Travel writers, tourist writers, migrant writers: a sociological qualitative and quantitative analysis of factual literature on contemporary Portugal and Spain

Com base num corpus de nove obras de não-ficção sobre os países da Península Ibérica, é realizada uma análise sistemática das representações que essas obras transmitem, comparando-as com resultados da literatura das ciências sociais sobre esses países. As características estruturais dos textos associadas à produção e apresentação de tais representações também são consideradas. O ponto de partida para estas duas tarefas é uma definição de imagem do social, juntamente com o conceito de leitor de senso comum, visto que um dos objetivos é considerar representações tal como surgem ao público. As imagens são quantificados em termos da sua densidade, grau de generalidade, formas de conhecimento e fontes de conhecimento, bem como quanto aos temas que consubstanciam e às dualidades sociedade tradicional / sociedade moderna e diferença / semelhança fundamental da alteridade (sendo a quantificação considerada necessária para evitar o problema da quantificação implícita identificado nos estudos sobre literatura de viagens produzidos pelas Humanidades). Tais dados alimentam uma análise individual e comparativa de cada obra, complementada por dados qualitativos. Os padrões identificados – preconceito estrutural, tipos de autenticidade, apresent(ific)ação do passado e esteticização do social – são relacionados com uma tipologia de escritores (viajantes, turistas e emigrantes) elaborada com base nos estudos sobre literatura de viagens e turismo, bem como atendendo às circunstâncias materiais e epistemológicas do contacto dos autores com a alteridade. Algumas das associações – assim como a respetiva ausência – servem de base a uma discussão de possibilidades de causalidade (por exemplo, com base nas origens dos autores) e destacam possíveis funções culturais específicas desempenhadas pela literatura factual sobre a alteridade.Based on a corpus of 9 non-fiction works dealing with Portugal or Spain, a systematic analysis is performed of the representations those works convey, comparing them with views of the literature of social science on such countries. The texts’ structural features associated with the production and presentation of such representations are also analysed. The departing point for both tasks is a definition of image of the social, along with the concept of commonsensical reader, as one of the goals is to consider the representations as they would appear to audience. Images are quantified in terms of their density, degree of generality, forms of knowledge and sources of knowledge. They are also quantified in terms of the themes they convey and the dualities traditional society/modern society and fundamental similarity/difference of otherness (quantification being considered necessary to avoid the problem of the implicit quantification found in the literature on travel writing produced by Humanities). Such data feed an individual and comparative analysis of each work, complemented by qualitative data. The emerging patterns – structural prejudice, types of authenticity, present(ific)ation of the past and aestheticization of the social – are related with a typology of writers (travellers, tourists and migrants) based on literature on tourism and travel writing, as well as on the material and epistemological circumstances of the authors’ contact with otherness. Some of the associations – as well as their absence – underpin a discussion of possibilities of causation such as the origins of authors and highlight possible specific cultural functions performed by the factual literature on otherness

Cognición estética de la sociedad: Representaciones modernas y posmodernas en textos no ficcionales contemporáneos

Patterns of representation in travel writing, travel guides, journalism and memoir are shown to amount to aesthetic cognition by comparison to social science analogues. Their postmodernity questions the supposed factuality of those genres. Travel writing and travel guides’s expected orientation to the present is contested by how the past is used. The patterns show operational potential for empirical testing of usual temporal boundaries of the postmodern. Finally, they are forms of modern and postmodern cognitive engagement of tourists and would-be tourists with society, complementing major theories of tourist motivation.Demonstra-se que certos padrões de representação nos géneros literatura de viagem, guia de viagem, jornalismo e memória constituem cognição estética, ao compará-los com padrões análogos usados nas ciências sociais. A pós-modernidade dos padrões questiona a suposta factualidade desses géneros. A esperada orientação da literatura de viagem e dos guias de viagem para o presente é posta em causa pela forma como o passado é usado. Os padrões revelam potencial operacional para testar empiricamente os limites temporais habituais do período pós-moderno. Finalmente, são formas modernas e pós-modernas de relacionamento cognitivo com o social por parte de turistas e aspirantes a turistas, complementando as principais teorias de motivação turística.Il est démontré que certains schémas de représentation dans les genres récit de voyage, guide de voyage, journalisme et mémoires constituent cognition esthétique, en les comparant avec analogues dans les sciences sociales. Leur postmodernité met en question la factualité supposée de ces genres. Les récits de voyage et les guides de voyage utilisent le passé de manière inattendue si on considère qu’ils sont censés être centrés au présent. Les schémas montrent potentiel opérationnel pour le test empirique des limites temporelles usuelles de la période postmoderne. Enfin, ce sont des formes modernes et postmodernes d’engagement cognitif entre touristes et touristes potentiels avec le monde social, et ils complémentent les principales théories de la motivation touristique.Se demuestra que ciertos patrones de representación en los géneros literatura de viaje, guía de viaje, periodismo y memoria constituyen cognición estética, al compararlos con patrones análogos usados en las ciencias sociales. La posmodernidad de los patrones cuestiona la supuesta factualidad de esos géneros. La esperada orientación de la literatura de viaje y de las guías de viaje al presente es cuestionada por como utilizan el pasado. Los patrones revelan potencial operacional para probar empíricamente los límites temporales habituales del período posmoderno. Finalmente, los patrones son formas modernas y posmodernas de relación cognitiva con lo social por parte de turistas y aspirantes a turistas, complementando las principales teorías de motivación turística

Orchestration of heterogeneous middleware services and its application to a comand and control platform

MSC Dissertation in Computer EngineeringDistributed objects was, until recently, the leading technology in the design and implementation of component-based architectures, such as the ones based on services, better known as Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). Although established in the market for more than a decade, and therefore mature, these technologies have failed to overcome the porting of the SOA concept to the Web. Web services are a recent technology that has been growing in the last few years. Their acceptance has increased over enterprises and organizations as they seem to overcome the Web and interoperability related problems of the Distributed Objects technology. Web services provide interoperability between systems and that is undoubtedly a strength of this technology since this is a crucial aspect of nowadays business. Moreover, the widespread of services led to the recent introduction of the service composition concept, that although being a technology independent concept,is closely related to Web services and there is no tool support for other technologies. Nonetheless, distributed objects still play an important role in the development of distributed systems, namely due to performance issues that are important when it comes to the internals of a platform. However, the use of service composition in these distributed object-based platforms requires the exposure of their composing services as Web services. The main objective of this masters thesis is improve the state-of-the-art in the support for the composition of services originating from distributed objects-based platforms. Bearing in mind that these kind of platforms are composed by several services, the idea is to present a platform as a set of Web services in order to be able to orchestrate them

Concepção e desenvolvimento de um protótipo de software educativo para a formação vocal

Citação bibliográfica: Teixeira, Paulo & SILVA, Bento (2007). Concepção e desenvolvimento de um protótipo de software educativo para a formação vocal. In A. Barca, M. Peralbo, A. Porto, B. Duarte da Silva & Almeida, L. (Eds.). Actas do IX Congresso Internacional Galego-Português de Psicopedagoxía. Corunha: Universidade da Corunha, pp. 789-800. (ISSN 1138-1663)Sendo a voz um instrumento privilegiado da comunicação é inquestionável a importância que assume para os profissionais que dependem dela enquanto instrumento de trabalho. Entre estes profissionais queremos distinguir os educadores e professores que em muitos casos, por desconhecimento do uso correcto da voz e dos cuidados que permitem conservá-la, defrontamse com disfunções ao nível da expressão verbal que condicionam e tornam a comunicação menos efectiva. Esta problemática torna-se ainda mais pertinente quando falamos de educadores de infância e de professores do 1º Ciclo que, com alguma frequência, utilizam o canto nas suas aulas. Tendo como ponto de partida os constrangimentos informalmente comunicados por um grupo de profissionais do ensino pré-escolar e do 1º Ciclo foi desenvolvida uma investigação que pretendeu fazer o ponto de situação relativamente à utilização do canto e à experiência adquirida ao nível da formação inicial e contínua, conceber e desenvolver um protótipo de software educativo, de forma interactiva com a população alvo e com peritos nas áreas da formação vocal e do software educativo. Nesta comunicação fazemos a apresentação do protótipo, o processo de validação em termos de usabilidade, destacando as áreas de trabalho direccionadas para a formação vocal

Workplace adaptations promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities in mainstream employment: a case-study on employers' responses in Norway

This case-study conducted in Norway investigates employers' responses to policy measures implemented throughout 2006-2015 and aimed at promoting the inclusion of persons with disabilities (PwDs) into mainstream employment by providing workplace adaptations. For this purpose, we apply a multi-method approach by combining in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with the managers at two large private companies in Norway and quantitative shift-share analysis performed on the Norwegian Disabled People LFS data. While the shift-share analysis has demonstrated positive effects in the employment of PwDs at the national level and in providing adaptations at work during 2011-2015 for "changes of working time", "need for one or more adaptations" and "changes of work tasks", "physical adaptations" remain negative. The qualitative interviews report that "flexibility" or "changes of working time" is the main workplace adaptation the managers at both companies provide to own employees who return to work after acquiring a disability or having a long-term illness. Both companies demonstrate high conformity to accessibility standards, however, the provision of workplace adaptations to PwDs without prior work experience remains limited or absent despite the disability policy measures in Norway in that period and the companies' commitment to inclusion

Research and development of ground-based transiting extrasolar planet projects

The search for exoplanets has gone from the realm of speculation to being one of the most prolific topics of modern astronomy in the space of just 20 years. In particular, the geometric alignment of transiting exoplanets provides the added opportunity to measure a host of properties of these systems, including studies of planetary atmospheres. The vast majority of known transiting exoplanets to date were found using dedicated ground-based surveys such as the SuperWASP project. Such enterprises comprise of multiple small telescopes designed to perform high-precision photometry over a wide field of view and rely on efficiently compensating for several noise contributions. An analysis of the sources of noise in the SuperWASP light curves was performed, focussing on systematic e↵ects fixed in detector space. A study of a set of detector maps produced from the average of the fractional residuals of the light curves in CCD coordinates has revealed that the current flat-fielding strategy is introducing a component of red noise into the light curves due to the wavelengthdependent nature of the CCDs. The possibility of using such maps as a basis for an additional decorrelation step in the software pipeline is discussed. The next phase in planetary discoveries from ground-based surveys consists of the search for smaller planets and those in longer orbits around their host stars. This process involves an observing strategy that focuses on intensive coverage of particular locations of the sky. We develop simulation software to aid the choice of observed fields for the SuperWASP and Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) projects in order to maximise the chances of finding planets at those locations. Moreover, this simulation can be used for comparative studies of the planet finding probability for several design choices and has been used to justify the necessity to commission the NGTS instrument at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in order to benefit from one of the World’s premier sites. The increasing number of known transiting planets has triggered a new phase of exoplanet exploration, in which the properties of the atmospheres of these planets are being explored using techniques such as transmission spectroscopy. This process consists of measuring an enhanced transit depth at particular wavelengths due to the presence of opacity sources in the atmospheres of exoplanets. We use the multiband photometer ULTRACAM to attempt a similar measurement via the technique of transmission photometry for the highly inflated planets WASP-15b and WASP- 17b. The data are found to be dominated by systematic errors and a detailed study of the possible sources is performed

Concepção e desenvolvimento de um protótipo de software educativo para a formação de educadores e professores na área do canto

Este texto concretiza um estudo que permitiu aflorar um problema real relacionado com a prática educativa de educadores de infância e professores do 1º Ciclo, tomando como amostra o Agrupamento de Escolas de Manhente. O problema relacionou-se com aspectos de desenvolvimento vocal que condicionam a aplicação da área do canto, tendo os elementos da população-alvo apontado a deficiente formação inicial e a falta de formação contínua nesta área como pontos cruciais que conduziram à falta de segurança e à pouca ou nenhuma abordagem neste domínio. Perante este constatação, e de uma problemática mais vasta que envolve um uso adequado da voz, enquanto instrumento privilegiado da comunicação, socorremo-nos da possibilidade de colocar as Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação ao serviço da educação/formação, ou seja, concebemos e desenvolvemos um protótipo de software educativo que visa permitir uma formação vocal autónoma e contínua

Tomographic determination of the spatial Distribution of Water Vapor using GNSS observations.

This paper focuses on investigating Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) observations as precipitation sensors and also analyse the contribution of the GNSS dense networks as an efficient tool for meteorological purposes based one Water Vapor Tomography. For that, case-studies are presented using data from BELEM and MANAUS dense network. For Water Vapor Tomograhy, a software package has been developed to reconstruct the GNSS water vapour spatial distribution. The obtained results indicate that GNSS can detect the variations in precipitation at different periods of the year and that dense GNSS networks allow us to generate images of the spatial and temporal distribution of water vapour. However, the influence of several parameters, such as number and distribution of receivers, grid sizes and initial values, has to be taken into account for the image reconstruction

Aesthetic cognition of society: modern and postmodern representations in contemporary non-fiction

Patterns of representation in travel writing, travel guides, journalism and memoir are shown to amount to aesthetic cognition by comparison to social science analogues. Their postmodernity questions the supposed factuality of those genres. Travel writing and travel guides’s expected orientation to the present is contested by how the past is used. The patterns show operational potential for empirical testing of usual temporal boundaries of the postmodern. Finally, they are forms of modern and postmodern cognitive engagement of tourists and would-be tourists with society, complementing major theories of tourist motivation.Demonstra-se que certos padrões de representação nos géneros literatura de viagem, guia de viagem, jornalismo e memória constituem cognição estética, ao compará-los com padrões análogos usados nas ciências sociais. A pós-modernidade dos padrões questiona a suposta factualidade desses géneros. A esperada orientação da literatura de viagem e dos guias de viagem para o presente é posta em causa pela forma como o passado é usado. Os padrões revelam potencial operacional para testar empiricamente os limites temporais habituais do período pós-moderno. Finalmente, são formas modernas e pós-modernas de relacionamento cognitivo com o social por parte de turistas e aspirantes a turistas, complementando as principais teorias de motivação turística.Il est démontré que certains schémas de représentation dans les genres récit de voyage, guide de voyage, journalisme et mémoires constituent cognition esthétique, en les comparant avec analogues dans les sciences sociales. Leur postmodernité met en question la factualité supposée de ces genres. Les récits de voyage et les guides de voyage utilisent le passé de manière inattendue si on considère qu’ils sont censés être centrés au présent. Les schémas montrent potentiel opérationnel pour le test empirique des limites temporelles usuelles de la période postmoderne. Enfin, ce sont des formes modernes et postmodernes d’engagement cognitif entre touristes et touristes potentiels avec le monde social, et ils complémentent les principales théories de la motivation touristique.Se demuestra que ciertos patrones de representación en los géneros literatura de viaje, guía de viaje, periodismo y memoria constituyen cognición estética, al compararlos con patrones análogos usados en las ciencias sociales. La posmodernidad de los patrones cuestiona la supuesta factualidad de esos géneros. La esperada orientación de la literatura de viaje y de las guías de viaje al presente es cuestionada por como utilizan el pasado. Los patrones revelan potencial operacional para probar empíricamente los límites temporales habituales del período posmoderno. Finalmente, los patrones son formas modernas y posmodernas de relación cognitiva con lo social por parte de turistas y aspirantes a turistas, complementando las principales teorías de motivación turística