Risks, issues and critical success factors in shared service center projects

ICOPEV2018 – 4th International Conference on Production Economics and Project Evaluation | 20 Set. - 21 Set. 2018This paper is based on a case study performed in a Shared Service Center from SEG Automotive group, a former automotive division from Bosch. Due to the Bosch decision of selling the business unit of Starter Motors and Generators, it was required to create a Shared Service Center which performed the processes, until then executed by central departments to all Bosch divisions. This paper will focus on the project of processes transfer from the Bosch departments to the Shared Service Center. Through semi-structured interviews to the leadership team, it was intended to identify the major risks and issues of those projects and its critical success factors, in order to allow the management to work on measures that can avoid the risks and issues and potentiate the project success. The results show the importance of the alignment and cooperation of all stakeholders during the whole project life. It turns also clear the need of a project manager that leads the project, guides the team and has authority for decisions making. Moreover, the influence of the project team within the project is clear, being crucial to have experience, flexibility and multilanguage knowledge.This research was supported by the SEG Automotive Portugal. I appreciate the support from all the colleagues which accepted to be part of the interviews phase. Without their support this work would not have been possible

Of adenosine and the blues: the adenosinergic system in the pathophysiology and treatment of major depressive disorder

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the foremost cause of global disability, being responsible for enormous personal, societal, and economical costs. Importantly, existing pharmacological treatments for MDD are partially or totally ineffective in a large segment of patients. As such, the search for novel antidepressant drug targets, anchored on a clear understanding of the etiological and pathophysiological mechanisms underpinning MDD, becomes of the utmost importance. The adenosinergic system, a highly conserved neuromodulatory system, appears as a promising novel target, given both its regulatory actions over many MDD-affected systems and processes. With this goal in mind, we herein review the evidence concerning the role of adenosine as a potential player in pathophysiology and treatment of MDD, combining data from both human and animal studies. Altogether, evidence supports the assertions that the adenosinergic system is altered in both MDD patients and animal models, and that drugs targeting this system have considerable potential as putative antidepressants. Furthermore, evidence also suggests that modifications in adenosine signaling may have a key role in the effects of several pharmacological and non-pharmacological antidepressant treatments with demonstrated efficacy, such as electroconvulsive shock, sleep deprivation, and deep brain stimulation. Lastly, it becomes clear from the available literature that there is yet much to study regarding the role of the adenosinergic system in the pathophysiology and treatment of MDD, and we suggest several avenues of research that are likely to prove fruitful.This work was supported by project funding from Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia (FCT) to SHV (PTDC/BTM-SAL/32147/2017) and AMS (PTDC/MED-FAR/30933/2017). This project has received funding from H2020-WIDESPREAD-05-2017-Twinning (EpiEpinet) under grant agreement No. 952455. MF-F (SFRH/BD/147505/2019), JG-R (PD/BD/150342/2019), and NR (PD/BD/113463/2015) are supported by PhD fellowships from FCT.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Introdução

UID/EAT/00693/2013publishersversionpublishe

musical trouble... after Butler

UIDB/00693/2020 UIDP/00693/2020publishersversionpublishe

Analysis of a vegetable oil performance in a milling process by MQL lubrication

In this work, we carried out a comparison between the dry machining of an aluminum block with conventional cutting oil and a block with vegetable oil. The two oils had different flow rates. Using the Taguchi method, it was possible to determine the matrices for optimizing the best parameters for each group of tests. Then, we studied the utility of using vegetable oil as a cutting lubricant. We found that the vegetable oil studied in this work had good properties in terms of reducing cutting temperatures but was less effective than conventional cutting oil in reducing the surface roughness of the machined part. Tribological tests were carried out to understand the influence of the selected lubricants in reducing friction and wear. After the sliding experiments, which were performed without lubrication in the presence of the same lubricants that were used in the machining tests and in the presence of distilled water, we concluded that vegetable oil has satisfactory lubricating properties that are similar to those of the conventional cutting fluid, indicating a potential for consideration as an effective alternative to the conventional cutting fluid, with economic, environmental, and health advantages.Financial support was provided by Portugal’s national funding FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO) (UIDB/00690/2020 and UIDP/00690/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020). Additionally, this work was partially supported by Portuguese FCT, under the reference projects UIDB/04077/2020, UIDB/00532/2020 and UIDB/04436/2020. This research was also partially funded by EXPL2021CIMO_01. Inês Afonso acknowledges the financial support of CIMO through EXPL2021CIMO_01.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Sobrecarga dos cuidadores familiares de pessoas com doença mental: dimensões analítico-reflexivas na perspectiva do Serviço Social

From a conceptual and documentary analysis about mental health and their implications on deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care, this article does a literature review about the factors of the analytical concept of burden of family caregivers, which serves the basic understanding of the phenomena and of the two family intervention models presented here: the model of Twigg and Atkin: focused on the problem and arguing on a expansion of the concept of caregiver in the perspective of the professional intervention; and Salleebey model: that focuses on the strengths and opportunities of persons involved in a dialectical process in which fall mediation, advocacy and empowerment. Being a field of multidisciplinary intervention, the mental health area is viewed by the practice of social worker profession, focusing on some of the theoretical, ethical and political dimensions.A partir d’une analyse conceptuelle et documentaire sur la santé mentale et les conséquences de la désinstitutionalisation des soins psychiatriques, cet article fait une revue de la littérature sur les facteurs concernant la charge des aidants familiaux, qui sert de base pour la compréhension de deux modèles d’intervention de la famille présenté ici: le modèle de Twigg et Atkin focalisé sur le problème et qui fait valoir l’élargissement de la notion de fournisseur de soins, et la perspective de l’intervention des professionnelles, et le modèle Salleebey qui se concentre sur les forces et les possibilités des personnes impliquées dans un processus dialectique dans lequel point la médiation automne, le plaidoyer et l’autonomisation. Constituant un champ d’intervention en santé mentale, l’acte est considéré du point de vue professionnel (des travailleurs sociaux) face à l’analyse du sujet, mettant l’accent sur certaines dimensions théoriques, éthiques et politiques.Partindo de uma análise conceptual e documental sobre a saúde mental e as implicações da desinstitucionalização da assistência psiquiátrica, neste artigo é efectuada uma revisão bibliográfica sobre os factores analíticos do conceito de sobrecarga de cuidadores familiares, que serve de base à compreensão de dois modelos de intervenção familiar aqui apresentados: o modelo de Twigg e Atkin centrado no problema e que sustenta uma expansão do conceito de cuidador, na óptica da intervenção profissional, e o modelo de Salleebey que focaliza as forças e as oportunidades dos sujeitos envolvidos, num processo dialéctico em que se enquadram processos de mediação, “advocacy” e “empowerment”. Sendo a saúde mental uma área de intervenção multidisciplinar, é perspectivado o agir profissional dos assistentes sociais face ao tema em análise, focando algumas dimensões teóricas, éticas e políticas

Influence of glucose on Candida parapsilosis virulence factors

Candida parapsilosis is a pathogenic fungus responsible for a high number of oral candidosis, predominantly due to the growth in a biofilm form on indwelling medical devices. One of the major contributions for C. parapsiloisis virulence is its versatility to adapt to a variety of different environmental factors. The development of Candida biofilms has important clinical repercussions because of their resistance to antifungal therapy and the protection against host immune defences. Candida biofilms are characterized by easily glucose adaptation. However, it remains unclear how glucose affect C. parapsilosis biofilms formation and virulence. Thus, this work aimed to study the influence of glucose in biofilm formation ability and matrix composition of C. parapsilosis and in the expression of virulence genes such as BCR1, FKS1 and OLE1. For that a full characterisation of in vitro biofilm formation with different concentrations of glucose (0.2, 2 and 10 %) was examined. Biofilms were analysed by CFUs determination and total biomass quantification. Biofilm matrix was examined in terms of total proteins and carbohydrates. Scanner electron microscopy (SEM) was used to observe the structure of Candida biofilms. Furthermore, RT-qPCR was performed to examine the expression levels of BCR1, FKS1 and OLE1 genes present in biofilm cells grown in the presence of the different glucose concentrations. The results demonstrated that glucose influences biofilm formation ability, with an increase in total biomass and number of CFUs, with an increase in a glucose; however in a strain dependent manner. Moreover, the increment of glucose causes an increase on the content of proteins and polysaccharides on C. parapsilosis biofilm matrix. Moreover, BCR1, FKS1 and OLE1 gene expression increased with the glucose increment. In addition, SEM images revealed the presence of pseudohyphae for higher levels of glucose (2 and 10 %). So, the results suggested that glucose enhanced pseudohyphae formation by the induced expression of OLE1, which influences biofilm structure. The overexpression of BCR1 and FKS1 confirm the influence of glucose in biofilm formation ability and in the carbohydrate synthesis and secretion (present in the matrix), respectively. Summarizing, C. parapsilosis biofilms presented a great capacity to tolerate and grow in the presence of high levels of glucose that seems to be directly implicated in C. parapsilosis virulence

Analysis of a vegetable oil performance in a milling process by MQL Lubrication

In this work, we carried out a comparison between the dry machining of an aluminum block with conventional cutting oil and a block with vegetable oil. The two oils had different flow rates. Using the Taguchi method, it was possible to determine the matrices for optimizing the best parameters for each group of tests. Then, we studied the utility of using vegetable oil as a cutting lubricant. We found that the vegetable oil studied in this work had good properties in terms of reducing cutting temperatures but was less effective than conventional cutting oil in reducing the surface roughness of the machined part. Tribological tests were carried out to understand the influence of the selected lubricants in reducing friction and wear. After the sliding experiments, which were performed without lubrication in the presence of the same lubricants that were used in the machining tests and in the presence of distilled water, we concluded that vegetable oil has satisfactory lubricating properties that are similar to those of the conventional cutting fluid, indicating a potential for consideration as an effective alternative to the conventional cutting fluid, with economic, environmental, and health advantages.Financial support was provided by Portugal’s national funding FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to Centro de Investigação de Montanha (CIMO) (UIDB/00690/2020 and UIDP/00690/2020) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2020). Additionally, this work was partially supported by Portuguese FCT, under the reference projects UIDB/04077/2020, UIDB/00532/2020 and UIDB/04436/2020. This research was also partially funded by EXPL2021CIMO_01. Inês Afonso acknowledges the financial support of CIMO through EXPL2021CIMO_01

Pericardite fibrinopurulenta: Caso clínico

Apresenta-se um caso clínico de pericardite fibrinopurulenta num gato macho com 3 meses de idade. Foi realizada uma pericardiectomia subfrénica onde se identificou e removeu cerca de 20 ml de material caseoso. Não foi identificado nenhum agente infeccioso