Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2017-06-23"
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- Correspondence of three-dimensional objectsPublication . Lam, Roberto; du Buf, J. M. H.First many thanks go to Prof. Hans du Buf, for his supervision based on his experience, for providing a stimulating and cheerful research environment in his laboratory, for letting me participate in the projects that produced results for papers, thus made me more aware of the state of the art in Computer Vision, especially in the area of 3D recognition. Also for his encouraging support and his way to always nd time for discussions, and last but not the least for the cooking recipes... Many thanks go also to my laboratory fellows, to Jo~ao Rodrigues, who invited me to participate in FCT and QREN projects, Jaime Carvalho Martins and Miguel Farrajota, for discussing scienti c and technical problems, but also almost all problems in the world. To all persons, that worked in, or visited the Vision Laboratory, especially those with whom I have worked with, almost on a daily basis. A special thanks to the Instituto Superior de Engenharia at UAlg and my colleagues at the Department of Electrical Engineering, for allowing me to suspend lectures in order to be present at conferences. To my family, my wife and my kids.
- Diferentes modelos organizativos de cuidados de saúde primários apresentam diferenças no desempenho?Publication . Teixeira, Cristiano de Jesus; Santos, Sérgio Pereira dos; Amado, CarlaIntrodução: A última reforma dos Cuidados de Saúde Primários em Portugal assumiu como objetivos: estabilidade, rigor, melhor acesso, ganhos em saúde e ganhos de eficiência. Passados cerca de oito anos, está ainda por demonstrar, se se está a caminhar no sentido de atingir esses objetivos. Objetivos: Este estudo procura dar um contributo para esta temática avaliando se é possível observar diferenças significativas no desempenho de alguns dos diferentes modelos organizativos introduzidos aquando da reforma dos cuidados primários em Portugal. Metodologia: Por forma a concretizar este objetivo, compilámos os resultados alcançados por todas as unidades funcionais do país (i. e. Unidades de Cuidados de Saúde Personalizados (UCSPs) e Unidades de Saúde Familiar (USFs)) relativos a 12 indicadores comuns contratualizados com estas unidades. Tendo por base estes indicadores, foi então utilizada a técnica do Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) por forma a determinar a taxa de desempenho médio de cada uma das quatro tipologias consideradas e foi utilizado o Índice de Produtividade de Malmquist ajustado, por forma a determinar as principais causas subjacentes aos níveis de desempenho observados. Em particular, explorámos até que ponto é que a gestão interna das unidades (mensurada pelo Within-group performance spread) e a estrutura organizativa da tipologia a que pertencem (mensurada através do Productivity gap between frontiers) contribuem para a o nível médio de desempenho destas unidades. Resultados: A taxa média de desempenho estimada foi de 90,95% para as UCSPs, 95,79% para as USFs-A e 97,81% para as USFs-B. As USFs-A, quando comparadas com as UCSPs, apresentam, em média, um nível de produtividade superior em 8,55%. Por outro lado, as USFs-B, quando comparadas com as USFs-A, apresentam, em média, um nível de produtividade superior em 2,99%. Conclusões: O modelo organizacional de USF apresenta um nível de desempenho médio superior ao observado no modelo organizacional das UCSPs. No entanto, a estrutura organizativa das USF-B parece não justificar o investimento financeiro avultado que está a ser feito nas mesmas.
- Sustainable tourism development in Cape Verde Islands: antecedents and consequencesPublication . Ribeiro, Manuel Alector dos Santos; Silva, João AlbinoResearch on resident attitudes and support for tourism development and sustainability and tourists’ satisfaction and destination loyalty formation are among the most well-researched and important topics within tourism research literature. This study sought to contribute to these fields of research in three specific ways. First, this study developed and validated a maximum parsimonious version of sustainable tourism attitude scale (SUS-TAS) through the first- and second-orders confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), confirming that SUS-TAS can be loaded in two broader dimensions named ‘perceived tourism impacts’ and ‘expected tourism sustainability’. Also, it was found that these two SUS-TAS dimensions resulted from the second-order factor model predict ‘residents’ support for sustainable tourism development’. The study concluded that the maximum parsimonious version of SUS-TAS can be both interpreted by seven individuals factors and/or as a global factor as indicated by the hierarchical measurement model and predictive validity. The second contribution of the study starts from taking the previously economic (i.e. the state of the local economy and perceived personal economic benefits from tourism) and non-economic (i.e. residents welcoming tourists) scales and integrates them as predictors of attitudes to the impacts and pro-tourism development behaviour. The results found that all the three independent variables (e.g. the state of the local economy, perceived personal economic benefits and residents welcoming tourists) had significant relationships with the attitudes to the positive and negative impacts of tourism. Similarly, the residents’ positive and negative attitudes towards tourism were found to influence pro-tourism development behaviour. Likewise, the state of the local economy and residents’ perceived personal economic benefits from tourism were the only constructs that directly influence residents’ pro-tourism development behaviour while the relationship between residents degree of welcoming tourists and residents’ pro-tourism behaviour was mediated by residents’ positive attitudes to tourism only. For the both above mentioned studies, the data collection was carried out in the islands of Boa Vista and Sal in Cape Verde. A questionnaire was applied to 418 residents in these two islands and the quota sampling approach was used with the sample distributed in proportion to the population’s distribution in these two islands, by gender and age group.Lastly, whether tourists perceive that residents foster positive attitude and pro-tourism behaviour among them this same perception may contribute to enhance their own satisfaction and loyalty formation. Therefore, this part of the study proposes a theoretical model integrating two lines of tourism research: emotional solidarity and destination loyalty. In order to test the proposed model, 464 surveys of international tourists were conducted in two international airports on the islands of Boa Vista and Sal. Tourists were intercepted in the international departure hall before leaving Cape Verde, following their check-in procedures with each airline. Structural equation modeling and moderated mediation analysis were implemented to assess the relationships involving visitors’ emotional solidarity with residents, satisfaction and destination loyalty. The three dimensions of emotional solidarity were considered in the study: feeling welcomed, sympathetic understanding and emotional closeness. Results indicated that visitors’ feeling welcomed and sympathetic understanding directly influence loyalty. In particular, the relationships involving visitors’ feeling welcomed by residents, emotional closeness with residents and sympathetic understanding with residents and loyalty were all mediated by satisfaction. Additionally, gender was found to moderate the conditional indirect effects of emotional closeness and feeling welcomed on loyalty (via satisfaction). Such relationships were stronger among male visitors. Overall, on one hand, this study confirms the premise that residents with pro-tourism attitudes can develop pro-tourism development behaviour; and on the other hand, when residents act as welcoming hosts and interact with tourists in a good manner the context is seen as favourable to increase tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty formation.