The words about a “sea of trees”. Colonial and post-colonial narratives about Gorongosa (Mozambique)

8º Congresso Ibérico de Estudos Africanos (CIEA8). Madrid, 2012A "sea of trees" was the term chosen by Lynne Tinley (wife of the environmentalist Ken Tinley), in 1968, to describe the nuances of the colors of the Gorongosa National Park (Mozambique) environment. Observed colors, but mostly sensed colors. This communication will give voice to the testimonies of different social actors (hunters, journalists, writers, tourists, conservationists) trying to understand the views and feelings of nature in colonial and postcolonial eras. The reports of those who were, however briefly, in Gorongosa, allow us to understand emotions, nostalgia, differences and recurrences in the way of appropriating nature. These experiential narratives give us historical and ideological constructions of Africa

Deep learning model combination and regularization using convolutional neural networks

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were inspired by biology. They are hierarchical neural networks whose convolutional layers alternate with subsampling layers, reminiscent of simple and complex cells in the primary visual cortex [Fuk86a]. In the last years, CNNs have emerged as a powerful machine learning model and achieved the best results in many object recognition benchmarks [ZF13, HSK+12, LCY14, CMMS12]. In this dissertation, we introduce two new proposals for convolutional neural networks. The first, is a method to combine the output probabilities of CNNs which we call Weighted Convolutional Neural Network Ensemble. Each network has an associated weight that makes networks with better performance have a greater influence at the time to classify a pattern when compared to networks that performed worse. This new approach produces better results than the common method that combines the networks doing just the average of the output probabilities to make the predictions. The second, which we call DropAll, is a generalization of two well-known methods for regularization of fully-connected layers within convolutional neural networks, DropOut [HSK+12] and DropConnect [WZZ+13]. Applying these methods amounts to sub-sampling a neural network by dropping units. When training with DropOut, a randomly selected subset of the output layer’s activations are dropped, when training with DropConnect we drop a randomly subsets of weights. With DropAll we can perform both methods simultaneously. We show the validity of our proposals by improving the classification error on a common image classification benchmark

Optics in Data Processing and Data Transmission

Today optical systems are more and more important in data communications (optical fibers) and are also becoming important in data processing (optical and quantum computing) allowing for a fully optical communication  network where all signals will be processed and transmitted in the optical domain. This paper gives an overview of optical fiber communications and analyses some optical devices and applications such as optical computing, holographic memory and optical pattern recognition

The internationalization to México of a SME footwear portuguese company: the real case of Passodado, Lda.

The Portuguese footwear industry is recognized for the quality of its products and service provided. These attributes have aroused the interest of the international markets that are currently the main buyers and that contribute in a positive way to the Portuguese trade balance. International markets have been the focus not only for multinationals, but also for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking for new opportunities to expand themselves. The effect of the globalization approached countries, cultures, commerce, etc. and the emerging economies are starting to show very high and attractive growth rates. Mexico is one of these markets and also benefits from a strategic location and numerous population. This study has as the main objective of understanding the strategy to be used by Portuguese footwear companies when entering Mexico. For this, the case study of a Portuguese footwear PME with the ambition to explore new markets was used (Passodado, Lda). As a result, the combination of internal and external factors made it possible to realize that this company's strategy will be the direct export through a sales agent in Mexico, benefiting from new customer orientation, controlled marketing by the company and greater control over products. It was concluded that the regular monitoring and analysis of the activities in the target market are decisive to guarantee the profitability of the business and the elasticity and agility to face possible challenges.A industria do calçado Portuguesa é reconhecida pela qualidade dos seus produtos e serviço prestado. Estes atributos têm despertado o interesse dos mercados internacionais que são atualmente os principais compradores e que contribuem positivamente para a balança comercial Portuguesa. Os mercados internacionais têm sido o foco não só para multinacionais, mas também para pequenas e médias empresas (PMEs) que procuram novas oportunidades se expandirem. O efeito da globalização aproximou os países, culturas, comércio, etc. e as economias emergentes começam a apresentar taxas de crescimento muito altas e aliciantes. O México é um desses mercados e beneficia também de uma localização estratégica e numerosa população. Este estudo tem como principal objetivo a compreensão da estratégia a utilizar pelas empresas de calçado portuguesas ao entrar no México. Para isso, foi utilizado o caso de estudo de PME de calçado portuguesa com ambição de explorar novos mercados (Passodado, Lda). Com resultado, a combinação de fatores do ambiente interno e externo, permitiram perceber que a estratégia desta empresa passará pela exportação direta através de agente de vendas no México, beneficiando da orientação para novos clientes, marketing controlado pela empresa e maior controle sobre os produtos. Concluiu-se que a monitorização e análise regular das atividades no mercado alvo são decisivas para garantir a rentabilidade dos negócios e a elasticidade e agilidade para enfrentar possíveis desafios

deep-dive into the auto assistance network management

In order to optimize the Auto Providers Network, it was performeda diagnosis of the internal context of Europ Assistance Portugal. Through internal expert interviews, data analysis and research, it was found that EAP faces pressure from its providers network, specifically dueto its low level sof digitalization, high refusalrate and overall complexity of internal processes and systems. In this regard, adeeper analysis was made in to the overall provider selection and activation process, with the goal of fully understanding the best wayto improveit ,keep inginmind the providers’ pain point

Effectiveness of a community health worker program on oral health promotion

OBJETIVO:Avaliar mudanças em conhecimentos, atitudes e acesso/utilização de serviços odontológicos decorrentes de um programa de promoção da saúde bucal com agentes comunitários de saúde. MÉTODOS:Um projeto de capacitação combinando ensino-aprendizagem, apoio e supervisão, foi desenvolvido entre os meses de julho de 2003 a agosto de 2004. As mudanças foram avaliadas por meio de entrevistas estruturadas em que participaram 36 agentes comunitários de saúde e uma amostra de 91 mulheres e mães, representativa de donas de casa com 25 a 39 anos de idade, alfabetizadas e residentes em domicílios de três a seis cômodos no município de Rio Grande da Serra (SP). Foram colhidos dados sobre conhecimentos de saúde-doença bucal, práticas e capacidades auto-referidas em relação ao auto-exame, higiene bucal, número de residentes e de escovas dentais individuais e coletivas em cada domicílio e acesso e uso de serviços odontológicos. Por meio do teste t de Student pareado, foram comparadas as médias dos valores obtidos antes e depois do programa para cada um dos grupos estudados. As respostas foram analisadas adotando-se um nível de significância de 5%. RESULTADOS: Foram observadas diferenças estatisticamente significativas para questões relativas ao conhecimento de saúde bucal entre os agentes e entre as mulheres antes e depois da capacitação (p<0,05). Desequilíbrio entre o número de escovas e de indivíduos em cada família diminuiu. A freqüência da escovação e do uso do fio dental se elevou depois da atuação dos agentes. Os valores de auto-avaliação da higiene bucal aumentaram. Modificação nas práticas e capacidades auto-referidas mostrou significativa elevação da auto-confiança. O acesso ao serviço foi mais fácil (p<0,000) e seu uso mais regular (p<0,000) entre mulheres. CONCLUSÕES: Houve mudanças positivas na percepção em relação a aspectos de saúde bucal, na auto-confiança e no acesso e uso de serviços odontológicos. Tais mudanças poOBJECTIVE: To assess changes of knowledge and attitudes and health service access and utilization after the implementation of a community health worker program for oral health promotion. METHODS: A capacity building project including learning, support, and supervision activities was developed between July 2003 and August 2004. A study to assess changes was conducted including 36 community health workers and a representative sample of homemaker literate women and mothers aged 25 to 39 years living in 3- to 6-room dwelling in the city of Rio Grande da Serra, southeastern Brazil. Data on oral health knowledge, self-reported practices, and personal skills regarding self-examination, oral hygiene, number of people living in the same household, number of individual and collective toothbrushes, and dental service access and utilization were collected using structured interviews. Mean scores measured pre- and post-intervention program were compared for each group studied using Student's t-test. A 5% significance level was set for the analysis. RESULTS:Statistically significant differences between pre- and post-intervention program were seen regarding oral health knowledge among both health workers and women (p<0.05). The number of shared toothbrushes per family decreased. Frequency of toothbrushing and flossing increased. Self-assessment of oral hygiene efficacy increased. Changes in practices and personal skills improved self-efficacy. Women had more access to services (p<0.000) and used them more regularly (p<0.000). CONCLUSIONS: There were seen significant changes of perception regarding oral health, self-efficacy, and health service access and utilization. These changes may show that community health workers play a key role in oral health promotio

Tuberculosis: new era for diagnosis and surveillance using whole-genome sequencing-based approaches

Tuberculosis (TB) has been declared as a global public health emergency by the WHO since 1993. It still accounts for almost 2 million deaths each year, making it the ninth leading cause of death worldwide. The major obstacle for an effective TB control is antimicrobial resistance, thus, to be successful, new strategies must be addressed, for instance, the implementation of new rapid TB diagnostic technologies that could translate into early treatment initiation and blocking of transmission chains. Considering the major constraints regarding the isolation and time of growth of M. tuberculosis strains, the main goal of this PhD dissertation was to acknowledge the potential of the use of WGS-based methodologies for routine diagnostic and epidemiological surveillance. We evaluated several software for in silico prediction of antibiotic resistance and developed bioinformatics pipelines for surveillance purposes, in particular for the identification of transmission chains. As they revealed high sensitivity, these approaches are already implemented in the routine of the Portuguese National Reference Laboratory (NRL). We also recognised the possibility to use these same approaches directly to samples collected from TB patients, lowering the time-to-results, for a complete drug resistance pattern and phylogeny analysis, for five to eight days. The validation of this methodology is ongoing and will be implemented in a near future. Additionally, and according to the new recommendations for TB treatment, we have initiated studies to identify new mutations associated with resistance to the recently adopted drugs, in order to enrich the available databases and improve the performance of the genotypic diagnostics pipelines. This PhD dissertation highlights WGS-based methodologies as powerful tools to surpass the difficulties of phenotypic TB diagnosis and surveillance and to provide a much more rapid information regarding resistance prediction and eventual transmission chains. It also supported the technological transition performed at the NRL for TB surveillance