Food Structure Design: Innovation in food structure-properties relationships

This Special Issue gathers selected contributions from the 1st Congress on Food Structure Design, covering most of the topics described above.

On trust, knowledge, sharing and innovation

Organisations continuously innovate, create, and are competitive if they improve their performance through continuous intellectual capital development, a key resource for value creation and organisational performance driver. Apart from sustaining competitive advantage, intellectual capital is increasingly important due to its ability to increase shareholder value, especially in public organisations. Employee learning, talent development, and knowledge creation allow the organisation to generate innovative ideas due to the quickness of knowledge obsolescence. The organisation's dynamic capabilities create and re-ignite organisational competencies for business sustainability being co-ordinated by well-structured organisational strategic routines ensuring continuous value creation streams into the business. This chapter focuses on the relationship between notions of knowledge sharing and trust in organisations. Lack of trust can impact negatively organisational knowledge sharing, dependent on trust, openness, and communication. The research sample included graduates and postgraduate students from two universities in Portugal. The findings revealed different perceptions according to the age group.

Resilience of concrete structures in the marine environment through microstructural innovation

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

A intervenção precoce: uma aliada dos cuidados de saúde prestados nas Unidades de Cuidados Intensivos Neonatais?

Dissertação de mestrado em Educação Especial (área de especialização em Intervenção Precoce)

A quantitative research about attitudes of pre-service teachers on inclusive education

In this paper we propose to characterize the inclusive philosophy in Thailand as well as to present and discuss results from a quantitative research carried out within the teacher pre-service context, viewed as one of the components that should be addressed by school systems that seek to be inclusive.

Impact of nutritional counseling in reducing serum cholesterol in public health service patients

OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of nutritional attention on the lipid profile and nutritional status of hypercholesterolemic patients attended in health centers of Belo Horizonte. METHODS: Using nutritional attendance patient record cards from two health units, the evolution of the lipid profile and the nutritional state (BMI) was monitored of 96 hypercholesterolemic patients who received diet. The patients were appraised at the following moments: initial (1st consultation), after 3 months (2nd consultation) and last consultation (variable for each patient). RESULTS: On the first attendance, 44,4% of the patients presented not only high total cholesterol and LDL-c, but also hypertriglyceridemia and 70.3% were overweight or obese, but most patients (75.6%) presented adequate HDL-c levels. There was significant reduction in the BMI, total cholesterol, LDL-c values (p < 0.01) and also in the triglyceride levels (p < 0.05) in the first three months, without alteration in the HDL-c levels. A significant reduction (p < 0.01) was observed in the frequency of individuals with high cholesterol (from 89.6% down to 47.9%), high and very high LDL-c (from 82.6% down to 45.7%), as well as high and very high triglyceride (from 43.6% down to 16.7%). The observed reduction in frequency of the low HDL-c was statistically meaningless. CONCLUSION: This study evidences the effect of the nutritional attention on lipid profile in hypercholesterolemic patients, reinforcing the need for a multiprofessional team to attend them at the public health services.

Modelo de Gestion Intersectorial para la formalización de villas, a partir de la revisión de normativa urbana, marco jurídico-político, y la innovación tecnológica de los recursos. Intersectorial management model for the formality of the illegal growth settles beginning from the revision of the urban norm, political - juridical, and the technological innovation of the resources.

El Proyecto que se presenta en esta convocatoria está relacionado con el diseño y desarrollo de procesos de gestión intersectorial para la reconversión formal del hábitat en asentamientos de crecimiento espontáneo e ilegal a partir de la la revisión de marcos legales y normativos respecto del derecho al uso de suelo urbano y la seguridad jurídica en la tenencia (regulación dominial) bajo un enfoque sustentable de los Derechos Humanos (DDHH) como así también a partir de la innovación tecnológica de los recursos para el mejoramiento habitacional en el marco de los aportes relacionados con la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial (RSE) .La originalidad, en este caso, se basa en la exploración de nuevos procesos de gestión mixta en los que intervienen diversos actores: ESTADO, SOCIEDAD, EMPRESA y COMUNIDAD CIENTIFICA, configurando un circuito intersectorial de gestión, capacitación y producción de hábitat que respondan al fortalecimiento del desarrollo comunitario, entendido como desarrollo económico con inclusión social y urbana.Los objetivos están relacionados con el fortalecimiento de la producción integral del hábitat social procurando el desarrollo genuino de las comunidades a partir de la expansión de sus capacidades y sus derechos.El presente proyecto de investigación explorará la producción de hábitat y de ciudad informal procurando reconvertirla hacia un modelo de gestión sustentable (normativo y tecnológico), basado en la necesidad de producir ciudadanía digna a partir de la construcción formal de hábitat.La propuesta del proyecto supone la participación intersectorial en la planificación formal y en la toma de decisiones para una inclusión social y económica, en el marco de un modelo de desarrollo de génesis inclusor, constituyéndose en un avance de conocimientos del propio campo disciplinar (hábitat) como así también de otros campos afines a los mismos (jurídico- social - económico- productivo- político ).

Mission du Service Geographique de l'Armée pour la mesure d'un arc de méridien équatorial en Amérique du Sud sous le contrôle scientifique de l'Académie des Sciences, 1899-1906

T. 10, Fasc. 1

The Irish Pub: past, present – whither the future?

The purpose of this research is to examine the main economic, legislative, and socio- cultural factors that are currently influencing the pub trade in Ireland and their specific impact on a sample of publicans in both Galway city and county. In approaching this task the author engaged in a comprehensive literature review on the origin, history and evolution of the Irish pub; examined the socio-cultural and economic role of the public house in Ireland and developed a profile of the Irish pub by undertaking a number of semi-structured interviews with pub owners from the area. In doing so, the author obtained the views and opinions of the publicans on the current state of their businesses, the extent to which patterns of trade have changed over recent years, the challenges and factors currently influencing their trade, the actions they believed to be necessary to promote the trade and address perceived difficulties and how they viewed the future of the pub business within the framework of the current regulatory regime. In light of this research, the author identified a number of key findings and put forward a series of recommendations designed to promote the future success and development of the pub trade in Ireland. The research established that public houses are currently operating under a very unfavourable regulatory framework that has resulted in the serious decline of the trade over the last decade. This decline appears to have coincided initially with the introduction of the ban on smoking in the workplace and was exacerbated further by the advent of more severe drink-driving laws, especially mandatory breath testing. Other unfavourable conditions include the high levels of excise duty, value added tax and local authority commercial rates. In addition to these regulatory factors, the research established that a major impediment to the pub trade is the unfair competition from supermarkets and other off-licence retail outlets and especially to the phenomenon of the below-cost selling of alcohol. The recession has also been a major contributory factor to the decline in the trade as also has been the trend towards lifestyle changes and home drinking mirroring the practice in some continental European countries.

An explaratory study on the relationship between Employee innovation and the rewards systems supporting innovation ; a case study of Medtronic Galway

The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between innovation and reward system supporting innovation. The empirical evidence came from a case study in Medtronic, Galway, a medical device company. This study incorporates the literature surrounding innovation and rewards and will attempt to identify a link both theoretically and practically between both.

Motivating techniques within Irish and American manufacturing and service companies in the Northwest of Ireland

In today’s world, many companies are concentrating on both their technology and human resources to provide them with their competitive advantage. Hence, understanding what motivates people is particularly important for managers in order to develop and sustain a competitive edge. As a result, numerous theories have been advanced to help our understanding of the subject matter and from these theories many motivational methods have evolved to enhance motivation within the workplace. In addition, research has been conducted on the various types of motivational techniques utilised by companies within Ireland. However, very little research has been completed within specific geographical regions in Ireland concerning the types of motivational techniques implemented at different job levels and their impact on employees work performance. Thus the objective of this research was to identify the motivational techniques utilised at different job levels within large manufacturing and service companies in the Northwest of Ireland and examine how these techniques influence the performance levels of employees. Furthermore, the study examined if these companies have changed from traditional ways of motivating employees to newer techniques. The research methodologies used to undertake the research included interviews with the HR managers and questionnaires completed by different employees at various job levels within the participating companies. Overall the conclusions were varied. Many different types of motivation techniques were found within the study’s participating companies. Irish companies are improving their motivational techniques, however most of these techniques are only used within higher job levels. In contrast to their American counterparts, a variety of motivational techniques are utilised and implemented at all job levels. On a more positive note, the majority of these motivational techniques do increase performance levels at all job levels. From the extensive primary and secondary research conducted, the thesis concludes by offering a number of recommendations to assist companies in further development of their motivational techniques for all job levels. These recommendations hope to augment the success of companies through an enhanced motivated workforce.

An investigation into system security requirements and implementation in an Application Service Provider (ASP) environment

Although the ASP model has been around for over a decade, it has not achieved the expected high level of market uptake. This research project examines the past and present state of ASP adoption and identifies security as a primary factor influencing the uptake of the model. The early chapters of this document examine the ASP model and ASP security in particular. Specifically, the literature and technology review chapter analyses ASP literature, security technologies and best practices with respect to system security in general. Based on this investigation, a prototype to illustrate the range and types of technologies that encompass a security framework was developed and is described in detail. The latter chapters of this document evaluate the practical implementation of system security in an ASP environment. Finally, this document outlines the research outputs, including the conclusions drawn and recommendations with respect to system security in an ASP environment. The primary research output is the recommendation that by following best practices with respect to security, an ASP application can provide the same level of security one would expect from any other n-tier client-server application. In addition, a security evaluation matrix, which could be used to evaluate not only the security of ASP applications but the security of any n-tier application, was developed by the author. This thesis shows that perceptions with regard to fears of inadequate security of ASP solutions and solution data are misguided. Finally, based on the research conducted, the author recommends that ASP solutions should be developed and deployed on tried, tested and trusted infrastructure. Existing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) should be used where possible and security best practices should be adhered to where feasible.

Framework for a service-oriented measurement infrastructure

Magdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Informatik, Diss., 2009

On the stepwise and disciplined engineering of adaptive service-oriented applications

Magdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Informatik, Habil.-Schr., 2010