O papel das redes sociais no conflito israelo-palestiniano : o caso da ofensiva militar em Gaza em 2014

Dissertação de mestrado em Relações Internacionais, apresentada à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra, sob a orientação de Teresa Almeida Cravo.O crescimento das redes sociais nos últimos anos trouxe novas oportunidades de comunicação entre instituições e os seus públicos-alvo. Ao mesmo tempo, entidades estatais viram estas plataformas como um meio para levar a cabo as suas estratégias de comunicação com os seus cidadãos. De que forma podem estas redes ser utilizadas como mais um meio ou complemento para fins de propaganda político-militar durante um conflito armado? Como podem estas novas plataformas servir de instrumento adicional a processos de securitização? A Escola de Copenhaga dos Estudos de Segurança propõe um quadro de análise para estudar processos de securitização através da construção de um ato discursivo. Porém, deixa por analisar a influência dos meios de comunicação nos processos de securitização e os efeitos destes nas suas audiências alvo. Recorrendo às teorias do Agendamento e Enquadramento em Comunicação Social, já é possível analisar o impacto mediático de determinado assunto na opinião pública. Em 2014, durante a Guerra de Gaza, ou Operação “Protective Edge”, Israel utilizou as redes sociais como meio para legitimar e justificar as suas ações militares. As Forças de Defesa Israelitas (FDI), construíram um discurso securitário com a ajuda de novas ferramentas online como o Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube e entre outras. Esta dissertação analisa a construção desse discurso à luz do quadro proposto pela Escola de Copenhaga, medindo também o seu impacto mediático no público-alvo. Procedeu-se à análise de conteúdos publicados com base numa amostra que corresponde a três das plataformas geridas pelas FDI em língua inglesa: o Facebook, Twitter e Youtube de forma a perceber como o processo de securitização foi construído no decorrer do conflito. Foram contabilizados no total 1718 tweets, 359 posts no Facebook e 182 vídeos no Youtube, num período de análise entre 7 de junho a 26 de setembro de 2014, englobando o período do conflito, um mês antes e um mês depois. Procedeu-se à análise do volume de publicações por ordem cronológica e à categorização de palavras por temas com base nos termos de unidades de análise da Escola de Copenhaga de forma a entender melhor como o processo de securitização foi levado a cabo. Para medir o impacto mediático, recorreu-se a plataformas de estatística online que avaliam o desempenho de redes sociais através do feedback dos seus utilizadores. Foram feitas comparações do desempenho das páginas relativamente a outro conflito, a Operação “Pillar of Defense” de 2012 e a um ano sem intervenções militares: 2013. Por fim, procedeu-se à medição do impacto do processo de securitização na população israelita com base em inquéritos realizados pelo think tank “Israel Institute of Democracy” e por jornais nacionais sobre a aprovação da operação militar e do executivo de Benjamim Netanyahu, governo no poder durante o período em análise. Conclui-se que as FDI apostaram nas redes sociais enquanto meio para difusão da sua estratégia militar, registando um aumento de atividade online e de audiências. São tiradas ilações sobre a forma como estes novos meios de comunicação podem reforçar a divulgação de uma mensagem específica em relação aos existentes em processos de securitização

Information technology service management: an experimental approach towards IT service prediction

Dissertation presented to obtain a Masters degree in Computer ScienceSoftware development and software quality improvement have been strong topics for discussion in the last decades. Software Engineering has always been concerned with theories and best practices to develop software for large-scale usage. However, most times those theories are not validated in real live environments. Therefore, the need for experiments is immense. The incidents database can be an important asset for software engineering teams. If they learn from past experience in service management, then they will be able to shift from a reactive approach to a more proactive one. The main goal of this dissertation is shedding some light on the influential factors that affect incidents lifecycle, from creation to its closure, and also to investigate to what accuracy the ARIMA models are a valid approach to model and predict not only the ITIL incident management process, but also other ITIL processes and services in general. The dissertation presented herein is on the crossroads of Empirical Software Engineering and of the emerging area of Services Science. It describes an experiment conducted upon a sample of incident reports, recorded during the operation of several hundred commercial software products, over a period of three years (2005-2007), on six countries in Europe and Latin America. The incidents were reported by customers of a large independent software vendor. The primary goal of an Incident Management process is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. As a result of this, a software company can make use of a good incident management process to improve several areas of their business, particularly product development, product support, the relation with its customers and their positioning in the marketplace. The underlying research questions refer to the validation of which are the influencing factors affecting the incidents management lifecycle, and also aims at finding the existence of patterns and/or trends in incident creation and resolution based on a time series approach. Additionally, it presents the estimation, evaluation and validation of several ARIMA models created with the purpose of forecasting upon incident resolution based on incident creation historic data. Understanding causal-relationships and patterns on incident management can help software development organizations on optimizing their support processes and in allocating the adequate resources; people and budget

Software development process mining: discovery, conformance checking and enhancement

Context. Modern software projects require the proper allocation of human, technical and financial resources. Very often, project managers make decisions supported only by their personal experience, intuition or simply by mirroring activities performed by others in similar contexts. Most attempts to avoid such practices use models based on lines of code, cyclomatic complexity or effort estimators, thus commonly supported by software repositories which are known to contain several flaws. Objective. Demonstrate the usefulness of process data and mining methods to enhance the software development practices, by assessing efficiency and unveil unknown process insights, thus contributing to the creation of novel models within the software development analytics realm. Method. We mined the development process fragments of multiple developers in three different scenarios by collecting Integrated Development Environment (IDE) events during their development sessions. Furthermore, we used process and text mining to discovery developers’ workflows and their fingerprints, respectively. Results. We discovered and modeled with good quality developers’ processes during programming sessions based on events extracted from their IDEs. We unveiled insights from coding practices in distinct refactoring tasks, built accurate software complexity forecast models based only on process metrics and setup a method for characterizing coherently developers’ behaviors. The latter may ultimately lead to the creation of a catalog of software development process smells. Conclusions. Our approach is agnostic to programming languages, geographic location or development practices, making it suitable for challenging contexts such as in modern global software development projects using either traditional IDEs or sophisticated low/no code platforms.Contexto. Projetos de software modernos requerem a correta alocação de recursos humanos, técnicos e financeiros. Frequentemente, os gestores de projeto tomam decisões suportadas apenas na sua própria experiência, intuição ou simplesmente espelhando atividades executadas por terceiros em contextos similares. As tentativas para evitar tais práticas baseiam-se em modelos que usam linhas de código, a complexidade ciclomática ou em estimativas de esforço, sendo estes tradicionalmente suportados por repositórios de software conhecidos por conterem várias limitações. Objetivo. Demonstrar a utilidade dos dados de processo e respetivos métodos de análise na melhoria das práticas de desenvolvimento de software, colocando o foco na análise da eficiência e revelando aspetos dos processos até então desconhecidos, contribuindo para a criação de novos modelos no contexto de análises avançadas para o desenvolvimento de software. Método. Explorámos os fragmentos de processo de vários programadores em três cenários diferentes, recolhendo eventos durante as suas sessões de desenvolvimento no IDE. Adicionalmente, usámos métodos de descoberta e análise de processos e texto no sentido de modelar o fluxo de trabalho dos programadores e as suas características individuais, respetivamente. Resultados. Descobrimos e modelámos com boa qualidade os processos dos programadores durante as suas sessões de trabalho, usando eventos provenientes dos seus IDEs. Revelámos factos desconhecidos sobre práticas de refabricação, construímos modelos de previsão da complexidade ciclomática usando apenas métricas de processo e criámos um método para caracterizar coerentemente os comportamentos dos programadores. Este último, pode levar à criação de um catálogo de boas/más práticas no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Conclusões. A nossa abordagem é agnóstica em termos de linguagens de programação, localização geográfica ou prática de desenvolvimento, tornando-a aplicável em contextos complexos tal como em projetos modernos de desenvolvimento global que utilizam tanto os IDEs tradicionais como as atuais e sofisticadas plataformas "low/no code"

The role of forensic dentistry for identification of a criminal sexual assault: a casework report

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited."The identification of an individual from dental traces collected at the crime scene is one of the objectives of the criminal investigation. When, at the crime scene, objects are found with tooth marks, the intervention of Forensic Dentistry may represent the only way to obtain positive identification of the author’s bite mark. The forensic analysis of a bite mark consists of detection, recognition, description and comparison of bite marks on either individuals or inanimate objects. In this medico-legal casework, a sexual assault, the victim of the crime presented to the forensic examination had a mark on her left arm consistent with a bite mark, probably from the aggressor during the crime perpetration. The protocol followed in this medico-legal casework study is a scientific analysis of the facts which when presented in the court will be defendable under ruthless cross-examination. The pattern association of dental features in this sexual abuse case demonstrated a degree of concordance present between the tooth marks in the victim’s body and the suspect´s dentition.

Prevenção e Controle da Infeção do Trato Urinário em Contexto Hospitalar

Relatório de Trabalho de Projeto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Enfermagem Médico-CirúrgicaO presente relatório reflete o processo de aquisição de competências de Mestre durante o curso (e respetivos estágios), com o intuito da obtenção do grau de Mestre em Enfermagem Médico-Cirúrgica. Através da metodologia de projeto, desenvolvemos as competências comuns e específicas do Enfermeiro Especialista em Enfermagem Médico-Cirúrgica, designadamente em Enfermagem em Pessoa em Situação Crítica. De salientar que nos estágios foram desenvolvidos dois projetos: Projeto de Intervenção no Serviço e Projeto de Aprendizagem Clínica. A prestação de cuidados em ambiente complexo obriga o enfermeiro a ter uma preparação ajustada às diversas situações. É essencial a criação de ambientes que potenciem o bem estar e que sejam ambientes verdadeiramente seguros. O enfermeiro é um dos pilares fundamentais à prevenção e controlo de infeções nos serviços de saúde. O Projeto de Intervenção em Serviço desenvolveu-se numa Comissão de Controlo de Infeção de um Hospital. Constatada a elevada taxa de incidência de infeções urinárias em doentes internados no serviço de cirurgia e especialidades cirúrgicas, trabalhou-se a área da Prevenção e Controle de Infeção do Trato Urinário em Contexto Hospitalar. O objetivo foi Melhorar a Qualidade da Prestação de Cuidados à pessoa com cateter urinário, no Serviço de Cirurgia e Especialidades Cirúrgicas. O Projeto de Aprendizagem Clínica desenvolveu-se no Serviço de Urgência de um Hospital. Constatada a falta de informação sobre o Plano de Catástrofe Externa na equipa de enfermagem, divulgámos o plano implementado no hospital. O objetivo foi Desenvolver as Competências da Equipa de Enfermagem do Serviço de Urgência na resposta a situações de Catástrofe Externa. Com todo o trabalho realizado, desenvolvemos competências na equipa de enfermagem e assistentes operacionais no serviço de Cirurgia no âmbito da prestação de cuidados à pessoa com cateter urinário, e aumentámos os conhecimentos sobre o plano de catástrofe externa na equipa de enfermagem do Serviço de Urgência.Abstract: This report reflects the process of acquiring skills of Master during the course (and respective internship), with the aim of obtaining the degree of Master of Medical-Surgical Nursing. We develop the common and specific skills of the Nurse Specialist in Medical- Surgical Nursing, specifically in Person in Critical Care, by applying the project methodology. Noteworthy that in the internships, two projects were developed: Intervention Project in Service and Project Learning Clinic. The provision of care in complex environment obliges the nurses to have a preparation adjusted to various situations. It is essential to create environments that enhance the well being and that are truly, in itself, safe environments. The nurse is a fundamental key in the prevention and control of infections in health care services. The Intervention Project in Service was developed in a Hospital's Infection Control Committee. Considering a high incidence of urinary tract infections in the inpatients in Surgery and Surgical specialties Service, we worked the area of Prevention and Control of Infection Urinary Tract Infection in Hospital Context . The objective was to improve the quality of care for patients with urinary catheter, in the Department of Surgery and Surgical Specialties. The Clinical Learning Project was developed in the Emergency Service of a hospital. Considering the lack of information about the External Emergency Plan in the nursing team, we advertised the plan implemented in the hospital. The objective was to develop the skills of ER Nursing Team in case of a foreign disaster . Due to all the work done, we develop skills in nursing assistants and operational staff in the surgery department in the provision of care to people with urinary catheter , and increased knowledge about the external disaster plan in the nursing team of the Emergency Service

Injuries of non-lethal child physical abuse to the crania and orofacial regions: a scientific review

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited."The literature states that maltreatment in childhood and youth make up a problem on a global scale that exceeds ethnicities, religions, cultures, social and economic classes. It is also said that more than half of the injuries from maltreatment occur in the head and face. Assuming the particular relevance of orofacial structures, the dentist must know how to observe and recognize the indicators and properly diagnose the injury by maltreatment. This scientific review aimed to understand what types of intraoral lesions, signs or external lesions of the head or neck can be associated with child maltreatment. One primary database was searched so that systematic review articles and meta-analysis, case reports or case series of intraoral lesions, signs or external lesions of the head or neck by child maltreatment could be acquired. The references in the works acquired by electronic search were manually researched and the authors of all possibly relevant papers were contacted. In all searches inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Of the twenty two papers included two were systematic reviews and twenty were case reports or case series. The twenty articles of case reports or case series exposed information from thirty-five clinical cases included. Despite the limitations of scientific evidence it can be concluded that oral cavity, head and neck regions are home to multiple and diverse injuries by maltreatment of children and youngsters.

Medico-legal age estimation in a sub-adult portuguese population: validation of Atlas Schour and Massler and London

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited."Introduction: Age estimation in children and adolescents often depends on morphological methods, such as examination of dental development. Objectives: The aim of this project was to validate, in a Portuguese population, two forensic methods of dental age estimation – Schour and Massler charts and the London atlas. Materials and Methods: The test sample was composed by 108 dental radiographs of living and known-age individuals. Dental age was estimated according to each method. Chronological age was then compared to the estimated dental age using individual t-test and paired t-test. Results: Results showed that the Schour and Massler charts underestimated age and the London atlas overestimated age. Nevertheless, the London atlas performed better in all measures. Mean differences for both the London atlas and Schour and Massler were 0,1389 and -5,4167 months respectively. Schour and Massler charts showed significant statistical difference between dental age and chronological age (p <0.05). Discussion and Conclusions: We conclude that, in the evaluated sample, age estimation using the London atlas represents an improvement in forensic age estimation from developing teeth. Further studies should be done with a larger Portuguese population sample.

The gut microbiota, bile acids and their correlation in primary sclerosing cholangitis associated with inflammatory bowel disease.

BACKGROUND: Patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis associated with inflammatory bowel disease (PSC-IBD) have a very high risk of developing colorectal neoplasia. Alterations in the gut microbiota and/or gut bile acids could account for the increase in this risk. However, no studies have yet investigated the net result of cholestasis and a potentially altered bile acid pool interacting with a dysbiotic gut flora in the inflamed colon of PSC-IBD. AIM: The aim of this study was to compare the gut microbiota and stool bile acid profiles, as well as and their correlation in patients with PSC-IBD and inflammatory bowel disease alone. METHODS: Thirty patients with extensive colitis (15 with concomitant primary sclerosing cholangitis) were prospectively recruited and fresh stool samples were collected. The microbiota composition in stool was profiled using bacterial 16S rRNA sequencing. Stool bile acids were assessed by high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. RESULTS: The total stool bile acid pool was significantly reduced in PSC-IBD. Although no major differences were observed in the individual bile acid species in stool, their overall combination allowed a good separation between PSC-IBD and inflammatory bowel disease. Compared with inflammatory bowel disease alone, PSC-IBD patients demonstrated a different gut microbiota composition with enrichment in Ruminococcus and Fusobacterium genus compared with inflammatory bowel disease. At the operational taxonomic unit level major shifts were observed within the Firmicutes (73%) and Bacteroidetes phyla (17%). Specific microbiota-bile acid correlations were observed in PSC-IBD, where 12% of the operational taxonomic units strongly correlated with stool bile acids, compared with only 0.4% in non-PSC-IBD. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with PSC-IBD had distinct microbiota and microbiota-stool bile acid correlations as compared with inflammatory bowel disease. Whether these changes are associated with, or may predispose to, an increased risk of colorectal neoplasia needs to be further clarified.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Age estimation of unaccompanied minors: A portuguese overview

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."In the past decade there has been a considerable increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum seeking children, many of whom appeared to be older than their given age. Dental age assessment has been included as part of the asylum seeking process in Portugal since the Law n. º 27/2008 dated 30 June (the “Asylum Law”). The legal framework of the forensic examination is based in biomedical ethics. The aim is to find the frequency of unaccompanied asylum seeking children with dental evidence of being older 18 years during the period between 2009 and 2013. In this period age estimations have been performed on 82 unaccompanied asylum seeking children whose given ages were queried by the Aliens and Bored Service – SEF, to the South Branch of National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences from Portugal. The dental development was studied on ortopantomograpic radiographs and the developing teeth staged from the tables according to Liversidge (2008), Mincer et al. (1993), Kullmanet al. (1992) and Haavikko (1970). If the dental development was complete, the dental age was estimated from Kvaal et al. (1995). The majority of the unaccompanied asylum seeking children clamed to came from Guinea Conakry, Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Syria, Congo, Morocco and other African countries and non-African countries. There was no statistical significant difference between sexes. The majority gave the age as being 14 or 15 years (70%). Forty percent were found to be 18 years or older by the dental methods. Fifty percent were in need of dental treatment.

The medico-legal importance of establishing human identity by palatal rugoscopy: evaluation of the immutability and individuality of palatal rugae under the influence of ante mortem orthodontic treatment

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited."Introduction: The palatal rugae can be an alternative method of forensic identification. Through the years, several investigations focused on the effect of orthodontic treatment in the palatal rugae pattern. Objectives: Evaluate the concepts of immutability and individuality of the palatal rugae in a Portuguese adult population submitted to orthodontic treatment, for the purpose of medico-legal identification through Thomas and Kotze classification system. Additionally, we wanted to establish comparison of the palatal rugae of each subject, and between genders. Materials and Methods: Thirty three pairs of study dental casts, from thirty three patients submitted to orthodontic treatment in the Department of Orthodontics in College of Dentistry - University of Lisbon, were photographed and classified according to the classification system described by Thomas and Kotze. We proceeded to a statistical analysis running SPSS for Windows, version 20.0, using descriptive analysis and tests, with an inclusion level p <0.05. The tests applied were normality tests and T Student for paired samples. Results: The number and length of primary rugae remain identical when comparing the situation before and after orthodontic treatment. The number of secondary rugae decreases after orthodontic treatment. The variation of the angle of divergence was not statistically significant. The area of primary rugae presented statistically significant reduction after orthodontic treatment. There has no statistically significant differences between genders for total number number of rugae or average length of primary rugae (p <0.05). Discussion and Conclusion: The palatal rugae pattern does not remain stable after orthodontic treatment, and this refutes the supposed long term stability of the palatal rugae pattern. Therefore, it influences the ability to establish a positive medico-legal identification of a recent copse, if the person was submitted to ante mortem orthodontic treatment. The identification might still be possible if we possess a last ante mortem palatal record in these situations, to allow identification based on positive individual characteristics, through comparison with the post-mortem record. Considering gender, no statistically significant differences were found. This subject remains controversial and deserves further research.