Creating classification models from textual descriptions of companies using crunchbase

This paper compares different models for multilabel text classification, using information collected from Crunchbase, a large database that holds information about more than 600000 companies. Each company is labeled with one or more categories, from a subset of 46 possible categories, and the proposed models predict the categories based solely on the company textual description. A number of natural language processing strategies have been tested for feature extraction, including stemming, lemmatization, and part-of-speech tags. This is a highly unbalanced dataset, where the frequency of each category ranges from 0.7% to 28%. Our findings reveal that the description text of each company contain features that allow to predict its area of activity, expressed by its corresponding categories, with about 70% precision, and 42% recall. In a second set of experiments, a multiclass problem that attempts to find the most probable category, we obtained about 67% accuracy using SVM and Fuzzy Fingerprints. The resulting models may constitute an important asset for automatic classification of texts, not only consisting of company descriptions, but also other texts, such as web pages, text blogs, news pages, etc.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

RES Efficiency Indicators for Portugal, Slovakia and Czech Republic

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Embedded Electricity Quality Analyzer

Electric installations are traditionally designed for supplying an electric service. The only one associated instrument is the energy meter that is introduced only for measure the total amount of energy that will be charged to the user. However, the exploration of parameters associated with electricity can provide several advantages such the household performance devices, legal issues and later one a more sustainable way to use the electricity energy. This work presents the principle of a low cost energy analyzer that will be part of an electric home installation. Electric parameters are measured and then transmitted via Wi-Fi to a domestic server where all data are stored. This data exploitation can be later one used for several purposes, since electric efficiency to electric charges prediction.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Indoor environmental quality in offices and risk of health and productivity complaints at work: A literature review

Many service jobs are carried out in modern offices, with individual offices being increasingly replaced by open-plan settings. The high number of adult people working in office buildings, in most situations sharing the work-place with many others during a considerable part of their daily time, highlights the importance of providing adequate guidance to ensure the quality of office environments. This paper aims to summarize existing data on modern offices' indoor environmental quality (IEQ) conditions in terms of air pollution (volatile organic compounds (VOC), particulate matter and inorganic pollutants), thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics and the respective associations with health and productivity-related outcomes in workers. Evidence shows that al-though many offices present acceptable IEQ, some office settings can have levels of air pollutants, hygrothermal conditions/thermal comfort and illuminance that do not comply with the existing international standards and recommendations. In addition, findings suggest the existence of significant associations between the assessed IEQ indicators and the risk of detrimental effects on health and productivity of office workers. In particular, airborne particles, CO2, O 3 and thermal comfort were linked with the prevalence of sick building syndrome symptoms. Poor lighting and acoustical quality have also been associated with malaise and physiological stress among office workers. Similarly, better productivity levels have been registered for good indoor air quality conditions, in terms of VOC, airborne particles and CO2. Overall, the evidence revised in this work suggests that for promoting health and productivity recommendations for office building managers include actions to ensure that: i) all relevant IEQ indicators are periodically controlled to ensure that levels comply with recommended limit values; ii) declared in-door pollution sources are avoided; iii) adequate ventilation and acclimatization strategies are implemented; and iv) there is the possibility of conduct personalized adjustments to environmental conditions (following workers' preferences).The authors gratefully acknowledge Fundacao para a Ciencia e nologia (FCT) for the financial support of FF through the PhD BD/6521/2020

Buildings Sustainability — The Non-Intrusive Load-Identification System Contribution

Buildings are responsible for an important share of the global energy consumed with the associated consequences at economic and environmental level. To overcome this actual concern several objectives were put in perspective, being one of them the energetic performance of systems and appliances. Efficiency depends on working on optimal conditions and user behavior. Monitoring of the energy consumption of each electric load is important but the use of decentralized energy is not feasible at present due to the huge number of loads connected to the electric grid. An alternative consists on the use of a centralized measurement device able to identify loads. This work presents a measurement infrastructure that have, among others, the possibility to make the identification of electrical loads data will be used to improve the energetic performance of households and buildings and increase the sustainability of the energy system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Trends on the cellulose-based textiles: raw materials and technologies

There is an emerging environmental awareness and social concern regarding the environmental impact of the textile industry, highlighting the growing need for developing green and sustainable approaches throughout this industrys supply chain. Upstream, due to population growth and the rise in consumption of textile fibers, new sustainable raw materials and processes must be found. Cellulose presents unique structural features, being the most important and available renewable resource for textiles. The physical and chemical modification reactions yielding fibers are of high commercial importance today. Recently developed technologies allow the production of filaments with the strongest tensile performance without dissolution or any other harmful and complex chemical processes. Fibers without solvents are thus on the verge of commercialization. In this review, the technologies for the production of cellulose-based textiles, their surface modification and the recent trends on sustainable cellulose sources, such as bacterial nanocellulose, are discussed. The life cycle assessment of several cellulose fiber production methods is also discussed.This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte Operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020– Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Support from The Navigator Company through the I&D n◦ 21874, “Inpactus– Produtos e Tecnologias Inovadores a partir do Eucalipto,” funded through the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER) and the Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) is acknowledged.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Indoor Air Quality in Elderly Centers: Pollutants Emission and Health Effects

The world population is ageing, in particular in the developed world, with a significant increase in the percentage of people above 60 years old. They represent a segment of the population that is more vulnerable to adverse environmental conditions. Among them, indoor air quality is one of the most relevant, as elders spend comparatively more time indoors than younger generations. Furthermore, the recent COVID-19 pandemic contributed immensely to raising awareness of the importance of breathing air quality for human health and of the fact that indoor air is a vector for airborne infections and poisoning. Hence, this work reviews the state of the art regarding indoor air quality in elderly centers, considering the type of pollutants involved, their emission sources, and their health effects. Moreover, the influence of ventilation on air quality is also addressed. Notwithstanding the potential health problems with the corresponding costs and morbidity effects, only a few studies have considered explicitly indoor air quality and its impacts on elderly health. More studies are, therefore, necessary to objectively identify what are the impacts on the health of elderly people due to the quality of indoor air and how it can be improved, either by reducing the pollutants emission sources or by more adequate ventilation and thermal comfort strategies. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Funding: This work was financially supported by base funding of the following projects: LA/P/0045/2020 (ALiCE), UIDB/00511/2020 (LEPABE), and UIDB/50022/2020 (LAETA), funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC). Fátima Felgueiras gratefully acknowledges the Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research, and Technology (FCT) for the financial support through the Grant BD/6521/2020. António Martins thanks FCT for funding through program DL 57/2016—Norma transitória. Teresa Mata gratefully acknowledge the funding of Project NORTE-06-3559-FSE-000107, cofinanced by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020), through Fundo Social Europeu (FSE)

Indoor environmental quality in households of families with infant twins under 1 year of age living in Porto

Exposure to air pollution in early years can exacerbate the risk of noncommunicable diseases throughout childhood and the entire life course. This study aimed to assess temperature, relative humidity (RH), carbon dioxide (CO2) and monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10), ultrafine particles, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and volatile organic compounds (VOC) levels in the two rooms where infant twins spend more time at home (30 dwellings, Northern Portugal). Findings showed that, in general, the worst indoor environmental quality (IEQ) settings were found in bedrooms. In fact, although most of the bedrooms surveyed presented adequate comfort conditions in terms of temperature and RH, several children are sleeping in a bedroom with improper ventilation and/or with a significant degree of air pollution. In particular, mean concentrations higher than recommended limits were found for CO2, PM2.5, PM10 and total VOC. Additionally, terpenes and decamethylcyclopentasiloxane were identified as main components of emissions from indoor sources. Overall, findings revealed that factors related to behaviors of the occupants, namely related to a conscientious use of cleaning products, tobacco and other consumer products (air-fresheners, incenses/candles and insecticides) and promotion of ventilation are essential for the improvement of air quality in households and for the promotion of children's health.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of Project HEALS – ‘Health and Environment-wide Associations based on Large Population Surveys’, through the European Union's Seventh Program for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/603946/EU. MFG, FF and ZM also gratefully acknowledge the funding of Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000010, Health, Comfort and Energy in the Built Environment (HEBE), cofinanced by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020), through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER). The co-author CR was supported by a PhD Grant PD/BD/135925/2018 funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) - Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education

Sustainability in Buildings - A Teaching Approach

Energy consumption in buildings is responsible for an important share of global consumed energy. The current electric energy paradigm carries important consequences both at economic and environmental levels. The so called Zero Energy Buildings’ strategy provides some guidelines in order to achieve better results in buildings energy demand. This scenario is a highly multidisciplinary engineering issue, and poses several challenges at the higher education level, that is taught in separate areas. This paper presents some higher education teaching limitations to address new technological challenges in new buildings design.N/

Morbimortality Associated with COVID-19 Infection in the Elderly in Portugal: A Comparison between the Autumn/Winter Period of 2020 - 2021 and 2021 - 2022 Comparison

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