RCAAP Repository

The story map "Dune(s): Fiction, History and Science" tells the story of the dunes stabilization programs developed on the US Northern Pacific Coast, that influenced Frank Herbert to write his great novel: Dune https://bit.ly/2MnNGMg

Retail gentrification is gaining relevance to study the transformation of several urban districts. In this article we explore the connections between this process and the appropriation and use of the elements of authenticity of a given urban district. Drawing upon the production standpoint, we based our research on the objective, constructivist and existential perspective of the concept of authenticity. We developed fieldwork on Mouraria, a traditional neighbourhood of Lisbon city centre, affected by gentrification as a consequence of a strong growth of tourism in the last decade. Information was collected about the size and evolution of the commercial fabric and business owners were interviewed. Its treatment allows to gather three set of elements that were considered as representative of the authenticity of Mouraria: community values, multiculturality and urban features. The way retail spaces use these elements is diverse and intertwined with the different perspectives of authenticity and, on the part of business owners, arises as a management practice. Although Mouraria can be currently placed within an early stage of retail gentrification, the current pace of retail change and gentrification occurring in the neighbourhood may led to a wider replacement of the commercial fabric with detrimental consequences for local residents.

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Background: Reward sensitivity has been proposed as a potential mediator of outcomes for bariatric surgery. Objectives: We aimed to determine whether gustatory and psychometric measures of reward-related feeding are predictors of bariatric-induced weight loss. Methods: A multicenter longitudinal cohort study was conducted in patients scheduled for bariatric surgery (surgical group), assessed at baseline and 2 follow-up assessments. Predictions of % weight loss from baseline (%WL) according to baseline gustatory measures, including intensity and pleasantness ratings of sweet and other tastants, and psychometric measures of reward-related feeding behavior, including hedonic hunger scores, were assessed with multivariable linear regression. Exploratory analyses were conducted to test for associations between %WL and changes in gustatory and psychophysical measures, as well as for comparisons with data from patients on the surgery waiting list (control group). Results: We included 212 patients, of whom 96 in the surgical group and 50 in the control group were prospectively assessed. The groups were similar at baseline and, as expected, bariatric surgery resulted in higher %WL (BTreatment-Time = 2.4; 95% CI: 2.1-2.8; P < 0.0001). While variation in gustatory measures did not differ between groups, in the surgery group baseline sweet intensity predicted %WL at the primary endpoint (11 to 18 months postoperatively; β = 0.2; B = 0.2, 95% CI: 0.02 to 0.3; P = 0.02), as did hedonic hunger scores (β = -0.2; B = -2.0, 95% CI: -3.8 to -0.3; P = 0.02). Furthermore, at this endpoint, postsurgical reduction of sweet taste intensity and acceptance of sweet foods were associated with %WL (β = -0.3; B = -3.5, 95% CI: -5.8 to -1.3; P = 0.003, and β = -0.2; B = -4.7, 95% CI: -8.5 to -0.8; P = 0.02, respectively). The use of sweet intensity as a predictor of weight change was confirmed in another bariatric cohort. Conclusions: Sweet intensity ratings and hedonic hunger scores predict %WL after surgery. The variability of sweet intensity ratings is also associated with %WL, further suggesting they may reflect physiological processes that are variably modulated by bariatric surgery, influencing clinical outcomes.

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The germinal center (GC) reactions are critical for the production of high-affinity antibodies that comprise the protective humoral response elicited by infection or vaccination. GCs are initiated through the interaction of B cells with T follicular helper (Tfh) cells. While the transcriptional regulation of Tfh differentiation has been studied in great detail, the impact of micro RNAs (miRNAs) on Tfh development and stability has been harder to address. It was previously shown that a complete deletion of miRNAs biogenesis prevents Tfh differentiation. In this issue of the European Journal of Immunology [Eur. J. Immunol. 2021. 51: 408-413], Zeiträg et al. use an inducible gene deletion approach to reveal that miRNAs are also required for the maintenance of Tfh cells induced following viral infection in mice. These results provide new clues to the regulation of GC responses through Tfh and T follicular regulatory cells.

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Wildfre susceptibility and hazard models based on drivers that change only on a multiyear timescale are considered of a structural nature. They ignore specifc short-term conditions in any year and period within the year, especially summer, when most wildfre damage occurs in southern Europe. We investigate whether the predictive capacity of structural wildfre susceptibility and hazard models can be improved by integrating a seasonal dimension, expressed by three variables with yearly to seasonal timescales: (1) a meteorological index rating fuel fammability at the onset of summer; (2) the scarcity of fuel associated with the burned areas of the previous year, and (3) the excessive abundance of fuel in especially fre-prone areas that have not been burned in the previous ten years. We describe a new methodology for combining the structural maps with the seasonal variables, producing year-specifc seasonal susceptibility and hazard maps. We then compare the structural and seasonal maps as to their capacity to predict burnt areas during the summer period in a set of eight independent years. The seasonal maps revealed a higher predictive capacity in 75% of the validation period, both for susceptibility and hazard, when only the highest class was considered. This percentage was reduced to 50% when the two highest classes were considered together. In some years, structural factors and other unconsidered variables probably exert a strong infuence over the spatial pattern of wildfre incidence. These fndings can complement existing structural data and improve the mapping tools used to defne wildfre prevention and mitigation actions.

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Esta dissertação descreve o trabalho que teve como objectivo estudar a actividade citotóxica e contribuir para o conhecimento do mecanismo de acção de compostos conjugados de ferroceno com aminoácidos (triptofano, prolina e metionina) e complexos de ouro (N-Au-PPh3, N-Au-PPh2py, S-Au-PPh3, S-Au- (C6F5)3) em linhas tumorais. Fez-se uso de duas linhas tumorais humanas, HeLa (células endoteliais do cancro do colo do útero) e MCF-7 (células epiteliais do cancro da mama) e de uma linha tumoral não-humana, N1E-115 (células isoladas a partir do clone adrenérgico derivado de neuroblastoma C-1300 de murganho). No que diz respeito à citotoxicidade, seis dos nove compostos testados apresentaram valores de IC50 promissores, entre os 10 - 88 μM. Observaram-se diferenças de actividade anti-proliferativa para os diferentes tipos celulares. O conjugado de ferroceno mais eficaz está associado ao aminoácido metionina e ao complexo de Ouro, S-Au-PPh3. Foram levados a cabo estudos biológicos e de interacção dos compostos com a molécula de DNA, com o intuito de obter informações sobre o mecanismo de acção destes potenciais fármacos. Dos primeiros estudos concluiu-se que a apoptose é, provavelmente, um dos mecanismos de morte celular que decorre da actividade destes e que a produção de espécies reactivas de oxigénio poderá estar na sua origem. A interacção dos compostos com a molécula de DNA não parece ser por intercalação.

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Este trabalho envolveu um estudo quantitativo por espectroscopia de Ressonância Magnética Nuclear (NMR) de 1H em amostras biológicas e um estudo de NMR de 29Si e 95Mo para caracterização de materiais e compostos organometálicos. No primeiro capítulo fez-se uma introdução à técnica de NMR. No segundo capítulo descreveu-se a quantificação de citrato em secreções prostáticas por 1H NMR e fez-se a sua comparação com níveis de PSA e biopsias. Foram analisadas doze amostras com volumes entre 10 e 450 L e as concentrações de citrato determinadas variaram entre 7 e 237 mmol/L. Os resultados obtidos estão de acordo com estudos publicados segundo os quais baixas concentrações de citrato estão, geralmente, associadas ao adenocarcinoma da próstata, e sugerem que a quantificação do citrato em secreções prostáticas constitui um método de diagnóstico mais fiável do que a determinação dos níveis de PSA. O terceiro capítulo envolveu o estudo de NMR de 29Si e 95Mo em materiais e compostos organometalicos. Verificou-se que o núcleo de silício em derivados (EtO)3Si(CH2)3X é sensível à alteração do substituinte X nos sistemas estudados. Os espectros de 95Mo dos derivados de fórmula geral [Mo(CO)2(3-C3H5)(Br)LL] (L=ligandos com átomos doadores de azoto), apresentam diferentes sinais de ressonância entre -600 e -800 ppm que correspondem aos vários isómeros (exo/equatorial, exo/axial, endo/equatorial) habitualmente detectados nos respectivos espectros NMR de 1H. No quarto capítulo descrevem-se os detalhes experimentais.

The construction of a new Museu Nacional dos Coches, Belem, in January 2013, and the subsequent transfer and instillation of all museum content, has created new challenges and renewed ways of looking at the vast potential of all assets as well as encouraged countless initiatives in the areas of conservation, study and communication of the different collections. As commonly happens when preparing a change, enthusiasm connected to “starting anew” and trying to do better were strongly felt. A closer look at questions concerning the Museum’s history, in particular questions related to the foundress Queen, D. Amélia’s, life experiences and the history of the collections, was both necessary and essential in order to obtain a more clarified understanding of the various nuclei. It consequently generated the motivation for a new investigation based on documental sources and direct observation which would allow for a more assertive and validated analysis of the physical condition of the assets themselves. This complex logistical journey, managing and organizing the collections, was supported by the available human and financial resources and created new strategies, procedures and operational methods which should be analysed, correlated, and gathered for future memory. The singular character of this patrimony, its undeniable historical significance, and the great prestige obtained among visitors as well as national and international investigators would certainly maintain the position of this Museum as the most visited among all national museums. With this study we intend to offer the public a new point of interest in these peculiar assets, most of which are installed on wheels. At the same time, we are confident that we can stimulate the imagination, bring back distant memories and turn important data about collection management, often left inside institutional and scientific limits, public. We hope to contribute to the developing studies and preservation of Museu Nacional dos Coches’ collections. We also hope that these facts serve as a guideline for emphasizing the importance of the preservation of this heritage, which is recognized all over the world, and help build multidisciplinary teams with specialized knowledge concerning maintenance and preservation of all different collections in the future.

Significant resources and efforts have been devoted, especially in the U.S.A., to develop predictive policing programs. Predictive policing is, at the same time, one of the drivers of the birth, and the ultimate material enactment of, the anticipatory logics that are central to the smart city discourse. Quite surprisingly, however, critical analyses of the smart city have remained divorced from critical criminology and police studies. To fill this gap, this article sets out the first critical, in-depth empirical discussion of Blue CRUSH, a predictive policing program developed in Memphis (TN, U.S.A.), where its implementation intersects long-term austerity for urban policy. The article, first, shows that there is no evidence of Blue CRUSH’s capacity to prevent crime, thus adding empirical material to skepticism over the role of predictive policing as a policy solution in the first place. And, second, it argues that, rather than making crime a matter of technological solutions, predictive policing shifts the politics therein—in short, it contributes to the expansion of policing into the field of urban policy at the same time as it disrupts present police work. These takeaways allow to further the critique of the salvific promises implicit in the smart city discourse.

This dissertation describes the genesis of the idea of femicide in a period of English and American Letters, the last decade of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, in which patriarchal values and constructions were entering a crisis which resulted in the revision of the idea of gender—in a way, that was the period in which the concept of gender was coded. In the first chapter, I look at the way the term femicide was first given currency in the English language in 1827 through Robert Macnish’s The Confessions of an Unexecuted Femicide, a fiction disguised as a true story, and how it spawned a short-lived literary sub-genre. In the second chapter, I examine Poe’s reworking of the femicide story, and to the ways in which he has drawn attention to its Gothic roots. Finally, in the third chapter, I offer a reading of Memoirs of the Author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,’ in which I argue that Godwin’s “sentimentalised” portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, and by extension of the female intellectual, constitutes an implicit refutation of her ideas, and therefore can be profitably compared to the portraits Poe’s femicide narrators make of Morella and Ligeia in the tales named after them.