For Your Freedom and Ours: The Polish Question in Wilson's Peace Initiatives, 1916 - 1917

The first eighteen months of the Great War witnessed an unprecedented awakening of interest in the Polish Question, when worldwide attention was drawn to the prolonged devastation of the Polish territories. Thereafter, a steady increase in media comment and criticism, highlighting Poland's plight, fostered public indignation at the continual stalling of humanitarian relief efforts for Polish refugees. Such burgeoning popular sentiment focused wider political attention upon a growing movement for recognition of Polish claims to independence. This particularly proved to be the case for Woodrow Wilson and his administration's budding interest in Poland. Subsequently, nowhere did the Polish Question assume a greater role in diplomatic efforts to mediate for peace than in America, and at no time more than during the year preceding the President's hesitant decision to intervene in hostilities.

Dishonouring Our Freedom Fighters

Inicio de uma coluna quinzenal intitulada "Historical Explorations" no jornal Herald, de Panjim (Goa).Esta primeira coluna Op-ed comenta sobre as opiniões contraditórias que continuam a surgir na opinião pública acerca da "libertação" de Goa. Relata casos históricos e identifica pessoas que se sacrificaram pela causa da democracia e para pôr fim ao colonialismo em Goa. Distingue entre os combatentes da liberdade e os políticos de conveniência. Esta série de coluna Op-ed pretende analisar a actutalidade goesa e portuguesa contextualisando-a com o passado comum e com o presente de interesse mútuo.

Natural Gas location design and operation

A major determinant of the level of effective natural gas supply is the ease to feed customers, minimizing system total costs. The aim of this work is the study of the right number of Gas Supply Units – GSUs - and their optimal location in a gas network. This paper suggests a GSU location heuristic, based on Lagrangean relaxation techniques. The heuristic is tested on the Iberian natural gas network, a system modelized with 65 demand nodes, linked by physical and virtual pipelines. Lagrangean heuristic results along with the allocation of loads to gas sources are presented, using a 2015 forecast gas demand scenario.

VPPs information needs for effective operation in competitive electricity markets

The large increase of renewable energy sources and Distributed Generation (DG) of electricity gives place to the Virtual Power Producer (VPP) concept. VPPs may turn electricity generation by renewable sources valuable in electricity markets. Information availability and adequate decision-support tools are crucial for achieving VPPs’ goals. This involves information concerning associated producers and market operation. This paper presents ViProd, a simulation tool that allows simulating VPPs operation, focusing mainly in the information requirements for adequate decision making.

Natural gas system operation: lagrangean optimization techniques

To comply with natural gas demand growth patterns and Europe´s import dependency, the gas industry needs to organize an efficient upstream infrastructure. The best location of Gas Supply Units – GSUs and the alternative transportation mode – by phisical or virtual pipelines, are the key of a successful industry. In this work we study the optimal location of GSUs, as well as determining the most efficient allocation from gas loads to sources, selecting the best transportation mode, observing specific technical restrictions and minimizing system total costs. For the location of GSUs on system we use the P-median problem, for assigning gas demands nodes to source facilities we use the classical transportation problem. The developed model is an optimisation-based approach, based on a Lagrangean heuristic, using Lagrangean relaxation for P-median problems – Simple Lagrangean Heuristic. The solution of this heuristic can be improved by adding a local search procedure - the Lagrangean Reallocation Heuristic. These two heuristics, Simple Lagrangean and Lagrangean Reallocation, were tested on a realistic network - the primary Iberian natural gas network, organized with 65 nodes, connected by physical and virtual pipelines. Computational results are presented for both approaches, showing the location gas sources and allocation loads arrangement, system total costs and gas transportation mode.

Optimal methodology for renewable energy dispatching in islanded operation

The management of energy resources for islanded operation is of crucial importance for the successful use of renewable energy sources. A Virtual Power Producer (VPP) can optimally operate the resources taking into account the maintenance, operation and load control considering all the involved cost. This paper presents the methodology approach to formulate and solve the problem of determining the optimal resource allocation applied to a real case study in Budapest Tech’s. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model (MILP) and solved by a deterministic optimization technique CPLEX-based implemented in General Algebraic Modeling Systems (GAMS). The problem has also been solved by Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization (EPSO). The obtained results are presented and compared.

Heterodox economics approach to business co-operation

Purpose- Economics and business have evolved as sciences in order to accommodate more of ‘real world’ solutions for the problems approached. In many cases, both business and economics have been supported by other disciplines in order to obtain a more complete framework for the study of complex issues. The aim of this paper is to explore the contribution of three heterodox economics disciplines to the knowledge of business co-operation. Design/methodology/approach- This approach is theoretical and it shows that many relevant aspects of business co-operation have been proposed by economic geography, institutional economics, and economic sociology. Findings- This paper highlights the business mechanisms of co-operation, reflecting on the role of places, institution and the social context where businesses operate. Research Implications- It contributes with a theoretical framework for the explanation of business co-operations and networks that goes beyond the traditional economics theories. Originality/value- This paper contributes with a framework for the study of business co-operation both from an economics and management perspective. This framework embodies a number of non-quantitative issues that are critical for understanding the complex networks in which firms operate.

Conceção e construção de um simulador de controlo de vibrações

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Distribution system operation supported by contextual energy resource management based on intelligent SCADA

Future distribution systems will have to deal with an intensive penetration of distributed energy resources ensuring reliable and secure operation according to the smart grid paradigm. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is an essential infrastructure for this evolution. This paper proposes a new conceptual design of an intelligent SCADA with a decentralized, flexible, and intelligent approach, adaptive to the context (context awareness). This SCADA model is used to support the energy resource management undertaken by a distribution network operator (DNO). Resource management considers all the involved costs, power flows, and electricity prices, allowing the use of network reconfiguration and load curtailment. Locational Marginal Prices (LMP) are evaluated and used in specific situations to apply Demand Response (DR) programs on a global or a local basis. The paper includes a case study using a 114 bus distribution network and load demand based on real data.

Using a prioritized MAC protocol to execute the database operation join in networked embedded computer systems

Database query languages on relations (for example SQL) make it possible to join two relations. This operation is very common in desktop/server database systems but unfortunately query processing systems in networked embedded computer systems currently do not support this operation; specifically, the query processing systems TAG, TinyDB, Cougar do not support this. We show how a prioritized medium access control (MAC) protocol can be used to efficiently execute the database operation join for networked embedded computer systems where all computer nodes are in a single broadcast domain.

Compact SMB chromatography for binary separation

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Adaptive tackling of the swinging problem for a 2 DOF crane – payload system

The control of a crane carrying its payload by an elastic string corresponds to a task in which precise, indirect control of a subsystem dynamically coupled to a directly controllable subsystem is needed. This task is interesting since the coupled degree of freedom has little damping and it is apt to keep swinging accordingly. The traditional approaches apply the input shaping technology to assist the human operator responsible for the manipulation task. In the present paper a novel adaptive approach applying fixed point transformations based iterations having local basin of attraction is proposed to simultaneously tackle the problems originating from the imprecise dynamic model available for the system to be controlled and the swinging problem, too. The most important phenomenological properties of this approach are also discussed. The control considers the 4th time-derivative of the trajectory of the payload. The operation of the proposed control is illustrated via simulation results.