Tourist motivation of the residents of the Urban Quadrilátero of Minho: a gender analysis

Women are increasingly active in the participation and consumption of tourism, representing a strong and unique market segment. Knowledge of the needs and preferences of female tourists represents a key success factor in the tourism industry. This preliminary study seeks to capture the underlying reasons for the travel decisions of the residents of the Urban Quadrilátero of Minho, investigating their tourist motivations from a gendered perspective. Insight on tourism motivation may be an important policy tool for tourism planners and managers in the development of products and marketing strategies. The empirical analysis is undertaken based on questionnaires administered in 2012 to residents of the Urban Quadrilátero of Minho. Preliminary results do not reveal significant gender differences in the importance that the local residents place on various tourism motivation factors.

Motivation and Benefits of Implementation and Certification according ISO 9001 – the Portuguese Experience

The aim of the research is to analyze the different aspects associated with the motivation and benefits of certified ISO 9001 companies in Portugal. A total of 426 certified Portuguese companies were surveyed. The response rate was equal to 61.03 percent. Our results suggest that the main motivation for certification were “improvement of quality”, “improvement of company image”, “marketing advantage”, “give empowerment to workers / capturing workers knowledge” and “cost reduction”. The main benefits that Portuguese companies have gained from the referred certification have been, among others, the improvement of “procedures”, beneficial effect on the “company’s image”, the improvement of quality products/services, increase of the “customer satisfaction”, improvement of “on-time delivery”; improvement the “morale” of workers’ increase in productivity and decrease of “production costs”, among others. The surveyed firms belong only to the Minho region of the north of Portugal. This paper aims to provide a contribution to the research related to the motivation and benefits associated to the quality management systems. The selection of the motives and benefits were validated through statistical analysis and the relationship between expected and perceived benefits was discussed.

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.

Innovation through virtual communities of Practice: motivation and constraints in the knowledge-creation process

Communities of Practice are places which provide a sound basis for organizational learning, enabling knowledge creation and acquisition thus improving organizational performance, leveraging innovation and consequently increasing competitively. Virtual Communities of Practice (VCoP‟s) can perform a central role in promoting communication and collaboration between members who are dispersed in both time and space. The ongoing case study, described here, aims to identify both the motivations and the constraints that members of an organization experience when taking part in the knowledge creating processes of the VCoP‟s to which they belong. Based on a literature review, we have identified several factors that influence such processes; they will be used to analyse the results of interviews carried out with the leaders of VCoP‟s in four multinationals. As future work, a questionnaire will be developed and administered to the other members of these VCoP‟s

Evidências de validade da versão brasileira do Exercise Motivation Inventory-2 em contexto de academia e personal training

Este estudo teve como objetivos verificar a validade fatorial e a validade interna da versão brasileira do Exercise Motivation Inventory-2 (EMI-2) e comparar os principais motivos para prática de exercício tendo em conta os contextos de academia e personal training. Um total de 588 praticantes de exercício da cidade de Pelotas/RS/Brasil (405 de academia e 183 de personal training) preencheram o EMI-2, o qual é constituído por 51 itens, agrupados em 14 motivos (fatores) para prática de exercício físico. A validade fatorial do EMI-2 foi testada através da realização de análises fatoriais confirmatórias e a validade interna através do alfa de Cronbach. Para a verificar o efeito do contexto nos motivos foi utilizada a MANOVA e calculado o tamanho do efeito. Os resultados obtidos dão suporte à estrutura original do EMI-2 com 14 fatores, nesta amostra. Verificou-se um efeito multivariado significativo do contexto sobre os motivos de prática [Wilks’ λ = 0.912, F (14, 573.000) = 3.9, p < 0.001, η² = 0.088]. Os motivos de “Prazer”, “Força e resistência”, “Desafio”, “Socialização”, “Competição” e “Reconhecimento Social” foram significativamente superiores no contexto de academia e os motivos de “Agilidade” e “Prevenção de Doenças” foram significativamente superiores no contexto de personal training.

Binocular vision and reading ability in a Portuguese population of school age children

Preventable visual loss caused by amblyopia (2 to 4%) and its risk factors such as strabismus (3%) and uncorrected refractive errors (5 to 7%) represent an important public health problem. Children with binocular vision anomalies could be at disadvantage in reading and writing. Objectives: (1) Describe binocular vision measures in children of school age; and (2) Describe the impact of abnormal binocular vision on reading ability (reading errors and reading speed).

Motivation among Hospital volunteers: an empirical analysis in Portugal

The purpose of this paper is to identify the different types of motivations in hospital volunteers. We present a literature review about different types of motivation and we collect data from hospital volunteers through a questionnaire. Four different motivation categories are identified: development and learning, altruism, career recognition and belonging and protection. The main motivations expressed are development and learning, followed by altruism. Belonging and protection, followed by career recognition are the least cited motivations. Career recognition is negatively correlated with age, and belonging/ protection is negatively correlated with education. That is, younger volunteers present more career recognition motives and less educated volunteers have more from protection and belonging. This study encompasses hospital volunteers and their motivations. The paper is useful to policy makers aiming to develop targeted approaches to attracting and retaining volunteers.

A aquisição da leitura e da escrita na Educação Pré-Escolar: estratégias de intervenção pedagógica

Mestrado, Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, 3 de Julho de 2013, Universidade dos Açores (Relatório de Estágio).

As práticas educativas em contexto Pré-Escolar e 1º ciclo do Ensino Básico: a consciência fonológica e a aprendizagem da leitura

Mestrado (PES II), Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, 3 de Julho de 2014, Universidade dos Açores.

Disruption and phenotypic analysis of six open reading frames from chromosome VII of Saccharomyces cerevisiae reveals one essential gene

Six open reading frames (ORFs) located on chromosome VII of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (YGR205w, YGR210c, YGR211w, YGR241c, YGR243w and YGR244c) were disrupted in two different genetic backgrounds using short-flanking homology (SFH) gene replacement. Sporulation and tetrad analysis showed that YGR211w, recently identified as the yeast ZPR1 gene, is an essential gene. The other five genes are non-essential, and no phenotypes could be associated to their inactivation. Two of these genes have recently been further characterized: YGR241c (YAP1802) encodes a yeast adaptor protein and YGR244c (LSC2) encodes the b-subunit of the succinyl-CoA ligase. For each ORF, a replacement cassette with long flanking regions homologous to the target locus was cloned in pUG7, and the cognate wild-type gene was cloned in pRS416.

Analysis of a 17.9 kb region from Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII reveals the presence of eight open reading frames, including BRF1 (TFIIIB70) and GCN5 genes

We report the nucleotide sequence of a 17,893 bp DNA segment from the right arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII. This fragment begins at 482 kb from the centromere. The sequence includes the BRF1 gene, encoding TFIIIB70, the 5' portion of the GCN5 gene, an open reading frame (ORF) previously identified as ORF MGA1, whose translation product shows similarity to heat-shock transcription factors and five new ORFs. Among these, YGR250 encodes a polypeptide that harbours a domain present in several polyA binding proteins. YGR245 is similar to a putative Schizosaccharomyces pombe gene, YGR248 shows significant similarity with three ORFs of S. cerevisiae situated on different chromosomes, while the remaining two ORFs, YGR247 and YGR251, do not show significant similarity to sequences present in databases.