A New Kind of Production Multiplier for Assessing the Scale and Structure Effects of Demand Shocks in Input-Output Frameworks

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a new kind of input-output multiplier that would be particularly well suited to quantifying the impacts of final demand changes on the sectoral output growth potential of an economy. Instead of using the traditional output multipliers, solving an appropriate optimization problem provides what can be called input-output Euclidean distance multipliers. This method does not impose unitary final demand shocks with a fixed (predetermined) structure, allowing the “IO economy” to change across the spectrum of all possible structures. It can be very helpful in measuring interindustry linkages and key sectors in a national or regional economy. An empirical illustration is made, using national (Spain and Portugal) and regional (Balearic Islands and the Azores) input-output data.input-output analysis; ultra-peripheral regions; structural change

Assessing Economic Complexity with Input-Output Based Measures

Economic complexity can be defined as the level of interdependence between the component parts of an economy. In input-output systems, intersectoral connectedness is a crucial feature of analysis, and there are many different methods for measuring it. Most of the measures, however, have drawbacks that prevent them from being used as a good indicator of economic complexity, because they were not explicitly made with this purpose in mind. In this paper, we present, discuss and compare empirically different indexes of economic complexity as intersectoral connectedness, using the interindustry tables of several OECD countries.input-output analysis; intersectoral connectedness; economic complexity

Innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3): Past, present and future research

The recent change in the regional development strategy of the European Union (EU) results in an important need to study the terms of change and their respective implications. This study seeks, through a bibliometric analysis, to ascertain the developments taking place in studies on research and innovation strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) to identify shortcomings and opportunities for future research. This bibliometric review drew upon the Scopus database with the sample selected containing all the articles containing the keywords “Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation” or “RIS3.” This correspondingly reports how some authors maintain that the path the EU should take involves imitative innovation. Meanwhile, others propose that each region should specialise in those industries that are already established there and thus avoid targeting any areas they do not already know/specialise in. Our findings detail six clusters in RIS3 research, which help in contextualising the literature review: (a) business discovery; (b) smart specialisation; (c) innovation; (d) specialisation; (e) regional policies; and (f) regional development. This study furthermore sets out perspectives for future lines of research and correspondingly seeks to convey a vast theoretical basis that may serve as the point of departure for future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The role of the RM-ODP computational viewpoint concepts in the MDA approach

An MDA design approach should be able to accommodate designs at different levels of platform-independence. We have proposed a design approach previously (in [2]), which allows these levels to be identified. An important feature of this approach is the notion of abstract platform. An abstract platform is determined by the platform characteristics that are relevant for applications at a certain level of platform-independence, and must be established by considering various design goals. In this paper, we define a framework that makes it possible to use RM-ODP concepts in our MDA design approach. This framework allows a recursive application of the computational viewpoint at different levels of platform-independence. This is obtained by equating the RM-ODP notion of infrastructure to our notion of abstract platform

Preventing Atomicity Violations with Contracts

Software developers are expected to protect concurrent accesses to shared regions of memory with some mutual exclusion primitive that ensures atomicity properties to a sequence of program statements. This approach prevents data races but may fail to provide all necessary correctness properties.The composition of correlated atomic operations without further synchronization may cause atomicity violations. Atomic violations may be avoided by grouping the correlated atomic regions in a single larger atomic scope. Concurrent programs are particularly prone to atomicity violations when they use services provided by third party packages or modules, since the programmer may fail to identify which services are correlated. In this paper we propose to use contracts for concurrency, where the developer of a module writes a set of contract terms that specify which methods are correlated and must be executed in the same atomic scope. These contracts are then used to verify the correctness of the main program with respect to the usage of the module(s). If a contract is well defined and complete, and the main program respects it, then the program is safe from atomicity violations with respect to that module. We also propose a static analysis based methodology to verify contracts for concurrency that we applied to some real-world software packages. The bug we found in Tomcat 6.0 was immediately acknowledged and corrected by its development team

Dos maus tratos ao bom cuidado

Este trabalho explorou a ideia de que os maus-tratos emergem em contexto relacional de prestação de cuidados e deste modo constituem ou são uma consequência direta de cuidados inadequados. Esta formulação privilegia mais o olhar para os maus tratos como uma prática inadequada de cuidados do que uma forma de violência. Isto não significa que se olhem os maus tratos como não sendo violência. Significa tão só uma estratégia de olhar para o fenómeno que permite identificar mais rapidamente necessidades de formação e de alteração de práticas, que não são práticas apenas para com o recetor de cuidados, mas para com a própria pessoa que presta o cuidado.Este trabalho foi desenvolvido no Centro de Investigação em Psicologia (PSI/01662), Universidade do Minho, e foi financeiramente suportado pela Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia e pelo Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, através de fundos nacionais, e co-financiado pelo FEDER, através do COMPETE2020, no âmbito do acordo Portugal 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). O primeiro autor foi financiado por uma bolsa da Fundação Portuguesa para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCT - (PD/BD/105965/2014).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Entrepreneurial artisan products as regional tourism competitiveness

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse the role of entrepreneurial artisan products in regional tourism competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach – This study applies secondary data from different sources (Regional Directorate of Statistics of Madeira, the Madeira Institute of Wine, Embroideries and Handicrafts) covering a temporal period spanning the last 15 years (2001-2015). This deployed quantitative data analysis through an econometric approach with recourse to regression models and the Pearson’s correlation technique. Findings – According to the results, it is suggested that in terms of external support and funding, there should be a greater role and a boost in the number of projects carried out not only under the auspices of the European Union but also under the Autonomous Region of Madeira. Thus, participant companies may invest in greater business efficiency and entrepreneurship, in innovation, promotion and the internationalisation of their products, and thereby obtain greater overall regional competitiveness. Research limitations/implications – The generalisation of results remains to a certain extent limited, given the findings stem from only one particular region. The exclusive utilisation of secondary data may also undermine the robustness of the results obtained. Originality/value – The study provides empirical evidence that helps in identifying the role of artisan products within the capacity for regional tourism sector entrepreneurship and competitiveness. Furthermore, this also contributes to the knowledge of the scientific community particularly interested in artisan and cultural entrepreneurship and regional competitiveness in the tourism sector.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Platform-independent Dynamic Reconfiguration of Distributed Applications

The aim of dynamic reconfiguration is to allow a system to evolve incrementally from one configuration to another at run-time, without restarting it or taking it offline. In recent years, support for transparent dynamic reconfiguration has been added to middleware platforms, shifting the complexity required to enable dynamic reconfiguration to the supporting infrastructure. These approaches to dynamic reconfiguration are mostly platform-specific and depend on particular implementation approaches suitable for particular platforms. In this paper, we propose an approach to dynamic reconfiguration of distributed applications that is suitable for application implemented on top of different platforms. This approach supports a platform-independent view of an application that profits from reconfiguration transparency. In this view, requirements on the ability to reconfigure components are expressed in an abstract manner. These requirements are then satisfied by platform-specific realizations

Influenza vaccination and prevention of cardiovascular disease mortality

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.In Europe, which has an influenza vaccination coverage of 45·6%, about 30 million individuals have ischaemic heart disease, and more than half a million of these people will die from cardiovascular causes (figures based on the conservative standardised mortality rates of individuals aged 65 years and older). Considering that influenza vaccination is associated with a 24% risk reduction of cardiovascular mortality in this population (the lower limit of 95% CI of the estimate), an increase of coverage to 75% (as recommended by the European Council) would translate to about 42 000 potentially avoidable cardiovascular deaths in Europe among individuals with ischaemic heart disease.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The LSTS open-source communication and autonomy software: enabling networked vehicle systems to find track, and sample dynamic features of the ocean

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