Acqusition and data analysis of the eco-efficiency for the establishment of indicators parameters for industrial environmental sustainability

The industrial activity is inevitably associated with a certain degradation of the environmental quality, because is not possible to guarantee that a manufacturing process can be totally innocuous. The eco-efficiency concept is globally accepted as a philosophy of entreprise management, that encourages the companies to become more competitive, innovative and environmentally responsible by promoting the link between its companies objectives for excellence and its objectives of environmental excellence issues. This link imposes the creation of an organizational methodology where the performance of the company is concordant with the sustainable development. The main propose of this project is to apply the concept of eco-efficiency to the particular case of the metallurgical and metal workshop industries through the development of the particular indicators needed and to produce a manual of procedures for implementation of the accurate solution.

Automorphisms of partial endomorphism semigroups

Publicationes Mathematicae Debrecen

Welfare effects of entry into international markets with licensing

We study the effects of entry of a foreign firm on domestic welfare in the presence of licensing, when the entrant is technologically inferior to the incumbent. We show that foreign entry increases domestic welfare for intermediate (respectively, sufficiently large) technological differences between the firms under licensing with fixed fee (respectively, output royalty).

Spectral and homogenization problems

Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics

Teaching mathematics using Massive Open Online Courses

Distance learning - where students take courses (attend classes, get activities and other sort of learning materials) while being physically separated from their instructors, for larger part of the course duration - is far from being a “new event”. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this has been done through Radio, Mail and TV, taking advantage of the full educational potential that these media resources had to offer at the time. However, in recent times we have, at our complete disposal, the “magic wonder” of communication and globalization - the Internet. Taking advantage of a whole new set of educational opportunities, with a more or less unselfish “look” to economic interests, focusing its concern on a larger and collective “welfare”, contributing to the development of a more “equitable” world, with regard to educational opportunities, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were born and have become an important feature of the higher education in recent years. Many people have been talking about MOOCs as a potential educational revolution, which has arrived from North America, still growing and spreading, referring to its benefits and/or disadvantages. The Polytechnic Institute of Porto, also known as IPP, is a Higher Education Portuguese institution providing undergraduate and graduate studies, which has a solid history of online education and innovation through the use of technology, and it has been particularly interested and focused on MOOC developments, based on an open educational policy in order to try to implement some differentiated learning strategies to its actual students and as a way to attract future ones. Therefore, in July 2014, IPP launched the first Math MOOC on its own platform. This paper describes the requirements, the resulting design and implementation of a mathematics MOOC, which was essentially addressed to three target populations: - pre-college students or individuals wishing to update their Math skills or that need to prepare for the National Exam of Mathematics; - Higher Education students who have not attended in High School, this subject, and who feel the need to acquire basic knowledge about some of the topics covered; - High School Teachers who may use these resources with their students allowing them to develop teaching methodologies like "Flipped Classroom” (available at http://www.opened.ipp.pt/). The MOOC was developed in partnership with several professors from several schools from IPP, gathering different math competences and backgrounds to create and put to work different activities such video lectures and quizzes. We will also try to briefly discuss the advertising strategy being developed to promote this MOOC, since it is not offered through a main MOOC portal, such as Coursera or Udacity.

Lean construction in rehabilitation works – suitability analysis and contribution for the definition of an implementation model

Proceedings IGLC-19, July 2011, Lima, Perú

From Consciousness to Knowledge – The Explanatory Power of Revelation

Epistemology in philosophy of mind is a difficult endeavor. Those who believe that our phenomenal life is different from other domains suggest that self-knowledge about phenomenal properties is certain and therefore privileged. Usually, this so called privileged access is explained by the idea that we have direct access to our phenomenal life. This means, in contrast to perceptual knowledge, self-knowledge is non-inferential. It is widely believed that, this kind of directness involves two different senses: an epistemic sense and a metaphysical sense. Proponents of this view often claim that this is due to the fact that we are acquainted with our current experiences. The acquaintance thesis, therefore, is the backbone in justifying privileged access. Unfortunately the whole approach has a profound flaw. For the thesis to work, acquaintance has to be a genuine explanation. Since it is usually assumed that any knowledge relation between judgments and the corresponding objects are merely causal and contingent (e.g. in perception), the proponent of the privileged access view needs to show that acquaintance can do the job. In this thesis, however, I claim that the latter cannot be done. Based on considerations introduced by Levine, I conclude that this approach involves either the introduction of ontologically independent properties or a rather obscure knowledge relation. A proper explanation, however, cannot employ either of the two options. The acquaintance thesis is, therefore, bound to fail. Since the privileged access intuition seems to be vital to epistemology within the philosophy of mind, I will explore alternative justifications. After discussing a number of options, I will focus on the so called revelation thesis. This approach states that by simply having an experience with phenomenal properties, one is in the position to know the essence of those phenomenal properties. I will argue that, after finding a solution for the controversial essence claim, this thesis is a successful replacement explanation which maintains all the virtues of the acquaintance account without necessarily introducing ontologically independent properties or an obscure knowledge relation. The overall solution consists in qualifying the essence claim in the relevant sense, leaving us with an appropriate ontology for phenomenal properties. On the one hand, this avoids employing mysterious independent properties, since this ontological view is physicalist in nature. On the other hand, this approach has the right kind of structure to explain privileged self-knowledge of our phenomenal life. My final conclusion consists in the claim that the privileged access intuition is in fact veridical. It cannot, however, be justified by the popular acquaintance approach, but rather, is explainable by the controversial revelation thesis.

Determinants of success of Nova SBE’s undergraduate students

Applied Policy Analysis major

In Search of the Origins of Modernism: Venice and the Crisis of Classical Architecture in the mid-eighteenth century

This paper attempts to prove that in the years 1735 to 1755 Venice was the birthplace and cradle of Modern architectural theory, generating a major crisis in classical architecture traditionally based on the Vitruvian assumption that it imitates early wooden structures in stone or in marble. According to its rationalist critics such as the Venetian Observant Franciscan friar and architectural theorist Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) and his nineteenth-century followers, classical architecture is singularly deceptive and not true to the nature of materials, in other words, dishonest and fallacious. This questioning did not emanate from practising architects, but from Lodoli himself– a philosopher and educator of the Venetian patriciate – who had not been trained as an architect. The roots of this crisis lay in a new approach to architecture stemming from the new rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment age with its emphasis on reason and universal criticism.

The group inverse of a product

In this paper, we characterize the existence and give an expression of the group inverse of a product of two regular elements by means of a ring unit.

A new perspective of students allocation satisfaction in engineering courses in Portugal

Publicado em "AIP Conference Proceedings" Vol. 1648

The role of automatic shape and position recognitionin streamlining manufacturing

The main features of most components consist of simple basic functional geometries: planes, cylinders, spheres and cones. Shape and position recognition of these geometries is essential for dimensional characterization of components, and represent an important contribution in the life cycle of the product, concerning in particular the manufacturing and inspection processes of the final product. This work aims to establish an algorithm to automatically recognize such geometries, without operator intervention. Using differential geometry large volumes of data can be treated and the basic functional geometries to be dealt recognized. The original data can be obtained by rapid acquisition methods, such as 3D survey or photography, and then converted into Cartesian coordinates. The satisfaction of intrinsic decision conditions allows different geometries to be fast identified, without operator intervention. Since inspection is generally a time consuming task, this method reduces operator intervention in the process. The algorithm was first tested using geometric data generated in MATLAB and then through a set of data points acquired by measuring with a coordinate measuring machine and a 3D scan on real physical surfaces. Comparison time spent in measuring is presented to show the advantage of the method. The results validated the suitability and potential of the algorithm hereby proposed

Evaluation of the performance of steel fibre reinforced self-compacting concrete in elevated slab systems; from the material to the structure

Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Structural/Civil Engineering

Logificação da Psicologia o itinerário intelectual de Edmundo Curvelo sobre a Mente, a Lógica e a Filosofia

Tese de Doutoramento em Filosofia - Especialidade de Filosofia da Mente

Business research, self-fulfilling prophecy, and the inherent responsibility of scholars.

Business research and teaching institutions play an important role in shaping the way businesses perceive their relations to the broader society and its moral expectations. Hence, as ethical scandals recently arose in the business world, questions related to the civic responsibilities of business scholars and to the role business schools play in society have gained wider interest. In this article, I argue that these ethical shortcomings are at least partly resulting from the mainstream business model with its taken-for granted basic assumptions such as specialization or the value-neutrality of business research. Redefining the roles and civic responsibilities of business scholars for business practice implies therefore a thorough analysis of these assumptions if not their redefinition. The takenforgrantedness of the mainstream business model is questioned by the transformation of the societal context in which business activities are embedded. Its value-neutrality in turn is challenged by self-fulfilling prophecy effects, which highlight the normative influence of business schools. In order to critically discuss some basic assumptions of mainstream business theory, I propose to draw parallels with the corporate citizenship concept and the stakeholder theory. Their integrated approach of the relation between business practice and the broader society provides interesting insights for the social reembedding of business research and teaching.