The Development of the Asylum Law and Refugee Protection Regimes in Portugal, 1975–2017

This article examines the development of the legislation on asylum law and refugee policies in Portugal. The assessment begins in 1975, the year when democracy was re-established in the country, following the 1974 Carnation Revolution, and ends in 2015, the year the European asylum crisis started. We want to discuss whether, during this period, the policies established indicate an open regime, with an integrationist perspective, or whether they proclaim a closed regime with an exclusivist position; in other words, whether the asylum system promoted an active policy of receiving and integrating refugees, or whether the policies pursued intended to limit the access of refugees to the borders of the state. In order to understand these developments, we analyze asylum application figures and asylum laws, trying to understand the main circumstantial contexts that influence them, namely Portugal’s integration in the European Union.Cet article examine l’élaboration, au Portugal, de la législation concernant les politiques relatives au droit d’asile et aux réfugiés. Cet examen débute en 1975, année du rétablissement de la démocratie dans le pays à la suite de la Révolution des Œillets en 1974, et s’arrête en 2015, année où débute la crise européenne de l’asile. Il s’agit pour nous de discuter si, au cours de cette période, les politiques établies signent un régime d’ouverture, dans une perspective intégrationniste, ou si elles déclarent un régime fermé, signant une position exclusiviste ; en d’autres termes, si le système d’asile promeut une politique active d’accueil et d’intégration des réfugiés, ou si les politiques poursuivies ont pour objectif de limiter l’accès des réfugiés aux frontières de l’État. Pour comprendre l’élaboration de ces politiques, nous analysons les chiffres de demandes d’asile et les lois sur l’asile en essayant de comprendre les principales circonstances contextuelles qui les infuencent, en l’occurrence l’intégration du Portugal à l’Union européenne.&nbsp

Using full-scale duckweed ponds as the finish stage for swine waste treatment with a focus on organic matter degradation

Artigo Publicado em: IWA - Water Science & TechnologyThe rapid increase in the number of swine has caused pronounced environmental impacts worldwide, especially on water resources. As an aggregate, smallholdings have an important role in South American pork production, contributing to the net diffusion of pollution. Thus, duckweed ponds have been successfully used for swine waste polishing, mainly for nutrient removal. Few studies have been carried out to assess organic matter degradation in duckweed ponds. Hence, the present study evaluated the efficiency of two full-scale duckweed ponds for organic matter reduction of swine waste on small pig farms. Duckweed ponds, in series, received the effluent after an anaerobic biodigester and storage pond, with a flow rate of 1 m3 day 1. After 1 year of monitoring, an improvement in effluent quality was observed, with a reduction in biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total chemical oxygen demand (tCOD), respectively, of 94.8 and 96.7%, operating at a loading rate of approximately 27 kgBOD ha 1 day 1 and 131 kgCOD ha 1 day 1. Algae inhibition due to duckweed coverage was strongly observed in the pond effluent, where chlorophyll a and turbidity remained below 25 μg L 1 and 10 NTU. Using the study conditions described herein, duckweed ponds were shown to be a suitable technology for swine waste treatment, contributing to the environmental sustainability of rural areas

Synthesis of Ent-16-hydroxycleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olide and Ent-cleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olide from (+)-hardwickiic acid

The absolute configurations of two natural diterpene butenolides were confirmed through the synthesis of ent-16-hydroxycleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olide (2) and ent-cleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olide (3), enantiomers of the natural products, starting from (+)-hardwickiic acid (1).As configurações absolutas de dois diterpenos butenolidos naturais foram confirmadas através da síntese do ent-16-hidroxicleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olida (2) e ent-cleroda-4(18),13-dien-15,16-olida (3), enantiômeros de produtos naturais, a partir do ácido (+)-hardwickiico (1).417420Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP

Author placement in Computer Science: a study based on the careers of ACM Fellows

The order in which authors of a scientific paper place their names on the byline follows in many research fields some implicit rules. In most fields, the first author is considered to be the one who contributed most to the intellectual effort described in the paper. Additionally, the last author is normally the most senior researcher and in many situations the contribution to the paper is more indirect. In this manuscript, we intend to analyse the evolution of the positions of computer science (CS) researchers on the bylines of scientific papers throughout their careers. In particular, this bibliometic study considers the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellows (the most prestigious members) that present a long and rich publication record. Our hypothesis is that young CS authors tend to have their names placed in the first positions of the bylines, while senior CS researchers are often considered as last authors. Several statistical analyses were conducted by using biblometric data collected from ACM Fellows and other CS researchers. Overall, the obtained results do confirm our initial hypothesis.This work has been supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments that helped improving the contents of the manuscript

2D cloud template matching - a comparison between iterative closest point and perfect match

Self-localization of mobile robots in the environment is one of the most fundamental problems in the robotics field. It is a complex and challenging problem due to the high requirements of autonomous mobile vehicles, particularly with regard to algorithms accuracy, robustness and computational efficiency. In this paper we present the comparison of two of the most used map-matching algorithm, which are the Iterative Closest Point and the Perfect Match. This category of algorithms are normally applied in localization based on natural landmarks. They were compared using an extensive collection of metrics, such as accuracy, computational efficiency, convergence speed, maximum admissible initialization error and robustness to outliers in the robots sensors data. The test results were performed in both simulated and real world environments.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multi-agent personal memory assistant

Springer - Series Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, vol. 71Memory is one of our most precious goods has it gives us the ability to store, retain and recall information thus giving a meaning to our past and help us to envision our future, dreams and expectations. However, ageing decreases the capacity of remembering and the capacity to store new memories, thus affecting our life quality. These presented problems configure a social and human dilemma. With the presented work we intend to address some of these problems, thru the use of the Personal Memory Assistant (PMA) concept in order to help its user to remember things and occurrences in a proactive manner. We will also address socialization and relaxation events that should be part of the user's life. With the use of a Multi-Agent System to implement the PMA, the objectives can be achieved in a ubiquitous and highly configurable manner. It is presented here the platform concept, scheme and the agent characteristics and their contribution to each and every agent

Humanoid realistic simulator: the servomotor joint modeling

This paper presents a humanoid servomotor model that can be used in simulations. Once simulation is a tool that reduces the software production time, it was developed a realistic simulator that own the humanoid features. Based on a real platform, the simulator is validated when compared with the reality

Proposal of a new real-time cooperative challenge in mobile robotics

In this paper it is presented a new robot competition that is going to be included in Robotica 2011, the main Robotics Portuguese Competition. The robot competition takes place in an emulated factory plant, where Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) must cooperate to perform tasks. To accomplish their goals the AGVs must deal with localization, navigation, scheduling and cooperation problems, that must be solved autonomously. One option of prototyping the AGVs is the use of the Lego Mindstorms NXT technology. The presented example can play an important role in education due to the inherent multi-disciplinary concepts that are involved, motivating students to technological areas. It also plays an important role in research and development, because it is expected that the outcomes that will emerge here, will later be transfered to other application areas, such as service robots and manufacturing