The determinants of portuguese salaries

This research studies the determinants of executive´s remuneration in Portugal, resorting to the Human Capital Theory, the Mincer Equation and Agency Theory as background research. Given the lack of studies regarding Portuguese executive remuneration, this study gives an important contribution to Portuguese literature regarding this subject. The research was performed using data from 274 companies operating in Portugal in the year 2007 containing information about certain characteristics pertaining to 56000 observations on most white-collar employees. Two regression models were estimated using this data, collected by a Human Resources company, to verify the hypotheses formulated. The results obtained through the estimated models support the hypotheses formulated. Indeed, the education and experience of the executives are two important determinants of remuneration. Furthermore, the size of the companies is positively correlated with the executive remuneration: we expect that the higher the firm, the higher the remuneration. The company performance is also positively correlated with remuneration, which means that it is expected that higher performances lead to higher salaries.Este trabalho estuda os determinantes da remuneração dos executivos em Portugal, recorrendo à Teoria do Capital Humano, a Equação de Mincer e a Teoria da Agência, como base de estudo. Dada a escassez de estudos relativos à remuneração dos executivos em Portugal, este estudo fornece um importante contributo para a literatura portuguesa acerca deste tema. A análise foi realizada recorrendo a dados de 274 empresas que operaram em Portugal no ano de 2007, contendo informação acerca de diversas características de 56000 empregados de colarinho branco. Dois modelos de regressão foram estimados usando a informação recolhida por uma empresa de Recursos Humanos, com o objectivo de verificar as hipóteses formuladas. Os resultados obtidos através dos modelos estimados verificam as hipóteses formuladas. De facto, a educação e experiência dos executivos são dois determinantes importantes da remuneração. Além disso, a dimensão das empresas está positivamente correlacionada com a remuneração dos executivos: é esperado que, quanto maior a dimensão das empresas, maior a remuneração.. A performance das empresas também está positivamente correlacionada com a remuneração, o que significa que é esperado que performances mais elevadas conduzam a salários mais elevados

The emergence of social technology: revisiting the appropriate technology movement as a strategy for sustainable development

Este artigo discute os conceitos concernentes à tecnologia social num mundo globalizado, em contraposição às propostas que defendem a adoção, pelas multinacionais, de estratégias organizacionais focadas na base da pirâmide social. Uma análise de aplicação desse novo conceito de tecnologia social é feita a partir de um estudo de caso. Como resultado, identificou-se o potencial inovador dessas tecnologias, em termos de eficácia, possibilidade de multiplicação e desenvolvimento em escala para a solução de problemas que afetam a maioria dos seres humanos, como os relacionados com a demanda por água, alimentos, educação, energia, saúde, entre outros, ao mesmo tempo que promovem a inclusão social e protegem o meio ambiente.This article discusses the concepts of social technology in a globalized world, in contrast with more recent views that advocate the adoption, by multinational companies, of organizational strategies focused on the base of the social pyramid. An analysis of the application of this new social technology concept is made through a case study. As a result, the innovative potential of these technologies was identified, in terms of efficiency, possibility of dissemination, and scale development, in order to solve problems that affect most people, such as those related to the demand for water, food, education, energy, and health. At the same time it should improve social inclusion and protect the environment

Tetracycline effects on diabetic bone regeneration

Tese de mestrado. Mestrado em Engenharia Biomédica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

Security sector reform: a new state-citizen partnership

Os autores procuram identificar aspetos comuns às diferentes doutrinas no âmbito da Reforma do Setor da Segurança, descrevem de modo genérico o caso-estudo da missão da União Europeia para a Reforma do Setor da Segurança na Guiné-Bissau e traçam as linhas de força da política portuguesa em matéria de cooperação externa. O texto apresentado evidencia uma continuidade representada pela centralidade das necessidades de segurança do indivíduo, como destinatário último deste tipo de processos de transformação

Development of in-vitro in-silico technologies for modelling and analysis of haematological malignancies

Worldwide, haematological malignancies are responsible for roughly 6% of all the cancer-related deaths. Leukaemias are one of the most severe types of cancer, as only about 40% of the patients have an overall survival of 10 years or more. Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a pre-leukaemic condition, is a blood disorder characterized by the presence of dysplastic, irregular, immature cells, or blasts, in the peripheral blood (PB) and in the bone marrow (BM), as well as multi-lineage cytopenias. We have created a detailed, lineage-specific, high-fidelity in-silico erythroid model that incorporates known biological stimuli (cytokines and hormones) and a competing diseased haematopoietic population, correctly capturing crucial biological checkpoints (EPO-dependent CFU-E differentiation) and replicating the in-vivo erythroid differentiation dynamics. In parallel, we have also proposed a long-term, cytokine-free 3D cell culture system for primary MDS cells, which was firstly optimized using easily-accessible healthy controls. This system enabled long-term (24-day) maintenance in culture with high (>75%) cell viability, promoting spontaneous expansion of erythroid phenotypes (CD71+/CD235a+) without the addition of any exogenous cytokines. Lastly, we have proposed a novel in-vitro in-silico framework using GC-MS metabolomics for the metabolic profiling of BM and PB plasma, aiming not only to discretize between haematological conditions but also to sub-classify MDS patients, potentially based on candidate biomarkers. Unsupervised multivariate statistical analysis showed clear intra- and inter-disease separation of samples of 5 distinct haematological malignancies, demonstrating the potential of this approach for disease characterization. The work herein presented paves the way for the development of in-vitro in-silico technologies to better, characterize, diagnose, model and target haematological malignancies such as MDS and AML.Open Acces

Experimental Tests and Numerical Simulations for Failure Investigation on Corrugated Boxes Used on Household Appliance Packaging

Packages made of corrugated paper are fundamental to the protection, transportation and handling of the appliance product market. During the storage and sales stages of a product, the package must resist compressive loads in different directions beyond moderate impacts. In this context, the objective of this work is to develop and implement a post-processor that allows the simultaneous analysis of two of the most common failure modes of packages made of corrugated paper: failure due to tensile or compressive stress limit, and failure due to local buckling, when the buckling of the faces of the corrugated paper between two peaks of the fluting waves occurs. It was realized that the current procedure proposed by the literature expend a series of operations, what became the failure analysis for corrugated boxes too lengthy for the immediacy of the industry. Thus, it was chosen to apply a procedure to simplify the failure limit surface. Tensile tests were performed for the characterization of corrugated material used in numerical simulations. Experimental tests were performed on corrugated boxes used on household appliance products. The Tsai-Wu criteria for the material failure evaluation was applied and a modified Nyman-Gustafsson criteria for the local buckling analysis on the numerical simulations was proposed. A good correlation between experimental tests and numerical results was obtained. This work brings high expectations to the agility requested by the industry in the launching of new products

Applying pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to the identification of oriental lacquers: study of two lacquered shields

Oriental lacquers have been used as coating materials for thousands of years for wooden, ceramics, leather and metal objects. Lacquers are natural polymers obtained from three species growing in different regions of Asia: Rhus vernicifera (China, Japan and Korea); Rhus succedanea (Vietnam and Taiwan); and Melanorrhoea usitate (Myanmar and Thailand). The identification of lacquer films is important for conservation and restoration purposes, as well as for art history studies because it may help in determining the origin of the lacquered objects. In this work, pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry using a filament-type pyrolyser was successfully applied to the characterization of oriental lacquers. A method to identify the three kinds of lacquer was developed and applied to the study of two lacquered shields imported from Asia in the sixteenth century. The materials that constitute the shields were also examined by Fourier-transform infrared microspectroscopy and details of the lacquering technique are reporte

Uma análise das diretrizes curriculares nacionais para o ensino superior no Brasil

Neste texto apresentamos uma análise das atuais Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais (DCN) para os cursos de graduação no Brasil, com o intuito de identificar os princípios expressos e a concepção política subjacente. Compreendendo que toda política guarda uma intencionalidade e que o currículo não é um campo neutro, centramos nossa atenção no discurso oficial corporificado nesses normativos. Com base nessa análise, constatamos que as DCN recomendam a (re)elaboração dos projetos político-pedagógicos (PPP) dos cursos de graduação, constituindo norteadores e não imperativos a serem rigidamente seguidos, embora as avaliações dos cursos realizadas pelo Ministério da Educação (MEC) cobrem a adequação dos PPP às DCN. Observamos ainda, que o conjunto de princípios defendidos pelas DCN são uníssonos na defesa da autonomia, liberdade e flexibilidade para que as Instituições de Ensino Superior (IES) (re)formulem os seus currículos. Por outro lado, constatamos que na concepção política das DCN prevalece a lógica do Estado Avaliador que as concebe como mecanismos de regulação do ensino superior, conciliando ações contraditórias, como autonomia e controle, o que pode ser interpretado como uma intervenção híbrida

Cluster-based analogue ensembles for hindcasting with multistations

The Analogue Ensemble (AnEn) method enables the reconstruction of meteorological observations or deterministic predictions for a certain variable and station by using data from the same station or from other nearby stations. However, depending on the dimension and granularity of the historical datasets used for the reconstruction, this method may be computationally very demanding even if parallelization is used. In this work, the classical AnEn method is modified so that analogues are determined using K-means clustering. The proposed combined approach allows the use of several predictors in a dependent or independent way. As a result of the flexibility and adaptability of this new approach, it is necessary to define several parameters and algorithmic options. The effects of the critical parameters and main options were tested on a large dataset from real-world meteorological stations. The results show that adequate monitoring and tuning of the new method allows for a considerable improvement of the computational performance of the reconstruction task while keeping the accuracy of the results. Compared to the classical AnEn method, the proposed variant is at least 15-times faster when processing is serial. Both approaches benefit from parallel processing, with the K-means variant also being always faster than the classic method under that execution regime (albeit its performance advantage diminishes as more CPU threads are used).This work has been partially supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05757/2020

Conhecimento da população portuguesa sobre Suporte Básico de Vida e disponibilidade para realizar formação

OBJECTIVETo evaluate the level of knowledge and the availability of the Portuguese population to attend training in Basic Life Support (BLS) and identify factors related to their level of knowledge about BLS.METHODObservational study including 1,700 people who responded to a questionnaire containing data on demography, profession, training, interest in training and knowledge about BLS.RESULTSAmong 754 men and 943 women, only 17.8% (303) attended a course on BLS, but 95.6% expressed willingness to carry out the training. On average, they did not show good levels of knowledge on basic life support (correct answers in 25.9 ± 11.5 of the 64 indicators). Male, older respondents who had the training and those who performed BLS gave more correct answers, on average (pOBJETIVOEvaluar el nivel de conocimiento y la disponibilidad de la población portuguesa para llevar a cabo la formación sobre Soporte Básico de Vida (SBV) e identificar algunos factores relacionados con su nivel de conocimiento acerca del SBV.MÉTODOEstudio observacional realizado con 1.700 personas que respondieron a un cuestionario compuesto de datos sociodemográficos y profesionales, formación, interés en la formación y conocimientos sobre SBV.RESULTADOSDe los 754 hombres y 943 mujeres, solo el 17,8% (303) asistió a un curso sobre SBV, pero el 95,6% manifestó disponibilidad para realizar la formación. En promedio, no presentaron buenos niveles de conocimientos en soporte básico de vida (contestaron bien 25,9 ± 11,5 de los 64 indicadores). Los respondedores mayores, del sexo masculino, los que llevaron a cabo la formación y los que ya prestaron SBV contestaron bien, en promedio, más cuestiones (pOBJETIVOAvaliar o nível de conhecimento e a disponibilidade da população portuguesa para realizar formação sobre Suporte Básico de Vida (SBV) e identificar alguns fatores relacionados ao seu nível de conhecimento sobre SBV.MÉTODOEstudo observacional realizado com 1.700 pessoas que responderam a um questionário composto por dados sociodemográficos e profissionais, formação, interesse na formação e conhecimentos sobre SBV.RESULTADOSDos 754 homens e 943 mulheres, apenas 17,8% (303) frequentou um curso sobre SBV, mas 95,6% manifestou disponibilidade para realizar a formação. Em média, não apresentaram bons níveis de conhecimentos em suporte básico de vida (acertaram em 25,9 ± 11,5 dos 64 indicadores). Os inquiridos mais velhos, do sexo masculino, os que efetuaram formação e os que já prestaram SBV acertaram em média mais questões (