Abstract. The Montesinho Natural Park (MNP), with an area of about 750 km2, is one of the largest protected areas in Portugal. Since its inauguration as a natural park in 1979, geological and geomorphological aspects have not been taken into consideration in its nature conservation policies. Over the last few years, this deficit has been compensated with an assessment of its geomorphological heritage. The assessment was made possible due to a research project on the geological heritage of the natural parks of north-eastern Portugal.The assessment method propagated herein proposes a clear definition of three types of geomorphosites: Single places, geomorphological areas or panoramic viewpoints. Further, it proposes as two-staged approach to assessment with inventory compilation followed by quantification of value. Inventory compilation, for example, involves the identification and qualitative assessment of potential geomorphosites and, therefore, the selection and characterization of geomorphosites. The quantification stage includes the numerical assessment of sites and their final ranking. The values are numerically assessed using selected criteria. The implementation of this approach in the MNP led to the identification of 154 potential geomorphosites, of which only 26 were selected after the qualitative assessment or characterisation process. The numerical assessment of the sites and their ranking allowed a final selection of 13 sites for public use.

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National Road Network which consists of a traditional road structure and modern roads, require planned maintenance and should be in accordance with the needs. The limited choice of available national road network and the deviation of the overloading encourage the government to be more responsive to carry out maintenance management. The institution in charge of road maintenance is often constrained by the limited budget available. A two-objective optimization model considers maximum roughness and minimum maintenance cost for used road network with overload. The study was conducted on the entire national road network in West Java which are paved with flexible pavement. In the proposed approach, data mining model are used for predicting the roughness index over a given period of time. Routine and periodic maintenance are chosen in this study. Multi-objective optimization model was developed based on Genetic Algorithms. Budget constraints and overloading are the two constraints in the developed model. Based on the R-Tools result, the Pareto optimal solutions of the two objective functions are obtained. From the optimal solutions represented by roughness index and cost, an agency more easily obtain the information of the maintenance planning. Results of the developed model has been implemented through the selection of maintenance on the road network scenarios with different levels of overload.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune disease of the Central Nervous System causing inflammation and neurodegeneration. There are only 3 epidemiological studies in Portugal, 2 in the Centre and 1 in the North, and there is the need to further study MS epidemiology in this country. The objective of this work is to contribute to the MS epidemiological knowledge in Portugal, describing the patients' epidemiological, demographic, and clinical characteristics in the Braga district of Portugal. This is a cross-sectional study of 345 patients followed in two hospitals of Braga district. These hospitals cover a resident population of 866,012 inhabitants. The data was collected from the clinical records, and 31/12/2009 was established as the prevalence day. For all MS patients, demographic characteristics and clinical outcomes are reported. We have found an incidence of 2.74/100,000 and a prevalence of 39.82/100,000 inhabitants. Most patients have an EDSS of 3 or lower and a mean age of 42 years. The diagnosis was done at mean age of 35, with RRMS being the disease type in more than 80% of patients. In this cohort, we found a female : male ratio of 1.79. More than 50% of patients are treated with Interferon β-1b IM or IFNβ-1a SC 22 μg.

Consistent with the initial hypothesis, our study revealed altered saccade latency, peak velocity and amplitude in patients with fatigue symptoms. Eye movement testing can complement the standard inventories when investigating fatigue because they do not share similar limitations. Our findings contribute to the understanding of functional changes induced by MS and might be useful for clinical trials and treatment decisions.

Top-down cracking (TDC) is a flexible pavement distress caused by a number of factors, including high contact stresses from truck tires, mix design characteristics (e.g., binder type and aggregate gradation), and poor construction quality (e.g., segregation and compaction methods). This paper presents the findings of a study seeking to quantify the effect of those factors on TDC. The study consists of a laboratory component involving an accelerated wheel-tracking device and a modeling component involving a 3-D nonlinear viscoelastic finite element model. The laboratory component of the study involved 17 asphalt bituminous slabs constructed to simulate the variation in material properties observed in the field as part of an earlier forensic TDC study. The effect on TDC of air voids, bitumen content and type, aggregate gradation, and segregation were studied under three temperature conditions. Air voids, segregation, and binder content were found to have a significant effect on TDC for all temperatures tested. Modeling the TDC involved laboratory testing to establish the viscoelastic and tensile strength properties of the asphalt mixtures tested. It was found that the rutted surface contributes significantly to TDC initiation.

BackgroundThe Stroop test is frequently used to assess deficits in inhibitory control in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). This test has limitations and antisaccade eye movements, that also measure inhibitory control, may be an alternative to Stroop.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was twofold: (i) to investigate if the performance in the antisaccade task is altered in patients with MS and (ii) to investigate the correlation between performances in neuropsychological tests, the Stroop test and the antisaccade task.MethodsWe measured antisaccades (AS) parameters with an infrared eye tracker (SMIRED 250 Hz) using a standard AS paradigm. A total of 38 subjects diagnosed with MS and 38 age and gender matched controls participated in this study. Neuropsychological measures were obtained from the MS group.ResultsPatients with MS have higher error rates and prolonged latency than controls in the antisaccade task. There was a consistent association between the Stroop performance and AS latency. Stroop performance but not AS latency was associated with other neuropsychological measures in which the MS group showed deficits.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that AS may be a selective and independent measure to investigate inhibitory control in patients with MS. More studies are necessary to confirm our results and to describe brain correlates associated with impaired performance in the antisaccade task in people diagnosed with MS.

We propose a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) for a combinatorial optimization problem, motivated by, and a simplification of, a TV Self-promotion Assignment Problem. The problem consists of, given the weekly self-promotion space (a set of TV breaks with known duration) and a set of products to promote, to assign the products to the breaks in the "best" possible way. The objective is to maximize contacts in the target audience for each product, while satisfying all constraints. The HGA developed incorporates a greedy heuristic to initialize part of the population and uses a repair routine to guarantee feasibility of each member of the population. The HGA works on a simplified version of the problem that, nevertheless, maintains its essential features. The proposed simplified problem is a binary programming problem that has similarities with other known combinatorial optimization problems, such as the assignment problem or the multiple knapsack problem, but has some distinctive features that characterize it as a new problem. Although we were mainly interested in solving problems of high dimension (of about 200 breaks and 50 spots), the quality of the solution was tested on smaller dimension problems for which we could find the exact global minimum using a branch-and-bound algorithm. For these smaller dimension problems we have obtained solutions on average within 1% of the optimal solution value.