RCAAP Repository

Introdução: O fígado gordo associado a disfunção metabólica (MAFLD) é a doença hepática deste século, sendo atualmente uma das principais indicações para transplante hepático (TH). Pode recidivar ou surgir de novo no pós-TH. Conduzimos uma revisão sistemática com meta-análise com o objetivo de clarificar a prevalência de MAFLD e quais os fatores de risco para a sua progressão em doentes submetidos a TH. Métodos: Foi realizada uma pesquisa em 3 bases de dados distintas: PUBMED, Scopus e Web Of Science. Das 6 617 referências inicialmente recolhidas, 40 foram incluídas na revisão. O risco de viés foi calculado usando a escala Newcastle-Ottawa. Resultados: Foram incluídos 40 estudos representando 6 979 doentes. Os estudos que diagnosticam fígado gordo no pós-TH por métodos não invasivos mostraram uma tendência para maior prevalência comparativamente aos que realizaram o diagnóstico por biópsia (41% versus 34%, P=0.327). 8 publicações avaliaram o NAFLD de novo, 8 a sua recorrência e as restantes 24 ambos. 32 estudos eram retrospetivos e 8 prospetivos. A prevalência ponderada de fígado gordo no pós transplante foi 36%. As variáveis que demonstraram ser fatores de risco para desenvolver esteatose no pós-TH foram: 1) no pré-TH – sexo masculino, diabetes mellitus, hipertensão arterial, maior índice de massa corporal/peso, obesidade, doença hepática alcoólica e MAFLD de base; 2) no pós-TH – diabetes mellitus, hipertensão arterial, dislipidemia, triglicerídeos, glicemia, obesidade, índice de massa corporal, ganho ponderal, obesidade abdominal e imunossupressão com sirolimus; e 3) relacionados com o dador – índice de massa corporal e o polimorfismo PNPLA3 rs738498-G. Discussão: O fígado gordo é muito prevalente no pós-transplante hepático, atingindo mais de 1 em cada 3 doentes. Doentes em maior risco de desenvolver fígado gordo no pós-TH, são os doentes transplantados por doença hepática associada ao álcool ou NAFLD e com co-morbilidades metabólicas.

Intravital microscopy (IVM) involves surgical procedures to expose the internal organs of live anesthetized animals to visualize fluorescently labeled components in situ, in vivo at subcellular resolution. Here, we provide an IVM protocol for time-lapse imaging of dynamic Trypanosoma brucei-host interactions in ten mammalian organs and in systemic circulation. We describe intraperitoneal or intradermal injection of mice with T.brucei. We then detail surgical procedures to prepare ten organs for IVM, followed by imaging of host-T. brucei interactions. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to De Niz et al. (2021).

The aim of this research is to develop a language that considers the art territory and its media, while promoting the creation of a proper sensitivity to the ecologically problematic in contemporary society. This artistic research deals with the cultural ecological outlook, particularly the capacity of artistic practice to influence this field and to include the ecosystem in its interdependencies. The art practice discussed is based on the perception and subsequent selection of examples of modern and contemporary art, in order to focus their interrelationships and create new objects capable of reinforming the artistic territory. The media used are appropriation, collage and telematics. The appropriation of audiovisual content enables the reinterpretation of various cultural models; the collage of sounds and images allows the interaction between various points of view; the telematics empowers the rizomathic structure of the multimedia compositions. This research is most concerned with historical time-periods in which works of art using appropriation, montage and collage are directly related to a larger social context. Throughout the dissertation several critics and philosophers whose theories inform the conceptual framework of the research are referenced: the «critical art» concept developed by Jacques Rancière; Thomas Brockelman’s notions on the practice of collage, modernism and post-modernism; the theory of altermodernism from Nicolas Bourriaud; the concepts of rhizome and minor, developed by Gilles Delleuze and Pierre-Felix Guattari; the definition of atlas by George Didi-Huberman, from the work of Aby Warburg; the concept of secession from the broadcast from Gene Youngblood; and the definition of ecosofy by Pierre-Felix Guattari

Introdução: Os estudantes de medicina estão numa posição bastante vulnerável a desenvolver perturbações mentais, nomeadamente, depressão e ansiedade. Fatores como a elevada carga horária e a pressão para o sucesso académico são exemplos de típicos geradores de stress nesta população. A pandemia COVID-19 provocou inúmeras mudanças no quotidiano das populações, incluindo os estudantes de medicina. O confinamento, com consequente isolamento social, e as alterações do curso podem ter influenciado negativamente a saúde mental e, consequentemente, o desempenho académico dos mesmos. Objetivo: Avaliar o impacto da pandemia na saúde mental e na experiência académica de estudantes de medicina. Método: Foram realizadas 24 entrevistas a 4 alunos de medicina de cada ano curricular de uma escola médica portuguesa. As entrevistas exploraram (1) o impacto da pandemia na vida académica, social e na saúde, (2) os recursos mais utilizados pelos estudantes (naturais, materiais, humanos ou temporais), (3) os principais constrangimentos/obstáculos (questões financeiras, naturais, sociais, materiais, preocupações/sobrecargas) e (4) as intervenções psicológicas e as estratégias que cada aluno possui para ultrapassar os seus eventuais problemas e constrangimentos. Resultados: Ao nível da vida académica, 33,3% dos estudantes referiram uma diminuição do desempenho académico, 70,83% sentiram-se desmotivados e os exames foram a principal preocupação (54,17%). A nível da saúde, 83,33% reportaram alterações do sono, 54,17% tinham pensamentos depressivos e 41,67% variações de humor. Discussão: O impacto da pandemia apresentou repercussões na vida académica e na saúde dos estudantes de medicina. Estes resultados reforçam a necessidade de se disponibilizar medidas e intervenções que as minimizem de forma a promover a saúde mental e o desempenho académico dos estudantes de medicina no contexto adverso da pandemia COVID-19.

Weight loss maintenance is a major challenge for obesity treatment. Weight control registries can be useful in identifying psychological and behavioural factors that could contribute to better long-term success. The objective of this study is to describe the existing weight control registries and their participants and identify correlates of weight loss maintenance. A comprehensive search of peer-reviewed articles published until November 2018 was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus. Studies that reported results from weight control registries were considered. Fifty-two articles, corresponding to five registries (the United States, Portugal, Germany, Finland, and Greece), were included. Registries differed in inclusion criteria and procedures. Of 51 identified weight loss and maintenance strategies, grouped in 14 domains of the Oxford Food and Activity Behaviors taxonomy, the following were the most frequently reported: having healthy foods available at home, regular breakfast intake, increasing vegetable consumption, decreasing sugary and fatty foods, limiting certain foods, and reducing fat in meals. Increased physical activity was the most consistent positive correlate of weight loss maintenance. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of information about successful weight loss maintenance obtained from weight control registries. Key common influential characteristics of success were identified, which can inform future prospective studies and weight management initiatives.

In the Prohibited Book’s introduction, Luis Royo highlights the main goal his work is pursuing. More than being appreciated for its aesthetics and creativity, he wants it to be a mean to an end: to attain orgasm. Royo declares to assisting the reader in reaching their pleasure and sexual fulfillment, by using a collection of stories and illustrations of a sexual nature. It is on this premise that the present Project is based on. In this Project for the Masters in Drawing, an erotic work will be produced, namely a webcomic, that uses the plot and the image as means to explore eroticism, fetish and perversion. Consequently, it will be divided into two parts: the theory behind the work and the webcomic itself. The former aims to create a basis for any creator of erotic content to do so with knowledge and quality. The History of Erotic Representations and Human Sexuality are the key subjects approached, whose study and topic analysis will have a direct impact on the creation of the webcomic. The latter part of the Project follows the process of the erotic work, from the creation of the original storyline and characters to the final product, a Smut webcomic entitled At Your Mercy. This Project is directed at all those who are interested in Erotic Literature and Art – with an emphasis on the Asian comics – and human sexuality.

Desde 2011, em Portugal, os dirigentes superiores da Administração Pública são recrutados e selecionados através de procedimentos que visam minimizar a nomeação política. Através da análise de 297 processos de recrutamento, pretendeu-se saber se a introdução de um sistema formal favoreceu o acesso de mais mulheres a cargos de direção superior. Realizaram-se ainda entrevistas a oito mulheres dirigentes para conhecer as suas perceções sobre a igualdade entre homens e mulheres na Administração Pública, o processo de recrutamento, e o seu percurso profissional. Os resultados evidenciam que a proporção de mulheres dirigentes superiores aumentou com o novo sistema de recrutamento, ainda que sobretudo para cargos de 2º grau. Da análise às entrevistas percebe-se subsistirem dúvidas sobre se o atual sistema afasta as nomeações políticas e a existência de obstáculos culturais.

Background & aims: Despite recent advances in treatment of viral hepatitis, liver-related mortality is high, possibly owing to the large burden of advanced alcohol-related liver disease (ALD). We investigated whether patients with ALD are initially seen at later stages of disease development than patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection or other etiologies. Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of 3453 consecutive patients with either early or advanced liver disease (1699 patients with early and 1754 with advanced liver disease) seen at 17 tertiary care liver or gastrointestinal units worldwide, from August 2015 through March 2017. We collected anthropometric, etiology, and clinical information, as well as and model for end-stage liver disease scores. We used unconditional logistic regression to estimate the odds ratios for evaluation at late stages of the disease progression. Results: Of the patients analyzed, 81% had 1 etiology of liver disease and 17% had 2 etiologies of liver disease. Of patients seen at early stages for a single etiology, 31% had HCV infection, 21% had hepatitis B virus infection, and 17% had nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, whereas only 3.8% had ALD. In contrast, 29% of patients seen for advanced disease had ALD. Patients with ALD were more likely to be seen at specialized centers, with advanced-stage disease, compared with patients with HCV-associated liver disease (odds ratio, 14.1; 95% CI, 10.5-18.9; P < .001). Of patients with 2 etiologies of liver disease, excess alcohol use was associated with 50% of cases. These patients had significantly more visits to health care providers, with more advanced disease, compared with patients without excess alcohol use. The mean model for end-stage liver disease score for patients with advanced ALD (score, 16) was higher than for patients with advanced liver disease not associated with excess alcohol use (score, 13) (P < .01). Conclusions: In a cross-sectional analysis of patients with liver disease worldwide, we found that patients with ALD are seen with more advanced-stage disease than patients with HCV-associated liver disease. Of patients with 2 etiologies of liver disease, excess alcohol use was associated with 50% of cases. Early detection and referral programs are needed for patients with ALD worldwide.

O presente trabalho se propõe a analisar a conexão entre a crise dos media tradicionais e a ascensão dos populismos de direita a partir do caso do atual presidente do Brasil, Jair Bolsonaro. O objetivo é compreender a ligação entre os dois processos e, além disso, a relação entre os diferentes tipos de media e os populistas. Para atingi-lo, a pesquisa se debruça sobre o caminho percorrido pelos media em meio ao surgimento e à popularização da Internet, sobretudo no que diz respeito às três crises que se sucederam – as crises do modelo de negócios, de credibilidade e de mediação –, e qual o impacto que causaram nos veículos de imprensa, na esfera pública de debate e na política. Uma vez estabelecida a ligação entre a crise dos media tradicionais, a difusão das redes sociais e os populistas, a partir de conceitos como esfera pública, fabricação do consenso e mediarquia, além de despolitização, fake news e democracia, a análise se volta ao caso de Jair Bolsonaro, ao contexto histórico que culminou com sua eleição e à própria relação que o presidente brasileiro mantém com os media. Aspectos como escândalos que envolvem o nome do presidente e o disparo ilegal de mensagens em massa no período pré-eleitoral são analisados, bem como tweets do presidente que mencionam os termos ‘mídia’, ‘imprensa’ e ‘jornalista’, a fim de colaborar para a compreensão da relação de Bolsonaro com os media e de evidenciar que a crise dos media tradicionais funciona como catalisadora da ascensão dos populismos de direita, como se deu com Bolsonaro.

The present essay seeks to problematize the current condition of research in the arts by reviewing and reformulating a series of texts produced in the course of a decade for an editorial project focused on the topic, namely as it relates to the historical horizon of the arts and the discourses construed around them as well as to artistic creation, in a reflection that poses methodological, epistemological and hermeneutical questions. (…) Thus, our effort supports a kind of artistic research developed within poiesis, which unleashes the need for a new argument from the artist in order to confront other reasons in his poietic.

No summary/description provided

A modernidade literária, tal como entendida pelo Warwick Research Collective (2015), precede e segue os movimentos modernistas e consiste no registo do desenvolvimento do capitalismo global. Os contactos entre modernismo(s) e literaturas africanas em português são manifestos e bem estudados. Todavia, e seguindo o trabalho de Nicholas Brown sobre a “reconstelação” do(s) modernismo(s) euro-americano(s), há um plano mais profundo do que a mera influência textual a ligar esta modernidade literária às literaturas africanas. Neste artigo, abordamos dois romances africanos recentes: Museu da Revolução, do moçambicano João Paulo Borges Coelho, de 2021, e Será Este Livro um Romance?, do angolano João Melo, de 2022, como exemplos ímpares e desiguais do desenvolvimento da modernidade literária africana em português.

FAMA – Family Math for Adult Learners – is an international project involving countries like Spain, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Portugal and Italy. In the countries collecting data from mainstream schools, students were mainly 13/14 years old. Thus, in Portugal students were attending the 8th grade which is part of the compulsory education since a long time ago (AR, 1986). We assumed an interpretative approach (Denzin, 2002) and an intrinsic case study design (Stake, 1995), composed by multiple cases, one for each country involved in the FAMA project. In Portugal we selected one school in the surroundings of Lisbon where we collected the majority of the data. But as no school had as many mathematics teachers as we needed for the study (at least 25 per country), we also used other similar schools in the same region to collect the teachers’ questionnaires. In the Portuguese case study the participants were 28 teachers, 108 students attending the 8th grade, which corresponds to the all the classes of that grade in the chosen school, and 52 family members of those students. The majority of the family members were parents and there were many more mothers than fathers, as usual, in Portuguese schools. All the participants answered first to a questionnaire. There were three different questionnaires, each one of them for a group: teachers, students and families. Then, we selected some privileged informers to be interviewed: 5 teachers, 22 students and their 22 families. Then, we had a focus group for teachers (N=5) and three focus groups for students (N=3, N=6 and N=8, respectively, in a total of 17 students) and another three for families (N=3, N=5 and N=5, respectively, in a total of 13 family members, two of them being the mother and the father of the same student). We must underline the huge effort represented by these families collaboration in this study, as the majority of the interviews and all the focus groups took place in the school and they had to conjugate their schedules with ours. We were able to interview all family members whose children were also interviewed (N=22). From those we could only get 17 students and 13 family members for the focus groups, although none of them explicitly told us s/he did not want to participate. Those who did not participate were sick or had last minute troubles that did not allow them to be there at the scheduled time and place.

The perceived need to improve the infrastructure supporting the re-use of scholarly data since the second decade of the 21st century led to the design of a concise number of principles and metrics, named FAIR Data Principles. This paper, part of an extended study, intends to identify the main authors, entities, and scientific journals linked to research conducted within the FAIR Data Principles. The research was developed by means of a qualitative approach, using documentary research and a constant comparison method for codification and categorization of the sampled data. The sample studied showed that most authors were located in the Netherlands, with Europe accounting for more than 70% of the number of authors considered. Most of these are researchers and work in higher education institutions. These entities can be found in most of the territorial-administrative areas under consideration, with the USA being the country with more entities and Europe being the world region where they are more numerous. The journal with more texts in the used sample was Insights, with 2020 being the year when more texts were published. Two of the most prominent authors present in the sample texts were located in the Netherlands, while the other two were in France and Australia.

Através da observação de algumas festas carnavalescas da região nordeste do Brasil, percebemos elementos que remetem para as festas do Entrudo em Portugal, especialmente da região nordeste, e também do Sul da Galiza. De tais elementos emerge o caminho que nos guiará na busca das origens destas festas populares, até a Antiguidade Clássica Europeia. Lá nos defrontamos com o berço de tais festividades e podemos compreender seu contexto e sua origem religiosa. A partir desta trilha podemos refletir sobre as estruturas culturais que mantiveram vivas essas práticas durante um período tão longo de tempo, e como o sentido social e cultural de tais festividades modificou-se profundamente ao longo dos séculos. Por intermédio dos escritores clássicos, como Ovídio e Eurípides, entre outros, pudemos visitar as principais festividades Greco-Romanas do ciclo do inverno, período em que se celebrava a fertilidade dos solos e dos rebanhos através de práticas purificatórias e de culto a divindades pastoris e agrárias.

Humans have inundated the environment worldwide with antimicrobials for about one century, giving selective advantage to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, antibiotic resistance has become a public health problem responsible for increased mortality and extended hospital stays because the efficacy of antibiotics has diminished. Hospitals and other clinical settings have implemented stewardship measures to reduce antibiotic administration and prescription. However, these measures demand multifactorial approaches, including multidisciplinary teams in clinical settings and the education of professionals and patients. Recent studies indicate that individual factors, such as mother–infant attachment and parenting styles, play a critical role in antibiotic use. Also, macrocontextual factors, such as economic, social, or cultural backgrounds, may impact antibiotic use rates. Therefore, research aiming to ameliorate stewardship measures must include psychologically and sociologically based research.

Antibiotics have individual and public-health drawbacks. Nevertheless, mother-infant attachment quality and maternal sensitivity are associated with antibiotic use. Ambivalent-attached infants are more likely to consume antibiotics than other infants. Conceivably, the emotional over-externalization of ambivalent-attached infants and maternal anxiety when infants are ill raise concerns in healthcare professionals, leading to antibiotic over-prescriptions. However, because infants prematurely born, particularly those with less than 32 weeks of gestation, are under more accurate health vigilance, the impact of infant and maternal behavior on antibiotic prescription may vanish in this sample. To test this hypothesis, we performed a longitudinal study to compare antibiotic use and the quality of mother-infant attachment in three groups: 86 infants born at full-term, 44 moderate-to-late preterm infants (32–36 gestation weeks), and 58 very-to-extreme preterm infants (<32 gestation weeks). Infants’ attachment was observed with the Ainsworth Strange Situation’s experimental paradigm at 12 months of corrected age. Findings indicate that infant attachment strategy is associated with antibiotics uptake, but results vary across samples. The proportion of infants that used antibiotics is highest among ambivalent-attached infants in the full-term sample but highest among avoidant-attached infants in the very-to-extreme premature sample. Moreover, higher infant gestational age and lower maternal sensitivity determine higher antibiotic use.

DNA mismatch repair (MMR), an evolutionarily conserved repair pathway shared by prokaryotic and eukaryotic species alike, influences molecular evolution by detecting and correcting mismatches, thereby protecting genetic fidelity, reducing the mutational load, and pre venting lethality. Herein we conduct the first genome-wide evaluation of the alterations to the mutation rate and spectrum under impaired activity of the MutSa homolog, msh-2, in Caenorhabditis elegans male–female fog-2(lf) lines. We performed mutation accumulation (MA) under RNAi-induced knockdown of msh-2 for up to 50 generations, followed by next-generation sequencing of 19 MA lines and the ances tral control. msh-2 impairment in the male–female background substantially increased the frequency of nuclear base substitutions ( 23 ) and small indels ( 328 ) relative to wildtype hermaphrodites. However, we observed no increase in the mutation rates of mtDNA, and copy-number changes of single-copy genes. There was a marked increase in copy-number variation of rDNA genes under MMR impair ment. In C. elegans, msh-2 repairs transitions more efficiently than transversions and increases the AT mutational bias relative to wildtype. The local sequence context, including sequence complexity, Gþ C-content, and flanking bases influenced the mutation rate. The X chro mosome exhibited lower substitution and higher indel rates than autosomes, which can either result from sex-specific mutation rates or a nonrandom distribution of mutable sites between chromosomes. Provided the observed difference in mutational pattern is mostly due to MMR impairment, our results indicate that the specificity of MMR varies between taxa, and is more efficient in detecting and repairing small indels in eukaryotes relative to prokaryotes.

Species' environmental requirements and large-scale spatial and evolutionary processes determine the structure and composition of local communities. However, ecological interactions also have major effects on community assembly at landscape and local scales. We evaluate whether two xerophytic shrub communities occurring in SW Portugal follow constrained ecological assembly dynamics throughout large geographical extents, or their composition is rather driven by species’ individualistic responses to environmental and macroecological constraints. Inland dune xerophytic shrub communities were characterized in 95 plots. Then, we described the main gradients of vegetation composition and assessed the relevance of biotic interactions. We also characterized the habitat suitability of the dominant species, Stauracanthus genistoides, and Ulex australis, to map the potential distribution of the xerophytic shrub communities. Finally, we examined the relationships between the vegetation gradients and a broad set of explanatory variables to identify the relative importance of each factor driving changes in community composition. We found that xerophytic shrubs follow uniform successional patterns throughout the whole geographical area studied, but each community responds differently to the main environmental gradients in each region. Soil organic matter is the main determinant of community variations in the northern region, Setúbal Peninsula, whereas aridity is so in the South/South-Western region. In contrast, in the central region, Comporta, the variation between S. genistoides and U. australis communities is explained mainly by aridity and temperature seasonality, followed by the individualistic responses of the dominant species and soil organic matter. Overall, these results indicate that, the relative importance of the main factors causing community-level responses varies according to regional processes and the suitability of the environmental conditions for the dominant species in these communities. These responses are also determined by intrinsic community mechanisms that result in a high degree of similarity in the gradient-driven community stages in different regions.

This essay attempts to reconcile charity with grace, the central concepts of two thinkers whose views may seem irreconcilable to many: Donald Davidson, an analytical philosopher and the most distinguished follower of Quine; and Julian Pitt-Rivers, an Europeanist anthropologist, who wrote at length on Spain and Southern France. The latter's historicist exegesis of gracia points to basic aspects of human experience that are also salient in the reduction to basics that Davidson carried out concerning interpretation and truth. For Davidson, in the face of ultimate indeterminacy, interpretation is made possible due to the rational accommodation that charity sparks off. For Pitt-Rivers, gratuity highlights how processes of personal interaction depend on the drawing of shared trajectories: that is, not only do I have to grant others charity to make sense of them, I also have to frame others as subjects with a future by relation to myself as already in existence. The paper proposes that human interaction involves processes of sensemaking that integrate shared intentionality (i.e. the credit with which we respond to the indeterminacy of meaning) with shared experience (i.e. the debt implicit in the ultimate underdetermination of the world's entities). Thus, it brings both concepts together under the label of charis, their common etymological root, suggesting that the dynamic it represents is a broader feature of life itself.