Application and improvement/finetuning of a hybrid pm planning method to a real project

Project management is the base for all projects. As many authors say and I also say, if a project fails in planning, it will fail in execution. The aeronautic business is a very demanding work which requires a big knowledge by the persons who are working on it. The present work is inserted into a very complex project. This project has the goal to perform Depot Level Maintenance (DLM) in a NATO fleet of 14 aircrafts. This project is characterized by performing in parallel the planning and the executing phases at the same time, which need to adopt a new approach more effective to accomplish with effectiveness all work. Within this, the team forecast to accomplish all the customers’ requirements, increasing, in that way, customer satisfaction. To address this problem, this work intent to implement and improve an approach developed before by another colleague. Finally, the implementation process showed very satisfied from the point of view of the team which they realize the approach very useful during this work, increasing the planning and executing phases performance of the team. Moreover, improvements were already made, following the intention the be more adaptive to the team.Gestão de projetos é a base para todos os projetos. Como é dito por muitos autores e também dito por mim, se um projeto falhar em planear, vai falhar na execução. O negócio aeronáutico é um trabalho muito exigente, o que necessita de um grande conhecimento por parte das pessoas que estão neste tipo de área. O presente trabalho está inserido num projeto muito complexo. Este projeto tem o objetivo de executar Depot Level Maintenace (DLM) numa frota de 14 aviões da NATO. Este projeto é caracterizado por ter a fase de execução e de planeamento ao mesmo tempo, o que precisa de adotar uma nova abordagem mais eficiente para realizar com eficiência todo o trabalho. Com isto, a equipa prevê realizar todos os requerimentos do cliente, aumentando desta maneira, a satisfação do cliente. Para resolver este problema, este trabalho tenciona implementar e melhorar uma abordagem desenvolvida por outro colega. Finalmente, o processo de implementação mostrou-se muito bom do ponto de vista da equipa onde encararam a abordagem muito útil ao longo deste trabalho, aumentando assim o desempenho da fase planeamento e execução da equipa. Além disso, melhoramentos já foram feitos, continuando com a intenção de ser cada vez mais apropriado para a equipa

Building a game with augmented reality: for training computational thinking

Dissertação de mestrado em Informatics EngineeringComputational Thinking is the problem solving method based on picking a complex problem, understanding what the problem is and developing solutions in a way that a computer or human could solve it. To aid in this task Augmented Reality provides a more visual and interesting way of presenting problems to subjects, that will solve puzzles presented as computational inputs. This work is composed of a case study of Augmented Reality and their uses and practices, Computational Thinking definitions and importance in society, as well as games and puzzles used as a training and skill developing tools among students. Based on the gathered data a proof of concept tool was developed to test and create an engaging game to retain the subjects interest to train Computational Thinking. The project developed tackled various technologies that together provided a fun and interactive game that developed Computational Thinking skills with positive feedback on the use of the Augmented Reality.Pensamento Computacional é o método de resolução de problemas baseado em escolher um problema complexo, entender qual o problema e desenvolver soluções de uma maneira que um computador ou humano podem resolver. Para ajudar nesta tarefa a Realidade Aumentada oferece uma mais visual e interessante maneira de apresentar problemas a indivíduos que irão resolver puzzles apresentados como inputs computacionais. Este trabalho é composto de um caso de estudo sobre Realidade Aumentada e os seus usos e práticas, Pensamento Computacional, as suas definições e a importância na sociedade, como também jogos e puzzles usados como ferramentas de desenvolvimento e treino de aptidão entre estudantes. Com base nos dados recolhidos uma ferramenta de prova de conceito foi desenvolvida para testar e criar uma experiência atraente para reter o interesse de indivíduos para treinar o Pensamento Computacional. O projeto foi desenvolvido enfrentado várias tecnologias que juntas ofereceram um jogo divertido e interativo para desenvolver o Pensamento Computacional com um feedback positivo sobre o uso da Realidade Aumentada

What characteristics do Sporting CP members perceive for the next board president?

In September 2018, Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting CP) is facing financial and sportive problems. All these problems arise after an historical attack against the players of the football team, and ends with the president getting fired by its own members of the club. Despite some people considering that this is the worst moment of Sporting CP history, within the elections there are at the beginning nine candidates. It is important to understand how did the club get to such position, and by listening to the fans what they do perceive for the club. The main objective of this case study is to allow marketing students or professionals to develop their knowledge in understanding sport consumers and getting an approach on marketing campaigns to get elected (political marketing). In this sense, the case concerns the analysis of Sporting CP, understanding its history and values. Also to understand the sports industry and its evolution, the overall sport consumers and in detail Sporting CP fans. This analyse is only possible due to the realization of a focus group, that allows to understand the fans, but also how they saw the candidates, what they want for Sporting CP, and what characteristics they believe the next board president would have. For the construction of the case, research was made about the club, sports and fans as well as a literature review that fits conceptually the diverse variables in the case: Sports Consumers, Leadership and Political marketing. A set of questions was developed to address the case topics as well as the proposed resolution proposal so that those who use the case can draw all the necessary conclusions and develop their knowledge in the covered areas.Em setembro de 2018, o Sporting Clube de Portugal (Sporting CP) enfrenta problemas financeiros e desportivos. Os problemas surgem após um ataque histórico contra os jogadores da equipa de futebol e terminam com o presidente a ser demitido pelos próprios sócios do clube. Muitas pessoas acabam por considerar que este é o pior momento da história do Sporting, mas nas eleições há nove candidatos ao arranque. É importante entender como o clube chegou a esta situação e ouvir os sócios do clube para entender o que pretendem para o clube. O principal objetivo deste "case study" é permitir que estudantes ou profissionais de marketing desenvolvam seus conhecimentos para entender os consumidores de desporto e obter uma abordagem em campanhas de marketing para eleições (marketing político). Nesse sentido, o caso diz respeito à análise do Sporting CP, compreendendo a sua história e valores. Também para entender a indústria do desporto e a sua evolução, o consumidor de desporto em geral, em detalhe, os fãs do Sporting CP. Essa análise só é possível devido à realização de um "focus group", que permite entender os adeptos, mas também como eles viram os candidatos, o que desejam para o Sporting CP e quais características acreditam que o próximo presidente da direção tenha. Para a construção do caso, foram realizadas pesquisas sobre o clube, desporto e sócios/adeptos, além de uma revisão bibliográfica que se enquadra conceitualmente às diversas variáveis do caso: Consumidores do desporto, Liderança e Marketing Político. Um conjunto de perguntas foi desenvolvido para abordar os tópicos do caso, bem como a proposta de resolução, para que aqueles que usam o caso possam tirar todas as conclusões necessárias e desenvolver conhecimentos nas áreas cobertas

Cardiovascular effects of Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists

Patients with type 2 diabetes have a several-fold increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease when compared with nondiabetic controls. Myocardial infarction and stroke are responsible for 75% of all death in patients with diabetes, who present a 2-4× increased incidence of death from coronary artery disease. Patients with diabetes are considered for cardiovascular disease secondary prevention because their risk level is similar to that reported in patients without diabetes who have already suffered a myocardial infarction. More recently, with a better risk factors control, mainly in intensive LDL cholesterol targets with statins, a significant decrease in acute cardiovascular events was observed in population with diabetes. Together with other major risk factors, type 2 diabetes must be considered as an important cause of cardiovascular disease. Glucagon like peptide-1 receptor agonists represent a novel class of anti-hyperglycemic agents that have a cardiac-friendly profile, preserve neuronal cells and inhibit neuronal degeneration, an anti-inflammatory effect in liver protecting it against steatosis, increase insulin sensitivity, promote weight loss, and increase satiety or anorexia. This review is intended to rationally compile the multifactorial cardiovascular effects of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists available for the treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes

Equity valuation research : Corticeira Amorim SGPS S.A.

Every single existing asset has value, including companies. The main purpose of Equity Valuation is to determine, at a given time, the value of a specific company, taking into account its past, present and future expected performance, as well as its market position and assets. Thus, Equity Valuation turns out to be very useful namely because it allows investors to take better informed investment decisions. To perform a true valuation, the implied assumptions must hold and be consistent to obtain a trustworthy and reliable scenario of the company’s reality. A good valuation needs to consider both internal and external factors that influence, positively or negatively, the company’s performance during its professional activity. It is also important to state that there are a large variety of possible valuation methods, which will result in different results and with different accuracy. The present dissertation is an Equity Valuation of Corticeira Amorim GSPS S.A., the world’s biggest cork-transforming company and the most international Portuguese company. While many companies have failed to survive to the financial crisis, Corticeira Amorim managed to succumb it due to its sustainable growth over time. Moreover, after analyzing the company’s financial statements, its consistently positive results are noticeable. Having said so, it appears to be a good company to invest in, as its recent and future expected performance seems to be aligned with investors’ expectations. This dissertation aims to suggest investors as to whether they should invest, or not, in Corticeira Amorim, taking into account its estimated market value.Todo e qualquer ativo tem um determinado valor, nomeadamente as empresas. O principal objetivo de uma Equity Valuation é determinar o valor de uma empresa, num dado período, tendo em consideração a sua performance passada, presente e futura, além da sua posição de mercado e dos seus ativos. Assim, uma Equity Valuation é extremamente útil, nomeadamente porque permite aos investidores tomarem decisões melhor informados. Numa boa avaliação, os pressupostos têm de ser realistas e consistentes de forma a representar um cenário realista da realidade da empresa. Uma boa avaliação tem também de considerar fatores internos e externos à empresa que influenciam, positiva ou negativamente, o seu desempenho durante a sua atividade profissional. É importante referir que há uma grande variedade de métodos de avaliação, levando a diferentes resultados e com diferentes graus de precisão. Esta dissertação incide sobre a Equity Valuation da Corticeira Amorim SGPS S.A., a maior empresa transformadora de cortiça do mundo e a empresa Portuguesa mais internacional. Enquanto muitas empresas faliram durante a crise financeira mundial, a Corticeira Amorim conseguiu ultrapassar este período devido ao seu crescimento sustentável ao longo dos anos. Analisando os seus relatórios financeiros, são evidentes os resultados positivos consistentes. Assim, parece ser uma boa empresa para investir devido ao seu bom desempenho recente e ao desempenho esperado no futuro. A dissertação sugere aos investidores se estes devem, ou não, investir na Corticeira Amorim, tendo em conta o seu valor de mercado

Java stream fusion: Adapting FP mechanisms for an OO setting

In this paper, we show how stream fusion, a program transformation technique used in functional programming, can be adapted for an Object-Oriented setting. This makes it possible to have more Stream operators than the ones currently provided by the Java Stream API. The addition of more operators allows for a greater deal of expressiveness. To this extent, we show how these operators are incorporated in the stream setting. Furthermore, we also demonstrate how a specific set of optimizations eliminates overheads and produces equivalent code in the form of for loops. In this way, programmers are relieved from the burden of writing code in such a cumbersome style, thus allowing for a more declarative and intuitive programming approach.This work is financed by the ERDF European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER016718

Framing program repair as code completion

Many techniques have contributed to the advancement of automated program repair, such as: generate and validate approaches, constraint-based solvers and even neural machine translation. Simultaneously, artificial intelligence has allowed the creation of general-purpose pre-trained models that support several downstream tasks. In this paper, we describe a technique that takes advantage of a generative model - CodeGPT - to automatically repair buggy programs by making use of its code completion capabilities. We also elaborate on where to perform code completion in a buggy line and how we circumvent the open-ended nature of code generation to appropriately fit the new code in the original program. Furthermore, we validate our approach on the ManySStuBs4j dataset containing real-world open-source projects and show that our tool is able to fix 1739 programs out of 6415 - a 27% repair rate. The repaired programs range from single-line changes to multiple line modifications. In fact, our technique is able to fix programs which were missing relatively complex expressions prior to being analyzed. In the end, we present case studies that showcase different scenarios our technique was able to handle.This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT -Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, within project LA/P/0063/2020. Francisco Ribeiro would like to acknowledge a PhD scholarship with reference SFRH/BD/144938/2019. Rui Abreu would like to acknowledge FCT through reference UIDB/50021/2020, the SecurityAware Project (ref. CMU/TIC/0064/2019) -also funded by the Carnegie Mellon Program, and the FaultLocker Project (ref. PTDC/CCI-COM/29300/2017)

Reconstruction of a genome-scale metabolic network for Streptococcus pneumoniae R6

The gram-positive, lancet-shaped bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae thrives in almost any environment. Under certain conditions this pathogen can cause several infections such as meningitis, otitis media, endocarditis or pneumonia. Genome-scale metabolic networks (GSMs) are commonly used to study phenotype-genotype relationships using biochemical, physiological and genomic information. These relationships might shed some light on identification of targets for metabolic engineering or, in the case of S. pneumoniae, determine if the bacteria´s increased invasiveness and virulence is dependent on specific genomic regions or determined by environmental conditions. In order to obtain a robust and reliable metabolic model, a proper, up-to-date genome annotation must be performed. In our work we aimed to re-annotate the genome of Streptococcus pneumoniae strain R6 and which would be used to reconstruct a metabolic network at a genomic level. For these tasks merlin was used, a software tool capable of performing automatic annotation of the genome using the amino acid sequences as well as reconstruction of the metabolic network. For validation purposes, another in-house tool (Optflux) capable of performing simulations and optimization tasks was used. Re-annotation of the genome was performed in accordance to an in-house generated pipeline which established rules for gene identification acceptance (and attribution of confidence levels) or rejection. Out of the 2043 genes present in S. pneumoniae´s genome, an initial 822 were identified as metabolic, representing an increase of almost 9 and 15% when compared to those of KEGG and Uniprot. An extended comparison revealed that a large number of genes (359 and 271 when compared to Uniprot and KEGG, respectively) were only present in our re-annotation. Although a significant amount of genes (113) were identified as only being present in KEGG and not in our study, this can be explained by the dismissal of genes associated to DNA and RNA processes from the statistical analysis. The metabolic network is comprised of 795 genes, 776 that only encode enzymes and 19 that only encode transporters. The biomass equation was adapted from close-related organisms such as B. subtilis and L. lactis cross-referenced with the biomass equation determined by ModelSEED for S. pneumoniae R6. Despite the considerable amount of essential genes in our model (83), only 38 were in accordance to literature regarding gene essentiality although it identified others (45) which have not been studied to date. The mismatch between results might be related to strain metabolic specificities, regulatory phenomena or even the dismissal of genes that affect DNA and RNA processes and capsule synthesis which should be addressed in future work. In order to validate the accuracy of the model, simulations were performed using experimental data retrieved from literature. The results obtained were very similar to the ones described in in vitro studies elevating the confidence level of the reconstructed model

The European Union Financial Transaction Tax : feasibility and desirability

The roots of a Financial Transaction Tax date back to 1936. At that time, Keynes stated that the implementation of an internationally agreed uniform tax over financial transactions could be a solution to control the volatility of financial markets, an idea that was later developed in the 70’s by James Tobin (1972; 1974). Taking into consideration the arguments in favour and against such tax, the European Commission decided to propose the implementation of a common Financial Transaction Tax in the European Union. The main goals of this thesis are to examine the feasibility and desirability of that proposal. In addition, this essay intends to understand which would be the main implications for the European financial sector and how it would react. In order to do so, this dissertation synthesizes and interprets the main arguments in favour and against the proposal present in the economic literature. The results of this study, based on the information available, point out that not only the proposal seems unfeasible and undesirable, but also that European financial institutions would be able to avoid taxation, a situation that would probably generate negative distortions in financial markets. Moreover, this essay also concludes that are other taxation mechanisms - namely the Financial Activities Tax - that better address European Commission’s desires with the measure.As raízes de um imposto sobre as transacções financeiras remontam a 1936. Nesse ano, Keynes referiu que a implementação de um imposto comum sobre as transacções financeiras a nível internacional poderia ser uma solução para controlar a volatilidade nos mercados financeiros, uma ideia que foi mais tarde desenvolvida por James Tobin (1972; 1974). Tomando em consideração os argumentos a favor e contra tal imposto, a Comissão Europeia decidiu propor a implementação de um imposto comum sobre as transacções financeiras na União Europeia. Os principais objectivos desta tese passam por examinar a plausibilidade e a desejabilidade da proposta Europeia. Adicionalmente, este ensaio pretende perceber quais seriam as principais implicações para o sector financeiro Europeu e de que forma este reagiria. Para este efeito, esta dissertação sintetiza e interpreta os principais argumentos a favor e contra a proposta presentes na literatura económica. Os resultados deste estudo, com base na informação disponível, apontam não apenas que a proposta parece inviável e indesejável, mas também que as instituições financeiras Europeias seriam capazes de evitar a tributação, uma situação que provavelmente geraria distorções negativas nos mercados financeiros. Além disso, este ensaio conclui que existem outros mecanismos de tributação – nomeadamente um imposto sobre as actividades do sector financeiro – que vão mais ao encontro dos objectivos da Comissão Europeia com a medida