Do acesso aos dados de telecomunicações e internet pelos serviços de informações portugueses

The Information System of the Portuguese Republic (SIRP) is inserted in public administration, being composed by Strategic Information Service of Defence (SIED) and the Security Information Service (SIS). These Intelligence Services are responsible for producing information necessary that may assist in prevent threats to the internal and external security of the Portuguese State, among other tasks. Until the recent creation of Organic Law 4/2017, of 25th August, access to telecommunications and Internet data was a prohibited means of operation of the Portuguese Intelligence Services, in an interconnected World in which a threat to the democratic State may arise both within as from the outside. The search for parity with most of the similar services in the use of this technical resource for intelligence relevant to the defence and security of the State, guaranteeing a fluent cooperation, as well as its magnitude in the pursuit of the associated roles, must be accompanied by strict control and oversight mechanisms willing to balance rights, freedoms and guarantees involved. In this dissertation we discuss the legislative progress achieved by the Portuguese Intelligence Services to access telecommunications and Internet data in the pursuit of their honourable mission, also analysing the impact of Judgement No. 403/2015 of the Constitutional Court. We aim to present the significance of the data under analysis and their relevance in the pursuit of the SIRP activity, as well as to briefly discuss the legal provisions related to this intelligence resource by foreign intelligence services. We also discuss the historical evolution of the SIRP and its governing principles of action in a freedom and security context. In addition to verifying the mechanisms of oversight and control of the SIRP, we inquire about the pertinence of the suitability of this legislative progress for the intended of purposes that it applies.O Sistema de Informações da República Portuguesa (SIRP) é um órgão inserido na Administração Pública, sendo constituído pelo Serviço de Informações Estratégicas de Defesa (SIED) e pelo Serviço Informações de Segurança (SIS). Estes Serviços de Informações estão incumbidos da produção de informações necessárias à prevenção das ameaças à segurança interna e externa do Estado Português, entre outras tarefas. Até à criação recente da Lei Orgânica n.º 4/2017, de 25 de agosto, o acesso aos dados de telecomunicações e Internet constituía um meio de atuação vedado aos Serviços de Informações portugueses, num Mundo interconectado em que uma ameaça ao Estado democrático pode surgir tanto no seu interior como a partir do exterior. A busca de paridade com a maioria dos serviços congéneres na utilização deste meio técnico para a produção de informações relevantes à defesa e segurança do Estado, de forma a garantir uma cooperação fluente e atendendo à sua importância na prossecução das adstritas competências do SIS e do SIED, devem ser acompanhadas de mecanismos de controlo e fiscalização que permitam salvaguardar equilibradamente os direitos, liberdades e garantias envolvidas. Nesta dissertação discorremos sobre o progresso legislativo alcançado pela possibilidade dada aos Serviços de Informações Portugueses de acederem aos dados de telecomunicações e Internet na prossecução da sua honrosa missão, analisando igualmente o impacto do Acórdão n.º 403/2015 do Tribunal Constitucional. Visamos apresentar a significação dos dados em análise e a sua pertinência na prossecução da atividade do SIRP, bem como discorrer brevemente acerca das disposições legais comparativas com este meio de produção de informações ao dispor serviços de informações estrangeiros. Discorremos ainda sobre a evolução histórica do SIRP e os seus princípios regentes de atuação num contexto de liberdade e segurança. Por último, para além de verificarmos os mecanismos de fiscalização e controlo do SIRP, indagamos acerca da pertinência da adequação deste meio às finalidades a que se propõe

Operating systems for Internet of Things low-end devices: analysis and benchmarking

In the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of wirelessly connected embedded devices rapidly became part of our daily lives. As a key tool for each Internet-enabled object, embedded operating systems (OSes) provide a set of services and abstractions which eases the development and speedups the deployment of IoT solutions at scale. This article starts by discussing the requirements of an IoT-enabled OS, taking into consideration the major concerns when developing solutions at the network edge, followed by a deep comparative analysis and benchmarking on Contiki-NG, RIOT, and Zephyr. Such OSes were considered as the best representative of their class considering the main key-points that best define an OS for resource-constrained IoT devices: low-power consumption, real-time capabilities, security awareness, interoperability, and connectivity. While evaluating each OS under different network conditions, the gathered results revealed distinct behaviors for each OS feature, mainly due to differences in kernel and network stack implementations.This work has been supported by national funds through FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019

Produção e caracterização de briquetes a partir de resíduos sólidos e prensagem semi-manual

No semiárido brasileiro, a pressão sobre a vegetação nativa devido a demanda energética local é um problema agravado pela lenta regeneração natural em áreas de caatinga. Este trabalho teve como objetivo buscar uma alternativa energética à exploração massiva dos recursos florestais voltada para população de baixa renda. Foram produzidos briquetes feitos de nove diferentes combinações de cinco tipos de resíduos sólidos: resíduos da madeira de Maçaranduba (Manilkara sp), coletados em marcenarias; finos de carvão, resíduo da produção de carvão vegetal; e três tipos de resíduos urbanos lignocelulósico (papel para impressão, papelão e papel jornal). Os briquetes forma prensados em equipamento de baixa pressão. Para a caracterização, foram analisadas as propriedades físicas, a química imediata, o índice de combustão e o poder calorífico. Os nove tratamentos caracterizados se mostraram potenciais geradores de energia. Briquetes produzidos com a mistura de finos de carvão e serragem, aglomerados com papelão ou papel jornal, apresentaram maiores valores médios de poder calorífico e de índices de combustão adequados para uso como fonte de energia

a clinical and molecular study

Funding This work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (FCT/MCTES, Portugal) through national funds to iNOVA4Health (UIDB/04462/2020 and UIDP/04462/2020) and the Associated Laboratory LS4FUTURE (LA/P/0087/ 2020), by Associação de Endocrinologia Oncológica (AEO), and by Instituto Português de Oncologia de Lisboa Francisco Gentil (IPOLFG). Carolina Pires was granted with a PhD scholarship by FCT - 2020.07120.BD. Ricardo Rodrigues was granted with a PhD scholarship by iNOVA4Health Research Unit - UIDP/04462/2020; UI/BD/ 154256/2022.OBJECTIVES: Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) has a poor survival. The combination of Dabrafenib plus Trametinib (DT) had a significant impact in survival of BRAF p.V600E patients. However, durable responses may be compromised by resistance. We aim to present our experience with DT in BRAF positive ATC patients and compare the outcomes with usual therapy, and to study tumor molecular alterations in the DT group. METHODS: Patients treated between May 2018 and April 2022 in a tertiary referral center, assessed for BRAF status were included. Patients were divided in three groups: BRAF p.V600E treated with DT, BRAF wild type (WT) under multimodal therapy (MT), and BRAF WT under compassionate care (CC). Response was assessed monthly in the first 6 months and every 3 months afterwards, by RECIST 1.1. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were estimated with the Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the log-rank test. RESULTS: Twenty-seven ATC patients were included (DT = 9, MT = 8, and CC = 10). Median OS was 475 days for DT, 156 days for MT, and 39 days for CC (P < .001). At 12 months, only patients in the DT group were alive (71%). Median PFS was 270 days, in the DT group, compared with less than 32 days in BRAF WT (P < .001). No severe adverse events were reported. Molecular profiling showed that in one of the four clinical progressions, a pathogenic NRAS mutation was found. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show a significant real-world efficacy of Dabrafenib plus Trametinib in both survival and recurrence compared with standard treatment, with a good safety profile.publishersversionpublishe

A hybrid bi-objective optimization approach for joint determination of safety stock and safety time buffers in multi-item single-stage industrial supply chains

In material requirements planning (MRP) systems, safety stock and safety time are two well-known inventory buffering strategies to protect against supply and demand uncertainties. While the role of safety stocks in coping with uncertainty is well studied, safety time has received only scarce attention in the supply chain management literature. Particularly, most previous operations research models have typically considered the use of such inventory buffers in a separate fashion, but not together. Here, we propose a decision support system (DSS) to address the problem of integrating optimal safety stock and safety time decisions at the component level, in multi-supplier multi-item single-stage industrial supply chains under dynamic demands and stochastic lead times. The DSS is based on a hybrid bi-objective optimization approach that simultaneously optimizes upstream inventory holding costs and β-service levels, suggesting multiple non-dominated Pareto-optimal solutions to decision-makers. We further explore a weighted closed-form analytical expression to select a single Pareto-optimal point from a set of non-dominated solutions, thereby enhancing the practical application of the proposed DSS. We describe the implementation of our approach in a major automotive electronics company operating under a myriad of components with dynamic demand, uncertain supply and requirements plans with different degrees of sparsity. We show the potential of our approach to improve β-service levels while minimizing inventory-related costs. The results suggest that, in certain cases, it appears to be more cost-effective to combine safety stock with safety time compared to considering each inventory buffer independently.This work has been supported by the European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Pro-gram (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 39479, Funding reference: POCI-01–0247-FEDER-39479]

Optically-Boosted Planar IBC Solar Cells with Electrically-Harmless Photonic Nanocoatings

Funding Information: This work received funding from the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, I.P.) under the projects LA/P/0037/2020, UIDP/50025/2020 and UIDB/50025/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute of Nanostructures, Nanomodeling, and Nanofabrication—i3N, and by the projects TACIT (PTDC/NAN‐OPT/28837/2017) and FlexSolar (PTDC/CTM‐REF/1008/2020). The authors also acknowledge the support of the H2020 Solar‐ERANET program, which funded the development of the IBC cells within the framework of the BOBTANDEM project. The work was also funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the project Synergy (H2020‐Widespread‐2020‐5, CSA), proposal n° 952169. M.A. and J.B. acknowledge funding by FCT‐MCTES through the grants SFRH/BD/148078/2019 and BD/14557/2022, respectively. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Advanced Optical Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.Advanced light management via front-coated photonic nanostructures is a promising strategy to enhance photovoltaic (PV) efficiency through wave-optical light-trapping (LT) effects, avoiding the conventional texturing processes that induce the degradation of electrical performance due to increased carrier recombination. Titanium dioxide (TiO2) honeycomb arrays with different geometry are engineered through a highly-scalable colloidal lithography method on flat crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers and tested on standard planar c-Si interdigitated back-contact solar cells (pIBCSCs). The photonic-structured wafers achieve an optical photocurrent of 36.6 mA cm−2, mainly due to a broad anti-reflection effect from the 693 nm thick nanostructured coatings. In contrast, the pIBCSC test devices reach 14% efficiency with 679 nm thick TiO2 nanostructures, corresponding to a ≈30% efficiency gain relative to uncoated pIBCSCs. In addition, several designed structures show unmatched angular acceptance enhancements in efficiency (up to 63% gain) and photocurrent density (up to 68% gain). The high-performing (yet electrically harmless) LT scheme, here presented, entails an up-and-coming alternative to conventional texturing for c-Si technological improvement that can be straightforwardly integrated into the established PV industry.publishersversionpublishe

Anatomy Teaching at the School of Health Sciences of University of Minho

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Combination of a Gellan Gum-Based Hydrogel With Cell Therapy for the Treatment of Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Cervical spinal cord trauma represents more than half of the spinal cord injury (SCI) cases worldwide. Respiratory compromise, as well as severe limb motor deficits, are among the main consequences of cervical lesions. In the present work, a Gellan Gum (GG)-based hydrogel modified with GRGDS peptide, together with adipose tissue-derived stem/stromal cells (ASCs) and olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), was used as a therapeutic strategy after a C2 hemisection SCI in rats. Hydrogel or cells alone, and a group without treatment, were also tested. Four weeks after injury, compound muscle action potentials (CMAPs) were performed to assess functional phrenic motor neuron (PhMN) innervation of the diaphragm; no differences were observed amongst groups, confirming that the PhMN pool located between C3 and C5 was not affected by the C2 injury or by the treatments. In the same line, the vast majority of diaphragmatic neuromuscular junctions remained intact. Five weeks post-injury, inspiratory bursting of the affected ipsilateral hemidiaphragm was evaluated through EMG recordings of dorsal, medial and ventral subregions of the muscle. All treatments significantly increased EMG amplitude at the ventral portion in comparison to untreated animals, but only the combinatorial group presented increased EMG amplitude at the medial portion of the hemidiaphragm. No differences were observed in forelimb motor function, neither in markers for axonal regrowth (neuronal tracers), astrogliosis (GFAP) and inflammatory cells (CD68). Moreover, using Von Frey testing of mechanical allodynia, it was possible to find a significant effect of the group combining hydrogel and cells on hypersensitivity; rats with a SCI displayed an increased response of the contralateral forelimb to a normally innocuous mechanical stimulus, but after treatment with the combinatorial therapy this behavior was reverted almost to the levels of uninjured controls. These results suggest that our therapeutic approach may have beneficial effects on both diaphragmatic recovery and sensory function

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio