Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2023"
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- “We Will Never be The Same”: Photovoice Reports From Social Workers of Aged Care During COVID-19Publication . Araújo, Lia; Fontoura, Sofia; Cid‑Fernández, Xosé Manuel; Sousa, LilianaUsing photovoice methodology, this study aimed to capture the perspectives of social workers from aged care services on how the pandemic impacted them at a professional level. This study comprised 12 social workers (aged 22– 41 years; 11 females) who worked in aged care facilities during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on photovoice methodology, as a participatory visual research method focused on individual and community assets and co-creation of knowledge, participants were asked to take photographs and then share the photos and associated narratives in a group session on the topic “Me as a professional: One year of pandemic”. From the thematic analysis, four themes emerged: personal and professional growth (increased resilience, with new perspectives on life), responding to the pandemic (implementation of immediate actions to prevent the virus propagation), teamwork (union among staff), and eyes on the future (with a sense of uncertainty, yet supported by the good lessons learned). The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant impact on aged care facilities, with social workers becoming frontline professionals in a public health crisis. These professionals faced “forced growth” during the pandemic that has transformed them both professionally and personally.
- Nutrition Control System Based on Short-term Personal DemandsPublication . Cunha, Carlos; P. Duarte, Rui; Oliveira, RafaelPersonalized nutrition considers an individual’s unique genetic, metabolic, and lifestyle factors to create a customized dietary plan tailored to their needs. People seeking to optimize their health and wellness through diet and lifestyle changes can benefit from technological advances in machine learning and deep learning approaches to create personalized models of nutritional requirements that override traditional food plans. These models will provide users with an unprecedented decision tool for informing them of the impact of specific food intake and exercise on their goals. This article presents the architecture, implementation, and preliminary results of a deep learning-based control system for nutrition. It allows users to understand the impact of their food and exercise immediate choices on their goals while reducing user interaction demands. Preliminary results have shown that it is possible to predict BMI (Body Mass Index) accurately within a time window of three days.
- Local waste agroforestry managment - biomass to energy analysis with LCAPublication . Brás, Isabel; Ferreira Silva, Maria Elisabete; Ferreira, José; Raimondo, Roberta; Saetta, Rafaella; Fabricino, MassimilainoTo enable the protection of forests against rural fires are foreseen a set of measures for plan-ning and intervention, reduction their risk and impacts. Forest residues collecting centers are being created in Portugal, to reduce undesired thermal charge in nature and for biomass further valorization. Keeping this in mind, one of the strategies is the energy recovery from these residues in bi-omass power plants that were built in strategic locations. The biomass is mostly natural residu-al forest, agricultural and garden wood and green materials The present work aims to study its environmental impact. The Life Cycle Assessment methodology, using SimaPro 9.3.0.3 PhD software, was applied to identify the burden of this process and the environmental categories most relevantly affect-ed. Data achieved showed the importance of the valorization of residual biomass for energy production, reduction the impact categories of abiotic depletion due to fossil fuels, global warming, human toxicity and eutrophication.
- Portuguese teachers’ conceptions and practices on the history of mathematics in teaching (7th to 12th grades)Publication . martins, ana patrícia; Pinto, H.; Gomes, Helena Margarida dos Santos Vasconcelos; Menezes, LuísThis study, based on what are the international recommendations for the introduction of the History of Mathematics (HM) in the teaching of this discipline, seeks to describe the Portuguese reality. Thus, the study aims to know: (i) teachers’ training in HM; and (ii) their conceptions and practices about the use of HM in the classroom. An online questionnaire was answered by a group of 432 Portuguese Mathematics teachers of secondary education (7th -12th grades). Approximately half of the teachers considered their training in HM obtained in their higher education as frequent or solid. Almost all categorized as non-existent or reduced their continuous education in HM. Regarding the teachers’ practices, an overwhelming majority reports using HM as a didactic resource in Mathematics class and only about a third do it rarely. Teachers resorted more frequently to textbooks and problems with a historical context and favored the use of HM in the introduction to mathematical content. As for the potential of using HM in teaching, teachers evaluated the didactic potential of HM very positively. The biggest constraints were related to the extension of the official curricula, the difficulty of evaluation and the scarcity of support materials.
- Food determinants and motivation factors impact on consumer behavior in LebanonPublication . Boustani, Nada Mallah; Guiné, Raquel P. F.The current study looks at a variety of factors that affect eating patterns. This is about internal and external aspects that lead to a thorough assessment of consumer behavior, with an emphasis on driving forces and obstacles that significantly affect each consumer’s food preferences. The information is based on questionnaire research of traditional and fiber food consumption as well as specific consumer purchasing behaviors. The results of the questionnaire survey were analyzed using qualitative aspects analysis and other statistical methods (ANOVA, t-test). The study’s goal is to provide comprehensive strategies that encourage and support the intake of nutritious meals, especially in light of how different food motivations and knowledge factors influence Lebanese consumer behavior. Based on the findings, individual eating motivation and its impact on consumers’ behavior in Lebanon when making food purchase decisions were found. Sources of potential influences include information, the social environment, and environmental variables. Processes like social learning influence the interplay between these components as well as food choices and eating habits. As a result, future programs to encourage healthy eating habits might profit by putting more of an emphasis on learning principles and food preferences when programs are implemented.
- Automated Reusable Tests for Mitigating Secure Pattern Interpretation ErrorsPublication . Cunha, Carlos; Pombo, NunoThe importance of software security has increased along with the number and severity of incidents in recent years. Security is a multidisciplinary aspect of the software development lifecycle, operation, and user utilization. Being a complex and specialized area of software engineering, it is often sidestepped in software development methodologies and processes. We address software security at the design level by adopting design patterns that encapsulate reusable solutions for recurring security problems. Design patterns can help development teams implement the best-proven solutions for a specialized problem domain. However, from the analysis of three secure pattern implementations by 70 junior programmers, we detected several structural errors resulting from their interpretation. We propose reusable unit testing test cases based on annotations to avoid secure pattern interpretation errors and provide an example for one popular secure pattern. Providing these test cases to the same group of programmers, they implemented the pattern without errors. The reason is annotations build a framework that disciplines programmers to incorporate secure patterns in their applications and ensure automatic testing.
- Identifying characteristics of marketing-influenced eating vulnerabilityPublication . Henriques, Carla; Guiné, Raquel P. F.; Matos, Ana; Malva, MadalenaNumerous people’s dietary decisions are influenced by commercial and marketing motiva- tions. Advertising and marketing tactics are in fact intended to pique consumer attention and influence their purchasing decisions. Yong people are known to be particularly vulner- able [1], and it is of interest to identify some other characteristics that may differentiate most vulnerable consumers. In this study, based in a sample of size 11919, collected as part of the project EATMOT [3], marketing motivations in food choices are analyzed through seven items. Factor analysis was applied by country, looking for a factor structure common to all countries. Three items were consistently combined in one factor. The other items were studied individually. Five variables were, then, considered to measure marketing mo- tivations in consumer’s food choices and used in a cluster analysis. Ward’s method, single linkage, and average linkage were three hierarchical techniques that were used; their results were considered as initial solutions for the k-means method. To find an optimal number of clusters, k-means method was applied to 50 bootstrap samples and the similarity of cluster solutions for different numbers of clusters was examined using the rand index [2]. The two cluster solution emerged as an optimal solution, distinguishing consumers more prone to the influence of marketing (Figure 1). Then, using statistical tests and logistic regression analysis, these two clusters were com- pared. For example, consumers of the Notably Motivated cluster were significantly younger (32.7 vs 36.7 years old, p < 0.005), as expected, and this cluster also had a higher per- centage of women (72.2% vs. 70.2%, p=0.016), a higher percentage of single individuals (51.9% vs. 37.9%, p < 0.005), a lower proportion of individuals with university education (58.3% vs. 66.1%, p < 0.005), more consumers living in rural or suburban areas (37.2% vs. 27.6%, p < 0.005), and more consumers without an active professional activity, that is, unemployed, non-working students or retired (43.1% vs.31.1%, p < 0.005). Furthermore, higher BMI and less physical exercise revealed to be associated with a greater chance of belonging to the notably motivated group (p < 0.005). We thus obtained evidence that the propensity for higher levels of commercial and marketing motivations is associated with socio-demographic, anthropometric, behavioural and health related characteristics of the consumer.
- Students and the internet: uses, problems and benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic in PortugalPublication . Morais, Nídia Salomé; Pestana, TiagoThe emergence of the Internet and the way it has grown worldwide is considered by many as a revolution, not only because it has changed the way people interact with the world, but also because it has become an essential part of most people's lives [1], becoming an increasingly indispensable tool in our daily lives, whether, for leisure activities, work or study, and its users are constantly increasing. In this context and taking as reference the results of the "Study on the access and consumption of online contents during periods of confinement in Portugal - the case of students from a Higher Education Institution" [2], which involved 94 undergraduate and master students, this article presents the main conclusions regarding the trends of Internet access and use during the two periods of confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal. In methodological terms, this is an exploratory study, using a questionnaire and conducting four interviews with students from the institution, both instruments having been subjected to a prior validation process. The results obtained regarding the frequency of access to the Internet show that the majority accessed the Internet daily and spent a good part of their days online, with many admitting to spending between 6 and 7 hours on the Internet and revealing that the activities they most developed daily were: using social networks, sending and receiving messages (WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger) and using platforms such as Zoom or Teams to attend classes. As for the type of online content consumed during their periods of confinement, the students who participated in the study showed a preference for music content (through platforms such as Spotify and Youtube), humorous content (such as watching shows, videos or podcasts), informative content (TV news and online newspapers) and also content related to watching movies (namely through platforms such as NETFLIX, HBO, DISNEY+). About the most positive aspects associated with the use of the Internet during their periods of confinement, the study participants mentioned that it allowed them to keep in touch with their friends and family and also that it was a very important tool to keep themselves informed. However, the students also pointed out fewer positive aspects, stressing that they felt several setbacks when using Internet services, namely problems related to Internet speed, the emergence of headaches caused by excessive use, and the feeling of extreme tiredness. When asked if they had difficulties adapting to platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, most of the study participants disagreed, revealing that they found it easy to use media of this nature. In addition to this, the students also pointed out that they encountered technical problems several times, and in some of these cases, they could not get around the situation, in this regard, it should be noted that an identical conclusion was also obtained in the research of [3].
- Quality attributes of different marinated oven-grilled pork neck meatPublication . Okpala, Charles Odilichukwu R; Juchniewicz, Szymon; Leicht, Katarzyna; Skendrović, Hanna; Korzeniowska, Małgorzata; Guiné, RaquelWhereas herbs/spices serve as natural preservatives, and thermal processing makes animal meat products edible, combining them should complement each other. Additionally, the application of oven grilling to meat products continues to increase in popularity. However, there is a paucity of relevant published information specific to different marinated oven-grilled pork neck meat. Therefore, the quality attributes of different marinated oven-grilled pork neck meat were investigated, which involved chemical (pH, thiobarbituric acid reactive substance [TBARS], 2,2′-azinobis(3-ethylbenzothiaziline-6-sulfonate) [ABTS], 1,1-diphenyl-2-pierylhydrazy [DPPH], ferric reducing antioxidant power [FRAP]), physical (cooking weight loss, L*a*b* color, and textural cutting force), as well as organoleptic (sensory: flavor, appearance, tenderness, taste, and off-flavor; texture: hardness, chewiness, gumminess, graininess, and greasiness) aspects. In particular, the pork neck meat was procured from a porcine farm in Poland. Different marinated variants comprised constituent 0.5, 1, and 1.5% quantities of cranberry pomace (CP), grape pomace (GP), and Baikal skullcap (BS) that subsequently incorporated either African spice (AS) or industrial marinade/pickle (IM). Results showed decreases in ABTS, DPPH, FRAP, and TBARS in some marinated oven-grilled pork neck meat samples, alongside pH variations by difference that seemingly associated with increasing concentrations of either CP, BS, or GP, which might not always coincide with L*a*b* color trends as AS and IM were incorporated. Despite the many resemblances (p > .05), the sensory aspects fluctuated as textural chewiness, gumminess, and hardness increased in some samples, more evident when incorporating AS compared to IM. Overall, oven-grilling promises to moderate the range values of key quality attributes of different marinated pork neck meat samples in this study.
- Strategy and design of innovation policy road mapping for microalgae-based foodsPublication . Barroca, Maria João; Florença, Sofia De Guiné E; Martins, Clara B.; Guiné, Raquel