O anel do imperador (1934), de João dos Reis Gomes. Entre a história e a ficção: Napoleão e a Madeira

O Anel do Imperador (1934) remete-nos - interligando-os - para dois momentos que associam Napoleão à Madeira: primeiro, a sua passagem pela baía do Funchal, em Agosto de 1815, a caminho do desterro. Esta foi, aliás, a única vez em que o imperador esteve em território português; um quarto de século mais tarde, em Julho de 1840, a passagem, pelo mesmo local, das fragatas francesas La Belle Poule e Favorite, que também se dirigiam a Santa Helena, sob o comando do Príncipe de Joinville, agora com a missão de transportar os restos mortais do antigo imperador de regresso a França. É a partir destes dois factos - e fazendo referência a algumas das personalidades históricas neles intervenientes - que a ficção e a História se cruzam na obra de João dos Reis Gomes.The Emperor's Ring (1934) reminds us - linking them - two historic moments involving Napoleon and Madeira: first, his passage through the bay of Funchal, in August 1815, in his path to exile; a quarter century later, in July 1840, the passage at the same place, of the French frigates La Belle Poule and Favorite, also directed to St. Helena, under the command of the Prince of Joinville, now with the mission of transporting the former emperor’s remains back to France. From these two facts - and referring to some of the historical personalities involved in them - fiction and history intersect in the work of João dos Reis Gomes.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Does low banking profitability contribute to financial instability in the Euro Zone?

The present research explores the hypothesis that lower levels of banking profitability constitutes a risk factor for financial stability by adopting a model which intends to find the main banking profitability determinants over 4 bank profitability quartiles of a sample of 735 banks. The sampled banks have total assets over $1 Billion and are located in 12 Euro Area countries. The adopted time window ranges from 2006 to 2015. This panel data model’s purpose is to find the relevance of the ‘GDP growth’ variable on explaining profitability of the lower profitable banks in the in-crisis period and compare this variable’s significance with the case of the higher profitable banks by looking for differences, mainly, whether it is a more relevant factor for lower profit banks than higher ones. The findings suggest that there is no relationship between lower profitability levels and higher impacts of GDP growth on banks profitability during the crisis. The baseline results are subject to robustness checks and are globally stable. Our analysis suggests that other risk factors on banks’ management should be adequately addressed by policymakers.Este estudo explora a hipótese de que baixos níveis de rendibilidade bancária constituem um fator de risco para a estabilidade financeira. Adotando um modelo que pretende detetar os principais determinantes da rendibilidade dos bancos sobre 4 quartis de rendibilidade bancária, pertencentes a uma amostra que agrega informação sobre 735 bancos. Os bancos da amostra detêm ativos totais superiores a 1.000$ milhões e estão localizados em 12 países da área euro. A janela temporal de estudo vai desde 2006 até 2015. O propósito deste modelo de dados em painel é tentar entender a relevância da variável “crescimento do PIB” para explicar a rendibilidade dos bancos menos rentáveis durante o período de crise e comparar a significância desta variável com o caso dos bancos mais rentáveis, tentando encontrar diferenças, nomeadamente, se o impacto da variação do PIB na rendibilidade dos bancos é mais sentido nos bancos menos rentáveis do que nos mais rentáveis. Os resultados sugerem que não há relação entre menores níveis de rendibilidade e efeitos superiores da variação do PIB sobre a rendibilidade dos bancos durante a crise. Os resultados base estão sujeitos a verificações de robustez, sendo estes globalmente estáveis. A nossa análise sugere que outros fatores de risco da gestão bancária deverão ser abordados adequadamente pelos decisores políticos

Tracking the US Business Cycle With a Singular Spectrum Analysis

The monitoring of economic developments is an exercise of considerable importance forpolicy makers, namely, central banks and fiscal authorities as well as for other economic agents such as financial intermediaries, firms and households. However, the assessment of the business cycle is not an easy endeavor as the cyclical component is not an observable variable. In this paper we resort to singular spectrum analysis in order to disentangle the US GDP into several underlying components of interest. The business cycle indicator yielded through this method is shown to bear a resemblance with band-pass filtered output. As the end-of-sample behavior is typically a thorny issue in business cycle assessment, a real-time estimation exercise is here conducted to assess the reliability of the several filters. The obtained results suggest that the business cycle indicator proposed herein possesses a better revision performance than other filters commonly applied in the literature.

Classification of electroencephalogram signals using artificial neural networks

The study of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) has proved to be fascinating over the years and the development of these networks has grown strongly in recent years. The neural networks have come to be increasingly convincing methods for solving complex problems, through artificial intelligence. In particular this work focused on development of an artificial neural network for identifying diseases: Parkinson's, Huntington's and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, based on signals from the Electroencephalogram (EEG). The phases of the project were developed through a number of operations implemented in Matlab. The Fourier transform was seen as the main technique of signal processing, in order to analyze and diagnose diseases in the study. The work consisted in the first stage process the EEG signals to serve as an entry into the ANN in order to reveal a distinctive feature in the different diseases studied, and then, create a model capable to distinguish the diseases. For this purpose 4 methodologies were used with different processing of the EEG signal. The 4 methodologies are compared in this paper

Software asset management in an organization

This thesis presents a project conducted to assess software asset management (SAM) maturity, through the usage of a SAM maturity model, in a Portuguese group, composed of six companies of different business sectors, in order to understand if the group was taking all necessary measures to prevent software non-compliance risks whilst maximizing SAM benefits. The SAM maturity model adopted was based on the Microsoft SAM Optimization Model (SOM) and comprised the assessment of ten core competences, each considering a total of four different maturity levels. The results show that despite the recent group efforts to improve SAM maturity the overall conclusion is that the group is still at Basic Level and vision, goals and objectives to be achieved with a global SAM still need to be approved. This project was the first enterprise initiative to promote SAM awareness in the group under the sponsorship of the Board of Directors and has allowed to understand the current SAM maturity, for the group and each of the six companies, define the desired SAM maturity and also determine all initiatives that must be implemented to achieve the target maturity within the next twelve months.A presente tese consiste no projecto que foi efectuado para aferir a maturidade da gestão de activos de software, tendo por base um modelo de maturidade de gestão de activos de software, de um grupo Português, composto por seis empresas que actuam em diversos sectores da nossa economia, a fim de compreender se o grupo estava a tomar todas as medidas necessárias para prevenir os riscos de não cumprimento legal e regulamentar associados à temática do software e para obter o máximo de benefícios associados à gestão dos activos de software. O modelo de maturidade de gestão de activos de software adoptado teve por base o Microsoft SAM Optimization Model (SOM) que contempla um total de dez competências, cada um com quatro níveis de maturidade distintos. Os resultados obtidos permitem concluir que apesar dos recentes esforços por parte do grupo para melhorar a maturidade nesta área o grupo ainda está no nível Básico e não existe uma visão e objectivos a atingir aprovados que permitam definir o caminho a seguir. Este projecto foi, no entanto, a primeira iniciativa transversal para promover o tema de forma corporativa, com o apoio da Comissão Executiva, e permitiu aferir o nível de maturidade actual, no grupo e em cada uma das seis empresas, bem como o nível de maturidade desejado para o grupo e o conjunto de iniciativas a implementar no período de doze meses de modo a atingir o estágio pretendido

Persistence change in tourism data

The authors apply recently proposed persistence change tests to inbound tourism series in order to evaluate whether their properties have changed over time. By using quarterly series of the number of overnight stays in hotel accommodation and similar establishments in the Algarve, from 1987:01 to 2008:03, they gathered evidence of persistence change in all series. In particular, a change from I(1) to I(0) was detected for some countries, while for others the direction change was not clear-cut. These results have implications from a policy perspective and shed light on the generally accepted conviction that policy decision processes should not ignore the fact that, in general, tourism inbound series display mean reverting behaviour, being only temporarily affected by external shocks

Inflation persistence in OECD and non-OECD economies

Inflation is an important macroeconomic variable that affects the options of economic agents as well as their future expectations and it is often regarded as a result of domestic policies combined with the effects of globalization and therefore, a sign of how governments have been well succeeded in their political options. This issue is reflected in the mandate of many monetary authorities to maintain price stability and, therefore, no wonder it plays a critical role in policies’ design as its effects spread out in the economy as a whole either in terms of economic efficiency and equity, two of the most important concerns of any government’s policy. This explains the attention political authorities and economic agents in general have given to the evolution of inflation and the fact that its control has been stated as a priority for governments all over the world. These issues have became increasing relevant as the international monetary context has experienced important changes such as the adoption of inflation targeting regimes by some countries, the arrival of monetary union in Europe, and a general deflationist process in industrial economies

A new approach in the analysis of european countries convergence: Lessons for the economies of central and eastern europe

In this paper, we use the concept of convergence based on the stationarity of cross-country per capita output differences and propose new on the persistence and change of persistence of data, taking into consideration the occurrence of structural changes. We consider data on per capita output of the European Union member states, considering the Western European economies and the Eastern European economies in a total of 23 countries. Our objective is to analyze the convergence process of these economies and, in particular to conclude whether there has been a convergence and/or divergent process between the Western European economies and between those economies and the Eastern European economies over the sample period. By considering different sub-periods, the results suggest that in general the Western European countries have reduced their per capita output gaps, being Ireland the only country reporting divergence until the end of the 80s. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania have reported divergence to Western European countries over the period from the 50s to the 90s. Finally, per capita output gaps of other Eastern economies have been reduced since the 1990s, in particular the cases of Latvia and Lithuania

Looking for my Inner Gardens

UID/EAT/00693/2019publishersversionpublishe

O Anel do Imperador (1934), de João dos Reis Gomes, entre a História e a Ficção: Napoleão e a Madeira

O Anel do Imperador (1934) remete-nos - interligando-os - para dois momentos que associam Napoleão à Madeira: primeiro, a sua passagem pela baía do Funchal, em Agosto de 1815, a caminho do desterro. Esta foi, aliás, a única vez em que o imperador esteve em território português; um quarto de século mais tarde, em Julho de 1840, a passagem, pelo mesmo local, das fragatas francesas La Belle Poule e Favorite, que também se dirigiam a Santa Helena, sob o comando do Príncipe de Joinville, agora com a missão de transportar os restos mortais do antigo imperador de regresso a França. É a partir destes dois factos - e fazendo referência a algumas das personalidades históricas neles intervenientes - que a ficção e a História se cruzam na obra de João dos Reis Gomes.The Emperor's Ring (1934) reminds us - linking them - two historic moments involving Napoleon and Madeira: first, his passage through the bay of Funchal, in August 1815, in his path to exile; a quarter century later, in July 1840, the passage at the same place, of the French frigates La Belle Poule and Favorite, also directed to St. Helena, under the command of the Prince of Joinville, now with the mission of transporting the former emperor’s remains back to France. From these two facts - and referring to some of the historical personalities involved in them - fiction and history intersect in the work of João dos Reis Gomes