The Concept of Europe

Saberemos o que é a Europa? Talvez cada um de nós tenha a sua própria concepção que também guia as nossas actividades práticas. Mas estamos um pouco no escuro quando se trata de nos orientarmos no que é, apesar de tudo, um campo complexo. Poderíamos mesmo dizer que há muitas concepções de Europa - Irei discutir algumas e estas diferem bastante umas das outras. Para muitos de nós, teremos que admiti-lo, a Europa e a União Europeia são realidades cujos contornos estão longe de ser claros. A nossa confusão acerca da União Europeia é, em parte, alimentada por uma falta de clareza acerca do próprio conceito de Europa . Como e quando emergiu este conceito? É claro que este não é um conceito ou uma ideia única e que não existe uma resposta adequada e satisfatória para tal pergunta.

What factors of satisfaction and motivation are affecting the development of the academic career in Portuguese higher education institutions?

An important constituent group and a key resource of higher education institutions (HEIs) is the faculty or academic staff. The centrality of the faculty role makes it a primary sculptor of institutional culture and has implications for the quality of the institution and therefore has a major role in achieving the objectives of the institution. Demand for academic staff in higher education has been increasing and may be expected to continue to increase. Moreover the performance of academic staff as teachers and researchers determines much of the student satisfaction and has an impact on student learning. There are many factors that serve to undermine the commitment of academics to their institutions and careers. Job satisfaction is important in revitalizing staff motivation and in keeping their enthusiasm alive. Well motivated academic staff can, with appropriate support, build a national and international reputation for themselves and the institution in the professional areas, in research and in publishing. This paper aims to identify the issues and their impacts on academic staff job satisfaction and motivation within Portuguese higher education institutions reporting an ongoing study financed by the European Union through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

On the concept of endogenous volatility

Most financial and economic time-series display a strong volatility around their trends. The difficulty in explaining this volatility has led economists to interpret it as exogenous, i.e., as the result of forces that lie outside the scope of the assumed economic relations. Consequently, it becomes hard or impossible to formulate short-run forecasts on asset prices or on values of macroeconomic variables. However, many random looking economic and financial series may, in fact, be subject to deterministic irregular behavior, which can be measured and modelled. We address the notion of endogenous volatility and exemplify the concept with a simple business-cycles model.

Contrastive terminology: semitic, anglo-germanic and latin concept building through complex terms. (avoiding one-way method procedures in translation

This paper aims to present a contrastive approach between three different ways of building concepts after proving the similar syntactic possibilities that coexist in terms. However, from the semantic point of view we can see that each language family has a different distribution in meaning. But the most important point we try to show is that the differences found in the psychological process when communicating concepts should guide the translator and the terminologist in the target text production and the terminology planning process. Differences between languages in the information transmission process are due to the different roles the different types of knowledge play. We distinguish here the analytic-descriptive knowledge and the analogical knowledge among others. We also state that none of them is the best when determining the correctness of a term, but there has to be adequacy criteria in the selection process. This concept building or term building success is important when looking at the linguistic map of the information society.

Cognitive models for the concept of angle

Tese de doutoramento em Filosofia

Concept of Customer Relationship Management as an example of innovation in banking sector

Banks that has introduced CRM system, had to make some difficult changes in their organization in order to become more customer oriented. Beside the pure CRM banks try to adopt other innovative tools related with the core CRM. Some of these solutions are constructed in such a way so that ensured could be also access to the information beside to bank’s organization.

Overcoming the objectification of western classical music with the concept of music as a process

Dissertation to obtain the degree of Master in Music - Artistic Interpretation

Adaption of the Creative Commons approach and the roaming concept to spatial data infrastructures (SDI)

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Sustainable Development Action Plan at ISEP - From Concept to Engineering Practice

Some of the main challenges in Incorporating Sustainable Development practices into Engineering Education reside in establishing the bridge between concept and application. In particular the relation between value creation and the knowledge economy, innovation and entrepreneurship, as the main vehicles to a relevant application of the sustainable development concept, is not yet part of the majority of the engineering curricula in schools. Porto Polytechnical Engineering School (ISEP), a Global Reporting Initiative training partner in Portugal, as just presented its Sustainable Development Action Plan, with the main objective of creating a new kind of engineers, with Sustainable Development at the core of their degrees. The plan has several issues like publish an annual sustainability report, sustainable buildings, minimization of energy consumption and water policy, waste management, sustainable mobility, green procurement, EMAS certification, research and postgraduate activity and promotion of lectures and seminars in Sustainable Development.

Scientist women perceptions of their work conditions and career development

This article reports preliminary findings about Portuguese scientist women’s perceptions of gender issues in their institutions. Empirical data have been collected by means of an electronic open questionnaire sent to the AMONET (Portuguese Association of Women in Science) members. Basically, the study aims to examine the degree of satisfaction with their profession, the difficulties they meet in everyday professional life, and whether they feel or have felt gender discrimination in their institutions. Findings show that all respondents feel happy or very happy with their profession. However, discrimination is mentioned by a significant percentage, even if such discrimination assumes, quite often, an elusive way, suggesting that higher institutions still discriminate against women. Findings, articulated with literature, also lead to discussion about power and leadership, both in the hands of male academics, in the majority of the institutions, as well as the clarification of different perceptions of ambition both by women and man.

Meta-analysis of gender and science research - Country report - Portugal

In Portugal, especially starting in the 1970s, women’s studies had implications on the emergency of the concept of gender and the feminist criticism to the prevailing models about differences between sexes. Until then, women had been absent from scientific research both as subject and as object. Feminism brought more reflexivity to the scientific thinking. After the 25th of April 1974, because of the consequent political openness, several innovating themes of research emerged, together with new concepts and fields of study. However, as far as gender and science relationship is concerned, such studies especially concentrate on higher education institutions. The feminist thinking seems to have two main objectives: to give women visibility, on the one hand, and to denunciate men’s domain in the several fields of knowledge. In 1977, the “Feminine Commission” is created and since then it has been publishing studies on women’s condition and contributing to the enhancement of the reflection of female condition at all levels. In the 1980s, the growing feminisation of tertiary education (both of students and academics), favoured the development of women’s studies, especially on their condition within universities with a special focus on the glass ceiling, despite the lack of statistical data by gender, thus making difficult the analysis of women integration in several sectors, namely in educational and scientific research activities. Other agglutinating themes are family, social and legal condition, work, education, and feminine intervention on political and social movements. In the 1990s, Women Studies are institutionalised in the academic context with the creation of the first Master in Women Studies in the Universidade Aberta (Open University), in Lisbon. In 1999, the first Portuguese journal of women studies is created – “Faces de Eva”. Seminars, conferences, thesis, journals, and projects on women’s studies are more and more common. However, results and publications are not so divulgated as they should be, because of lack of comprehensive and coordinated databases. 2. Analysis by topics 2.1. Horizontal and vertical segregation Research questions It is one of the main areas of research in Portugal. Essentially two issues have been considered: - The analysis of vertical gender segregation in educational and professional fields, having reflexes on women professional career progression with special attention to men’s power in control positions and the glass ceiling. - The analysis of horizontal segregation, special in higher education (teaching and research) where women have less visibility than men, and the under-representation of women in technology and technological careers. Research in this area mainly focuses on description, showing the under-representation of women in certain scientific areas and senior positions. Nevertheless, the studies that analyze horizontal segregation in the field of education adopt a more analytical approach which focuses on the analysis of the mechanisms of reproduction of gender stereotypes, especially socialisation, influencing educational and career choices. 1

Preliminary study of synthesis gas production from water electrolysis, using the ELECTROFUEL (R) concept

This paper describes preliminary work on the generation of synthesis gas from water electrolysis using graphite electrodes without the separation of the generated gases. This is an innovative process, that has no similar work been done earlier. Preliminary tests allowed to establish correlations between the applied current to the electrolyser and flow rate and composition of the generated syngas, as well as a characterisation of generated carbon nanoparticles. The obtained syngas can further be used to produce synthetic liquid fuels, for example, methane, methanol or DME (dimethyl ether) in a catalytic reactor, in further stages of a present ongoing project, using the ELECTROFUEL® concept. The main competitive advantage of this project lies in the built-in of an innovative technology product, from RE (renewable energy) power in remote locations, for example, islands, villages in mountains as an alternative for energy storage for mobility constraints.

Proof of Concept of the Electrochemical Sensing of 3-Iodothyronamine (T1AM) and Thyronamine (T0AM)

Recent studies have shown that, besides the well-recognized T3 and T4 hormones, there are other relevant thyroid hormones circulating in the human body. In particular, this is the case for 3-iodothyronamine (T1AM) and thyronamine (T0AM). One of the reasons for the lack of studies showing their precise importance is the absence of analytical methodologies available. Herein, for the first time, T1AM and T0AM are electrochemically characterized. T0AM was sensed by means of a glassy carbon electrode; furthermore, T1AM was sensed both with a graphitic surface (oxidatively) as well as with mercury (reductively). For both compounds, after oxidation, it was possible to observe the reversible redox reaction concerning the benzoquinone/hydroquinone couple, thus increasing the specificity of the electroanalysis. Therefore, this work provides the basis for an ‘at-point-of-use’ electrochemical strip test for T1AM and T0AM.

Energy evaporation: the new concept of indoor systems for WPT and EH embedded into the floor

This work introduces a novel idea for wireless energy transfer, proposing for the first time the unit-cell of an indoor localization and RF harvesting system embedded into the floor. The unit-cell is composed by a 5.8 GHz patch antenna surrounded by a 13.56 MHz coil. The coil locates a device and activate the patch which, connected to a power grid, radiates to wirelessly charge the localized device. The HF and RF circuits co-existence and functionality are demonstrated in this paper, the novelty of which is also in the adoption of low cost and most of all ecofriendly materials, such as wood and cork, as substrates for electronics.

Factores individuais que condicionam a Saúde : um estudo caso-controlo

RESUMO - O presente projecto enquadra-se no paradigma salutogénico e visa apurar alguns dos factores que determinam que algumas pessoas se apresentem mais saudáveis que a população em geral. Foi seleccionado um estudo, quantitativo, analítico tipo caso-controlo (1 caso para 3 controlos), em que os casos são constituídos por indivíduos integrando a Função Pública que se encontram acima do percentil 95 de assiduidade ao trabalho nos últimos dois anos e com uma auto-percepção de Saúde classificada como muito boa, os controlos são indivíduos que não obedecem à definição de caso. Os indivíduos serão emparelhados por idade, género, estado civil, carreira, categoria profissional e unidade funcional que integram. A assiduidade será calculada com recurso aos certificados de incapacidade temporária entregues nos respectivos serviços. Os factores a estudar são os mais citados na literatura como factores salutogénicos ou factores de protecção, são eles: - Sentido de Coerência de Antonowsky - Locus de controlo - Auto conceito -Auto Eficácia - Aptidão física nas três vertentes clássicas: Capacidade aeróbia, Composição corporal, Aptidão muscular. Todos estes factores serão estudados com recurso a questionários auto preenchidos devidamente testados e validados para o português de Portugal sendo a aptidão física apurada com recurso á bateria de testes "Fitness Gram" adoptada para Portugal pelo Instituto do Desporto de Portugal e pelo Ministério da Educação. Os resultados serão apurados com recurso ao software de análise epidemiológica EPIDAT. 3.1. ---------------- ABSTRACT - The present project follows the salutogénic paradigm and intends to identify some of the factors that determine why some people are healthier than the general population. It was selected a quantitative, analytic, case-control study type (1 case to 3 controls), in which the cases are constituted by individuals who are integrated in Public Services and find themselves above 95 percentile of assiduity in work in the last two years, and with a self-perception of Health classified as very good, the controls are individuals who don’t obey to the case definition. The individuals will be matched by age, gender, civil state, career, professional category and Functional Unity in the Health services. The assiduity will be calculated with the help of temporary incapacity certificates delivered in the respective services. The currently studying factors are the most cited in literature, like salutogenic factors or protection factors, are those: - Antonowsky’s Sense of Coherence - Locus Control - Self-concept - Self-Efficacy - The three classic strands of Physical Fitness: Aerobic Capacity, Corporal Composition, Muscular Fitness. All these factors will be studied with the resource of properly tested and validated self-filled questionnaires for Portugal Portuguese (language), with the Physical Fitness being determined with the resource of “Fitness Gram” test battery, adopted for Portugal by the Portuguese Sports Institute and the Education Ministry. The results will be determined with the resource of the epidemiologic analysis software EPIDAT. 3.1.