Browsing by Author "Lima, Ana"
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- Facebook's features and the impact on the purchase behavior of consumers of organic products: generation Y And ZPublication . Teixeira, Elisabete; Lima, Ana; Teixeira, SandrinaIn the era of digital globalization, there are many behavioral changes in consumption. Most social media users use them to search for information about a product to determine whether they want to proceed with the purchase. Therefore, companies must develop digital marketing strategies for their profiles on social networks, especially in competitive markets, such as organic products. The objective of this study is to understand whether Facebook’s features have an influence on the purchasing behavior of consumers of organic products and which of the features has the most impact on these individuals. A questionnaire was created to carry out this study, which received 205 responses. The results of the study showed a positive influence of the following Facebook features on the purchase behavior of consumers of organic products: the “like” button, the “share” button, and the “advertising” button. Furthermore, these features proved to be more influential on Generation Z.
- Impacto das comunidades de consumidores no valor das marcasPublication . Lima, Ana; Dionísio, Pedro; Brito, CarlosThe act of consumption is a way to structure and give meaning to the world and the relationships established among people. During the transition from modernity, i.e., from modernity to postmodernity (Rajj, 1998), in a consumer culture (Slater, 1997), the products and their signal value and consumption assume a central role in creating meaning for individuals (Solomon, 1983; Fournier, 1998), thus affecting the differentiation and integration of individuals in the social world. Today consumers are dedicated to the consumption of experiences and feelings about brands, far beyond the functionality of the product. This promotes the consumption value of the bond and connection between consumers’ tastes, opinions and preferences. Thus, consumption in social and convivial contexts overlaps isolated and egocentric consumption. Given this new reality, blurring the differences between the materials products makes the concept of brand a key issue in the identification and differentiation. User groups and admirers of a brand that engage in joint activities to achieve collective goals and or to express mutual feelings, experiences and commitments are known as brand communities (Stokburger Sauer, 2010). They consume the symbolic meaning of products and not only the product features, and the image and the emotional connection is more important than functionality. In the social context of consumption of these communities should be studied both their interactions and the direct and indirect impact to organizations. It is intended to investigate and explain the interdependence between the concepts of brand community and brand value, with respect to the motivations for participation in the brand community, its characteristics and organic and ultimately the relationship with the cognitive dimensions of brand equity.
- Mixed reality in surgery – a delphi studyPublication . Veloso, Rita; Magalhães, Renato; Lima, Ana; Gomes, Paulo Veloso; Marques, António; Pereira, JavierVirtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality all have useful applications in the field of medicine, but Mixed reality has great potential because it allows for interaction with both real and digital Objects. Based on a previous literature review, a preliminary Delphi study was performed to obtain the opinion of a panel of 22 experts from several hospitals on the use of Mixed Reality tools, such as the HoLoLens 2, in surgeries. After data collection, a consensus letter was signed. According to experts, the most useful areas are medical education and surgical planning.
- ViruScopeDB: a comprehensive multi-omics database for highly infectious virusesPublication . Lima, Ana; Carneiro, João; Sousa, Sérgio; Sá, Vítor; Pratas, Diogo; Sá, Vítor J.Highly infectious viruses such as HIV, Ebola, and SARS-CoV-2 have presented ongoing challenges to global health. Consequently, the optimization of rapid detection tests, including PCR, and the identification of new therapeutic targets remain of paramount importance. The development of genomic and proteomic databases like the HIV Oligonucleotide Database (HIVoligoDB) [1], EbolaID [2], and CoV2ID [3] has facilitated the accumulation and accessibility of knowledge through comprehensive, user-friendly, open-access platforms. This study aims to update, expand, and integrate these databases into a single resource, ViruScopeDB, while conducting thorough analyses of informative genomic regions with the goal of enhancing viral detection methods and treatment strategies. Complete genomic sequence variants for each virus were compiled using NCBI Virus, followed by multiple sequence alignment via MAFFT within the Galaxy platform. The alignments were consequently uploaded to Geneious Prime for complete genome visualization and calculation of parameters such as percentage of pairwise identity. Primer data was extracted from open-access research articles available on PubMed using a newly-built custom pipeline for PDF to plain text conversion followed by data mining of oligonucleotide sequences. A fully automated script for primer validation, parameter scoring and calculation of best primer pairs for PCR is being constructed for subsequent upload into the database. A total of 658 sequences with a mean length of 18,910 base pairs (bp) were collected for Ebolavirus, with percentage of pairwise identity (PPI) of 91.7%. 7,261 sequences with a mean length of 8,883 bp, with a PPI of 80.8% were identified for HIV-1. For HIV-2, 43 sequences with an average of 10,108 bp and PPI of 80.9% were analyzed. For Ebola, a total of 709 primers were scraped from 257 articles, and for HIV articles this number rises to 10,290 primers collected from 2,579 articles. Using a combination of preexistent and novel custom-built bioinformatics tools, it was possible to data mine key information related to each virus and their variants, as well as collect primer information for possible PCR optimizations. Further analysis will be conducted on the data collected, branching out into the realm of phylogenetics and 3D modelling/viral protein docking, in order to construct a database that is transversal to various omics.