Technology for creativity and innovation: tools, techniques and applications

It is widely accepted that organizations and individuals must be innovative and continually create new knowledge and ideas to deal with rapid change. Innovation plays an important role in not only the development of new business, process and products, but also in competitiveness and success of any organization. Technology for Creativity and Innovation: Tools, Techniques and Applications provides empirical research findings and best practices on creativity and innovation in business, organizational, and social environments. It is written for educators, academics and professionals who want to improve their understanding of creativity and innovation as well as the role technology has in shaping this discipline.

Representa����es dos t��cnicos de interven����o precoce sobre as fam��lias e pr��ticas de IP em contexto rural e urbano

O presente estudo visou caraterizar as representa����es que t��cnicos de interven����o precoce t��m sobre fam��lias que vivem em meio rural e em meio urbano que recebem apoio das equipas. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi-diretivas, os participantes e entrevistados foram dez docentes com interven����o educativa nas equipas, cinco em apoio direto a fam��lias de meio rural e cinco a realizar interven����es com fam��lias de meio urbano. Deste estudo resultaram v��rios dados qualitativos que depois de analisados e discutidos, levaram a diversas conclus��es que vem dar respostas ��s quest��es e problem��tica iniciais. As fam��lias inseridas nestes contextos t��m caracter��sticas que as diferenciam; habilita����es, recursos, necessidades e comportamentos em comunidade. Tem aspetos culturais que influenciam as suas atitudes, participa����o e autonomia e s��o ou n��o decisivas no desenvolvimento da crian��a. Em contexto rural as fam��lias apresentam um maior n��mero de necessidades comparativamente ��s fam��lias de meio urbano. As maiores necessidades das fam��lias em contexto rural situam-se nas quest��es financeiras, de forma����o e apoio t��cnico e especializado. As maiores necessidades das fam��lias de contexto urbano situam-se ao n��vel do fraco apoio familiar e das redes sociais. As necessidades comuns situam-se nas necessidades de informa����o e promo����o da autonomia e compet��ncias parentais. As visitas e interven����es domiciliares podem permitir melhorar a identifica����o das necessidades e recursos das fam��lias e compreender melhor os crit��rios de refer��ncia de algumas crian��as. As oportunidades de aprendizagem s��o maiores nestes encontros em domic��lio, est��o presentes em muitos casos, elementos da fam��lia alargada, que muitas vezes tem um papel fundamental na educa����o e estimula����o destas crian��as. Os docentes de IP em interven����o em contexto urbano, comparativamente com os docentes inseridos em contexto rural, apoiam fam��lias que na generalidade abrangem ��reas profissionais mais vantajosas financeiramente. Estas fam��lias ter��o �� partida melhores condi����es para aceder a mais recursos e apoios. Nos dois contextos existe uma necessidade comum, falta de informa����o e alguma autonomia e compet��ncias parentais em rela����o ao crescimento das crian��as. A realiza����o de iii encontros de pais ou cria����o de grupos de pais que tenham por base a partilha de experiencias e informa����o, est��o planeadas mas n��o s��o uma realidade nestas equipas. Nas pr��ticas de qualidade, o profissional deve atuar nos contextos naturais como, a fam��lia, ou a comunidade, mas pode incluir tamb��m rotinas, brincadeiras, festas etc. cen��rios que facilitem o dia-a-dia. As fam��lias t��m contextos e rotinas pr��prias que os profissionais devem identificar, os dados que recolhemos indicam essa necessidade de proceder a avalia����o mais atenta das necessidades das fam��lias. As pr��ticas recomendadas e o enquadramento legislativo s��o tidos em conta pelos docentes e profissionais das equipas, os recursos documentais s��o na sua maioria comuns, a todas as equipas participantes, seguindo as orienta����es e documentos/minutas facultadas pela comiss��o coordenadora do SNIPI (Sistema Nacional de Interven����o Precoce na Inf��ncia) Apesar das recomenda����es te��ricas para pr��ticas de qualidade centradas na fam��lia, verificamos que estas fazem parte das preocupa����es destes docentes, mas nem sempre s��o implementadas. A problem��tica da crian��a parece ser ainda o ponto mais importante dos programas e planos de interven����o e mesmo o crit��rio decisivo para delinear a dura����o e frequ��ncia das interven����es, seja em contexto urbano ou rural. - ABSTRACT This study aimed to characterize the families of rural and urban areas that receive support from Early Intervention Teams. It has been proposed yet whether professionals IP suit their practices to the characteristics of these families and communities integrated in different cultural contexts. Interviews were conducted semidirective, participants were ten respondents and teachers with educational intervention teams, five in direct support to families in rural areas and five interventions with families in urban areas. This study resulted in a number of qualitative data that then analyzed and discussed, led to several conclusions that comes to answer the questions and problems early. The families included in these contexts have characteristics that differentiate them; qualifications, resources, needs and behaviors in the community. Has cultural aspects that influence their attitudes, participation and autonomy and are not decisive in the development of the child. In the rural households have a greater number of needs compared to urban families. The greatest needs of families in rural settings are located in financial matters, training and technical support and expertise. The greatest needs of the urban households are located at the level of weak family support and social networks. Common needs lie in information needs and promoting autonomy and parenting skills. The home visits and interventions may allow improved identification of needs and resources of families and understand the benchmarks of some children. Learning opportunities are greater in these meetings at home, are present in many cases, elements of the extended family, which often plays a key role in education and stimulation of these children. Teachers IP intervention in the urban compared with rural teachers placed in context, support families in general include professional areas more financially advantageous. These families will have better starting conditions for access to more resources and support. In both contexts there is a common need, lack of information and some autonomy and parenting skills in relation to the growth of children. The meetings of parents or creating parent groups that are based on the sharing of information and experiences are planned but are not a reality in these teams. In quality practices, the professional must act in natural contexts like the family or the community, but may also include routines, jokes, and parties��� etc. scenarios that v facilitate the day-to-day. Families have their own contexts and routines that professionals should identify, collect the data indicate that the need for more careful assessment of the needs of families. Best practices and legislative environment are taken into account by teachers and professional teams, the documentary resources are mostly common to all participating teams, following the guidelines and documents / drafts provided by the coordinating committee SNIPI (National Intervention Early Childhood) Despite the theoretical recommendations for quality practices family-centered, we see that these are part of the concerns of teachers, but are not always implemented. The issue of child seems to be still the most important programs and plans and even the decisive criterion for delineating the duration and frequency of interventions whether in urban or rural.

Les��es da subst��ncia branca por resson��ncia magn��tica: uma avalia����o entre as pondera����es DWI e T2 FLAIR

RESUMO: Objetivos ��� Determinar a sensibilidade e especificidade das pondera����es Difus��o (DWI) e T2 Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) na avalia����o de les��es da subst��ncia branca (SB) e verificar em que medida se complementam, por forma a criar um conjunto de boas pr��ticas na RM cranioencef��lica de rotina. Metodologia ��� Recorrendo-se a uma metodologia quantitativa, efetuou-se uma an��lise retrospetiva da qual foram selecionados 30 pacientes, 10 sem patologia e 20 com patologia (2 com EM, 7 com Leucoencefalopatia, 6 com doen��a microangiop��tica e 5 com patologia da subst��ncia branca indefinida). Obteve-se uma amostra de 60 imagens, nomeadamente: 30 imagens ponderadas em DWI e 30 em T2 FLAIR. Recorrendo ao programa Viewdex��, tr��s observadores avaliaram um conjunto de imagens segundo sete crit��rios: visibilidade, dete����o, homogeneidade, localiza����o, margens e dimens��es da les��o e capacidade de diagn��stico. Com os resultados obtidos recorreu-se ao c��lculo de sensibilidade e especificidade pelas Curvas ROC, bem como �� an��lise estat��stica, nomeadamente, Teste-T, ��ndice de Concord��ncia Kappa e coeficiente de correla����o de Pearson entre as vari��veis em estudo. Resultados ��� Os resultados de sensibilidade e de especificidade obtidos para a pondera����o T2 FLAIR foram superiores (0,915 e 0,038, respetivamente) aos da pondera����o DWI (0,08 e 0,100, respetivamente). N��o se verificaram vari��ncias populacionais significativas. Obteve-se uma elevada correla����o linear entre as vari��veis com um valor r situado entre 0,8 e 0,99. Verificou-se tamb��m uma variabilidade consider��vel entre os observadores. Conclus��es ��� Dados os baixos valores de sensibilidade e especificidade obtidos para a DWI, sugere-se que esta deva ser inclu��da no protocolo de rotina de cr��nio como auxiliar no diagn��stico diferencial com outras patologias.

Geographical, temporal and environmental determinants of bryophyte species richness in the Macaronesian Islands

Copyright: �� 2014 Aranda et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Cultivo de macroalgas nos A��ores��� Oportunidades e desafios

As macroalgas marinhas t��m uma grande diversidade de aplica����es. Nos A��ores, v��rias esp��cies t��m sido usadas tradicionalmente para alimenta����o humana e para extra����o de agar, um ficocol��ide aplicado na ind��stria alimentar e farmac��utica. As exig��ncias no controlo da qualidade das mat��rias-primas e as pr��ticas atuais de colheita de macroalgas marinhas selvagens na Europa exigem uma gest��o eficaz deste recurso natural e, simultaneamente, tornam premente a necessidade de se implementarem m��todos de produ����o de biomassa controlados, nomeadamente, pr��ticas de cultivo. Apesar da import��ncia reconhecida da explora����o sustent��vel dos recursos marinhos existentes nos A��ores, n��o existe qualquer informa����o sobre a viabilidade do cultivo de macroalgas marinhas no Arquip��lago. O objetivo principal do presente projeto �� avaliar o potencial de cultivo de esp��cies de macroalgas marinhas selecionadas, bem como identificar as melhores pr��ticas de recolha desse recurso natural.

Sistema de vis��o para percep����o e navega����o de um UAV Quadrotor

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrot��cnica e de Computadores

Avalia����o dos modelos de Supply Chain : Lean, Agile e Leagile : uma abordagem emp��rica

Disserta����o de Mestrado em Ci��ncias Econ��micas e Empresariais.

Hazing practices in higher education : a study with portuguese students

Hazing practices in higher education institutions are perceived controversially. This study looked at the perception towards hazing practices of students from the University of the Azores in first cycle (n=247). It analyses if their perception was positive, emphasizing the integrative aspects of hazing practices, or if it was negative, inclining to define those practises like being violent and humiliating. The applied questionnaire measures 3 factors to define individual���s perception with hazing practices (positive relation with hazing practices, negative relation and the social dimension of the practices). This study used descriptive analyses to observe the level of agreement with hazing practices and non-parametrical statistical test to analyse the relationship between their levels of agreement with hazing practices and socio-demographic variables. Results emphasised balanced proportion of students perceiving positively and negatively those practices and incline to define hazing practices with the same components in both perceptions. It didnot highlight a strong mandatory integrative component in students��� perception. Also, results stressed a large part of students disinterested in hazing practices. Additionally factors of hazing practices��� perception showed significant relationships with respondent���s sex, age and academic degree. Hazing practices in this study did not seem to meet their main objectives of welcoming and integrating freshmen in higher education institutions.

Avalia����o e garantia da qualidade da auditoria interna

Mestrado em Auditoria

A gest��o e avalia����o do risco: perspectiva das organiza����es e da auditoria no sector p��blico

Mestrado em Auditoria

Tecnologia e gest��o das constru����es de obras portu��rias - estudo de caso

Este relat��rio de est��gio aborda as principais tecnologias de constru����o utilizadas e as metodologias de gest��o implementadas na empreitada de ���Amplia����o do Cais do Terminal XXI - Terminal de Contentores de Sines���. Com o objectivo de fazer enquadramento desta empreitada �� apresentado ainda um levantamento das solu����es estruturais e processos construtivos mais utilizados, com base nas obras mais relevantes de constru����o de cais acost��veis de navios em Portugal e em Cabo Verde, recentemente constru��das ou ainda em constru����o. Relativamente �� obra em estudo foram analisados em detalhe os processos construtivos, associados a cada uma das actividades, e sistemas de gest��o implementados no ��mbito do prazo, custos, qualidade, ambiente, seguran��a e sa��de e ainda da explora����o dos navios. S��o ainda descritos os principais conhecimentos adquiridos com o acompanhamento desta obra, decorrentes de dificuldades ocorridas e boas pr��ticas implementadas. As principais fontes de informa����o, que serviram de base �� elabora����o deste relat��rio, foram os projectos, caderno de encargos e documentos gerados em obra, sendo alguns destes documentos de obra elaborados pelo pr��prio autor. Por fim regista-se a enorme utilidade que este relat��rio trouxe para o autor, que desta forma registou e sistematizou os conhecimentos adquiridos durante a obra, e espera-se que seja uma boa refer��ncia para os engenheiros civis em geral no planeamento e gest��o de futuras obras portu��rias.

Welcome to the new world disorder: conflict and transformation in Ian McEwan���s saturday

Ian McEwan���s novel Saturday deals with the complex issues of conflict and transformation in the age of terrorism. The plot presents one internal dilemma and several interpersonal altercations that occur within a mere twenty-four hours: a) Perowne (the protagonist) vs. himself, in face of his ambivalent thoughts regarding British military participation in the war in the Middle East; b) The protagonist vs. Baxter, a ruffian from East End, in the context of a car accident; c) Perowne vs. a fellow anaesthetist, Jay Strauss, during a squash game; d) Perowne���s daughter, Daisy vs. her grandfather, John Grammaticus, both poets and rivals; e) Perowne���s family vs. Baxter, who intrudes the protagonist���s house. In this paper, I exemplify, analyse and discuss how: a) Understanding the causes of what we call evil constitutes an important step towards mutual understanding; b) Both science and arts (which Perowne considers, at first, irrelevant) are important elements in the process of transformation; c) Both personal and interpersonal conflicts are intrinsic to human nature ��� but they also propitiate healthy changes in behaviour and opinion, through reflection. In order to do so, I resort to Saturday, and to the work of several specialists in the field of conflict management.

Towards the detection of deception in interactive multimedia environments

A classical application of biosignal analysis has been the psychophysiological detection of deception, also known as the polygraph test, which is currently a part of standard practices of law enforcement agencies and several other institutions worldwide. Although its validity is far from gathering consensus, the underlying psychophysiological principles are still an interesting add-on for more informal applications. In this paper we present an experimental off-the-person hardware setup, propose a set of feature extraction criteria and provide a comparison of two classification approaches, targeting the detection of deception in the context of a role-playing interactive multimedia environment. Our work is primarily targeted at recreational use in the context of a science exhibition, where the main goal is to present basic concepts related with knowledge discovery, biosignal analysis and psychophysiology in an educational way, using techniques that are simple enough to be understood by children of different ages. Nonetheless, this setting will also allow us to build a significant data corpus, annotated with ground-truth information, and collected with non-intrusive sensors, enabling more advanced research on the topic. Experimental results have shown interesting findings and provided useful guidelines for future work. Pattern Recognition

Determination of pesticides in fruit and fruit juices by chromatographic methods. An overview

In order to combat a variety of pests, pesticides are widely used in fruits. Several extraction procedures (liquid extraction, single drop microextraction, microwave-assisted extraction, pressurized liquid extraction, supercritical fluid extraction, solid-phase extraction, solid-phase microextraction, matrix solid-phase dispersion, and stir bar sorptive extraction) have been reported to determine pesticide residues in fruits and fruit juices. The significant change in recent years is the introduction of the Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged, and Safe (QuEChERS) methods in these matrices analysis. A combination of techniques reported the use of new extraction methods and chromatography to provide better quantitative recoveries at low levels. The use of mass spectrometric detectors in combination with liquid and gas chromatography has played a vital role to solve many problems related to food safety. The main attention in this review is on the achievements that have been possible because of the progress in extraction methods and the latest advances and novelties in mass spectrometry, and how these progresses have influenced the best control of food, allowing for an increase in the food safety and quality standards.

Pr��ticas de inclus��o com alunos com multidefici��ncia no 2�� e 3�� ciclo

Disserta����o apresentada �� Escola Superior de Educa����o de Lisboa para obten����o do grau de mestre em Ci��ncias da Educa����o Especialidade Educa����o Especial