Staging the Scientist: The Representation of Science and its Processes in American and British Drama

Dissertação apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Estudos Ingleses e Norte Americanos

A volumetric hybrid representation for obstacle detection in all-terrain robots

This dissertation presents an approach aimed at three-dimensional perception’s obstacle detection on all-terrain robots. Given the huge amount of acquired information, the adversities such environments present to an autonomous system and the swiftness, thus required, from each of its navigation decisions, it becomes imperative that the 3-D perceptional system to be able to map obstacles and passageways in the most swift and detailed manner. In this document, a hybrid approach is presented bringing the best of several methods together, combining the lightness of lesser meticulous analyses with the detail brought by more thorough ones. Realizing the former, a terrain’s slope mapping system upon a low resolute volumetric representation of the surrounding occupancy. For the latter’s detailed evaluation, two novel metrics were conceived to discriminate the little depth discrepancies found in between range scanner’s beam distance measurements. The hybrid solution resulting from the conjunction of these two representations provides a reliable answer to traversability mapping and a robust discrimination of penetrable vegetation from that constituting real obstructions. Two distinct robotic platforms offered the possibility to test the hybrid approach on very different applications: a boat, under an European project, the ECHORD Riverwatch, and a terrestrial four-wheeled robot for a national project, the Introsys Robot.

Return Migration, Self-Selection and Entrepreneurship in Mozambique

Does return migration affect entrepreneurship? This question has important implications for the debate on the economic development effects of migration for origin countries. The existing literature has, however, not addressed how the estimation of the impact of return migration on entrepreneurship is affected by double unobservable migrant self-selection, both at the initial outward migration and at the final inward return migration stages. This paper uses a representative household survey conducted in Mozambique in order to address this research question. We exploit variation provided by displacement caused by civil war in Mozambique, as well as social unrest and other shocks in migrant destination countries. The results lend support to negative unobservable self-selection at both and each of the initial and return stages of migration, which results in an under-estimation of the effects of return migration on entrepreneurial outcomes when using a ‘naïve’ estimator not controlling for self-selection. Indeed, ‘naïve’ estimates point to a 13 pp increase in the probability of owning a business when there is a return migrant in the household relative to non-migrants only, whereas excluding the double effect of unobservable self-selection, this effect becomes significantly larger - between 24 pp and 29 pp, depending on the method of estimation and source of variation used.

Do Migrants Send Remittances as a Way of Self-Insurance?

How do risk preferences affect migrant remittance behaviour? Examination of this relationship has only begun to be explored. Using a tailored representative survey of 1500 immigrants in the Greater Dublin Area, Ireland, we find a positive and significant relationship between risk aversion and migrant remittances. Risk-averse individuals are more likely to send remittances home and are, on average, likely to remit a higher amount, after controlling for a broad range of individual and group characteristics. The evidence we obtain is consistent with a “purchase of self-insurance” motive to remit in that we also find support for more remittances being sent by risk-averse immigrants who face higher wage risks and to individuals with more financial resources.

Application of NMR RDC’s, relaxation and self-diffusion for the study of dynamic processes of small molecules in solution

Spin-lattice Relaxation, self-Diffusion coefficients and Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDC’s) are the basis of well established Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques for the physicochemical study of small molecules (typically organic compounds and natural products with MW < 1000 Da), as they proved to be a powerful and complementary source of information about structural dynamic processes in solution. The work developed in this thesis consists in the application of the earlier-mentioned NMR techniques to explore, analyze and systematize patterns of the molecular dynamic behavior of selected small molecules in particular experimental conditions. Two systems were chosen to investigate molecular dynamic behavior by these techniques: the dynamics of ion-pair formation and ion interaction in ionic liquids (IL) and the dynamics of molecular reorientation when molecules are placed in oriented phases (alignment media). The application of NMR spin-lattice relaxation and self-diffusion measurements was applied to study the rotational and translational molecular dynamics of the IL: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate [BMIM][BF4]. The study of the cation-anion dynamics in neat and IL-water mixtures was systematically investigated by a combination of multinuclear NMR relaxation techniques with diffusion data (using by H1, C13 and F19 NMR spectroscopy). Spin-lattice relaxation time (T1), self-diffusion coefficients and nuclear Overhauser effect experiments were combined to determine the conditions that favor the formation of long lived [BMIM][BF4] ion-pairs in water. For this purpose and using the self-diffusion coefficients of cation and anion as a probe, different IL-water compositions were screened (from neat IL to infinite dilution) to find the conditions where both cation and anion present equal diffusion coefficients (8% water fraction at 25 ºC). This condition as well as the neat IL and the infinite dilution were then further studied by 13C NMR relaxation in order to determine correlation times (c) for the molecular reorientational motion using a mathematical iterative procedure and experimental data obtained in a temperature range between 273 and 353 K. The behavior of self-diffusion and relaxation data obtained in our experiments point at the combining parameters of molar fraction 8 % and temperature 298 K as the most favorable condition for the formation of long lived ion-pairs. When molecules are subjected to soft anisotropic motion by being placed in some special media, Residual Dipolar Couplings (RDCs), can be measured, because of the partial alignment induced by this media. RDCs are emerging as a powerful routine tool employed in conformational analysis, as it complements and even outperforms the approaches based on the classical NMR NOE or J3 couplings. In this work, three different alignment media have been characterized and evaluated in terms of integrity using 2H and 1H 1D-NMR spectroscopy, namely the stretched and compressed gel PMMA, and the lyotropic liquid crystals CpCl/n-hexanol/brine and cromolyn/water. The influence that different media and degrees of alignment have on the dynamic properties of several molecules was explored. Different sized sugars were used and their self-diffusion was determined as well as conformation features using RDCs. The results obtained indicate that no influence is felt by the small molecules diffusion and conformational features studied within the alignment degree range studied, which was the 3, 5 and 6 % CpCl/n-hexanol/brine for diffusion, and 5 and 7.5 % CpCl/n-hexanol/brine for conformation. It was also possible to determine that the small molecules diffusion verified in the alignment media presented close values to the ones observed in water, reinforcing the idea of no conditioning of molecular properties in such media.

Res Publica: Citizenship and Political Representation in Portugal, 1820-1926

The term res publica (literally “thing of the people”) was coined by the Romans to translate the Greek word politeia, which, as we know, referred to a political community organised in accordance with certain principles, amongst which the notion of the “good life” (as against exclusively private interests) was paramount. This ideal also came to be known as political virtue. To achieve it, it was necessary to combine the best of each “constitutional” type and avoid their worst aspects (tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy). Hence, the term acquired from the Greeks a sense of being a “mixed” and “balanced” system. Anyone that was entitled to citizenship could participate in the governance of the “public thing”. This implied the institutionalization of open debate and confrontation between interested parties as a way of achieving the consensus necessary to ensure that man the political animal, who fought with words and reason, prevailed over his “natural” counterpart. These premises lie at the heart of the project which is now being presented under the title of Res Publica: Citizenship and Political Representation in Portugal, 1820-1926. The fact that it is integrated into the centenary commemorations of the establishment of the Republic in Portugal is significant, as it was the idea of revolution – with its promise of rupture and change – that inspired it. However, it has also sought to explore events that could be considered the precursor of democratization in the history of Portugal, namely the vintista, setembrista and patuleia revolutions. It is true that the republican regime was opposed to the monarchic. However, although the thesis that monarchy would inevitably lead to tyranny had held sway for centuries, it had also been long believed that the monarchic system could be as “politically virtuous” as a republic (in the strict sense of the word) provided that power was not concentrated in the hands of a single individual. Moreover, various historical experiments had shown that republics could also degenerate into Caesarism and different kinds of despotism. Thus, when absolutism began to be overturned in continental Europe in the name of the natural rights of man and the new social pact theories, initiating the difficult process of (written) constitutionalization, the monarchic principle began to be qualified as a “monarchy hedged by republican institutions”, a situation in which not even the king was exempt from isonomy. This context justifies the time frame chosen here, as it captures the various changes and continuities that run through it. Having rejected the imperative mandate and the reinstatement of the model of corporative representation (which did not mean that, in new contexts, this might not be revived, or that the second chamber established by the Constitutional Charter of 1826 might not be given another lease of life), a new power base was convened: national sovereignty, a precept that would be shared by the monarchic constitutions of 1822 and 1838, and by the republican one of 1911. This followed the French example (manifested in the monarchic constitution of 1791 and in the Spanish constitution of 1812), as not even republicans entertained a tradition of republicanism based upon popular sovereignty. This enables us to better understand the rejection of direct democracy and universal suffrage, and also the long incapacitation (concerning voting and standing for office) of the vast body of “passive” citizens, justified by “enlightened”, property- and gender-based criteria. Although the republicans had promised in the propaganda phase to alter this situation, they ultimately failed to do so. Indeed, throughout the whole period under analysis, the realisation of the potential of national sovereignty was mediated above all by the individual citizen through his choice of representatives. However, this representation was indirect and took place at national level, in the hope that action would be motivated not by particular local interests but by the common good, as dictated by reason. This was considered the only way for the law to be virtuous, a requirement that was also manifested in the separation and balance of powers. As sovereignty was postulated as single and indivisible, so would be the nation that gave it soul and the State that embodied it. Although these characteristics were common to foreign paradigms of reference, in Portugal, the constitutionalization process also sought to nationalise the idea of Empire. Indeed, this had been the overriding purpose of the 1822 Constitution, and it persisted, even after the loss of Brazil, until decolonization. Then, the dream of a single nation stretching from the Minho to Timor finally came to an end.

State detection in a financial portfolio: a self-organizing maps approach for financial time series

This study analyses financial data using the result characterization of a self-organized neural network model. The goal was prototyping a tool that may help an economist or a market analyst to analyse stock market series. To reach this goal, the tool shows economic dependencies and statistics measures over stock market series. The neural network SOM (self-organizing maps) model was used to ex-tract behavioural patterns of the data analysed. Based on this model, it was de-veloped an application to analyse financial data. This application uses a portfo-lio of correlated markets or inverse-correlated markets as input. After the anal-ysis with SOM, the result is represented by micro clusters that are organized by its behaviour tendency. During the study appeared the need of a better analysis for SOM algo-rithm results. This problem was solved with a cluster solution technique, which groups the micro clusters from SOM U-Matrix analyses. The study showed that the correlation and inverse-correlation markets projects multiple clusters of data. These clusters represent multiple trend states that may be useful for technical professionals.

A built-in self-test technique for high speed analog-to-digital converters

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - PhD grant (SFRH/BD/62568/2009)

Transactions in dynamic reactive environments

Most of today’s systems, especially when related to the Web or to multi-agent systems, are not standalone or independent, but are part of a greater ecosystem, where they need to interact with other entities, react to complex changes in the environment, and act both over its own knowledge base and on the external environment itself. Moreover, these systems are clearly not static, but are constantly evolving due to the execution of self updates or external actions. Whenever actions and updates are possible, the need to ensure properties regarding the outcome of performing such actions emerges. Originally purposed in the context of databases, transactions solve this problem by guaranteeing atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability of a special set of actions. However, current transaction solutions fail to guarantee such properties in dynamic environments, since they cannot combine transaction execution with reactive features, or with the execution of actions over domains that the system does not completely control (thus making rolling back a non-viable proposition). In this thesis, we investigate what and how transaction properties can be ensured over these dynamic environments. To achieve this goal, we provide logic-based solutions, based on Transaction Logic, to precisely model and execute transactions in such environments, and where knowledge bases can be defined by arbitrary logic theories.

The Vase’s Representation (Cantharus, Crater) on the Roman Mosaic in Portugal: A Significant Formal and Iconographic Path from Classic Antiquity to Late Antiquity

11TH INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM ON ANCIENT MOSAICS OCTOBER 16TH  20TH, 2009, BURSA TURKEY Mosaics of Turkey and Parallel Developments in the Rest of the Ancient and Medieval World: Questions of Iconography, Style and Technique from the Beginnings of Mosaic until the Late Byzantine Era

Popular music exhibitions in Portugal: practices of representation from 2007 to 2013

This thesis focuses on the representation of Popular Music in museums by mapping, analyzing, and characterizing its practices in Portugal at the beginning of the 21st century. Now that museums' ability to shape public discourse is acknowledged, the examination of popular music's discourses in museums is of the utmost importance for Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies as well as for Museum Studies. The concept of 'heritage' is at the heart of this processes. The study was designed with the aim of moving the exhibiting of popular music in museums forward through a qualitative inquiry of case studies. Data collection involved surveying pop-rock music exhibitions as a qualitative sampling of popular music exhibitions in Portugal from 2007 to 2013. Two of these exhibitions were selected as case studies: No Tempo do Gira-Discos: Um Percurso pela Produção Fonográfica Portuguesa at the Museu da Música in Lisbon in 2007 (also Faculdade de Letras, 2009), and A Magia do Vinil, a Música que Mudou a Sociedade at the Oficina da Cultura in Almada in 2008 (and several other venues, from 2009 to 2013). Two specific domains were observed: popular music exhibitions as instances of museum practice and museum professionals. The first domain encompasses analyzing the types of objects selected for exhibition; the interactive museum practices fostered by the exhibitions; the concepts and narratives used to address popular music discursively, as well as the interpretative practices they allow. The second domain, focuses museum professionals and curators of popular music exhibitions as members of a group, namely their goals, motivations and perspectives. The theoretical frameworks adopted were drawn from the fields of ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and museum studies. The written materials of the exhibitions were subjected of methods of discourse analysis methods. Semi-structured interviews with curators and museum professional were also conducted and analysed. From the museum studies perspective, the study research suggests that the practice adopted by popular music museums largely matches that of conventional museums. From the ethnomusicological and popular music studies stand point, the two case studies reveal two distinct conceptual worlds: the first exhibition, curated by an academic and an independent researcher, points to a mental configuration where popular music is explained through a framework of genres supported by different musical practices. Moreover, it is industry actors such as decision makers and gatekeepers that govern popular music, which implies that the visitors' romantic conception of the musician is to some extent dismantled; the second exhibition, curated by a record collector and specialist, is based on a more conventional process of the everyday historical speech that encodes a mismatch between “good” and “bad music”. Data generated by a survey shows that only one curator, in fact that of my first case study, has an academic background. The backgrounds of all the others are in some way similar to the curator of the second case study. Therefore, I conclude that the second case study best conveys the current practice of exhibiting Popular Music in Portugal.

Tool for spatial and dynamic representation of artistic performances

This proposal aims to explore the use of available technologies for video representation of sets and performers in order to serve as support for composition processes and artistic performer rehearsals, while focusing in representing the performer’s body and its movements, and its relation with objects belonging to the three-dimensional space of their performances. This project’s main goal is to design and develop a system that can spatially represent the performer and its movements, by means of capturing processes and reconstruction using a camera device, as well as enhance the three-dimensional space where the performance occurs by allowing interaction with virtual objects and by adding a video component, either for documentary purposes, or for live performances effects (for example, using video mapping video techniques in captured video or projection during a performance).

Self-initiation expatriation: A focus on Italian and Portuguese students

The purpose of this work project is to analyze the phenomenon of self-initiated expatriation (SIE) through its link to the Protean Career and Career Capital theories, focusing in particular on Italian and Portuguese students attending a Master in the business area. The main research questions are to understand the reasons driving the intention to expatriate, after the conclusion of the academic path, using three main categories (Adventure Motivation, Work Characteristic Motivation and instrumental Motivation) and the intention to repatriate. A sample of Italian and Portuguese students was obtained. Italians show a higher intention to expatriate relative to Portuguese; nevertheless, no other significant differences were found among the two populations, because of the similar cultural background and economic situation. Additionally, several heterogeneities were observed considering other clusters defined by Gender, Teaching Language of the Master and Past International Experiences, across the two nationalities. Furthermore, possible future researches and practical implications were discussed.

Positive serology for viral hepatitis and donor self-exclusion in Southern Brazil

Introduction Despite the great advances in serological testing for transfusion-transmitted infections, the selection of blood donors by blood bank operators remains the only way to avoid transmission within the testing window period. Part of this selection is the self-exclusion form, on which the donors can exclude their blood from donation without any explanation. This study assessed the clinical and epidemiological characteristics related to positivity for viral hepatitis and to the use of the confidential self-exclusion (CSE) form. Methods This transversal study analyzed the data collected from blood donors' files in a hospital in Southern Brazil. Univariate and multivariate analyses identified the clinical and epidemiological variables related to positive serologies of viral hepatitis and to whether the donor was self-excluded. Results Of the 3,180 donors included in this study, 0.1% tested positive for HBsAg, 2.1% for anti-HBc, and 0.9% for anti-HCV. When the 93 donors with positive serologies for viral hepatitis were compared with those who were negative, a greater proportion of the positive serology group was found to have had a history of blood transfusions (OR=4.908; 95%CI=1.628 - 14.799; p<0.01), had repeatedly donated (OR=2.147; 95%CI=1.236 - 3.729; p<0.01), and used the CSE form for self-exclusion (OR=7.139; 95%CI=2.045 - 24.923; p<0.01). No variables were independently associated with self-exclusion. Conclusions A history of blood transfusion, repeated donations, and self-exclusion are factors that should be considered during viral hepatitis screenings in blood banks.

Illness perception, knowledge and self-care about cervical cancer

Prevention plays a central role in early detection of cervical cancer. Common Sense Model proposes that the nature and organization of illness representations can guide actions related to health and how self-care is exercised. The aim of this study was to describe and compare illness perception, knowledge and self-care in women with and without cancer precursor lesions. Participants were 92 women (aged 18-59) from primary care unity divided into two groups: women with and without premalignant lesion. Measures for illness perception, knowledge and self-care were used. There was no statistically signifi cant difference (t test e chi-square test) between groups in the variables analyzed. Despite the risk for cervical cancer, women with precursor lesions do not adjust their illness perceptions, knowledge and self-care to the situation. These data show the need to warn women against the cervical cancer risks, because their distorted perceptions and lack of knowledge about the disease may hamper the screening and control of cervical cancer.