Intergenerational Transmission of Education: An Alert to Empirical Implementation

The intergenerational transmission of education is certainly a problem that continues to challenge most countries. The level of education that an individual rises to is linked to the education level(s) of her/his parents. This note serves as an alert to researchers undertaking empirical investigation into how the parents' education should be considered with regard to the child's. Using Portuguese data we conclude that the parents should be viewed as a unit (i.e. as a couple), and we should examine all of the different education combinations, avoiding the temptation to aggregate them in larger categories.transmission of education, human capital, parent’s education

The Contribution of Vocational Training to Employment, Job-Related Skills and Productivity: Evidence from Madeira Island

In this paper, we analyze the transition to the labour market of participants in vocational training in Madeira Island. In a first stage, we investigate how the employment status at different dates (one month, one year, and two years after the completion of the training program) depends on relevant variables, such as age, gender, education and the content and duration of the training. In a second stage, we use the individuals’ self-assessment regarding the effectiveness of the training program along three dimensions: employment, job-related skills and productivity. We find that respondents score training activities high in every dimension. Moreover, we find that training is more effective among the educated, indicating that vocational training is far from being remedial. We also find that long training programs and training in the area of tourism are particularly effective.job-related skills, productivity, employment, training, ordered logit

Does education reduce wage inequality? Quantile regression evidence from 16 countries

Quantile regression estimates of returns to education are used to address the relation between schooling and wage inequality. Empirical evidence for male workers from 16 countries for the mid 1990s suggests a robust stylised fact: Returns to schooling are higher for the more skilled individuals, conditional on their observable characteristics. This suggests that schooling has a positive impact upon within-levels wage inequality. Factors such as over-education, ability – schooling interactions and school quality or different fields of study may be driving this result. D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Predicting the confusion level of text excerpts with syntactic, lexical and n-gram features

Distance learning, offline presentations (presentations that are not being carried in a live fashion but were instead pre-recorded) and such activities whose main goal is to convey information are getting increasingly relevant with digital media such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). While MOOCs are a well-established reality in the learning environment, VR is also being used to promote learning in virtual rooms, be it in the academia or in the industry. Oftentimes these methods are based on written scripts that take the learner through the content, making them critical components to these tools. With such an important role, it is important to ensure the efficiency of these scripts. Confusion is a non-basic emotion associated with learning. This process often leads to a cognitive disequilibrium either caused by the content itself or due to the way it is conveyed when it comes to its syntactic and lexical features. We hereby propose a supervised model that can predict the likelihood of confusion an input text excerpt can cause on the learner. To achieve this, we performed syntactic and lexical analyses over 300 text excerpts and collected 5 confusion level classifications (0 – 6) per excerpt from 51 annotators to use their respective means as labels. These examples that compose the dataset were collected from random presentations transcripts across various fields of knowledge. The learning model was trained with this data with the results being included in the body of the paper. This model allows the design of clearer scripts of offline presentations and similar approaches and we expect that it improves the efficiency of these speeches. While this model is applied to this specific case, we hope to pave the way to generalize this approach to other contexts where clearness of text is critical, such as the scripts of MOOCs or academic abstracts.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Bargaining regimes and wages in Portugal

In this paper we analyse the bargaining regime wage-effect in Portugal. The results indicate that the bargaining regime coverage is important in explain- ing the variability of wages. Wage differentials between bargaining regimes are substantial, a fact which may be related to a decentralised wage setting which pre- vails in Portugal. The highest wages are generated by multi-firm negotiations and the lowest are generated by sectoral contracts. Single-firm contracts align at an intermediate level in the ranking.Financial support from program PRAXIS XXI under grant PRAXIS/2/2.1/CSH/781/95 and FEDER is acknowledged. The third author also acknowledges financial support from program PRAXIS XXI under grant BD/3486/94 and from the University of the Azores.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Growth performance, biochemical composition and sedimentation velocity of Tetraselmis sp. CTP4 under different salinities using low-cost lab- and pilot-scale systems

Biomass harvesting is one of the most expensive steps of the whole microalgal production pipeline. Therefore, the present work aimed to understand the effect of salinity on the growth performance, biochemical composition and sedimentation velocity of Tetraselmis sp. CTP4, in order to establish an effective low-cost pilot-scale harvesting system for this strain. At lab scale, similar growth performance was obtained in cultures grown at salinities of 5, 10 and 20 g L-1 NaCl. In addition, identical settling velocities (2.4-3.6 cm h-1) were observed on all salinities under study, regardless of the growth stage. However, higher salinities (20 g L-1) promoted a significant increase in lipid contents in this strain compared to when this microalga was cultivated at 5 or 10 g L-1 NaCl. At pilot-scale, cultures were cultivated semi-continuously in 2.5-m3 tubular photobioreactors, fed every four days, and stored in a 1-m3 harvesting tank. Upon a 24-hour settling step, natural sedimentation of the microalgal cells resulted in the removal of 93% of the culture medium in the form of a clear liquid containing only vestigial amounts of biomass (0.07 ± 0.02 g L-1 dry weight; DW). The remaining culture was recovered as a highly concentrated culture (19.53 ± 4.83 g L-1 DW) and wet microalgal paste (272.7 ± 18.5 g L-1 DW). Overall, this method provided an effective recovery of 97% of the total biomass, decreasing significantly the harvesting costs.Agência financiadora Portuguese national budget P2020 Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) CMAR/Multi/04326/2013 ALGARED+ 1398 EP - INTERREG V-A Espana Portugal project ALGACO2 project 023310 COST Action 1408 - European Network for Bio-products FCT SFRH/BD/105541/2014info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Compression fatigue behaviour of a biomimetic 3D textile structure for pressure ulcers prevention

The objective of the present research study is the development of a multifunctional textile structure to prevent the appearance of pressure ulcers. The concept of the overall structure was inspired by plant structures morphology, resulting in a 3D patchwork knitted fabric, specially designed according to the necessities of body segments, for a mattress overlay. To simulate the pressure that causes the occurrence of bedsores, compression tests were performed allowing the analysis of strain/stress behaviour, energy absorption and thickness variation under load. The results show the suitable behaviour of the textile structure developed to prevent pressure ulcers.The authors acknowledge the funding from Compete 2020 – Program Portugal2020 under the grant SENSEBED – 10422

Pilot Study to Reduce Added Salt on a University Canteen through the Use of an Innovative Dosage Equipment

Background: This study aims to demonstrate the practical application of an innovative easy-to-use equipment to dosage cooking salt, and evaluate the effectiveness in reducing 30% of the added salt in meals and the impact on consumers satisfaction and food waste. Methods: Two canteens from one public university where randomized in one control arm and one intervention arm. The first step was to evaluate the salt added to food through atomic emission spectrophotometry in both canteens, and the second step was to perform gradual reductions of up to 30% of cooking salt in the intervention canteen using the Salt Control-C (SC-C) equipment. Consumer acceptability was assessed through satisfaction questionnaires and food waste was evaluated by weighing. Results: The intervention canteen achieved to a reduction of more than 30% of added salt in soup (34.3% per 100 g), fish dish (41.1% per 100 g) and meat dish (48.0% per 100 g), except for the vegetarian dish (6.1% per 100 g). There was no decrease in consumer satisfaction, with a significant satisfaction increase of 15.7% (p = 0.044) regarding the flavor of the main dish. Also, no significant differences were found in food waste. Conclusions: SC-C seems to be effective in reducing 30% of added salt levels in canteen meals, and may be a good strategy to control and reach adequate levels of added salt in meals served outside-the-home, promoting benefits to the individuals health. (c) 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland