Social media and tourism : a wishful relationship

For decades hospitality firms were used to domain the communication process. Thematic social network sites such as TripAdvisor became very important tools for travelers when deciding which hotels to book, and what restaurants and tourist attractions to visit, been a visible part of tourism communication evolution. Evidence suggests that e-WOM serves as a primary information source when tourists choose destinations, hotels, and other experiences. The role and use of social media in tourists’ decision making has been widely discuss in tourism and hospitality research, especially in the research phase of the tourist’ travel planning process. With the wide adoption of social media the influence of customers’ word-of-mouth increased and influences not only the research phase, but the repetition and overall customers’ experiences. To answer these questions a model assessing e-wom was developed and data was gathering from TripAdvisor regarding customer’s opinion in restaurant experiences. The results found establish the bases for understanding tourists’ engagement level and profiles.N/

Types for X10 Clocks

X10 is a modern language built from the ground up to handle future parallel systems, from multicore machines to cluster configurations. We take a closer look at a pair of synchronisation mechanisms: finish and clocks. The former waits for the termination of parallel computations, the latter allow multiple concurrent activities to wait for each other at certain points in time. In order to better understand these concepts we study a type system for a stripped down version of X10. The main result assures that well typed programs do not run into the errors identified in the X10 language reference, namely the ClockUseException. The study will open, we hope, doors to a more flexible utilisation of clocks in the X10 language.Comment: In Proceedings PLACES 2010, arXiv:1110.385

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Food Quality in UGC

AbstractUser-generated content diffusion on social networks has triggered an explosive attention in various disciplines. Within tourism activities, social media has growth in the past years rapidly through regular social network sites, or thematic social network sites such as TripAdvisor. The present study aims to provide a deeper insight into this matter, having as starting point the thought that clients posts good or bad reviews, regarding to different aspects of their experience; and, that a client who has a good experience in restaurant tends to revisit it and recommended it to friends, as opposite if the experience was bad they tell this to friend and recommend not visit. To assess customers’ reviews of restaurants, data was gathered on TripAdvisor of Top 10 restaurants in two island context Azores and Hawaii. All the comments were studied carefully and categorized in set of dimensions that measured how the entirety of a meal was perceived: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. As the results showed, food is the most decisive variable adopted in the UGC. Additionally, our findings support the notion that the overall quality of the meal reflects a lot more than flavor or taste of the food. To these elements, we need to add visual effect, freshness of the ingredients, and healthiness of the meal, among others as main contents spread on SNS. Thus, results reinforce the literature relative to the social media and ads to the knowledge of the contents created and shared by tourists relative to restaurant experience as a whole

The Solow residual as a black box : attempts at integrating business cycle and growth theories

The intersection between growth and business cycle theory remains a controversial subject in economics. The question posed by this article is, What role did Robert Solow’s “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function” (1957) play in recent attempts to integrate business cycle and growth theory? We argue that the “Solow residual” was a resource given to multiple uses, at times rhetorical and symbolic, at times instrumental for theory development, at others a social artifact. On the history of models that bring growth and fluctuation into a single frame, we have focused on the uses and meanings of a particularly prominent object: the Solow residual. The significance of Solow’s 1957 work arose from having stabilized a method and result, the residual as reproducible object, a black box. This object was shown to traffic liberally across doctrinal divides in economics. Once on offer, the black box had a life of its own. Its relation to the original context and to the intentions and beliefs of its originator was severed. So while Denison used the residual in ways that were surely faithful to Solow, the new classicals employed it in ways that seemed counter to Solow’s outlook. While the residual had always remained a problematic result in growth accounting, its borrowing by real business cycle theorists sought to establish it as a definitive representation of technology. Furthermore, in these models it was a short-run and stochastic technology, a novel and surprising interpretationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cyclicality of fiscal policy : how do eurozone's fiscal stances change during recessions?

Mestrado em Economia Monetária e FinanceiraThis dissertation presents findings about the cyclicality of fiscal policy in the 19 Eurozone countries during recessions, for the period from 1995 to 2020. A time-varying measure of cyclicality is used to describe both overall and discretionary fiscal policy. The results suggest that during recessions discretionary fiscal policy becomes more pro- cyclical, but overall fiscal policy becomes more counter-cyclical. The results also suggest that the pursuing of a Ricardian fiscal regime by more indebted countries leads to higher counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Atualização Bayesiana da distribuição de trincas em tubos de gerador de vapor

The structural failure of steam generator tubes is a common problem that can a ect the availability and safety of nuclear power plants. To minimize the probability of occurrence of failure, it is needed to implement maintenance strategies such as periodic nondestructive inspections of tubes. Thus, a tube is repaired or plugged whenever it has detected a crack which a threshold size is overtaken. In general, uncertainties and errors in crack sizes are associated with the nondestructive inspections. These uncertainties and errors should be appropriately characterized to estimate the actual crack distribution. This work proposes a Bayesian approach for updating crack distributions, which in turn allows computing the failure probability of steam generator tubes at current and future times. The failure criterion is based on plastic collapse phenomenon, and the failure probability is computed by using the Monte-Carlo simulation. The failure probability at current and future times is in good agreement with the ones presented in the literature.A ruptura de um dos tubos do gerador de vapor é um problema que pode afetar a disponibilidade e segurança das usinas nucleares. Para reduzir ao mínimo a probabilidade da ocorrência desse problema, deve-se implementar uma estratégia de manutenção com inspeções periódicas dos tubos do gerador de vapor, por meio de técnicas não-destrutivas. Com isso, um tubo é reparado ou tamponado sempre quando o tamanho da trinca detectada ultrapassa um valor crítico. Em geral, incertezas na detecção e erros de medição estão associados às técnicas não-destrutivas. Essas incertezas e erros devem ser caracterizados propriamente para se estimar acuradamente a distribuição dos tamanhos de trincas. Neste trabalho, propõe-se aplicar uma abordagem probabilística Bayesiana para atualizar a distribuição dos tamanhos de trinca, e a partir da distribuição obter a probabilidade de falha dos tubos do gerador de vapor em momentos presente e futuro. O critério de falha é baseado no fenômeno do colapso plástico, e a probabilidade de falha é computada através da simulação de Monte-Carlo. Os resultados de probabilidade de falha em momentos presente e futuro estão em boa concordância com valores encontrados na literatura

Discovery of infection biomarkers based on metabolomics

Thesis to obtain the Master’s degree in Biomedical EngineeringEnquadramento e objetivos: Pacientes críticos de COVID-19 são regularmente admitidos nos cuidados intensivos com diversas complicações, necessitando de tratamentos mais invasivos. Para além disso, os pacientes estão expostos a uma ameaça iminente de infeções durante a sua estadia hospitalar. Estas infeções podem levar ao agravamento do estado de saúde do paciente, e tendo em conta o estado atual do paciente COVID-19 critico, pode ser fatal caso não seja devidamente identificada a presença de infeção e iniciado o tratamento mais adequado. Nesta tese, o foco foi dividido em dois objetivos: determinar uma metodologia capaz de identificar mais rapidamente um estado ativo de bacteremia no paciente COVID-19 critico; e identificar a tipologia de Gram da bactéria que originou a bacteremia. Métodos: Recorrendo-se ao método do espectrometria de FTIR, e testes Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) e Linear Discriminant analysis (PCA-LDA), para realizar analise discriminante de uma amostra com objetivo de testar o método mais eficaz na discriminação entre pacientes com bacteremia (n=48) e pacientes sem bacteremia (n=54), e entre amostras com bactéria Gram-positiva (n=28) e bactéria Gram-negativa (n=20). Resultados: Através dos testes PCA e HCA não foi possível obter uma discriminação fidedigna nem entre amostras com e sem bacteremia, nem entre bactérias Gram-positivas e Gram-Negativas. A vasta variabilidade associada a amostras biológicas pode justificar este resultado. PCA-LDA, possibilitou resultados de 75% de eficácia na discriminação entre amostras de bacteremia e sem bacteremia, e uma eficácia de 85% na discriminação entre amostras com bactérias Gram-positivas e bactérias Gram-negativas. Conclusão: Os resultados apontam para a possibilidade da utilização da análise de espetro de espetrometria FTIR como um método apelador para o diagnóstico de bacteremia e classificação do tipo de bactéria, de uma forma simples e rápida, permitindo uma gestão mais eficiente deste tipo de pacientes críticos.N/