An innovative platform for territorial marketing and location benchmarking

When looking for locations to install their production or business units, entrepreneurs undertake a well established decision process that starts with the very first option to invest in a specific country and finishes with a final decision over a commonly named “short list”. In order to support investors looking for investment locations in Portugal across the decision process mentioned before, an internet platform was developed and deployed worldwide as a result of a development partnership between the University of Minho and Innovation Point S.A., a technological start-up. The platform, named where-to-invest-in-portugal.com and often classified as a territorial marketing & analysis platform, includes an extensive set of resources to support potential investors. Among them, the so-called Investor_DSS channel is a multicriteria Decision Support System intended to model the geographical screening and find the best ranked set of locations (municipalities) for a particular location exercise. Other channels include fact sheets and databases for Business Space Offers and Business Opportunities. A special channel is dedicated to the Mayors, a space where they may address an invitation for direct investment in their Municipalities. This paper describes the architecture of the platform and some of the relevant developments related to

Irrigação na cultura da bucha vegetal.

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Characterization of requeijão and technological optimization of its manufacturing process

In attempts to characterize Portuguese whey cheese (Requeijão) and optimize the manufacture thereof I7 whey cheeses were produced according to a factorial design using heating time, heating temperature and fractional addition of ovinelcaprine milk as manipulated technological variables. Chemical analyses were carried out for the 17 cheeses, whereas sensorial and rheological analyses were carried out for eight selected whey cheeses and a reference (i.e. a whey cheese produced locally according to traditional procedures). A true local maximum exists for moisture content (at a temperature of about 93°C heating time of about 30 min and addition of about 17% ovine milk) which lies well within the range chosen for experimentation. Fat content of Requeijão was positively affected by heating temperature (especially via its quadratic effect) and, to a lesser extent, by heating time (especially via its linear effect); nitrogen content was especially affected by heating temperature (via its quadratic effect); and moisture content was affected especially by heating temperature (via its quadratic effect). The sensorial analyses showed that the eight whey cheeses produced were prefered with respect to the reference whey cheese. For rheological analyses the most significant observations pertain to the high strain dependence of the dynamic moduli, absence of a true equilibrium storage modulus, and relatively low difference between the loss and the storage modulus

A model of the reflection distribution in the vacuum ultra violet region

A reflection model with three components, a specular spike, a specular lobe and a diffuse lobe is discussed. This model was successfully applied to describe reflection of xenon scintillation light (175 nm) by PTFE and other fluoropolymers and can be used for Monte Carlo simulation and analysis of scintillation detectors. The measured data favors a Trowbridge-Reitz distribution function of ellipsoidal micro-surfaces. The intensity of the coherent reflection increases with increasing angle of incidence, as expected, since the surface appears smoother at grazing angles. The total reflectance obtained for PTFE is about 70% for VUV light at normal incidence in vacuum and estimated to be up to 100% in contact with liquid xenon

Sistema de produção de banana para a Zona da Mata de Pernambuco.

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Responses in growth and dynamics of the shade-tolerant species Theobroma subincanumto logging gaps in the Eastern Amazon.

Aim of study: To assess responses of the shade-tolerant species Theobroma subincanum in relation to canopy gaps created by reduced impact logging (RIL). Materials and methods: A managed forest in themunicipality ofMoju, Pará state,Brazil, harvested in 1997 through RIL was monitored during 12 years (1998-2010). Nine logging gaps were selected and classified in small, medium, and large. Four 10 m x 50 m strips starting from the gap?s border towards the forest and following the directions of cardinal points were installed. Each strip was divided in five 10 m x 10 m plots. Density, diameter distribution (DBH ≥ 5 cm with intervals = 5 cm), and diameter growth were measured. Main results: No significant changes in seedling density of T. subincanum were found, and its diameter distribution followed the reverse ?J? shape during all monitoring time. T. subincanum presented diameter growth of 0.15 cm year-1 with highest Periodic Annual Increment in diameter up to three years, and stabilization in nine years after RIL. The species responded to a growth gradient inversely proportional to the gap?s border distance (p = 0.001) but not to gap size and plots direction in cardinal points around the gap. Research highlights: Shade-tolerant species such as T. subincanum have sensible and positive growth responses to disturbances caused by RIL even when seedlings received low amounts of indirect sunlight. These positive responses should be considered in the management of production forests

Efeito do ethephon na maturação pós-colheita de peras cultivar Princesinha.

Este trabalho objetivou avaliar o efeito de diferentes concentrações de ethephon em conjunto com diferentes tempos de armazenamento em temperatura controlada, na aceleração da 29 maturação de peras da cultivar princesinha

Rheological behavior of thermoreversible k-carrageenan/nanosilica gels

The rheological behavior of silica/κ-carrageenan nanocomposites has been investigated as a function of silica particle size and load. The addition of silica nanoparticles was observed to invariably impair the gelation process, as viewed by the reduction of gel strength and decrease of gelation and melting temperatures. This weakening effect is seen, for the lowest particle size, to become slightly more marked as silica concentration (or load) is increased and at the lowest load as particle size is increased. These results suggest that, under these conditions, the particles act as physical barriers to polysaccharide chain aggregation and, hence, gelation. However, for larger particle sizes and higher loads, gel strength does not weaken with size or concentration but, rather, becomes relatively stronger for intermediate particles sizes, or remains unchanged for the largest particles, as a function of load. This indicates that larger particles in higher number do not seem to increasingly disrupt the gel, as expected, but rather promote the formation of stable gel network of intermediate strength. The possibility of this being caused by the larger negative surface charge found for the larger particles is discussed. This may impede further approximation of neighboring particles thus leaving enough inter-particle space for gel formation, taking advantage of a high local polysaccharide concentration due to the higher total space occupied by large particles at higher loads.FCT - PTDC/QUI/67712/2006FEDE