Cognitive task automation may lead to over trust, complacency and loss of the necessary work environment situation awareness. This is a major constraint in complex work organizations teamwork, ending up into an operational gap, between system developments and its understanding and usability, by operators. This document presents a summary of the main results of author’s research on operational decision processes and occupational competences, applied to the air traffic control operational reality. Introducing a human/technological complementary approach to virtual team’s conceptualisation, the results show there is a dimension to be followed in human/machine integration, which stands beyond interface design, and calls for a deeper human comprehension of technological agent’s structure and functionalities, which will, ultimately, require the development of an operational cognitive framework, where work processes and technological behaviour are integrated in professional competences, as he two faces of the same coin.

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

n/a

No abstract is available for this item.

The WORKS Project started two years ago (2005), involving the efforts of research institutes of 13 European countries with the main purpose of improving the understanding of the major changes in work in the knowledge-based society, taking account both of global forces and the regional diversity within Europe. This research meeting in Sofia (Bulgaria) aimed to present synthetically the massive amount of data collected in the case studies (occupational and organisational) and with the quantitative research during last year.

In this working paper is presented information on the Portuguese labour market developed with the support of the European project WORKS-“Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society”. Is still a on the process article and thus commentaries are welcome. The structure is based on the following topics: a) The employment policy (Time regimes - time use, flexibility, part-time work, work-life balance -, and the work contracts regimes – wages, contract types, diversity); b) Education and training (skilling outcomes, rules on retraining and further training, employability schemes, transferability of skills); c) Equal opportunities (relevance of equal opportunity regulation for restructuring outcomes, the role of gender and age regulation); d) Restructuring effects (policy on transfer of personnel, policy on redundancies, and participation or voice in restructuring).

In this paper, a research project intituled {“Supply} chain management: design for resilient systems” is presented. The project aim is to develop a Management Support System prototype to help managers to react quickly and efficiently to the effects of disruptions that can occur in supply chain. The research project is presented; including the current state of the art in Supply Chain disruptions, the research project objectives and main tasks. Preliminary research findings are presented and discussed.

n/a

Some programs and research networks are dealing with topics associated to the automtive sector and they observe one of the most significative sectores of modern economies. Because of that is so interesting to forecast some possible changes in an horizon of 10 to 20 years. But this exercse must not be centred only on technical aspects of automobile construction, or on the design, or even on the mobility systems. How one can face these problems, and how it can be so decisivelly important, is what we will try to answer in this paper that resumes some of the debates on the foresight exercises in Germany (Futur) and on the automotive sector in Portugal (WorTiS).

Some of the phenomena where the “globalization” concept is applied include the internationalization of markets, globalization of culture, polítical hegemony of world by some states, or groups of states, the increasing power of supranational institutions, and the development of a global division of labour. A starting point to understand the global division of work is the study of how companies are re-structuring, once they are the key-actors in the decision on which work should be found and where. The “value chains” describe each step in the productive process of a final product or service. Separated units of value chains can be in the same company (in-house) or in different companies (outsourced). Similarly they can be in a same local, or in other location. Normalization of business processes, combined with digitalization of information and the development of telecommunication networks made possible the tele-mediated work. This paper presents results from the European WORKS project, where are studied Portuguese cases of firms that integrate globalized value chain, and are analized the implications on work organization models and the (new) professional structures.

Nesta comunicação em que se discutem, numa perspectiva de complementaridade, os conceitos de qualificação e de competência profissional, dá-se conta da metodologia adoptada para a identificação e validação de um conjunto de competências profissionais num sistema complexo de trabalho. O estudo incidiu sobre os Serviços de Controlo de Tráfego Aéreo da Região de Informação de Voo de Lisboa e permitiu concluir pela existência de uma dimensão integrativa das componentes trabalho e tecnologia, enquanto elementos estruturantes dos mapas de competências profissionais, indispensáveis à integração sistémica dos diferentes agentes (humanos e tecnológicos) no processo produtivo.

This work reports the direct electrochemistry of Paracoccus pantotrophus pseudoazurin and the mediated catalysis of cytochrome c peroxidase from the same organism. The voltammetric behaviour was examined at a gold membrane electrode, and the studies were performed in the presence of calcium to enable the peroxidase activation. A formal reduction potential, E (0)', of 230 +/- 5 mV was determined for pseudoazurin at pH 7.0. Its voltammetric signal presented a pH dependence, defined by pK values of 6.5 and 10.5 in the oxidised state and 7.2 in the reduced state, and was constant up to 1 M NaCl. This small copper protein was shown to be competent as an electron donor to cytochrome c peroxidase and the kinetics of intermolecular electron transfer was analysed. A second-order rate constant of 1.4 +/- 0.2 x 10(5) M(-1) s(-1) was determined at 0 M NaCl. This parameter has a maximum at 0.3 M NaCl and is pH-independent between pH 5 and 9.

n/a

Reactive oxygen species (ROS), when in excess, are among the most deleterious species an organism can deal with. The physiological effects of ROS include amino acid chain cleavage, DNA degradation and lipid oxidation, among others. They can be formed in the cytoplasm in a variety of ways, including autooxidation reactions (FMN- and FAD-containing enzymes) and Fenton reactions as a result of the cytoplasmatic pool of iron ions. The superoxide anion (021, despite its short half-life in solution, is particularly pernicious as it can form other reactive ROS (such as the strong oxidant peroxynitrite) or oxidize and/or reduce cellular components. For strict anaerobic or microaerophilic bacteria it is of particular importance to be able to dispose of ROS in a controlled manner, especially if these organisms are temporarily exposed to air. This review aims to describe the structural characteristics of superoxide reductases (SORs) and mechanistic aspects of biological superoxide anion reduction. SORs can be considered the main class of enzymes behind the oxygen detoxification pathway of anaerobic and microaerophilic bacteria. The geometry of the active site (three classes have been described), the possible electron donors in vivo and the current hypothesis for the catalytic mechanism will be discussed. Some phylogenetic considerations are presented, regarding the primary structure of SORs currently available in genome databases. ((c) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH {&} Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2007).

n/a

Sulphate-reducing bacteria have a wide variety of periplasmic cytochromes involved in electron transfer from the periplasm to the cytoplasm. HmcA is a high molecular mass cytochrome of 550 amino acid residues that harbours 16 c-type heme groups. We report the crystal structure of HmcA isolated from the periplasm of Desulfovibrio gigas. Crystals were grown. using polyethylene glycol 8K and zinc acetate, and diffracted beyond 2.1 angstrom resolution. A multiple-wavelength anomalous dispersion experiment at the iron absorption edge enabled us to obtain good-quality phases for structure solution and model building. DgHmcA has a V-shape architecture, already observed in HmcA isolated from Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough. The presence of an oligosaccharide molecule covalently bound to an Asn residue was observed in the electron density maps of DgHmcA and confirmed by mass spectrometry. Three modified monosaccharides appear at the highly hydrophobic vertex, possibly acting as an anchor of the protein to the cytoplasmic membrane. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

n/a

We report the 98% assignment of the apo-form of an orange protein, containing a novel Mo-Cu cluster isolated from Desulfovibrio gigas. This protein presents a region where backbone amide protons exchange fast with bulk solvent becoming undetectable. These residues were assigned using 13C-detection experiments.

n/a