Futuros designers como agentes de mudança : exploração do ensino do design focado em inovação social e sustentabilidade

ABSTRACT : This paper, part of a Ph.D. in Design research, focused on discussing the role of Design Education on training future designers to be actors of change. It describes the methodology of a workshop for design students during the Design Week of Mérida, at Universidad de Extremadura – Spain. The workshop discussed the point of view of students in problem-solving, and what they believe to be the skills, methods, and partnerships for design to achieve such a change in its approach and how Design Education plays a part in preparing the future genera_on of designers to tackle social innovation and sustainability problems. The results showed how these particular group of future designers see as crucial in the given context and the possibilities for improvement on a system that struggles to be resilient and respond at a faster pace.O presente trabalho é parte do projeto de investigação para o programa de Doutoramento em Design e foca em discutir o papel do Ensino do Design na educação de futuros designers como agentes de mudança. O artigo descreve a metodologia aplicada a um workshop facilitado para alunos de design durante a Semana de Design de Mérida, na Universidad de Extremadura, em Espanha. A atividade discutiu os pontos de vista dos estudantes no tocante à resolução de problemas complexos e suas crenças sobre as habilidades, métodos e parcerias necessárias ao Design para que alcance as mudanças necessárias, para além de discutir o papel do Ensino do Design na preparação da futura geração de profissionais focados na resolução de problemas de sustentabilidade e inovação social. O resultado demonstra o que este particular grupo de futuros designers entendem como sendo crucial neste contexto e as possibilidades para melhorias em um sistema que sofre para se tornar resiliente e responder às questões sociais de maneira mais ágil.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inflation Targeting and Dollarization in Bolivia

This thesis attempts to test the effectiveness of the IT regime as a nominal anchor (reference for monetary policy) to the Bolivian Central Bank through the use of the Taylor rule. In order to use the Taylor Rule, it will be necessary to collect data from the monetary aggregates, interest rates (preferably US interest rates since the boliviano is pegged to the US dollar), and Bolivian Central Bank international reserves. Depending upon the results of the coefficients found it would be possible to make some initial conclusions. The reason why this amount of data will be required is that this thesis will not present a standard Taylor Rule (which assumes that central banks are autonomous with respect to monetary policy). The Bolivian Central Bank does not have an autonomous monetary policy. Therefore, there will be some modifications to the variables present in the standard Taylor Rule. Moreover, the thesis will attempt to capture the relationship among the mentioned data in a time series framework through the use of a vector auto regression model (VAR). In that way, it will be feasible to study how the data (such as interest rates and international reserves) react to exogenous shocks. Through the use of the VAR framework, the effects of the IT regime in the Bolivian economy will be known more accurately

Essays on Manufacturing and Growth

The first chapter of this dissertation studies the role of human capital in generating economic convergence through its impact on manufacturing productivity growth and allocation of labor across sectors of the economy. I confirm and extend existing results showing that productivity in manufacturing – unlike its economy-wide counterpart – has exhibited convergence; that is, countries further behind the technology frontier tend to catch up to those on the frontier. I then show that the convergence in manufacturing is (a) somewhat accelerated by countries’ tertiary education levels and (b) faster in high-tech industries. Perhaps surprisingly, this is not driven by tertiary education’s direct impact on the rate of catching up in any of the high-tech industries. Instead, tertiary education has a composition effect: it increases the share of labor allocated to the fast-converging high-tech sector. Since low-income countries usually have low shares of college-educated workers, these findings help explain “premature deindustrialization” in those countries, a process where, despite the potential of manufacturing to generate economic convergence, it is the sectors with fewer growth prospects (e.g, services) that are expanding. It also helps explain why previous studies tended to find negligible effects of tertiary education on growth. The second chapter of this dissertation investigates the link between these labor inflows and foreign direct investment (FDI). Using a decomposition for labor productivity change with sectoral level data for Latin American and Asia countries between the years 1970 and 2011, I find that FDI has an important role in explaining this misallocation of workers across sectors. Furthermore, results indicate that this misallocation is driven mainly by a growth in the service sector

Creating Virtual Animals Through Machine Learning

Approximately 42 percent of threatened or endangered species are at risk due to invasive species. Some invasive species find the new habitat by themselves during migrations, others are misplaced by humans, be it by mistake or necessity. This project aims to create a virtual habitat, populated by intelligent agents that represent the animals present in it. Programmers and scientists can add invasive species, and simulate what might happen. This will allow a more proactive response to this type of crisis. Different data-driven models are explored in order to find the best one for the problem at hands. Game engines are discussed, they have improved greatly over the last decade, and are accessible to everyone. Reliable tools to build simple or complex prototypes that give us graphic representations that can be photo realisticAproximadamente 42 por cento das espécies em vias de extinção estão em risco devido a espécies invasoras. Algumas dessas espécies invasoras chegam aos novos habitats através de migrações, outras chegam através da mão humana, voluntaria ou involuntariamente. Este projeto tem como objetivo criar um habitat virtual, com agentes inteligentes que rep resentam os animais presentes nesse mesmo habitat. Programadores e cientistas poderão adicionar espécies invasoras, e simular o que pode acontecer. Isto irá permitir uma resposta mais proativa quando estes tipos de crises acontecem. Diferentes modelos orientados a dados são explorados, a fim de perceber qual será o melhor para resolver o problema. Game engines são discutidos, este tipo de ferramenta tem evoluído bastante ao longo da última década, são ferramentas grátis, que podem ser usadas para criar protótipos com gráficos simples, ou foto realista

Extracting kinetic information from literature with KineticRE

To better understand the dynamic behavior of metabolic networks in a wide variety of conditions, the field of Systems Biology has increased its interest in the use of kinetic models. The different databases, available these days, do not contain enough data regarding this topic. Given that a significant part of the relevant information for the development of such models is still wide spread in the literature, it becomes essential to develop specific and powerful text mining tools to collect these data. In this context, this work has as main objective the development of a text mining tool to extract, from scientific literature, kinetic parameters, their respective values and their relations with enzymes and metabolites. The approach proposed integrates the development of a novel plug-in over the text mining framework @Note2. In the end, the pipeline developed was validated with a case study on Kluyveromyces lactis, spanning the analysis and results of 20 full text documents.The work was funded by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for ScienceandTechnology)withinprojectref. PTDC/QUI-BIQ/119657/2010 “Finding the naturally evolved design principles of prevalent metabolic circuits”. The authors would like to thank the FCT Strategic Project PEst-OE/EQB/ LA0023/2013 and the Projects “BioInd - Biotechnology and Bioengineering for improved Industrial and Agro-Food processes”, REF. NORTE07-0124-FEDER-000028 and “PEM Metabolic Engineering Platform”, project number 23060, both co-funded by the Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2 ONovoNorte),QREN, FEDER

A text mining approach for the extraction of kinetic information from literature

Systems biology has fostered interest in the use of kinetic models to better understand the dynamic behavior of metabolic networks in a wide variety of conditions. Unfortunately, in most cases, data available in different databases are not sufficient for the development of such models, since a significant part of the relevant information is still scattered in the literature. Thus, it becomes essential to develop specific and powerful text mining tools towards this aim. In this context, this work has as main objective the development of a text mining tool to extract, from scientific literature, kinetic parameters, their respective values and their relations with enzymes and metabolites. The pipeline proposed integrates the development of a novel plug-in over the text mining tool @Note2. Overall, the results validate the developed approach

Low power low voltage quadrature RC oscillators for modern RF receivers

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresThis thesis proposes a study of three different RC oscillators, two relaxation and a ring oscillator. All the circuits are implemented using UMC 130 nm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.2 V. We present a wideband MOS current/voltage controlled quadrature oscillator constituted by two multivibrators. Two different forms of coupling named, soft (traditional)and hard (proposed) are differentiated and investigated. It is found that hard coupling reduces the quadrature error and results in a low phase-noise (about 2 dB improvement) with respect to soft coupling. The behaviour of the singular and coupled multivibrators is investigated, when an external synchronizing harmonic is applied. We introduce a new RC relaxation oscillator with pulse self biasing, to reduce power consumption, and with harmonic ltering and resistor feedback, to reduce phase-noise. The designed circuit has a very low phase-noise, -132.6 dBc/Hz @ 10 MHz offset, and the power consumption is only 1 mW, which leads to a gure of merit (FOM) of -159.1 dBc/Hz. The nal circuit is a two integrator fully implemented in CMOS technology, with low power consumption. The respective layout is made and occupies a total area of5.856x10-3 mm2, post-layout simulation is also done

A contribution to the use of Hopfield neural networks for paramater estimation

This paper presents a contribution to the use of Hopfield neural networks (HNNs) for parameter estimation. Our focus is on time-invariant systems that are linear in the parameters. We introduce a suitable HNN and present a weaker condition than the currently existing ones that guarantees the convergence of the parameterization estimated by the network to the actual parameterization. The application of our results is illustrated in a parameter estimation problem for a two carts system

Modeling and control of a direct drive point absorber for wave energy harvesting

Several devices have been developed to convert the wave energy into electricity and they can be found in different degrees of development. A very interesting group of wave energy converters (WEC) is composed of direct drive systems which are characterized by having a simpler mechanical structure compared to others. For example, in the Archimedes Wave Swing (AWS) and the Uppsala/Seabed AB WEC, the Power Take-Off (PTO) system is composed of a linear permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). Due to the nature of the ocean waves, this electricity presents high variability both in amplitude and in frequency. For this reason, direct drive systems require power electronics to convert this very irregular electricity into a form suitable for the grid connection. This work is focused on the WEC modeling in time-domain and, taking advantage of the electronic converter, on maximizing the captured power