Repositório RCAAP

Objective: Seizures and electroencephalographic (EEG) abnormalities have been associated with unfavorable stroke functional outcome. However, this association may depend on clinical and imaging stroke severity. We set out to analyze whether epileptic seizures and early EEG abnormalities are predictors of stroke outcome after adjustment for age and clinical/imaging infarct severity. Methods: A prospective study was made on consecutive and previously independent acute stroke patients with a National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score ≥ 4 on admission and an acute anterior circulation ischemic lesion on brain imaging. All patients underwent standardized clinical and diagnostic assessment during admission and after discharge, and were followed for 12 months. Video-EEG (<60 min) was performed in the first 72 h. The Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score quantified middle cerebral artery infarct size. The outcomes in this study were an unfavorable functional outcome (modified Rankin Scale [mRS] ≥ 3) and death (mRS = 6) at discharge and 12 months after stroke. Results: Unfavorable outcome at discharge was independently associated with NIHSS score (p = 0.001), EEG background activity slowing (p < 0.001), and asymmetry (p < 0.001). Unfavorable outcome 1 year after stroke was independently associated with age (p = 0.001), NIHSS score (p < 0.001), remote symptomatic seizures (p = 0.046), EEG background activity slowing (p < 0.001), and asymmetry (p < 0.001). Death in the first year after stroke was independently associated with age (p = 0.028), NIHSS score (p = 0.001), acute symptomatic seizures (p = 0.015), and EEG suppression (p = 0.019). Significance: Acute symptomatic seizures were independent predictors of vital outcome and remote symptomatic seizures of functional outcome in the first year after stroke. Therefore, their recognition and prevention strategies may be clinically relevant. Early EEG abnormalities were independent predictors and comparable to age and early clinical/imaging infarct severity in stroke functional outcome discrimination, reflecting the concept that EEG is a sensitive and robust method in the functional assessment of the brain.

Este estudo situa-se na área da formação contínua de professores e teve por objectivo analisar os processos de construção da oferta formativa de quatro Centros de Formação das Associações de Escolas e a forma como nela se articulam as prioridades nacionais de formação e as necessidades de formação das escolas e dos professores, a partir dos modos de funcionamento destes Centros. As interacções entre as estruturas internas de cada Centro e as interacções estabelecidas com outras instituições, a política de formação dos Centros, as dificuldades na concretização da política de formação e as atitudes e expectativas do Director e de elementos da Comissão Pedagógica de cada Centro constituem as dimensões principais do problema investigado. Nesta investigação adoptou-se uma abordagem metodológica de natureza qualitativa baseada na realização de um estudo de caso múltiplo. A opção por uma pesquisa envolvendo quatro Centros de Formação teve como fundamento o facto de se tratar de um estudo exploratório que sairia enriquecido pela investigação da mesma situação em contextos diferentes, permitindo assim pôr em evidência as singularidades mas também as características comuns a cada caso. Os resultados deste estudo permitem concluir que o funcionamento interno destes Centros de Formação das Associações de Escolas e a natureza das relações que estabeleceram com os parceiros educativos e com as instâncias centrais e regionais do Ministério da Educação não contribuíram para centrar a formação nas escolas. A nível do funcionamento interno, o Director surge como o principal protagonista de todas as iniciativas do Centro, a Comissão Pedagógica emerge como um órgão com uma participação limitada à discussão e aprovação das propostas apresentadas pelo Director, e as escolas, por falta de associativismo, não perspectivaram o Centro como uma estrutura de apoio às suas dinâmicas internas. No plano das interacções externas, as relações concretizadas no âmbito dos protocolos estabelecidos com as instituições do ensino superior circunscreveram-se, essencialmente, à cedência de formadores e, em três dos casos estudados, os resultados sugerem ter existido concorrência, entre os Centros e as instituições do ensino superior, na oferta de acções de formação. Com o Ministério da Educação, as relações foram caracterizadas, essencialmente, pela falta de apoio a uma política de descentralização da formação. É também ao Ministério da Educação que é atribuída a origem da maioria das dificuldades sentidas, salientando-se as decorrentes do controlo exercido pelos organismos oficiais através dos processos relacionados com o financiamento das acções. No que concerne à oferta formativa destes Centros, emergiram desta investigação as seguintes características: (1) construção da oferta formativa centrada nos professores individualmente considerados e nas prioridades nacionais de formação; (2) formação de tipo tradicional centrada nos cursos de formação e na transmissão de conhecimentos e de competências técnicas; e (3) formação articulada, essencialmente, com as necessidades decorrentes da evolução do sistema educativo. Os Centros de Formação das Associações de Escolas constituem uma instituição nova e original no domínio da formação de professores, possuindo potencialidades para desenvolver dinâmicas associativas entre as escolas e para concretizar uma política descentralizada de formação. Esta investigação contribui, pela descrição e interpretação dos modos de funcionamento dos Centros e da sua política de formação, para o conhecimento deste novo e importante objecto de estudo gerado por esta nova realidade. Contribui também para a compreensão da política do Ministério da Educação no domínio da formação contínua de professores.

The field of Cognitive Science is broader enough on the interdisciplinary study of the brain, mind, and intelligence with a scientific research community gaining momentum over the last few decades. Specifically, joining the two fields of psychology and artificial intelligence (AI) one may envision agents, embodied or not, human-like or wearable, with the ability to significantly change the way humans live. This research conceive the artificial agent as a non-anthropomorphic with adaptive empathy for human-agent interaction (HAI) synergy towards better companionship. Therefore, the main objectives of this research are (a) to build a predictive model for each human user on context-based emotional valence changes; and (b) to study the age, gender, and human behaviour neutrality and robustness of the artificial agent regarding the prediction ability. The context include geographically located data from sensors, text sentiment analysis, and human emotional valence self-report, all timestamped events, using a common mobile device such as a smartphone. Also, to analyse and discuss the results on how to leverage such a model to adapt interaction strategies in order to foster higher levels of empathy between a non-anthropomorphic agent and its interacting human. For these goals SensAI+Expanse is developed where SensAI acts as an embodied nearby agent and Expanse encompass the machine learning resources in efficient manner, i.e., a distributed, fault-tolerant, mobile and Cloud-based platform from scratch as a research tool to continuously, online, gather and process data towards automated machine learning (AutoML) and prediction. The study is designed with a methodology in place to avoid the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies bias. This goal is accomplished by collecting data in the wild and worldwide by making use of the publicly accessible Google Play repository for the Android™ SensAI smartphone application. Eligible participants are diverse in age, gender, and behaviour on self-reporting emotional valence. In order to balance the gender distribution by age a dichotomy approach using age median (M = 34) is used. Regarding participation duration, two thirds (33/49) of the eligible individuals for analysis remain interacting for the required minimum of four weeks. The analysis of the results show evidence of significant behaviour differences between some age and gender combinations regarding self-reported emotional valence. Furthermore, the results from a comparison study between state-of-the-art algorithms revealed Extreme Gradient Boosting on average the best model for prediction (F1 = 0:91) with efficient energy use, and explainable using feature importance inspection. Moreover, the artificial agent remained neutral regarding human demographics and, simultaneously, able to reveal individual idiosyncrasies. Therefore, this research contributions include results with evidence, restricted to population and data samples available, of differences in behaviour amongst some combinations of age ranges versus gender. The main contribution is a novel platform for studies regarding human emotional valence changes in context. This system may complement and supersede (eventually) traditional long-list self-appraisal questionnaires. The SensAI+Expanse platform contributes with several parts such as a mobile device application (SensAI) able to adapt and learn in order to predict emotional valence states with high performance, a cloud computing (Cloud) service (SensAI Expanse) with ready-to-action analysis and processing modules towards AutoML. Additionally, smartphone sensing add a contribution for continuous, non-invasive and personalised health check. In the future, developments about human-agent relationships regarding affective interactions are foreseen. Further, the measurement of empathetic reactions and evaluating outcomes may be used to verify and validate health status thus improving care and significantly change the way humans live.

O presente trabalho foca as práticas de escrita no Enino Secundário no contexto de Cabo Verde, procurando compreender como se ensina a escrever e quais os géneros textuais ensinados. Parte-se do pressuposto de que os alunos à saída do Ensino Secundário, ainda apresentam uma série de lacunas a nível de produção textual e de que este fenómeno carece de explicação. O trabalho começa com a contextualização do ensino-aprendizagem da Língua Portuguesa em Cabo Verde, dando conta dos desafios impostos pela forte presença da LM. Procura-se, também, mapear os géneros escolares de Língua Portuguesa, faz-se a contextualização da Pedagogia de Género da Escola de Sydney e, como forma de colmatar as lacunas, optou-se pela aplicação de dois inquéritos por questionário destinados a professores e alunos do 11º e 12º anos de escolaridade. O trabalho pretende contribuir com respostas para a colmatação das lacunas descritas, recorrendo a uma Abordagem baseada em Género, informada pela Linguística Sistémico-Funcional (LSF) e, mais concretamente, pelos estudos da designada Escola de Sydney. A escolha da LSF deve-se ao seu comprovado sucesso em melhorar o desempenho dos alunos de L2, em contextos similares ao de Cabo Verde. Dá-se conta das práticas de escrita, primeiramente, através do mapeamento dos géneros presentes nos documentos legais e nos manuais escolares. Em segundo lugar, através da aplicação de questionários procura-se saber, junto do público acima referido, quais são as suas perceções sobre estas mesmas práticas. Em consequência, recomenda-se a mobilização da abordagem genológica para dar respostas aos problemas inventariados.

O presente relatório de estágio integra-se no âmbito do Mestrado em Ciências da Documentação e Informação, para obtenção do grau de Mestre. Este estágio decorreu na Câmara Municipal do Cartaxo (CMC) entre 21 de Janeiro e 15 de Março de 2019, realizado em tempo integral de 6 horas diárias, num total de 234 horas. Teve como principal objetivo realizar a avaliação da informação acumulada na Câmara Municipal do Cartaxo, entre 1970 e 2015, com o fim de produzir uma proposta de auto de eliminação, fundamentando o trabalho com recurso às Portarias de Gestão de Documentos (PGD), produzindo uma listagem numa Tabela de Avaliação e Seleção. No relatório de estágio, procurou-se estudar estas mesmas PGD e a sua aplicabilidade, uma vez que estas mesmas PGD determinam qual a documentação a conservar e qual a documentação a eliminar. Procurou-se estudar, na metodologia, essa mesma fundamentação teórica, assim como se debruçou sobre as várias correntes arquivísticas da avaliação documental e elaborou-se uma revisão de literatura em que se colocou em perspetiva a questão da organização arquivística ao nível das autarquias locais. Estudou-se igualmente a estrutura orgânico-funcional da Câmara Municipal do Cartaxo, aprofundando o conhecimento da prática desta autarquia, fazendo um levantamento da sua situação atual e procurou-se, também, compreender a importância de um arquivo municipal na estrutura de uma autarquia local. Verifica-se que a Câmara Municipal do Cartaxo não possui uma estrutura de arquivo, embora esta esteja prevista no Regulamento da Organização dos Serviços Municipais e que a documentação arquivística se encontra distribuída por vários depósitos instalados em diversas instalações municipais, como tal está ainda por concretizar a adequada implementação do serviço de arquivo municipal, de acordo com o que e regulado pela legislação em vigor.

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A cerâmica de paredes finas recolhida no Castelo de Castro Marim é abundante, sendo o conjunto datável do final da época republicana o mais bem representado. Para esta cronologia, a diversidade formal e a origem são consideráveis, dominando, contudo, as importações itálicas, sobretudo as etruscas, apesar de terem sido identificadas produções de outras áreas da península centro-mediterrânea e também ocidentais, como Ibiza. No alto-império, as importações desta categoria cerâmica diminuíram substancialmente, tendo-se a Bética assumido como principal centro abastecedor de Castro Marim, no que à cerâmica de paredes finas diz respeito. Ainda assim, quer a Península Itálica quer também Ibiza contribuíram para esse abastecimento.

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A filosofia sempre se interessou pela arte. Mas foi só quando a arte contemporânea registou novos e surpreendentes desenvolvimentos que surgiu na história da filosofia um aceso debate acerca da possibilidade de encontrar uma definição real de arte capaz de captar a sua essência. Nesta dissertação discutirei algumas das mais importantes teorias contemporâneas acerca da natureza da arte, desde as teorias essencialistas clássicas de Bell e Collingwood, passando pela proposta das semelhanças de família feita por Weitz, até às mais recentes teorias relacionais de Danto, Dickie, Levinson e Carroll. Defenderei que a filosofia da arte de Danto oferece a resposta mais credível, das discutidas, para a questão da natureza da arte. Para além de ser mais capaz de lidar com as objecções, Danto fornece uma definição real que é verdadeiramente uma explicação ontológica da arte e acomoda eficazmente algumas das crenças mais comuns acerca da produção artística e da nossa relação com ela.

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The COVID-19 pandemic threw into disarray almost all spheres of human activity. Research is no exception. When labs and research centres closed, scientists were told to stay at home, scientific events were cancelled or postponed to an uncertain date, most scientific projects had to be put on hold or modified substantially. This chapter concerns the adjustments and adaptations that had to be made in one such project, PERSIST_EU, an international project aimed at bringing together European university students through the organisation of participatory events in five cities. The participation of students should provide needed insights about knowledge, perceptions and opinion on science, and how these can be changed by engaging and discussing controversial scientific topics.

Background: Prevalence of fatty liver (FL) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) depends mainly on obesity, diabetes and genetic factors. FL and NAFLD prevalence was evaluated in Portuguese adult population and correlated with several risk factors and related mortality data, within the same period. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional, population-based multicenter study, voluntary and randomly selected in 834 Portuguese adults (18-79 years). Participants were evaluated after 12-hour fasting. Anthropometric data, past history including alcohol consumption, and associated diseases were registered. Blood samples were collected for biochemical testing. Dietary intake was evaluated using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Presence of FL was evaluated using ultrasound, and NAFLD was diagnosed after exclusion of other causes for liver disease. Results: Adjusted prevalence of FL and NAFLD was 37.8% and 17.0%, respectively. FL individuals were older, more frequently males, with increased probability of having obesity, diabetes or harmful alcohol consumption (HAC). NAFLD individuals were also older, but had a similar sex distribution and an increased probability of obesity and diabetes. In both groups, no differences were found regarding dietary pattern or physical activity. During the same time period, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) liver-related deaths in Portugal were 0.105/100 000, while alcohol-related liver disease mortality was 6.790/100 000. Conclusion: The large spectrum of FL was present in more than one third of the population, although only less than half could be classified as NAFLD. Other significant risk factors, such as HAC, are probably implicated in FL, explaining the low NASH-related mortality compared with the high alcohol-related mortality during the same time period.

Dignity Therapy (DT) is a brief, individualized intervention, which provides terminally ill patients with an opportunity to convey memories and essential disclosures that culminate in a legacy document. DT often broaches psychosocial and existential issues, hence bolstering a sense of meaning and purpose (Chochinov et al., 2005). During DT, trained therapists guide a psychotherapeutic session based on a framework of questions developed from key tenets of the Dignity Model (Chochinov et al., 2002). DT is presently well established in adult populations, but its application to younger people has received little attention (Rodriguez et al., 2018; Julião et al., 2020). To address this gap, Julião and colleagues adapted the Portuguese DT question framework to make it applicable to adolescents (ages 10–18) (Julião et al., 2020).

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in developed countries. Nevertheless, in recent years, mortality associated with diseases of the circulatory system has decreased steadily across several European Union (EU) member states. This change may, at least in part, be due to increased screening and awareness of appropriate and timely treatment procedures, as well as to changes in patients’ lifestyles.

Purpose: Determination of genotypic/phenotypic features of GATAD2B-associated neurodevelopmental disorder (GAND). Methods: Fifty GAND subjects were evaluated to determine consistent genotypic/phenotypic features. Immunoprecipitation assays utilizing in vitro transcription-translation products were used to evaluate GATAD2B missense variants' ability to interact with binding partners within the nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase (NuRD) complex. Results: Subjects had clinical findings that included macrocephaly, hypotonia, intellectual disability, neonatal feeding issues, polyhydramnios, apraxia of speech, epilepsy, and bicuspid aortic valves. Forty-one novelGATAD2B variants were identified with multiple variant types (nonsense, truncating frameshift, splice-site variants, deletions, and missense). Seven subjects were identified with missense variants that localized within two conserved region domains (CR1 or CR2) of the GATAD2B protein. Immunoprecipitation assays revealed several of these missense variants disrupted GATAD2B interactions with its NuRD complex binding partners. Conclusions: A consistent GAND phenotype was caused by a range of genetic variants in GATAD2B that include loss-of-function and missense subtypes. Missense variants were present in conserved region domains that disrupted assembly of NuRD complex proteins. GAND's clinical phenotype had substantial clinical overlap with other disorders associated with the NuRD complex that involve CHD3 and CHD4, with clinical features of hypotonia, intellectual disability, cardiac defects, childhood apraxia of speech, and macrocephaly.

The physiological significance of biometric body condition indices (bBCI) is poorly understood. We hypothesized that bBCI are composite metrics of nutritional physiology, physical fitness and health. To test this hypothesis, we first compared the performance of eight bBCI, using 434 Southern European carnivores from six species as a model system; and then identified, by non-destructive methods, the hematology and serum biochemistry correlates of three selected bBCI. Fulton’s K Index, Major Axis Regression Residuals and Scaled Mass Index were the only bBCI insensitive to the effect of sex and age. The most informative physiological parameters in explaining the variation of these bBCI were the albumin (Effect Size (ES) = − 1.66 to − 1.76), urea (ES = 1.61 to 1.85) and total bilirubin (ES = − 1.62 to − 1.79). Hemoglobin and globulins (positive) and cholesterol (negative) were moderately informative (0.9 <|ES|< 1.5). This study shows that most bBCI do not control for the effect of age and sex in Southern European carnivores. Our results support that bBCI are composite measures of physiologic processes, reflecting a positive gradient from protein-poor to protein-rich diets, accompanied by increased physical fitness. Biometric body condition indices allow the integration of ecologically relevant physiological aspects in an easily obtained metric.

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The extensive afforestation of the Mediterranean rim of Europe in recent decades has increased the number of wildfire disturbances on hydrological and sediment processes, but the impacts on headwater catchments is still poorly understood, especially when compared with the previous agricultural landscape. This work monitored an agroforestry catchment in the north-western Iberian Peninsula, with plantation forests mixed with traditional agriculture using soil conservation practices, for one year before the fire and for three years afterwards, during which period the burnt area was plowed and reforested. During this period, continuous data was collected for meteorology, streamflow and sediment concentration at the outlet, erosion features were mapped and measured after major rainfall events, and channel sediment dynamics were monitored downstream from the agricultural and the burnt forest area. Data from 202 rainfall events with over 10 mm was analysed in detail. Results show that the fire led to a notable impact on sediment processes during the first two post-fire years, but not on streamflow processes; this despite the small size of the burnt area (10% of the catchment) and the occurrence of a severe drought in the first year after the fire. During this period, soil loss at the burnt forest slopes was much larger than that at most traditionally managed fields, and, ultimately, led to sediment exhaustion. At the catchment scale, storm characteristics were the dominant factor behind streamflow and sediment yield both before and after the fire. However, the data indicated a shift from detachment-limited sediment yield before the fire, to transport-limited sediment yield afterwards, with important increases in streamflow sediment concentration. This indicates that even small fires can temporarily change sediment processes in agroforestry catchments, with potential negative consequences for downstream water quality.

Irrigation is essential for a large part of Mediterranean agricultural systems, but scarce resources may cause conflicts between agricultural and domestic uses. These conflicts might be exacerbated by climate change, which could bring a drier climate and thus increase irrigation water demands while lowering supplies. These issues were addressed when designing a climate change adaptation plan for water resources in the Algarve region (southern Portugal), which was co-created between hydrologists and local stakeholders and policy-makers, by using the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) approach to synthetize and communicate the results from hydrological modelling of future scenarios. The evolution of water availability and irrigation demands for key water assets in Algarve (southern Portugal) were simulated until 2100 for climate scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, using a modified version of Thornthwaite-Mather. The results show an increase in water stress, mainly in the RCP8.5 scenario. The results and need for adaptation were discussed with local and regional decision-makers and other stakeholders, and a set of adaptation measures was agreed upon. The discussed adaptation measures were then modelled and integrated the design of tailor-made DAPP. Finally, decision-makers and stakeholders were presented with DAPP and selected the most suitable and political reliable adaptation pathway that tackles projected climate change impacts in water resources until the end of the 21 st century. Stakeholders showed a strong preference for incremental and distributed small-scale measures, including the promotion of water use efficiency and landscape water retention, to large-scale measures such as wastewater recycling or new dams. A decrease in irrigation water use for agriculture was not considered socially desirable. Desalination was considered too costly for irrigation in the short term but kept in reserve in case other measures fail to keep water supplies at an acceptable level.