http://docentes.fct.unl.pt/lblm/files/biochemistry-2015-54-685.pdf

http://docentes.fct.unl.pt/lblm/files/jbic-2015-20-403_1.pdf

If the question is whether there is a parliamentary technology assessment (PTA) unit in Portugal or Spain, the clear answer is that there is still no such unit at the central state level at the present time, neither in Portugal nor in Spain. The question then has to be modified addressing previous and current efforts to establish PTA and the current framework conditions and opportunities. Practices of PTA are framed here as a democratic innovation in the context of changes in representative democracies. Against this backdrop, the efforts and opportunities to establish PTA in Spain and Portugal are studied. By sketching these developments and outlining the opportunities in these countries, our aim is to contribute to the debate about the likelihood of a new wave of PTA in Europe (Hennen/Nierling 2014).

Modelling of ventilation is strongly dependent on the physical characteristics of the building of which precise evaluation is a complex and time consuming task. In the frame of a research project, two children day care centres (CDCC) have been selected in order to measure the envelope air permeability, the flow rate of mechanical ventilation systems and indoor and outdoor temperature. The data obtained was used as input to the computer code CONTAM for ventilation simulations. The results obtained were compared with direct measurements of ventilation flow from short term measurements with CO2 tracer gas and medium term measurements with perfluorocarbon tracer (PFT) gas decay method. After validation, in order to analyse the main parameters that affect ventilation, the model was used to predict the ventilation rates for a wide range of conditions. The purpose of this assessment was to find the best practices to improve natural ventilation. A simple analytical method to predict the ventilation flow rate of rooms is also presented. The method is based on the estimation of wind effect on the room through the evaluation of an average factor and on the assessment of relevant cross section of gaps and openings combined in series or in parallel. It is shown that it may be applied with acceptable accuracy for this type of buildings when ventilation is due essentially to wind action.

There are many issues concerning the performance behaviour of FRP-to-concrete interfaces at elevated service temperatures (EST). At EST, i.e. slightly above the glass transition temperature (Tg), some properties associated with the FRP composites, such as the stiffness, strength or the bond characteristics, degrade. This is a crucial issue and there are only a few studies that take into account such effects on FRP-to-concrete interfaces at EST. This paper examines, through a numerical analysis, the performance of FRP-to-concrete bonded joints at EST using a new discrete model based on truss elements and shear springs. The External Bonded Reinforcement (EBR) systems subjected to EST are analyzed. The numerical discrete model was implemented in a MATLAB routine and the bond-slip curves of the interfaces at EST were obtained from a model found in literature. The numerical results revealed that the interface at EST behaves similarly to one with two equal mechanical loads applied at both ends of the FRP plate. The load-slip curves or bond stresses, strains or slippages along the bonded length obtained from several bond-slip curves at different temperatures were obtained. Two different single-lap shear tests were simulated at steady-state (steady temperature followed by load increase) and transient state (steady load followed by temperature increase). Regarding the influence of the temperature on the adhesion between the FRP and concrete, the results showed that an increase in the temperature at an earlier situation, i.e. during a period where temperature had no influence in the concrete deformations, leads to an increase in the effective bond length of the interface affecting the initial strength of the interface.

A tecnologia é cada vez mais indispensável no dia-a-dia, rodeando-nos constantemente. Para os nossos alunos é uma realidade que conhecem desde sempre e que tendem a encarar com uma naturalidade descontraída e intuitiva. A facilidade de acesso à tecnologia e o modo como esta tende a enfatizar o intuitivo e a relegar para segundo plano o formal e a demonstração matemática são o foco deste artigo. Partindo da análise de uma proposta de trabalho onde alunos de 10.º ano começam por uma abordagem intuitiva apoiada na calculadora gráfica e terminam a realizar uma demonstração da conjectura que formularam, procuro discutir a problemática. As conclusões alcançadas sugerem que é possível colocar aos alunos situações onde estes se podem aperceber da vantagem de recorrer tanto a abordagens mais formais como a abordagens mais intuitivas e isto mesmo quando a tecnologia é uma realidade em sala de aula. Sugere ainda que a realização de demonstrações pode, entre outros aspectos já identificados na literatura, dar um contributo importante para a compreensão de aspectos basilares da Matemática.

The technology and how it tends to emphasize the intuitive and overshadow calculus and mathematical proof are the focus of this paper. The conclusions reached suggest that tasks where students might realize the usefulness of calculus as well as of more intuitive approaches are possible even when the technology is a reality in the classroom. They also suggest that proof may, among other things already identified in the literature, make an important contribution to the students’ understanding of fundamental aspects of mathematics.

A tecnologia e a forma como esta tende a enfatizar o intuitivo e a relegar para segundo plano o formal e a demonstração matemática são o foco deste artigo. As conclusões alcançadas sugerem que é possível colocar aos alunos situações onde estes se possam aperceber da vantagem de recorrer tanto a abordagens mais formais como a abordagens mais intuitivas e isto mesmo quando a tecnologia é uma realidade em sala de aula. Sugere ainda que a realização de demonstrações pode, entre outros aspectos já identificados na literatura, dar um contributo importante para a compreensão de aspectos basilares da Matemática.

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The solution of the Conic Quadratic Eigenvalue Complementarity Problem (CQEiCP) is first investigated without assuming symmetry on the matrices defining the problem. A new sufficient condition for existence of solutions of CQEiCP is presented, extending to arbitrary pointed, closed and convex cones a condition known to hold when the cone is the nonnegative orthant. We also address the symmetric CQEiCP where all its defining matrices are symmetric. We show that, assuming that two of its defining matrices are positive definite, this symmetric CQEiCP reduces to the computation of a stationary point of an appropriate merit function on a convex set. Furthermore, we discuss the use of the so called Spectral Projected Gradient (SPG) algorithm for solving CQEiCP when the cone of interest is the second-order cone (SOCQEiCP). A new algorithm is designed for the computation of the projections required by the SPG method to deal with SOCQEiCP. Numerical results are included to illustrate the efficiency of the SPG method and the new projection technique in practice.

Theropods form a taxonomically and morphologically diverse group of dinosaurs that include extant birds. Inferred relationships between theropod clades are complex and have changed dramatically over the past thirty years with the emergence of cladistic techniques. Here, we present a brief historical perspective of theropod discoveries and classification, as well as an overview on the current systematics of non-avian theropods. The first scientifically recorded theropod remains dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries come from the Middle Jurassic of Oxfordshire and most likely belong to the megalosaurid Megalosaurus. The latter was the first theropod genus to be named in 1824, and subsequent theropod material found before 1850 can all be referred to megalosauroids. In the fifty years from 1856 to 1906, theropod remains were reported from all continents but Antarctica. The clade Theropoda was erected by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1881, and in its current usage corresponds to an intricate ladder-like organization of ‘family’ to ‘superfamily’ level clades. The earliest definitive theropods come from the Carnian of Argentina, and coelophysoids form the first significant theropod radiation from the Late Triassic to their extinction in the Early Jurassic. Most subsequent theropod clades such as ceratosaurs, allosauroids, tyrannosauroids, ornithomimosaurs, therizinosaurs, oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurids, and troodontids persisted until the end of the Cretaceous, though the megalosauroid clade did not extend into the Maastrichtian. Current debates are focused on the monophyly of deinonychosaurs, the position of dilophosaurids within coelophysoids, and megaraptorans among neovenatorids. Some recent analyses have suggested a placement of dilophosaurids outside Coelophysoidea, Megaraptora within Tyrannosauroidea, and a paraphyletic Deinonychosauria with troodontids placed more closely to avialans than dromaeosaurids.

The objective of this paper is to study the monoid of all partial
transformations of a finite set that preserve a uniform partition. In addition
to proving that this monoid is a quotient of a wreath product with respect to a
congruence relation, we show that it is generated by 5 generators, we compute
its order and determine a presentation on a minimal generating set.

Software developers are expected to protect concurrent accesses to shared regions of memory with some mutual exclusion primitive that ensures atomicity properties to a sequence of program statements. This approach prevents data races but may fail to provide all necessary correctness properties.The composition of correlated atomic operations without further synchronization may cause atomicity violations. Atomic violations may be avoided by grouping the correlated atomic regions in a single larger atomic scope. Concurrent programs are particularly prone to atomicity violations when they use services provided by third party packages or modules, since the programmer may fail to identify which services are correlated. In this paper we propose to use contracts for concurrency, where the developer of a module writes a set of contract terms that specify which methods are correlated and must be executed in the same atomic scope. These contracts are then used to verify the correctness of the main program with respect to the usage of the module(s). If a contract is well defined and complete, and the main program respects it, then the program is safe from atomicity violations with respect to that module. We also propose a static analysis based methodology to verify contracts for concurrency that we applied to some real-world software packages. The bug we found in Tomcat 6.0 was immediately acknowledged and corrected by its development team.

Event-Condition-Action languages are the commonly accepted para- digm to express and model the behavior of reactive systems. While numerous Event-Condition-Action languages have been proposed in the literature, differing e.g. on the expressivity of the language and on its operational behavior, existing Event-Condition-Action languages do not generally support the action compo- nent to be formulated as a transaction. In this paper, sustaining that it is important to execute transactions in reactive languages, we propose an Event-Condition- Transaction language, based on an extension of Transaction Logic. This exten- sion, called Transaction Logic with Events (T Rev ), combines reasoning about the execution of transactions with the ability to detect complex events. An impor- tant characteristic of T Rev is that it takes a choice function as a parameter of the theory, leaving open the behavioral decisions of the logic, and thereby allowing it to be suitable for a wide-spectrum of application scenarios like Semantic Web, multi-agent systems, databases, etc. We start by showing how T Rev can be used as an Event-Condition-Action language where actions are considered as transac- tions, and how to differently instantiate this choice function to achieve different operational behaviors. Then, based on a particular operational instantiation of the logic, we present a procedure that is sound and complete w.r.t. the semantics and that is able to execute T Rev programs

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