The Unexamined Life on Trial. A Crucial Problem in Plato’s Writings

The goal of this dissertation is to discuss the assertion that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Apology, 38a). We will start by considering how, according to the Apology, such a life is marked by false knowledge claims, self-neglect, drowsiness and a merely apparent happiness. Then, we will extent this analysis to the whole Platonic corpus, in order to better understand the implications of this perspective. This extension will include four moments. First, we will analyze Plato‟s conception of philosophical examination. Although it may seem there is no unitary conception of examination in the corpus (especially because of the difference between a negative and a positive kind of examination), we will see that philosophical examination is always directed at views or beliefs. We all possess a complex system of beliefs, and these beliefs may contain many errors and distortions, which are bound to vitiate any positive examination. Consequently, we must first verify the beliefs we already have, and only then can we search for new views. Second, we must consider the inner constitution of our being (i.e., of our ροπή) and see how it determines the general structure of each particular life (αίμξ). The ροπή has a complex cognitive structure, and it is essentially marked by the pursuit of a superlative good. A αίμξ is thus a system of practical tensions, directed at the superlative good, and based on our views of the good and of how to attain it. Moreover, the ροπή is marked by three constitutive drives (love of gain, love of honor, and love of knowledge – θζθμζμθία), and these drives try to control the pursuit of the good, are always in a particular relation of forces, and also contaminate or transform each other – which means, among other things, that our entire ροπή and our entire life are deeply marked by love of knowledge. Third, we will describe the constitution of the unexamined life on the basis of the structures previously identified. We will see that although there are many modalities of unexamined life, they all have a similar constitution. They are characterized by the rule of a non-philosophical drive and by a weak love of knowledge, and this in turn constitutes a practical system and a cognitive system that are marked by many defects. Fourth, we will reconsider Plato‟s assertion in light of all that was seen. We will show that the unexamined life is constitutively defective or bad because it is ruled by a drive that is unfit to rule and its way of seeing things is severely distorted. This prevents the ροπή from attaining the knowledge and the superlative good it desires. Hence, the unexamined life should be rejected and we should devote ourselves to philosophical examination, in order to attain truth and the superlative good. However, philosophical examination can have different outcomes and it faces several risks. Thus, we will close with the discussion of whether or not these variables may affect the imperative of philosophical examination and the rejection of the unexamined life

Ensaios acústicos de edifícios

As mais diversas actividades humanas ocorrentes na periferia dos edifícios, principalmente nos grandes centros urbanos, e no interior dos próprios edifícios, originam níveis de intensidade sonora que podem ser fontes de elevado incómodo para os seus habitantes. A escolha de soluções construtivas adequadas que visem atenuar os efeitos destas fontes de radiação sonora torna-se desta forma importante para garantir a qualidade habitacional. Com vista à obtenção das exigências de conforto acústico o regulamento dos requisitos acústicos em edifícios estipula um conjunto de parâmetros de desempenho acústico que os elementos constituintes dos edifícios estão obrigados a cumprir. A avaliação destes parâmetros faz-se recorrendo à realização de ensaios acústicos, medições estas que se regem pelas normas da série ISO 140 e da série ISO 717. No presente trabalho descreveu-se resumidamente todas as especificações e procedimentos essenciais que as referidas normas de medição de isolamento sonoro definem. Foi ainda efectuada a avaliação in situ do isolamento a sons aéreos de dois elementos que separam compartimentos de diferentes fogos, de quatro elementos de fachada assim como o isolamento a sons de percussão de um pavimento pertencente a um edifício multifamiliar com uso unicamente habitacional, que serviu como caso de estudo. Posteriormente e através da análise objectiva dos resultados dos ensaios efectuou-se a verificação da conformidade dos índices de isolamento sonoro obtidos com os requisitos regulamentares

Load Management in a Smart House

Since a couple years ago, studies have been done in order to minimize the energy consumption at home. With that in mind, algorithms were developed to predict the energy consumption at the house and study the behaviour of the loads with the goal of minimizing the energy costs. In this dissertation, the objective was to create a model for the space heating and water heating and study their behaviour and adjust their load model to reduce the energy consumption and energy bill, and find the best energy tariffs for each case.The models consider physical parameters of the house , so the model can be a better approximation from reality.However, the problem is not only, a Energy and bill reduction, but the algorithm has to focus on the comfort of the house habitants too.Since a couple years ago, studies have been done in order to minimize the energy consumption at home. With that in mind, algorithms were developed to predict the energy consumption at the house and study the behaviour of the loads with the goal of minimizing the energy costs. In this dissertation, the objective was to create a model for the space heating and water heating and study their behaviour and adjust their load model to reduce the energy consumption and energy bill, and find the best energy tariffs for each case.The models consider physical parameters of the house , so the model can be a better approximation from reality.However, the problem is not only, a Energy and bill reduction, but the algorithm has to focus on the comfort of the house habitants too

A corporate metadata dashboard for the BI & analytics department of EDP Comercial : curricular internship in EDP Comercial

Companies that want to remain competitive in the market need to constantly update themselves. With the development of technology, it is now possible to collect more data about the business and companies have made large investments in this collection, processing and analysis of data. One of the business difficulties is the organization of these data, which is now in increasing quantities. Thus, the challenge of this project arose: the organization of large amounts of data in a corporate metadata dashboard to improve the internal management of a department in relation to its developed projects. The DOMO Business Intelligence software was used to facilitate the processing of information and allow the visualization of data in a more accessible and useful method. The project results were positive, bringing to the company in question, EDP Comercial, an improvement in the department's Internal Management, with advantages in terms of data visualization and in economic terms.As empresas que se querem manter competitivas no mercado precisam de se atualizar constantemente. Com o desenvolvimento da tecnologia, é agora possível recolher mais dados sobre o negócio e as empresas têm feito grandes investimentos nessa recolha, processamento e análise desses mesmos dados. Uma das dificuldades do negócio é a organização desses dados, que agora são em cada vez maiores quantidades. Assim, surgiu o desafio deste projeto: a organização de grandes quantidades de dados em um dashboard de metadados corporativo para melhorar a gestão interna de um departamento em relação aos seus projetos já desenvolvidos. O software DOMO Business Intelligence foi utilizado para facilitar o processamento das informações e permitir a visualização dos dados de forma mais acessível e útil. Os resultados do projeto foram positivos, trazendo para a empresa em causa, a EDP Comercial, uma melhoria na Gestão Interna do departamento, com vantagens em termos de visualização de dados e em termos económicos

Um processo de injeção de plásticos: melhoria do programa de controlo estatístico

O presente artigo resulta de um projeto de investigação que aborda a melhoria de um programa de controlo estatístico de um processo de injeção de plásticos, tendo por base a aplicação das ferramentas básicas da qualidade, nomeadamente a análise de Pareto, o diagrama de Ishikawa e os gráficos de controlo. Paralelamente às ferramentas básicas da qualidade, foi também utilizada a metodologia Análise ao Sistema de Medida (Measurement Systems Analysis), com recurso ao software Minitab. A metodologia empregue neste projeto foi o estudo de caso

Risk aversion in financial crises

This study is designed to understand how investors risk preferences change, when faced by financial crisis. Option prices implied densities provide information about market movements and risk preferences. The data used are European call options prices on the DJIA with a time to maturity of four weeks. This paper obtains the risk aversion estimates by the extraction of options implied risk neutral densities and their translation to real world densities, applied to three crisis : Dotcom bubble in 2001; Subprime mortgage in 2008 and European sovereign debt in 2011. RND is achieved by the use of two parametric methods: mixture of lognormal densities (MLN); and generalised beta distribution of the second kind (GB2). The risk transformation procedure from RND to RWD (real world densities) is achieved by applying the power utility function. The RND empirical results imply that the GB2 method is disregarded due to inferior quality whilst the MLN produces results of higher uncertainty and expected future results of index levels corrected downward. The risk aversion estimates obtained from the RWD generation process do not present any evident pattern of evolution from a stable financial period to one of financial shock. It is also important to mention that for some periods the risk aversion reached negative values. This is a surprising result due to existent theoretical assumption of positive risk aversion. Overall, this study documents inconclusive results. Nevertheless, several important topics are left for future research. Interesting developments would consist: either replicating this study considering more expiration dates, bearing in mind that too many periods would imply an extremely generalised risk aversion estimate that would be counterproductive for achieving the objective of this paper; apply another method from the available literature; or testing the negative estimates with more sophisticated models that are beyond the focus of this paper

Consistent state software transactional memory

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia InformáticaAs the multicore CPUs start getting into everyone’s computers, concurrent programming must start covering, not only the scientific and enterprise applications, but also every computer application we all use in our daily lives. Since the introduction of software transactional memory [ST95,HLMWNS03], this topic has had a strong interest by the scientific community as it has the potential of greatly facilitating concurrent programming by hiding the concurrency issues under the transactional layer. This thesis builds on the TL2 STM engine [DON06], which is one of the top performing to date. We have explored different design alternatives focusing on performance and safety. With our research we have achieved performance improvements and better safety properties of the engine. We have also achieved a much better understanding of the design alternatives and their impacts. During the course of this thesis we have come across several tough concurrency bugs and we have created a list of testing patterns, which proved to be useful in finding and reproducing several problems. This thesis describes the cutting edge of STM engine technology, elaborates on the design of a new STM engine and reports on the experimental results obtained