Antecedents of academic performance of university students: academic engagement and psychological capital resources

Predicting academic performance is of key importance to the success, wellbeing and prosperity of students, their families, the economy, and the society at large. This study investigates the relationship between academic engagement, psychological capital (PsyCap) and academic performance. Data were collected in two different universities, one in Spain and another in Portugal. Students completed two self-report questionnaires regarding academic engagement and Psychological Capital. Academic performance was assessed through Grade Point Average, provided by the universities at the end of the exam period. The samples consisted of 389 and 243 undergraduate students, respectively. Results showed a positive relationship between academic engagement and PsyCap, on the one hand, and academic performance on the other, in both samples. Results also supported PsyCap as a full mediator in the relationship between academic engagement and academic performance. Exploration of alternative models yielded superior fit for the proposed model. Accordingly, academically engaged students were likely to experience higher levels of PsyCap, which in turn positively impacted their academic performance. The results point to the importance of considering psychological predictors, rather than the prevalent reliance on traditional predictors of academic performance

Una modelización de los años de vida ajustados por la calidad como utilidades esperadas

En el presente trabajo, los a\~nos de vida ajustados por la calidad (AVAC), son caracterizados como funciones de utilidad von Newman--Morgenstern. Esta caracterizaci\'on se efect\'ua para dos problemas de elecci\'on: la elecci\'on entre loter{\'\i}as definidas sobre estados de salud cr\'onicos y la elecci\'on entre loter{\'\i}as definidas sobre estados de salud temporales. En el primer caso, deducimos las mismas condiciones que Pliskin et al. (1980), s\'olo que siguiendo un camino m\'as directo. En el segundo caso, una vez establecida una condici\'on de independencia aditiva basada en Fishburn (1970), inferimos una nueva condici\'on en la literatura sobre AVAC que denominamos \underline{condici\'on de simetr{\'\i}a}.QALYs, expected utility, medical decision making

Competitividade e incumprimento das funções de gestão da construção

De um modo geral, a problemática da falta de competitividade do sector da construção em Portugal preocupa os vários intervenientes e tem sido objecto da atenção dos sucessivos Governos, órgãos de soberania, parceiros sociais, meios de comunicação social, investigadores nacionais e estrangeiros, etc. Os elementos chave de avaliação da competitividade têm vindo a ser objecto de estudo e pesquisa internacional, sendo que ao nível das obras, releva a falta de cumprimento das principais funções de gestão nos empreendimentos de construção. Não obstante ser reconhecido por todos os intervenientes o fraco desempenho desses indicadores de gestão, sendo situações comuns as derrapagens orçamentais, os atrasos na conclusão das obras, a insuficiente qualidade do produto final e a manifesta falta segurança no trabalho, não existe uma quantificação objectiva destes incumprimentos, nem as razões concretas para que tal aconteça. Neste trabalho apresentam-se os resultados de um inquérito a Donos de Obra e Empreiteiros em relação ás dimensões e às causas dos incumprimentos das principais funções de gestão na construção, no que toca a obras públicas concluídas nos últimos anos, relacionando-as com a falta de competitividade da indústria da construção em Portugal.Fundação para a Ciência e aTecnologia (FCT) -projecto SAPIENS nº 4762

Managing stakeholders conflicts

It is not unusual that a chapter on conflict management, which is about, generally speaking, helping people or organizations that are in conflict with each other to deal with their differences, opens up with this statement (Moore, 1986 cited in Gordon, 1966): All societies, communities, organizations, and interpersonal relationships experience conflict at one time or another in the process of day-to-day interaction. Conflict is not necessarily bad, abnormal, or dysfunctional; it is a fact of life.The author, Alexandre Ferreira da Silva, is supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/39459/2007)

Claims in railway projects in Portugal

Comunicação apresentada na CIB W102-2005, Lisboa, Portugal, 18 - 20 Maio 2005.The importance of claims and disputes in Portuguese public contracting is so large nowadays that most construction managers tend to consider a specific final stage of the project life cycle for dealing with them. The aim of this paper is to characterise claims in railway projects conducted in the last few years in Portugal. A survey was made to project promoters and data from a number of projects has been collected and classified according to usual claim causes as currently adopted in literature. The results of the survey show that project changes and delays contribute to roughly 99% of the claims surveyed

Why can’t main project management functions be achieved in most construction projects?

The lack of accomplishment of the main management functions in construction projects had been reported worlwide. The symptoms are well recognized, like cost and time overruns, deficient quality and lack of safety. To help clarifying the reasons for this evidence, a survey was carried to Portuguese construction stakeholders, based on an Internet inquiry, aimed to characterize past projects. While time for the answers is still running, the main important conclusion retrieved from the survey is that industry practicioners do not have, or do not want to provide, quantitative information about past projects. This, in fact, may be signalled as the first reason for the lack of competitiveness of the construction industry in Portugal

Some aspects of the synchronization in coupled maps

Through numerical simulations we analyze the synchronization time and the Lyapunov dimension of a coupled map lattice consisting of a chain of chaotic logistic maps exhibiting power law interactions. From the observed behaviors we find a lower bound for the size $N$ of the lattice, independent of the range and strength of the interaction, which imposes a practical lower bound in numerical simulations for the system to be considered in the thermodynamic limit. We also observe the existence of a strong correlation between the averaged synchronization time and the Lyapunov dimension. This is an interesting result because it allows an analytical estimation of the synchronization time, which otherwise requires numerical simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Towards precise recognition of pollen bearing bees by convolutional neural networks

Automatic recognition of pollen bearing bees can provide important information both for pollination monitoring and for assessing the health and strength of bee colonies, with the consequent impact on people's lives, due to the role of bees in the pollination of many plant species. In this paper, we analyse some of the Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) methods for detection of pollen bearing bees in images obtained at hive entrance. In order to show the in uence of colour we preprocessed the dataset images. Studying the results of nine state-of-the-art CNNs, we provide a baseline for pollen bearing bees recognition based in deep learning. For some CNNs the best results were achieved with the original images. However, our experiments showed evidence that DarkNet53 and VGG16 have superior performance against the other CNNs tested, with unsharp masking preprocessed images, achieving accuracy results of 99:1% and 98:6%, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Anamnese cultural de enfermagem nas famílias migrantes: uma scoping review

A prática clínica com famílias migrantes coloca desafios aos profissionais de saúde e particularmente aos enfermeiros na atualidade, como apontam diferentes autores nacionais e internacionais. Na anamnese cultural os profissionais procuram identificar elementos facilitadores da comunicação e da avaliação inicial das famílias, visando a promoção da adesão e da continuidade aos cuidados propostos.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Palynological and physicochemical data characterisation of honeys produced in the Entre-Douro e Minho region of Portugal

Honey legislation has been addressed to establish the minimum marketing level of the product and the need for consumer protection through correct denominations. Research oriented toward assessment of floral origin and physicochemical properties may increase the commercial value of these products. The characteristics of thirty-one honeys produced in the Entre-Douro e Minho region in Portugal were studied. Pollen features and some physicochemical parameters (moisture, ash, pH, free acidity, electrical conductivity, hydroxymethylfurfural contain, apparent sucrose, reducing sugars and diastase activity) were determined. The samples were found to meet international honey specifications. The present study found a linear regression between the ash content of honeys and their specific conductivity. Five samples are listed as Eucalyptus honey, one sample as Citrus honey, and twenty-five samples as multifloral honeys. Of the total, 87.1% exceeded the quality parameters and should be labelled as ‘virgin’ honey