Investigation of Utilizing Single Surface Depressions in Optimization of NLF Aerofoil Design

An environment has been created for the optimisation of aerofoil profiles with inclusion of small surface features. For TS wave dominated flows, the paper examines the consequences of the addition of a depression on the aerodynamic optimisation of an NLF aerofoil, and describes the geometry definition fidelity and optimisation algorithm employed in the development process. The variables that define the depression for this optimisation investigation have been fixed, however a preliminary study is presented demonstrating the sensitivity of the flow to the depression characteristics. Solutions to the optimisation problem are then presented using both gradient-based and genetic algorithm techniques, and for accurate representation of the inclusion of small surface perturbations it is concluded that a global optimisation method is required for this type of aerofoil optimisation task due to the nature of the response surface generated. When dealing with surface features, changes in the transition onset are likely to be of a non-linear nature so it is highly critical to have an optimisation algorithm that is robust, suggesting that for this framework, gradient-based methods alone are not suited.

Inhibition of dUTPase induces synthetic lethality with thymidylate synthase-targeted therapies in non-small cell lung cancer

Chemotherapies that target thymidylate synthase (TS) continue to see considerable clinical expansion in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). One drawback to TS-targeted therapies is drug resistance and subsequent treatment failure. Novel therapeutic and biomarker-driven strategies are urgently needed. The enzyme deoxyuridine triphosphate nucleotidohydrolase (dUTPase) is reported to protect tumor cells from aberrant misincorporation of uracil during TS inhibition. The goal of this study was to investigate the expression and significance of dUTPase in mediating response to TS-targeted agents in NSCLC. The expression of dUTPase in NSCLC cell lines and clinical specimens was measured by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase PCR and immunohistochemistry. Using a validated RNA interference approach, dUTPase was effectively silenced in a panel of NSCLC cell lines and response to the fluoropyrimidine fluorodeoxyuridine (FUdR) and the antifolate pemetrexed was analyzed using growth inhibition and clonogenic assays. Apoptosis was analyzed by flow cytometry. Significant variation in the quantity and cellular expression of dUTPase was observed, including clear evidence of overexpression in NSCLC cell line models and tumor specimens at the mRNA and protein level. RNA interference-mediated silencing of dUTPase significantly sensitized NSCLC cells to growth inhibition induced by FUdR and pemetrexed. This sensitization was accompanied by a significant expansion of intracellular dUTP pools and significant decreases in NSCLC cell viability evaluated by clonogenicity and apoptotic analyses. Together, these results strongly suggest that uracil misincorporation is a potent determinant of cytotoxicity to TS inhibition in NSCLC and that inhibition of dUTPase is a mechanism-based therapeutic approach to significantly enhance the efficacy of TS-targeted chemotherapeutic agents.

A phase I/II trial of vorinostat in combination with 5-fluorouracil in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who previously failed 5-FU-based chemotherapy

PURPOSE: We conducted a phase I/II clinical trial to determine the safety and feasibility of combining vorinostat with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) and elevated intratumoral thymidylate synthase (TS).

METHODS: Patients with mCRC who had failed all standard therapeutic options were eligible. Intratumoral TS mRNA expression and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) histone acetylation were measured before and after 6 consecutive days of vorinostat treatment at 400 mg PO daily. 5-FU/LV were given on days 6 and 7 and repeated every 2 weeks, along with continuous daily vorinostat. Dose escalation occurred in cohorts of three to six patients.

RESULTS: Ten patients were enrolled. Three dose levels were explored in the phase I portion of the study. Two dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) were observed at the starting dose level, which resulted in dose de-escalation to levels -1 and -2. Given the occurrence of two DLTs at each of the dose levels, we were unable to establish a maximum tolerated dose (MTD). Two patients achieved significant disease stabilization for 4 and 6 months. Grade 3 and 4 toxicities included fatigue, thrombocytopenia and mucositis. Intratumoral TS downregulation > or = 50% was observed in one patient only. Acetylation of histone 3 was observed in PBMCs following vorinostat treatment.

CONCLUSIONS: The study failed to establish a MTD and was terminated. The presence of PBMC histone acetylation indicates biological activity of vorinostat, however, consistent reductions in intratumoral TS mRNA were not observed. Alternate vorinostat dose-scheduling may alleviate the toxicity and achieve optimal TS downregulation.

Histone deacetylase inhibitors suppress thymidylate synthase gene expression and synergize with the fluoropyrimidines in colon cancer cells

Despite recent therapeutic advances, the response rates to chemotherapy for patients with metastatic colon cancer remain at approximately 50% with the fluoropyrimidine, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), continuing to serve as the foundation chemotherapeutic agent for the treatment of this disease. Previous studies have demonstrated that overexpression of thymidylate synthase (TS) is a key determinant of resistance to 5-FU-based chemotherapy. Therefore, there is a significant need to develop alternative therapeutic strategies to overcome TS-mediated resistance. In this study, we demonstrate that the histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi) vorinostat and LBH589 significantly downregulate TS gene expression in a panel of colon cancer cell lines. Downregulation of TS was independent of p53, p21 and HDAC2 expression and was achievable in vivo as demonstrated by mouse xenograft models. We provide evidence that HDACi treatment leads to a potent transcriptional repression of the TS gene. Combination of the fluoropyrimidines 5-FU or FUdR with both vorinostat and LBH589 enhanced cell cycle arrest and growth inhibition. Importantly, the downstream effects of TS inhibition were significantly enhanced by this combination including the inhibition of acute TS induction and the enhanced accumulation of the cytotoxic nucleotide intermediate dUTP. These data demonstrate that HDACi repress TS expression at the level of transcription and provides the first evidence suggesting a direct mechanistic link between TS downregulation and the synergistic interaction observed between HDACi and 5-FU. This study provides rationale for the continued clinical evaluation of HDACi in combination with 5-FU-based therapies as a strategy to overcome TS-mediated resistance.

Novel opportunities for thymidylate metabolism as a therapeutic target

For over 40 years, the fluoropyrimidine 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) has remained the central agent in therapeutic regimens employed in the treatment of colorectal cancer and is frequently combined with the DNA-damaging agents oxaliplatin and irinotecan, increasing response rates and improving overall survival. However, many patients will derive little or no benefit from treatment, highlighting the need to identify novel therapeutic targets to improve the efficacy of current 5-FU-based chemotherapeutic strategies. dUTP nucleotidohydrolase (dUTPase) catalyzes the hydrolysis of dUTP to dUMP and PPi, providing substrate for thymidylate synthase (TS) and DNA synthesis and repair. Although dUTP is a normal intermediate in DNA synthesis, its accumulation and misincorporation into DNA as uracil is lethal. Importantly, uracil misincorporation represents an important mechanism of cytotoxicity induced by the TS-targeted class of chemotherapeutic agents including 5-FU. A growing body of evidence suggests that dUTPase is an important mediator of response to TS-targeted agents. In this article, we present further evidence showing that elevated expression of dUTPase can protect breast cancer cells from the expansion of the intracellular uracil pool, translating to reduced growth inhibition following treatment with 5-FU. We therefore report the implementation of in silico drug development techniques to identify and develop small-molecule inhibitors of dUTPase. As 5-FU and the oral 5-FU prodrug capecitabine remain central agents in the treatment of a variety of malignancies, the clinical utility of a small-molecule inhibitor to dUTPase represents a viable strategy to improve the clinical efficacy of these mainstay chemotherapeutic agents.

FPGA-based Tabu Search for Detection in Large-Scale MIMO Systems

The increasing scale of Multiple-Input Multiple- Output (MIMO) topologies employed in forthcoming wireless communications standards presents a substantial implementation challenge to designers of embedded baseband signal processing architectures for MIMO transceivers. Specifically the increased scale of such systems has a substantial impact on the perfor- mance/cost balance of detection algorithms for these systems. Whilst in small-scale systems Sphere Decoding (SD) algorithms offer the best quasi-ML performance/cost balance, in larger systems heuristic detectors, such Tabu-Search (TS) detectors are superior. This paper addresses a dearth of research in architectures for TS-based MIMO detection, presenting the first known realisations of TS detectors for 4 × 4 and 10 × 10 MIMO systems. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, these are the largest single-chip detectors on record.

Relação do aroma e da espuma dos vinhos espumantes com o potencial enológico das uvas e dos vinhos

Os espumantes produzidos segundo o método Champanhês são obtidos após uma segunda fermentação em garrafa. Quando o vinho é vertido no copo, o CO2 produzido é libertado, sendo a espuma formada o resultado da sua interacção com os constituintes do vinho. A quantidade e a estabilidade da espuma do vinho espumante estão relacionadas com a sua composição química. Para além da espuma, o aroma é também um parâmetro importante de qualidade na apreciação geral de um vinho espumante. O aroma de um vinho espumante provém do contributo das uvas assim como do processo fermentativo. Dependendo do estado de maturação da uva, o contributo dos compostos voláteis para o aroma é diferente. Em virtude da vindima para os vinhos espumantes ser realizada antes da vindima para os vinhos maduros, dependendo da variedade, as uvas poderão não ser colhidas na expressão máxima do seu aroma, podendo verificar-se uma perda significativa do seu potencial varietal volátil. O objectivo desta dissertação é relacionar o aroma e a espuma dos vinhos espumantes com o potencial enológico das uvas e dos vinhos. Para isso, foi estudada a composição volátil das duas castas principais da Bairrada, a casta branca Fernão-Pires (FP) e a casta tinta Baga (BG), sendo estas duas das castas usadas para a produção de espumante. Para estudar a composição volátil das uvas durante a maturação, com vista a avaliar este efeito na expressão máxima de compostos voláteis, foi optimizada para este propósito a metodologia de microextracção em fase sólida em espaço de cabeça (HS-SPME). As uvas foram colhidas semanalmente, em duas vinhas, do pintor à pós-maturidade sendo posteriormente analisadas pela metodologia de HS-SPME seguida de cromatografia de gás acoplada à espectrometria de massa com quadrupolo (GC–qMS). No caso das uvas BG, observou-se um aumento acentuado na expressão máxima de compostos voláteis próximo da maturidade da uva determinada pelo teor em açúcar e acidez titulável, mantendo-se constante durante a pós-maturidade. Na determinação do perfil volátil das uvas ao longo da maturação foram identificados 66 compostos varietais nas uvas provenientes de uma vinha (Pedralvites) e 45 da outra vinha (Colégio). Em ambas as vinhas foram identificados 23 sesquiterpenóides, 13 monoterpenóides, 6 norisoprenóides, 2 álcoois aromáticos e 1 diterpenóide. Os sesquiterpenóides, devido à sua abundância em número e em área cromatográfica, podem ser considerados marcadores da casta BG. As uvas FP apresentaram um comportamento diferente do das uvas BG, sendo a expressão máxima de compostos voláteis expressa durante um curto período de tempo (1 semana), que coincide com a maturidade da uva. Depois de atingido este pico, observa-se uma diminuição drástica logo na semana seguinte. Este comportamento foi observado em ambas as vinhas, onde foram identificados 20 compostos voláteis varietais e 5 pré-fermentativos (álcoois e aldeídos em C6). Estes resultados mostram que quando estas castas são colhidas precocemente (1 semana antes da maturidade) para a produção de espumante, é observada uma redução significativa do potencial volátil que é expresso na maturidade. Para a análise da composição volátil dos vinhos espumantes foi optimizada uma metodologia de microextracção que permite usar uma maior quantidade de fase estacionária, a extracção sorptiva em barra de agitação (SBSE). O método foi optimizado usando 10 padrões de compostos voláteis representativos das principais famílias químicas presentes no vinho, nomeadamente, ésteres, monoterpenóides, sesquiterpenóides, norisoprenóides em C13 e álcoois. O método proposto apresenta uma boa linearidade (r2 > 0,982) e a reprodutibilidade varia entre 8,9 e 17,8%. Os limites de detecção para a maioria dos compostos é bastante baixo, entre 0,05 e 9,09 μg L-1. O método foi aplicado para a análise da composição volátil dos vinhos espumantes. Dentro dos vinhos espumantes analisados, foi estudada a influência da casta, do tipo de solo e do estado de maturação das uvas na sua composição volátil. A casta FP pode dar origem a vinhos com maior potencial de aroma do que a casta BG. Relativamente à avaliação dos diferentes estados de maturação, verificou-se que as uvas da maturidade e as da colheita tardia (uma semana depois da maturidade) deram origem aos vinhos com maior quantidade de compostos voláteis. Para os três tipos de solo estudados (arenoso, argiloso e argilo-calcário), o vinho obtido a partir de uvas colhidas no solo argilo-calcário foi o que mostrou a maior concentração de compostos voláteis varietais. A espuma destes vinhos espumantes foi também avaliada quanto à sua quantidade máxima (HM) e tempo de estabilidade (TS). O vinho espumante que apresentou um maior TS foi o vinho produzido a partir da casta FP proveniente de uma colheita tardia e solo argiloso. Os vinhos provenientes dos solos arenosos e argilo-calcários são os que apresentaram valores mais baixos de TS. Com vista a avaliar quais os conjuntos de moléculas do vinho que estão relacionados com as propriedades da espuma e possíveis sinergismos entre eles, para cada vinho espumante foi separada a fracção hidrofóbica de baixo peso molecular (MeLMW), a fracção de elevado peso molecular (HMW) e duas fracções de peso molecular intermédio (AqIMW e MeIMW). As propriedades da espuma dos vinhos modelo, reconstituídos com estas fracções e suas misturas, foram avaliadas. A combinação da fracção HMW com a MeLMW aumentou o TS 2,7 vezes quando comparado com o observado para a fracção HMW isoladamente, produzindo um efeito sinergético. Este aumento do TS ainda foi maior quando se combinou a fracção HMW com as subfracções obtidas a partir da fracção MeLMW, principalmente para as fracções menos apolares. A subfracção hidrofóbica menos apolar foi caracterizada por espectrometria de massa de ionização por electrospray (ESI-MS/MS) tendo sido identificada uma série de oligómeros de polietileno glicol e um potencial composto tensioactivo, o 8-hidroxi-tridecanoato de dietilenoglicolglicerilacetato. A fracção MeLMW foi também isolada da espuma do vinho espumante e caracterizada por ESI-MS/MS, permitindo identificar vários compostos potenciais tensioactivos, nomeadamente, dois monoacilgliceróis e quatro derivados de ácidos gordos com gliceriletilenoglicol. Estes resultados confirmam que estes compostos relacionados com a estabilidade da espuma existem em maior número na espuma do que no vinho. O vinho foi ainda fraccionado em 12 grupos de moléculas: 3 fracções de manoproteínas, 3 de arabinogalactanas, 3 de misturas de polissacarídeos, proteínas e compostos fenólicos e 3 fracções de peso molecular intermédio e baixo, compostas por uma mistura de hidratos de carbono, peptídeos e compostos fenólicos. Foram usados vinhos modelo reconstituídos com cada uma das fracções isoladas na concentração em que estas se encontraram no vinho. Foram também efectuados ensaios com soluções modelo dez vezes mais concentradas e com misturas de algumas das fracções. Todas as soluções formadas foram avaliadas quanto às propriedades da espuma. O aumento da concentração para dez vezes faz com que a solução contendo a fracção rica em manoproteínas (MP1) aumente para mais do dobro a HM e 7,4 vezes mais o TS. A combinação entre a fracção MP1 e a MeLMW produziu um aumento significativo nos parâmetros de HM e TS. A combinação da fracção HMW (manoproteínas com baixo teor em proteína) com a MeLMW (tensioactivos derivados de ácidos gordos com gliceriletilenoglicol) contém os compostos chave de um vinho espumante para se obter uma maior quantidade e estabilidade da espuma.

Perfil de ensino do professor de ciências: concetualização e validação

As ciências são um elemento central da cultura contemporânea pelo que a educação científica tem de ser vista como um direito essencial dos cidadãos. A qualidade do ensino das ciências na escola torna-se, portanto, um especial foco de interesse, científico, político e social, ao nível local, nacional, e global. A investigação em educação em ciências tem produzido conhecimentos que permitem compreender os problemas e fundamentar decisões conducentes a um ensino de ciências ajustado aos desafios atuais. Por outro lado, várias organizações internacionais (UE, OCDE e UNESCO) também têm produzido documentos que visam regular as políticas globais de ensino de ciências, assumindo que a educação científica dos cidadãos é uma condição para a prosperidade económica e social de qualquer estado. Assim, atualmente, existe um acervo documental extenso e diverso relativo ao ensino de ciências, pelo que se impõe um exercício de análise e síntese que identifique quais as orientações-chave que devem ser consideradas. O ensino de nível secundário (ISCE2 e ISCE3), sendo uma etapa em que os jovens fazem escolhas pessoais e vocacionais importantes, merece particular atenção, pois diversos estudos revelam que regista níveis preocupantes de abandono e de desinteresse pelas áreas científicas e tecnológicas. Sendo as práticas dos professores um dos principais fatores de inovação e mudança importa sistematizar os conhecimentos científicos que explicam a sua complexidade e podem orientar a promoção da sua qualidade. O estudo que se apresenta situa-se na confluência de todos estes interesses e visou duas finalidades: delimitar um conceito unificador que permita estudar e desenvolver a qualidade das práticas dos professores de ciências de nível secundário; desenvolver um instrumento de inquérito que operacionalize esse conceito, numa perspetiva de investigação, formação e supervisão de práticas de ensino de ciências. O plano da investigação decorreu em duas fases. Na fase I foi delimitado o conceito perfil de ensino do professor de ciências (PEPC); este estrutura-se em três dimensões – didática, epistemológica e psicológica – cujos referenciais teórico-empíricos decorreram de revisão sistemática de literatura e de abordagem empírica de natureza exploratória e qualitativa, baseada em entrevistas a professores de ciências. Na fase II foi construído e validado o questionário do perfil de ensino do professor de ciências (QPEPC); este contém itens empiricamente situados, construídos a partir do discurso dos professores entrevistados na fase I e seguidamente validados. A validação de QPEPC envolveu dois processos de inquérito por questionário e uma metodologia mista de investigação (análise de conteúdo e análise estatística de dados): a primeira validação contou com um painel internacional de 12 especialistas em didática de ciências; a segunda validação envolveu 184 professores de ciências portugueses. Concluindo-se que QPEPC avalia duas dimensões de PEPC, construíram-se índices e modelos gráficos para facilitar a interpretação dos dados recolhidos. Analisaram-se limitações e potencialidades heurísticas de PEPC e QPEPC, enquanto produtos da investigação, perspetivando o seu uso em contextos diversos, nomeadamente futuras investigações e cenários de formação, reflexão e supervisão de professores de ciências.

Nanosensor for assessing the risk of a cardiovascular disease

The incidence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has been increasing according to the European and global statistics. Thus, the development of new analytical devices, such as biosensors for assessing the risk of CVD could become a valuable approach for the improvement of healthcare service. In latest years, the nanotechnology has provided new materials with improved electronic properties which have an important contribution in the transduction mechanism of biosensors. Thus, in this thesis, biosensors based on field effect transistors with single-walled carbon nanotubes (NTFET) were developed for the detection of C-reactive protein (CRP) in clinical samples, that is, blood serum and saliva from a group of control patients and a group of CVD risk patients. CRP is an acute-phase protein, which is commonly known as the best validated biomarker for the assessment of CVD, the single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) were applied as transduction components, and the immunoreaction (interaction between the CRP antigen and the antibodies specific to CRP) was used as the mechanism of molecular recognition for the label-free detection of CRP. After the microfabrication of field effect transistors (FET), the screening of the most important variables for the dispersion of SWCNT, the assemblage of NTFET, and their application on standard solutions of CRP, it was found that NTFET respond accurately to CRP both in saliva and in serum samples, since similar CRP levels were found with the NTFET and the traditional methodology (ELISA technique). On the other hand, a strong correlation between salivary and serum CRP was found with NTFET, which means that saliva could be used, based on non-invasive sampling, as an alternative fluid to blood serum. It was also shown that NTFET could discriminate control patients from CVD risk patients, allowing the determination of a cut-off value for salivary CRP of 1900 ng L-1, which corresponds to the well established cut-off of 3 mg L-1 for CRP in serum, constituting an important finding for the possible establishment of a new range of CRP levels based on saliva. According to the data provided from the volunteer patients regarding their lipoprotein profile and lifestyle factors, it was concluded that the control and the CVD risk patients could be separated taking into account the various risk factors established in literature as strong contributors for developing a CVD, such as triglycerides, serum CRP, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, body mass index, Framingham risk score, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes mellitus. Thus, this work could provide an additional contribution to the understanding of the association of biomarkers levels in serum and saliva samples, and above all, cost-effective, rapid, label-free, and disposable NTFET were developed, based on a noninvasive sampling, for the assessment of CVD risk, thus constituting a potential point-of-care technology.

Inter layer and cooperative design strategies for green mobile networks

The promise of a truly mobile experience is to have the freedom to roam around anywhere and not be bound to a single location. However, the energy required to keep mobile devices connected to the network over extended periods of time quickly dissipates. In fact, energy is a critical resource in the design of wireless networks since wireless devices are usually powered by batteries. Furthermore, multi-standard mobile devices are allowing users to enjoy higher data rates with ubiquitous connectivity. However, the bene ts gained from multiple interfaces come at a cost in terms of energy consumption having profound e ect on the mobile battery lifetime and standby time. This concern is rea rmed by the fact that battery lifetime is one of the top reasons why consumers are deterred from using advanced multimedia services on their mobile on a frequent basis. In order to secure market penetration for next generation services energy e ciency needs to be placed at the forefront of system design. However, despite recent e orts, energy compliant features in legacy technologies are still in its infancy, and new disruptive architectures coupled with interdisciplinary design approaches are required in order to not only promote the energy gain within a single protocol layer, but to enhance the energy gain from a holistic perspective. A promising approach is cooperative smart systems, that in addition to exploiting context information, are entities that are able to form a coalition and cooperate in order to achieve a common goal. Migrating from this baseline, this thesis investigates how these technology paradigm can be applied towards reducing the energy consumption in mobile networks. In addition, we introduce an additional energy saving dimension by adopting an interlayer design so that protocol layers are designed to work in synergy with the host system, rather than independently, for harnessing energy. In this work, we exploit context information, cooperation and inter-layer design for developing new energy e cient and technology agnostic building blocks for mobile networks. These technology enablers include energy e cient node discovery and short-range cooperation for energy saving in mobile handsets, complemented by energy-aware smart scheduling for promoting energy saving on the network side. Analytical and simulations results were obtained, and veri ed in the lab on a real hardware testbed. Results have shown that up to 50% energy saving could be obtained.

Seamless integration of heterogeneous networks in multicast environments

Nowadays, communication environments are already characterized by a myriad of competing and complementary technologies that aim to provide an ubiquitous connectivity service. Next Generation Networks need to hide this heterogeneity by providing a new abstraction level, while simultaneously be aware of the underlying technologies to deliver richer service experiences to the end-user. Moreover, the increasing interest for group-based multimedia services followed by their ever growing resource demands and network dynamics, has been boosting the research towards more scalable and exible network control approaches. The work developed in this Thesis enables such abstraction and exploits the prevailing heterogeneity in favor of a context-aware network management and adaptation. In this scope, we introduce a novel hierarchical control framework with self-management capabilities that enables the concept of Abstract Multiparty Trees (AMTs) to ease the control of multiparty content distribution throughout heterogeneous networks. A thorough evaluation of the proposed multiparty transport control framework was performed in the scope of this Thesis, assessing its bene ts in terms of network selection, delivery tree recon guration and resource savings. Moreover, we developed an analytical study to highlight the scalability of the AMT concept as well as its exibility in large scale networks and group sizes. To prove the feasibility and easy deployment characteristic of the proposed control framework, we implemented a proof-of-concept demonstrator that comprehends the main control procedures conceptually introduced. Its outcomes highlight a good performance of the multiparty content distribution tree control, including its local and global recon guration. In order to endow the AMT concept with the ability to guarantee the best service experience by the end-user, we integrate in the control framework two additional QoE enhancement approaches. The rst employs the concept of Network Coding to improve the robustness of the multiparty content delivery, aiming at mitigating the impact of possible packet losses in the end-user service perception. The second approach relies on a machine learning scheme to autonomously determine at each node the expected QoE towards a certain destination. This knowledge is then used by di erent QoE-aware network management schemes that, jointly, maximize the overall users' QoE. The performance and scalability of the control procedures developed, aided by the context and QoE-aware mechanisms, show the advantages of the AMT concept and the proposed hierarchical control strategy for the multiparty content distribution with enhanced service experience. Moreover we also prove the feasibility of the solution in a practical environment, and provide future research directions that bene t the evolved control framework and make it commercially feasible.

Seasonal and storm induced morphological variations at praia de Faro, península do Ancão, southern Portugal

Dissertação de Mestrado, Estudos Marinhos e Costeiros, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2009

Sistemas de informação para a gestão turística

Nowadays, to be competitive in society means to have a technological framework that fi ts customer responses. In tourism, the need for ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is even more important, since to sell the tourist product it is crucial to disclose the information that characterizes it, plus, it is necessary to organize, manage and deal with it in accordance with the tourists’ expectations. After the tourist product has been consumed, it is important to share the experience with other travellers. The process of purchase and consumption of a tourist product is possible only if tourists and professionals have access to the information required, and for this it is necessary to use systems that can: manage results, flights and customer loyalty, distribute information and travel planning, among other things. All these systems have tourist information management in common, which leads to the conclusion that they are indispensable to tourism. This paper presents several information systems that coexist in the tourism sector, as well as those used in tourist distribution channels. Finally we show the trends that these systems are causing in tourism.

Sediment dynamics and tidal inlet relocation in mixed-energy settings: the case of Ancão inlet (Algarve - Portugal)

Tese de dout., Ciências do Mar, Faculdade de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente, Univ. do Algarve, 2003

Dissection of the early steps in the assembly of the 20S proteasome in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Tese de dout., Bioquímica (Biologia Celular e Molecular), Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Univ. do Algarve, 2010