The Late Triassic (Norian) outcrops of the Malmros Klint Formation, Jameson Land (Greenland) have yielded numerous specimens of non-sauropod sauropodomorphs. Relevant fossils were briefly reported in 1994 and were assigned to Plateosaurus trossingensis. However, continuous new findings of early non-sauropod sauropodomorphs around the globe facilitate comparisons and allow us to now revise this material. Here, the non-sauropod sauropodomorph Issi saaneq gen. et sp. nov. is described based on two almost complete and articulated skulls. The two skulls represent a middle-stage juvenile and a late-stage juvenile or subadult. Issi saaneq differs from all other sauropodomorphs by several unique traits: (1) a small foramen at the medial surface of the premaxilla; (2) an anteroposteriorly elongated dorsoposterior process of the squamosal; (3) a relatively high quadrate relative to rostrum height; (4) a well-developed posterodorsal process of the articular. These features cannot be explained by taphonomy, ontogeny, or intraspecific variation. Issi saaneq shows affinities to Brazilian plateosaurids and the European Plateosaurus, being recovered as the sister clade of the latter in our phylogenetic analysis. It is the northernmost record of a Late Triassic sauropodomorph, and a new dinosaur species erected for Greenland. Issi saaneq broadens our knowledge about the evolution of plateosaurid sauropodomorphs.

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A new plesiosaur partial skeleton, comprising most of the trunk and including axial, limb, and girdle bones, was collected in the lower Sinemurian (Coimbra Formation) of Praia da Concha, near São Pedro de Moel in central west Portugal. The specimen represents a new genus and species, Plesiopharos moelensis gen. et sp. nov. Phylogenetic analysis places this taxon at the base of Plesiosauroidea. Its position is based on this exclusive combination of characters: presence of a straight preaxial margin of the radius; transverse processes of mid-dorsal vertebrae horizontally oriented; ilium with sub-circular cross section of the shaft and subequal anteroposterior expansion of the dorsal blade; straight proximal end of the humerus; and ventral surface of the humerus with an anteroposteriorly long shallow groove between the epipodial facets. In addition, the new taxon has the following autapomorphies: iliac blade with less expanded, rounded and convex anterior flank; highly developed ischial facet of the ilium; apex of the neural spine of the first pectoral vertebra inclined posterodorsally with a small rounded tip. This taxon represents the most complete and the oldest plesiosaur species in the Iberian Peninsula. It is also the most complete, best preserved, and oldest marine vertebrate in the region and testifies to the incursion of marine reptiles in the newly formed proto-Atlantic sea, prior to the Atlantic Ocean floor spreading in the Early Cretaceous.

The Kap Stewart Group (Rhaetian-Sinemurian, Triassic–Early Jurassic) of the Jameson Land Basin in central East Greenland has traditionally been regarded as a strictly continental unit with delta and perennial lake sediments. New finds of plesiosaur bone remain in a thin storm deposited sandstone bed in the middle part of the Rhætelv Formation of the Kap Stewart Group, however, indicates a likely period of marine influence. At the study area at the eastern margin of the basin, the Rhætelv Formation is 300-m thick and overlies unconformably the Norian Fleming Fjord Group. The bone-bearing sandstone occurs 190 m above the base of the group and is closely associated with black laminated mudstones; palynological investigation of three samples from these mudstones indicates that they are of a younger Hettangian age. The Hettangian was a relatively short stage (201.3–199.5 Ma) and elsewhere characterized by two episodes of sea-level highstands. Assuming that the marine incursion in the Jameson land Basin evidenced by the plesiosaur fossil remains took place during the youngest of these sea-level highstands, the bone-bearing bed of the Rhætelv Formation can be dated to 200 Ma and thereby gives the first numerical age constraint of this hitherto poorly dated succession.

We propose a stochastic algorithm for global optimisation of a regular function, possibly unbounded, defined on a bounded set with regular boundary; a function that attains its extremum in the boundary of its domain of definition. The algorithm is determined by a diffusion process that is associated with the function by means of a strictly elliptic operator that ensures an adequate maximum principle. In order to preclude the algorithm to be trapped in a local extremum, we add a pure random search step to the algorithm. We show that an adequate procedure of parallelisation of the algorithm can increase the rate of convergence, thus superseding the main drawback of the addition of the pure random search step.

We propose and study a simple model for microcredit using two sums, with a random number of terms, of identically distributed random variables, the number of terms being Poisson distributed; the first sum accounts for the payments { the payables{ made to the collective vault by the participants and the second sum, subtracted to the first, accounts for the loans received by the participants, the receivables.
Under a global independence hypothesis we define, by mean of moment generating functions, an easily
implementable condition for the sustainability of the collective vault. That is, if, for all the participants and at any time, on average, the sum of the loans is strictly less than the sum of the payments to the collective vault then the probability of the collective vault failing can be made arbitrarily small, provided the loans only start to be accepted after a sufficiently large delay. We present numerical illustrations of collective vaults for exponential and chi-squared distributed random terms. For the practical management of such a collective vault it may be advisable to have loan granting rules that destroy independence of the random terms. We present a first simulation study that shows the effect of such a breaking dependence loan granting rule on maintaining the stability of the collective vault.

We formulate an optimization stochastic algorithm convergence theorem, of Solis and Wets type, and we show several instances of its application to concrete algorithms. In this convergence theorem the algorithm is a sequence of random variables and, in order to describe the increasing flow of information associated to this sequence we define a filtration – or flow of σ -algebras – on the probability space, depending on the sequence of random variables and on the function being optimized. We compare the flow of information of two convergent algorithms by comparing the associated filtrations by means of the Cotter distance of σ-algebras. The main result is that two convergent optimization algorithms have the same information content if both their limit minimization functions generate the full σ-algebra of the probability space.

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Studying the dynamics of deposits is important for three reasons: first, it serves as an important component of liquidity stress testing; second, it is crucial to asset-liability management exercises and the allocation between liquid and illiquid assets; third, it is the support for a liquidity at risk (LaR) methodology.

Current models are based on AR(1) processes that often underestimate liquidity risk. Thus a bank relying on those models may face failure in an event of crisis. We propose a novel approach for modeling deposits, using panel data and a momentum term.

The model enables the simulation of a variety of deposit trajectories, including episodes of financial distress, showing much higher drawdowns and realistic liquidity at risk estimates, as well as density plots that present a wide range of possible values, corresponding to booms and financial crises.

Therefore, this methodology is more suitable for liquidity management at banks, as well as for conducting liquidity stress tests.

A large, well-preserved vertebrate coprolite was found in a lacustrine sediment in the Malmros Klint Formation of the Late Triassic Fleming Fjord Group in the Jameson Land Basin, central East Greenland. The size and internal and external morphology of the coprolite is consistent with that of crocodilian coprolites and one end of the coprolite exhibits evidence of post-egestion trampling. As the associated vertebrate fauna of the Fleming Fjord Group contains abundant remains of pseudosuchian phytosaurs, the coprolite is interpreted as being from a large phytosaur.

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Portugal has been referred as one example of lower levels of integration of social partners in the governance of education and training systems (Sanz de Miguel, 2017). There is lack of research about the effectiveness of the governance of the only program close to the Dual VET concept: the Apprenticeship system. A pilot project of Dual VET ran from 2012 and terminated in 2016 without substantial evaluation. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the role social partners have in the governance of the existing Portuguese Apprenticeship system. We carried out extensive review of the scientific and grey literature about Dual VET for youngsters in Portugal, as well as database queries to official statistical sources. Our research reveals a complex formal role: The employment agency IEFP provides funding for Apprenticeship and negotiates with the main social partners the allocation of the Single Social Tax for its regional centres. Indirectly, many social partners are formally involved in the general VET governance participating in various coordination and monitoring structures of the National System of Qualifications and other regulatory agencies (IEFP and ANQEP). In this article we also discuss possible causes for the failure of the pilot Dual VET, which took effect within the scope of a curricular review of the primary and secondary education.

Since the 1970s, the application of microprocessor in industrial machinery and the development of computer systems have transformed the manufacturing landscape. The rapid integration and automation of production systems have outpaced the development of suitable human design criteria, creating a deepening gap between humans and systems in which human was seen as an important source of errors and disruptions. Today, the situation seems different: the scientific and public debate about the concept of Industry 4.0 has raised awareness about the central role humans have to play in manufacturing systems, the design of which must be considered from the very beginning. The future of industrial systems, as represented by Industry 4.0, will rely on the convergence of several research fields such as Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), but also socio-technical fields such as social approaches within technical systems. This article deals with different human social dimensions associated with CPS and IoT and focuses on their conceptual evolution regarding automated production systems’ sociability, notably by bringing humans back in the loop. Hereby, this paper aims to take stock of current research trends to show the importance of integrating human operators as a part of a socio-technical system based autonomous and intelligent products or resources. Consequently, different models of sociability as a way to integrate humans in the broad sense and/or the develop future automated production systems have been identified from the literature and analysed.

Regime switching diffusion processes with one or two thresholds and regime switching occurring by a change in the diffusion drift and/or volatility functions parameters of a stochastic differential equation, whose solution defines a continuous time diffusion process, were defined in previous works; the change in regime occurring whenever the trajectory of the process crosses a threshold, possibly with some delay. In this paper we generalise the previous
results by allowing the underlying diffusion process to change from one family of diffusions in one regime to an entirely different one in the other regime; these families of diffusions are characterised by specific functional forms for drift and volatility coefficients depending on parameters. We propose an estimation procedure for all the parameters, namely the thresholds, the delay and, for both regimes, diffusion’s parameters and we apply the introduced estimation procedure to both simulated and real data.

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Due to the innovative possibilities of digital technologies, the issue of increasing automation is once again on the agenda – and not only in the industry, but also in other branches and sectors of contemporary societies. Although public and scientific discussions about automation seem to raise relevant questions of the “old” debate, such as the replacement of human labor by introducing new technologies, the authors focus here on the new contextual quality of these questions. The debate should rethink the relationship between technology and work with regard to quantitative and qualitative changes in work. In this article, our example will be the introduction of automation in industry, which has been reflected in the widely recognized study by Frey and Osborne in 2013. They estimated the expected impacts of future computerization on US labor market outcomes as very high, specifically regarding the number of jobs at risk. Surprisingly, this study was the starting point of an intensive international debate on the impact of technologies on the future of work and the role of technological change in working environments. Thus, according to the authors, “old” questions remain important, but they should be reinterpreted for “new” societal demands and expectations of future models of work.

This paper intended to provide a vision on the potential consequences of the introduction of emerging air transportation system which was based on a section of the thesis to contribute to the forming of public and policy opinion.Especially this paper tried to understand whether there were enough positive social and environmental impacts in terms of potential benefits to continue the efforts.The negative impacts are beyond the scope of this paper. Limitations of the current ground and airline transportation systems, increasing congestion, poor block speed, combined with expanding population and demand for affordable on-demand mobility are driving the development of future transportation technology and policy. The third wave of aeronautic,e VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and landing) Air Transportation System, is envisioned as the next logical step in the natural progression and could bring about great new capabilities for society that would bring aviation into a new age of being relevant in daily lives. Considering door to door block time, e VTOL Air Transportation System has the potential to achieve anotherfive-fold increase over the auto today as the auto provided ten-fold increase over the horse, and a daily mobility reach of 125 to 250 miles.The main benefits will be on-demand, point-to-point,safe travel, further and anywhere in less travel time with almost zero environmental impact for general people. Besides, a successful implementation and sustainable transition will depend on overcoming technological hurdles, regulatory frameworks, operational safety, cost competitiveness, and sensibilities of the affected communities.