Access and use of european information: a comparative analysis

This paper presents some results of a survey on access to European information among a group of 234 users of 55 European Documentation Centres (EDCs), from 21 European Union (EU) Member-States. The findings of the questionnaire made to 88 EDCs' managers, from 26 EU Member-States, will also be analyse. Two different points of view regarding issues related to reasons to access European information, the valued aspects during that access and the use of European databases will be compare.

A relação entre satisfação de cliente e word-of-mouth

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Publicidade e Marketing.

Micro-generation Evaluation of the Zero Emissions Technologies in the Portuguese Market

Micro-generation is the small scale production of heat and/or electricity from a low carbon source and can be a powerful driver for carbon reduction, behavior change, security of supply and economic value. The energy conversion technologies can include photovoltaic panels, micro combined heat and power, micro wind, heat pumps, solar thermal systems, fuel cells and micro hydro schemes. In this paper, a small research of the availability of the conversion apparatus and the prices for the micro wind turbines and photovoltaic systems is made and a comparison between these two technologies is performed in terms of the availability of the resource and costs. An analysis of the new legal framework published in Portugal is done to realize if the incentives to individualspsila investment in sustainable and local energy production is worth for their point of view. An economic evaluation for these alternatives, accounting with the governmentpsilas incentives should lead, in most cases, into attractive return rates for the investment. Apart from the attractiveness of the investment there are though other aspects that should be taken into account and those are the benefits that these choices have to us all. The idea is that micro-generation will not only make a significant direct contribution to carbon reduction targets, it will also trigger a multiplier effect in behavior change by engaging hearts and minds, and providing more efficient use of energy by householders. The diversified profile of power generation by micro-generators, both in terms of location and timing, should reduce the impact of intermittency or plant failures with significant gains for security of supply.

Experiences on the implementation of a cooperative embedded system framework

As the complexity of embedded systems increases, multiple services have to compete for the limited resources of a single device. This situation is particularly critical for small embedded devices used in consumer electronics, telecommunication, industrial automation, or automotive systems. In fact, in order to satisfy a set of constraints related to weight, space, and energy consumption, these systems are typically built using microprocessors with lower processing power and limited resources. The CooperatES framework has recently been proposed to tackle these challenges, allowing resource constrained devices to collectively execute services with their neighbours in order to fulfil the complex Quality of Service (QoS) constraints imposed by users and applications. In order to demonstrate the framework's concepts, a prototype is being implemented in the Android platform. This paper discusses key challenges that must be addressed and possible directions to incorporate the desired real-time behaviour in Android.

Mid-point for open-ended income category and the effect of equivalence scales on the income-health relationship

To estimate the mid-point of an open-ended income category and to assess the impact of two equivalence scales on income-health associations. Data were obtained from the 2010 Brazilian Oral Health Survey ( Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde Bucal – SBBrasil 2010). Income was converted from categorical to two continuous variables ( per capita and equivalized) for each mid-point. The median mid-point was R$ 14,523.50 and the mean, R$ 24,507.10. When per capita income was applied, 53% of the population were below the poverty line, compared with 15% with equivalized income. The magnitude of income-health associations was similar for continuous income, but categorized equivalized income tended to decrease the strength of association.

Optimising and adapting the QoS of a dynamic set of inter-dependent tasks

Due to the growing complexity and adaptability requirements of real-time systems, which often exhibit unrestricted Quality of Service (QoS) inter-dependencies among supported services and user-imposed quality constraints, it is increasingly difficult to optimise the level of service of a dynamic task set within an useful and bounded time. This is even more difficult when intending to benefit from the full potential of an open distributed cooperating environment, where service characteristics are not known beforehand and tasks may be inter-dependent. This paper focuses on optimising a dynamic local set of inter-dependent tasks that can be executed at varying levels of QoS to achieve an efficient resource usage that is constantly adapted to the specific constraints of devices and users, nature of executing tasks and dynamically changing system conditions. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed anytime algorithms are able to quickly find a good initial solution and effectively optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves as the algorithms are given more time to run, with a minimum overhead when compared against their traditional versions.

Biogeographic and palaeoclimatic relationships of the Middle Pliocene ichthyofauna of the Samoggia Torrent (Bologna, Italy)

New Middle Pliocene ichthyofauna (2.4-2.2 Ma) from central-eastern Italy (Samoggia Torrent, Bologna) are described. These ichthyolites were found in a rather thin laminated layer that was deposited after the 2.4 Ma climatic crisis. The origin of this deposit, in which 31 taxa have been classified, is to be related to anoxic events on a regional and, probably, supraregional scale. This ichthyofaunistic association, which consists of living genera, is characterized by a clearcut predominance of mesopelagic species. The palaeoclimatic characters of these ichthyofauna indicate subtropical-type waters, while from a palaeobiogeographic point of view there is a close relationship with the present-day Atlantic-Mediterranean bioprovince. The Samoggia deposit has yielded six taxa that are absent or only occasionally present in the Mediterranean: one of these, Spratelloides gracilis, is exclusive of the Indo-Pacific bioprovince.

The evolution of user mobility on the Eduroam network

The emergence of smartphones with Wireless LAN (WiFi) network interfaces brought new challenges to application developers. The expected increase of users connectivity will impact their expectations for example on the performance of background applications. Unfortunately, the number and breadth of the studies on the new patterns of user mobility and connectivity that result from the emergence of smartphones is still insufficient to support this claim. This paper contributes with preliminary results on a large scale study of the usage pattern of about 49000 devices and 31000 users who accessed at least one access point of the eduroam WiFi network on the campuses of the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute. Results confirm that the increasing number of smartphones resulted in significant changes to the pattern of use, with impact on the amount of traffic and users connection time.

Primary bioreceptivity of limestones from the mediterranean basin to phototrophic microorganisms

Dissertação apresentada para a obtenção do grau de Doutor em Conservação e Restauro pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

A case study on the improvement of eco-efficiency ratios: application to a composite processing industry

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) defines Eco-Efficiency as follows: ‘Eco- Efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced-goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life-cycle to a level at least in line with the earth’s estimated carrying capacity’. Eco-Efficiency is under this point of view a key concept for sustainable development, bringing together economic and ecological progress. Measuring the Eco-Efficiency of a company, factory or business, is a complex process that involves the measurement and control of several and relevant parameters or indicators, globally applied to all companies in general, or specific according to the nature and specificities of the business itself. In this study, an attempt was made in order to measure and evaluate the eco-efficiency of a pultruded composite processing company. For this purpose the recommendations of WBCSD [1] and the directives of ISO 14301 standard [2] were followed and applied. The analysis was restricted to the main business branch of the company: the production and sale of standard GFRP pultrusion profiles. The main general indicators of eco-efficiency, as well as the specific indicators, were defined and determined according to ISO 14031 recommendations. With basis on indicators’ figures, the value profile, the environmental profile, and the pertinent eco-efficiency’s ratios were established and analyzed. In order to evaluate potential improvements on company eco-performance, new indicators values and ecoefficiency ratios were estimated taking into account the implementation of new proceedings and procedures, both in upstream and downstream of the production process, namely: a) Adoption of new heating system for pultrusion die in the manufacturing process, more effective and with minor heat losses; b) Implementation of new software for stock management (raw materials and final products) that minimize production failures and delivery delays to final consumer; c) Recycling approach, with partial waste reuse of scrap material derived from manufacturing, cutting and assembly processes of GFRP profiles. In particular, the last approach seems to significantly improve the eco-efficient performance of the company. Currently, by-products and wastes generated in the manufacturing process of GFRP profiles are landfilled, with supplementary added costs to this company traduced by transport of scrap, landfill taxes and required test analysis to waste materials. However, mechanical recycling of GFRP waste materials, with reduction to powdered and fibrous particulates, constitutes a recycling process that can be easily attained on heavy-duty cutting mills. The posterior reuse of obtained recyclates, either into a close-looping process, as filler replacement of resin matrix of GFRP profiles, or as reinforcement of other composite materials produced by the company, will drive to both costs reduction in raw materials and landfill process, and minimization of waste landfill. These features lead to significant improvements on the sequent assessed eco-efficiency ratios of the present case study, yielding to a more sustainable product and manufacturing process of pultruded GFRP profiles.

Academic effectiveness of VISIR remote lab in analog electronics

The effectiveness of VISIR is compared to other experimentation activities under the point of view presented by the professor Soysal in 2000. Advantages and limitations are discussed in terms of equipment availability, infrastructure cost, and contribution to various elements of experimental learning.

Considerations about the choice of a differintegrator

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computational Cybernetics, Vienna University of Technology, August 30 - September 1, 2004

The making of saudade. National identity and ethnic psychology in Portugal

Roots and rituals.The construction of ethnic identities, Ton Dekker, John Helsloot Carla Wijers editors, p. 267-268; Selected papers of the 6TH SIEF conference on 'Roots & rituals', Amsterdam 20-25 April 1998.

Multi-agent system for personalization of location-based services

The current ubiquitous network access and increase in network bandwidth are driving the sales of mobile location-aware user devices and, consequently, the development of context-aware applications, namely location-based services. The goal of this project is to provide consumers of location-based services with a richer end-user experience by means of service composition, personalization, device adaptation and continuity of service. Our approach relies on a multi-agent system composed of proxy agents that act as mediators and providers of personalization meta-services, device adaptation and continuity of service for consumers of pre-existing location-based services. These proxy agents, which have Web services interfaces to ensure a high level of interoperability, perform service composition and take in consideration the preferences of the users, the limitations of the user devices, making the usage of different types of devices seamless for the end-user. To validate and evaluate the performance of this approach, use cases were defined, tests were conducted and results gathered which demonstrated that the initial goals were successfully fulfilled.

Performance assessment of a wind energy conversion system using a hierarchical controller structure

This paper deals with a hierarchical structure composed by an event-based supervisor in a higher level and two distinct proportional integral (PI) controllers in a lower level. The controllers are applied to a variable speed wind energy conversion system with doubly-fed induction generator, namely, the fuzzy PI control and the fractional-order PI control. The event-based supervisor analyses the operation state of the wind energy conversion system among four possible operational states: park, start-up, generating or brake and sends the operation state to the controllers in the lower level. In start-up state, the controllers only act on electric torque while pitch angle is equal to zero. In generating state, the controllers must act on the pitch angle of the blades in order to maintain the electric power around the nominal value, thus ensuring that the safety conditions required for integration in the electric grid are met. Comparisons between fuzzy PI and fractional-order PI pitch controllers applied to a wind turbine benchmark model are given and simulation results by Matlab/Simulink are shown. From the results regarding the closed loop point of view, fuzzy PI controller allows a smoother response at the expense of larger number of variations of the pitch angle, implying frequent switches between operational states. On the other hand fractional-order PI controller allows an oscillatory response with less control effort, reducing switches between operational states. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.