Structural characterization and biological activities of terpenic and phenolic compounds isolated from Euphorbia lagascae and Euphorbia tuckeyana

Tese de doutoramento em Farmácia (Química Farmacêutica), apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa através da Faculdade de Farmácia, 200

Fast Reconstruction and Data Scouting

Data scouting, introduced by CMS in 2011, is the use of specialized data streams based on reduced event content, enabling LHC experiments to record unprecedented numbers of proton-proton collision events that would otherwise be rejected by the usual filters. These streams were created to maintain sensitivity to new light resonances decaying to jets or muons, while requiring minimal online and offline resources, and taking advantage of the fast and accurate online reconstruction algorithms of the high-level trigger. The viability of this technique was demonstrated by CMS in 2012, when 18.8 fb$^{-1}$ of collision data at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV were collected and analyzed. For LHC Run 2, CMS, ATLAS, and LHCb implemented or expanded similar reduced-content data streams, promoting the concept to an essential and flexible discovery tool for the LHC.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures; submitted to proceedings of Connecting the Dots 201

Search for natural Supersymmetry in events with 1 b-tagged jet using razor variables at 8 TeV

We discuss a search for natural Supersymmetry in events with at least one bottom-quark jet using razor variables in proton-proton collisions at 8 TeV with the CMS detector. The event distribution in the plane defined by the razor variables $R^2$ and $M_R$ is studied, searching for a peaking signal on top of a smoothly falling standard model background. The data are consistent with the expected background, modeled by a template function. The 95% C.L. exclusion limit on the masses of the gluino and lightest supersymmetric particle in a benchmark simplified model is presented. For a lightest supersymmetric particle mass of 100 GeV, the pair production of gluinos in a multi-bottom final state is excluded for gluino masses up to 1375 GeV.Comment: LHCP Conference 201

Exchange Rate and Interest Rate Distribution and Volatility under the Portuguese Target Zone

The aim of this study is to analyse the exchange rate and interest rate distribution and volatility under the participation of the Portuguese economy in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS) based on some of the main predictions of the target zone literature. Portugal adopted this exchange rate target zone from April 6 1992 until December 31 1998. During this period, the exchange rate distribution reveals that the majority of the observations lie close to the central parity, thus rejecting one of the key predictions of the Paul Krugman (1991) model. The analysis of the data also shows that exchange rate volatility tended to increase as the exchange rate approached the edges of the band, contrary to the predictions of the basic model. Interest rate differential volatility, on the other hand, seemed to behave in line with theoretical predictions. This suggests an increase in the credibility of monetary policy, allowing us to conclude that the adoption of a target zone has contributed decisively to the creation of the macroeconomic stability conditions necessary for the participation in the European Monetary Union (EMU). The Portuguese integration process should therefore be considered as an example to be followed by other small open economies in transition to the euro area.Exchange rate stability, EMS, Volatility and target zones

The role of smes for development: a literature review "regions and fiscal federalism"

The role played by SMEs in any society is undoubtedly important, for instance, in Portugal around 98% of the industrial fabric is composed by SMEs. Nowadays, entrepreneurship and firm creation is mostly related to small and micro firms, which lead us to look at them as an important development agent in any society. Most of times, firms are seen as a black box on what concerns to development however the measures taken by them, entrepreneurial strategies, and entrepreneurship actions, have influence in the development theatre. At the same, not only the SMEs as a group of firms (industrial sector) must be taken into consideration, but also many factors inside the firm, such as the quality of management, human resources, or innovation factors. This work intends to present the state-of-art on the subjects relating SMEs and development, trying to find out how the SMEs are related to development, which factors are taken into consideration when the role of these firms are analysed, for instance, innovation factors, human resources, or the firm revenues. It is widely accepted that SMEs are an important development agent, but sometimes they are analysed not like an agent by themselves, but as a group of firms creating (the group) another agent. This group might be a cluster, an industrial district or a filière, however it is important to look to the firm by itself. The entrepreneur might take individual actions different from those followed by the group. So the small or micro firm also has an important role for development, the main idea for this work is to find out some important initial literature on SMEs and development, trying to get a perception of the role played, not only on what concerns to enterprises creation, but also on the strategies adopted by these type of enterprises to overcome the bottleneck of regional development. Keywords: Development, SMEs, Entrepreneurship

Exchange Rate Target Zones: A Survey of the Literature

This work selectively reviews the literature on exchange rate target zones and their theoretical and empirical methodologies and examines whether they can be used to clarify to what extent this type of exchange rate regime could contribute to greater exchange rate stability. We discuss the main contributions of the first and second generations of exchange rate target zone models. In an attempt to reconcile the poor empirical performance of the Krugman (1991) model with the reality of exchange rate target zone regimes, this line of research integrates target zones with alternative underlying economic models, such as imperfect credibility, intra-marginal interventions and sticky price models. It was thus possible to understand the correlations observed between the exchange rate, its fundamentals determinants and the interest rate differential, and to explain the fact that the statistical distribution of the exchange rate is hump-shaped rather than U-shaped. This implies that the initial emphasis of target zone models on nonlinearities, “honeymoon effect”, “smooth pasting” and marginal interventions has vanished. Exchange rate target zones are better described as similar to managed floating regimes with intra-marginal interventions, with some marginal interventions when the exchange rate reaches the edges of the floating band.Exchange rate target zones, imperfect credibility, intra-marginal interventions realignments and sticky prices.