A formação de professores em empreendedorismo na Europa: uma perspetiva das políticas europeias e desenvolvimentos

In regard to the current context of Entrepreneurship Education in Europe, the majority of countries are in a process of educational reform. Among their objectives is to strengthen entrepreneurship education in a perspective of lifelong learning across all educational levels. The challenges presented in teaching entrepreneurship require significant changes in the way teachers themselves are educated. This chapter starts with the baseline goal of improving entrepreneurship education and training as set out by the European Commission. It highlights the challenges that are faced in fostering an entrepreneurial attitude in educational institutions and, in particular the need to support teachers through training programs that pursue a long-term policy commitment that is both creative and well-conceived. Entrepreneurship education is still an up-and-coming subject in teacher education. Nevertheless, experience and good practice indicate that when this type of training is offered the concept and the innovative methods associated with entrepreneurship are quickly adapted to the educational necessities of students.No que diz respeito ao atual contexto da Educação em Empreendedorismo na Europa, a maior parte dos países estão num processo de reformas educativas. Entre os seus objetivos, encontra-se o de fortalecer a educação em empreendedorismo, numa perspetiva de aprendizagem contínua em todos os níveis de ensino. Os desafios no ensino de empreendedorismo exigem mudanças significativas na forma como os próprios professores são formados. Este capítulo começa por abordar o objetivo primordial de melhorar a educação e a formação em empreendedorismo conforme estabelecido pela Comissão Europeia. São assim realçados os desafios que se prendem com a persecução de uma atitude empreendedora nas instituições de ensino e em particular a necessidade de apoiar os professores em programas de formação que tenham em conta um compromisso político prolongado e que sejam criativos e bem concebidos. A educação em empreendedorismo é ainda uma matéria promissora no ensino. Ainda assim, a experiência e as boas práticas mostram que, quando se leva a cabo este tipo de formação, o conceito e os métodos mais inovadores associados ao empreendedorismo são facilmente adaptados às necessidades educativas dos alunos

Entrepreneurship education in Portugal: 2004/2005 national survey

Education in entrepreneurship is a relatively new addition to the curriculum of institutions of higher education in Portugal. Forty-one percent of the current courses were first offered in 2003 or 2004. This recent awakening to the importance of entrepreneurship education is both reactive to the needs of the market as well as pro-active through the interests of professors. As the developing phenomenon of entrepreneurship education grows there is an urgent need to better understand and develop this area through academic research. Pedagogy, course content, the use of technology as well as other parallel initiatives related to entrepreneurship education in Portugal are the primary focus of this national survey of academic year 2004/2005. The majority (76.5%) of professors surveyed stated that their university has plans to create an entrepreneurship/innovation center. However, it is believed that roles and activities that a “center” must have to be effective are, as of yet, not well-defined in the Portuguese context. In developing future initiatives, Portugal could benefit by looking at models from other countries that have well-developed entrepreneurship educational offerings and support structures. Findings indicate that current course pedagogy in Portugal relies heavily on business plan creation and theoretical lectures and seldom makes use of computer business simulations, role-playing or internships. In addition, greater use of the Internet as a method for disseminating information to students and entrepreneurs could help “market” entrepreneurship education better and improve the perception of those students not currently taking an entrepreneurship course.A educação em empreendedorismo constitui uma temática relativamente recente no currículo das instituições de ensino superior em Portugal. Quarenta e um por cento dos cursos que existem presentemente foram leccionados pela primeira vez em 2003 ou 2004. A recente consciencialização para a importância da educação em empreendedorismo revela-se, sinultaneamente, reactiva, face às necessidades do mercado, mas também proactiva, atendendo aos interesses dos professores. À medida que o fenómeno da educação em empreendedorismo se tem vindo a desenvolver, tem-se assistido a uma necessidade crescente para uma melhor compreensão desta área de estudo, através da investigação científica. A pedagogia, os conteúdos dos cursos, o uso de tecnologia, entre outras iniciativas relacionadas com a educação em empreendedorismo constituem o foco primordial do questionário nacional relativo ao ano lectivo 2004/2005 que foi aplicado a uma amostra representativa do universo de professores de empreendedorismo. A maioria dos professores (76.5%) revelou que as suas universidades planeavam criar centros de empreendedorismo/inovação. Contudo, acredita-se que os papéis e as actividades que estão inerentes a um funcionamento eficaz destes centros não se encontram, ainda, bem definidos no contexto Português. Em termos de iniciativas futuras, Portugal pode benificiar do estudo de modelos internacionais onde as ofertas em educação em empreendedorismo, assim como as estruturas de suporte, se encontram bem desenvolvidas. Os resultados do estudo demonstram, ainda, que os cursos leccionados em Portugal assentam, sobretudo, no ensino teórico e no desenvolvimento de planos de negócios, e não tanto no uso de simulações de negócios em suporte informático, nos role-playings ou em estágios. O uso crescente da internet enquanto método para a disseminação de informação pelos estudantes e empreendedores pode contribuir para o desenvolvimento do “mercado” da educação em empreendedorismo, assim como para a melhoria da percepção dos estudantes que ainda não frequentam os cursos de empreendedorismo.Portuguese Studies Program at the University of California – Berkeley; Lester Center for Entrepreneurship; Innovation in the Haas School of Busines

Direct Numerical Simulation of a Weakly Stratified Turbulent Wake

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) is used to investigate a time-dependent turbulent wake evolving in a stably stratified background. A large initial Froude number is chosen to allow the wake to become fully turbulent and axisymmetric before stratification affects the spreading rate of the mean defect. The uncertainty introduced by the finite sample size associated with gathering statistics from a simulation of a time-dependent flow is reduced, compared to earlier simulations of this flow. The DNS reveals the buoyancy-induced changes to the turbulence structure, as well as to the mean-defect history and the terms in the mean-momentum and turbulence-kinetic-energy budgets, that characterize the various states of this flow - namely the three-dimensional (essentially unstratified), non-equilibrium (or 'wake-collapse') and quasi-two-dimensional (or 'two-component') regimes observed elsewhere for wakes embedded in both weakly and strongly stratified backgrounds. The wake-collapse regime is not accompanied by transfer (or 'reconversion') of the potential energy of the turbulence to the kinetic energy of the turbulence, implying that this is not an essential feature of stratified-wake dynamics. The dependence upon Reynolds number of the duration of the wake-collapse period is demonstrated, and the effect of the details of the initial/near-field conditions of the wake on its subsequent development is examined

Development of Aluminum LEKIDs for Balloon-Borne Far-IR Spectroscopy

We are developing lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs) designed to achieve background-limited sensitivity for far-infrared (FIR) spectroscopy on a stratospheric balloon. The Spectroscopic Terahertz Airborne Receiver for Far-InfraRed Exploration (STARFIRE) will study the evolution of dusty galaxies with observations of the [CII] 158 $\mu$m and other atomic fine-structure transitions at $z=0.5-1.5$, both through direct observations of individual luminous infrared galaxies, and in blind surveys using the technique of line intensity mapping. The spectrometer will require large format ($\sim$1800 detectors) arrays of dual-polarization sensitive detectors with NEPs of $1 \times 10^{-17}$ W Hz$^{-1/2}$. The low-volume LEKIDs are fabricated with a single layer of aluminum (20 nm thick) deposited on a crystalline silicon wafer, with resonance frequencies of $100-250$ MHz. The inductor is a single meander with a linewidth of 0.4 $\mu$m, patterned in a grid to absorb optical power in both polarizations. The meander is coupled to a circular waveguide, fed by a conical feedhorn. Initial testing of a small array prototype has demonstrated good yield, and a median NEP of $4 \times 10^{-18}$ W Hz$^{-1/2}$.Comment: accepted for publication in Journal of Low Temperature Physic

Use of MMG signals for the control of powered orthotic devices: Development of a rectus femoris measurement protocol

Copyright © 2009 Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society (RESNA). This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Assistive Technology, 21(1), 1 - 12, 2009, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10400430902945678.A test protocol is defined for the purpose of measuring rectus femoris mechanomyographic (MMG) signals. The protocol is specified in terms of the following: measurement equipment, signal processing requirements, human postural requirements, test rig, sensor placement, sensor dermal fixation, and test procedure. Preliminary tests of the statistical nature of rectus femoris MMG signals were performed, and Gaussianity was evaluated by means of a two-sided Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. For all 100 MMG data sets obtained from the testing of two volunteers, the null hypothesis of Gaussianity was rejected at the 1%, 5%, and 10% significance levels. Most skewness values were found to be greater than 0.0, while all kurtosis values were found to be greater than 3.0. A statistical convergence analysis also performed on the same 100 MMG data sets suggested that 25 MMG acquisitions should prove sufficient to statistically characterize rectus femoris MMG. This conclusion is supported by the qualitative characteristics of the mean rectus femoris MMG power spectral densities obtained using 25 averages

Optimisation of variables for studying dilepton transverse momentum distributions at hadron colliders

In future measurements of the dilepton ($Z/\gamma^*$) transverse momentum, \Qt, at both the Tevatron and LHC, the achievable bin widths and the ultimate precision of the measurements will be limited by experimental resolution rather than by the available event statistics. In a recent paper the variable \at, which corresponds to the component of \Qt\ that is transverse to the dilepton thrust axis, has been studied in this regard. In the region, \Qt\ $<$ 30 GeV, \at\ has been shown to be less susceptible to experimental resolution and efficiency effects than the \Qt. Extending over all \Qt, we now demonstrate that dividing \at\ (or \Qt) by the measured dilepton invariant mass further improves the resolution. In addition, we propose a new variable, \phistarEta, that is determined exclusively from the measured lepton directions; this is even more precisely determined experimentally than the above variables and is similarly sensitive to the \Qt. The greater precision achievable using such variables will enable more stringent tests of QCD and tighter constraints on Monte Carlo event generator tunes.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Actin crosslinker competition and sorting drive emergent GUV size-dependent actin network architecture

The proteins that make up the actin cytoskeleton can self-assemble into a variety of structures. In vitro experiments and coarse-grained simulations have shown that the actin crosslinking proteins α-actinin and fascin segregate into distinct domains in single actin bundles with a molecular size-dependent competition-based mechanism. Here, by encapsulating actin, α-actinin, and fascin in giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs), we show that physical confinement can cause these proteins to form much more complex structures, including rings and asters at GUV peripheries and centers; the prevalence of different structures depends on GUV size. Strikingly, we found that α-actinin and fascin self-sort into separate domains in the aster structures with actin bundles whose apparent stiffness depends on the ratio of the relative concentrations of α-actinin and fascin. The observed boundary-imposed effect on protein sorting may be a general mechanism for creating emergent structures in biopolymer networks with multiple crosslinkers

Exploring the limits of saving a subspecies: The ethics and social dynamics of restoring northern white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum cottoni)

Abstract The northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is functionally extinct with only two females left alive. However, cryopreserved material from a number of individuals represents the potential to produce additional individuals using advanced reproductive and genetic rescue technologies and perhaps eventually a population to return to their native range. If this could and were done, how should it be done responsibly and thoughtfully. What issues and questions of a technical, bioethical, and societal nature will it raise that need to be anticipated and addressed? Such issues are explored in this article by an interdisciplinary team assembled to provide context to the northern white rhino project of the San Diego Zoo Global