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The paper examines how various COVID-19 news sentiments differentially impact the behaviour of cryptocurrency returns. We used a nonlinear technique of transfer entropy to investigate the relationship between the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation and COVID-19 news sentiment. Results show that COVID-19 news sentiment influences cryptocurrency returns. The nexus is unidirectional from news sentiment to cryptocurrency returns, in contrast to past findings. These results have practical implications for policymakers and market participants in understanding cryptocurrency market dynamics under extremely stressful market conditions.

UID/SOC/04647/2013 As Instituições de Ensino Superior (IES) localizam-se ao longo de todo o território português. Contudo, nem as IES são idênticas nem os territórios que as acolhem são semelhantes. Desde logo, do ponto de vista formal, as IES são diferentes uma vez que estão enquadradas nos subsistemas público e privado, universitário e politécnico. Por outro lado, estudos anteriores efectuados pelas autoras, com base no Índice de Desenvolvimento Regional – que agrupa diferentes variáveis em três dimensões: Coesão, Competitividade e Qualidade Ambiental – revelam diferenças de desenvolvimento entre as regiões portuguesas que vão para além das mais convencionais distinções entre Norte e Sul, Interior e Litoral ou ainda Urbano e Rural. Foram encontrados quatro clusters que evidenciam o comportamento distinto das várias regiões. A partir desses estudos, pretende-se agora verificar de que forma as IES acompanham (ou não) esta “nova geografia” do território nacional, ou seja, importa verificar se as diferenças entre as IES se revelam quando se consideram as suas características, dando origem a grupos distintos. Para tanto, propõe-se estudar a rede de estabelecimentos de ensino público, utilizando os métodos da análise estatística multivariada, por um lado para verificar as similitudes entre as IES e, por outro, para identificar as principais variáveis que distinguem os (potenciais) grupos de instituições. O conhecimento destas características permite caracterizar melhor o sistema público de ensino superior português bem como as semelhanças entre as diversas instituições. O estudo desenvolvido mostra que as IES públicas portuguesas podem agrupar-se em 3 clusters, de acordo com a respectiva dimensão, as quais ocupam de forma distinta o território, podendo ser estabelecida uma correspondência genérica entre a dimensão das IES e a densidade do território onde estão localizadas. publishersversion published

Relatório da Prática Profissional Supervisionada Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar O presente relatório Intitulado “A importância das histórias para as crianças em idade pré-escolar”, tem como objetivo ilustrar, analisar, fundamentar e avaliar de forma reflexiva o trabalho realizado ao longo da minha Prática Profissional Supervisionada (PPS), a qual foi desenvolvida em contexto de Creche e Jardim-de-Infância (JI). O trabalho desenvolvido com os grupos de crianças, respetivas famílias e equipas educativas decorreu de um processo que teve início com PPS em creche numa instituição que tem como dimensão jurídica “pessoa coletiva de direitos privados e utilidade pública”, durante o período de tempo de 6 a 31 de janeiro de 2014, com um grupo de 14 crianças com idades compreendidas entre 1 e 3 anos. Este processo continuou e terminou com a PPS em Jardim-de-Infância num J.I da rede pública, durante o período de tempo de 10 de fevereiro a 23 de maio de 2014, com um grupo de 20 crianças entre os três e os seis anos de idade. Este relatório divide-se em 4 partes: caracterização dos contextos, uma reflexão da intervenção educativa em creche e JI, a problemática que dá nome ao presente relatório e ainda as considerações finais. Abstract This report is entitled “The importance of children’s stories to preschoolers”. It has as objective to illustrate, analyse and evaluate the work that has been developed during my Supervised Professional Practice (SPP), which was done in the context of preschool and kindergarten. The work done with the children’s groups, respective families and educational teams was initiate with SPP in a preschool - an institution with juridic dimension “collective person of private rights and public utility”- from 6th to 31st January 2014, with a group of 14 children with ages between 1 and 3 years old. This process continued and finished with a SPP in a government-run kindergarten during 10th February to 23rd May 2014, with a group of 20 children with ages between 3 and 6 years old. This report is divided in 4 parts: characterization of the context, reflexion of the educational intervention in the kindergarten, the problematic presented in the title of this report and some final considerations.

The credibility and consistency of brands are central elements in its position in the minds of con sumers, reducing the uncertainty linked to the buying processes, building associations and solidifying relationships of trust, repeated purchases and brand equity. Retailers started to sell their own brands – Private labels – positioned at low-end segments, based on low price and low quality. Actually we observe the coexistence of PLs with different qualitative levels, based on branding strategies that may include umbrella and/or independent names: private labels are a central strategic issue for all major food retailers. These labels may contribute to increase retailer’s differentiation, exclusivity, associations, loyalty, and, as a consequence, retailer brand equity. Brand equity results from the brand-market interaction, reflected in consumer’s perceptions, preferences and buying behaviors, built from all interactions developed between the consumer and the brand. Recent research tried to conceptualize the brand equity concept to retailers, building and testing “store equity” metrics, has the differential effect of the knowledge about retailers in consumers buying behaviors. Two of the most representative scales about brand equity in retail industry were developed by Arnett, Laverie & Meieres and Pappu & Questerb. This paper is part of an investigation process; focus on measuring Private labels brand equity in the food retailing industry. Actually, it is not clear the Private label real impact in retailers brand equity and if they can be considered a true brand, with exclusive associations and brand equity, autonomous from its “umbrella retailer”.

Entropy is a measure of information and uncertainty which has been used recently in different areas, besides of its original utilization in physics. Finance, microeconomics, macroeconomics, utility functions or even psychology are approached areas, using analogies between the areas physics and nature, creating a new research area: Econophysics (see, for example, Ausloos et al, 1999 or Bouchaud, 2002). This paper intends to explore the utilization of entropy through politics and election results, an area just slightly explored (Gill, 2005). It generalizes interpretation of entropy, considering it a measure of dissatisfaction and disillusion of populations in relation to politics. Some phenomena like the increase of abstention in a country, consequence of the dissatisfaction of population and of their alienation in relation to politics could be detected and analysed. This discontentment could result, for example, in the appearance of new political parties, with more division of votes and increasing entropy (result of the discontentment and uncertainty by electors). Absolute majorities, while imply less dispersion of votes, are synonym of more confidence in a given party, making a reduction of entropy. Electoral results could also be influenced by particular phenomena, like those terrorist attacks made in vespers of the two last elections in Spain, with consequences on the affluence to the polls by electors, and influencing levels of entropy. Elections' dates could also influence results: for example, elections on summer season suffer from more abstention. Elections' results could also be connected with aspects like safety feeling of citizens, with unpopular socio-economic policies taken by government or even with the economic performance of a country. One of the purposes of this paper is to find these types of phenomena and try to relate them with the concept of entropy. Another objective is to analyse the reality in different European countries.