Porto: cidade amiga das pessoas idosas: um estudo centrado na perspectiva de idosos das freguesias de Miragaia e Vitória

O presente estudo, de natureza qualitativa e exploratório, teve como objectivo verificar se a cidade do Porto possui características de uma cidade amiga das pessoas idosas, na perspectiva de idosos residentes neste meio urbano. Uma cidade amiga das pessoas idosas estimula um envelhecimento activo e com dignidade ao optimizar oportunidades para a saúde, participação e segurança. Foram realizados dois focus groups com pessoas idosas habitantes das Freguesias da Vitória e Miragaia, seleccionados a partir de uma amostragem por conveniência, recorrendo-se a um guião de entrevista constituído pelas seguintes categorias: espaços exteriores e edifícios; transportes; habitação; respeito e inclusão social; participação social; participação cívica e emprego; comunicação e informação; apoio comunitário e serviços de saúde. Desta forma, foi possível verificar que, apesar dos participantes identificarem um conjunto de condições que podem ser consideradas amigas das pessoas idosas, a maior parte das características referidas foram encaradas como negativas e com um impacto considerável no seu quotidiano. A participação social, os meios de informação disponíveis e os serviços comunitários são as condições perante as quais os participantes demonstram maior satisfação. Pelo contrário, em relação aos espaços exteriores, referem aspectos, como os grandes declives, as más condições dos pavimentos, os obstáculos nos passeios e a acumulação de lixo, que contribuem para um ambiente desagradável e inseguro. Quanto aos transportes, as modificações na identificação dos veículos, as alterações nos percursos, a pouca consciencialização dos motoristas em relação às necessidades dos mais velhos e as condições das paragens são os principais factores destacados, enquanto as habitações são consideradas antigas e com más condições estruturais e de acesso. De uma forma geral, estes idosos consideram-se pouco reconhecidos e desrespeitados pelos mais jovens e deparam-se com grandes dificuldades no acesso a actividades laborais e de voluntariado.

Towards the wide implementation of standards IEC 61968/70 (CIM) and IEC 61850 in the distribution system (CIGRÉ C6-105_2010)

Currently, power systems (PS) already accommodate a substantial penetration of distributed generation (DG) and operate in competitive environments. In the future, as the result of the liberalisation and political regulations, PS will have to deal with large-scale integration of DG and other distributed energy resources (DER), such as storage and provide market agents to ensure a flexible and secure operation. This cannot be done with the traditional PS operational tools used today like the quite restricted information systems Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) [1]. The trend to use the local generation in the active operation of the power system requires new solutions for data management system. The relevant standards have been developed separately in the last few years so there is a need to unify them in order to receive a common and interoperable solution. For the distribution operation the CIM models described in the IEC 61968/70 are especially relevant. In Europe dispersed and renewable energy resources (D&RER) are mostly operated without remote control mechanisms and feed the maximal amount of available power into the grid. To improve the network operation performance the idea of virtual power plants (VPP) will become a reality. In the future power generation of D&RER will be scheduled with a high accuracy. In order to realize VPP decentralized energy management, communication facilities are needed that have standardized interfaces and protocols. IEC 61850 is suitable to serve as a general standard for all communication tasks in power systems [2]. The paper deals with international activities and experiences in the implementation of a new data management and communication concept in the distribution system. The difficulties in the coordination of the inconsistent developed in parallel communication and data management standards - are first addressed in the paper. The upcoming unification work taking into account the growing role of D&RER in the PS is shown. It is possible to overcome the lag in current practical experiences using new tools for creating and maintenance the CIM data and simulation of the IEC 61850 protocol – the prototype of which is presented in the paper –. The origin and the accuracy of the data requirements depend on the data use (e.g. operation or planning) so some remarks concerning the definition of the digital interface incorporated in the merging unit idea from the power utility point of view are presented in the paper too. To summarize some required future work has been identified.

A web-based intelligent tutoring system on teaching and learning electrical project

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) provide new strategies for disseminating information and new communication models in order to change attitudes and human behaviour concerning to education. Nowadays the internet is crucial as a means of communication and information sharing. To education or tutorship will be required to use ICT, supported on the internet, to establish the communication of teacher-student and student-student, disseminating the content of the subjects, and as a way of teaching and learning process. This paper presents an intelligent tutor that aims to be a tool to support teaching and learning in the field of the electrical engineering project.

A comunicação online das organizações culturais. A utilização de novas ferramentas pelas companhias de teatro de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo de 2000 a 2013

Nos dias de hoje, ferramentas como o Facebook, o Twitter e o YouTube fazem parte do quotidiano. Desde o recente virar do século até ao presente, a sociedade transformou-se. Usamos cada vez mais a Internet. Nela pesquisamos informação e partilhamos conteúdos, sejam eles textos, fotos ou vídeos. As novas ferramentas de comunicação online trouxeram uma maior interatividade entre aquele que emite uma mensagem e aquele que a recebe. Nesta investigação procura-se analisar quais e como é que as novas ferramentas de comunicação online são utilizadas pelas organizações culturais, nomeadamente, pelas companhias de teatro de Lisboa e Vale do Tejo, entre 2000 e 2013. Ao longo do enquadramento teórico são abordadas questões como a comunicação das organizações, a comunicação online das mesmas, a utilização das novas ferramentas online por parte de companhias de teatro e o que são considerados sites, media sociais e redes sociais. Entre várias referências, serão citados Grunig e Hunt (1984) que apresentam o modelo de comunicação de dois sentidos simétricos, assim como Phillips e Young (2009) que abordam as diferentes ferramentas de comunicação online. São ainda apresentados estudos relativos à utilização destas ferramentas por parte das organizações artísticas, elaborados pela MTM London (2009) e pelo Australia Council for the Arts (2011). A presente investigação tem por base a observação e acompanhamento das ferramentas de comunicação online utilizadas pelas companhias de teatro, inquéritos aos produtores dessas companhias e entrevistas a alguns dos seus diretores. Com este trabalho pretende-se verificar que ferramentas estão a ser utilizadas pelas companhias, com que regularidade, quem nas companhias gere essas ferramentas, quais as vantagens percecionadas, entre outros aspetos.

Investigação em Jornalismo: desafios e linhas de pesquisa no século XXI

Propomo-nos, com este artigo, mapear os principais desafios e linhas de pesquisa que marcam hoje os estudos sobre o jornalismo. Desta forma, tentaremos estimular os estudantes de jornalismo, e não só, a eleger as suas linhas de pesquisa e objectos de análise para a elaboração dos projectos de licenciatura e também para futuras incursões académicas, nomeadamente sob a forma de mestrados e doutoramentos.

Dizer sem falar: a Comissão de Ética, Sociedade e Cultura e a alegada tentativa de controlo da comunicação social por José Sócrates

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

GuideMe: service for consulting, publication and recommendation of touristic locations

Trabalho de Projeto realizado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores

Social gender stereotypes and their implications in Hindi

This essay looks at the subtle ways in which gender identities are constructed and reinforced in India through social norms of language use. Language itself becomes a medium for perpetuating gender stereotypes, forcing its speakers to confirm to socially defined gender roles. Using examples from a classroom discussion about a film, this essay will highlight the underlying rigid male-female stereotypes in Indian society with their more obvious expressions in language. For the urban woman in India globalisation meant increased economic equality and exposure to changed lifestyles. On an individual level it also meant redefining gender relations and changing the hierarchy in man-woman relationships. With the economic independence there is a heightened sense of liberation in all spheres of social life, a confidence to fuzz the rigid boundaries of gender roles. With the new films and media celebrating this liberated woman, who is ready to assert her sexual needs, who is ready to explode those long held notions of morality, one would expect that the changes are not just superficial. But as it soon became obvious in the course of a classroom discussion about relationships and stereotypes related to age, the surface changes can not become part of the common vocabulary, for the obvious reason that there is still a vast gap between the screen image of this new woman and the ground reality. Social considerations define the limits of this assertiveness of women, whereas men are happy to be liberal within the larger frame of social sanctions. The educated urban woman in India speaks in favour of change and the educated urban male supports her, but one just needs to scratch the surface to see the time tested formulae of gender roles firmly in place. The way the urban woman happily balances this emerging promise of independence with her gendered social identity, makes it necessary to rethink some aspects of looking at gender in a gradually changing, traditional society like India.

Public health and the knowledge industry

Knowledge plays an important role in health care. The production and diffusion of health-related knowledge are increasingly under the control of private commercial interests, which are characterized by conflicts of interests that result in abuses of power. Considerable research has been done on the medical-industrial complex and its role in the production of power imbalances and the consequent abuses, but little attention has been dedicated to the role played by the publishing industry, which can be subject to the same problems. The widely diffused idea that "frequent and major changes" occur in medicine, albeit unsupported by clearcut evidence, is an effective marketing tool for both the pharmaceutical and publishing industries, who feed and thrive on physicians' insecurities. The production and distribution of knowledge should be addressed as a strategic component of public health.

The invisible factors that can make the difference. Language management and knowledge transfer in multinational sites

The knowledge-based society we live in has stressed the importance of human capital and brought talent to the top of most wanted skills, especially to companies who want to succeed in turbulent environments worldwide. In fact, streams, sequences of decisions and resource commitments characterize the day-to-day of multinational companies (MNCs). Such decision-making activities encompass major strategic moves like internationalization and new market entries or diversification and acquisitions. In most companies, these strategic decisions are extensively discussed and debated and are generally framed, formulated, and articulated in specialized language often developed by the best minds in the company. Yet the language used in such deliberations, in detailing and enacting the implementation strategy is usually taken for granted and receives little if any explicit attention (Brannen & Doz, 2012) an can still be a “forgotten factor” (Marschan et al. 1997). Literature on language management and international business refers to lack of awareness of business managers of the impact that language can have not only in communication effectiveness but especially in knowledge transfer and knowledge management in business environments. In the context of MNCs, management is, for many different reasons, more complex and demanding than that of a national company, mainly because of diversity factors inherent to internationalization, namely geographical and cultural spaces, i.e, varied mindsets. Moreover, the way of functioning, and managing language, of the MNC depends on its vision, its values and its internationalization model, i.e on in the way the MNE adapts to and controls the new markets, which can vary essentially from a more ethnocentric to a more pluricentric focus. Regardless of the internationalization model followed by the MNC, communication between different business units is essential to achieve unity in diversity and business sustainability. For the business flow and prosperity, inter-subsidiary, intra-company and company-client (customers, suppliers, governments, municipalities, etc..) communication must work in various directions and levels of the organization. If not well managed, this diversity can be a barrier to global coordination and create turbulent environments, even if a good technological support is available (Feely et al., 2002: 4). According to Marchan-Piekkari (1999) the tongue can be both (i) a barrier, (ii) a facilitator and (iii) a source of power. Moreover, the lack of preparation for the barriers of linguistic diversity can lead to various costs, including negotiations’ failure and failure on internationalization.. On the other hand, communication and language fluency is not just a message transfer procedure, but above all a knowledge transfer process, which requires extra-linguistic skills (persuasion, assertiveness …) in order to promote credibility of both parties. For this reason, MNCs need a common code to communicate and trade information inside and outside the company, which will require one or more strategies, in order to overcome possible barriers and organization distortions.

James W. Carey as critical theorist of the information age

This paper suggests that the thought of the North-American critical theorist James W. Carey provides a relevant perspective on communication and technology. Having as background American social pragmatism and progressive thinkers of the beginning of the 20th century (as Dewey, Mead, Cooley, and Park), Carey built a perspective that brought together the political economy of Harold A. Innis, the social criticism of David Riesman and Charles W. Mills and incorporated Marxist topics such as commodification and sociocultural domination. The main goal of this paper is to explore the connection established by Carey between modern technological communication and what he called the “transmissive model”, a model which not only reduces the symbolic process of communication to instrumentalization and to information delivery, but also politically converges with capitalism as well as power, control and expansionist goals. Conceiving communication as a process that creates symbolic and cultural systems, in which and through which social life takes place, Carey gives equal emphasis to the incorporation processes of communication.If symbolic forms and culture are ways of conditioning action, they are also influenced by technological and economic materializations of symbolic systems, and by other conditioning structures. In Carey’s view, communication is never a disembodied force; rather, it is a set of practices in which co-exist conceptions, techniques and social relations. These practices configure reality or, alternatively, can refute, transform and celebrate it. Exhibiting sensitiveness favourable to the historical understanding of communication, media and information technologies, one of the issues Carey explored most was the history of the telegraph as an harbinger of the Internet, of its problems and contradictions. For Carey, Internet was seen as the contemporary heir of the communications revolution triggered by the prototype of transmission technologies, namely the telegraph in the 19th century. In the telegraph Carey saw the prototype of many subsequent commercial empires based on science and technology, a pioneer model for complex business management; an example of conflict of interest for the control over patents; an inducer of changes both in language and in structures of knowledge; and a promoter of a futurist and utopian thought of information technologies. After a brief approach to Carey’s communication theory, this paper focuses on his seminal essay "Technology and ideology. The case of the telegraph", bearing in mind the prospect of the communication revolution introduced by Internet. We maintain that this essay has seminal relevance for critically studying the information society. Our reading of it highlights the reach, as well as the problems, of an approach which conceives the innovation of the telegraph as a metaphor for all innovations, announcing the modern stage of history and determining to this day the major lines of development in modern communication systems.

Effects of home environment and center-based child care quality on children’s

This study examined the joint effects of home environment and center-based child care quality on children’s language, communication, and early literacy development, while also considering prior developmental level. Participants were 95 children (46 boys), assessed as toddlers (mean age = 26.33 months;Time 1) and preschoolers (mean age = 68.71 months; Time 2) and their families. At both times, children attended center-based child care classrooms in the metropolitan area of Porto, Portugal. Results from hierarchical linear models indicated that home environment and preschool quality, but not center-based toddler child care quality, were associated with children’s language and literacy outcomes at Time 2. Moreover, the quality of preschool classrooms moderated the association between home environment quality and children’s language and early literacy skills – but not communication skills – at Time 2, suggesting the positive cumulative effects of home environment and preschool quality. Findings further support the existence of a detrimental effect of low preschool quality on children’s language and early literacy outcomes: positive associations among home environment quality and children’s developmental outcomes were found to reduce substantially when children attended low-quality preschool classrooms.

Bradykinin-induced Ca2+ signaling in human subcutaneous fibroblasts involves ATP release via hemichannels leading to P2Y12 receptors activation

Background: Chronic musculoskeletal pain involves connective tissue remodeling triggered by inflammatory mediators, such as bradykinin. Fibroblast cells signaling involve changes in intracellular Ca2+ ([Ca2+]i). ATP has been related to connective tissue mechanotransduction, remodeling and chronic inflammatory pain, via P2 purinoceptors activation. Here, we investigated the involvement of ATP in bradykinin-induced Ca2+ signals in human subcutaneous fibroblasts. Results: Bradykinin, via B2 receptors, caused an abrupt rise in [Ca2+]i to a peak that declined to a plateau, which concentration remained constant until washout. The plateau phase was absent in Ca2+-free medium; [Ca2+]i signal was substantially reduced after depleting intracellular Ca2+ stores with thapsigargin. Extracellular ATP inactivation with apyrase decreased the [Ca2+]i plateau. Human subcutaneous fibroblasts respond to bradykinin by releasing ATP via connexin and pannexin hemichannels, since blockade of connexins, with 2- octanol or carbenoxolone, and pannexin-1, with 10Panx, attenuated bradykinin-induced [Ca2+]i plateau, whereas inhibitors of vesicular exocytosis, such as brefeldin A and bafilomycin A1, were inactive. The kinetics of extracellular ATP catabolism favors ADP accumulation in human fibroblast cultures. Inhibition of ectonucleotidase activity and, thus, ADP formation from released ATP with POM-1 or by Mg2+ removal from media reduced bradykinin-induced [Ca2+]i plateau. Selective blockade of the ADP-sensitive P2Y12 receptor with AR-C66096 attenuated bradykinin [Ca2+]i plateau, whereas the P2Y1 and P2Y13 receptor antagonists, respectively MRS 2179 and MRS 2211, were inactive. Human fibroblasts exhibited immunoreactivity against connexin-43, pannexin-1 and P2Y12 receptor. Conclusions: Bradykinin induces ATP release from human subcutaneous fibroblasts via connexin and pannexin-1-containing hemichannels leading to [Ca2+]i mobilization through the cooperation of B2 and P2Y12 receptors.

B2B platform for media content personalisation

This paper proposes a novel business model to support media content personalisation: an agent-based business-to-business (B2B) brokerage platform for media content producer and distributor businesses. Distributors aim to provide viewers with a personalised content experience and producers wish to en-sure that their media objects are watched by as many targeted viewers as possible. In this scenario viewers and media objects (main programmes and candidate objects for insertion) have profiles and, in the case of main programme objects, are annotated with placeholders representing personalisation opportunities, i.e., locations for insertion of personalised media objects. The MultiMedia Brokerage (MMB) platform is a multiagent multilayered brokerage composed by agents that act as sellers and buyers of viewer stream timeslots and/or media objects on behalf of the registered businesses. These agents engage in negotiations to select the media objects that best match the current programme and viewer profiles.

Highly scalable aggregate computations in cyber-physical systems: physical environment meets communication protocols

In this paper, we focus on large-scale and dense Cyber- Physical Systems, and discuss methods that tightly integrate communication and computing with the underlying physical environment. We present Physical Dynamic Priority Dominance ((PD)2) protocol that exemplifies a key mechanism to devise low time-complexity communication protocols for large-scale networked sensor systems. We show that using this mechanism, one can compute aggregate quantities such as the maximum or minimum of sensor readings in a time-complexity that is equivalent to essentially one message exchange. We also illustrate the use of this mechanism in a more complex task of computing the interpolation of smooth as well as non-smooth sensor data in very low timecomplexity.