The EU foreign policy architecture after the Lisbon Treaty : the role of the EEAS in empowering the EU as an international actor

The Treaty of Lisbon (ToL) sought to meet the new global challenges by providing the European Union (EU) with the necessary institutional and political tools to strengthen its role in international relations. The European External Action Service (EEAS) has emerged as a potential driving force for the EU foreign policy. With its unique position within the EU institutional framework and comprising an amalgamation of three groups of officials, its mandate is to provide a more coherent and effective foreign policy. The suis generis Service is at the centre of the coordination role that runs along two dimensions: vertically, between the Service and the 28 Member States; and horizontally, between the Service and the EU institutions involved in the foreign policy-making of the EU (the Commission, the European Council, and the Council of the EU). This thesis is a qualitative research, approaching the analysis of the EEAS in applying the three following approaches: Europeanization (uploading, downloading, and socialization), capabilities-expectations gap, and the EU`s actorness. These three approaches have contributed to the examination of the EU`s capabilities in international relations. Supported by the “triple-hatted” High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP) and the EU Delegations, the EEAS has been given the tools to bring together the actors that constitute EU`s foreign policy, and to strengthen the EU`s visibility and influence in the world. Special attention has also been giving to the building of a new esprit de corps as a key element in the construction of a coherent and effective European diplomatic service. Elements such as leadership, communication, trust, public image, training and career prospects have the potential to promote esprit de corps, thus turning the EEAS into a more effective organization. The empirical analysis shows that the institutional and political innovations brought by the ToL was intended to establish a coherent EU foreign policy but this remains a work in progress. However, these innovations have given the EU the opportunity to enhance its presence and influence in the world of politics.M-I

Is the euro area M3 abandoning us?

This paper reassesses the role of the M3 aggregate for monetary policy purposes in the euro area. Using data until 2006Q4 it is shown that the M3 aggregate ceased to display the empirical properties that supported its prominent role in the ECB’s monetary policy strategy. On the one hand, when the most recent data are used in the analysis there is strong evidence of cointegration breakdown in the M3 money demand models as well as in the "two-pillar Phillips curves" with filtered data. On the other hand, the leading indicator properties of M3 for inflation in the area have also deteriorated markedly in the most recent years. This is supported by evidence both in the time and frequency domains.

Design methodologies to implement computer games (Super Milkman)

Trabalho final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores.Jogos de vídeo actualmente são a principal forma de entretenimento, superando filmes e música. O processo de criação de jogos de vídeo envolve muitas áreas de especialização. Começando pela definição da arquitectura, existem os motores de física e gráfico, os recursos artísticos, como modelos 3D e imagens 2D. Além disso, alguns destes recursos artísticos são animados. Os efeitos visuais, o áudio, a interface de utilizador, as mecânicas, a câmara, e às vezes, inteligência artificial, juntos criam o sistema de jogabilidade. Cada uma destas diferentes áreas requer diferentes metodologias para ser implementada. É apresentado um protótipo de um jogo de vídeo, chamado Super Milkman, onde são descritas as diferentes metodologias para cada área e são discutidas as opções escolhidas. O protótipo desenvolvido é jogável, podendo servir de guia para programadores iniciantes na área dos jogos de vídeo e podendo também ser estendido através da adição de novos níveis de jogo.Video games nowadays are the first form of entertainment, exceeding films and music. The process of creating a video game involves many areas of expertise. Starting from the definition of the architecture, there are also the physics and graphical engines, the art assets like 3D models or 2D sprites. Furthermore, some of these art assets are also animated. The visual effects, the audio, the user interface, the mechanics, the camera and sometimes the artificial intelligence, are connected creating the gameplay system. Each one of these different areas requires different methodologies to be implemented. Herein, it is depicted a prototype of a video game, namely Super Milkman, where are described the different methodologies for each area, and discussed the option chosen. The prototype developed is playable, can be used as a guide for beginner developers of video games, and also can be extended through the addition of new game levels.N/

Knowledge Presentation and Reasoning with Loglinear Models

Our approach for knowledge presentation is based on the idea of expert system shell. At first we will build a graph shell of both possible dependencies and possible actions. Then, reasoning by means of Loglinear models, we will activate some nodes and some directed links. In this way a Bayesian network and networks presenting loglinear models are generated

PyBindE: Development of a Simple Python MM-PBSA Implementation for Estimating Protein-Protein and Protein-Ligand Binding Energies

Tese de mestrado, Bioquímica (Bioquímica), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2022Given the importance of proteins, the study of their interactions and binding affinities has been one of the most broadly populated fields of research for many years. Many approaches exist to calculate protein-protein and protein-ligand binding free energies, with single-trajectory MM-PBSA being a pop ular choice due to its more rigorous theoretical framework, when compared with methods, such as molec ular docking, while still possessing reasonable speed. MM-PBSA is particularly useful when the relative energy differences between system configurations are concerned, being able to provide insights about the forces involved in the binding process and their energetic contribution. In the present work, we describe a newly developed, DelPhi-based, single-trajectory MM-PBSA im plementation (PyBindE) written in Python, designed to be compatible with GROMOS force fields. A validation of this method was performed using a set of 37 HIV-1 protease-inhibitor complexes with experimentally-determined inhibition constants. These systems were also used as a validation set for g_mmpbsa, one widely used MM-PBSA implementation, originally validated using AMBER, thus com parisons with this method can be drawn. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of 150 ns were run in triplicate for every system, and MM-PBSA calculations were performed on the full trajectories, in 1500 snapshots per replicate. For 9 of the systems used for validation, the ligands of these systems con tained amine groups with pKa values ( 9) above physiological pH, and as such, different protonation scenarios for the ligands and the catalytic aspartate residues (Asp-25) were also explored. Furthermore, the impact of different values of the solute dielectric constant, on the correlation with experimental data, was studied for all different protonation cases. A practical application of PyBindE is also presented for the case of β-2 Microglobulin (β2M) D76N mutants, the causing-agents of a fatal form of amyloidosis. MM-PBSA was used to study the binding of 212 dimers derived from a Monte-Carlo Ensemble Docking protocol, determining the forces responsible for their binding and aggregation, and ranking the most stable binding modes. MM-PBSA calculations were run on 100 ns of MD trajectory for each dimer. Results of the comparison with g_mmpbsa are also analysed. Our validation results show an adequate correlation, 0.56, with experimental data when the correct ligand and catalytic aspartate residue protonations are employed, with a dielectric constant of 8. We found that underestimating the polar solvation contribution to the binding free energy resulted in an improvement of the correlations with our method, suggesting the need to optimize our parameterization and/or polar solvation calculation procedures. Regardless, our correlation results are higher than those reported for many standard MM-PBSA methods, with minimal parameter tweaking. The usefulness of PybindE was also highlighted in the calculation of binding free energies for β2M dimers. This method allowed the distinction of several binding modes from which different oligomerization patterns were then predicted. Overall, the results using PyBindE for the study of protein-protein binding affinities revealed a higher accuracy than g_mmpbsa, that often predicted positive binding energies suggesting unbinding events, which were not observed in the MD simulations