Desenvolvimento lexical: perspectivas e práticas de professores no 1.º ciclo do ensino básico

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para a obtenção de grau de Mestre em Didática da Língua Portuguesa no 1.º e 2.º Ciclos do Ensino Básico

Environmental Decision Support: a Multi-Agent Approach

The environmental management domain is vast and encompasses many identifiable activities: impact assessment, planning, project evaluation, etc. In particular, this paper focusses on the modelling of the project evaluation activity. The environmental decision support system under development aims to provide assistance to project developers in the selection of adequate locations, guaranteeing the compliance with the applicable regulations and the existing development plans as well as satisfying the specified project requirements. The inherent multidisciplinarity features of this activity lead to the adoption of the Multi-Agent paradigm, and, in particular, to the modelling of the involved agencies as a community of cooperative autonomous agents, where each agency contributes with its share of problem solving to the final system’s recommendation. To achieve this behaviour the many conclusions of the individual agencies have to be justifiably accommodated: not only they may differ, but can be interdependent, complementary, irreconcilable, or simply, independent. We propose different solutions (involving both local and global consistency) to support the adequate merge of the distinct perspectives that inevitably arise during this type of decision making.

Intelligent Distributed Environmental Decision Support System

This article discusses the development of an Intelligent Distributed Environmental Decision Support System, built upon the association of a Multi-agent Belief Revision System with a Geographical Information System (GIS). The inherent multidisciplinary features of the involved expertises in the field of environmental management, the need to define clear policies that allow the synthesis of divergent perspectives, its systematic application, and the reduction of the costs and time that result from this integration, are the main reasons that motivate the proposal of this project. This paper is organised in two parts: in the first part we present and discuss the developed Distributed Belief Revision Test-bed — DiBeRT; in the second part we analyse its application to the environmental decision support domain, with special emphasis on the interface with a GIS.

Adapting Meeting Tools to Agent Decision

Electricity markets are complex environments comprising several negotiation mechanisms. MASCEM (Multi- Agent System for Competitive Electricity Markets) is a simulator developed to allow deep studies of the interactions between the players that take part in the electricity market negotiations. ALBidS (Adaptive Learning Strategic Bidding System) is a multiagent system created to provide decision support to market negotiating players. Fully integrated with MASCEM it considers several different methodologies based on very distinct approaches. The Six Thinking Hats is a powerful technique used to look at decisions from different perspectives. This paper aims to complement ALBidS strategies usage by MASCEM players, providing, through the Six Thinking Hats group decision technique, a means to combine them and take advantages from their different perspectives. The combination of the different proposals resulting from ALBidS’ strategies is performed through the application of a Genetic Algorithm, resulting in an evolutionary learning approach.

Stochastic Framework for Strategic Decision-making of Load-serving Entities for Day-ahead Market

The deregulation of electricity markets has diversified the range of financial transaction modes between independent system operator (ISO), generation companies (GENCO) and load-serving entities (LSE) as the main interacting players of a day-ahead market (DAM). LSEs sell electricity to end-users and retail customers. The LSE that owns distributed generation (DG) or energy storage units can supply part of its serving loads when the nodal price of electricity rises. This opportunity stimulates them to have storage or generation facilities at the buses with higher locational marginal prices (LMP). The short-term advantage of this model is reducing the risk of financial losses for LSEs in DAMs and its long-term benefit for the LSEs and the whole system is market power mitigation by virtually increasing the price elasticity of demand. This model also enables the LSEs to manage the financial risks with a stochastic programming framework.

Decision support tool for Virtual Power Players: Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization applied to Day-ahead Vehicle-To-Grid Scheduling

This paper presents a decision support tool methodology to help virtual power players (VPPs) in the Smart Grid (SGs) context to solve the day-ahead energy resource scheduling considering the intensive use of Distributed Generation (DG) and Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G). The main focus is the application of a new hybrid method combing a particle swarm approach and a deterministic technique based on mixedinteger linear programming (MILP) to solve the day-ahead scheduling minimizing total operation costs from the aggregator point of view. A realistic mathematical formulation, considering the electric network constraints and V2G charging and discharging efficiencies is presented. Full AC power flow calculation is included in the hybrid method to allow taking into account the network constraints. A case study with a 33-bus distribution network and 1800 V2G resources is used to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.

The use of analytical hierarchy process in spatial decision support system for land use management

Geographic information systems give us the possibility to analyze, produce, and edit geographic information. Furthermore, these systems fall short on the analysis and support of complex spatial problems. Therefore, when a spatial problem, like land use management, requires a multi-criteria perspective, multi-criteria decision analysis is placed into spatial decision support systems. The analytic hierarchy process is one of many multi-criteria decision analysis methods that can be used to support these complex problems. Using its capabilities we try to develop a spatial decision support system, to help land use management. Land use management can undertake a broad spectrum of spatial decision problems. The developed decision support system had to accept as input, various formats and types of data, raster or vector format, and the vector could be polygon line or point type. The support system was designed to perform its analysis for the Zambezi river Valley in Mozambique, the study area. The possible solutions for the emerging problems had to cover the entire region. This required the system to process large sets of data, and constantly adjust to new problems’ needs. The developed decision support system, is able to process thousands of alternatives using the analytical hierarchy process, and produce an output suitability map for the problems faced.

Aquisição da Competência Lexical na Aprendizagem do Português Língua Segunda _ Especificidades do aluno angolano

A presente dissertação insere-se no âmbito do mestrado em Linguística: Ciências da Linguagem. Com este trabalho pretende-se, com base num estudo de caso sobre a Aquisição da Competência Lexical na Aprendizagem do Português Língua segunda, constatar se os alunos angolanos que aprendem o Português como Língua segunda adquirem e desenvolvem a competência lexical, atendendo às suas especificidades. Nesta dissertação discute-se sobre o ensino do Português e consequente aquisição da competência lexical, face à realidade plurilingue considerando as metodologias adotadas para o efeito. Sendo o português a língua do discurso pedagógico em Angola, e concomitantemente, língua segunda para a maioria da população angolana que é utente de diversas línguas (locais, nativas) designadas nacionais ou africanas de Angola, suscitou o mais vivo interesse em refletir sobre o seu ensino, as metodologias usadas para o efeito, visando a aquisição e o desenvolvimento da competência lexical de alunos que o aprendem. A pluralidade linguística de Angola coloca ao estado, aos professores de Língua Portuguesa, e não só, desafios enormes no que diz respeito à adoção de política linguística, quer da Língua Portuguesa, quer das línguas africanas de Angola no que concerne ao seu ensino e na promoção do sucesso escolar nos mais variados níveis de escolaridade. Por estas e outras razões, defende-se nesta dissertação não só a clarificação de metodologias adequadas e contextualizadas para o ensino do Português em Angola, tanto como língua segunda ou como língua materna, optando-se por uma ou outra metodologia com base na realidade específica do aluno, pois não se deve ignorar a proveniência linguística primária do aprendente, para que se consigam aprendizagens harmoniosas, sólidas e significativas.

Decision-making process of Nova Executivos’ students

Field lab: Consumer insights

Importance of decision-making in a purchasing context – DPS Case Study

This work project has the objective of exploring the importance of making good decisions on supplier selection, so that the purchasing department can contribute to the success of a company. For that it is presented a short bibliography review of the latest insights that were found relevant, on the subjects of purchasing, technology, outsourcing, supplier selection and decision-making techniques. For a better understating on how to deal with a decision-making situation, a case study is also presented: Digital Printing Solutions (DPS) is a Portuguese company that provides complete and integrated printing solutions and has been planning to contract a software supplier. DPS has no formal supplier-selection model and it has to choose between 2 suppliers. The case study was solved using the M-MACBETH software. I have found that complex decisions-making situations can be easily overcome by using the M-MACBETH decision model. Moreover, the usage of a model, instead of decision that follows no formal procedure, provides the decision maker with insights that can be useful to negotiate with the supplier.

How to improve consumer decision skills in children? A case study of an intervention with institutionalized children

The aim of this study is to assess the institutionalized children’s skills as consumers but also to assess how we can improve their knowledge through an intervention. The sample was composed of two subgroups (38 institutionalized children and 36 non-institutionalized children). In order to assess children’s knowledge, a questionnaire and an interview were used. The method used as intervention was a 30-minute class. Results suggested that institutionalized children have lower levels of knowledge regarding consumption-related practices and lower levels of accuracy at estimating prices than non-institutionalized children. However, results also showed that the attitudes of institutionalized children towards advertising and making decisions based on price/quantity evaluation or based on the use of the same strategy in different situations are not significantly different from the non-institutionalized children. Regarding the intervention, it was possible to conclude that one class is not the best method to improve children’s knowledge. Institutionalized children need a longer and more practical intervention.

Challenges of converting nonprofit in for-profit-reasons decision making and key success factores of a conversion

Due to external constraints (opposed by the market and legal system) and internal changes nonprofit organizations have been converting to for-profit entities combining commercial revenue and social value creation. To create an understanding of the conversion process considering its challenges, the reasons, the decision-making process and key success factors of a conversion are examined. Therefore, a two-step research procedure is used combining literature research and a multiple case study approach based on expert interviews with known companies. The outcome is a helpful guideline (including a decision matrix) for social entrepreneurs that might face a conversion.

The firm delocalization decision

In the current paper, the determinants of firm international relocation decision in twenty-six European countries during the period 2004-2014 are analyzed. We demonstrate, at light of three different but complementary theories that neoclassical, behavioural and institutional „push‟ factors have an impact in a firm decision-making process. Findings support that firm size, access to a global network, foreign capital, and negative internal growth in the workforce induce firm relocation. On the other hand, the degree of sunk assets has a negative effect on the probability of relocation. Delocalization decisions are also sector-dependent with low-tech manufacturing firms paying high salaries relocating abroad with a greater likelihood.

Essays on bounded rationality: Individual decision and strategic interaction

Economics is a social science which, therefore, focuses on people and on the decisions they make, be it in an individual context, or in group situations. It studies human choices, in face of needs to be fulfilled, and a limited amount of resources to fulfill them. For a long time, there was a convergence between the normative and positive views of human behavior, in that the ideal and predicted decisions of agents in economic models were entangled in one single concept. That is, it was assumed that the best that could be done in each situation was exactly the choice that would prevail. Or, at least, that the facts that economics needed to explain could be understood in the light of models in which individual agents act as if they are able to make ideal decisions. However, in the last decades, the complexity of the environment in which economic decisions are made and the limits on the ability of agents to deal with it have been recognized, and incorporated into models of decision making in what came to be known as the bounded rationality paradigm. This was triggered by the incapacity of the unboundedly rationality paradigm to explain observed phenomena and behavior. This thesis contributes to the literature in three different ways. Chapter 1 is a survey on bounded rationality, which gathers and organizes the contributions to the field since Simon (1955) first recognized the necessity to account for the limits on human rationality. The focus of the survey is on theoretical work rather than the experimental literature which presents evidence of actual behavior that differs from what classic rationality predicts. The general framework is as follows. Given a set of exogenous variables, the economic agent needs to choose an element from the choice set that is avail- able to him, in order to optimize the expected value of an objective function (assuming his preferences are representable by such a function). If this problem is too complex for the agent to deal with, one or more of its elements is simplified. Each bounded rationality theory is categorized according to the most relevant element it simplifes. Chapter 2 proposes a novel theory of bounded rationality. Much in the same fashion as Conlisk (1980) and Gabaix (2014), we assume that thinking is costly in the sense that agents have to pay a cost for performing mental operations. In our model, if they choose not to think, such cost is avoided, but they are left with a single alternative, labeled the default choice. We exemplify the idea with a very simple model of consumer choice and identify the concept of isofin curves, i.e., sets of default choices which generate the same utility net of thinking cost. Then, we apply the idea to a linear symmetric Cournot duopoly, in which the default choice can be interpreted as the most natural quantity to be produced in the market. We find that, as the thinking cost increases, the number of firms thinking in equilibrium decreases. More interestingly, for intermediate levels of thinking cost, an equilibrium in which one of the firms chooses the default quantity and the other best responds to it exists, generating asymmetric choices in a symmetric model. Our model is able to explain well-known regularities identified in the Cournot experimental literature, such as the adoption of different strategies by players (Huck et al. , 1999), the inter temporal rigidity of choices (Bosch-Dom enech & Vriend, 2003) and the dispersion of quantities in the context of di cult decision making (Bosch-Dom enech & Vriend, 2003). Chapter 3 applies a model of bounded rationality in a game-theoretic set- ting to the well-known turnout paradox in large elections, pivotal probabilities vanish very quickly and no one should vote, in sharp contrast with the ob- served high levels of turnout. Inspired by the concept of rhizomatic thinking, introduced by Bravo-Furtado & Côrte-Real (2009a), we assume that each per- son is self-delusional in the sense that, when making a decision, she believes that a fraction of the people who support the same party decides alike, even if no communication is established between them. This kind of belief simplifies the decision of the agent, as it reduces the number of players he believes to be playing against { it is thus a bounded rationality approach. Studying a two-party first-past-the-post election with a continuum of self-delusional agents, we show that the turnout rate is positive in all the possible equilibria, and that it can be as high as 100%. The game displays multiple equilibria, at least one of which entails a victory of the bigger party. The smaller one may also win, provided its relative size is not too small; more self-delusional voters in the minority party decreases this threshold size. Our model is able to explain some empirical facts, such as the possibility that a close election leads to low turnout (Geys, 2006), a lower margin of victory when turnout is higher (Geys, 2006) and high turnout rates favoring the minority (Bernhagen & Marsh, 1997).