Preparing for disaster: a comparative analysis of education for critical infrastructure collapse

This article explores policy approaches to educating populations for potential critical infrastructure collapse in five different countries: the UK, the US, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. ‘Critical infrastructure’ is not always easy to define, and indeed is defined slightly differently across countries – it includes entities vital to life, such as utilities (water, energy), transportation systems and communications, and may also include social and cultural infrastructure. The article is a mapping exercise of different approaches to critical infrastructure protection and preparedness education by the five countries. The exercise facilitates a comparison of the countries and enables us to identify distinctive characteristics of each country’s approach. We argue that contrary to what most scholars of security have argued, these national approaches diverge greatly, suggesting that they are shaped more by internal politics and culture than by global approaches.

Frequency- domain multiuser detection for highly overloaded DS-CDMA systems

A DS-CDMA (Direct Sequence-Coded Division Multiple Access) system has maximum spectral efficiency if the system is fully loaded (i.e., the number of users is equal to the spreading factor) and we employ signals with bandwidth equal to the chip rate. However, due to implementation constraints we need to employ signals with higher bandwidth, decreasing the system’s spectral efficiency. In this paper we consider prefixassisted DS-CDMA systems with bandwidth that can be significantly above the chip rate. To allow high spectral efficiency we consider highly overloaded systems where the number of users can be twice the spreading factor or even more. To cope with the strong interference levels we present an iterative frequencydomain receiver that takes full advantage of the total bandwidth of the transmitted signals. Our performance results show that the proposed receiver can have excellent performance, even for highly overloaded systems. Moreover, the overall system performance can be close to the maximum theoretical spectral efficiency, even with transmitted signals that have bandwidth significantly above the chip rate.

An autonomous system for ocean acoustic tomography

Vertical line arrays (VLA) are a widely used apparatus in underwater acoustics with applications in sonar prediction, underwater communications and acoustic tomography, among others. Recent developments in digital electronics and communications allow for off-the-shelf development of VLA systems, with a large number of embedded acoustic and non-acoustic sensors able to fulfill application requirements, as opposed to single or few receiver configurations available until only a few years ago. Very often, the flexibility in water column sampling is achieved by splitting the VLA into modules that can be assembled according to the application. Such systems can be deployed and recovered from small vessels with a shorthanded crew, and make it possible for research labs with reduced budgets and operational means (ships and manpower) to gain control over the whole development process, from data acquisition to post-processing.

Diversifying medical imaging of breast lesions

Dissertação de mestrado, Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2015

Generation Y : affektives Commitment von Mitarbeitern in Unternehmen der Metropolregion Hannover-Braunschweig Göttingen Wolfsburg

Vertreter der Generation Y, Personen, die in den 1980er Jahren geboren wurden, drängen verstärkt in den Arbeitsmarkt. Ihre Wert- und Erwartungshaltung ist deshalb von großem Interesse für Unternehmen, die mit Themen wie dem Fachkräftemangel und demografischen Wandel konfrontiert sind und die Leistungsträger langfristig binden müssen. Ziel dieser Hausarbeit ist herauszufinden, wie ausgeprägt die emotionale Bindung der Generation Y in Unternehmen allgemein ist und unter welcher Voraussetzung affektives Commitment bei der Generation Y entsteht. Ein weiteres Ziel ist die Erarbeitung von Handlungsempfehlungen bezüglich des Personalmanagements von Generation Y in Unternehmen. Generation Y hat hohe Erwartungen an Arbeitsinhalt, Selbstverwirklichungsmöglichkeiten, Aus- und Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen, Unternehmenswerte und -ethik, Sinnhaftigkeit der Tätigkeit und Teamarbeit. Vertreter dieser Generation wünschen sich Wertschätzung, eine gute Beziehung zum Vorgesetzten, viele Partizipationsmöglichkeiten, regelmäßiges Feedback und Flexibilität. Weiterhin sind Work-Life-Balance, Karriereoptionen, Einkommen, digitale Vernetzung und Arbeitsplatzsicherheit wichtige Themen für diese Generation. Affektives Commitment entsteht durch Erfüllung von Erwartungen. Generation Y ist nur bedingt affektiv gebunden, tendiert zu häufigen Unternehmenswechseln und ist durch eine schwache Loyalität gekennzeichnet. Dies liegt hauptsächlich daran, dass die Erwartungen dieser Generation nicht erfüllt werden. Es wird empfohlen HR-Maßnahmen zu implementieren, die auf Erfüllung der Erwartungen von Generation Y abzielen.

The determinants of retail productivity: a critical review of the evidence

This paper discusses the literature on the established determinants of productivity in the retail sector. It also draws attention to some neglected strands of research which provide useful insights into strategies that could allow productivity enhancements in this area of the economy. To date, very few attempts have been made to integrate different specialisms in order to explain what drives productivity in retail. Here this paper rectifies this omission by putting together studies from economics, geography, knowledge management and employment studies. It is the authors' view that quantitative studies of retail productivity should focus on total factor productivity in retailing as the result of competition/composition effects, planning regulations, information and communications technology, the multinational operation element and workforce skills. Further, the fact that retail firms possess advantages that are transferable between locations suggests that investment in strategies enhancing the transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge between and within businesses are crucial to achieve productivity gains.

A quarter century of creative chaos: Xinhua News Agency 1980-2005

Chinese media in the context of China's rise have puzzled many scholars who used to understand media and communications phenomena by employing the theories generated from a few affluent Western democracies, notably the US. As a result, a complex but more accurate picture has been ignored. Under numerous theoretical polarizations, the contemporary social world seems little changed but polarized. This thesis aims to propose a different approach endeavoring to 'de-Westernize' or 'internationalize' media and communications studies. As a starting point, this study focuses on the globalization debate, Chinese media and news agency studies. The thesis has investigated the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, by employing Fuzzy Logic which captures the complexity of the change in the agency's business structure and journalistic practices over last 25 years. The change is also examined by scrutinizing the role of journalists in the interrelations of Xinhua with its news sources, media and nonmedia clients, and other news agencies. A combination of archive study and 94 semistructured interviews conducted in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and London provides an inclusive account of the Chinese news institution. The key research findings drawn from the empirical research into Xinhua have justified the central argument of this thesis: Crisp Logic or the 'either/or' approach has failed to explain the dynamics of the change to the media system based in a 'non-Western' society. The numerous theoretical polarizations generated by Crisp Logic to a large extent have distorted the understanding of the contemporary social world by polarizing it. Fuzzy Logic serves better(though it is not the only choice)than the traditional approach to reflect on the set of variables existing between the two poles created by Crisp Logic. This thesis is the first doctorate research in the UK and other English-speaking countries to investigate Xinhua by 'going inside' the news institution's headquarters, local branches and overseas bureaus. This is the first comprehensive academic study of the agency, which not only examines the agency's recent change in business structure and journalistic practices, but also provides a historical account of the agency and its relationship with other social institutions. This is the first media study that employs Fuzzy Logic to understand the globalization theory, Chinese media and news agencies.

An artificial neural network approach for short-term wind power forecasting in Portugal

This paper presents an artificial neural network approach for short-term wind power forecasting in Portugal. The increased integration of wind power into the electric grid, as nowadays occurs in Portugal, poses new challenges due to its intermittency and volatility. Hence, good forecasting tools play a key role in tackling these challenges. The accuracy of the wind power forecasting attained with the proposed approach is evaluated against persistence and ARIMA approaches, reporting the numerical results from a real-world case study.

Programação em artes performativas para idosos nos serviços educativos das redes culturais

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção de grau de mestre em Educação Artística, na especialização de Teatro na Educação

Response time analysis of COTS-Based multicores considering the contention on the shared memory bus

The current industry trend is towards using Commercially available Off-The-Shelf (COTS) based multicores for developing real time embedded systems, as opposed to the usage of custom-made hardware. In typical implementation of such COTS-based multicores, multiple cores access the main memory via a shared bus. This often leads to contention on this shared channel, which results in an increase of the response time of the tasks. Analyzing this increased response time, considering the contention on the shared bus, is challenging on COTS-based systems mainly because bus arbitration protocols are often undocumented and the exact instants at which the shared bus is accessed by tasks are not explicitly controlled by the operating system scheduler; they are instead a result of cache misses. This paper makes three contributions towards analyzing tasks scheduled on COTS-based multicores. Firstly, we describe a method to model the memory access patterns of a task. Secondly, we apply this model to analyze the worst case response time for a set of tasks. Although the required parameters to obtain the request profile can be obtained by static analysis, we provide an alternative method to experimentally obtain them by using performance monitoring counters (PMCs). We also compare our work against an existing approach and show that our approach outperforms it by providing tighter upper-bound on the number of bus requests generated by a task.

Crowdsourcing innovation intermediaries functions

Open innovation is a hot topic in innovation management. Its basic premise is open up the innovation process. The innovation process, in general sense, may be seen as the process of designing, developing and commercializing a novel product or service to improve the value added of a company. The development of Web 2.0 tools facilitates this kind of contributions, opening space to the emergence of crowdsourcing innovation initiatives. Crowdsourcing is a form of outsourcing not directed to other companies but to the crowd by means of an open call mostly through an Internet platform. Innovation intermediaries, in general sense, are organizations that work to enable innovation, that just act as brokers or agents between two or more parties. Usually, they are also engaged in other activities like inter-organizational networking and technology development and related activities. A crowdsourcing innovation intermediary is an organization that mediates the communication and relationship between the seekers – companies that aspire to solve some problem or to take advantage of any business opportunity – with a crowd that is prone to give ideas based on their knowledge, experience and wisdom. This paper identifies and analyses the functions to be performed by an intermediary of crowdsourcing innovation through grounded theory analyses from literature. The resulting model is presented and explained. The resulting model summarizes eight main functions that can be performed by a crowdsourcing process, namely, diagnoses, mediation, linking knowledge, community, evaluation, project management, intellectual property governance and marketing and support. These functions are associated with a learning cycle process which covers all the crowdsourcing activities that can be realized by the broker.

Relatório de estágio

O presente relatório foi desenvolvido no âmbito de Prática Pedagógica Supervisionada no 1ºCiclo do Ensino Básico, Unidade Curricular do Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1ºCiclo do Ensino Básico, na Escola Superior de Educação do Instituto Politécnico do Porto. Assim sendo, diz respeito à intervenção da mestranda numa turma de 4ºano do 1ºCiclo do Ensino Básico, numa instituição de ensino público, na zona metropolitana do Porto. A Unidade Curricular em questão, de cariz teórico-prático, permitiu mobilizar pressupostos teóricos fundamentais para o desenvolvimento da prática pedagógica, dando a conhecer as competências desejáveis do profissional de ensino. A metodologia utilizada ao longo do percurso da mestranda assentou na vertente da investigação e ação, pelo que envolve um conjunto de etapas que permitem a melhoria das práticas e, consequentemente, do desenvolvimento profissional e da aprendizagem dos alunos. O relatório espelha todo o processo formativo, destacando conceções teóricas e legais e o contexto da prática, evidenciando, de forma crítica e reflexiva, momentos do estágio que marcaram o desenvolvimento profissional e pessoal da futura professora. Destaca-se a valorização do aluno como indivíduo único, repleto de características que o caracterizam, bem como do processo de ensino-aprendizagem, pelo que se utilizaram metodologias socioconstrutivistas e recursos diversificados com vista à aprendizagem de sucesso. Deste modo, realça-se que este mestrado contribuiu para o desenvolvimento de competências essenciais no que concerne à profissão docente, sendo que a vivência de situações concretas permitiram a construção fundamentada do pensamento crítico e de um conjunto de saberes científicos, pedagógicos e didáticos da mestranda.

Fostering e-participation sustainability through a BPM-driven semantic model

According to a recent Eurobarometer survey (2014), 68% of Europeans tend not to trust national governments. As the increasing alienation of citizens from politics endangers democracy and welfare, governments, practitioners and researchers look for innovative means to engage citizens in policy matters. One of the measures intended to overcome the so-called democratic deficit is the promotion of civic participation. Digital media proliferation offers a set of novel characteristics related to interactivity, ubiquitous connectivity, social networking and inclusiveness that enable new forms of societal-wide collaboration with a potential impact on leveraging participative democracy. Following this trend, e-Participation is an emerging research area that consists in the use of Information and Communication Technologies to mediate and transform the relations among citizens and governments towards increasing citizens’ participation in public decision-making. However, despite the widespread efforts to implement e-Participation through research programs, new technologies and projects, exhaustive studies on the achieved outcomes reveal that it has not yet been successfully incorporated in institutional politics. Given the problems underlying e-Participation implementation, the present research suggested that, rather than project-oriented efforts, the cornerstone for successfully implementing e-Participation in public institutions as a sustainable added-value activity is a systematic organisational planning, embodying the principles of open-governance and open-engagement. It further suggested that BPM, as a management discipline, can act as a catalyst to enable the desired transformations towards value creation throughout the policy-making cycle, including political, organisational and, ultimately, citizen value. Following these findings, the primary objective of this research was to provide an instrumental model to foster e-Participation sustainability across Government and Public Administration towards a participatory, inclusive, collaborative and deliberative democracy. The developed artefact, consisting in an e-Participation Organisational Semantic Model (ePOSM) underpinned by a BPM-steered approach, introduces this vision. This approach to e-Participation was modelled through a semi-formal lightweight ontology stack structured in four sub-ontologies, namely e-Participation Strategy, Organisational Units, Functions and Roles. The ePOSM facilitates e-Participation sustainability by: (1) Promoting a common and cross-functional understanding of the concepts underlying e-Participation implementation and of their articulation that bridges the gap between technical and non-technical users; (2) Providing an organisational model which allows a centralised and consistent roll-out of strategy-driven e-Participation initiatives, supported by operational units dedicated to the execution of transformation projects and participatory processes; (3) Providing a standardised organisational structure, goals, functions and roles related to e-Participation processes that enhances process-level interoperability among government agencies; (4) Providing a representation usable in software development for business processes’ automation, which allows advanced querying using a reasoner or inference engine to retrieve concrete and specific information about the e-Participation processes in place. An evaluation of the achieved outcomes, as well a comparative analysis with existent models, suggested that this innovative approach tackling the organisational planning dimension can constitute a stepping stone to harness e-Participation value.

A indústria de defesa na cooperação Brasil-Portugal

The global dynamics of alliances are strongly determined by the level of cooperation among states. This cooperation can be embodied in various aspects, but the level of defense and security cooperation becomes usually more doctrinal and lasting. By the nature of sovereignty that instills in the bilateral relationship, cooperation at defense and security level can leverages other forms of cooperation. The circumstances and relational balance between Brazil and Portugal seem to evolve towards distancing opportunities, despite they are culturally and institutionally untainted. The economic dynamics, the strategic projection in global sustainability terms, the scale and ambition of Brazilian regional leadership, contrasts with the actual context of Portugal, distancing himself both on the stage where they operate. On the other hand, the historical and cultural roots, the language, the affinity of the peoples of CPLP and some opportunities for economic niches, trend to attract both countries. The condition of Portugal in NATO and Europe, coupled with the ability to export technical and human resources to value-added for Brazil, seems also to become approaching factors. On the balance of these dynamics, there is a set of exogenous factors (economic, external global relations matrix, regional stability, among others), which are not always controlled by any of both countries. These factors call for strong capacity for foresight analysis and decision making, with the inherent risk. There is cooperation vectors that are not apparently penalized by geographic distance, or by the difference of realities. Among these vectors we shall highlight synergies in technological niches, highly tradable goods and, mostly, using the domain of dual technologies. The thirteen niches herein identified are: Monitoring, Navigation, Command and Control, Electronics, Optoelectronics, Communication and remote sensing, Information Technologies, Flight Simulation, Specialized Training, Fiber Optic Sensors, Materials Engineering, Nanotechnology and Communications. Cumulating with identified opportunities in traditional relational framework, both countries are growing (in geography and economic terms) into the Atlantic, making it a central element in the bilateral approach. By being at the same time a growing stage of disputes and which stability tends to be threatened, it will be done an analysis of these synergistic vectors, superimposed on the impact on Atlantic securitization process.

TecMinho- Associação Universidade- Empresa para o Desenvolvimento : a comunicação estratégica aplicada a Ideias de negócio

O estágio curricular, inserido na componente não-lectiva do mestrado em Comunicação Estratégica é a ferramenta principal no desenvolvimento deste relatório. A TecMinho- Associação Universidade -Empresa para o Desenvolvimento, onde decorreu o estágio, é uma instituição de vanguarda, que promove a inovação, o empreendedorismo e o desenvolvimento de diferentes competências. Foca-se em diversas vertentes, desde a investigação e tecnologias, à formação, o empreendedorismo e a planos de negócio para empresas. Uma atividade particularmente relevante é o programa IdeaLab, um acelerador de ideias de negócio, que oferece aos promotores conhecimentos e ferramentas que lhes permite melhorar a concepção de produtos e serviços, e de ideias inovadoras, de modo a reforçar a sua proposta de valor. Neste programa são destacadas as competências empreendedoras através de workshops temáticos, coaching, networking e pré-incubação.