Knowledge management : critical perspectives on e-business activities

This article is both a review and an agenda-setting piece. It argues that knowledge management suffers from conceptual and definitional ambiguity, oversimplification of its development processes, and methodological limitations. Nevertheless, there is a consensus in business and academia that knowledge is a key component of success and allows firms to achieve and sustains competitive advantages. In a digital era, these advantages arise from the potential of data and information that can be gathered, processed, shared, and used to improve e-business activities. Thus, this research bridges the gap in the assessment of knowledge management and e-business relationship, by applying an SEM to a large database sample of KM activities performed by European firms.N/

Physics-Based Image Synthesis for MRI Sequence Standardisation

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a powerful, non-invasive medical imaging modality adept at showcasing soft-tissue contrast and well-suited to imaging most body parts. However, MRI is overwhelmingly used to produce qualitative images whose individual voxel values carry no diagnostic value. Instead, information is primarily derived from analysing the contrast between regions of interest. Challenges persist when it comes to downstream analyses predicated on using images acquired under different conditions. The first is that models are prone to lack generalisability to domains which they were not made privy to during training, and the second is the lack of standardisation when extracting biomarkers, as models typically cannot divorce perceived contrast from the true underlying anatomy. This thesis addresses the generalisability and standardisation problem by designing self-supervised segmentation networks that are cognizant of the physics underpinning the acquisition process. These networks are trained using simulated MR images boasting a wealth of contrasts, thus enabling a breadth of generalisability and granting them the ability to innately account for and standardise MR images, regardless of the sequence parameters used to acquire them. This is followed by iterating over the initial designs, enhancing generalisability and robustness and reducing the pre-processing time by modifying various aspects of the training pipeline. Further, uncertainty modelling is incorporated into the models to allow for additional levels of safety and introspection. Additionally, we demonstrate that despite their simulation-based training, our models generalise to real-world data, and so too does their internal modelling of the interplay between contrast and sequence parameters. Lastly, an unsupervised, heteromodal framework for translating typical qualitative images into quantitative tissue maps is proposed, the first of its kind. The hope is that the work contained herein will benefit the standardisation community and that its concepts will be translated into a greater variety of sequences and body part images

Los jesuitas en América.

Sin resume

Tourism development potential in an insular territory : the case of Ribeira Grande in the Azores

The Autonomous Region of the Azores is one of the most sustainable destinations in the world. Being an archipelago comprised of nine small islands, quality and sustainability are critical features in the tourism sector, inducing the need for thorough and technical strategic development processes. Ribeira Grande is an important municipality in the Azores, which envisioned tourism as a strategic sector to develop when the partial liberalization of the air passenger transport sector occurred in 2015. However, this destination had little tourism maturity and competitiveness and required some structural planning work. The development of a strategic plan for tourism for the municipality of Ribeira Grande, including the selection of tourism products, is explained in detail in this article, which highlights the main challenges and results of the process.N/

Bank performance during the european debt crisis

Mestrado em FinançasO presente trabalho, tem como objetivo principal a análise de performance de 353 bancos, de 17 países da zona euro, para o período de 2005 a 2010. A análise é feita através da aplicação do método do Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) sobre dados financeiros de demonstrações financeiras, e os resultados da mesma sujeitos a uma regressão para determinar possíveis determinantes de performance. Este estudo sugere que a performance foi constante para a amostra selecionada e aponta como principais determinantes da performance o tamanho e a localização dos bancos.The present work analyses the performance of 353 banks, from 17 countries of the euro zone, for the period of 2005 to 2010. The analysis is made through the application of Data Envelopment Analysis method (DEA) upon financial data from financial reports, and the results are then subject to a regression analysis to determine possible efficiency determinants. The results suggest that performance was somewhat constant across the sample firms and points out the main determinants of efficiency being the bank size and location

Satisfação de clientes em centros aquáticos públicos um estudo empírico nas cidades de Bragança e Viseu

A amostra sobre a qual se desenvolve este trabalho foi obtida por conveniência. A amostra global que constitui o estudo é de 318 indivíduos, sendo 179, pertencentes ao distrito de Viseu, onde 44 pertencem ao concelho de Santa Comba dão, 43 ao concelho de Carregal do Sal, 42 ao concelho de Mortágua e 50 ao concelho de Tondela. Os restantes 127, pertencem ao concelho de Bragança, sendo respectivamente, 42 do concelho de Bragança, 15 do concelho. de Macedo, 31 de Mirandela e 39 de Vinhais

Utopia and Resignation: Case Studies of Science Fiction in the Portuguese Society during the Estado Novo

Esta dissertação foca-se no estado da literatura de ficção científica em Portugal durante o Estado Novo e o seu efeito na sociedade. Para tal, começa por abordar o estado geral do país nessa altura e os ideais do seu governo, com foco nos pilares principais do Estado Novo e o seu plano para a sociedade portuguesa. Em seguida, tenta explicar como ocorreu a propagação da ficção científica no país, e como este tipo de conteúdo literário poderia, por um lado, enriquecer os conhecimentos de uma população que era, na altura, uma das mais culturalmente deficientes da Europa, e por outro lado, como poderia ser usado para imaginar um futuro ideal, uma utopia. Por conseguinte, há necessidade de estudar a utopia e a sua significação para definir o futuro, bem como o papel da ficção científica como forma de aprendizagem. Também se torna relevante haver uma definição concreta do que se considera o conhecimento público da ciência. De forma a desenvolver estes temas, esta dissertação centra-se em seguida na análise de duas obras literárias, A.D. 2230, de Amílcar de Mascarenhas, que irá demonstrar como este tipo de literatura podia ser usado para fins propagandísticos, e O Aquário, de Alice Sampaio, que irá demonstrar a face mais crítica da ficção científica, e como, ao analisar e escrever sobre um potencial futuro distante, é possível criticar e ponderar sobre o presente. Estas duas obras também refletem duas noções muito diferentes de utopia, pelo que a conclusão apresenta as considerações finais sobre os verdadeiros efeitos da literatura de ficção científica numa sociedade tão afectada pela censura.This dissertation aims to explore the state of science fiction literature in Portugal during Estado Novo and its potential effect on society. For that, it starts by giving a general overview of the country at the time and its government, referring to the main tenets of Estado Novo and its plan for the Portuguese society. Afterwards, it attempts to explain how the spread of science fiction occurred in the country, and how the content of this type of literature could, on the one hand, enrich the knowledge of a population that was, at the time, one of the most culturally deficient in Europe, and on the other, how it could also be used to imagine a future where everything was ideal, a utopia. Thus, there is a need to define the significance of utopia and its meaning in defining the future, as well as the role of science fiction as a tool for learning. Through this, an understanding of what entails a public understanding of science must also be determined. To achieve this, the theorical basis is complemented by the analysis of two books, A.D. 2230 by Amílcar de Mascarenhas, which will show how this type of literature could be used for propaganda purposes, and O Aquário, by Alice Sampaio, that will show the more critical facet of science fiction, and how, by analysing and writing about a potential distant future, we can very well criticize and ponder about our present. These two books also reflect two very distinct notions of utopia, setting the stage for the conclusion to present some final remarks about the actual effects of science fiction literature in a society so affected by censorship

Analysis of I/O patterns for data management systems

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Informatics EngineeringThe exponential growth of digital information that has been witnessed in recent years requires a continuous evolution and optimization of data management systems, such as databases and storage solutions. In order to provide efficient processing and storage capabilities for large amounts of data, data man agement systems must adopt different optimizations (e.g., caching, replication, data reduction) that in crease their complexity. As a result, developing, configuring and maintaining a data management system becomes increasingly difficult and costly. Tracing and analyzing the interactions and exchanges between components of these systems is funda mental to uncover performance, correctness and dependability issues almost unavoidable in any complex solution. On the other hand, this presents several challenges, such as minimizing the impact on applica tions’ performance and storage space, improving tracing accuracy and achieving real-time analysis, that must be explored. With this thesis, we present a tracing and analysis pipeline capable of capturing and analyzing the I/O patterns of these data-centric systems in order to better understand their behavior, using LTTng as tracing tool. In particular, the proposed solution includes a tracing component that efficiently collects disk and network I/O metrics originated by the target application. This component is the major focus of this thesis and allows for the capture of system calls that the application executes, as well as their arguments, in a non-intrusive and almost real-time way. The rest of the pipeline facilitates the analysis and visualization of captured events through search queries and diagrams, allowing the user to find potential performance and optimization problems. In the end, we demonstrate that the proposed solution allows for the identification of inefficient and redundant I/O patterns in production applications without causing significant impacts on the runtime performance of the application and allowing for near real-time analysis.O crescimento exponencial de dados digitais a que se tem assistido nos últimos anos exige uma evolução e otimização dos sistemas de gestão de dados, como bases de dados e sistemas de armazenamento. De modo a fornecer processamento e armazenamento eficaz de grandes quantidades de dados, os sistemas de gestão de dados devem adotar diferentes otimizações (e.g., caching, replicação, redução de dados) que aumenta a sua complexidade. Desta forma, desenvolver, configurar e manter um sistema de gestão de dados tornam-se cada vez mais tarefas difíceis e dispendiosas. Analisar as interações entre componentes destes sistemas é fundamental para descobrir problemas de desempenho, correção e confiabilidade quase inevitáveis em qualquer solução complexa. Por outro lado, isto apresenta vários desafios, como minimizar o impacto no desempenho das aplicações e no espaço de armazenamento, melhorar a precisão do tracing e alcançar análise em tempo real, que devem ser explorados. Com esta tese, apresentamos uma pipeline de tracing e análise capaz de capturar e analisar padrões I/O destes sistemas com o objetivo de melhor compreender o seu comportamento, utilizando o LTTng como ferramenta de tracing. Em particular, a solução proposta contempla uma componente que coleciona de forma eficaz os pedidos de disco e métricas de E/S de rede originados pela aplicação alvo. Esta componente é o foco principal da tese e permite a captura de todas as chamadas ao sistema operativo que a aplicação execute, bem como os seus argumentos, de forma não intrusiva e quase em tempo real. O resto da pipeline facilita a análise e visualização dos eventos capturados através de interrogações de pesquisa e de diagramas, permitindo ao utilizar encontrar potenciais problemas de desempenho e otimização. No final, demonstramos que a solução proposta permite identificar padrões E/S ineficientes e redundantes em aplicações de produção sem causar impactos significativos na execução normal da aplicação e possibilitando análise quase em tempo real