University of Minho

About: University of Minho is a education organization based out in Braga, Portugal. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Population. The organization has 10585 authors who have published 34736 publications receiving 732436 citations. The organization is also known as: Universidade do Minho & UMinho.

Risk‐related disclosures by non‐finance companies: Portuguese practices and disclosure characteristics

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the risk‐related disclosure (RRD) practices in annual reports for 2005 Portuguese companies in the non‐finance sector.Design/methodology/approach – The paper conducts a content analysis of a sample of 81 companies (42 listed and 39 unlisted). In considering corporate governance effects, the sample is reduced to the 42 listed companies that are required to disclose a corporate governance report.Findings – Implementation of IAS/IFRS and the European Union's Modernisation Directive in 2005 did not affect the quantity and quality of RRD positively. Disclosures are generic, qualitative and backward‐looking. Public visibility (as assessed by size and environmental sensitivity) is a crucial influence in explaining RRD: companies appear to manage their reputation through disclosure of risk‐related information. Agency costs associated with leverage are important influences also. In listed companies, the presence of independent directors improves the level of RRD.Res...

Trends in the use of natural antioxidants in active food packaging: a review

Abstract: The demand for natural antioxidant active packaging is increasing due to its unquestionable advantages compared with the addition of antioxidants directly to the food. Therefore, the search for antioxidants perceived as natural, namely those that naturally occur in herbs and spices, is a field attracting great interest. In line with this, in the last few years, natural antioxidants such as α-tocopherol, caffeic acid, catechin, quercetin, carvacrol and plant extracts (e.g. rosemary extract) have been incorporated into food packaging. On the other hand, consumers and the food industry are also interested in active biodegradable/compostable packaging and edible films to reduce environmental impact, minimise food loss and minimise contaminants from industrial production and reutilisation by-products. The present review focuses on the natural antioxidants already applied in active food packaging, and it reviews the methods used to determine the oxidation protection effect of antioxidant active films and the me...

A Proactive Intelligent Decision Support System for Predicting the Popularity of Online News

Abstract: Due to the Web expansion, the prediction of online news popularity is becoming a trendy research topic. In this paper, we propose a novel and proactive Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) that analyzes articles prior to their publication. Using a broad set of extracted features (e.g., keywords, digital media content, earlier popularity of news referenced in the article) the IDSS first predicts if an article will become popular. Then, it optimizes a subset of the articles features that can more easily be changed by authors, searching for an enhancement of the predicted popularity probability. Using a large and recently collected dataset, with 39,000 articles from the Mashable website, we performed a robust rolling windows evaluation of five state of the art models. The best result was provided by a Random Forest with a discrimination power of 73%. Moreover, several stochastic hill climbing local searches were explored. When optimizing 1000 articles, the best optimization method obtained a mean gain improvement of 15 percentage points in terms of the estimated popularity probability. These results attest the proposed IDSS as a valuable tool for online news authors.

Flexible working hours, health, and well-being in Europe: some considerations from a SALTSA project.

Abstract: The project brought together researchers from 9 EU-Countries and resulted in a number of actions, in particular the following: (a) There is an urgent need of defining the concept of flexible working hours, since it has been used in many different and even counterintuitive ways; the most obvious distinction is where the influence over the working hours lies, that is between the "company-based flexibility" and the "individual-oriented flexibility"; (b) The review of the Legislation in force in the 15 European countries shows that the regulation of working times is quite extensive and covers (Council Directive 93/104/EC) almost all the various arrangements of working hours (ie, part-time, overtime, shift, and night work), but fails to provide for flexibility; (c) According to the data of the Third EU Survey on Working Conditions, longer and "irregular" working hours are in general linked to lower levels of health and well-being; moreover, low (individual) flexibility and high variability of working hours (ie, company-based flexibility) were consistently associated with poor health and well-being, while low variability combined with high autonomy showed positive effects; (d) Six substudies from different countries demonstrated that flexible working hours vary according to country, economic sector, social status, and gender; overtime is the most frequent form of company-based flexibility but has negative effects on stress, sleep, and social and mental health; individual flexibility alleviates the negative effects of the company-based flexibility on subjective health, safety, and social well-being; (e) The literature review was able to list more than 1,000 references, but it was striking that most of these documents were mainly argumentative with very little empirical data Thus, one may conclude that there is a large-scale intervention ongoing in our society with almost completely unknown and uncontrolled effects Consequently, there is a strong need for systematic research and well-controlled actions in order to examine in detail what flexible working hours are considered, what and where are their positive effects, in particular, as concerns autonomy, and what regulation seem most reasonable