Knowledge management framework based on brain models and human physiology

The life of humans and most living beings depend on sensation and perception for the best assessment of the surrounding world. Sensorial organs acquire a variety of stimuli that are interpreted and integrated in our brain for immediate use or stored in memory for later recall. Among the reasoning aspects, a person has to decide what to do with available information. Emotions are classifiers of collected information, assigning a personal meaning to objects, events and individuals, making part of our own identity. Emotions play a decisive role in cognitive processes as reasoning, decision and memory by assigning relevance to collected information. The access to pervasive computing devices, empowered by the ability to sense and perceive the world, provides new forms of acquiring and integrating information. But prior to data assessment on its usefulness, systems must capture and ensure that data is properly managed for diverse possible goals. Portable and wearable devices are now able to gather and store information, from the environment and from our body, using cloud based services and Internet connections. Systems limitations in handling sensorial data, compared with our sensorial capabilities constitute an identified problem. Another problem is the lack of interoperability between humans and devices, as they do not properly understand human’s emotional states and human needs. Addressing those problems is a motivation for the present research work. The mission hereby assumed is to include sensorial and physiological data into a Framework that will be able to manage collected data towards human cognitive functions, supported by a new data model. By learning from selected human functional and behavioural models and reasoning over collected data, the Framework aims at providing evaluation on a person’s emotional state, for empowering human centric applications, along with the capability of storing episodic information on a person’s life with physiologic indicators on emotional states to be used by new generation applications

Is contrarian investment producing higher returns for value investors?

This dissertation addresses the complex area of decision-making related to stock valuation. The study will focus on value investing and the contrarian investment approach, investigating whether this strategy provides investors with higher returns. The concept of margin of safety, introduced by Klarman (1991), is also discussed, relating it to defensive investment, such as the importance of identifying undervalued or overvalued stock. Furthermore, this research addresses the role of emotions and irrational investor behaviour in stock price formation and how these factors can create opportunities for investors seeking contrarian investment approaches. The findings suggest that contrary to past literature that advocated for higher returns with a value investment strategy, the observed data during the analysed time period may not be able to confirm the continuity of this trend as previously reported, revealing a diminishing correlation between contrarian investment strategies and investment returns. With the limitations of this study and the small sample used, the sample should be increased for further study to get more robustness to the conclusions. While the study did not confirm the effectiveness of value investing during the analysed period, it is essential to note that these findings are specific to that period. Given the significant shifts in the macroeconomic and market landscape in 2022-2023, the dynamics of value investing may evolve again.Esta dissertação aborda a complexa área de tomada de decisão relacionada à avaliação de ações. O foco do estudo prende-se pela estratégia de investimento em valor e na abordagem contrarian, investigando se proporciona retornos mais elevados aos investidores. O conceito de margem de segurança, introduzido por Klarman (1991), também é discutido, relacionando-o ao investimento defensivo, como a importância de identificar ações subvalorizadas ou sobrevalorizadas. Além disso, este estudo aborda o papel das emoções e do comportamento irracional dos investidores na formação dos preços das ações e como esses fatores podem criar oportunidades para investidores que buscam abordagens contrarian. Os resultados sugerem que, ao contrário da literatura anterior que defendia maiores retornos com a estratégia de investimento em valor, os dados observados durante o período analisado podem não confirmar a continuidade dessa tendência, revelando uma correlação decrescente entre estratégias contrarian de investimento e retornos. Diante das limitações deste estudo e da amostra reduzida utilizada, futuras pesquisas devem considerar o aumento do tamanho da amostra para obter conclusões mais robustas. Além disso, é importante observar que, embora o estudo não tenha confirmado a eficácia do investimento em valor durante o período analisado, esses resultados são específicos para esse período. Dadas as mudanças significativas no cenário macroeconómico e de mercado em 2022-2023, as dinâmicas do investimento em valor podem evoluir de novo

Importance of Entrepreneurship in the Organizational Performance of Higher Education Institutions

The traditional mission of higher education institutions (HEIs) are training, research, and the transfer of knowledge to society. Nowadays, the third mission has been gaining importance, considering the increasing relevance given to the creation of value by HEIs for society. Entrepreneurial activity is one of the components with more impacts that value creation, but it is still seen as an activity parallel to the main missions of HEIs, where training still takes on special importance. At the same time, the general ized movement of analysis of the organizational performance of HEIs, associated to its strategy but es sentially associated with national agencies for accreditations and the rankings, have been direct impacts on its external image and the capacity to obtain students and financing. For the entrepreneurial activity to move from an activity parallel to a prominent activity within HEIs, it must firstly have a strategic framework, but also have measurement mechanisms, based on indicators, that allow to understand the evolution of performance in this area.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Genetic Land - Modeling land use change using evolutionary algorithms

Future land use configurations provide valuable knowledge for policy makers and economic agents, especially under expected environmental changes such as decreasing rainfall or increasing temperatures, or scenarios of policy guidance such as carbon sequestration enforcement. In this paper, modelling land use change is designed as an optimization problem in which landscapes (land uses) are generated through the use of genetic algorithms (GA), according to an objective function (e.g. minimization of soil erosion, or maximization of carbon sequestration), and a set of local restrictions (e.g. soil depth, water availability, or landscape structure). GAs are search and optimization procedures based on the mechanics of natural selection and genetics. The GA starts with a population of random individuals, each corresponding to a particular candidate solution to the problem. The best solutions are propagated; they are mated with each other and originate “offspring solutions” which randomly combine the characteristics of each “parent”. The repeated application of these operations leads to a dynamic system that emulates the evolutionary mechanisms that occur in nature. The fittest individuals survive and propagate their traits to future generations, while unfit individuals have a tendency to die and become extinct (Goldberg, 1989). Applications of GA to land use planning have been experimented (Brookes, 2001, Ducheyne et al, 2001). However, long-term planning with a time-span component has not yet been addressed. GeneticLand, the GA for land use generation, works on a region represented by a bi-dimensional array of cells. For each cell, there is a number of possible land uses (U1, U2, ..., Un). The task of the GA is to search for an optimal assignment of these land uses to the cells, evolving the landscape patterns that are most suitable for satisfying the objective function, for a certain time period (e.g. 50 years in the future). GeneticLand develops under a multi-objective function: (i) Minimization of soil erosion – each solution is validated by applying the USLE, with the best solution being the one that minimizes the landscape soil erosion value; (ii) Maximization of carbon sequestration – each solution is validated by applying atmospheric CO2 carbon uptake estimates, with the best solution being the one that maximizes the landscape carbon uptake; and (iii) Maximization of the landscape economic value – each solution is validated by applying an economic value (derived from expert judgment), with the best solution being the one that maximizes the landscape economic value. As an optimization problem, not all possible land use assignments are feasible. GeneticLand considers two sets of restrictions that must be met: (i) physical constraints (soil type suitability, slope, rainfall-evapotranspiration ratio, and a soil wetness index) and (ii) landscape ecology restrictions at several levels (minimum patch area, land use adjacency index and landscape contagion index). The former assures physical feasibility and the latter the spatial coherence of the landscape. The physical and landscape restrictions were derived from the analysis of past events based on a time series of Landsat images (1985-2003), in order to identify the drivers of land use change and structure. Since the problem has multiple objectives, the GA integrates multi-objective extensions allowing it to evolve a set of non-dominated solutions. An evolutive type algorithm – Evolutive strategy (1+1) – is used, due to the need to accommodate the very large solution space. Current applications have about 1000 decision variables, while the problem analysed by GeneticLand has almost 111000, generated by a landscape with 333*333 discrete pixels. GeneticLand is developed and validated for a Mediterranean type landscape located in southern Portugal. Future climate triggers, such as the increase of intense rainfall episodes, is accommodated to simulate climate change . This paper presents: (1) the formulation of land use modelling as an optimization problem; (2) the formulation of the GA for the explicit spatial domain, (3) the land use constraints derived for a Mediterranean landscape, (4) the results illustrating conflicting objectives, and (5) limitations encountered.

Seismic analysis of masonry monuments by an integrated approach that combines the finite element models with a specific mechanistic model

The paper presents a strategy for the non-linear dynamical analysis of ancient masonry structures through two case studies ("Maniace Castle" in Syracuse, Italy and the Qutb Minar in Delhi, India).(undefined

Seismic assessment of the Qutb Minar in Delhi, India

The present paper describes the seismic assessment of the Qutb Minar in Delhi, India. Three models with different levels of complexity and simplifications were developed. The use of these models allows to overcome the complexity on the study of the seismic behavior of ancient masonry structures; by combining the results of the different models it is possible to obtain a better and more comprehensive interpretation of the seismic behavior. The models were used for non-linear static (pushover) and non-linear dynamic analyses. The static and dynamic analyses give different behaviors, indicating that push-over analysis should be used carefully in the seismic assessment of masonry structures. For the static analysis, the base of the tower is the most vulnerable part; while according to the dynamic analysis, it is the upper part of the tower. This last behavior is according to the historical damage suffered by the tower due to earthquakes. The different behaviors can be explained by the influence of the higher modes of vibration