Study of Instruments and Tools to Anticipate the Effects of Industrial Change - Portuguese report

This study was produced for the “Study of Instruments and Tools to anticipate the effects of industrial change on employment, trades and vocational qualifications” and for DG V (Employment) of the European Commission in the late 1994. It started when the previous Portuguese government was still ruling, the main policies were defined, and the available instruments were not used in a minimum extend. The new Government, issued from the 1995 elections, proposed “employment” as a major objective with horizontal responsibility. That’s also why there is now a Ministry for Qualifications and Employment, and another one for Solidarity and Social Affairs, not one for Employment and Social Affairs as the previous Government had. But more than that, this objective is considered to need a coordinated and consistent action that involves external affairs, industrial and regional policies, and the policies on education, training and employment, among others. The promotion of the “quality of employment” is being recently done at the working conditions, remuneration, social protection, occupational promotion levels, and the equality of opportunities towards employment and vocational training levels, and finally, the levels of qualification of human resources for a better labour market, education policy and training policy developments. In Portugal, the influence of the industrial change is produced in a top-down way; with (in some cases) an ex post analysis process to formulated training needs. This means that the industrial change impact is produced (normally, unexpectedly), and afterwards the responsible at the company level tries to know which training needs should be formulated in order those effects could be the smoother possible. The training needs at the company level is not based on anticipatory studies, neither is done any long term forecast on qualification, or even employment level.employment; qualifications; Portugal; labour market; working conditions; human resources; foresight; forecasting

The influence of planning and response inhibition on cognitive functioning of Non-Psychotic unipolar depressed suicide attempters

Depression is one of the main risk factors for suicide. However, little is known about the intricate relationships among depressive symptomatology in unipolar depression, suicide risk, and the characteristics of executive dysfunction in depressed patients. We compared 20 non-psychotic unipolar depressed suicide attempters to 20 matching depressed non-attempters and to 20 healthy controls to further investigate the possible differences in neuropsychological performance. Depressed subjects were controlled for current suicidal ideation, and their neuropsychological profile was assessed using a range of measures of executive functioning, attention, verbal memory, processing speed, and psychomotor speed. Depressed groups were outperformed by healthy controls. Depressed attempters presented more cognitive impairment than depressed non-attempters on a simple Go/No-go response inhibition task and performed better than non-attempters on the Tower of London planning task. Depressed attempters were clearly distinguished by a deficit in response inhibition (Go/No-go commission errors). The normative planning performance (Tower of London extra moves) of the suicide attempters was unexpected, and this unanticipated finding calls for further research. Normative planning may indicate an increased risk of suicidal behavior.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Study of Instruments and Tools to Anticipate the Effects of Industrial Change - Portuguese report

This study was produced for the “Study of Instruments and Tools to anticipate the effects of industrial change on employment, trades and vocational qualifications” and for DG V (Employment) of the European Commission in the late 1994. It started when the previous Portuguese government was still ruling, the main policies were defined, and the available instruments were not used in a minimum extend. The new Government, issued from the 1995 elections, proposed “employment” as a major objective with horizontal responsibility. That’s also why there is now a Ministry for Qualifications and Employment, and another one for Solidarity and Social Affairs, not one for Employment and Social Affairs as the previous Government had. But more than that, this objective is considered to need a coordinated and consistent action that involves external affairs, industrial and regional policies, and the policies on education, training and employment, among others. The promotion of the “quality of employment” is being recently done at the working conditions, remuneration, social protection, occupational promotion levels, and the equality of opportunities towards employment and vocational training levels, and finally, the levels of qualification of human resources for a better labour market, education policy and training policy developments. In Portugal, the influence of the industrial change is produced in a top-down way; with (in some cases) an ex post analysis process to formulated training needs. This means that the industrial change impact is produced (normally, unexpectedly), and afterwards the responsible at the company level tries to know which training needs should be formulated in order those effects could be the smoother possible. The training needs at the company level is not based on anticipatory studies, neither is done any long term forecast on qualification, or even employment level

Study of Instruments and Tools to Anticipate the Effects of Industrial Change - Portuguese report

This study was produced for the “Study of Instruments and Tools to anticipate the effects of industrial change on employment, trades and vocational qualifications” and for DG V (Employment) of the European Commission in the late 1994. It started when the previous Portuguese government was still ruling, the main policies were defined, and the available instruments were not used in a minimum extend. The new Government, issued from the 1995 elections, proposed “employment” as a major objective with horizontal responsibility. That’s also why there is now a Ministry for Qualifications and Employment, and another one for Solidarity and Social Affairs, not one for Employment and Social Affairs as the previous Government had. But more than that, this objective is considered to need a coordinated and consistent action that involves external affairs, industrial and regional policies, and the policies on education, training and employment, among others. The promotion of the “quality of employment” is being recently done at the working conditions, remuneration, social protection, occupational promotion levels, and the equality of opportunities towards employment and vocational training levels, and finally, the levels of qualification of human resources for a better labour market, education policy and training policy developments. In Portugal, the influence of the industrial change is produced in a top-down way; with (in some cases) an ex post analysis process to formulated training needs. This means that the industrial change impact is produced (normally, unexpectedly), and afterwards the responsible at the company level tries to know which training needs should be formulated in order those effects could be the smoother possible. The training needs at the company level is not based on anticipatory studies, neither is done any long term forecast on qualification, or even employment level

Défices cognitivos em pacientes com depressão unipolar: Influência das variáveis idade, género e história anterior de tentativas de suicídio

Tese de Doutoramento, Psicologia, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2015A depressão afeta mundialmente cerca de 350 milhões de pessoas, sendo considerada a principal causa de incapacidade a nível mundial, comprometendo seriamente a qualidade de vida, apresentado este estado afetivo um elevado risco de suicídio para estes doentes. No que se refere ao suicídio, o mesmo pode ser considerado um fenómeno global e um grave problema de saúde pública, responsável por mais de 800 mil mortes anualmente. Défices nas funções executivas, na memória e na velocidade motora são comuns na depressão e ainda mais exacerbados em indivíduos depressivos suicidas. Torna-se, por isso, essencial generalizar o recurso a meios complementares de diagnóstico, como os testes neuropsicológicos que medem a capacidade de decisão, de mudança de foco de atenção, de planeamento, de inibição de resposta e o controlo inibitório, entre outros, que, para além de fornecerem informações importantes para um correto diagnóstico e tratamento da depressão, propiciam estudar as dinâmicas subjacentes aos comportamentos suicidas, com vista a encontrar marcadores cognitivos que permitam identificar casos de maior risco visando o seu controlo e prevenção. Em Portugal, o recurso a medidas neuropsicológicas ainda não se encontra generalizado, por isso, um dos objetivos deste trabalho passou por validar um conjunto de testes computorizados de um software de livre acesso da Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) junto da população portuguesa – a saber, Finger Tapping Task, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Torre de Londres, Iowa Gambling Task, Victoria Stroop Task e Go/No-go –, procurando simultaneamente estudar amostras de depressivos unipolares não-psicóticos. Outro objetivo consistiu em aplicar esses testes em pacientes suicidas com igual diagnóstico, procurando encontrar marcadores cognitivos que os diferenciassem de depressivos não suicidas, tendo-se corroborado a existência de défices nas amostras depressivas, com uma alteração significativa da inibição de resposta nos sujeitos suicidas face aos não suicidas e face aos controlo saudáveis

Intelligent Assistant Language Understanding On Device

It has recently become feasible to run personal digital assistants on phones and other personal devices. In this paper we describe a design for a natural language understanding system that runs on device. In comparison to a server-based assistant, this system is more private, more reliable, faster, more expressive, and more accurate. We describe what led to key choices about architecture and technologies. For example, some approaches in the dialog systems literature are difficult to maintain over time in a deployment setting. We hope that sharing learnings from our practical experiences may help inform future work in the research community