The African Atlantic possessions, 1575- 1630

UID/HIS/04666/2013The works devoted to the study of Spanish arbitrismo, developed between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, have been traditionally influenced by a negative perspective, inherited from the use given to the adjective arbitrista in the past, when it was used almost as an insult. Instead of emphasising this negative view, it would perhaps be convenient to analyse such as what they really were, at least to a certain extent; that is, collective opinions seeking to influence the king and his most trusted circle. While Castilian arbitrismo of financial nature has been more widely studied, the arbitrismo developed in the colonial world is less known, especially that for the possessions in Atlantic Africa. These texts were written by merchants, soldiers, and clerics with great experience in the service of these territories. As a crucial “remedy” to solve the problems of these difficult times of monarchical “decline”, these texts propound an encouragement of territorial conquest and defensive fortresses, as well as a reorganisation of the main resources and of trade that would enable them to put an end to fraud and abuse.publishersversionpublishe

Treat your employees or the trick is on you : performance evidence from european firms

The link between employee satisfaction and performance has been predominantly discussed in recent years through the scope of market returns. However, the underlying mechanisms of such link still remain widely indefinite at an operational level. Do Companies with high levels of employee satisfaction develop superior mechanisms of operational value creation? This thesis addresses the operational performance of 125 companies that ranked consistently in the “Best Companies to Work For” list in 15 European Countries from 2003-2011, by benchmarking their performance measures against a geographical- and industry- and size-matched peer group. It unveils the superior operational performance of companies with outstanding employee relations in a cross-country and cross-time analysis. We find that “Best Companies to Work For” enjoy significant abnormal operational performance both in an economic growth period (2003-2007) and during the recession (2008-2011). The study unveils that the superior operational performance is driven by a greater efficiency in cost managing and capital utilization that overcompensates higher costs related with wages. This project management efficiency is obtained regardless of differences in the capital structure such as lower debt levels, introducing job satisfaction as a complimentary mechanism to the disciplinary role of debt.La relation entre la satisfaction des employés et la performance de l’entreprise a été amplement discuté au cours des dernières années, principalement dans une perspective de valeur actionnariale. Cependant, les mécanismes sous-jacents à ce lien restent encore largement indéterminés au niveau opérationnel. Est-ce que les sociétés ayant les niveaux les plus élevés de satisfaction des employés développent des mécanismes supérieurs de création de valeur opérationnelle ? Ce mémoire concerne la performance opérationnelle de 125 entreprises qui se sont classées continuellement dans la liste “Le Palmarès des Entreprises où il fait bon travailler ” dans 15 pays européens entre 2003-2011. Il s’agit d’une analyse comparative des mesures de performance, en faisant un benchmark avec un groupe choisi sur un critère géographique, industriel et de taille. Nous constatons que les “Les Entreprises où il fait bon Travailler” ont une surperformance significative tant dans une période de croissance économique (2003-2007) comme pendant la récession (2008-2011). Cette étude révèle que la performance opérationnelle anormale est expliquée par une efficacité supérieure dans la gestion des coûts et dans l’utilisation du capital, qui compense quand même la hausse des coûts liés aux salaires. Cette efficacité est obtenue indépendamment de l’existence de différences dans la structure du capital tel qu’un faible niveau d'endettement. Ces résultats introduisent la satisfaction au travail comme un mécanisme complémentaire au rôle disciplinaire de la dette.A relação entre satisfação dos trabalhadores e a performance da empresa tem sido amplamente discutida nos últimos anos, particularmente sobre a óptica do mercado financeiro. Uma das principais problemáticas em questão prende-se com o reconhecimento dos mecanismos que constituem a citada relação. Será que as empresas com elevados níveis de satisfação dos trabalhadores desenvolvem mecanismos superiores de criação de valor ao nível operacional? O presente estudo foca-se no desempenho operacional de 125 empresas que se classificaram constantemente para a lista de “Melhores Empresas para Trabalhar” em 15 países Europeus entre 2003-2011, através da análise comparativa de medidas de rentabilidade em relação um a benchmark de empresas escolhidas através de um critério geográfico, industrial e de dimensão. Prova-se que as “As Melhores Empresas para Trabalhar” demonstram uma performance operacional superior tanto durante períodos de crescimento económico (2003-2007) como durante um período de recessão (2008-2011). O estudo revela que esta superior performance operacional é explicada por uma maior eficiência na gestão de custos e na utilização de capital, que chega mesmo a compensar os maiores custos salariais suportados por estas empresas. Esta eficácia ao nível da gestão é obtida independentemente de uma estrutura de capitais diferente, como rácios de endividamento inferiores. Deste modo, introduz-se o conceito de satisfação dos trabalhadores como mecanismo complementar do papel disciplinador da dívida

Administração escolar: estudos

Recensão críticaCentro de Investigação em Educação da Universidade do Minh

Drivers and barriers influencing sustainable food procurement in the hospitality industry

In late years, the tourism and hospitality industry became one of the most important contributors to the global economy and sustainable development. Corporate responsibility is now accepted to be a viable strategy to achieve competitive advantages as well as stakeholders’ satisfaction. By interviewing representatives from six Lisbon hotels and one expert association, the present study aims to identify the drivers and barriers influencing a hotel’s ability to implement a sustainable food procurement system as well as to determine how, and in what ways, specific hotel characteristics and market position can impact its motivations, setbacks and overall ability to manage food procurement in a sustainable way. The interviews’ responses and the case-studies have shown how the quest for quality, internal and external communication, education and mutual collaboration with all stakeholders, corporate responsibility programs and guidelines and ultimately, business values and philosophy are the more recurrent reasons motivating hotels to achieve sustainable food procurement. On the other hand, the lack of prioritization of sustainable objectives, lack of implementation of such values throughout all hierarchies, lack of administrative freedom and an overall lack of sustainable supply chains and sustainable suppliers and products have been identified as the biggest difficulties hampering the process of implementing sustainable food procurement policies. Despite many factors being identified as possible factors affecting these results, we have ultimately concluded that a balance between sustainable development, customer satisfaction and financial sustainability are key for the achievement of sustainability related policies.Nos últimos anos, a indústria do turismo e da hospitalidade contribuiu fortemente para a economia global e o desenvolvimento sustentável. A responsabilidade empresarial é agora aceite como uma estratégia competitiva que satisfaz todos os interessados. O presente estudo, que parte de entrevistas a representantes de seis hotéis de Lisboa e a uma associação especializada, tem como objetivo identificar que motores e obstáculos influenciam a capacidade de os hotéis implementarem um sistema sustentável de compras de alimentos e determinar os efeitos das suas características específicas e do seu posicionamento no mercado nessas respetivas motivações e dificuldades. As respostas dos inquiridos e os estudos de casos mostram como a procura da qualidade, a comunicação interna e externa, a educação das partes interessadas e a colaboração entre elas, os programas e diretrizes de responsabilidade empresarial e, em última instância, os valores e as filosofias empresariais são os fatores que mais influenciam, e mais frequentemente, a política de aquisição sustentável de alimentos. Por outro lado, a falta de prioritização dos objetivos de sustentabilidade, a falta de inscrição dos respetivos valores em toda a cadeia hierárquica, a falta de liberdade administrativa e, por fim, a falta generalizada de cadeias de fornecimentos, fornecedores e produtos sustentáveis foi identificada como o maior travão à implementação de políticas sustentáveis de aquisição de alimentos. Apesar de vários fatores terem sido identificados como possíveis obstáculos a esses objetivos, concluímos que equilibrar o desenvolvimento sustentável com a satisfação do cliente e a sustentabilidade financeira é fundamental para implementar políticas de sustentabilidade

Parity violating gravitational waves at the end of inflation

Inflaton-vector interactions of the type $\phi F\tilde{F}$ have provided interesting phenomenology to tackle some of current problems in cosmology, namely the vectors could constitute the dark matter component. It could also lead to possible signatures imprinted in a gravitational wave spectrum. Through this coupling, a rolling inflaton induces an exponential production of the transverse polarizations of the vector field, having a maximum at the end of inflation when the inflaton field velocity is at its maximum. These gauge particles, already parity asymmetric, will source the tensor components of the metric perturbations, leading to the production of parity violating gravitational waves. In this work we examine the vector particle production with an attempt to mimic its backreaction effects on the inflation evolution in the weak coupling regime. Furthermore, we fully integrate the gauge particle amplitudes spectrum during this production epoch, studying the behavior until the end of reheating. Finally, we calculate the gravitational wave spectrum solely relying on the vector mode WKB expansion in its regime of validity.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure

Elogios em memória de Alfredo Margarido

ResPublica : Revista Lusófona de Ciência Política, Segurança e Relações Internacionai

Ecological Predictive Maintenance of Diesel Engines

The ecological predictive maintenance (EPM) of diesel engines is a great contribution to improve the environment and to stimulate good practices with good impact in the human health. The ecology is a rapidly developing scientific discipline with great relevance to a sustainable world, whose development is not complete as a mature theory. There are, however, general principles emerging that may facilitate the development of such theory. In the meantime, these principles can serve as useful guides for EPM. According to the state of the art, it can be stated that through prediction algorithms, the equipment’s performance can be improved. To support this approach, it is necessary to implement a good condition monitoring maintenance. The result permits to maximise the time spacing between interventions and to increase the reliability levels. The condition variables of each equipment can be monitored according to their specificity, such as temperature, humidity, pollutant emissions (NOx, CO2, HC and PM), emitted noise, etc. The environment where the equipment is inserted also must be considered. The assessment of the equipment’s condition can be done by Hidden Markov Models (HMM), namely diesel engines. This chapter presents two algorithms—Viterbi and Baum-Welch algorithms—that, through the prediction of the equipment’s condition, help to increase the efficiency of the maintenance planning

A reduced-CP approach to SC/FDE block transmission for broadband wireless communications

For conventional cyclic prefix (CP)-assisted single-carrier/frequency-domain equalization (SC/FDE) implementations, as well as for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) implementations, the CP length is known to be selected on the basis of the expected maximum delay spread. Next, the data block size can be chosen to be large enough to minimize the CP overhead, yet small enough to make the channel variation over the block negligible. This paper considers the possibility of reducing the overall CP assistance, when transmitting sequences of SC blocks, while avoiding an excessively long fast Fourier transform window for FDE purposes and keeping good FDE performances through low-complexity, noniterative receiver techniques. These techniques, which take advantage of specially designed frame structures, rely on a basic algorithm for decision-directed correction (DDC) of the FDE inputs when the CP is not long enough to cope with the time-dispersive channel effects. More specifically, we present and evaluate a novel class of reduced-CP SC/FDE schemes, which takes advantage of a special frame structure for replacing "useless" CP redundancy by fully useful channel coding redundancy, with the help of the DDC algorithm. When using the DDC-FDE technique with these especially designed frame structures, the impact of previous decisions, which are not error-free, is shown to be rather small, thereby allowing a power-efficiency advantage (in addition to the obvious bandwidth-efficiency advantage) over conventional block transmission implementations under full-length CP. Additionally, the DDC algorithm is also shown to be useful to improve the power efficiency of these conventional implementations.Fundação para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT), Centro de Análise e processamento de Sinais (CAPS

Käytännön eväitä monikulttuuriseen ohjaukseen

Opinnäytetyö tarkastelee maahanmuuttajien työssäoppimisen ohjausprosessia työssäoppimisen ohjaajan näkökulmasta. Tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten perehdytys, ohjaaminen sekä palautteen antamien ja arviointi tapahtuvat työssäoppimispaikoilla tällä hetkellä ja mitä tietoa työelämän edustajat toivovat maahanmuuttajaopiskelijasta ennen työssäoppimisen alkua. Lisäksi kartoitettiin ohjaajakoulutuksen tarvetta maahanmuuttajaopiskelijoiden työssäoppimisen ohjaajille. Tietoja kerättiin haastattelemalla kahdeksaa maahanmuuttajaopiskelijoiden työssäoppimisen ohjaajaa. Haastattelu toteutettiin teemahaastattelun menetelmin. Haastatteluja ohjaavat teema-alueet muodostettiin työssäoppimisen prosessin mukaisesti. Haastattelut tehtiin tammikuussa 2009. Aineisto koostui neljän siivousalan yrityksen työssäoppimisen ohjaajan kokemuksista. Haastattelun tuloksista nousi useita kehittämisalueita. Suomen kielen taito ja työelämän pelisääntöjen hallinta koettiin työssäoppimisen onnistumisen kannalta tärkeimmiksi asioiksi. Työssäoppimisen aikaa toivottiin riittävän pitkäksi, jotta maahanmuuttajaopiskelija ymmärtää työtehtävien kokonaisuudet. Toivottiin enemmän tietoa maahanmuuttajaopiskelijan kulttuuritaustasta ja erityispiirteistä. Työssäoppimisen ohjaajakoulutuksen järjestäminen koettiin tarpeelliseksi. Haastattelun tulosten johtopäätöksistä nousee kolme erillistä kehittämisaihetta. Ensimmäinen aihe on järjestää perusteellisempi perehdyttäminen ja opastaminen niin työssäoppimisen ohjaajille kuin maahanmuuttajaopiskelijoille. Toinen aihe on järjestää työssäoppimisen ohjaajille koulutus, jossa käsitellään monikulttuurisuuteen liittyviä asioita. Kolmas aihe on maahanmuuttajakoulutusten alkukartoitusten järjestelmällisen organisoinnin aloittaminen. Tätä opinnäytetyötä voidaan hyödyntää alan koulutuksissa.The thesis examines the process of supervising immigrants in workplace learning from the supervisor’s point of view. The aim of the study was to find out how introduction, supervision as well as feedback and evaluation currently take place in sites for workplace learning and what information concerning the immigrant student the representatives of workplaces expect to have prior to the beginning of workplace learning. In addition, the need for training for supervisors of immigrant students’ workplace learning was examined. The data was gathered by interviewing eight supervisors of immigrant students’ workplace learning. The interviews were conducted by using the methods of a theme interview. The themes guiding the interviews were constructed according to the process of workplace learning. The interviews were conducted in January 2009 and the data consists of the experiences of four supervisors of workplace learning in cleaning companies. Several areas of development arose from the interviews. Proficiency in Finnish and mastering the rules of working life were considered to be the most important factors for successful workplace learning. The time for workplace learning should be long enough so that the immigrant student would understand the entities formed by different work-related tasks. Organizing training for supervisors was also considered necessary. The results indicate three different areas for development, which are, firstly, a more thorough introduction and guidance for both the supervisors of workplace learning and the immigrant students; secondly, organizing training for supervisors of workplace learning which would deal with issued related to multiculturalism; and thirdly, organizing a systematic initial survey. The results of the study can be utilized in organizing training in this area