3,949 research outputs found
Learning roadmaps for Higher Education
An integrated platform for the support of teaching activities as been developed and deployed at the Aveiro Norte Polytechnic School of the University of Aveiro. In this paper we present an approach to Learning Roadmaps for Higher Education based on this platform. The aprend.e platform – Electronic Integrated System for Learning and Training - has at its core a Learning Management System with a number of plugins. It represents a new challenge for the University of Aveiro for higher education and is already being at its core is the concept of learning roadmaps that act upon two fundamental axes: education and learning. For the teachers, it aims at becoming a self-supporting tool that stimulates the organization and management of the course materials (lectures, presentations, multimedia content, and evaluation materials, amongst others). For the students, the learning roadmap aims at promoting self-study and supervised study, endowing the pupil with the capabilities to find the relevant information and to capture the concepts in the study materials. The outcome will be a stimulating learning process together with an organized management of those materials
On the use of Neumann's principle for the calculation of the polarizability tensor of nanostructures
The polarizability measures how the system responds to an applied electrical
field. Computationally, there are many different ways to evaluate this
tensorial quantity, some of which rely on the explicit use of the external
perturbation and require several individual calculations to obtain the full
tensor. In this work, we present some considerations about symmetry that allow
us to take full advantage of Neumann's principle and decrease the number of
calculations required by these methods. We illustrate the approach with two
examples, the use of the symmetries in real space and in spin space in the
calculation of the electrical or the spin response.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in the Journal of
Nanoscience and Nanotechnolog
Musikla: Language for generating musical events
In this paper, we'll discuss a simple approach to integrating musical events, such as notes or chords, into a programming language. This means treating music sequences as a first class citizen. It will be possible to save those sequences into variables or play them right away, pass them into functions or apply operators on them (like transposing or repeating the sequence). Furthermore, instead of just allowing static sequences to be generated, we'll integrate a music keyboard system that easily allows the user to bind keys (or other kinds of events) to expressions. Finally, it is important to provide the user with multiple and extensible ways of outputing their music, such as synthesizing it into a file or directly into the speakers, or writing a MIDI or music sheet file. We'll structure this paper first with an analysis of the problem and its particular requirements. Then we will discuss the solution we developed to meet those requirements. Finally we'll analyze the result and discuss possible alternative routes we could've taken.- (undefined
Density-based mixing parameter for hybrid functionals
A very popular ab-initio scheme to calculate electronic properties in solids
is the use of hybrid functionals in density functional theory (DFT) that mixes
a portion of Fock exchange with DFT functionals. In spite of their success, a
major problem still remains, related to the use of one single mixing parameter
for all materials. Guided by physical arguments that connect the mixing
parameter to the dielectric properties of the solid, and ultimately to its band
gap, we propose a method to calculate this parameter from the electronic
density alone. This method is able to cut significantly the error of
traditional hybrid functionals for large and small gap materials, while
retaining a good description of structural properties. Moreover, its
implementation is simple and leads to a negligible increase of the
computational time.Comment: submitte
The Insular Cortex Controls Food Preferences Independently of Taste Receptor Signaling
The insular cortex (IC) contains the primary sensory cortex for oral chemosensation including gustation, and its integrity is required for appropriate control of feeding behavior. However, it remains unknown whether the role of this brain area in food selection relies on the presence of peripheral taste input. Using multielectrode recordings, we found that the responses of populations of neurons in the IC of freely licking, sweet-blind Trpm5−/− mice are modulated by the rewarding postingestive effects of sucrose. FOS immunoreactivity analyses revealed that these responses are restricted to the dorsal insula. Furthermore, bilateral lesions in this area abolished taste-independent preferences for sucrose that can be conditioned in these Trpm5−/− animals while preserving their ability to detect sucrose. Overall, these findings demonstrate that, even in the absence of peripheral taste input, IC regulates food choices based on postingestive signals
Accuracy of generalized gradient approximation functionals for density functional perturbation theory calculations
We assess the validity of various exchange-correlation functionals for
computing the structural, vibrational, dielectric, and thermodynamical
properties of materials in the framework of density-functional perturbation
theory (DFPT). We consider five generalized-gradient approximation (GGA)
functionals (PBE, PBEsol, WC, AM05, and HTBS) as well as the local density
approximation (LDA) functional. We investigate a wide variety of materials
including a semiconductor (silicon), a metal (copper), and various insulators
(SiO -quartz and stishovite, ZrSiO zircon, and MgO periclase).
For the structural properties, we find that PBEsol and WC are the closest to
the experiments and AM05 performs only slightly worse. All three functionals
actually improve over LDA and PBE in contrast with HTBS, which is shown to fail
dramatically for -quartz. For the vibrational and thermodynamical
properties, LDA performs surprisingly very good. In the majority of the test
cases, it outperforms PBE significantly and also the WC, PBEsol and AM05
functionals though by a smaller margin (and to the detriment of structural
parameters). On the other hand, HTBS performs also poorly for vibrational
quantities. For the dielectric properties, none of the functionals can be put
forward. They all (i) fail to reproduce the electronic dielectric constant due
to the well-known band gap problem and (ii) tend to overestimate the oscillator
strengths (and hence the static dielectric constant)
Understanding the adoption of a new waste management system
Vorobeva, D., Scott, I. J., Oliveira, T., & Neto, M. (2023). Leveraging technology for waste sustainability: Understanding the adoption of a new waste management system. Sustainable Environment Research, (33), [12]. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42834-023-00174-x --- The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) Portugal under the project UIDB/0415s2/2020—Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC). Project BEE2WasteCrypto (reference IDT-COP 45933) leading to this work is co-financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalisation COMPETE 2020, the Lisbon Portugal Regional Operational Program – LISBOA 2020 and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT under CMU Portugal Program.Many countries are under escalating pressure to meet legally binding targets in relation to recycling and waste management. This paper explores how innovative tools, including blockchain, economic incentives, and gamification, encourage consumer adoption of a novel household waste management system. We focus on developing a comprehensive framework that combines UTAUT2 (the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2) with novel features in the waste management context and additional behavioral construct, intention to recommend the system to others. We tested the proposed model using the partial least square structural equation modeling approach based on a survey of 400 respondents. The results indicate that in addition to effort expectancy, social influence, and hedonic motivation, trust, a property of blockchain technology, also impacts the respondent’s behavioral intention to use the new system. Furthermore, trust has a significant effect on both the level of system use and intention to recommend waste management system to others. The role of gamification was identified as a moderator between behavioral intention and system use and between trust and system use but not between system use and facilitating conditions. This result demonstrates that gamification can be valuable to increase adoption in users with otherwise low levels of behavioral intention. However, we did not find a strong link between either economic incentives, facilitating conditions, or performance expectancy and behavioral intention. The paper concludes by presenting the application of the proposed framework and the implications for the design of future consumer-facing waste management systems. The introduction of the novel features such as blockchain and gamification is discussed.publishersversionpublishe
The role of financial incentives and pro-environmental behavior
Vorobeva, D., Scott, I. J., Oliveira, T., & Neto, M. (2022). Adoption of new household waste management technologies: The role of financial incentives and pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Cleaner Production, 362(August), 1-10. [132328]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132328 --- Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) Portugal under the project UIDB/0415s2/2020 - Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC) . Project BEE2WasteCrypto (reference IDT-COP 45933) leading to this work is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalisation COMPETE 2020, the Lisbon Portugal Regional Operational Program – LISBOA 2020 and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT under CMU Portugal Program.New technological solutions can encourage lower household waste production and higher levels of waste separation. This paper focuses on analyzing the role of different behavioral factors, such as empowerment and pro-environmental behavior (PEB), have on citizens' intention to use a novel household waste management and separation system and how these interact with the financial incentives typically applied in this area, pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) and save-as-you-throw (SAYT). The proposed model was tested in Portugal using the structural equation modeling approach. Survey data from 400 respondents found that empowerment plays a vital role in adopting an innovative waste management system. The research discerns pro-environmental behavior (PEB) both as an antecedent and a moderator between system use and empowerment, system use and behavioral intention, and also between system use and financial incentives. We discovered that for people with low perceived PEB, PAYT actually reduces the use of the new waste management system, while SAYT can increase the use of the system. Furthermore, increasing the empowerment of users in the system can work exceptionally well at encouraging consumers that already have a high level of PEB. The paper concludes with a discussion section about the developed framework's application and implication in the waste management sector. This study is valuable for understanding how citizens will adopt a new waste management system and essential for encouraging citizens to engage in recycling behavior regularly.publishersversionpublishe
Cork processing wastewater treatment/valorisation by nanofiltration
Nanofiltration process for the treatment/valorisation of cork processing wastewaters was studied. A DS-5 DK 20/40 (GE Water Technologies) nanofiltration membrane/module was used, having 2.09 m(2) of surface area. Hydraulic permeability was determined with pure water and the result was 5.2 L.h(-1).m(-2).bar(-1). The membrane presents a rejection of 51% and 99% for NaCl and MgSO4 salts, respectively. Two different types of regimes were used in the wastewaters filtration process, total recycling mode and concentration mode. The first filtration regime showed that the most favourable working transmembrane pressure was 7 bar working at 25 degrees C. For the concentration mode experiments it was observed a 30% decline of the permeate fluxes when a volumetric concentration factor of 5 was reached. The permeate COD, BOD5, colour and TOC rejection values remained well above the 90% value, which allows, therefore, the concentration of organic matter (namely the tannin fraction) in the concentrate stream that can be further used by other industries. The permeate characterization showed that it cannot be directly discharged to the environment as it does not fulfil the values of the Portuguese discharge legislation. However, the permeate stream can be recycled to the process (boiling tanks) as it presents no colour and low TOC (< 60 ppm) or if wastewater discharge is envisaged we have observed that the permeate biodegradability is higher than 0.5, which renders conventional wastewater treatments feasible
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