Mind the Gap: Education Inequality at the Regional Level in Portugal, 1986-2005

Portugal stands as one of the most unequal countries in terms of income among the developed countries. Over the period 1980-2005, income inequality kept high, fostered mainly by a monotonic increase in earnings inequality. Given the close link between education and earnings, it is of major importance to study the distribution of education. This paper examines the distribution of education at the regional level in Portugal between 1986 and 2005. Our results indicate that education inequality decreased for the whole country as the average education level of the workforce rose, over the sample years. This finding does not apply at the regional level however, with several districts initially poor in terms of education exhibiting an increase in education inequality. The evidence also supports the existence of a Kuznets curve of education: as the average level of education rises, education inequality first increases, and, after reaching a peak at 5.13 years of schooling, starts declining.

Narrative and Serious Games: Playing the message

In this dissertation we will study the form of developing a videogame aiming to transmit serious messages to the player and how serious games can accomplish this objective. The different narratives that can be used in videogames will also be explored, analyzing which of them are better in transmitting messages. We believe that narratives linked to game design may be very effective to deliver serious messages. The narrative accompanied our evolution in every sense, all our cultural information was transmitted by writing and storytelling. This is how we kept evolving as Humans. With the passing of time the technology evolved too, and new mediums were born, videogames were created, and with them a new group of people appeared, the targets. In this sense the videogames are a good way to communicate serious messages to this specific target. The main goal of this dissertation is the study of different types of narrative and how they can be structured to communicate messages more efficiently. So, by exploring the different types of narratives and the different types of serious games we will then create a proposal for a serious game.É de uma grande relevância estudar jogos enquanto meios de comunicação de mensagens específicas aos jogadores. Enquanto jogos digitais, estes assentam em características que podem servir como ferramenta de elaboração de mundos virtuais baseados no real em que servem um propósito maior do que um simples jogo. Neste sentido, existem áreas que podem ser conjugadas de forma a reforçar determinadas características que são intrínsecas a este meio. A extrapolação de áreas como o Design de jogos, a Narrativa Interativa para fins sérios pode ser um excelente ponto de partida e em específico algumas subcategorias destas mesmas pode levar à criação de um fio condutor que pode ser relevante para uma proposta que assenta nesses mesmos conceitos. Relativamente aos jogos sérios estudados durante esta dissertação foram relevantes para o conhecimento tanto como finalidade de uma proposta bem como perceber como eles se enquadram no tratamento teórico. Claro que os aspetos de maior relevância para esta proposta são inevitavelmente importantes para uma simbiose que pode criar emoção e uma experiência única ao jogador. No que toca às narrativas em jogos digitais e apesar de haver uma discussão aberta entre esta e o cinema, nós só pretendemos perceber de que forma é que ela pode ser ligada aos jogos não entrando pelo caminho de “se é narrativa ou não”. Também não pretendemos discutir e sim afastarmo-nos, neste campo, da ludologia. Iremos abordar então a narrativa enquanto suporte ao videojogo, seja ela em formato de texto bem como a criação de mundos narrativos, que em certa parte pode ser relevante para a criação de uma maior experiência jogável e maior retenção de mensagem para o jogador. Claro que para haver uma maior conexão entre o jogador e estes mundos virtuais a uma criação de uma ponte que transporta o real para o digital temos de pensar inevitavelmente no centro do que é e o objetivo do processo de Design em jogos: O jogador. Neste sentido teremos de entender o significado de certos conceitos existentes nesta área, como é o caso de game flow, imersão e feedback. Para assim entender como podemos criar um elo de ligação e experiência ao jogador

Assessment of left ventricular diastolic function by MR: why, how and when

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), a valuable non-invasive technique for the evaluation of the cardiovascular system, has already been accepted as the "gold standard" for the assessment of systolic function. The assessment of diastolic function is important not only for diagnosis purposes, but also in terms of prognosis. ECG-triggering phase-contrast (PC) CMR allows the routine assessment of diastolic function by measuring the transmitral and pulmonary venous flow with high accuracy and reproducibility, using morphological and quantitative parameters similar to those obtained by transthoracic echocardiography, which are so familiar to general cardiologists. Therefore, the increasing role of CMR in the assessment of the cardiovascular system requires a greater awareness and knowledge of this condition by radiologists. The aim of this study is to review the main mechanisms and common causes of left ventricle diastolic dysfunction, provide a practical approach for the assessment of LV diastolic function and illustrate the different degrees of diastolic dysfunction

Activation of effector immune cells promotes tumor stochastic extinction: A homotopy analysis approach

In this article we provide homotopy solutions of a cancer nonlinear model describing the dynamics of tumor cells in interaction with healthy and effector immune cells. We apply a semi-analytic technique for solving strongly nonlinear systems - the Step Homotopy Analysis Method (SHAM). This algorithm, based on a modification of the standard homotopy analysis method (HAM), allows to obtain a one-parameter family of explicit series solutions. By using the homotopy solutions, we first investigate the dynamical effect of the activation of the effector immune cells in the deterministic dynamics, showing that an increased activation makes the system to enter into chaotic dynamics via a period-doubling bifurcation scenario. Then, by adding demographic stochasticity into the homotopy solutions, we show, as a difference from the deterministic dynamics, that an increased activation of the immune cells facilitates cancer clearance involving tumor cells extinction and healthy cells persistence. Our results highlight the importance of therapies activating the effector immune cells at early stages of cancer progression

Bilateral tempered fractional derivatives

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.The bilateral tempered fractional derivatives are introduced generalising previous works on the one-sided tempered fractional derivatives and the two-sided fractional derivatives. An analysis of the tempered Riesz potential is done and shows that it cannot be considered as a derivative.publishersversionpublishe

Cycles of linear and semilinear mappings

We give a canonical form of matrices of a cycle of linear or semilinear mapping V_1 --- V_2 --- ... --- V_t --- V_1 in which all V_i are complex vector spaces, each line is an arrow ---> or <---, and each arrow denotes a linear or semilinear mapping.Comment: 18 page