daGui: A DataFlow Graphical User Interface

Big Data is a growing trend. It focuses on storing and processing a vast amount of data in a distributed environment. There are many frameworks and tools which can be used to work with this data. Many of them utilise Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) in some way. A DAG is often used for expressing the dataflow of computation as it offers the possibility to optimise the execution, because it contains the overview of the whole computation. This thesis aims to create an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like software, which is user-friendly, interactive and easily extendable. The software enables to draw a DAG which represents the dataflow of a program. The DAG is then transformed into launchable source code. Moreover, the software offers a simple way to execute the generated source code. It compiles the code (if necessary), and launches it based on the user's configuration, either on localhost or cluster. The software primarily aims to help beginners learn these technologies, but experts can also use it as visualisation for their workflow or as a prototyping tool. The software has been implemented using Electron and Web technologies, which ensure its platform independence. Its main features are code generation (i.e. translation of a DAG into source code) and code execution. It is created with extensibility in mind, to be able to plug-in support for more frameworks and tools in the future

Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Governmental

Embora a ciência e a tecnologia influenciem todos os aspetos das sociedades modernas, existe ainda uma enorme lacuna de comunicação entre as comunidades científicas e não-científicas, trazendo um profundo prejuízo ao pleno exercício da cidadania. No caso particular da investigação biomédica, o aumento do investimento e do impacto na sociedade deve ser forçosamente acompanhado por mecanismos eficazes de comunicação de ciência e envolvimento público na investigação. Contribuir para ultrapassar os problemas de comunicação de ciência, um dos grandes desafios em todos os campos científicos, constitui o maior objetivo desta tese. No sentido de superar o hiato existente entre ciência e diferentes públicos, tendo em consideração a elevada importância do esclarecimento e sensibilização face às temáticas científicas, parece-nos crucial o reforço das ligações entre a comunidade científica e a sociedade, e a promoção de uma comunicação mais transparente. Assim, propusemos o desenvolvimento de estratégias criativas de comunicação de ciência, bem como de metodologias de avaliação que permitissem medir a eficácia das iniciativas. Desta forma, no decorrer do trabalho foram exploradas diferentes formas de comunicação de ciência com o envolvimento de investigadores, na área das biociências. O primeiro capítulo contextualiza todo o trabalho desenvolvido, sendo apresentado um estado da arte na área da comunicação de ciência. O segundo capítulo debruça-se em projetos que privilegiam as atividades “mãos-na-massa” , destinadas essencialmente ao público-escolar. Foram aqui desenvolvidos dois projetos distintos de divulgação de ciência e exploradas as perceções dos diferentes públicos e também dos investigadores envolvidos nos processos. No terceiro capítulo é apresentado um projeto que articula a ciência e a arte, através da participação ativa de investigadores na criação artística teatral, assim como a sua avaliação. No quarto capítulo é exposto um projeto de criação de suportes educativos e a avaliação do seu impacto na população. O quinto capítulo é dedicado a projetos de sensibilização da sociedade e angariação de fundos para a investigação biomédica. Foram adotadas metodologias tanto qualitativas como quantitativas nos estudos de avaliação, de forma a obter um conjunto de resultados diversificado que permita uma análise rica dos projetos em causa. No seu conjunto, os resultados desta tese revelam que os diferentes projetos representam contributos no aumento da literacia científica e aproximação entre a ciência e a sociedade. Acreditamos que os dados obtidos na investigação do envolvimento de públicos e investigadores poderão servir de base para o desenvolvimento de projetos de comunicação de ciência mais eficazes.Although science and technology impact every aspect of modern societies, there is still an extensive gap between science and society, which impairs the full exercise of citizenship. In the particular case of biomedical research increased investment should be accompanied by parallel efforts in terms of public information and engagement. Contribute to overcome the problems of science communication and public engagement, one of the great challenges in all scientific fields, is the main goal of this thesis. In order to overcome the gap between science and different audiences, taking into account the high importance of enlightenment and awareness about scientific themes, it seems crucial to strengthen the links between the scientific community and society, and the promotion of a clearer communication. Therefore, we proposed the development of creative strategies of science communication as well as evaluation methodologies that allow measuring the effectiveness of initiatives. Thus, in this work were explored different forms of science communication with the involvement of researchers in the field of life sciences. The first chapter contextualizes all the work in a state of the art in the field of science communication. The second chapter focuses on projects that emphasis "hands-on" activities, intended primarily for the public-school. Here we developed two distinct projects to disseminate science and we explored the perceptions of the different public and also of researchers involved in the processes. The third chapter presents a project that articulates science and art, through the active participation of researchers in the theatrical artistic creation, as well as its evaluation. In the fourth chapter is exposed a project of creation of educational materials and its impact evaluation. The fifth chapter is dedicated to awareness projects and fundraising for biomedical research. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted in the evaluation studies in order to obtain a diverse set of results enabling rich designs analysis concerned. Taken together, the results of this thesis show that the different projects represent contributions in increasing scientific literacy and closer ties between science and society. We believe that the data obtained in the research of public involvement and researchers may provide basis for the development of more effective science communication projects.FCT - SFRH/BD/79648/2011Tese de doutoramento em Biociências, na especialidade de Biologia Celular e Molecular, apresentada ao Departamento de Ciências da Vida da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbr

Social Comparison and Self-Presentation on Social Media as Predictors of Depressive Symptoms

Social media, an online arena for social behaviors such as self-presentation and social comparison, may have effects on users’ mood and mental health. Favorably presenting oneself is linked to positive outcomes such as higher self-esteem, whereas social comparison, in general and specifically upward social comparison to higher-performing others, is related to feelings of inadequacy, envy, and depression. Social comparison may explain the “Facebook depression effect,” acting as a mediator between time spent on social media and depressive symptoms. A correlational study is proposed that will ask 200 participants to report their time spent on various social media sites, self-presentation of themselves and their “friends,” social comparison orientation, and depressive symptoms. Expected findings are that time spent on social media and the degree of others’ perceived self-presentation will each be positively correlated with depression, and these relationships will be mediated by social comparison. This study will demonstrate that people feel depressed when they spend time on social media because they are frequently exposed to the self-enhancing images of others, which provides an opportunity for negative social comparison

Sedimentology of the Sundance Formation, northern Wyoming

The glauconitic sublitharenites and arenaceous biosparites of the upper 20 meters of the Sundance Formation are the deposits of a regressive shoreline that existed in northern Wyoming during the Late Jurassic. This regressive shoreline was characterized by discontinous barrier islands, with associated inter-barrier tidal inlets, back-barrier shoals and sandy tidal flats. In north-central Wyoming, this shoreline trended generally east-west, with the regression progressing from south to north. Within the sublitharenites of the uppermost Sundance Formation, tidal bundles, sigmoidal reactivation surfaces, herringbone cross-lamination and abundant mud drapes are a record of the influence of tidal currents during the deposition of the unit. The neap-spring cyclicity of the tidal bundles implies that they were developed in a diurnal tidal setting. The tidal range along the Late Jurassic shoreline is estimated to have been at least mesotidal (2-4 m) in north-central Wyoming. The lateral migration of inter-barrier tidal inlets along the regressive shoreline caused the sublitharenites and biosparites of the uppermost Sundance Formation to be deposited as tabular, laterally-extensive units. Earlier models, which attach an offshore environment of deposition to these units, do not explain their tabular geometries and conformable stratigraphic relationship with the overlying non-marine sediments of the Morrison Formation;The Late Jurassic seaway was a foreland basin, formed by downbowing of the North American craton in response to the load of the Cordilleran thrust belt. The areal distribution of dark chert clasts (of probably upper Paleozoic derivation) in the fragmental biosparites of the uppermost Sundance Formation suggests that areas of positive relief existed within the Late Jurassic seaway. The proximal, most obvious evidence (e.g., conglomerates overlying an unconformity) of these Late Jurassic structures is only rarely preserved. This proximal evidence exists only where the Jurassic highs have not been overwhelmed by the later development of Laramide structures

Pathways Across the Valley of Death: Novel Intellectual Property Strategies for Accelerated Drug Discovery

Drug discovery is stagnating. Government agencies, industry analysts, and industry scientists have all noted that, despite significant increases in pharmaceutical R&D funding, the production of fundamentally new drugs - particularly drugs that work on new biological pathways and proteins - remains disappointingly low. To some extent, pharmaceutical firms are already embracing the prescription of new, more collaborative R&D organizational models suggested by industry analysts. In this Article, we build on collaborative strategies that firms are already employing by proposing a novel public-private collaboration that would help move upstream academic research across the valley of death that separates upstream research from downstream drug candidates. By exchanging trade secrecy for contract-based collaboration, our proposal would both protect intellectual property rights and enable many more researchers to search for potential drug candidates

Advancing Health and Well-Being in Hospitality: Employers Respond to New Workforce Expectations

Kendall College at National Louis University conducted research between Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 on the status of health and well-being initiatives in hospitality. The research involved in-depth surveys with 27 hotels and 18 restaurants, for a total sample of 45 hospitality businesses located primarily in the Chicago region. In addition, working collaboratively with the national food service research firm, Datassential, a sample of 401 food service providers from across the U.S. was collected. The findings confirmed that poor working conditions have helped drive turnover and that current and prospective employees are seeking healthy, safe and inclusive work environments with reliable, supportive people who take employees’ health and well-being into consideration. In response, employers are attempting to address working conditions in the industry, with increased compensation and health benefits among the most prominent initiatives. Employers are providing greater flexibility in scheduling and touting quality-of-life factors such as paid time off, limited overtime, reduced scheduling/40-hour work weeks, and extended personal/parental leave along with fitness memberships, tuition reimbursement, retirement planning, and discounts on products and services. Mental health initiatives include EAPs and benefits that cover therapy or medication along with yoga/relaxation workshops and areas for employees to de-stress. Few participants had concrete plans to evaluate the impact of these strategies, mainly focusing on observed workplace behavior, retention and turnover data or employee feedback. A sizeable percentage of participants reported having no specific wellness programs and a small number of food service respondents responded negatively to the suggestion of supporting employees\u27 well-being needs. Future research is needed to assess which strategies work best and why to help hospitality managers know where to place their limited resources of time and resources

Study and Application of Silence Model Adaptation for Use in Telephone Speech Recognition System

This paper addresses the problem of the mismatch between a silence model and background noises which often occurs in a telephone speech recognition system (SRS) application. At first, the use of parallel model combination (PMC) methods is studied with the respect to this application. Secondly, the effective adaptation of a silence model to various background noises is confirmed. Finally, an original method combining log-add PMC with a noise power spectral density estimation based on minimum statistics is proposed. The performed tests prove the benefit of the suggested method to the speech recognition results that is caused by the stability of speech vector selection under the influence of various background noises. The advantages can be seen in no extra voice activity detector and in a relatively low computational load