Quality of the Azores destination in the perspective of tourists

Tourism is a growing industry in the Autonomous Region of the Azores. However, little is known about how tourists evaluate this destination, something which certainly constitutes a shortcoming if one takes into consideration that this is a very competitive industry, with new destinations appearing every year and others increasing their market share. This paper focuses on the quality of the Azores destination in the perspective of tourists and, to an extent, has the goal of contributing to reduce this shortcoming. According to our findings, 74% of the tourists interviewed consider the global quality of the Azores destination to be very good or excellent, with the landscape, the climate/weather, the hospitality, the cleanliness and the security being the most highly-rated partial indicators. Additionally, a regression analysis indicates that the evaluation of the global quality of this destination varies according to the individual characteristics of tourists.N/

Electronic publishing of ADB editions

Arquivo Distrital de Braga (ADB), the second largest Portuguese Archive, owns thousands of important master pieces, published according to merely typographic techniques. For the great majority, their existence in electronic support is still a mirage. However, some years ago, ADB and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Minho have created a synergy aiming at modernizing, through computing processes, the unique cultural value the Archive owns. The goal of this document is to provide a technological overview on the work developed at ADB along the years in the arena of electronic publishing. It includes the presentation of a practical case

Mining protein structure data

The principal topic of this work is the application of data mining techniques, in particular of machine learning, to the discovery of knowledge in a protein database. In the first chapter a general background is presented. Namely, in section 1.1 we overview the methodology of a Data Mining project and its main algorithms. In section 1.2 an introduction to the proteins and its supporting file formats is outlined. This chapter is concluded with section 1.3 which defines that main problem we pretend to address with this work: determine if an amino acid is exposed or buried in a protein, in a discrete way (i.e.: not continuous), for five exposition levels: 2%, 10%, 20%, 25% and 30%. In the second chapter, following closely the CRISP-DM methodology, whole the process of construction the database that supported this work is presented. Namely, it is described the process of loading data from the Protein Data Bank, DSSP and SCOP. Then an initial data exploration is performed and a simple prediction model (baseline) of the relative solvent accessibility of an amino acid is introduced. It is also introduced the Data Mining Table Creator, a program developed to produce the data mining tables required for this problem. In the third chapter the results obtained are analyzed with statistical significance tests. Initially the several used classifiers (Neural Networks, C5.0, CART and Chaid) are compared and it is concluded that C5.0 is the most suitable for the problem at stake. It is also compared the influence of parameters like the amino acid information level, the amino acid window size and the SCOP class type in the accuracy of the predictive models. The fourth chapter starts with a brief revision of the literature about amino acid relative solvent accessibility. Then, we overview the main results achieved and finally discuss about possible future work. The fifth and last chapter consists of appendices. Appendix A has the schema of the database that supported this thesis. Appendix B has a set of tables with additional information. Appendix C describes the software provided in the DVD accompanying this thesis that allows the reconstruction of the present work

Auditoria Energética a uma Refinaria de Açúcar

A factura energética possui um peso relativamente reduzido comparativamente com outros factores, como a matéria-prima e a mão-de-obra nos custos de exploração de uma empresa do sector industrial. Devido ao factor referido previamente a gestão de energia era usualmente negligenciada, no entanto, a competitividade industrial aliada à crescente consciencialização para os efeitos nefastos da indústria no meio ambiente conduz ao nascimento do conceito de Utilização Racional de Energia. Como objectivo principal para este trabalho, foi proposta a caracterização energética da RAR – Açúcar, com especial interesse na vertente da energia eléctrica, tendo em vista identificar possíveis melhorias em desempenho técnico e consumos

Informação, tecnologia e democracia digital: uma análise das oportunidades de participação política em sites de parlamentares

Procura analisar as possibilidades de participação política de cidadãos interessados em conteúdos informacionais públicos, a partir dos dispositivos de interatividade disponibilizados nos websites dos deputados do Estado da Bahia, Brasil. Com nível descritivo, a presente comunicação levanta os sítios de parlamentares registradas no site da Assembleia Legislativa do Estado da Bahia (ALBA), excetuando os blogs. Para a coleta de dados, aplicou-se o formulário dos Níveis de Participação dos Cidadãos: a Escala de Avaliação, desenvolvido por Marques (2005), e na tabulação dos dados adaptou-se este instrumento para uma planilha no programa Office Excel. Os resultados desta pesquisa apontam o estado incipiente websites dos deputados baianos quanto às oportunidades de participação política na internet

A Despesa Militar em Portugal: 1950-1990

Neste artigo estuda-se a procura de despesa pública militar em Portugal no período de 1950 a 1990; apresenta-se um breve resumo dos estudos sobre esta questão a nível internacional; caracteriza-se a evolução da despesa pública militar no período; estuda-se a estacionaridade dos dados estatísticos; analisa-se a causalidade à Granger entre as variáveis; e estima-se uma equação de procura de despesa pública militar para o período em análise. O artigo aceita as hipóteses de Oslon-Zeckhauser, de que a despesa militar depende da população e do facto do país pertencer à aliança OTAN. Palavras Chave: despesa pública militar. econometria temporal, teste de causalidade à Granger, equação de procura de despesas militares

Hazards, vulnerability, and risk analysis on wave overtopping and coastal flooding in low-lying coastal areas: The case of costa da caparica, Portugal

PTDC/EAM-OCE/31207/2017 UIDB/04292/2020 UIDB/04647/2020Coastal areas are densely populated areas, and they have been experiencing increasing pressures as a consequence of population growth, but also because of climate change aggravation. For this reason, hazard, vulnerability, and risk indexes have been becoming more recurrent, especially to study and analyze low-lying coastal areas. This study presents an analysis on wave overtopping and coastal flooding, using an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) multicriteria methodology, in Costa da Caparica (Portugal). The definition of the different criteria, as well as their respective weighting for the overall problem and index calculation, was carried out with the help of experts in the subject. By following this methodology, and by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), hazard, vulnerability, and risk indexes were obtained. The most hazardous areas are located closest to the sea, where the elevation is the lowest, whereas the most vulnerable areas are in neighborhoods with specific socioeconomic characteristics (high urban and economic density). Overall, around 30% of the study area displays moderate to very high risk regarding the occurrence of overtopping and flooding events. The results of this study will be helpful in decision-making processes in matters of coastal zone management and monitoring.publishersversionpublishe

Analysis of the evolution of the Spanish labour market through unsupervised learning

Unemployment in Spain is one of the biggest concerns of its inhabitants. Its unemployment rate is the second highest in the European Union, and in the second quarter of 2018 there is a 15.2% unemployment rate, some 3.4 million unemployed. Construction is one of the activity sectors that have suffered the most from the economic crisis. In addition, the economic crisis affected in different ways to the labour market in terms of occupation level or location. The aim of this paper is to discover how the labour market is organised taking into account the jobs that workers get during two periods: 2011-2013, which corresponds to the economic crisis period, and 2014-2016, which was a period of economic recovery. The data used are official records of the Spanish administration corresponding to 1.9 and 2.4 million job placements, respectively. The labour market was analysed by applying unsupervised machine learning techniques to obtain a clear and structured information on the employment generation process and the underlying labour mobility. We have applied two clustering methods with two different technologies, and the results indicate that there were some movements in the Spanish labour market which have changed the physiognomy of some of the jobs. The analysis reveals the changes in the labour market: the crisis forces greater geographical mobility and favours the subsequent emergence of new job sources. Nevertheless, there still exist some clusters that remain stable despite the crisis. We may conclude that we have achieved a characterisation of some important groups of workers in Spain. The methodology used, being supported by Big Data techniques, would serve to analyse any alternative job market.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-55894-C2-R y TIN2017-88209-C2-2-R, CO2017-8678