Behavioural determinants of Foreign Direct Investment

The paper presents a behavioural economics approach to foreign direct investment. Starting from the behavioural finance literature, it uses content analysis based on interviews and questionnaires covering 12% of the Portuguese firms with investments abroad. The study presents evidence of several behavioural rules (e.g., herding, cascading, anchoring, overconfidence, mental accounting) in firms’ location decisions that originate a new set of determinants of FDI flows and complement the neo classical paradigm. Moreover, it confirms the Heiner model (1983, 1985, 1989) by showing that the higher is the uncertainty faced by decision makers the more frequent is the use of behavioural rules. The central role of uncertainty helps explaining why FDI flows occur more frequently among developed countries.Behavioural, Foreign Direct Investment, Uncertainty

Using Lucene for Developing a Question-Answering Agent in Portuguese

Given the limitations of available platforms for creating conversational agents, and that a question-answering agent suffices in many scenarios, we take advantage of the Information Retrieval library Lucene for developing such an agent for Portuguese. The solution described answers natural language questions based on an indexed list of FAQs. Its adaptation to different domains is a matter of changing the underlying list. Different configurations of this solution, mostly on the language analysis level, resulted in different search strategies, which were tested for answering questions about the economic activity in Portugal. In addition to comparing the different search strategies, we concluded that, towards better answers, it is fruitful to combine the results of different strategies with a voting method

Inorganic Graphenylene: A Porous Two-Dimensional Material With Tunable Band Gap

By means of ab initio calculations we investigate the possibility of existence of a boron nitride (BN) porous two-dimensional nanosheet which is geometrically similar to the carbon allotrope known as biphenylene carbon. The proposed structure, which we called Inorganic Graphenylene (IGP), is formed spontaneously after selective dehydrogenation of the porous Boron Nitride (BN) structure proposed by Ding et al. We study the structural and electronic properties of both porous BN and IGP and it is shown that, by selective substitution of B and N atoms with carbon atoms in these structures, the band gap can be significantly reduced, changing their behavior from insulators to semiconductors, thus opening the possibility of band gap engineering for this class of two-dimensional materials

Enxerto de tecido conjuntivo tunelizado – a propósito de um caso clínico

Artigo licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons - Atribuição Não Comercial Sem Derivações 4.0 Internacional - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"A técnica de tunelização, combinada com enxerto de tecido conjuntivo, tem sido descrita como uma opção vantajosa no tratamento de recessões gengivais classe I e II de Miller moderadas. O presente artigo descreve o caso clínico de uma paciente de 22 anos, do sexo feminino, referenciada para tratamento de recessões gengivais múltiplas. Após avaliação clínica e radiográfica, constatou‐se a presença de recessões gengivais classe I de Miller nos dentes 2.1, 2.2 e 2.3, tendo‐se decidido proceder ao recobrimento radicular destes dentes, recorrendo a esta técnica. Após um ano, observa‐se recobrimento radicular completo, ausência de hemorragia à sondagem, profundidade de sondagem inferior a 3 mm e perfeita integração estética com os tecidos adjacentes. Esta técnica apresenta resultados bastante previsíveis quando indicada e corretamente executada, permitindo obter resultados estéticos.""The tunnel technique with connective tissue graft has been described as a favorable option for treatment of Miller Class I and II defects. This article describes the case of a 22 year‐old female patient referred for treatment of multiple gingival recessions. Clinical and radiographic examination revealed Miller Class I gingival recession of the teeth 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3; thus the tunnel technique with connective tissue graft was proposed to provide root coverage. A year after the surgical procedure, there was total root coverage, no bleeding on probing, probing depht under 3 mm e nice aesthetic integration. This technique provides a predictable surgical result when recommended and correctly executed, offering an aesthetic outcome.

On a test-bed application for the ART-WiSe framework

This report describes the development of a Test-bed Application for the ART-WiSe Framework with the aim of providing a means of access, validate and demonstrate that architecture. The chosen application is a kind of pursuit-evasion game where a remote controlled robot, navigating through an area covered by wireless sensor network (WSN), is detected and continuously tracked by the WSN. Then a centralized control station takes the appropriate actions for a pursuit robot to chase and “capture” the intruder one. This kind of application imposes stringent timing requirements to the underlying communication infrastructure. It also involves interesting research problems in WSNs like tracking, localization, cooperation between nodes, energy concerns and mobility. Additionally, it can be easily ported into a real-world application. Surveillance or search and rescue operations are two examples where this kind of functionality can be applied. This is still a first approach on the test-bed application and this development effort will be continuously pushed forward until all the envisaged objectives for the Art-WiSe architecture become accomplished