Inovação para os objectivos de desenvolvimento sustentável

O que é Inovação para o Desenvolvimento? Serve para quê? Como se faz? E como se diferencia da inovação noutros sectores? Este relatório é uma resposta a essas perguntas. Entre 2015 e 2030, os Objectivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável são o grande desafio global. A inovação para o Desenvolvimento surgiu como resposta a um debate complexo sobre a eficácia da ajuda. Hoje, as questões são outras: como se pode inovar para atingir os ODS? Neste relatório, concentramo-nos na clarificação de termos básicos: inovação, escala e impacto. Debatemos a necessidade de estruturar a Inovação para o Desenvolvimento em torno de cinco componentes: aprender, criar, organizar, liderar e colaborar.Projecto Business4Dev, desenvolvido em parceria com a CESO – Development Consultants, e financiado pelo Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua e pela Fundação Calouste Gulbenkianinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Softened Variable Angle Truss Model (RA-STM): Model Description and Refinement/Optimization Proposals

This article presents a recent softened truss model with variable angle, namely the refined RA-STM (Rotating-Angle Softened Truss Model), to model the behaviour of structural concrete plates under pure shear.  The equations of the model, as well as the solution procedure, are summarized. Some predictions from the RA-STM are also presented, discussed and compared with experimental results available in the literature. It is shown that the refined RA-STM still needs to be refined. In addition, the need to generalize the RA-STM for more general loading cases is also discussed as well as the need to optimize the solution procedure in order to facilitate its computational implementation

Evaluation of Self-Compacting Concrete Strength with Non-Destructive Tests for Concrete Structures

Self-compacting concrete (SCC) shows to have some specificities when compared to normal vibrated concrete (NVC), namely higher cement paste dosage and smaller volume of coarse aggregates. In addition, the maximum size of coarse aggregates is also reduced in SCC to prevent blocking effect. Such specificities are likely to affect the results of non-destructive tests when compared to those obtained in NVC with similar compressive strength and materials. This study evaluates the applicability of some non-destructive tests to estimate the compressive strength of SCC. Selected tests included the ultrasonic pulse velocity test (PUNDIT), the surface hardness test (Schmidt rebound hammer type N), the pull-out test (Lok-test), and the concrete maturity test (COMA-meter). Seven sets of SCC specimens were produced in the laboratory from a single mixture and subjected to standard curing. The tests were applied at different ages, namely: 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 28, and 94 days. The concrete compressive strength ranged from 45 MPa (at 24 h) to 97 MPa (at 94 days). Correlations were established between the non-destructive test results and the concrete compressive strength. A test variability analysis was performed and the 95% confidence limits for the obtained correlations were computed. The obtained results for SCC showed good correlations between the concrete compressive strength and the non-destructive tests results, although some differences exist when compared to the correlations obtained for NVC.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Electronic textiles functionalized with conductive polymers

Smart textiles have received a lot of attention nowadays for combining two of the most prolific industries: fabrics and electronics. This was possible due to the evolution of conductive polymers, mean-ing that a material as conductive as metals with flexible properties was in the market. Its potential to integrate signals and stimuli from contact means that a myriad of applications might be in the making, spanning interest from electronics to communication, military and biomedical uses. The main goal of this work was to study different methodologies to functionalize commercial textiles with conductive polymers to obtain piezoresistive textiles. Polypyrrole (PPy) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) are two intrinsically conduc-tive polymers used to functionalize lycra and felt textiles. Such functionalization was carried out by in situ-polymerization of pyrrole (Py) and 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT). Several polymerization con-ditions were evaluated to determine the most suitable ones to prepare stable conductive textiles. In-plane electrical conductivities of 6.707x10−3 Scm−1 to 1.808x10−2 Scm−1 and transversal conductivities of 1.837x10−4 Scm−1 to 2.040x10−3 Scm−1 were reached throughout textiles. Morphological, chemical and electrical characterization was carried before and out after polymerization. Piezoresistive behaviour of textiles was studied, because coated and agglomerated polymer comes into different contacts when stress is applied. Two different approaches were studied: stretch behaviour for elastic lycra ranging from 11-26kΩ and pressure behaviour for felt textiles ranging from 0.72-19.54kΩ. Finally, stability tests were studied. In this section, abrasion was performed to show the wear off textiles. Felt had the best stability with values from 3.903x10−4 S.cm−1 to 6.685x10−6 S.cm−1, while lycra had the worst results, from 1.242x10−4 S.cm−1 to 2.696x10−11 S.cm−1. Conductivity over time was studied, showing there is over a 50% conductivity decline over 6 months. Washing cycles, showed de-clines of over four orders of magnitude, compromising further use

The future of international development cooperation : fragmentation, adaptation and innovation in a changing world

This study stemmed from the need perceived by the Portuguese Platform of NGDOs (PPNGDO) to produce knowledge that will help its members carry out a more informed analysis of the changes in International development cooperation (hereafter, development cooperation). Understanding the transformation underway and the challenges it presents is fundamental for the PPNGDO and its members to jointly outline possible paths into the future, setting out the future direction of action, their priorities and their options. The study was conducted with three goals in mind: 1) tracing the progress of development cooperation over the past 20 years, while reflecting and discussing the ongoing changes in a multiplex world; 2) addressing the challenges faced by key public and private development cooperation actors view of the ongoing change; 3) contributing to the discussion on this new configuration of development cooperation by offering guidelines based on adaptation and innovation for thinking and acting in a complex, fragmented and fragile multiplex world. This study sought to review the available academic and grey literature (reports from development cooperation organisations, blog posts, online discussions and interviews), and where possible, interviews with professionals from international organisations – both governmental and non-governmental – were used. In the introduction of the study, we contextualise development cooperation in a changing world and describe the framework for discussion applied to each of the following sections: In Part I, changes in development cooperation and ODA are addressed, based on three issues that are crucial for the sectors: quantity, quality and legitimacy. Part II highlights the challenges faced by key public and private actors of development cooperation - either ‘“traditional’” or ‘“new’” ones. Finally, Part III outlines a few guidelines on complexity, fragmentation, and fragility, which can provide useful tools for analysis in the new context. To conclude, we offer civil society organisations some points for reflection.This report was co-financed by the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of the Portuguese NGDO Platform and does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Unioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Privacy-preserving efficient searchable encryption

Data storage and computation outsourcing to third-party managed data centers, in environments such as Cloud Computing, is increasingly being adopted by individuals, organizations, and governments. However, as cloud-based outsourcing models expand to society-critical data and services, the lack of effective and independent control over security and privacy conditions in such settings presents significant challenges. An interesting solution to these issues is to perform computations on encrypted data, directly in the outsourcing servers. Such an approach benefits from not requiring major data transfers and decryptions, increasing performance and scalability of operations. Searching operations, an important application case when cloud-backed repositories increase in number and size, are good examples where security, efficiency, and precision are relevant requisites. Yet existing proposals for searching encrypted data are still limited from multiple perspectives, including usability, query expressiveness, and client-side performance and scalability. This thesis focuses on the design and evaluation of mechanisms for searching encrypted data with improved efficiency, scalability, and usability. There are two particular concerns addressed in the thesis: on one hand, the thesis aims at supporting multiple media formats, especially text, images, and multimodal data (i.e. data with multiple media formats simultaneously); on the other hand the thesis addresses client-side overhead, and how it can be minimized in order to support client applications executing in both high-performance desktop devices and resource-constrained mobile devices. From the research performed to address these issues, three core contributions were developed and are presented in the thesis: (i) CloudCryptoSearch, a middleware system for storing and searching text documents with privacy guarantees, while supporting multiple modes of deployment (user device, local proxy, or computational cloud) and exploring different tradeoffs between security, usability, and performance; (ii) a novel framework for efficiently searching encrypted images based on IES-CBIR, an Image Encryption Scheme with Content-Based Image Retrieval properties that we also propose and evaluate; (iii) MIE, a Multimodal Indexable Encryption distributed middleware that allows storing, sharing, and searching encrypted multimodal data while minimizing client-side overhead and supporting both desktop and mobile devices

epistemological inventiveness according to Diderot

UID/HIS/04666/2019 Copyright Year 2020In Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature (1753), Denis Diderot discusses what may be the novelty of a science of becoming and morphogenesis, consequent with the autopoietic of nature. Far from arriving at a positivist conception, as is common among materialistic philosophies, the author projects a science of the probable, the contingent, the transitory, which requires the combined efforts of all capacities of the knowing subject to carry out the ceaseless dialectic between the two poles of observation and interpretation. Imagination, intuition, prospect, and conjecture are summoned to accompany experiential activity, introducing an inventive dimension in science, whose freedom contributes to subverting the epistemological canon, blurring the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries, intensifying scientific discovery, and giving meaning to the cluster of research. Consequently, science becomes a plurality of texts, intersecting facts and conjectures, data and metaphors, protocol rigour and rhetorical procedures. The unusual character of this exuberance has led the main commentators on the work to presume that it is the fruit of philosophy’s intervention, to which it would be fitting to add the step of creativity, unfeasible in scientific methodology. In contrast, we argue that, for the philosopher, those various processes are constitutive of the same scientific research, which finds in judgment the central faculty and in abduction the privileged process of discovery.authorsversionpublishe

Quando a Universidade era o Liceu: Sociedade, Política e Elites em Évora durante a I República

O presente estudo pretende contribuir para o conhecimento do meio social eborense no período da I Republica. O nosso intuito é colocar em destaque a acção pública das elites políticas e intelectuais cuja trajectória de vida as relacionou com a cidade e as suas instituições ao longo do período considerado. Embora a cronologia enunciada se inclua no logo interregno do ensino universitário em Évora, a nossa perspectiva analítica pretende dar relevo ao tópico da relação entre as instituições ligadas ao ensino, o Liceu em particular, e a dinâmica social e política da cidade. A prossecução deste objectivo desdobra-se nas seguintes etapas analíticas. Primeiro, efectua-se uma síntese sobre os traços essenciais da formação social no Sul de Portugal no período em estudo. Depois, procede-se a uma caracterização da cidade do ponto de vista do seu perfil de estratificação social e principais sectores de actividade económica. Em seguida, procuram captar-se as linhas de continuidade e/ou de ruptura em relação à composição social das mencionadas elites, quer em relação ao final da Monarquia Constitucional quer em relação ao início do Estado Novo. Finalmente, partindo do perfil biográfico de algumas das personalidades marcantes do período, reflecte-se sobre o significado de uma instituição como o Liceu para o processo de estruturação das elites políticas e diferenciação social em Évora

How analysts react to M&A announcements

This dissertation examines how analysts react to M&A announcements. Using Propensity Score Matching to increase the accuracy of the analysis, I build a sample of comparable observations to measure the impact of M&A when an analyst recommendation revision takes place. I find a negative influence of M&A deals on revision. Focusing on the specifics of each deal, I also analyze the impact of the type of financing being used to the acquisition as well as the under or over valuation of the acquirer’s stock. My results suggest that stock financed deals are generally perceived in a more pessimistic way. However, when the acquirer is overvalued, analysts react positively. I also find that the advisor selection on the target side plays an important role, as analysts tend to react more negatively when the sell-side is supported by tier-1 advisors. Lastly, in this study I also analyze the impact of knowledge-acquisition M&A in analysts’ recommendations, but no statistically significant results are found, suggesting a deeper analysis on the subject is required.Esta dissertação analisa a forma como as recomendações dos analistas reagem aos anúncios de M&A (fusões e aquisições) na empresa adquirente. Através do uso de Propensity Matching Score para aumentar a precisão da análise, construo uma amostra de observações comparáveis para estudar o impacto de M&A aquando das revisões das recomendações. Nas observações com M&A, encontro uma influência negativa nas revisões das recomendações. Focando nas características de cada aquisição, neste estudo também analiso o impacto do tipo de financiamento usado e eventual subavaliação/sobreavaliação do capital em bolsa da empresa adquirente, onde descubro uma relação negativa entre a revisão da recomendação e utilização das ações da empresa como forma de financiamento. No entanto, quando o adquirente está sobreavaliado, os analistas tendem a reagir positivamente. Também estudo o impacto da seleção do advisor por parte da empresa adquirida, e descubro que a escolha de um advisor melhor reputado (tier-1) impacta negativamente a revisão da recomendação no adquirente. Por último, também analiso as aquisições motivadas pela aquisição de conhecimento, mas não foram encontrados resultados estatisticamente significantes, sugerindo uma análise mais profunda ao tópico

A review on thermoplastic or thermosetting polymeric matrices used in polymeric composites manufactured with banana fibers from the pseudostem

Recent manufacturing advancements have led to the fabrication of polymeric composites (PC) reinforced with fibers. However, to reduce the impact on the environment, efforts have been made to replace synthetic fibers (SF) by natural fibers (NF) in many applications. NF, e.g., as banana fibers (BF) possess higher cellulose content, a higher degree of polymerization of cellulose, and a lower microfibrillar angle (MFA), which are crucial factors for the mechanical properties (MP), namely tensile modulus (TM) and tensile strength (TS), and many other properties that make them suitable for the reinforcement of PC. This review paper presents an attempt to highlight some recent findings on the MP of PC reinforced with unmodified or modified BF (UBF, MBF), which were incorporated into unmodified or modified (synthetic (SPM) or a bio (BPM)) polymeric matrices (UPM, MPM). The experimental results from previous studies are presented in terms of the variation in the percentage of the MP and show that BF can improve the MP of PC. The results of such studies suggest the possibility to extend the application of PC reinforced with BF (PCBF) in a wide range, namely from automotive to biomedical fields. The meanings of all the acronyms are listed in the abbreviations section.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio