A new algorithm to accelerate harmonic analysis of time series

The Lomb periodogram has been traditionally a tool that allows us to elucidate if a frequency turns out to be important for explaining the behaviour of a given time series. Many linear and nonlinear reiterative harmonic processes that are used for studying the spectral content of a time series take into account this periodogram in order to avoid including spurious frequencies in their models due to the leakage problem of energy from one frequency to others. However, the estimation of the periodogram requires long computation time that makes the harmonic analysis slower when we deal with certain time series. Here we propose an algorithm that accelerates the extraction of the most remarkable frequencies from the periodogram, avoiding its whole estimation of the harmonic process at each iteration. This algorithm allows the user to perform a specific analysis of a given scalar time series. As a result, we obtain a functional model made of (1) a trend component, (2) a linear combination of Fourier terms, and (3) the so-called mixed secular terms by reducing the computation time of the estimation of the periodogram.

On the nature of candidate luminous blue variables in M 33

Context. Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are a class of highly unstable stars that have been proposed to play a critical role in massive stellar evolution as well as being the progenitors of some of the most luminous supernovae known. However the physical processes underlying their characteristic instabilities are currently unknown. Aims. In order to provide observational constraints on this behaviour we have initiated a pilot study of the population of (candidate) LBVs in the Local Group galaxy M 33. Methods. To accomplish this we have obtained new spectra of 18 examples within M 33. These provide a baseline of ≥ 4 yr with respect to previous observations, which is well suited to identifying LBV outbursts. We also employed existing multi-epoch optical and mid-IR surveys of M 33 to further constrain the variability of the sample and search for the presence of dusty ejecta. Results. Combining the datasets reveals that spectroscopic and photometric variability appears common, although in the majority of cases further observations will be needed to distinguish between an origin for this behavour in short lived stochastic wind structure and low level photospheric pulsations or coherent long term LBV excursions. Of the known LBVs we report a hitherto unidentified excursion of M 33 Var C between 2001-5, while the transition of the WNLh star B517 to a cooler B supergiant phase between 1993−2010 implies an LBV classification. Proof-of-concept quantitative model atmosphere analysis is provided for Romano’s star; the resultant stellar parameters being consistent with the finding that the LBV excursions of this star are accompanied by changes in bolometric luminosity. The combination of temperature and luminosity of two stars, the BHG [HS80] 110A and the cool hypergiant B324, appear to be in violation of the empirical Humphreys-Davidson limit. Mid-IR observations demonstrate that a number of candidates appear associated with hot circumstellar dust, although no objects as extreme as η Car are identified. The combined dataset suggests that the criteria employed to identify candidate LBVs results in a heterogeneous sample, also containing stars demonstrating the B[e] phenomenon. Of these, a subset of optically faint, low luminosity stars associated with hot dust are of particular interest since they appear similar to the likely progenitor of SN 2008S and the 2008 NGC 300 transient (albeit suffering less intrinsic extinction). Conclusions. The results of such a multiwavelength observational approach, employing multiplexing spectrographs and supplemented with quantitative model atmosphere analysis, appears to show considerable promise in both identifying and characterising the physical properties of LBVs as well as other short lived phases of massive stellar evolution.

Knowledge and attitudes of Spanish adolescent girls towards human papillomavirus infection: where to intervene to improve vaccination coverage

Background: HPV vaccine coverage is far from ideal in Valencia, Spain, and this could be partially related to the low knowledge about the disease and the vaccine, therefore we assessed these, as well as the attitude towards vaccination in adolescent girls, and tried to identify independently associated factors that could potentially be modified by an intervention in order to increase vaccine coverage. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in a random selection of schools of the Spanish region of Valencia. We asked mothers of 1278 girls, who should have been vaccinated in the 2011 campaign, for informed consent. Those that accepted their daughters’ participation, a questionnaire regarding the Knowledge of HPV infection and vaccine was passed to the girls in the school. Results: 833 mothers (65.1%) accepted participation. All their daughters’ responded the questionnaire. Of those, 89.9% had heard about HPV and they associated it to cervical cancer. Only 14% related it to other problems like genital warts. The knowledge score of the girls who had heard about HPV was 6.1/10. Knowledge was unrelated to the number of contacts with the health system (Pediatrician or nurse), and positively correlated with the discussions with classmates about the vaccine. Adolescents Spanish in origin or with an older sister vaccinated, had higher punctuation. 67% of the girls thought that the vaccine prevented cancer, and 22.6% felt that although prevented cancer the vaccine had important safety problems. 6.4% of the girls rejected the vaccine for safety problems or for not considering themselves at risk of infection. 71.5% of the girls had received at least one vaccine dose. Vaccinated girls scored higher knowledge (p = 0.05). Conclusion: Knowledge about HPV infection and vaccine was fair in adolescents of Valencia, and is independent to the number of contacts with the health system, it is however correlated to the conversations about the vaccine with their peers and the vaccination status. An action to improve HPV knowledge through health providers might increase vaccine coverage in the adolescents.

Conceptual Modelling of Complex Network Management Systems

Society, as we know it today, is completely dependent on computer networks, Internet and distributed systems, which place at our disposal the necessary services to perform our daily tasks. Moreover, and unconsciously, all services and distributed systems require network management systems. These systems allow us to, in general, maintain, manage, configure, scale, adapt, modify, edit, protect or improve the main distributed systems. Their role is secondary and is unknown and transparent to the users. They provide the necessary support to maintain the distributed systems whose services we use every day. If we don’t consider network management systems during the development stage of main distributed systems, then there could be serious consequences or even total failures in the development of the distributed systems. It is necessary, therefore, to consider the management of the systems within the design of distributed systems and systematize their conception to minimize the impact of the management of networks within the project of distributed systems. In this paper, we present a formalization method of the conceptual modelling for design of a network management system through the use of formal modelling tools, thus allowing from the definition of processes to identify those responsible for these. Finally we will propose a use case to design a conceptual model intrusion detection system in network.

Management of social networks in the educational process

The research developed in this work consists in proposing a set of techniques for management of social networks and their integration into the educational process. The proposals made are based on assumptions that have been proven with simple examples in a real scenario of university teaching. The results show that social networks have more capacity to spread information than educational web platforms. Moreover, educational social networks are developed in a context of freedom of expression intrinsically linked to Internet freedom. In that context, users can write opinions or comments which are not liked by the staff of schools. However, this feature can be exploited to enrich the educational process and improve the quality of their achievement. The network has covered needs and created new ones. So, the figure of the Community Manager is proposed as agent in educational context for monitoring network and aims to channel the opinions and to provide a rapid response to an academic problem.

Rehabilitating, repairing and restoring against demolishing, tearing down and destroying: the recovery of the military fort for the Santa Pola town museum

This communication develops the process of interventions of the Renaissance fortress of a new plant built in 1554–57 in Santa Pola. It is one of the earliest examples built with reference to military architecture theoretical treaties (XV–XVI) and best preserved. The study runs its own story from its initial military use, through the use of civil equipment until the final cultural and Museum Center. First, the project of Italian origin is examined and its use as barracks for troops for a duration of three centuries (1557–1850), pointing out the architectural constants of war machinery in a defense position and its origin as a rainwater collector and cistern: a perfect square with two bastions in which a plan of the uprising is preserved (1778). Secondly, we study the changes in the mentioned architecture throughout a century and a half (1850–1990) after its change of ownership (from the state to the municipality), and as a result of the new use as a city hall and public endowment: a market and health and leisure centre, which meant the demolition of defensive elements and the opening up to the outside of the inner parade ground. And thirdly, the new transfer of the municipal offices brings in the beginning of a project of transformations (1990–2015) that retrieves the demolished elements at the same time as it assigns the entire fort for a cultural centre: exhibition, research and history museum, promoting the identity between the citizens and the building which stands in the foundations of their city. The conclusions take us through an interesting route that goes from the approach of defensive tactics, its use as administrative headquarters to the current cultural policy of preservation. In addition, all the known plans of the fort are recovered (of military, civil and cultural use), some unpublished, as well as the project of the North wing that has guided the last operation and which has been set as a pattern of reference.

Inspeção-Geral da Educação e Ciência e Avaliação das Escolas : o caso da autoavaliação de um agrupamento de escolas : um olhar a partir de quem avalia e de quem é avaliado

Relatório de estágio de mestrado, Educação (Área de especialidade em Administração Educacional), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2016

Reducing task’s redundancy – the strategy of Faculty of Pharmacy Library to centralize all scientific research

Introduction – Based on a previous project of University of Lisbon (UL) – a Bibliometric Benchmarking Analysis of University of Lisbon, for the period of 2000-2009 – a database was created to support research information (ULSR). However this system was not integrated with other existing systems at University, as the UL Libraries Integrated System (SIBUL) and the Repository of University of Lisbon (Repositório.UL). Since libraries were called to be part of the process, the Faculty of Pharmacy Library’ team felt that it was very important to get all systems connected or, at least, to use that data in the library systems. Objectives – The main goals were to centralize all the scientific research produced at Faculty of Pharmacy, made it available to the entire Faculty, involve researchers and library team, capitalize and reinforce team work with the integration of several distinct projects and reducing tasks’ redundancy. Methods – Our basis was the imported data collection from the ISI Web of Science (WoS), for the period of 2000-2009, into ULSR. All the researchers and indexed publications at WoS, were identified. A first validation to identify all the researchers and their affiliation (university, faculty, department and unit) was done. The final validation was done by each researcher. In a second round, concerning the same period, all Pharmacy Faculty researchers identified their published scientific work in other databases/resources (NOT WoS). To our strategy, it was important to get all the references and essential/critical to relate them with the correspondent digital objects. To each researcher previously identified, was requested to register all their references of the ‘NOT WoS’ published works, at ULSR. At the same time, they should submit all PDF files (for both WoS and NOT WoS works) in a personal area of the Web server. This effort enabled us to do a more reliable validation and prepare the data and metadata to be imported to Repository and to Library Catalogue. Results – 558 documents related with 122 researchers, were added into ULSR. 1378 bibliographic records (WoS + NOT WoS) were converted into UNIMARC and Dublin Core formats. All records were integrated in the catalogue and repository. Conclusions – Although different strategies could be adopted, according to each library team, we intend to share this experience and give some tips of what could be done and how Faculty of Pharmacy created and implemented her strategy.

Greater Europe. Putin's vision of European (dis)integration. OSW Study 46/2013

On several occasions since 2001 Vladimir Putin has raised the concept of ‘Greater Europe’, a partly-integrated common space comprising mainly Russia and the European Union. This concept has never been recast into a detailed political programme. While it has been championed as‘a Europe without dividing lines’, the concept would in practice permanently split Europe into two geopolitical blocs – the Western bloc of the European Union, with Germany in the dominant role, and the Eastern bloc, consisting of the emerging Eurasian Union, with Russia in a hegemonic position. In recent years Russia has undertaken a number of initiatives aimed at implementing some elements of the concept. However, most of these have failed to become reality. In this context, we should expect Russia’s policy to focus on implementing its priority project of Eurasian integration, based on the structures of the Customs Union/the Eurasian Union. The Greater Europe project, on the other hand, will be postponed until the time when, as Moscow believes, a weakened EU will be ready to accept Russian proposals.

Integrating Europeans: The Political Economy and Social Aspects of Europeanization. ACES Working Papers (Curriculum Development), 2012

This course, then, investigates the effects of integration on European citizens as well as the duality of the EU as a competitive and social model. It is sensitive to the involvement of social groups, protest, and domestic politics in the study of market integration. Some of the questions we explore are: What are the effects of regulatory policy-making on social actors, how do such actors’ strategies and behaviors change as a consequence, and how to they overcome their collective action problems? Why is it that the logic of integration has at times followed a logic of “permissive consensus” while at other times it has been described as a “constraining dissensus”? What is the importance of discourse in domestic politics in order to articulate and legitimate Europeanization? How do European identities change as a consequence of policymaking as well as of protest? To what extent do ordinary Europeans matter in terms of accepting and opposing the project of European integration, how do European citizens in core and peripheral EU states experience Europeanization, and how is their involvement in the integration project to be conceptualized?

Palavras que nos embalam: a escrita criativa no 1º ciclo do ensino básico

A leitura e a escrita mantêm entre si relações de grande proximidade sendo praticamente indissociáveis. Na verdade, nas últimas décadas, a investigação tem vindo a demonstrar que a aprendizagem da leitura e da escrita se processa praticamente em simultâneo e que, ao longo do processo de ensino-aprendizagem, essa relação entre os dois domínios se vai intensificando. Assim, sabemos hoje, que quanto mais se lê melhor se escreve, da mesma forma que quanto mais se escreve maior é a capacidade de compreender os textos lidos. Ao professor de Português compete a tarefa de desenvolver nos seus alunos, em qualquer nível de ensino, competências várias em todos os domínios contemplados nos documentos legais e programáticos em vigor. No entanto, e dada a natureza deste Relatório Final de Prática de Ensino Supervisionada, não podemos deixar de frisar que, relativamente aos domínios da leitura e da escrita, o professor de língua materna deve promover e estimular nos seus alunos o desenvolvimento gradual e articulado de competências relacionadas com a compreensão leitora e a expressão escrita, nas suas várias dimensões – ortográfica, textual e criativa. Encarando a escrita criativa como uma modalidade fundamental para a criança, não só por alargar a sua capacidade imaginativa, mas também por permitir adquirir, consolidar e utilizar com progressiva autonomia e criatividade todos os aspetos relacionados com a estrutura da língua, perspetivamo-la como fundamental nas aulas de Português, pelas potencialidades de que a mesma se reveste e não apenas como ferramenta utilizada para desbloquear nos alunos o receio da página em branco. Daí que tenhamos concebido e implementado, numa sala de 3º ano de escolaridade, num dos agrupamentos de escolas de Portalegre, um projeto de investigação-ação centrado no domínio da escrita criativa, mas alicerçado em práticas de leitura compreensiva de textos literários, práticas essas que antecederam os momentos de escrita. Desse projeto em particular, e das atividades implementadas ao longo da Prática de Ensino Supervisionada nas diversas disciplinas em geral, no 1º e no 2º CEB, dar-se-á conta, de forma reflexiva, neste Relatório Final.

Data compilation of ESOP

The work in this sub-project of ESOP focuses on the advective and convective transforma-tion of water masses in the Greenland Sea and its neighbouring areas. It includes observational work on the sub-mesoscale and analysis of hydrographic data up to the gyre-scale. Observations of active convective plumes were made with a towed chain equipped with up to 80 CTD sensors, giving a horizontal and vertical resolution of the hydrographic fields of a few metres. The observed scales of the penetrative convective plumes compare well with those given by theory. On the mesoscale the structure of homogeneous eddies formed as a result of deep convection was observed and the associated mixing and renewal of the intermediate layers quantified. The relative importance and efficiency of thermal and haline penetrative convection in relation to the surface boundary conditions (heat and salt fluxes and ice cover) and the ambient stratification are studied using the multi year time series of hydro-graphic data in the central Greenland Sea. The modification of the water column of the Greenland Sea gyre through advection from and mixing with water at its rim is assessed on longer time scales. The relative contributions are quantified using modern water mass analysis methods based on inverse techniques. Likewise the convective renewal and the spreading of the Arctic Intermediate Water from its formation area is quantified. The aim is to budget the heat and salt content of the water column, in particular of the low salinity surface layer, and to relate its seasonal and interannual variability to the lateral fluxes and the fluxes at the air-sea-ice interface. This will allow to estimate residence times for the different layers of the Greenland Sea gyre, a quantity important for the description of the Polar Ocean carbon cycle.

Historical sea ice of the Baltic Sea (1960/61-78/79)

The Baltic Sea is a seasonally ice-covered, marginal sea in central northern Europe. It is an essential waterway connecting highly industrialised countries. Because ship traffic is intermittently hindered by sea ice, the local weather services have been monitoring sea ice conditions for decades. In the present study we revisit a historical monitoring data set, covering the winters 1960/1961 to 1978/1979. This data set, dubbed Data Bank for Baltic Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperatures (BASIS) ice, is based on hand-drawn maps that were collected and then digitised in 1981 in a joint project of the Finnish Institute of Marine Research (today the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)) and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). BASIS ice was designed for storage on punch cards and all ice information is encoded by five digits. This makes the data hard to access. Here we present a post-processed product based on the original five-digit code. Specifically, we convert to standard ice quantities (including information on ice types), which we distribute in the current and free Network Common Data Format (NetCDF). Our post-processed data set will help to assess numerical ice models and provide easy-to-access unique historical reference material for sea ice in the Baltic Sea. In addition we provide statistics showcasing the data quality. The website http://www.baltic-ocean.org hosts the post-processed data and the conversion code.

Report from the Delta Station : a report covering activities and achievements of the Delta Waterfowl Research Station in the Prairie Provinces of Canada /

"A waterfowl research project of the North American Wildlife Foundation."

Annual report of the President of the Board of Education of the town of Berkeley.

Mode of access: Internet.