A Global Strategy for a soul-searching European Union. EPC Discussion Paper, 13 July 2016

On 28 June 2016, just a few days after the historic Brexit vote, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini presented the paper on the new European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) at the European Council, outlining the strategic coordinates for the EU’s foreign and security policy. In this Discussion Paper, Giovanni Grevi takes a closer look at the EUGS and assesses its main rationale, features, added value and prospects against the backdrop of an ever more complex world. Not only is the EU dealing with increasingly contested and polarised politics at home, but the global theatre itself has become hugely disorienting, more integrated and yet more fragmented at the same time. The paper recalibrates the overall foreign policy posture of the EU and sketches out a more modest and concrete approach compared to earlier aspirations, and a more joined-up one compared to current practice. By doing so, the strategy seeks to square the circle between the need for Europe to be cohesive and purposeful in a harder strategic environment and the fact that domestic politics within the Union constrain its external action and drain its attractiveness. The EUGS calls on the EU and member states to fully take on their responsibility to underpin unity, prosperity and security at home by taking more effective and joined-up action abroad. The question is, of course, whether this call will be heeded.

Compreender a (in)disciplina na educação pré-escolar e no 1.º ciclo do ensino básico : o educador e o professor como promotor da disciplina na sala

Relatório de estágio apresentado para a obtenção do grau de mestre na especialidade profissional de Educação pré-escolar e ensino do 1º ciclo do ensino básico

Comunicações tácticas e de emergência por propagação por efeito NVIS

O presente trabalho tem como objectivo projectar e construir uma antena que opere em onda curta, HF, e que explore a propagação na ionosfera por efeito NVIS, de modo a permitir o estabelecimento de comunicações de curta distância em situações tácticas e de emergência. Este projecto pode ter bastante interesse para o Exército Português, em teatros de operações em que o terreno seja bastante acidentado, como por exemplo o Afeganistão ou o Kosovo. A antena projectada e construída é composta por dois dipolos cruzados, com uma tipologia em v invertido, por forma a ser efectuada uma ligação de curta distância, com ângulos de elevação que podem atingir cerca de 88º a 89º para distâncias da ordem da dezena de quilómetros. Foi efectuado o dimensionamento teórico, a simulação do diagrama de radiação e posteriormente procedeu-se à construção e ensaio da antena, com resultados bastante satisfatórios.

Electoral Volatility, Political Sophistication, Trust and Efficacy

In this article we investigate voter volatility and analyze the causes and motives of switching vote intentions. We test two main sets of variables linked to volatility in literature; political sophistication and ‘political (dis)satisfaction’. Results show that voters with low levels of political efficacy tend to switch more often, both within a campaign and between elections. In the analysis we differentiate between campaign volatility and inter-election volatility and by doing so show that the dynamics of a campaign have a profound impact on volatility. The campaign period is when the lowly sophisticated switch their vote intention. Those with higher levels of interest in politics have switched their intention before the campaign has started. The data for this analysis are from the three wave PartiRep Belgian Election Study (2009).

Hebrew grammar (Mikhlol) systematically presented and critically annotated

Mode of access: Internet.

Social Impact of Coca Crops in Colombia. : From socio-territorial processes to new social configurations: the role of land tenure, armed conflict, environment and coca crops.

This paper explores alterations in social dynamics caused by coca crops in Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó, at Choco department in the Colombian Pacific region. The research analyzes the role of armed actors such as paramilitaries and guerrillas in the conformation of new social spaces where local people find resistance as the main tool to survive in chaotic environments. Local power as a politics of resistance is also analyzed. Non-governmental organizations are a key tool to comprehend new social configurations. By doing the analysis and comparison using political ecology as the theoretical background along with concepts of moral economy and everyday resistance, with qualitative research methods. The paper aims to interpret and provide a better understanding of those changes considering social-environmental relations. Findings suggest that those changes in social structure are leading to an understanding, not just of the organization of the area, but also that social dynamics and coca crops cannot be generalized in the country. 

Essays on Entrepreneurship and Founder Pre-entry Knowledge

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

A reference architecture for instructional educational software

Our extensive research has indicated that high-school teachers are reluctant to make use of existing instructional educational software (Pollard, 2005). Even software developed in a partnership between a teacher and a software engineer is unlikely to be adopted by teachers outside the partnership (Pollard, 2005). In this paper we address these issues directly by adopting a reusable architectural design for instructional educational software which allows easy customisation of software to meet the specific needs of individual teachers. By doing this we will facilitate more teachers regularly using instructional technology within their classrooms. Our domain-specific software architecture, Interface-Activities-Model, was designed specifically to facilitate individual customisation by redefining and restructuring what constitutes an object so that they can be readily reused or extended as required. The key to this architecture is the way in which the software is broken into small generic encapsulated components with minimal domain specific behaviour. The domain specific behaviour is decoupled from the interface and encapsulated in objects which relate to the instructional material through tasks and activities. The domain model is also broken into two distinct models - Application State Model and Domainspecific Data Model. This decoupling and distribution of control gives the software designer enormous flexibility in modifying components without affecting other sections of the design. This paper sets the context of this architecture, describes it in detail, and applies it to an actual application developed to teach high-school mathematical concepts.

SaveRF: Towards efficient relevance feedback search

In multimedia retrieval, a query is typically interactively refined towards the ‘optimal’ answers by exploiting user feedback. However, in existing work, in each iteration, the refined query is re-evaluated. This is not only inefficient but fails to exploit the answers that may be common between iterations. In this paper, we introduce a new approach called SaveRF (Save random accesses in Relevance Feedback) for iterative relevance feedback search. SaveRF predicts the potential candidates for the next iteration and maintains this small set for efficient sequential scan. By doing so, repeated candidate accesses can be saved, hence reducing the number of random accesses. In addition, efficient scan on the overlap before the search starts also tightens the search space with smaller pruning radius. We implemented SaveRF and our experimental study on real life data sets show that it can reduce the I/O cost significantly.

GESTÃO DE RISCO E GOVERNANÇA CORPORATIVA: AS EMPRESAS BRASILEIRAS NA BOLSA DE VALORES DE NOVA YORK

Esta dissertação trata da importância da Governança Corporativa e da Gestão de Risco para as empresas brasileiras que tem suas ações negociadas nas Bolsas de Valores de Nova York e de São Paulo. Tem como principais objetivos: a avaliação do atual estágio de adequação dessas empresas brasileiras às normas da Lei Sarbanes & Oxley, a confirmação da importância do gerenciamento de risco para a Governança Corporativa, buscando fazer uma associação da ocorrência de perdas patrimoniais com as ferramentas da gestão de risco e das fraudes com a fragilidade de normas de controle interno e com as normas emanadas dos órgãos externos regulatórios. O trabalho acadêmico, um estudo exploratório, teve como ponto de partida uma pesquisa bibliográfica de livros e artigos técnicos versando sobre Governança Corporativa com foco na gestão de riscos. A pesquisa foi feita através da leitura dos relatórios de administração das empresas selecionadas e a aplicabilidade das normas da Lei Sarbanes Oxley. Como conclusão foi possível confirmar com razoável certeza que as grandes perdas, que levaram empresas internacionais a quebra, ocorreram pela falta de uma eficaz gestão de risco ou por um deficiente sistema de controle interno associada a falta de ações preventivas. Por outro lado, apesar dos esforços das empresas brasileiras em se adequar às novas exigências para poder atuar no mercado financeiro do Brasil e dos Estados Unidos da América, parte das empresas pesquisadas ainda se encontra em fase de implementação dos Comitês de Auditoria, de Normas e Procedimentos de Controle Interno e das demais práticas de Gestão Corporativa. Novas pesquisas sobre o tema central deste estudo poderão ensejar no aprofundamento da questão da relação custo x benefício da implantação das práticas de Governança Corporativa e na questão da eficácia dos sistemas corporativos de gerenciamento e controle considerando os custos incorridos em sua implantação e manutenção e os benefícios obtidos. Propõe-se ainda um estudo que busque a revisão das responsabilidades das autoridades reguladoras no que tange ao controle ante e pós-fato. Um dilema a ser resolvido e que deve instigar futuros pesquisadores.(AU)

Corpos mortos e vivos: as cerimônias mortuárias e as representações da morte entre católicos brasileiros

Esta pesquisa procurou descrever, analisar e comparar as cerimônias mortuárias e as representações coletivas de católicos brasileiros da morte e do luto. Tivemos por objetivo estudar os sistemas simbólicos desenvolvidos em várias sociedades, começando com as culturas tribais, passando depois para o cristianismo dos primeiros séculos, antes da instauração do processo de institucionalização que originou o cristianismo católico e durante ele. Analisamos as práticas e representações católicas relacionadas com a morte e o morrer, na Idade Média, Idade Moderna e Contemporânea, tanto na Europa como no Brasil. O objetivo também foi apresentar os ritos mortuários como formas de dar sentido à vida, de reforçar e manter a coesão social, em que indivíduos vivem constantemente os desarranjos gerados pela presença da morte que arrebata um dos seus semelhantes provocando um desequilíbrio social. Ao realizar tal pesquisa sobre os rituais mortuários católicos, a meta consistiu em avançar um pouco mais no conhecimento sobre um fenômeno social religioso nem sempre abordado pelos pesquisadores: a morte do crente, as práticas mortuárias dos grupos católicos, seus hábitos e discurso quanto ao morto, dentro de um cenário brasileiro que se torna cada vez mais urbano e secularizado.(AU)

Exporting and productivity in business services:evidence from the United States

Does exporting make firms more productive, or do more productive firms choose to become exporters? Given the amount of resources devoted by governments to supporting exporters, this is an important question. There are reasons to expect exporting to boost productivity, both through the exposure to foreign competition which exporting brings, and through ‘learning by exporting’. However, the broad thrust of previous research is that more productive firms self-select into export markets, with relatively little evidence that exporting leads to higher productivity thereafter. This paper considers the link between exporting and productivity for a sample of firms in US business services. We find that larger, more productive firms are more likely to become exporters, but that these factors do not necessarily influence the extent of exporting. This conforms with previous literature that there is a self-selection effect into exporting. We then test for the effect of exporting on productivity levels after allowing for this selection effect. We model both the relationship between exporting and productivity, and a simultaneous relationship between export intensity and productivity after allowing for selection bias. In both cases we find a clear association, indicating that productivity is positively linked both to exporting and to increased exposure to international markets.

Non-rigid object tracking in complex scenes

A recently proposed colour based tracking algorithm has been established to track objects in real circumstances [Zivkovic, Z., Krose, B. 2004. An EM-like algorithm for color-histogram-based object tracking. In: Proc, IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 798-803]. To improve the performance of this technique in complex scenes, in this paper we propose a new algorithm for optimally adapting the ellipse outlining the objects of interest. This paper presents a Lagrangian based method to integrate a regularising component into the covariance matrix to be computed. Technically, we intend to reduce the residuals between the estimated probability distribution and the expected one. We argue that, by doing this, the shape of the ellipse can be properly adapted in the tracking stage. Experimental results show that the proposed method has favourable performance in shape adaption and object localisation.

Design and construction for traditional house building

This study is concerned with quality and productivity aspects of traditional house building. The research focuses on these issues by concentrating on the services and finishing stages of the building process. These are work stages which have not been fully investigated in previous productivity related studies. The primary objective of the research is to promote an integrated design and construction led approach to traditional house building based on an original concept of 'development cycles'. This process involves the following: site monitoring; the analysis of work operations; implementing design and construction changes founded on unique information collected during site monitoring; and subsequent re-monitoring to measure and assess Ihe effect of change. A volume house building firm has been involved in this applied research and has allowed access to its sites for production monitoring purposes. The firm also assisted in design detailing for a small group of 'experimental' production houses where various design and construction changes were implemented. Results from the collaborative research have shown certain quality and productivity improvements to be possible using this approach, albeit on a limited scale at this early experimental stage. The improvements have been possible because an improved activity sampling technique, developed for, and employed by the study, has been able to describe why many quality and productivity related problems occur during site building work. Experience derived from the research has shown the following attributes to be important: positive attitudes towards innovation; effective communication; careful planning and organisation; and good coordination and control at site level. These are all essential aspects of quality led management and determine to a large extent the overall success of this approach. Future work recommendations must include a more widespread use of innovative practices so that further design and construction modifications can be made. By doing this, productivity can be improved, cost savings made and better quality afforded.

Teaching speaking:a holistic approach

Teaching Speaking A Holistic Approach brings together theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on teaching speaking within a coherent methodological framework. The framework combines understandings derived from several areas of speaking research and instruction including cognitive and affective processes, oracy for thinking and learning communicative competence, discourse theories, task-based language learning, and self-regulated learning. By explaining, interpreting, evaluating, and synthesizing these diverse perspectives from linguistics and language learning, the text offers a comprehensive and versatile approach for teaching speaking. Samples of authentic classroom data are used for illustrating important concepts to help readers see how theoretical perspectives can be applied in practice. It also includes a pedagogical model for sequencing learning activities with concrete guidelines on planning and conducting speaking lessons. Different types of learning tasks are explained and illustrated with examples, and each chapter includes short tasks and ends with a number of tasks that enable readers to extend their ideas.