Esfinge at CLEF 2008: Experimenting with answer retrieval patterns. Can they help?

Esfinge is a general domain Portuguese question answering system which has been participating at QA@CLEF since 2004. It uses the information available in the ?official? document collections used in QA@CLEF (newspaper text and Wikipedia), but additionally it also uses information from the Web as an additional resource when searching for answers. Where it regards the use of external tools, Esfinge uses a syntactic analyzer, a morphological analyzer and a named entity recognizer. This year an alternative approach to retrieve answers was tested: whereas in previous years, search patterns were used to retrieve relevant documents, this year a new type of search patterns was also used to extract the answers themselves. Besides that we took advantage of the main novelty introduced this year by QA@CLEF organization which was that the systems could return up to three answers for each question, instead of the single answer allowed in previous editions. This enabled the investigation about how good were the second and third best answers returned by Esfinge (when the first answer is not correct). The experiments revealed that the answer retrieval patterns created for this participation improve the results, but only for definition questions. Regarding the study of the three answers returned by Esfinge, the conclusion was that when Esfinge answers correctly a question, it does so usually with its first answer

SUPeRB: Building bibliographic resources on the computational processing of Portuguese

PROPOR 2008 Special Session: Applications of Portuguese Speech and Language Technologie

Macroeconomic Determinants of Bank Spread in Brazil: An Empirical Evaluation

Despite a decline in interest rates since mid-1999, bank spread in Brazil continues extremely high in international terms and in recent years has stood at around 40%. This paper analyses the determinants of bank spread in Brazil, seeking particularly to analyse the macroeconomic determinants of spread in recent times. It uses a VAR model to identify the macroeconomic variables that may directly or indirectly have been influencing spread in Brazil over the period 1994-2005. It presents evidence that interest rate levels and, to a lesser degree, the inflation rate are the main macroeconomic determinants of high bank spread in Brazil.Bank Spread, VAR models, Brazilian banking sector

Fiscal Policy, the Sraffian Supermultiplier and Functional Finance

Sraffian supermultiplier models (SSM) try to identify autonomous components of demand. The most plausible candidate is government consumption. Descriptively, however, government consumption does not grow at a constant rate, and prescriptively there is no justification for keeping constant the growth rate of government consumption, irrespective of economic performance. An active fiscal policy guided by principles of functional finance can produce more powerful stabilization, avoid overheating and excessive utilization rates, and secure faster adjustments of the growth rate towards its target level

Desenho de experiências - estratégicas

O desenvolvimento de produtos e processos pressupõe a realização de experiências que conduzam à sua optimização ao menor custo possível. As estratégias a utilizar na condução das experiências, bem como o tratamento estatístico dos resultados alcançados, deverão conduzir às melhores condições de realização dos ensaios necessários à prossecução deste objectivo. O método de Taguchi permite obter informação relevante, com um número reduzido de experiências, conforme se demonstra nos casos de estudo apresentados

"E Cristo é a única voz de todo o mundo" : a defesa da Respublica Christiana nos sermões de auto-de-fé da Inquisição Portuguesa (1612-1640)

Orientadora : Profª Drª Andréa DoréDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Humanas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em História. Defesa: Curitiba, 10/03/2015Inclui referênciasResumo: O objetivo desta dissertação foi analisar um conjunto de vinte e cinco sermões pregados em cerimônias públicas de autos-de-fé e publicados entre 1612 e 1640. Durante este período, negociações de perdões gerais foram propostas por cristãos novos à coroa espanhola com o intuito de obterem liberdade para deixar o reino português. Tais acordos começaram a ser travados enquanto a Inquisição fortalecia sua malha e aumentava a perseguição aos hereges - sobretudo aos judaizantes. Por outro lado, alguns grupos de cristãos novos apresentavam profundas críticas ao Santo Ofício, questionando seus métodos e argumentando que boa parte das prisões feitas baseavam-se em testemunhos falsos sendo, portanto, arbitrárias. A situação tornou-se ainda mais dramática quando as colônias ultramarinas portuguesas foram invadidas por holandeses e chegava-se a notícia do envolvimento de cristãos novos fugidos de Portugal. Nesta conjuntura, sermões de autos-de-fé eram impressos e traziam palavras de ódio e condenação ao judaísmo, vindo, assim, a somar-se a uma literatura antijudaica que estava em seu período mais profícuo. A presente pesquisa visa problematizar de que forma os sermões de autos-de-fé buscaram reforçar o confronto da Inquisição contra seus inimigos da fé. Notou-se que o discurso dos sermões reforçava uma identidade portuguesa, a qual era eminentemente católica e conhecida por "levar a voz de Cristo para todo o mundo", mas que naquele momento via-se ameaçada. Daí o objetivo de compreender os sermões como uma defesa dessa identidade católica portuguesa, a qual é compreendida aqui a partir dos trabalhos de Francisco Bethencourt, concernente à "sociogênese do sentimento nacional", e de Ana Silva e António Manuel Hespanha, sobre a Respublica Christiana, enquanto uma república de crentes que não permitia a heterodoxia. Esta pesquisa, portanto, buscou apresentar como o discurso antijudaico em Portugal atingiu, na primeira metade do século XVII, um de seus momentos de maior virulência. Palavras-chave: Sermões de autos-de-fé, Inquisição Portuguesa, identidade portuguesa, Respublica Christiana.Abstract: The objective of this dissertation was to analyze a set twenty-five sermons preached in public ceremonies of autos-da-fe and published between 1612 and 1640. During this period, new Christians proposed general forgiveness negotiations to the Spanish crown in order to obtain freedom to leave the Portuguese kingdom. Such agreements began while the Inquisition strengthened its network and increased the persecution of heretics - particularly the Judaizers. On the other hand, some groups of new Christians had a deep criticism of the Holy Office, questioning his methods and arguing that most of the arrests were based on false testimonies, being arbitrary. The situation became even more dramatic when the Portuguese overseas colonies were invaded by the Dutch, leading suspicions about the involvement of new Christians escaped from Portugal. In this context, sermons from autos-da-fe were printed, introducing words of hate and condemnation of Judaism, adding to a anti-Jewish literature in its most profitable period. This research seeks to discuss how the sermons of autos-da-fé pursued increase the confrontation of the Inquisition against enemies of the faith. It was noted that the discourse of sermons strengthened a Portuguese identity, which was emminent Catholic and known as "take the voice of Christ to the world", but which was threatened. That is why the objective is the understanding how the sermons could be a defense of the Portuguese Catholic identity, which is understood here from the works from Francisco Bethencourt work on the sociogenesis of the national sentiment, and Ana Silva and António Manuel Hespanha, about the Respublica Christiana, the republic of the believers who did not allow the heterodoxy. Therefore, this research try to present how the anti-Jewish discourse in Portugal reached, in the first half of the seventeenth century, one of his moments of virulence. Key words: Sermons of autos-da-fe, Portuguese Inquisition, Portuguese identity, Respublica Christiana