Cereals and children: A study of their lifetime relation

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The impact of the economic crisis on the quality of health services

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The Internationalization of a Portuguese small and medium enterprise: The case of Vale da Rosa

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Strategy definition of a new business opportunity in mobile-casual gaming: Partnership between Nmusic and Rovio Entertainment Ltd.

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The use of qualitative and quantitative polymerase chain reactions for diagnosis of cytomegalovirus infections in bone marrow and kidney transplant recipients

The purpose of this work was to test a cytomegalovirus qualitative PCR and a semi-quantitative PCR on the determination of CMV load in leukocytes of bone marrow and kidney transplanted (RT) patients. Thirty three BMT and 35 RT patients participated of the study. The DNA was subjected to a qualitative PCR using primers that amplify part of CMV gB gene. CMV load of positive samples was determined by a semi-quantitative PCR using quantified plasmids inserted with part of the gB gene of CMV as controls. The sensitivity of the test was determined to be 867 plasmid copies/µg DNA. CMV loads between 2,118 and 72,443 copies/µg DNA were observed in 12.1% BMT recipients and between 1,246 and 58,613 copies/µg DNA in 22.9% RT recipients. Further studies are necessary to confirm the usefulness of this CMV semi-quantitative PCR in transplanted patients.

Precast concrete wall-foundation connection. Development of a seismic dissipative connection

Seismic events are a major factor to consider in structural design of buildings in many countries. With the purpose of saving lives, most of the design codes lead to structural solutions that withstand large seismic actions without collapsing, but without taking into account a possible usage of the structures after the earthquake. As a result, it is necessary to consider the time needed to repair/retrofit the damaged structures (i.e. the downtime) since this period of inactivity may result in huge financial implications for the occupants of the buildings. In order to minimise the damages and simplify repair operations, structural solutions with rocking systems and negligible residual displacements have been developed during the last two decades. Systems with precast concrete rocking walls were studied with the aim of investigat- ing suitable and convenient structural alternatives to minimise the damage in case of an earthquake. Experimental, numerical and analytical analyses on post-tensioned solutions, with and without energy dissipation devices, were carried out in this research. The energy dissipation devices were made from steel angles that were further developed during the research. Different solutions for these devices were experimentally tested under cyclic loading and the results are presented. Numerical and analytical work on steel angles was also carried out. Regarding the concrete rocking wall systems, two concrete rocking wall systems were studied: post-tensioned walls and post-tensioned walls with energy dissipation devices. In the latter, the solution was to fix them externally to the wall, allowing their easy replacement after an earthquake. It is shown that the dissipaters are a viable solution for use in precast concrete rocking wall systems. A building case study is presented. The comparison between a traditional monolithic system and a hybrid solution was carried out, allowing the evaluation of the efficiency of the solution that was developed.

Ionic liquids as catalysts of lignocellulosic biomass processing

The present work is devoted to study the pre-treatment of lignocellulosic biomass, especially wheat straw, by the application of the acidic ionic liquid (IL) such as 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulphate. The ability of this IL to hydrolysis and conversion of biomass was scrutinised. The pre-treatment with hydrogen sulphate-based IL allowed to obtain a liquor rich in hemicellulosic sugars, furans and organic acids, and a solid fraction mainly constituted by cellulose and lignin. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the produced liquors were made by capillary electrophoresis and high-performance liquid chromatography. Pre-treatment conditions were set to produce xylose or furfural. Specific range of temperatures from 70 to 175 °C and residence times from 20.0 to 163.3 min were studied by fixing parameters such as biomass/IL ratio (10 % (w/w)) and water content (1.25 % (w/w)) in the pre-treatment process. Statistical modelling was applied to maximise the xylose and furfural concentrations. For the purpose of reaction condition comparison the severity factor for studied ionic liquid was proposed and applied in this work. Optimum conditions for xylose production were identified to be at 125 °C and 82.1 min, at which 16.7 % (w/w) xylose yield was attained. Furfural was preferably formed at higher pre-treatment temperatures and longer reaction time (161 °C and 104.5 min) reaching 30.7 % (w/w) maximum yield. The influence of water content on the optimum xylose formation was also studied. Pre-treatments with 5 and 10 % (w/w) water content were performed and an increase of 100 % and 140 % of xylose yield was observed, respectively, while the conversion into furfural maintained unchanged.

Development of principle culture medium formulations for Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae as well as other microorganisms are frequently used in industry with the purpose of obtain different kind of products that can be applied in several areas (research investigation, pharmaceutical compounds, etc.). In order to obtain high yields for the desired product, it is necessary to make an adequate medium supplementation during the growth of the microorganisms. The higher yields are typically reached by using complex media, however the exact formulation of these media is not known. Moreover, it is difficult to control the exact composition of complex media, leading to batch-to-batch variations. So, to overcome this problem, some industries choose to use defined media, with a defined and known chemical composition. However these kind of media, many times, do not reach the same high yields that are obtained by using complex media. In order to obtain similar yield with defined media the addition of many different compounds has to be tested experimentally. Therefore, the industries use a set of empirical methods with which it is tried to formulate defined media that can reach the same high yields as complex media. In this thesis, a defined medium for Saccharomyces cerevisiae was developed using a rational design approach. In this approach a given metabolic network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae is divided into a several unique and not further decomposable sub networks of metabolic reactions that work coherently in steady state, so called elementary flux modes. The EFMtool algorithm was used in order to calculate the EFM’s for two Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolic networks (amino acids supplemented metabolic network; amino acids non-supplemented metabolic network). For the supplemented metabolic network 1352172 EFM’s were calculated and then divided into: 1306854 EFM’s producing biomass, and 18582 EFM’s exclusively producing CO2 (cellular respiration). For the non-supplemented network 635 EFM’s were calculated and then divided into: 215 EFM’s producing biomass; 420 EFM’s producing exclusively CO2. The EFM’s of each group were normalized by the respective glucose consumption value. After that, the EFMs’ of the supplemented network were grouped again into: 30 clusters for the 1306854 EFMs producing biomass and, 20 clusters for the 18582 EFM’s producing CO2. For the non-supplemented metabolic network the respective EFM’s of each metabolic function were grouped into 10 clusters. After the clustering step, the concentrations of the other medium compounds were calculated by considering a reasonable glucose amount and by accounting for the proportionality between the compounds concentrations and the glucose ratios. The approach adopted/developed in this thesis may allow a faster and more economical way for media development.

A DSL for querying building data streams of energy, eeather and occupation data

The superfluous consumption of energy is faced by the modern society as a Socio-Economical and Environmental problem of the present days. This situation is worsening given that it is becoming clear that the tendency is to increase energy price every year. It is also noticeable that people, not necessarily proficient in technology, are not able to know where savings can be achieved, due to the absence of accessible awareness mechanisms. One of the home user concerns is to balance the need of reducing energy consumption, while producing the same activity with all the comfort and work efficiency. The common techniques to reduce the consumption are to use a less wasteful equipment, altering the equipment program to a more economical one or disconnecting appliances that are not necessary at the moment. However, there is no direct feedback from this performed actions, which leads to the situation where the user is not aware of the influence that these techniques have in the electrical bill. With the intension to give some control over the home consumption, Energy Management Systems (EMS) were developed. These systems allow the access to the consumption information and help understanding the energy waste. However, some studies have proven that these systems have a clear mismatch between the information that is presented and the one the user finds useful for his daily life, leading to demotivation of use. In order to create a solution more oriented towards the user’s demands, a specially tailored language (DSL) was implemented. This solution allows the user to acquire the information he considers useful, through the construction of questions about his energy consumption. The development of this language, following the Model Driven Development (MDD) approach, took into consideration the ideas of facility managers and home users in the phases of design and validation. These opinions were gathered through meetings with experts and a survey, which was conducted to the purpose of collecting statistics about what home users want to know.

The Impact of income support programs on transitions to employment

The income support programs are created with the purpose of fighting both, the poverty trap and the inactivity trap. The balance between both is fragile and hard to find. Thus, the goal of this work is to contribute to solve this issue by finding how income support programs, particularly the Portuguese RSI, affect transitions to employment. This is made through duration analysis, namely using Cox and Competing Risks models. A particular feature is introduced in this work as it incorporates the possibility of Defective Risks. The estimated hazard elasticity with respect to the amount of RSI received for individuals who move to employment is -0,41. More than a half of RSI receivers stays for more than a year and the probability of never leaving to employment is 44%. The results appear to indicate that RSI has affected negatively transitions to employment.

Epidemiological aspects of American cutaneous leishmaniasis and phlebotomine sandfly population, in the municipality of Monte Negro, State of Rondônia, Brazil

Introduction: This work was carried out on the purpose of identifying the species of phlebotomine sandflies in the municipality of Monte Negro, state of Rondonia, Brazil, that may have been transmitting the American cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL), and concisely describe epidemiological aspects of disease. METHODS: The epidemiologic and socioeconomical indicators were obtained from government institutions and the local Municipal Secretary of Health. Phlebotomine sandflies were captured using CDC light traps between July 2006 to July 2008. The total of 1,240 of female sandflies were examined by PCR method directed to k-DNA. RESULTS: There has been a significant decrease in the incidence of ACL of about 50% over the last ten years in the municipality. A total of 1,935 specimens of 53 sandfly species were captured, three of the genus Brumptomyia genus and 50 of the genus Lutzomyia. The predominant species was Lutzomyia acanthopharynx, Lutzomyia whitmani, Lutzomyia geniculata and Lutzomyia davisi. None were positive for Leishmania sp. CONCLUSIONS: Four sandflies species were found in the State of Rondonia for the first time: Brumptomyia brumpti, Lutzomyia tarapacaensis, Lutzomyia melloi and Lutzomyia lenti. The presence of Lutzomyia longipalpis, was also captured. Socioeconomical improvement of Brazilian economy and the increase of environmental surveillance in the last 15 years collaborated in the decrease of people exposed to vectors, reducing the incidence of ACL.

Evolution of Teeth and Quadrate in Non-avian Theropoda (Dinosauria: Saurischia), with the Description of Torvosaurus Remains from Portugal

Theropods form a highly successful and morphologically diversified group of dinosaurs that gave rise to birds. They include most, if not all, carnivorous dinosaurs, yet many theropod clades were secondarily adapted to piscivory, omnivory and herbivory, and theropods show a large array of skull and dentition morphologies. This work aims to investigate aspects of the evolution of theropod dinosaurs by analyzing in detail both the anatomy and ontogeny of teeth and quadrates in non-avian theropods, and by studying embryonic and adult material of a new species of theropod. A standardized list of terms and notations for each anatomical entity of the tooth, quadrate, and maxilla is here proposed with the goal of facilitating descriptions of these important cranial and dental elements. The distribution of thirty dental characters among 113 theropod taxa is investigated, and a list of diagnostic dental characters is proposed. As an example, four isolated theropod teeth from the Lourinhã Formation (Kimmeridgian‒Tithonian) of Portugal are described and identified based on a cladistic analysis performed on a data matrix of 141 dentition-based characters coded in 60 taxa. Two shed teeth are referred to an abelisaurid, providing the first record of Abelisauridae in the Jurassic of Laurasia and the one of the oldest records of this clade in the world, suggesting a possible radiation of Abelisauridae in Europe well before the Upper Cretaceous. The consensus tree resulting from this phylogenetic analysis, the most extensive on theropod teeth, indicates that theropod teeth provide reliable data for identification at approximately family level, and this method will help identifying theropod teeth with more confidence. A detailed description of the dentition of Megalosauridae is also provided, and a discriminant analysis performed on a dataset of numerical data collected on the teeth of 62 theropod taxa reveals that megalosaurid teeth are hardly distinguishable from other theropod clades with ziphodont dentition. This study highlights the importance of detailing anatomical descriptions and providing additional morphometric data on teeth with the purpose of helping to identify isolated theropod teeth. In order to evaluate the phylogenetic potential and investigate the evolutionary transformations of the quadrate, a phylogenetic morphometric analysis as well as a cladistic analysis using 98 discrete quadrate related characters were conducted. The quadrate morphology by its own provides a wealth of data with strong phylogenetic signal, and the phylogenetic morphometric analysis reveals two main morphotypes of the mandibular articulation of the quadrate linked to function. As an example, six isolated quadrates from the Kem Kem beds (Cenomanian) of Morocco are determined to be from juvenile and adult individuals of Spinosaurinae based on phylogenetic, morphometric, and phylogenetic morphometric analyses. Morphofunctional analysis of the spinosaurid mandibular articulation has shown that the posterior parts of the two mandibular rami displaced laterally when the jaw was depressed due to a mediolaterally oriented intercondylar sulcus of the quadrate. Such lateral movement of the mandibular ramus was possible due to a movable mandibular symphysis in spinosaurids, allowing the pharynx to be widened. A new species of theropod from the Lourinhã Formation of Portugal, Torvosaurus gurneyi, is erected based on a right maxilla and an incomplete caudal centrum. This taxon supports the mechanism of vicariance that occurred in the Iberian Meseta during the Late Jurassic when the proto-Atlantic was already well formed. A theropod clutch containing several crushed eggs and embryonic material is also assigned to this new species of Torvosaurus. Investigation on the maxilla ontogeny in basal tetanurans reveals that crown denticles, elongation of the anterior ramus, and fusion of interdental plates appear at a posthatchling stage. On the other hand, maxillary pneumaticity is already present at an embryonic stage in non-avian theropods.

Trust, alliance management capability and the alliance management function: A comparative analysis of Portuguese SMEs

Strategic alliances represent a key driver for internationalization and growth, being the purpose of this work project to better understand the intertwined relationship between trust and the existence of an alliance management position. Previous research supports the positive impact of such position in stock market returns. However, little attention has been given to the impact of such position on the level of trust in the collaborative arrangement, which is deemed to be a key driver for alliance success. A qualitative comparative case-study of three Portuguese SMEs is used to draw conclusions from the literature to real life business cases and it demonstrates the positive impact of an alliance management position on trust.

The importance of succession planning in family-owned Small and Medium Enterprises in Portugal

This work project addresses the importance of succession planning in family-owned Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This is directly related with Human Resources Management (HRM) given that there is an HRM long term vision in order for the succession to be planned on time and benefit the companies. This study focused on SMEs since these are the entities that have a minor focus on HRM practices. A total of 22 in-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed. Selected SMEs owners/managers and successors/antecessors were interviewed with the purpose of acquiring more insight on the level of succession planning, using a qualitative methodology from which the process of succession was derived. This study unveils that the first step in this process is related to the definition of criteria to be a good successor, followed by the choice of possible successors, being the children the natural successors, but also considering other potential ones, and finally some considerations on the future of these companies.

Optimization of export support systems: How to promote exports from Portugal to Germany in the area of information technology and electronics

This work project focuses on developing new approaches which enhance Portuguese exports towards a defined German industry sector within the information technology and electronics fields. Firstly and foremost, information was collected and a set of expert and top managers’ interviews were performed in order to acknowledge the demand of the German market while identifying compatible Portuguese supply capabilities. Among the main findings, Industry 4.0 presents itself as a valuable opportunity in the German market for Portuguese medium sized companies in the embedded systems area of expertise for machinery and equipment companies. In order to achieve the purpose of the work project, an embedded systems platform targeting machinery and equipment companies was suggested as well as it was developed several recommendations on how to implement it. An alternative approach for this platform was also considered within the German market namely the eHealth sector having the purpose of enhancing the current healthcare service provision.