile unit. Regarding the focus of this paper, we intend to report the current state of MixAR mobile unit prototype, which allows visualizing virtual buildings – properly aligned with real-world structures – based on user's location, during outdoor navigation. In order to evaluate the prototype performance, a set of tests were made using virtual models with different complexities.

Reconstructing transcriptional regulatory networks using data integration and text mining

Transcriptional Regulatory Networks (TRNs) are powerful tool for representing several interactions that occur within a cell. Recent studies have provided information to help researchers in the tasks of building and understanding these networks. One of the major sources of information to build TRNs is biomedical literature. However, due to the rapidly increasing number of scientific papers, it is quite difficult to analyse the large amount of papers that have been published about this subject. This fact has heightened the importance of Biomedical Text Mining approaches in this task. Also, owing to the lack of adequate standards, as the number of databases increases, several inconsistencies concerning gene and protein names and identifiers are common. In this work, we developed an integrated approach for the reconstruction of TRNs that retrieve the relevant information from important biological databases and insert it into a unique repository, named KREN. Also, we applied text mining techniques over this integrated repository to build TRNs. However, was necessary to create a dictionary of names and synonyms associated with these entities and also develop an approach that retrieves all the abstracts from the related scientific papers stored on PubMed, in order to create a corpora of data about genes. Furthermore, these tasks were integrated into @Note, a software system that allows to use some methods from the Biomedical Text Mining field, including an algorithms for Named Entity Recognition (NER), extraction of all relevant terms from publication abstracts, extraction relationships between biological entities (genes, proteins and transcription factors). And finally, extended this tool to allow the reconstruction Transcriptional Regulatory Networks through using scientific literature.

Estudo comparativo entre as normas ISO 21931:2010, NBR 15575 e os requisitos das certificações AQUA e LEED

The construction sector is responsible for generating large environmental impacts in order to minimize these impacts, environmental standards and seals for the construction were created. This article presents a comparative study between the preliminary requirements of ISO 21931: 2010 Sustainable Building, the requirements of AQUA-HQE stamps, LEED and the Performance Standard NBR 15575: 2013. For this, a literature search was conducted to carry out a comparative analysis of the requirements of each of them in order to know those common to all of them. As a result of this work was identified that the standard of performance, the AQUA seal and LEED are well aligned with the sustainability criteria, comfort and health of the user, and has the ISO 21931 standard has some of these items as options.

Impacto do azoto no processo de soldadura reflow

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia Industrial (área de especialização em Qualidade, Segurança e Manutenção)

A 3D computer assisted Orthopedic Surgery Planning approach based on planar radiography

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Biomédica (área de especialização em Informática Médica)

Microhabitats de mosquitos (Diptera, Culicidae) em internódios de taquara na Mata Atlântica, Paraná, Brasil

During two consecutive years, from January 1985 to December 1986, a comparative study of mosquitoes preferences for breeding habitat was carried out in the Atlantic Forest of the Serra do Mar, Paraná State, Brazil. To achieve it, 1875 bamboo internodes aligned vertically in live green, bamboo plants Merostachys speciosa Munro and Merostachys sp. were used, in which metabolic water was exuded from the plant itself, and presenting different size/pattern holes at their lateral walls, bored by the local sylvan fauna. Another group of 1200 individual internode traps was used as comparative element, carved out with a transversal cut by a saw, filled with local stream water and held in branches at different heights in the vegetal strata nearby. At both microhabitat types, a total of 17 culicid species was registered. Culex (Microculex) neglectus Lutz, 1904, Cx. (Carrollia) soperi Antunes & Lane, 1937, Sabethes (Sabethes) batesi Lane & Cerqueira, 1942 and Sa. (Sabethinus) melanonymphe (Dyar, 1924)colonized exclusively live plant internodes, while Culex (Microculex) elongatus Rozeboom & Lane, 1950, Cx. (Carrollia) iridescens (Lutz, 1905), Cx. (Carrollia) kompi Valencia,1973and Trichoprosopon (Trichoprosopon) soaresi Dyar & Knab, 1907 bred only in internode traps. The remaining nine species colonized both habitats indistinctly. Quantitatively, was detected the abundance of 60.1% at live green internodes, against 39.9% for internode traps. Concerning the different patterns of bored live internode holes, 40.3% of the total computed specimens were collected in square or rectangular holes, 31.9% in two hole internodes, one minute circular, the other wider, and the remaining 28.8% of specimens distributed in other pattern type internodes. The mosquitoes breeding at these microhabitats fall in the culicid entomofauna specialized at locating and detecting peculiar and propitious mesogen conditions for breeding purposes.

Fraseologia espanyola d'origen llatí i motiu grecorromà

Proyecto realizado en la Universidad de Lleida entre 2003 i 2006. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es vislumbrar la génesis y la evolución de unidades fraseológicas que proceden del latín y de las que utilizan algún motivo grecorromano para su creación. Una de las razones por las que se ha elegido este tipo de fraseologismos es que se remontan a una época bastante bien conocida de la historia de nuestro pueblo, circunstancia que permitirá desarrollar el segundo objetivo, a saber: conocer qué aspectos de la sociedad y la cultura clásicas han sido seleccionados por los antiguos y por los hispanohablantes para la formación de una expresión figurada, así como sacar a la luz las posibles causas que han motivado esta elección. La inclusión de estos dos grupos de unidades –el de las que proceden directamente del latín y el de las que se han basado, ya en plena época romance, en un motivo de la cultura clásica– nos posibilita la consecución de un tercer objetivo: saber si en ambos pueblos (grecorromano e hispano) han llamado la atención los mismos aspectos de la realidad (y de idéntico modo) para la cristalización de unidades fraseológicas. Las hipótesis de partida eran que, en español, debiera darse tanto la perduración o recreación de unidades latinas y griegas, como la creación de nuevas unidades referidas a aspectos culturales de Grecia y Roma; y que el número de estas unidades debiera ser elevado, puesto que el latín es la lengua de la que deriva el español y la cultura grecorromana es la base de la nuestra. Para el establecimiento del corpus definitivo se han elaborado dos corpora de fraseologismos y refranes (sobre el español y el latín), que han sido debidamente comparados hasta llegar establecer unas 20.000 unidades de origen latino y unas 3.000 de origen clásico .

Time-consistent fiscal policy under heterogeneity: Conflicting or common interests?

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of Markov-perfect tax-spending policy in a neoclassical growth model with capitalists and workers. Focusing on the long run, our main fi ndings are: (i) it is optimal for a benevolent government, which cares equally about its citizens, to tax capital heavily and to subsidise labour; (ii) a Pareto improving means to reduce ine¢ ciently high capital taxation under discretion is for the government to place greater weight on the welfare of capitalists; (iii) capitalists and workers preferences, regarding the optimal amount of "capitalist bias", are not aligned implying a conflict of interests.