The competitiveness of the Portuguese wine sector and a case study of exports and activity diversification in the Vinhos Verdes region

The world wine market is currently characterised by two principal wine suppliers: the European and the New World. Countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal have witnessed a tremendous growth in the New World wine- makers (Australia, Chile, South Africa, etc.). As competition continues to intensify, wineries are searching for new channels to increase revenues and many vintners chose to develop other activities. Portugal is one of the European countries that present several natural and technical constraints which might be now resulting in modest performance regarding its position in the global wine market, competitiveness and dynamism required to overcome difficulties. The main objective of the study is to provide information to vintners concerning the current situation of the wine industry and possibly to present "holes" in the market which overall might be explored as new business opportunities. To that end, the research will attempt to measure the competitiveness of the Portuguese wine industry and its behaviour during a time period considered. This will be based on indices such as the trade intensity index, revealed comparative advantage, auto- sufficiency and market share ratios. This paper will also try to analyse empirically the specific case of exports and activity diversification in the Vinhos Verdes region.wine industry, competitiveness indices, exports, activity diversification, Vinhos Verdes wine, Agribusiness,

Induced mass in N=2 super Yang-Mills theories

The masses of the matter fields of N=2 Super-Yang-Mills theories can be defined as parameters of deformed supersymmetry transformations. The formulation used involves central charges for the matter fields. The explicit form of the deformed supersymmetry transformations and of the invariant Lagrangian in presence of the gauge supermultiplet are constructed. This works generalizes a former one, due to the same authors, which presented the free matter case.Comment: 15 pages, Late

Portuguese adolescents : active lifestyles and health

FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), IDP (Instituto do Desporto de Portugal), AIESEP World Congres

A NTU-Based Model to Estimate Suction Superheating In Scroll Compressors

Suction superheating plays a major role in determining the efficiency degradation of hermetic scroll compressors. Current models to predict superheating are usually experimentally calibrated and therefore can only be applied to existing compressors. This paper presents a thermal model to estimate suction superheating in scroll compressors, based on the NTU method for heat exchangers design. The model considers an isothermal surface exchanging heat with the gas in the suction path and in the discharge plenum. Compared to other models, the new approach described herein has the advantage of not requiring any experimental input data. The thermal model is coupled to a thermodynamic model and applied to evaluate the performance of a scroll compressor. The model was capable to predict the suction gas temperature in good agreement with experimental data, making it particularly useful for compressor design

The Surface Texturing of Monocrystalline Silicon with NH4OH and Ion Implantation for Applications in Solar Cells Compatible with CMOS Technology

AbstractThis work presents the development of photovoltaic cells based on p+/n junction in Si substrates, aimed at compatibility with fabrication processes with CMOS technology. The compatible processes, which are developed in this study, are the techniques:i) Si surface texturing, with the textured surface reflection of 15% obtained by the formation of micro-pyramids (heights between 3 and 7μm) using NH4OH (ammonium hydroxide) alkaline solution, which is free of undesirable contamination by Na+ and K+ ions, when NaOH and KOH traditional solutions are used, respectively, and ii) of the ECR-CVD (ElectronCyclotron Resonance - Chemical Vapor Deposition) deposition of SiNx (silicon nitride) anti-reflective coating (ARC), which is carried out at room temperature and can be performed after the end of cell fabrication without damage on metallic tracks and without variation of p+/n junction depth. The ARC coating characterization presented that the silicon nitride has a refractive index of 1.92 and a minimum reflectance of 1.03%, which is an excellent result for application in solar (or photovoltaic) cells. For the formation of the pn junction was used ion implantation process with 11B+, E=20KeV, dose of 1x1015cm2 and four rotations of 90° to get uniformity on texturized surfaces

Molecular Sieve Silica (MSS) Membranes for Gas Separation and Reaction Processes

Weakly branched silica films formed by the two-step sol-gel process allow for the formation of high selectivity membranes for gas separation. 29Si NMR and gas permeation showed that reduced crosslinking leads to He/CH4 selectivity improvement from 300 to 1000. Applied in membrane reactor for cyclohexane conversion to benzene, conversions were achieved at 14 fold higher than a conventional reactor at 250°C. Hydrothermal stability studies showed that carbon templating of silica is required for hydrothermally stable membranes. From our work it was shown that with correct application of chemistry, practical membrane systems can be built to suit gas separation (e. g. hydrogen fuel) and reactor systems

Gemini NIFS survey of feeding and feedback processes in nearby Active Galaxies: I - Stellar kinematics

We use the Gemini Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) to map the stellar kinematics of the inner few hundred parsecs of a sample of 16 nearby Seyfert galaxies, at a spatial resolution of tens of parsecs and spectral resolution of 40 km/s. We find that the line-of-sight (LOS) velocity fields for most galaxies are well reproduced by rotating disk models. The kinematic position angle (PA) derived for the LOS velocity field is consistent with the large scale photometric PA. The residual velocities are correlated with the hard X-ray luminosity, suggesting that more luminous AGN have a larger impact in the surrounding stellar dynamics. The central velocity dispersion values are usually higher than the rotation velocity amplitude, what we attribute to the strong contribution of bulge kinematics in these inner regions. For 50% of the galaxies, we find an inverse correlation between the velocities and the $h_3$ Gauss-Hermitte moment, implying red wings in the blueshifted side and blue wings in the redshifted side of the velocity field, attributed to the movement of the bulge stars lagging the rotation. Two of the 16 galaxies (NGC 5899 and Mrk 1066) show an S-shape zero velocity line, attributed to the gravitational potential of a nuclear bar. Velocity dispersion maps show rings of low-$\sigma$ values (50-80 km/s) for 4 objects and "patches" of low-sigma for 6 galaxies at 150-250 pc from the nucleus, attributed to young/ intermediate age stellar populations.Comment: To be published in MNRA