University of Lisbon

Resumo Este artigo tem como objetivo refletir sobre as queixas apresentadas contra os oficiais régios que serviam na América portuguesa do Setecentos. Mais do que o teor das denúncias e sua veracidade, importa debater, recorrendo também a estudos de caso centrados nas capitanias auríferas, as vias utilizadas para a apresentação destas queixas. Para além dos mecanismos de controle ordinário, nos quais se incluíam as residências e outras ações correntes, interessa destacar a importância das petições, enviadas para o centro político, em Lisboa, e arquivadas no Conselho Ultramarino

Wildfires represent a major global threat to ecosystems and human lives. Fire impacts on forests are usually expressed in terms of burned area or the amount of aboveground biomass density (AGBD) affected, for which airborne data and spaceborne missions such as the NASA GEDI provide auxiliary 3D data for its estimation. This study presents an integrated assessment of total forest biomass. Using 25,000 ha burned in 2023 during the most severe wildfire in Spain in decades, we showed that accounting only for AGBD can leave out 37% of all C emissions from a fire. The portfolio of four biomass pools (roots, litter, shrubs and AGBD) was modelled at 25-m resolution using data and models based on ALS surveys and built allometries from the National Forest Inventory (NFI) of Spain. Specifically, on AGBD, we measured the agreement between ALS-based inference, NFI data and GEDI biomass estimates (AGBD only) considering forest type and fire severity using the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR). We observed a strong agreement between GEDI, ALS and NFI data on AGBD estimates in dense-pine dominated forests while forest types such as sparse oaks or mixed forests (broadleaves and conifers) showed the highest discrepancies. To verify whether fire had an impact on the retrieval of RH metrics and consequently on the AGBD estimates, GEDI tracks in the pre- and post-fire were used for hybrid inference. Fire had no effect on mean AGBD, but severe changes on energy distribution or waveform metrics were observed in the areas most severely impacted by the wildfire. More studies over a larger sample of fire episodes is needed to test whether change in GEDI relative height metrics from pre- to post-fire conditions can help to assess fire severity in terms of AGBD losses.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze whether digital remote work in times of Covid-19 is influencing the satisfaction of Public Administration employees. Based on the objective of this study, an online survey was conducted in the Portuguese Public Administration, for a sample of 70 individuals, working at home due to the situation of Public Health caused by the Coronavirus. Digital remote work is being applied massively worldwide and is a specific form of work organization supported by information and knowledge. Digital remote workers carry out their activities at home and using digital technologies, depending on the nature of the tasks and work situations. To understand the satisfaction of Public Administration employees, an empirical study was carried out, supported by data collection through an online survey. The main conclusions were that despite the constraints (resistance of top management, organizational culture, autonomy, and flexibility of workers, among others) that existed before the health and socioeconomic crisis caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, digital remote work is a given in the life of organizations, public or private, and of workers with reflection at various levels in society and particularly in the professional fulfillment and satisfaction of employees. According to the analysis carried out on the data collected to support the conclusions of this study, the degree of satisfaction of Public Administration employees is influenced in different ways by the influencing factors studied: autonomy at work, conditions at work, and income. However, regarding the factor of quality of life at work, this link has not been established. Thus, it was possible to conclude that satisfaction increases positively and strongly with autonomy at work. Technological specialization and productivity still have a positive influence, but with low intensity contribute to the satisfaction of AP employees. Working conditions also negatively influence satisfaction, although at an average intensity. However, the average degree of job satisfaction varies according to the different age groups, with employees aged 35 or more having a higher satisfaction average than employees whose ages vary between 34 and the beginning of their working lives.

It has long been argued that Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is crucial for democratic education. As is repeatedly discussed in the literature, children and teenagers who take part in philosophy sessions become more thoughtful, more reflective, more considerate, and more reasonable adults, and thus more capable of becoming “participants in the process of democracy itself” (Lipman in Teaching philosophy on the eve of the twenty first century. International Federation of Philosophical Societies, Ankara, p. 6 [2]). Although this is clear to practitioners and theorists who observe and provide training for P4wC sessions, it is still hard to convince those who have not experienced the application of the methodology and the impact of such sessions firsthand. The present chapter attempts to overcome this gap by arguing that an important part of this contribution to citizenship is the way in which P4wC promotes the consideration of meta-ethical questions in the processes of ethical reflection. Understanding the full impact of meta-ethics in ethical inquiry requires a comprehensive approach that recognizes the central role that emotions and metacognitive moments play in teaching reflexivity in P4wC sessions. In addition, P4wC practitioners will understand in greater detail how and why the methodology of the community of inquiry and the topics explored in the sessions contribute to preparing participants for global citizenship. Emotions, meta-ethics, and meta-cognition in P4wC

Human biases have been shown to influence the performance of models and algorithms in various fields, including Natural Language Processing. While the study of this phenomenon is garnering focus in recent years, the available resources are still relatively scarce, often focusing on different forms or manifestations of biases. The aim of our work is twofold: 1) gather publicly-available datasets and determine how to better combine them to effectively train models in the task of hate speech detection and classification; 2) analyse the main issues with these datasets, such as scarcity, skewed resources, and reliance on non-persistent data. We discuss these issues in tandem with the development of our experiments, in which we show that the combinations of different datasets greatly impact the models’ performance.

Nowadays, to address societal challenges, collaboration is more and more critical in order to survive in a world exposed to increasingly disruptive causes. In the business world, in particular, business ecosystems require sustainable collaboration to ensure more cohesive and resilient organisations when facing attacks/disruptive events. This article proposes a performance assessment and adjustment model (PAAM) to establish and analyse simulation scenarios based on real data provided by IT organisations collaborating in the same business ecosystem, to measure and influence collaboration, leading to a more sustainable collaborative business ecosystem. To validate the model, workshops were conducted with focus groups of top managers of the organisations who provided the data to validate PAAM. The achieved results are presented and discussed.

Collaborative Networks (CNs) as a new discipline play an important part in the continuing digital transformation of business and services, taking advantage of Information and Communication Technology’s growing sociability and usability qualities to enable and improve partnership that results in competitive solutions. While CNs could get benefit from technological development, it could inherit its disadvantages, through violation of human-centeredness and human values. Recently proposed Collaborative Networks 4.0 addressed some of these issues in three-dimensional CNs. However, while the 4th generation of CNs putting ethics and intelligent autonomous systems into account, it does not assume “by design” approach in implementation of these characteristics as an obligation. It also overlooks the generation of communication technologies such as Extended Reality. The current article by introducing the four-dimensional, human-centred, human-value based, 5th generation of CNs aimed to cover the previous generations of CNs’ constraints in dealing with society 5.0’s challenges.

This position paper aims to explore the interplay between networks, time, and digitalization. With the convergence of networks and digital technologies, the concept of time has undergone a significant transformation, influencing various aspects of our lives. More specifically, the paper highlights the transformative power of AI in shaping our understanding and experience of time, from the acceleration of information dissemination to the optimization of processes. By drawing on examples from different domains, this paper provides some insights into the implications of networked time in the context of AI-based digitalization, while suggesting a set of good practices that can prevent the negative implications of such transformation.

Theory generally predicts that host specialisation and dispersal should evolve jointly. Indeed, many models predict that specialists should be poor dispersers to avoid landing on unsuitable hosts while generalists will have high dispersal abilities. Phytophagous arthropods are an excellent group to test this prediction, given extensive variation in their host range and dispersal abilities. Here, we explore the degree to which the empirical literature on this group is in accordance with theoretical predictions. We first briefly outline the theoretical reasons to expect such a correlation. We then report empirical studies that measured both dispersal and the degree of specialisation in phytophagous arthropods. We find a correlation between dispersal and levels of specialisation in some studies, but with wide variation in this result. We then review theoretical attributes of species and environment that may blur this correlation, namely environmental grain, temporal heterogeneity, habitat selection, genetic architecture, and coevolution between plants and herbivores. We argue that theoretical models fail to account for important aspects, such as phenotypic plasticity and the impact of selective forces stemming from other biotic interactions, on both dispersal and specialisation. Next, we review empirical caveats in the study of this interplay. We find that studies use different measures of both dispersal and specialisation, hampering comparisons. Moreover, several studies do not provide independent measures of these two traits. Finally, variation in these traits may occur at scales that are not being considered. We conclude that this correlation is likely not to be expected from large‐scale comparative analyses as it is highly context dependent and should not be considered in isolation from the factors that modulate it, such as environmental scale and heterogeneity, intrinsic traits or biotic interactions. A stronger crosstalk between theoretical and empirical studies is needed to understand better the prevalence and basis of the correlation between dispersal and specialisation.

The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) is a widely used self-report scale with the original twenty-three items and its abbreviated version of nine items to assess workers’ engagement. This paper reports a validation study of the UWES-17 and UWES-9 using confirmatory factor analysis, its convergent validity and invariance across gender in a sample of 921 Portuguese school leaders. The main findings support a bidimensional conceptualization of work engagement measurement. The Portuguese version of UWES-9 is proposed as a reliable and robust (CFI = 0.97; TLI = 0.95; RMSEA = 0.073) tool to assess work engagement amongst Portuguese school leadership. The 9-item UWES is a reliable instrument to assess work engagement among Portuguese school leaders and could be used as an effective screening tool in educational contexts.

Background Early breast cancer (EBC) in the elderly is a major public health problem and a risk factor for undertreatment. The authors aim to describe surgical patterns and outcomes of an elderly population diagnosed with EBC treated in a BC-dedicated reference center. Methods Retrospective study for all EBC patients ≥70 years old submitted to breast surgery from 2018 to 2021. Patients were included if submitted to the G8 screening tool. Data on standard demographics, surgery performed, and outcomes were collected. Results Overall, 192 patients were included. Frail patients were significantly older (p<0.01), had worse Charlson Comorbidity Index (p<0.01) and ASA (p<0.01) scores and more comorbidities (p=0.09). In total, 199 breasts were operated; 173 breast conservative surgeries (BCS) and 26 mastectomies. In the frail population, oncoplastic surgery after BCS was more frequently mammoplasty; no reconstruction was reported after mastectomy. In the fit group, more diversity was seen in oncoplastic procedures; 13 breasts underwent direct-to-implant breast reconstruction (BR) after mastectomy. Frail patients were less likely to be offered BR (p<0.01). There was no association between frailty and postoperative complications, in-hospital length of stay, readmission, or reintervention. Conclusions Our results suggest that G8 frail patients are less likely to be offered BR. Even if there were no significant differences in surgical adverse outcomes between groups, this could have been masked by a higher proportion of BR among fit patients. G8 screening can be a useful instrument to support the surgeon’s decision to whether or not to consider BR in elderly breast cancer patients. Level of Evidence: Level IV, Risk/Prognostic Study.

Berth allocation decisions affect all subsequent decisions in port terminals. Thus assigning berthing positions and berthing times to vessels—known as the berth allocation problem (BAP)—is one of the most important problems in port terminals. Because this is an NP‐hard problem, most of the solution methods proposed for solving it are heuristics. Although very different, some heuristics applied to the continuous BAP share a common step usually performed several times: the insertion of vessels from an insertion sequence in the time‐space diagram that represents a BAP solution. This process is frequently done by using minimum cost sequential insertion heuristics such as bottom‐left‐based heuristics. Although fast and simple, these heuristics may not lead to high‐quality solutions. In this paper, we propose improved sequential insertion heuristics that generally outperform the traditional ones and keep their simplicity and speed. The proposed heuristics are tested on a large set of instances of BAPs with different optimization objectives, and the obtained results show that they can lead to solutions up to 70% better than those obtained by traditional sequential insertion heuristics.

The aim of this study is to identify the main moderators in the relationship between antecedents/predictors (doctors, privacy, accessibility, and availability, perceived waiting time to be called back by the doctor after the examinations and/or tests) and the perceived quality of healthcare (PQHC) in the emergency department (ED). Patients admitted to the ED of a public hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, between January and December 2016 were included in this study, with a representative sample size of 382 patients. A 5% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval were used, and all data were collected between May and November 2017. We used a stepwise multiple linear regression analysis to test the moderation models. We identified 3 main moderators with different moderating roles between the antecedents (predictors) and PQHC: level of life satisfaction, level of happiness, and frequency of ED experiences. Overall satisfaction with doctors is more likely to influence the PQHC among patients with lower levels of life satisfaction. Moreover, privacy and perceived waiting time to be called back by the doctor after an examination and/or test are more likely to influence the PQHC among patients with lower levels of life satisfaction and happiness. Finally, accessibility and availability are more likely to influence the PQHC among patients with more frequent ED experiences. Thus, knowing the moderating effects of psychological factors and the frequency of ED experiences may help to better understand the relationship between PQHC and certain predictors.

Trees are an integral part in European landscapes, but only forest resources are systematically assessed by national inventories. The contribution of urban and agricultural trees to national-level carbon stocks remains largely unknown. Here we produced canopy cover, height and above-ground biomass maps from 3-meter resolution nanosatellite imagery across Europe. Our biomass estimates have a systematic bias of 7.6% (overestimation; R = 0.98) compared to national inventories of 30 countries, and our dataset is sufficiently highly resolved spatially to support the inclusion of tree biomass outside forests, which we quantify to 0.8 petagrams. Although this represents only 2% of the total tree biomass, large variations between countries are found (10% for UK) and trees in urban areas contribute substantially to national carbon stocks (8% for the Netherlands). The agreement with national inventory data, the scalability, and spatial details across landscapes, including trees outside forests, make our approach attractive for operational implementation to support national carbon stock inventory schemes.

Plant–ungulate interactions are critical in shaping the structure of Mediterranean plant communities. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of knowledge on how plant intrinsic and extrinsic factors mediate the sign and strength of plant–ungulate interactions. This is most relevant when addressing natural or assisted restoration of plant communities in human‐disturbed areas. We conducted field‐clipping experiments simulating how different intensities of ungulate herbivory may affect the natural regeneration and establishment of the Mediterranean dwarf palm ( Chamaerops humilis ), a keystone species in Mediterranean ecosystems. We quantified seedling survival and size in two human‐disturbed sites (SW Spain) where wild and domestic ungulates exert high herbivory pressure on vegetation. Severe clipping and seedling aging reduced rates of seedling survival. In contrast, moderate clipping did not affect seedling survival, suggesting a certain degree of C. humilis tolerance to herbivory. Severe clipping reduced seedling height strongly but not seedling diameter, and these effects seem to have decreased seedling survival. Nurse shrubs increased seedling size, which likely improved seedling survival. We also found seedling compensatory growth which varied between study sites. Field‐clipping experiments can help disentangle effects of plant extrinsic and intrinsic factors on the sign and strength of plant–ungulate interactions and their ecological consequences on the dynamics of human‐disturbed ecosystems. We call attention to the importance of appropriately managing scenarios of severe herbivory and summer droughts, particularly frequent in Mediterranean ecosystems, as synergic effects of such key drivers can negatively affect the structure and dynamics of plant communities and endanger their conservation.

OBJECTIVE: Shifting from meat-centric to plant-rich diets may help to enable healthier and more sustainable food systems. Here we present the results of a 1-week intervention to promote plant-based eating in a meat-centric food context (i.e. canteen). DESIGN: The intervention included environmental restructuring strategies (e.g. promotional materials and menu redevelopment) and improvements to the offer of plant-based meals. The evaluation (sales data; pre-registered) spanned 3 weeks prior to the intervention (baseline), 1 week during the intervention (immediate/short-term impact) and 3 weeks after the intervention (follow-up). Opinion surveys were also used to collect data with customers during the intervention. SETTING: Canteen unit of a university campus in Portugal (Lisbon metropolitan area). PARTICIPANTS: In addition to sales data (baseline: 7965 meals; immediate/short-term: 2635 meals; follow-up: 7135 meals), we used opinion surveys to assess customers’ meal appraisals during the intervention ( n = 370). RESULTS: The odds of a sold meal being vegetarian were 24 % higher in the intervention week compared with the pre-intervention period [OR = 1·24, 95 % CI (1·10, 1·40)] and 9 % higher in the post-intervention period compared with the pre-intervention period [OR = 1·09, (95 % CI (1·00, 1·19)]. Survey data showed that vegetarian meals compared favourably to meat and fish alternatives in liking, sustainability and satiety. CONCLUSIONS: A short-term, theory-driven, operationally feasible intervention was effective in promoting increased plant-based meal choices in a collective meal context. Nevertheless, these changes were not entirely sustained over time. Future studies could test whether prolonged or more transformative interventions are necessary to unlock entrenched food practices more effectively in meat-centric collective meal contexts.

While the role of cities and regions is increasingly acknowledged for climate action and discussed in the literature on sustainability transitions, the specific condition of peripheral regions has received less attention. This article develops a bibliometric review to shed light and discuss how the (multi-dimensional) notion of periphery has been conceived and implicitly declinate in different literature streams studying low-carbon sustainability transitions at the sub-national level. While the studies explicitly addressing the issues of peripherality are still scarce, the article identifies four critical dimensions that contribute to frame structural bottlenecks and opportunities: socio-spatial unevenness, asset fragility, network positionality and agency and the multi-scalar embeddedness of transition policies. At the interface of urban and regional studies and sustainability transitions’ research, these dimensions open up new research challenges and trading zones ahead for peripheral regions on navigating troubled waters of sustainability transitions.

The synthesis and base pairing properties of platinum complexes based on uridine and deoxyuridine nucleosides are described. The synthesis was performed by C–I oxidative addition with protected and unprotected nucleosides. The metallated compounds feature an agostic interaction at H6. Uridine complexes undergo self-base pairing and also establish base pairs with adenosine. The formation of an intermolecular N-H-Pt bond is also observed