RCAAP Repository

This chapter develops a proposed framework for urban inter-and transdisciplinary processes. In the framework, competences and dispositions are listed separately on purpose to highlight their potential distinctiveness and relevance, thus making them more clearly visible in the phase of planning for an inter-and transdisciplinary process. The first dimension has four phases that characterise inter-and transdisciplinary processes: co-design, co-production, dissemination and outreach, and continuation. The second dimension includes four enabling conditions: time, competences and dispositions, contexts, and words. For inter-and transdisciplinary projects linked to research funds, time is almost always too short, as the unequal weight given to economic and social time results in the former trumping the latter. The third dimension describes a predisposition to learning as an individual, in teams and in society: a quality that underpins and influences the workings of both the phases and the enabling conditions.

Parasitic diseases, such as sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and malaria, remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, but particularly in tropical, developing countries. Controlling these diseases requires a better understanding of host-parasite interactions, including a deep appreciation of parasite distribution in the host. The preferred accumulation of parasites in some tissues of the host has been known for many years, but recent technical advances have allowed a more systematic analysis and quantifications of such tissue tropisms. The functional consequences of tissue tropism remain poorly studied, although it has been associated with important aspects of disease, including transmission enhancement, treatment failure, relapse and clinical outcome. Here, we discuss current knowledge of tissue tropism in Trypanosoma infections in mammals, describe potential mechanisms of tissue entry, comparatively discuss relevant findings from other parasitology fields where tissue tropism has been extensively investigated, and reflect on new questions raised by recent discoveries and their potential impact on clinical treatment and disease control strategies.

The position of the nucleus within cells is a key event during cell migration. The movement and positioning of the nucleus strongly impacts cell migration. Notably, the last two years largely contributed to emphasise the dynamicity of the nucleus-cytoskeleton interactions that occur during cell migration. Nuclei are under continuous tension from opposing intracellular forces and its tether to the cytoskeleton can be regulated at different levels. Interestingly, it was showed how nuclear positioning is highly related to cell function. In most migrating cells, including cancer cells, the nucleus can be the rate limiting step of cell migration and is placed away from the leading edge. By contrast, leukocytes position their nucleus close to the lamellipodia at the leading edge, and the nucleus contributes to drilling through the endothelium. Differences in cell migration in 2D versus 3D environments are also evident. The mechanisms and forces at play during nuclear positioning and translocation are clearly affected by the nature of the substrate. As such nuclear positioning during cell migration can vary between cell types and environments. In this review we aim to give an overview of the latest discoveries in the field revealing how nuclear positioning is tightly regulated, not only by intrinsic nuclear properties, such as deformability, nuclear envelope content or nucleus-cytoskeleton connectivity, but also by the microenvironment.

In the present review, we stress the importance of the purine nucleosides, adenosine and guanosine, in protecting the nervous system, both centrally and peripherally, via activation of their receptors and intracellular signalling mechanisms. A most novel part of the review focus on the mechanisms of neuronal regeneration that are targeted by nucleosides, including a recently identified action of adenosine on axonal growth and microtubule dynamics. Discussion on the role of the purine nucleosides transversally with the most established neurotrophic factors, e.g. brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), is also focused considering the intimate relationship between some adenosine receptors, as is the case of the A2A receptors, and receptors for neurotrophins. This article is part of the Special Issue entitled 'Purines in Neurodegeneration and Neuroregeneration'.

Parasites undergo complex life cycles that comprise a wide variety of cellular differentiation events in different host compartments and transmission across multiple hosts. As parasites depend on host resources, it is not surprising they have developed efficient mechanisms to sense alterations and adapt to the available resources in a wide range of environments. Here we provide an overview of the nutritional needs of different parasites throughout their diverse life stages and highlight recent insights into strategies that both hosts and parasites have developed to meet these nutritional requirements needed for defense, survival, and replication. These studies will provide the foundation for a systems-level understanding of host-parasite interactions, which will require the integration of molecular, epidemiologic, and mechanistic data and the application of interdisciplinary approaches to model parasite regulatory networks that are triggered by alterations in host resources.

The incidence of brain metastases (BM) in cancer patients is increasing. After diagnosis, overall survival (OS) is poor, elicited by the lack of an effective treatment. Monoclonal antibody (mAb)-based therapy has achieved remarkable success in treating both hematologic and non-central-nervous system (CNS) tumors due to their inherent targeting specificity. However, the use of mAbs in the treatment of CNS tumors is restricted by the blood-brain barrier (BBB) that hinders the delivery of either small-molecules drugs (sMDs) or therapeutic proteins (TPs). To overcome this limitation, active research is focused on the development of strategies to deliver TPs and increase their concentration in the brain. Yet, their molecular weight and hydrophilic nature turn this task into a challenge. The use of BBB peptide shuttles is an elegant strategy. They explore either receptor-mediated transcytosis (RMT) or adsorptive-mediated transcytosis (AMT) to cross the BBB. The latter is preferable since it avoids enzymatic degradation, receptor saturation, and competition with natural receptor substrates, which reduces adverse events. Therefore, the combination of mAbs properties (e.g., selectivity and long half-life) with BBB peptide shuttles (e.g., BBB translocation and delivery into the brain) turns the therapeutic conjugate in a valid approach to safely overcome the BBB and efficiently eliminate metastatic brain cells.

This dissertation aims to establish a connection between digital games, with special interest in serious games, and domestic and teen dation violence, with the main research topic being “How can a game contribute to alert about domestic violence related problems?”. We began the investigation by understanding more about domestic violence: causes, consequences, how the victims are seen by society and what might cause someone to become an abuser. For the digital games, we started from the general definition of game, its impact and importance as a cultural medium, and the benefit of using serious games particularly to explore sensitive and taboo themes with young people. After an extensive research on both topics and knowing what other games exist not only about domestic and teen dating violence, but that also address other social and sensitive problems, Sea of Roses was born. This project was initially created as to participate in the Life.Love Game Design Challenge 2020, an international contest promoted by Jennifer Ann’s Group, an American organization focused in fighting teen dating violence with the use of serious games. Sea of Roses won the second place in said contest, and in this document, we will present it with more detail, from the initial concept, characters and the world, art and story. Sea of Roses is a serious game that addresses the impact of culture in teen dating violence, some abusive and toxic behaviors and how gender stereotypes and can influence how young people establish romantic relationships. The project also benefits from the work of Andreia Batista, an artist and designer, master in Communication Design by the Faculty of Fine Arts, Lisbon, and André Fidalgo Silva, a developer and master in Computer Engineering by Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon.

The present essay aims to investigate, with no intention of being exhaustive or categorical, the poetics of the artists Mira Schendel (1919-1988) and Ana Hatherly (1929-2015), trying to bring them closer through some central notions, such as: writing, gesture, letter, silence/emptiness/white, text/fabric, stain and illegibility. Both artists worked at the border of visual arts and poetry, image and writing, text and visuality. They shared a common desire for the between of image and writing; a poetic-visual thinking where to paint and to write – to think with one’s hands – is analogous to the work of Penelope, Ariadne and Arachne, ergo, to spin and to weave, to give form, manually, to existence. Finally, it is intended to put both artists in a possible love dialogue, opening small gaps – paths – that give view to new forms of seeing their works. This essay is a love letter.

O presente relatório diz respeito ao estágio realizado na Norparts, uma das empresas da Create Business que atua no mercado de distribuição de peças de automóveis, tendo as oficinas independentes como clientes alvo. Atualmente a Norparts tem armazéns em Frielas, Porto, Braga e Madrid. As peças são adquiridas a vários fornecedores, são armazenadas nos armazéns, seguem por sua vez para os mecânicos e lojas de venda e por fim chegam aos consumidores finais. Quando chegam aos armazéns, as peças têm que ser arrumadas nas prateleiras correspondentes para o efeito e quando chegam as ordens de encomenda, têm que ser recolhidas no armazém e posteriormente distribuídas pelos clientes. Com base no mapeamento que já estava feito para um dos armazéns, fez-se o mapeamento dos outros armazéns. Neste estágio apresentam-se e implementam-se heurísticas para o problema de determinação de rotas dentro de um armazém (order picking problem) e para o problema de determinação de rotas para uma zona de clientes, em que o objetivo é maximizar uma função profit garantindo que não se excede um tempo máximo da rota (orienteering problem). Considera-se neste problema a existência de janelas temporais Para a obtenção das rotas de picking dentro do armazém utiliza-se a heurística de inserção de menor custo com vista a obter uma primeira solução admissível e posteriormente as heurísticas 2-optimas e 1-optimal para o melhoramento da solução obtida anteriormente. Os resultados obtidos usando estas heurísticas foram comparados com os resultados obtidos antes da utilização das heurísticas nos armazéns em que já existiam rotas dentro do armazém. No caso do problema de determinação de rotas numa zona de clientes utiliza-se também uma heurística construtiva baseada no princípio de inserção de menor custo. Descreve-se também a obtenção dos dados para a zona de clientes em estudo e os resultados obtidos pela heurística.

This work presents an investigation into the relationship between drawing and autoethnography. Based on the development of an artistic project DicionáriosDeArtista - which links the domains of drawing, site-specific and artist's book, it proposes to research processes which establish relationships with autoethnography, in the way that connect author and place. It serves as a starting point for a broader study on the implications of using models of autoethnography for contemporary drawing practices. To research the relationships between drawing and autoethnography implies deepening the study on the new interconnections between art and anthropology. More precisely, to address the border space between artistic practices and ethnography that dominated interdisciplinary theorization since the end of the 20th century. In this context, the lack of prominence of specific proposals in the drawing field is evident, legitimizing the relevance of a study on the relationship between the practices of drawing and anthropology. On the other hand, the fact that autoethnography has been marginalized in the field of anthropology, opposing a subjective and critical dimension to anthropological scientificism, triggered the interest in further research on this alternative form of ethnographic research. The thesis strives from the ethnographic turn in contemporary art; then links are established with the development of autoethnography, visual anthropology and the graphic turn in anthropology, to study the influence of autoethnography in artistic practices. At the same time, the development of DicionáriosDeArtista, the study of a set of artist books and the analysis of case studies, allow the identification of forms of autoethnographic appropriation within the specific scope of drawing. The investigation as a whole aim to recognize an interdisciplinary area that is relevant for the way it combines subjectivity and critical reflection, in the production of alternative readings on the social and cultural complexity of the current world.

‘Nalini Malani: Utopia!?’, a retrospective of Nalini Malani’s animation artworks at the Serralves Museum (19 December 2020–29 August 2021), follows the development of Malani’s artistic path through a continued investment in ‘resonance’.1 As a retrospective, the exhibition includes works from the Indian artist’s first experimental colour stop-motion 8 mm animation film, Dream Houses (1969), produced at the Vision Exchange Workshop and transferred to digital medium, to the immersive, nine- channel video installation Can You Hear Me? (2017–2020). At the same time, the artworks on display document the imagining of India, probing the utopia of a nation, as reflected in the exclamation and interrogation points in the retrospective’s title. The artworks take visitors to the aftermath of political independence and partition in 1947 and the to-be-realisation of Gandhi’s utopian vision in Nehruvian modernity – the historical conjuncture and sentiment that inform Dream Houses. This essay assesses how quotation (and, generally, adaptation) functions in Malani’s artworks as a visual and acoustic way of creating resonance in the contemporary moment, thinking through ‘originals’ as a form of cultural activism.

The trillions of microorganisms that reside in the gastrointestinal tract, essential for nutrient absorption, are kept under control by a single cell barrier and large amounts of immune cells. Intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) are critical in establishing an environment supporting microbial colonization and immunological tolerance. A large population of CD8+ T cells is in direct and constant contact with the IECs and the intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs). Due to their location, at the interphase of the intestinal lumen and external environment and the host tissues, they seem ideally positioned to balance immune tolerance and protection to preserve the fragile intestinal barrier from invasion as well as immunopathology. IELs are a heterogeneous population, with a large innate-like contribution of unknown specificity, intercalated with antigen-specific tissue-resident memory T cells. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of IEL physiology and how they interact with the IECs and contribute to immune surveillance to preserve intestinal homeostasis and host-microbial relationships.

Notch signalling is a fundamental pathway that shapes the developing embryo and sustains adult tissues by direct communication between ligand and receptor molecules on adjacent cells. Among the ligands are two Delta paralogues, DLL1 and DLL4, that are conserved in mammals and share a similar structure and sequence. They activate the Notch receptor partly in overlapping expression domains where they fulfil redundant functions in some processes (e.g. maintenance of the crypt cell progenitor pool). In other processes, however, they appear to act differently (e.g. maintenance of foetal arterial identity) raising the questions of how similar DLL1 and DLL4 really are and which mechanism causes the apparent context-dependent divergence. By analysing mice that conditionally overexpress DLL1 or DLL4 from the same genomic locus (Hprt) and mice that express DLL4 instead of DLL1 from the endogenous Dll1 locus (Dll1Dll4ki), we found functional differences that are tissue-specific: while DLL1 and DLL4 act redundantly during the maintenance of retinal progenitors, their function varies in the presomitic mesoderm (PSM) where somites form in a Notch-dependent process. In the anterior PSM, every cell expresses both Notch receptors and ligands, and DLL1 is the only activator of Notch while DLL4 is not endogenously expressed. Transgenic DLL4 cannot replace DLL1 during somitogenesis and in heterozygous Dll1Dll4ki/+ mice, the Dll1Dll4ki allele causes a dominant segmentation phenotype. Testing several aspects of the complex Notch signalling system in vitro, we found that both ligands have a similar trans-activation potential but that only DLL4 is an efficient cis-inhibitor of Notch signalling, causing a reduced net activation of Notch. These differential cis-inhibitory properties are likely to contribute to the functional divergence of DLL1 and DLL4.

The interior of the eukaryotic cell nucleus is populated by a multitude of microscopic domains termed nuclear bodies. Despite having attracted much attention, how these compartments form and are maintained remained elusive. Now, two live-cell imaging studies provide compelling evidence that nascent RNAs can act as transiently immobilized scaffolds that recruit specific nuclear body proteins.

Background: The first phase of malaria infection occurs in the liver and is clinically silent. Inside hepatocytes each Plasmodium sporozoite replicate into thousands of erythrocyte-infectious merozoites that when released into the blood stream result in clinical symptoms of the disease. The time between sporozoite inoculation and the appearance of parasites in the blood is defined as the pre-patent period, which is classically analysed by time-consuming and labor-intensive techniques, such as microscopy and PCR. Methods: Luciferase-expressing Plasmodium berghei parasites were used to measure pre-patent period of malaria infection in rodents using a bioluminescence assay that requires only one microliter of blood collected from the tail-vein. The accuracy and sensitivity of this new method was compared with conventional microscopy and PCR based techniques, and its capacity to measure the impact of anti-malarial interventions against the liver evaluated. Results: The described method is very sensitive allowing the detection of parasites during the first cycles of blood stage replication. It accurately translates differences in liver load due to inoculation of different sporozoite doses as well as a result of treatment with different primaquine regimens. Conclusions: A novel, simple, fast, and sensitive method to measure pre-patent period of malaria infection in rodents is described here. The sensitivity and accuracy of this new method is comparable to standard PCR and microscopy-based techniques, respectively.

The theoretical-practical investigation presented here – Between Real and Dream: interdisciplinary creation for the interactive Scenic Space – has as hypothesis that the interactive technologies in an installation work or performative art, are a means of materializing the unreal and imaginary. The general objective was to understand how the scenic space can be enhanced in a sensorial and symbolical way by interactive technologies and what are the impacts of this transformation in the interactor, in the performer and the scene. As a poetic mote of creation, the practical work had as basis the story O Ex-mágico da Taberna Minhota, from which we established an imagetic reflection about the rainbow, an element of nature. In this practice-based research, the creative methodology imposed itself, becoming one of the products of this process. The project is interdisciplinary, from fields of knowledge to beyond the creation of the scenic space of performative arts, just like computing and visual arts – in its practical bias, the experience had the cooperation of artists and researchers of these other areas. An immersive space was developed in the fields of installation and performance. The interactive installation Rainbow: Between Real and Dream, and the Rainbow performance were realized as result of this investigation. In this investigation, the proximity between visual arts, performative arts and digital arts is analyzed under the impact of interactive technologies in the creation of an artistic environment. It was concluded that the creation of an interactive space allows the virtual space to be built and lived in the real space of installation and the scene which alters the meaning of the scenic space itself and allows it to be manipulated – by the interactor and the actor.

Nesta investigação procedeu-se à adaptação para a população portuguesa do Índice de Estilos da Personalidade de Millon – MIPS-R (Millon, 2004) e das Escalas de Sugestionabilidade de Gudjonsson – GSS1 e GSS2 (Gudjonsson, 1997), com o objectivo de estudar as relações entre as variáveis da personalidade medidas pelo MIPS-R e a Sugestionabilidade Interrogativa avaliada pela GSS1. Previu-se a existência de diferenças individuais na sugestionabilidade e que a essas diferenças correspondem diferenças em características de personalidade dos indivíduos. A adaptação portuguesa do MIPS-R apresenta indicadores de consistência interna, estabilidade temporal e validade semelhantes aos obtidos com o instrumento original. No âmbito dos estudos realizados com o MIPS-R, propôs-se uma alternativa aos resultados de prevalência, justificada pelas limitações deste sistema de derivação de resultados (Casullo & Solano, 2000; Grove & Vrieze, 2009). A adaptação portuguesa das Escalas de Sugestionabilidade pôs em evidência as limitações psicométricas destes instrumentos, também reconhecidas noutros estudos independentes (Gignac & Powell, 2009; Polczyk, 2005). Por esta razão, no estudo principal, Cedência 1, cujos indicadores de validade e precisão são adequados, foi utilizada como medida de sugestionabilidade. O estudo principal foi realizado com uma amostra de 258 indivíduos (M idades = 31.8 anos, DP = 12.0), que responderam ao MIPS-R e à GSS1 em sessões experimentais individuais. Os resultados mostram diferenças individuais na sugestionabilidade, que correspondem a características de personalidade retratadas em algumas escalas dos Estilos de Pensamento e de Comportamento do MIPS-R. Confirmam, ainda, que a sugestionabilidade medida através das Escalas de Sugestionabilidade de Gudjonsson é influenciada por variáveis de personalidade diferentes das que influenciam a sugestionabilidade captada através de paradigmas experimentais (cf. Lee, 2004; Liebman et al., 2002; Zhu et al., 2010). As implicações desta conclusão para a Psicologia Forense, bem como o contributo da investigação sobre os factores e condições que influenciam a exactidão dos testemunhos, são discutidas.

γδ T cells are an evolutionary conserved branch of the immune system and the first T cells to be generated in the developing mouse embryo. While αβ T cells are the predominant T cell subset in lymphoid organs, γδ T cells can constitute up to 50% of all T cells in tissues. Both αβ and γδ T cell subsets develop in the thymus, whereas αβ T cells egress as naïve cells that only aquire effector function upon activation in the periphery, a substantial fraction of γδ T cells exit the thymus precommitted to cytokine production. In particular, thymic γδ T cells can already display interferon-γ (IFN-γ) or interleukin-17 (IL-17) effector phenotypes, which are important for tissue homeostasis, infection, autoimmunity and cancer.

Background: Epilepsy is a prevalent neurological disorder worldwide. It is characterized by an enduring predisposition to generate seizures and its development is accompanied by alterations in many cellular processes. Organotypic slice cultures represent a multicellular environment with the potential to assess biological mechanisms, and they are used as a starting point for refining molecules for in vivo studies. Here, we investigated organotypic slice cultures as a model of epilepsy. Methods: We assessed, by electrophysiological recordings, the spontaneous activity of organotypic slices maintained under different culture protocols. Moreover, we evaluated, through molecular-based approaches, neurogenesis, neuronal death, gliosis, expression of proinflammatory cytokines, and activation of NLRP3 inflammasome (nucleotide-binding, leucine-rich repeat, pyrin domain) as biomarkers of neuroinflammation. Results: We demonstrated that organotypic slices, maintained under a serum deprivation culture protocol, develop epileptic-like activity. Furthermore, throughout a comparative study with slices that do not depict any epileptiform activity, slices with epileptiform activity were found to display significant differences in terms of inflammation-related features, such as (1) increased neuronal death, with higher incidence in CA1 pyramidal neurons of the hippocampus; (2) activation of astrocytes and microglia, assessed through western blot and immunohistochemistry; (3) upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines, specifically interleukin-1β (IL-1β), interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor α, revealed by qPCR; and (4) enhanced expression of NLRP3, assessed by western blot, together with increased NLRP3 activation, showed by IL-1β quantification. Conclusions: Thus, organotypic slice cultures gradually deprived of serum mimic the epileptic-like activity, as well as the inflammatory events associated with in vivo epilepsy. This system can be considered a new tool to explore the interplay between neuroinflammation and epilepsy and to screen potential drug candidates, within the inflammatory cascades, to reduce/halt epileptogenesis.

How we see organisms and cells depends on the tools at our disposal. For over 150 years, biologists were forced to rely on fixed, dehydrated and stained specimens in order to guess how the living cells could function. It all changed abruptly during the last two decades when the rapid development of novel imaging techniques revolutionized the way scientists look at the structures of life alive.