The use of social media in travel planning: solutions for destination management organizations (DMOS)

JEL Codes: L83, M31Social media has been a widely discussed subject in the marketing and tourism literature. Even though most of tourism entities have adopted social media as marketing tool, its real potential and benefits still remain unclear for most of companies and businesses involved. Also, there is little evidence on the purposes of using social media in the travel planning and whether these platforms are relevant or not for companies to market their products and destinations. This project aims at understanding the role of social media in tourists’ travel planning while analyzing the current role of Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) in destination promotion. This study comprised a survey with 200 tourists visiting the city of Lisbon. It was examined their usage of social media in travel planning, sites content information and influence in their travel plans and destination image. The analysis suggests social media is a relevant source in tourists’ travel planning, providing a wide range of information and used throughout all travel planning stages. Also, research claimed social media content is perceived as trustworthy and it will influence tourists travel plans as well as tourists’ destination overall image. In addition, the current level knowledge and satisfaction with Portuguese DMOs social media sites content and features was also analyzed and further combined with a qualitative study of two DMOs interviews. This work provides insights of social media usage in the travel context and ultimately point solutions for DMOs to use them as a marketing tool. Given the fact this is one of the first studies analyzing Portuguese DMOs social sites, several recommendations are provided for future research.O tema das redes sociais tem sido amplamente discutido na literatura de marketing e turismo. Ainda que a maior parte das entidades turísticas tenha adotado as redes sociais como ferramenta de marketing, o seu potencial e benefícios ainda parecem não ser totalmente conhecidos pela maior parte das empresas e negócios. Acresce a isto, parece predominar pouca fundamentação científica relativamente aos motivos de utilização das redes sociais no planeamento de viagens, e na importância destas plataformas para as empresas na promoção de produtos e destinos. A presente tese procura aprofundar o papel das redes sociais no planeamento das viagens pelos turistas e analisar o papel atual das Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) portuguesas na promoção do destino. Este estudo compreendeu uma pesquisa quantitativa a 200 turistas que visitavam a cidade de Lisboa. Foram examinadas a utilização das redes sociais no planeamento das viagens, conteúdo dos sites e influência nos planos de viagem e imagem do destino. A análise sugere que as redes sociais são uma fonte relevante no planeamento das viagens pelos turistas e usada durante as fases de planeamento da viagem. Sugere-se ainda que o conteúdo apresentado nas redes sociais é confiável e que este influencia os planos de viagem bem como a imagem do destino pelos turistas. O nível de conhecimento e satisfação como os sites de redes sociais dos DMOs portugueses foram também analisados e posteriormente combinados com um estudo qualitativo de duas entrevistas a DMOs nacionais. Este projeto visa contribuir para uma melhor compreensão da utilização das redes sociais no âmbito turístico e sugerir soluções para os DMOs para utilização destas plataformas como meio de promoção. Sendo este estudo pioneiro na análise das redes sociais destas entidades turísticas, é apontado um número de sugestões para pesquisa futura nesta área

A methodological approach in order to support decision-makers when defining Mobility and Transportation Politics

Nowadays Portugal is under a large process of creation/revision of studies and plans related with land use and territorial planning, mainly due to the end of the lifetime period of the actual Municipal Master Plan, but also because of the creation of the new Metropolitan Authorities of Transportation, which will require Mobility Plans. Even though the Portuguese law doesn’t impose these Mobility Plans at the present moment, there is a general feeling about the importance of the mobility system for the society and economics in general. This is the case in highly density areas, where the need and complexity of the system requires these specific studies in order to obtain an efficient management; or in the case of low-density areas where the risk of loosing competitiveness is too high to ignore the importance of the transportation and mobility system, and the advantage of gaining local and regional competitiveness might increase the importance of the municipality in regional context. This paper intends to provide an innovative approach regarding the provision, at an early stage, of technical support to decision-makers in order to define Mobility and Transportation Policies. The opportunity provided by using adapted SWOT analysis (among others) to identify weakening or potential factors, and how to take advantage of the results, always using a cause and effect approach and a coherent policy in order to obtain high quality and effective studies and politics. The methodology relies on a two-stage process. In the first stage a summary diagnose is provided, using inputs which are supposed to well characterise the territory’s mobility patterns. Afterwards, in a second phase, these are inter-related and evaluated in order to build-up a table of options, where policies are proposed with a careful attention to its qualitative cross impact with the measures and objectives intended to be achieved. The proposed methodology was applied in the Alcobaça´s Municipality case study, which provided different lines of action in diverse subjects, such as, public and private transportation networks, parking policies and organisation, and territory competitiveness. This study was particularly relevant, since this Municipality is under great pressure of its neighbour municipalities, has a low level of regional importance and a low intra-municipal cohesion. Finally, the general opinion of the decision-makers about this technical approach is presented. Keywords: Mobility; Transportation; Land Planning and Policies; Decision-making Support

Welfare Policies and Solidarity Toward the Elderly

In this paper we analyze the effect of welfare policies oriented toward the elderly on solidarity toward the elderly in a sample of European countries. The research question is whether more generous welfare policies crowd out solidarity. For this purpose, we analyze four waves of the SHARE database. We use multilevel analysis to estimate the effect of national variables on transfers toward the elderly, controlling for individual level variables. At the national level we focus on the effect of public spending on policies oriented toward the elderly after controlling for some other relevant variables, such as the proportion of elderly people, female labor force participation and unemployment. Our results indicate that expenditure in social protection toward the elderly has a positive and significant (albeit moderate) effect on the economic support received by the elderly (which is in line with the Crowding-in hypothesis). However, in the case of time transfers, we find that expenditure in social protection toward the elderly has a negative and significant impact on the time transfers received by the elderly (which is consistent with the Crowding-out hypothesis).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Experience and Lessons learnt from running High Availability Databases on Network Attached Storage

The Database and Engineering Services Group of CERN's Information Technology Department supplies the Oracle Central Database services used in many activities at CERN. In order to provide High Availability and ease management for those services, a NAS (Network Attached Storage) based infrastructure has been setup. It runs several instances of the Oracle RAC (Real Application Cluster) using NFS (Network File System) as shared disk space for RAC purposes and Data hosting. It is composed of two private LANs (Local Area Network), one to provide access to the NAS filers and a second to implement the Oracle RAC private interconnect, both using Network Bonding. NAS filers are configured in partnership to prevent having single points of failure and to provide automatic NAS filer fail-over

Expatriate vs locals: career management processes and relevant factors in multinationals

The aim of this investigation is to determine in what extent the individual and organizational factors are liable for the motivation intensity and for the expected success of an international assignment. Therefore, we also cleared the variables that can influence these behaviours and create a higher perception of success in which concerns employees on an international assignment. Survey data were collected from 130 non-expatriates and from 32 expatriates (from which only 18 were still on an international assignment) through survey questionnaires. The results show that the individual and organizational factors influence the motivation intensity and the expected success of an international assignment. Additionally, both individual and organizational factors are influenced by individual and organizational characteristics (respectively). In the individual characteristics the factors with more relevance are the highest educational level, the marital status (married or living with someone) and the foreign language – English. All organizational characteristics showed a significant impact on organizational policies, being the latter presented as good predictors of motivation intensity and expected success. The implications of our findings intend to enhance and alert multinationals of their practices regarding the expatriates, since the latter are an important part of the organization’s intellectual assets. Thus, it is important not only to support employees during an international assignment, but also to assure that all activities are well communicated inside the organization. Finally, companies should also understand the assignee motivation, the motivation related to family support and international adjustment on international assignments, since as we shall see this can provide companies’ benefits.Esta investigação tem como objectivo determinar em que medida os factores individuais e organizacionais impactam na intensidade da motivação e no sucesso esperado de um destacamento internacional. Foram igualmente apuradas as variáveis que podem influenciar estes comportamentos e criar uma maior percepção de sucesso nos colaboradores no que toca ao destacamento internacional. Foram criados questionários online onde foram operacionalizadas estas questões. O questionário foi aplicado a 130 não expatriados e a 32 expatriados (sendo que destes apenas 18 continuam em destacamento internacional). Os resultados demonstram que os factores individuais e organizacionais influenciam a intensidade da motivação e a o sucesso expectável num destacamento. Adicionalmente, tanto os factores individuais como organizacionais são influenciados por características individuais ou organizacionais consoante o caso. Dentro das características individuais, os factores mais importantes são as habilitações literárias, o estado civil (casado ou em união de facto) e a língua inglesa. As características organizacionais mostraram um significativo impacto nas políticas organizacionais, sendo estas preditas da intensidade da motivação e do sucesso expectável. Com estes resultados pretende-se melhorar e alertar para as práticas que são desenvolvidas nas multinacionais relativamente aos cuidados a ter com os colaboradores expatriados, uma vez que estes são parte importante do activo intelectual da organização, bem como perceber se as práticas implementadas pela empresa, para apoiar o colaborador durante um destacamento internacional, são bem comunicadas na organização. Por último, as empresas devem ainda ter em conta a motivação do expatriado, a motivação relacionada com o apoio da família e o ajustamento em contexto de expatriação, uma vez que tais acções, como veremos adiante, poderão trazer benefícios à própria empresa

Unveiling Novel Glioma Biomarkers through Multi-omics Integration and Classification

Glioma is currently one of the most prevalent types of primary brain cancer. Given its high level of heterogeneity along with the complex biological molecular markers, many efforts have been made to accurately classify the type of glioma in each patient, which, in turn, is critical to improve early diagnosis and increase survival. Nonetheless, as a result of the fast- growing technological advances in high throughput sequencing and evolving molecular understanding of glioma biology, its classification has been recently subject to significant alterations. In this study, multiple glioma omics modalities (including mRNA, DNA methylation, and miRNA) from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) are integrated, while using the revised glioma reclassified labels, with a supervised method based on sparse canonical correlation analysis (DIABLO) to discriminate between glioma types. It was possible to find a set of highly correlated features distinguishing glioblastoma from low- grade gliomas (LGG) that were mainly associated with the disruption of receptor tyrosine kinases signaling pathways and extracellular matrix organization and remodeling. On the other hand, the discrimination of the LGG types was characterized primarily by features involved in ubiquitination and DNA transcription processes. Furthermore, several novel glioma biomarkers likely helpful in both diagnosis and prognosis of the patients were identified, including the genes PPP1R8, GPBP1L1, KIAA1614, C14orf23, CCDC77, BVES, EXD3, CD300A and HEPN1. Overall, this classification method allowed to discriminate the different TCGA glioma patients with very high performance, while seeking for common information across multiple data types, ultimately enabling the understanding of essential mechanisms driving glioma heterogeneity and unveiling potential therapeutic targets.O glioma é atualmente um dos tipos mais prevalentes de cancro cerebral primário. Dado o seu elevado nível de heterogeneidade e dada a complexidade dos seus marcadores moleculares biológicos, muitos esforços têm sido realizados para classificar com precisão o tipo de glioma em cada paciente, o que, por sua vez, é fundamental para melhorar o diagnóstico precoce e aumentar a sobrevivência. No entanto, como resultado dos avanços tecnológicos em rápido crescimento na sequenciação de dados e na evolução da com- preensão molecular da biologia do glioma, a sua classificação foi recentemente sujeita a alterações significativas. Neste estudo, múltiplas modalidades ómicas de glioma (in- cluindo mRNA, metilação de DNA e miRNA) provenientes do The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) são integradas, juntamente com a utilização das classes revistas e reclassificadas de glioma, com um método supervisionado baseado em análise de correlação canónica esparsa (DIABLO) para discriminar entre os tipos de glioma. Foi possível encontrar um conjunto de características altamente correlacionadas que distinguem o glioblastoma dos gliomas de baixo grau (LGG) que estavam principalmente associadas à ruptura das vias de sinalização dos receptores de tirosina quinases e à organização e remodelação da matriz extracelular. Por outro lado, a discriminação dos tipos LGG foi caracterizada principalmente por variáveis envolvidas nos processos de ubiquitinação e transcrição de DNA. Além disso, foram identificados vários novos biomarcadores de glioma potencial- mente úteis tanto no diagnóstico quanto no prognóstico dos pacientes, incluindo os genes PPP1R8, GPBP1L1, KIAA1614, C14orf23, CCDC77, BVES, EXD3, CD300A e HEPN1. No geral, este método de classificação permitiu discriminar com desempenho muito elevado os diferentes pacientes com glioma, simultaneamente procurando informações comuns entre os vários tipos de dados, permitindo, em última análise, a compreensão de mecanis- mos essenciais que impulsionam a heterogeneidade em glioma e revelam potenciais alvos terapêuticos

A dinâmica do consumo privado em Portugal : 1974-1998 : o papel do crédito bancário aos particulares : o endividamento : o contributo privilegiado do crédito hipotecário

Mestrado em Desenvolvimento e Cooperação InternacionalA ruptura política de 25 de Abril de 1974 (determinante nas posteriores movimentações c alterações de índole social, económica, laboral, etc), encontrou uma estrutura económica, que do ponto de vista do Consumo das famílias, se encontrava muito debilitada e muito longe de padrões europeus. O mecanismo de acesso ao crédito por parte dos particulares (quer ele fosse para Consumo imediato ou de médio/longo prazo), não existia, ou era tão insípido que não era mensurável. A partir do final da década de 80/início da de 90, a Banca segmentou a sua clientela, definiu "target 's" preferenciais e começou a direccionar os seus produtos para o cliente particular (famílias), incentivando e criando necessidades de consumo, que seriam depois colmatadas com o crédito a conceder. A adesão à UE, marcou de forma definitiva este processo evolutivo. Os portugueses, começaram a alterar o seu padrão de Consumo. Se conjugarmos ainda a inexistência prática dum mercado de aluguer de habitação, com uma forte dinamização do mercado da construção, temos as condições necessárias para uma oferta que se veio a revelar agressiva a partir de 1992, de crédito por parte da Banca, cuja finalidade era a Hipotecária. Em 1998, do total de crédito concedido a particulares, cerca de 96% era crédito liipotccário. o que por si atesta a dimensão deste mercado e justifica a aposta que todo o sector bancário fez na dinamização deste produto, através de fortes campanhas de marketing tentando fidelizar clientes para o produto e para o desejado "cross-selling". As tradicionais teorias do Consumo - Keynesiana, Rendimento Permanente e Ciclo de Vida parecem não ser suficientes para explicar as decisões de Consumo das famílias, sobretudo nesta última década. Num mundo, em que a globalização pode significar a perda ou precaridade de emprego ou uma reforma compulsiva, é difícil adaptar os referidos modelos, sendo que os agentes económicos que se estão a endividar, o fazem numa perspectiva de rendimento presente. Neste estudo, viu-se a evolução do Consumo Privado em Portugal num período de 25 anos (1974/1998) e a forma como quantitativamente e qualitativamente se comportou.The politicai transformation of 25 April 1974 (a determining factor in subsequent social, economic, employment and other changes) found itself confronted with an economic structure which, from the point of view of spending by families, was extremely weak and markedly distanced from European standards. Access to personal credit (whether for immediate or medium/long term consumption) did not exist, or was so minor as to be unmeasurable. From the end of the 1980s/beginning of the 1990s, banks started to segment their customers and define preferential target groups, and began to aim their products at the private individual (households), thereby encouraging and creating the need for consumption, subsequently met through credit. Portugafs accession to the EU was a definitive step in this evolutionary process. The Portuguese began to alter their pattems of consumption. This, combined with the virtual absence of a rented housing sector and vigorous activity in construction, created the necessary conditions for bank lending for mortgage purposes, which became energetic from 1992 onwards. In 1998, approximately 96% of ali credit to individuais was mortgage lending, attesting to the size of the market and justifying the efforts made by the banking sector to promote mortgage products through vigorous marketing campaigns aimed at encouraging take-up by customers and cross-selling. Traditional consumption theories - Keynesian, Permanent Income and Life Cycle - appear inadequate to explain family spending decisions, particularly during the last decade. In a world in which globalisation can result in job losses or insecurity or forced retirement, it is difficult to adapt the above models, since the participants in the economy who are taking on debt are doing so on the basis of their current income. The study describes the growth of Personal Consumption in Portugal over a period of 25 years (1974-1998) and its behaviour in quantitative and qualitative terms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Desenvolvimento de um novo sistema de entrega de DNA plasmídico para futura aplicação na terapia do cancro

During the past few decades gene therapy has become a promising alternative for the treatment of many incurable diseases such as cancer. This extremely complex disease possesses characteristics that make most of the generally used treatments rather ineffective. The research work presented in this thesis attempts to take advantage of novel non-viral gene therapeutic approaches based on plasmidic DNA and nanoparticulated systems that might provide the foundation for the development of a novel therapeutic treatment from the production to a real application in the everyday life of cancer patients. Hence the production of an expression vector that encodes for a tumor suppressor, p53 was promoted in recombinant organisms. Subsequently the different plasmid DNA isoforms were isolated and the supercoiled isoform, the one biologically active and with enhanced transfection efficiency was purified by affinity chromatography. Following this purification and recovery the development of novel nanoparticle systems that could deliver the exogenous DNA into the malignant cells was promoted. Nanoparticulated systems produced with chitosan demonstrated small size ranges and suitable properties for the encapsulation of plasmidic DNA. Additionally, transfection of eukaryotic neoplastic cells revealed the suitability of the nanocarrier as a novel delivery system of p53 expression vectors to cancer

Portugal Telecom’s strategic partnership with Oi: the value creation potential

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and EconomicsPortugal Telecom (PT) has been in the Brazilian Telecom Market for over a decade. After the end of the Joint-Venture with Telefónica, PT and Oi, a resident telecom player, decided to combine strengths in order to create value for both companies. The success of this partnership depends on the Brazilian operator’s performance, and which competitive advantages will be possible to achieve. Portugal Telecom will receive the return under the form of dividends, firm value increase, scale and geographic projection. The key point of the partnership is the management of the integration process as it will determine whether the expertise is transferred between companies. The project aims to analyze the motivations of the strategic partnership, the Brazilian Telecom Market, and the integration process, leading to withdrawal of final conclusions