A Growth Model for the Quadruple Helix Innovation Theory

We propose a theoretical growth model with which to frame analytically the Quadruple Helix Innovation Theory (QHIT). The aim is to emphasise the investment in innovation transmission mechanisms in terms of economic growth and productivity gains, in one-high-technology sector, by stressing the role played by the helices of the Quadruple Helix Innovation Model: Academiaand Technological Infrastructures, Firms of Innovation, Government and Civil Society. In the existing literature, the relationship between the helices and respective impacts on economic growth does not appear clear. Results are fragiledue to data weakness and the inexistence of a theoretical framework to specify the relationship between the helices. Hence our motivation for providing the QHIT with a theoretical growth model. Our intent is to model the importance of emerging, dynamically adaptive, and transdisciplinary knowledge and innovation ecosystems to economic growth. We .nd that higher economic growth rate is obtained as a result of an increase in synergies and complementarities between different productive units, or an incease in productive government expenditure.Economic Growth; Quadruple Helix Innovation Model; Innovation Ecosystems.

Real holdings international limited investment fund strategic growth plan

The world is changing faster than at any time in documented history; longstanding strategies must change and new investment approaches must be established. The Investment Fund Strategic Growth Plan is intended to accurately shape the new strategy of Real Holdings International Limited, while accounting for the impact of macroeconomic trends in real assets. The flat growth, low central banks’ interest rates and strong prospects in agriculture industry emerge to support an investment proposal in an olive oil production in Alqueva, Portugal. A buy-to-lease strategy with flexible lease agreements was designed to maximize LPs and GPs’ cash flows, while reducing their exposure to the risk inherent to the project. From the financial analysis, Real Holdings concluded that the Alqueva project delivers attractive returns measured by IRR and NPV

A protocol language for smart contracts

Tese de mestrado, Engenharia Informática (Engenharia de Software), 2021, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasSmart contracts are immutable automated scripts published on distributed ledgers (such as blockchains) that express a set of procedures to be followed by the participants. These contracts have gained popularity, yet breaches in their reliability and security linger on, with some of these exploits causing losses of millions of USD. Examples of attacks are the DAO and the parity wallet hack. Among the vulnerabilities in smart contracts, we concentrate on faults rooted in out-of-order interactions with contract endpoints. We propose SmartScribble, a protocol language to specify patterns of interaction between users and endpoints, allowing developers to implement correctby-construction contracts. From a protocol description, the compiler generates a smart contract that the programmer should complete with the relevant business logic. SmartScribble’s syntax is heavily inspired in Scribble, even if it covers only a fragment of the latter language and adapts it to fit the blockchain environment. Generated contracts rely on integrated finite state machines to control endpoint invocations by detecting unexpected interactions and ensuring that they have no potentially harmful side effects. As a proof of concept, we target Plutus, a smart contract programming language from the Cardano blockchain. Initial results point to secure contracts that enforce correct interaction patterns and exhibit a decrease of 75% in the size of the code that developers must write. Performance-wise, contracts generated with SmartScribble are on par with to those implemented by experts that also use a state machine

Staphylococcus warneri: brief literature review / Staphylococcus warneri: breve revisão da literatura

Coagulase-negative Staphylococcus warneri is an opportunistic pathogen that is capable of causing several infections, especially in patients with indwelling medical devices. Antimicrobial resistance is a global challenge for the treatment of infections caused by staphylococci. The most important virulence factor of CoNS is the biofilm-producing ability. This brief literature review discusses aspects of the antimicrobial resistance and virulence factors of the Staphylococcus warneri. Literature about the Staphylococcus warneri listed in PubMed between 2011 and 2021 was reviewed. Staphylococcus warneri is a part of the normal flora of the skin, especially the nares, head, legs, and arms. The importance of S. warneri as a modern-day pathogen is growing, as it has established itself as a successful nosocomial pathogen. S. warneri isolates from these infections are generally resistant to beta-lactam antimicrobial agents. The virulence of S. warneri have been suggested to be multifactorial, including adhesins, enzymes, extracellular toxins, capsule, iron uptake systems, virulence regulators and to adhere to produce biofilm, invade and destroy epithelial cells. The pathogenetic mechanisms of infections their mechanisms of bacterial persistence and evasion of the host’s immune system have not yet been clearly elucidated. Only with deeper studies, which will allow a more comprehensive understanding of its physiological characteristics, will it be possible to design effective strategies against S. warneri

Dissipation-induced long-range order in the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model

Understanding the stability of strongly correlated phases of matter when coupled to environmental degrees of freedom is crucial for identifying the conditions under which these states may be observed. Here, we focus on the paradigmatic one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, and study the stability of the Luttinger liquid and Mott insulating phases in the presence of local particle exchange with site-independent baths of non-interacting bosons. We perform a numerically exact analysis of this model by adapting the recently developed wormhole quantum Monte Carlo method for retarded interactions to a continuous-time formulation with worm updates; we show how the wormhole updates can be easily implemented in this scheme. For an Ohmic bath, our numerical findings confirm the scaling prediction that the Luttinger-liquid phase becomes unstable at infinitesimal bath coupling. We show that the ensuing phase is a long-range ordered superfluid with spontaneously-broken U(1) symmetry. While the Mott insulator remains a distinct phase for small bath coupling, it exhibits diverging compressibility and non-integer local boson occupation in the thermodynamic limit. Upon increasing the bath coupling, this phase undergoes a transition to a long-range ordered superfluid. Finally, we discuss the effects of super-Ohmic dissipation on the Luttinger-liquid phase. Our results are compatible with a stable dissipative Luttinger-liquid phase that transitions to a long-range ordered superfluid at a finite system-bath coupling.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figure

Innovation economy, productive public expenditures and economic growth

Innovation is the main engine of growth in an increasing number of economies. Innovation economies are, according to the Quadruple Helix (QH) Innovation Theory, sustained by four pilars – Firms, Academia, Government and Consumers –, all operating in a systemic, interactive environment. We provide a model that gives analytical body to the QH theory and links formally innovation to economic growth. We aim to emphasise the equally important roles of the four helices sustaining an innovation economy and its long run growth. In particular, given the downwards pressure on Government expenditures, we analyse the effects of an increase in public expenditures on economic growth, which we find positive in the short, medium and long-run.COMPETE; QREN; FEDER; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

A growth model for the quadruple helix innovation theory

We propose a theoretical growth model with which to frame analytically the Quadruple Helix Innovation Theory (QHIT). The aim is to emphasise the investment in innovation transmission mechanisms in terms of economic growth and productivity gains, in one-high-technology sector, by stressing the role played by the helices of the Quadruple Helix Innovation Model: Academiaand Technological Infrastructures, Firms of Innovation, Government and Civil Society. In the existing literature, the relationship between the helices and respective impacts on economic growth does not appear clear. Results are fragiledue to data weakness and the inexistence of a theoretical framework to specify the relationship between the helices. Hence our motivation for providing the QHIT with a theoretical growth model. Our intent is to model the importance of emerging, dynamically adaptive, and transdisciplinary knowledge and innovation ecosystems to economic growth. We .nd that higher economic growth rate is obtained as a result of an increase in synergies and complementarities between different productive units, or an incease in productive government expenditure.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

VIS³COS. III. Environmental effects on the star formation histories of galaxies at z ∼ 0.8 seen in [O II], Hδ, and D_n4000

We present spectroscopic observations of 466 galaxies in and around a superstructure at z ∼ 0.84 targeted by the VIMOS Spectroscopic Survey of a Supercluster in the COSMOS field (VIS³COS). We use [OII]λ3727, Hδ, and D_n4000 to trace recent, medium-, and long-term star formation histories and investigate the effect of stellar mass and local environment on them. By studying trends in individual and composite galaxy spectra, we find that stellar mass and environment play a role in the observed galactic properties. Galaxies with low stellar mass (10  11) shows an increase in Hδ absorption strengths in intermediate-density environments (e.g. filaments). Galaxies with intermediate stellar mass (10.5 <  log₁₀ (M⋆/M⊙) < 11) have similar Hδ absorption profiles in all environments, but show an indication of enhanced [OII] emission in intermediate-density environments. This indicates that field galaxies with low stellar mass and filament galaxies with high stellar mass are more likely to have experienced a recent burst of star formation, while galaxies of the intermediate stellar-mass show an increase of star formation at filament-like densities. We also find that the median [OII] equivalent width (|EW_([OII])|) decreases from 27 ± 2 Å to 2.0^(+0.5)_(−0.4) Å and D_n4000 increases from 1.09 ± 0.01 to 1.56 ± 0.03 with increasing stellar mass (from ∼10^(9.25) to ∼10^(11.35) M⊙). For the dependence on the environment, we find that at fixed stellar mass, |EW_([OII])| is tentatively lower in environments with higher density. We find for D_n4000 that the increase with stellar mass is sharper in denser environments, which indicates that these environments may accelerate galaxy evolution. Moreover, we find higher D_n4000 values in denser environments at fixed stellar mass, suggesting that galaxies are on average older and/or more metal rich in these dense environments. This set of tracers depicts a scenario where the most massive galaxies have, on average, the lowest specific star formation rates and the oldest stellar populations (age ≳ 1 Gyr, showing a mass-downsizing effect). We also hypothesize that the observed increase in star formation (higher EW_([OII]|), higher specific star formation rate) at intermediate densities may lead to quenching because we find that the quenched fraction increases sharply from the filament to cluster-like regions at similar stellar masses

Exploring the use of cognitive enhancement substances among Portuguese university students

Background Prescription drug use and the consumption of substances to enhance college students' cognitive performance, described as pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE), is a known phenomenon potentially impacting individuals' health. University and college students are two specific subpopulations noted to use PCE (up to 17%, on average). To our knowledge, no data have been published on the use of PCE drugs among university students at a national level in Portugal and the factors that might be associated with this usage. Objective The main objective was to estimate the prevalence of PCE use by Portuguese university students and to identify the PCE substances commonly used by university students, i.e., those classified as prescription drugs and other legal and nonprescribed substances, including food supplements. Methods The study followed a cross-sectional exploratory, descriptive design and pursued a convenience sample of students from Portuguese public and private universities (22 higher education institutions). Results From a sample of 745 university students, 32% indicated the use of prescribed and nonprescribed substances. The most consumed substances were food supplements with CNS stimulants being the most frequent prescription-only drugs but not necessarily accessed through a medical prescription. A significant statistical association was found between substance consumption and the field of study. Health science students reported more food supplements and drug intake, allegedly under prescribed regimens, compared to humanities and exact sciences students. The study discusses the need to better understand the competitive societies that produce and support young students' outputs and the perceived ‘need’ for performance-enhancing substances. Conclusions One-third of the university students aimed to improve their performance by pharmacological cognitive enhancement, with a preference for food supplements dispensed in pharmacies. PCE substance consumption in higher education is thus non-negligible. The study suggests the need to improve regulations on potential inequalities in academic rankings and success and an observant attitude concerning implications that negatively affect health in the long run.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio