RCAAP Repository

O presente volume composto por 85 artigos, está estruturado em sete Secções nos respectivos temas: 1. Mudanças demográficas, sociais e epidemiológicas; 2. Equidade e desigualdades em Saúde: desafios para as políticas públicas; 3. Planeamento urbano saudável: uma abordagem à saúde em todas as políticas; 4. Turismo, desenvolvimento e saúde; 5. Segurança alimentar, educação e práticas alternativas em saúde; 6. Qualidade de informação, SIG e processos de apoio à decisão; e 7. Ambiente e saúde

This introductory essay bridges the gap between two historiographical fields that rarely engaged with each other: Atlantic history and the history of petitions and petitionary practices. The essay emphasises the importance of petitioning within and across Atlantic empires, from the initial European expansion to the Age of Revolutions.Petitioning played a major role in the negotiated patterns of early modern empires, irrespective of the political regime of each state or empire. Petitioning practices underwent a very unique development in the Atlantic World, the essay argues. This was partly dictated by a background of common features that did not converge anywhere else in the same timeframe, namely the shared Greco-Roman and medieval petitionary heritage, the simultaneous expansion and colonisation processes, and the infectious reverberations of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. The essay goes through the traditional practices and institutions and revisits the unique petitionary experience of colonised peoples. It also pays a special attention to the transformative role of the Revolution, which began to convert petitioning into a vehicle for mass popular politics on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Portuguese Liberal Revolution of 1820 was followed by a petitionary wave of unprecedented proportions in the history of Portugal and its empire. Suddenly, there was an outburst of petitions that even threaten the regular parliamentary proceedings of the new Liberal Cortes. Although explored since the late 1960s, this petitionary wave was never situated in the broader context of petitionary practices. Above all, we do not know if these petitions were mainly tied to traditional forms of addressing authorities or if they were more related to new repertoires of protest. This essay tries to answer this question by exploring the signs normally associated with the petitionary drives of the nineteenth century, namely the sudden parlamentarisation of politics, the relation between petitioning and the public sphere, the relation between petitioning and the organization of mass mobilisation and the adoption of new language of rights.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs with approximately 19–24 nucleotides long, that play a critical role in the regulation of many viral and host protein-coding genes. These small RNAs are encoded by cellular or viral genomes, however, although DNA viruses have been found to produce miRNAs of similar size to eukaryotic miRNAs, it has been generally assumed that RNA viruses do not encode miRNAs, based on the notion that the generation of canonical miRNAs from a pre-miRNA hairpin would result in useless cleavage of the viral genome and transcripts. HIV retroviruses (HIV-1 and HIV-2) are RNA viruses that have been intensively studied since HIV1 infections constitute one of the biggest health issues of the last decades. Nevertheless, the existence of HIV-1 encoded miRNAs is still up for debate, while the existence of HIV-2 encoded miRNAs has never been investigated. Previous work from our lab using a high-quality dataset of small RNAs from naïve CD4+ T cells infected with either HIV-1 or HIV-2 detected three candidate molecules, two encoded by the former and one from the later viral genome that display typical features of authentic miRNAs. With this project, we aim to experimentally validate the putative HIV-1 and HIV-2 encoded miRNAs as bonafide miRNAs, dissect the mechanism used by HIV to produce them, and investigate the functional impact of these molecules in host and viral gene expression. Our results show that both HIV-1 and HIV-2 can encode strong miRNA candidates that require a hairpin secondary structure to be expressed. Moreover, the knock-down of Dicer lead to a decrease in the accumulation of mature putative miRNAs for two of our three candidates, suggesting that they are derived from Dicer-dependent processing, rather than being merely RNA degradation products. Regarding the functional impact of these miRNAs, several viral and host targets were predicted. Importantly, the list of predicted targets for all three molecules seems to be enriched in biological processes, molecular functions, and cellular compartments related to the regulation of viral infection, latency, and cell survival. Overall, our results were able to support the existence of putative HIV-encoded miRNAs and provide new insights regarding the v-miRNA-dependent regulatory mechanisms linked to the pathobiology of HIV-1 and HIV-2, warranting future in-depth studies.

This report describes the development of a new iteration of an already existant platform called Datapark, which is used by CNS, which is a clinical institution specialized in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. The main goal is to identify any flaws present in the web platform and implement any fixes or changes to it. This platform allows users to analyze their patient’s condition by keeping all of their assessments, as well as any notes written by clinicians in a single, centralized spot. Furthermore, Datapark takes into account sensory data that was gathered during the assessments via accelerometers wored by the patients. This sensory data is then used as a complement to the assessment in order to display further metrics about patient’s performance. In order to create this new version of Datapark, an analysis to the platform’s interface, as well as two separate sessions withe the clinicians were conducted. During these sessions, both subjective and objective analysis were conducted in order to get as much feedback regarding both the current web application, as well as the prototype. The result was a new interface that matches with the clinician’s daily needs. This interface was then taken into account when creating the new, API-driven iteration.

In concurrent interactions there are a large number of messages exchanged between two or more processes that often lead to coding errors. To simplify these interactions and reduce the coding errors, session types were created. Session types are an approach for structuring interaction protocols between multiple parties. When a channel is shared between two processes it is necessary to ensure that if one is sending a message, the other is prepared to receive it. In the same way, if a process offers some options, the complementary is prepared to select one of the options. There are finite types of messages, that perform an operation and stop, where you can perform send/receive or offer/select a message and terminate the interaction. However, not all of the interactions are possible just with finite types. This work presents an extension of session types into infinity, since it is necessary to study different classes of types with greater expressive power than finite types. Recursive and 1-counter types are the main focus of this thesis. We start by designing grammars so we can test equation systems based on those types. Defining rules in which the systems of these types can be written is the purpose of the grammars. These rules include the possibility of sending or receiving messages and selecting or offering a set of options. The grammars are implemented based on SePi, a concurrent programming language based on pi-calculus. All the systems that present a finite and infinite behavior should be tested. Constructing algorithms for type formation and type equivalence of these systems as well as testing those algorithms is the main goal of this project, so that we can be sure that infinite types, specifically, with different degrees of expressivity are correctly defined and able to be compared.

Este artigo reflecte a experiência docente dos autores na disciplina de Psicologia Educacional, integrada na formação de professores de 3º ciclo do ensino básico e do ensino secundário. Apoia-se em dados recolhidos junto dos formandos, em distintos momentos do seu percurso formativo, relativos a expectativas, preocupações e interesses face à psicologia, bem como à utilidade dos conhecimentos adquiridos para a prática pedagógica. A amostra foi constituída por professores em formação inicial (a nível da componente teórica e do estágio) e em profissionalização em serviço. Os dados foram recolhidos no início e no termo da componente teórica da formação e durante o estágio profissional. Espera-se que esta reflexão possa constituir um contributo para a identificação de necessidades na perspectiva da formação contínua de professores.

The transport of a solute in a solvent is an advection-diffusion problem that is widespread in both nature and industry. Many porous materials, such as soils and rocks, are intrinsically disordered at the pore scale which results in complex flow patterns. In this work, the dynamics of the fluid and solute was simulated using the lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM) to investigate how solute dispersion and absorption are affected by the porous medium properties. We simulate systems with circular obstacles to represent the pore scale and obtain the macroscopic source term for different microscopic properties. We validated our code for advection, diffusion, and absorption in porous media. First, we validated the model for the dispersion in a Poiseille flow by confirming that the theoretical prediction between the effective diffusion and Peclet number holds true in our simulations. Similarly, we simulated the solute dispersion in a ´ regular grid of circular objects to analyze the relationship between these two quantities. Additionally, we considered a system with no advection, only diffusion and absorption at a constant rate our results were according with the theoretical expectation and we verified that the relative error becomes smaller for larger obstacles (finer discretization). We also studied a regular porous medium with and without saturation for advection, diffusion, and absorption. In systems with saturation, we found out that the solute concentration decays exponentially while in the case of constant absorption, solute concentrations decrease linearly. For the same conditions we also discovered that the amount of solute lost per obstacle is constant for systems without saturation, whereas the proportion of solute lost is not. We found that the exponential decay of the concentration as a function of distance in disordered porous media is similar to that of regular porous media with the same simulation parameters.

Malaria is a deadly mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, for which the only licensed vaccine provides modest, rapidly waning protection. Whole-sporozoite (WSp) pre-erythrocytic vaccines constitute a potential solution for inducing long-lasting sterile protection against malaria. WSp vaccines employ live or attenuated Plasmodium sporozoites to induce strong immune responses against the parasite’s pre-erythrocytic stages. Attenuation can be achieved by irradiation to block parasite replication (RAS) or through genetic engineering, leading to the early (EA-GAP) or late (LA-GAP) stage arrest of the parasite’s hepatic development. Live, non-attenuated sporozoites can also be employed, allowing for full hepatic development, with the parasites being killed upon release into the bloodstream by prophylactic treatment with compounds such as chloroquine (CPS). Previous studies suggested that a longer liver-stage development, as observed in CPS and LA-GAP vaccines, induces greater protection than RAS and EA-GAP vaccines, potentially due to the higher parasite biomass and antigenic repertoire presented by the former. We investigated the effect of immunization dosage and regimen on the level and duration of the protective efficacy (PE) conferred by different WSp vaccines. Using rodent parasite surrogates of EAGAP, RAS, LA-GAP and CPS vaccine candidates, and C57BL/6J mice, we assessed overall sterile protection, prepatency, hepatic load, and protection against severe disease achieved with increasing immunization dosages in either a single or a prime-boost-boost vaccination regimens. Our results show that prime-only vaccination by RAS and LA-GAP affords higher levels of short-lived PE than EA-GAP and CPS. Conversely, prime-boost-boost vaccination with either of the WSp vaccines provides similar PE levels, which are differently maintained over time, suggesting a dose-dependent efficacy for RAS and LA-GAP. Collectively, our results indicate that WSp-induced protective immunity is a complex phenomenon in which the extent of parasite liver development may not be the only key feature influencing the efficacy of vaccination.

This paper shows how coastal and island peoples of Guinea-Bissau continue to prefer staying put over migrating when faced with manifestations of climate change and environmental disrepair. This reaction contradicts widely held interpretations of climate migration, which emphasize anti-immigrant sentiments and border regimes. We examine how historically marginalized Bissau-Guineans respond to slow-onset climate and environmental events in the face of political jeopardy and inadequate governance. We find that while their most pressing livelihood challenges remain politically unaddressed, they mobilize collectively in the absence of state support. While seasonal and temporary migration improves households' conditions, communal togetherness and bonding reinforce a vital sense of security, allowing them to stay put. Coping with present and future climate and environmental changes depends on whether or not people's lives continue to be undermined through the creation and reproduction of vulnerability. To overcome the long-standing socio-economic and political dysfunctions overwhelming Bissau-Guineans, we highlight the urgency for an overturn of the state’s attitudes and actions; of the dependency and cultural asymmetries by Western practices; and of the unjust support of civil society. Failure to provide basic requirements of good governance, self-reliance and communal support may no longer enable people to stay where they wish to.

A presente dissertação versa sobre a avaliação da suscetibilidade à ocorrência de deslizamentos superficiais no limite norte do concelho de Almada, com recurso a métodos de base física, estáticos e dinâmicos. Procedeu-se à atualização do inventário de movimentos de vertente e à melhoria do mapa geológico préexistentes. Os dados hidrológicos e geotécnicos dos solos, associados às diferentes unidades litológicas, foram obtidos através de pesquisa bibliográfica e os parâmetros de resistência foram calibrados por retroanálise. Para estimar a espessura de solo potencialmente instável utilizaram-se diferentes modelos empíricos existentes. Os modelos hidrológicos e de estabilidade, estáticos e dinâmicos, foram aplicados em toda a extensão da área de estudo e validados através da construção de curvas ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) de predição, tendo-se procedido ao cálculo da Área Abaixo da Curva (AAC), bem como do effectiveness ratio. Os resultados revelaram que o modelo com melhor desempenho foi o TRIGRS, associado ao modelo de espessura de solo sGIST, porque obteve valores de effectiveness ratio mais elevados na classe de suscetibilidade muito elevada, bem como maiores valores de AAC (85,2%). Os resultados provenientes da modelação com os valores de precipitação extremos projetados para os cenários climáticos Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 e 8.5, para o horizonte temporal de 2100, indicam que as variações de suscetibilidade obtidas pelo modelo estático não são significativas e as obtidas pelo modelo dinâmico sugerem que a área da classe de suscetibilidade muito elevada poderá aumentar cerca de 2%, em detrimento de uma redução da área da classe de suscetibilidade muito baixa. Apesar de o modelo dinâmico ter apresentado resultados mais satisfatórios, o modelo estático não deve ser rejeitado porque, ao considerar uma maior área classificada como tendo suscetibilidade muito elevada, é mais conservador, podendo ser mais adequado para cartografar áreas suscetíveis quando a informação de base disponível é escassa.

Despite the low mobilization of citizenry, the lack of any strong electoral competition and consequently the expected re-election of the incumbent, the 2021 Portuguese Presidential elections gained particular interest for two main reasons. Firstly, this election took place in extraordinary circumstances amid the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, Portugal was experiencing the world’s highest number of new cases and deaths per million. Secondly, this election was noted for the support obtained by the far-right candidate, unprecedented in national elections in Portugal. Thus, this article attempts to provide an overview of the main features of the presidential elections of 2021 in Portugal, namely the measures introduced to mitigate the threat of the pandemic and assure voters’ safety, the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown in the electoral campaign, the electoral results, and the rise of the radical right in Portugal and its implications.

Nucleases are ubiquitous in bacterial pathogens, a considerable number of secreted nucleases degrade extracellular nucleic acids to supply nutrients for growth. Specific nucleases secreted promote pathogenicity and survival of the bacteria, working as virulence factors. The Nucleic Acids Technologies Laboratory (NAT-Lab), located at Linköping University (Sweden), explores nucleic acid as substrates to target pathological bacteria nucleases. Our goal was to target Serratia marcescens using oligonucleotide fluorescence probes to detect the bacteria’s nuclease activity (blueprint). First, we used benzonase, a reported endonuclease derived from S. marcescens, and performed screening against our library of 75 oligonucleotide probes, correlating the nuclease activity with the fluorescence intensity. We found out that the probes DNA Poly CG (P11), DNA Pur 2’-O-methyl (P37), and DNA Pur 2’- fluoro (P54) were the best ones to target benzonase. Thereafter, we conducted screening in two S. marcescens strains, in the same manner as previously reported by the NAT-Lab. In this screening, we have demonstrated that probes with 2’-fluoro chemistry exhibited promising results. Moreover, stability studies were conducted using human plasma and bacteria controls (Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium) to confirm the specific of the best performing probes. Most of the substrates were degradable in HP and by the controls, for this reason, 7 eligible candidate probes were selected and we performed a new nuclease activity assay using cation and chelator conditions to separate S. marcescens nucleases from the control bacteria. We found out that cobalt chloride was a great cofactor for 6 out of 7 candidate probes, contributing to the unique characterization of the probes to sensibly detect S. marcescens. Herein, we report for the first time the characterization of oligonucleotide probes that can detect S. marcescens.

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This project reports the analysis of organochloride pesticides and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) compoundsin a marsh environment, to observe its toxicological effects on a marine model organism. To achieve this goal, it was quantified the concentration of organocloride pesticides and PCBs in sediments and plants, with origin in Alcochete, Rosário in Seixal estuaries. In this case, we chose to study Spartina maritima. To extract the pollutants, it was used the ASE and QuEChERS techniquesin sediments and plants samples, respectively, and the GC-ECD technique to analyze its content. With this experiment, it was possible to conclude that pesticide compounds were more predominant in Rosário, while PCBs compounds were more predominant in Seixal, derived from the activities that occurred in the vicinity of those sites. Alcochete was the less polluted site that was analysed in this work. When comparing the results obtained in this work with other concentrations from the same compounds in other Portuguese estuaries, it was possible to observe that the Tagus estuary presented a higher level of these contaminants. This is due to the higher population and activity that occurs in this zone, in comparison to other Portuguese estuaries. When studying the compounds’ concentration on plants, it was possible to observe a higher concentration on the rhizosediments. To test the toxicity of these compounds we exposed PCB 153 at 1 µg/L, 3 µg/L and 6 µg/L to the diatom model Phaeodactylum tricornutum. Afterwards, we analysed the biomarkers growth rate, photochemistry, pigment, fatty acids, lipid peroxidation and antioxidant enzyme activity of the cell. It was possible to observe that, when exposed to the compound, the cells suffered from growth inhibition, oxidative stress, and photosynthesis inhibition, such as the closure of the reaction’s centres and damage in the photosystem. This occured even though they presented counter mechanisms to the toxic effects, such as the incrementation of photosynthetic effects, such as the grouping probability, increase of efficiency of the electron transport from PQH2 to PSI, and biochemical such as the incrementation of photoprotective pigments and pigments which increase the ability to trap photons for the reductions that happen in the photosynthesis and increases the activity of antioxidant enzymes.

With the increase in the amount of vehicles and the population in big cities, problems related to traffic jams, traffic congestion and pollution arise with it. A lot of investigation has been done to try and solve or, at least, mitigate this problem. Governments are trying to mitigate traffic congestion and traffic jams by better understanding traffic, its characteristics and its patterns and getting insights about traffic. The purpose of this research is to create general traffic indicators for the city of Lisbon and, to do so, we will apply state of the art methods to a dataset of traffic from the city of Lisbon, provided by Camara Municipal de Lisboa ˆ that contain traffic data from the years of 2019 and 2020. We discuss the several types of data used in this type of problem, the pre-processing techniques used to transform the data, the several state of the art methods used for both prediction of traffic flow, and classification of different traffic situations, and also the performance metrics used to evaluate results. We make an exploratory and a more complex analysis to the provided data and also a discussion about the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on the data and the problems that this could bring. We explain all the pre-processing and data cleaning techniques we used to handle the data, all the prediction models used, as in LSTM and ARIMA, and all the classification models used, as in Decision Tree Classifier and SVM. For the prediction task, LSTM obtained a mean RMSE of 10.493, while ARIMA got a mean RMSE of 38.722. For the classification task, DTC got a mean accuracy of 96.7%, while SVM got a mean accuracy of 88.6%.

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A integração das tecnologias digitais na actividade regular de professores e alunos é, sem dúvida, uma grande ambição para a escola do século XXI (Laurillard, 2008), independentemente do tipo de argumentos mobilizados e dos objectivos que os seus diferentes defensores possam ter em mente. É uma tarefa de grande envergadura e exigência, nomeadamente se a meta for fazê‐lo de forma a abranger todos, sem excepção, em particular os que ainda não iniciaram o caminho e, por isso, ainda não conseguem compreender os benefícios e o verdadeiro potencial das tecnologias para a aprendizagem. Se aos mais jovens (aos alunos) é reconhecida grande facilidade na manipulação dos novos recursos tecnológicos hoje disponíveis, já no caso de muitos professores isso parece ainda não acontecer, estando longe de, à forte motivação manifestada quando inquiridos, corresponder um real conhecimento e domínio desses recursos enquanto estratégia de facilitação e potenciação dos processos de aprendizagem.   Esta discrepância entre motivação para a utilização das tecnologias digitais nos processos de ensinar e de aprender e a competência necessária para o poderem fazer com confiança e intencionalidade é bastante saliente no caso de Portugal, conforme mostram alguns dos estudos mais recentes realizados no nosso país. É o que pode concluir‐se, por exemplo, do estudo sobre a utilização das TIC por professores, realizado por Jacinta Paiva e publicado em 2002, bem como o estudo de diagnóstico sobre a modernização tecnológica do sistema de ensino em Portugal (GEPE/ME, 2007), mais recente, de onde sobressaem fortes índices motivacionais dos professores relativamente às TIC. Este último estudo acabaria por estar na base da elaboração do Plano Tecnológico da Educação (Portugal).

A common finding among risk perception studies is that, comparatively to men, women express higher risk perceptions. Aiming to go beyond a generic description of gender effects on risk representations, we examined the indirect effect of informal and formal roles on risk perceptions through a mediation of affect, with all associations moderated by gender. To fulfill such goal COVID-19 pandemic crisis presented the perfect scenario. Participants (N=607) were asked to report changes in informal (household and relational tasks) and formal workload, levels of worry regarding COVID-19 and the perceived likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 or developing severe symptoms. Controlling for chronic diseases, age and the level of effort directed into parenting, mediation analysis revealed that increases in household tasks were associated with higher levels of risk perception through a mediation of affect. Conditional on participant’s gender, relational tasks and formal workload were found to be related to risk perception, through a mediation of affect. Findings signal the relevance of informal and formal roles on predicting gendered reactions to risk perception and how changing social roles of men may have implications for the gender gap in risk perception.

Research has consistently shown how global warming is driven by human action and how we must make significant changes in our habits towards mitigating climate change before serious consequences are upon us. One area that is estimated to account for around one fourth of global greenhouse gas emissions is agriculture, fuelled by our dietary habits, particularly in meat and dairy consumption. The present study sought to test how a reciprocity appeal and piggyback mechanism could be used in promoting sustainable plant-based options in a university canteen setting. The study was conducted with an online questionnaire presented as a hypothetical plant-based meal promotion campaign, where participants (N= 303) were exposed to messages containing reciprocity and piggybacking mechanisms in a 2 (reciprocity appeal: yes, no) x 2 (piggyback mechanism: yes, no) between participants design and where willingness towards meat, fish, and vegetarian meals, perceived consumer effectiveness, diffusion of responsibility and perceived sustainable norm measures were evaluated. Twoway ANOVAs showed a main effect of reciprocity in decreasing willingness to choose fish and vegetarian meals, suggesting that our reciprocity message backfired. No significant effects were found for piggybacking. The discussion presents possible explanations for why the reciprocity and piggybacking messages where ineffective in this study, as well as suggestions on how the messages can be improved to enable further research on the topic (e.g., paring a more context-specific reciprocity appeal with social norm features of the message).