RCAAP Repository

The paper reports a study that seeks to develop an instrument so as to explore Bang- ladeshi science teachers’ perceived importance and perceived current practices, geared to the inclusion of four suggested areas of focus within a context-based, socio-scientific framework—student motivation, scientific problem-solving, socio- scientific decision-making and a beyond school, active informed citizenry concern. The study, taking into consideration the influence of different realities in the Bang- ladesh context (large class size, gender stereotypes and inadequate teacher develop- ment programmes), was conducted in 2 stages involving first piloting of a devised instrument with participant teachers involved in an international ‘We Act’ project which sought to promote socio-scientific activism. Expert validation and Cronbach Alpha test were carried out to establish the validity and reliability of the instrument. The actual implementation of the revised instrument was with purposefully chosen Bangladeshi science teachers. The results showed the participant Bangladeshi sci- ence teachers’ comparatively higher perceived importance, yet lower perceived cur- rent practice of incorporating different orientations associated to a context-based, socio-scientific framework. The results also revealed the influence of large class size, professional development programmes and gender factors on Bangladeshi sci- ence teachers’ perception. The significance of the study lies in emphasising the need for a more socio-scientific approach to Bangladesh science education and ini- tiating professional development programmes for enabling teachers to perceive the role of science education to promote citizens who are able to meet the social needs as indicated in the constitution.

This research scrutinizes the content, spread, and implications of disinformation in Brazil’s 2018 pre-election period. It focuses specifically on the most widely shared fake news about Lula da Silva and links these with the preexisting polarization and political radicalization, ascertaining the role of context. The research relied on a case study and mixed-methods approach that combined an online data collection of content, spread, propagators, and interactions’ analyses, with in-depth analysis of the meaning of such fake news. The results show that the most successful fake news about Lula capitalized on prior hostility toward him, several originated or were spread by conservative right-wing politicians and mainstream journalists, and that the pro-Lula fake news circulated in smaller networks and had overall less global reach. Facebook and WhatsApp were the main dissemination platforms of these contents.

Complexities of social problems in our globalised world pose new educational challenges, including how to empower citizens for active engagement with socioscientific issues. This study describes the analysis and discussion of an activist video as the first phase in an activist education programme. Participants were 104 preservice primary teachers from the University of Malaga (Spain). Their task was to watch a video about illegal mining in the Venezuelan Amazon and, using the CoAnnotation tool, to annotate the video so as to indicate: the problem they saw as most important, the best solution and ways in which the video could be improved. Students were subsequently shown all the annotations that had been made by the group as a whole so as to facilitate discussion. The content of their annotations was analysed and described using a category system developed by consensus among the research team. The problem most commonly referred to by students was environmental damage. In terms of solutions, the main focus was on raising awareness, although mention was also made of government intervention and both citizen-led and school-based initiatives. As for how the video might be improved as a tool for raising awareness, students made several suggestions regarding its content.

Este livro aborda os seguintes tópicos: Orientações curriculares para o ensino da estatística, Investigações estatísticas, dados e variáveis, Tabelas e gráficos, Características amostrais, Probabilidade, Simulação.

Although usually considered the most important city of Lusitania - after Augusta Emerita - and the main maritime harbour of the whole Atlantic peninsular façade, there remains a generalized absence of studies that highlight the role that Olisipo played in the most western of the Roman provinces’ economy and commercial relations. This work aims to address that absence, by focusing on the research on Olisipo, located at the Tagus estuary, during the period encompassing the Republic and the Principate, and based on the study of amphorae. The dataset resulting from the analysis of the amphorae from Lisbon discloses the existence of a vast network of commercial relations with the diverse areas of the Mediterranean throughout all of the considered chronology, thus revealing a cosmopolitan city, with an active and central role in the complex commercial exchanges of the West of Iberian Peninsula with the rest of the Roman Empire. These results underline Olisipo’s importance as a trading post in the Atlantic coast during the Roman period, a role that has been recognized long ago, allowing to draw in a more accurate way how the city’s economic history was shaped.

The expansion of forest farmers across tropical lowland South America during the Late Holocene has long been connected to climate change. The more humid conditions established during the Late Holocene are assumed to have driven the expansion of forests, which would have facilitated the dispersal of cultures that practised agroforestry. The Tupi, a language family of widespread distribution in South America, occupies a central place in the debate. Not only are they one of the largest families in the continent, but their expansion from an Amazonian homeland has long been hypothesized to have followed forested environments wherever they settled. Here, we assess that hypothesis using a simulation approach. We employ equation-based and cellular automaton models, simulating demic-diffusion processes under two different scenarios: a null model in which all land cells can be equally settled, and an alternative model in which non-forested cells cannot be settled or delay the expansion. We show that including land cover as a constraint to movement results in a better approximation of the Tupi expansion as reconstructed by archaeology and linguistics.

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Ana Plácido (1831-1895) foi uma autora portuguesa que viveu e escreveu na sombra do seu amante, e posterior marido, Camilo Castelo Branco. Sendo hoje praticamente esquecida pela crítica literária, a sua obra é, ainda assim, de extrema importância para o estudo do romance oitocentista e do Romantismo português. No texto “Às Portas da Eternidade”, incluído na sua obra Luz coada por ferros, a autora faz das conturbações psicológicas de uma mulher abandonada pelo amante toda a tessitura do seu texto. A atmosfera sombria e gótica composta pelo ambiente que a circunda e pela iminência da morte transformam este conto numa história de fantasmas, em que a protagonista está prestes a transpor a barreira entre a vida e a morte. O suicídio por amor é neste conto desenhado como um fim desesperado para uma alma sem salvação. A consciência feminina é, aqui como noutros textos deste volume, o lugar por excelência da expressão do terror e angústia psicológicos femininos.

In the novel As Visitas do Dr. Valdez, by João Paulo Borges COELHO, role-playing and masks (literal or figurative) are central topics, connected to power or submission within social relationships, during the transition between the colonial regime and independence in Mozambique. They serve several purposes in the story, such as to invoke the past and insert it into the rapidly changing present – through the mask of Dr. Valdez concocted by Vicente -; to momentarily extend a political and social order that is progressively wearing away – through the authoritative mask of Sá Caetana - ; or to introduce without violence the essence of change into former colonial relationships, which predicts the end of the colonial way of living. Sá Caetana, coming from a colonizing family, uses a traditional authoritative attitude towards Vicente that she does not wish to see subverted; a mask which she cannot forgo. Vicente, on the other hand, is divided between the submissive and obedient memory of his father, Cosme Paulino, who was a servant to the family, and the new callings of independence and decolonization. This role-playing and these masks lead the characters into a dead-lock without solution: the simultaneous impossibility of keeping up the role-playing or of dismantling it entirely. In this proposal, we aim to analyse how, in the story, wearing a certain social mask is both part of the colonial past and of the decolonized present and future, and how these masks represent an impediment to the creation of real and emotional connections.

Esta Newsletter (NL) resulta de uma parceria entre o Instituto de Saúde Baseada na Evidência e a Cochrane Portugal, e tem como objectivo disponibilizar informação sobre áreas interessantes para a prática clínica, com base na melhor evidência científica. São incluídos estudos relevantes, criticamente avaliados pela sua validade, importância dos resultados e aplicabilidade prática, resumidos numa óptica de suporte à decisão. É dada prioridade a estudos de causalidade incluindo-se ainda, quando justificado, estudos qualitativos e metodológicos, assim como revisões científicas. O conteúdo da NL é da exclusiva responsabilidade do(s) seu(s) autor(es).

Background: Hansen’s disease (leprosy), widespread in medieval Europe, is today mainly prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions with around 200,000 new cases reported annually. Despite its long history and appearance in historical records, its origins and past dissemination patterns are still widely unknown. Applying ancient DNA approaches to its major causative agent, Mycobacterium leprae, can significantly improve our understanding of the disease’s complex history. Previous studies have identified a high genetic continuity of the pathogen over the last 1500 years and the existence of at least four M. leprae lineages in some parts of Europe since the Early Medieval period. Results: Here, we reconstructed 19 ancient M. leprae genomes to further investigate M. leprae’s genetic variation in Europe, with a dedicated focus on bacterial genomes from previously unstudied regions (Belarus, Iberia, Russia, Scotland), from multiple sites in a single region (Cambridgeshire, England), and from two Iberian leprosaria. Overall, our data confirm the existence of similar phylogeographic patterns across Europe, including high diversity in leprosaria. Further, we identified a new genotype in Belarus. By doubling the number of complete ancient M. leprae genomes, our results improve our knowledge of the past phylogeography of M. leprae and reveal a particularly high M. leprae diversity in European medieval leprosaria. Conclusions: Our findings allow us to detect similar patterns of strain diversity across Europe with branch 3 as the most common branch and the leprosaria as centers for high diversity. The higher resolution of our phylogeny tree also refined our understanding of the interspecies transfer between red squirrels and humans pointing to a late antique/early medieval transmission. Furthermore, with our new estimates on the past population diversity of M. leprae, we gained first insights into the disease’s global history in relation to major historic events such as the Roman expansion or the beginning of the regular transatlantic long distance trade. In summary, our findings highlight how studying ancient M. leprae genomes worldwide improves our understanding of leprosy’s global history and can contribute to current models of M. leprae’s worldwide dissemination, including interspecies transmissions.

This etymology-in-context textbook focuses on modern words, their ancient roots, and the ancient concepts that lie behind these words that aid in the understanding of their meanings. It is designed to make classical antiquity available and attractive to a non-specialist audience. Chapters 1–3 provides a general background to the system and rules of word-building. This book examines the influence of Latin and ancient Greek on the modern English language and explains how a knowledge of this influence can aid in the understanding of English. The rest of this textbook examines selected groups of words and concepts that have their origin in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. Chapters 4–9 focus on the social, historical and political origins of these words and phrases and contextualises them in ancient Greek and Roman society.

This exceptional volume edited by Grant Parker on the role of Classics and its heritage in South Africa has been in preparation for a number of years. Whatever time was necessary to produce South Africa, Greece, Rome: Classical Confrontations has shown to be well worth the wait for scholars of the classical reception and tradition.1 Parker declares that the aims of his edited volume are to examine South Africa’s past in relation to classical antiquity (p. xxi), to extract specifically South African contexts of this antiquity, and to examine the ‘afterlives’ of classical culture in the country (p. 6).

Littlewood’s commentary on Punica 10 is commendably accessible to postgraduate and even undergraduate students of Latin and Classical Studies, but it will find many appreciative readers among scholars of Silius Italicus. In addition to providing mini-essays and notes involving literary criticism and historical analysis, the commentary discusses philological and stylistic matters. While the treatment of philological issues is not Littlewood’s principal focus, the discussion of literary and historical questions makes her commentary more useful for the type of reader that is increasingly likely to consult it in the years ahead. Littlewood’s commentary therefore continues the laudable trend evident in recent Oxford Flavian commentaries of focussing on both literary and philological issues. As in her commentary on Punica 7, Littlewood’s literary approach reveals a heightened appreciation of Silius Italicus as a poet and therefore surpasses the standard commentary that is devoted mainly to philological and textual issues. Littlewood’s commentary on Punica 10 will be utilized by all serious scholars and students of the epic.

In his introductory survey of ancient Roman rhetoric that opens Part II of the Handbook, William J. Dominik (ch. 12: “The Development of Roman Rhetoric”) argues that while Roman rhetoric is often treated as an adumbration of Greek models and doctrines, another useful method is to analyze the uniquely Roman “cultural dynamic” that shaped Latin rhetorical theory and practice. In addition to Romanizing Greek terms and employing Latin literary and legal examples, theorists strove to develop a native Latin rhetoric that reflected its agrarian roots and reinforced elite male Roman attitudes toward national, class, and gender identity. This attention to the singularities of the Roman social context also leads Dominik to contest the view that rhetoric degenerated under the Empire: law courts remained arenas of rhetorical activity, genres such as epic, lyric, historiography, and the novel flourished, and declamation—often criticized for its lurid, improbable, and artificial themes—emerged as a vital cultural practice intimately connected to the “social and political realities” of Roman life. Taken together, the chapters that comprise The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies show that rhetoric is not only a body of precepts for stylish, effective communication in speech, writing, and other media but also a social process embedded in manifold areas of culture, a process that both mirrors and engenders the society in which it operates. “Rhetoric, like any other field of activity,” observes William J. Dominik, “is constructed socially, politically and cognitively in ways that reflect, express and extend—through its rules, structures, processes and values—the culture that produces it” (1997: 11).

Recent scholarship on Quintilian, though it has much improved in attitude toward and coverage of the rhetorician, still remains prone to uninformed bias. While discussion of Quintilian in reference works such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary and the Ancient World Encyclopedia are more factual and generally discuss briefly his role in the history of rhetoric, criticism of Quintilian and his theories and approaches tends to be confined to discussions by critics or students who have not re-evaluated his critical role in Roman rhetoric and depend on some of the scholarly judgements made by past scholars. This is evident, for example, especially in the Wikipedia article on the ‘Institutio Oratoria’ in English (modified 26 May 2013). While scholars may be generally dismissive of Wikipedia scholarship, it holds an enormous influence over students and the general public and is often the first source for students and even scholars confronting an ancient figure such as Quintilian. The section entitled ‘Limitations’ in the anonymous, (presumably) collectively produced and unreferenced Wikipedia article in English is extremely unhelpful to serious students of Quintilian. He is damned for being so heavily immersed in the culture of rhetoric so as to have lost perspective on its shortcomings, for being a victim of the education he advocates, for being compelled to adopt the unnatural language of his age, and for promoting the idea of an ideal orator whose existence was unrealisable. Fortunately, though, modern assessments are generally positive in their approach toward Quintilian, as is evident by the comments on his achievements as a rhetorician and his important role in the history of education. But the greatest indication of the growing esteem in which Quintilian is held is the enormous number and breadth of topics that have been undertaken on his rhetorical theories and techniques, which serve to provide the basis for an informed critical judgement of him as a rhetorician and educator. Ultimately the modern scholarship on Quintilian not only provides a positive appraisal and reassessment of his place in the history of rhetoric and education but also of his important role in the modern resurgence of scholarly interest in rhetoric.

One approach to the reading of Pliny’s Panegyricus is to examine later iterations and discussions of panegyric in Late Antiquity and the Early Modern Period for loci and passages that recall and discuss this earliest extant imperial panegyric. Although a surface reading of imperial panegyric, whether it is in the judicial or political context, is indisputably laudatory, the ambiguous undertones of a text like the Panegyricus will always be the subject of contestation among critics. Inevitably scholars who read imperial panegyric literally will not like an interpretation that opens up possibilities for a multivalent reading of Pliny’s panegyric on Trajan. The Panegyricus can be read firstly and most obviously as praise and flattery, even if such a reading includes the potential for the instability or slippage of flattery. But the hybrid nature of the genre it represents suggests that the Panegyricus can also be read in at least four other ways: as ceremony and celebration; as authorial self-positioning, self-fashioning, and self-representation; as exhortation, admonition, and advice, that is, as protreptic and didactic; and as potential admonishment and criticism. As later panegyric evidently was multi-dimensional and allowed for ambiguity and even criticism, it seems natural that the Panegyricus, which sometimes served as a model for the composition of subsequent panegyrics, would possess a similar capacity to function on a number of levels. The reception of Pliny’s Panegyricus by writers of Late Antiquity and the Early Modern Period not only provides evidence of its important role in the history of the genre of panegyric, but it also serves to illustrate the potential functions of the Panegyricus’ own narrative. The modern criticism levelled against the Panegyricus is largely attributable to its effusive flattery of the emperor, but the focus on this feature of the work has partly blinded readers to its more nuanced aspects. An examination of Pliny’s narrative techniques in the Panegyricus and its reception (and that of Graeco-Roman panegyric generally) during Late Antiquity and the Early Modern Period demonstrates that the oration had a number of potential functions that transcend the mere purpose of praising the emperor.

Os sistemas de informação da Época Moderna baseiam-se no registo de actos. Discutem-se neste artigo os sistemas de informação civis, como aqueles das Câmaras Municipais ou das Misericórdias, ou de uma grande instituição como a Inquisição, e a sua materialização em unidades de informação. A análise consistirá na relação entre a produção de informação e o contexto histórico em que a mesma ocorreu, o que significa não só apresentar uma relação directa entre legislação e informação produzida, e, especialmente, problematizar a história custodial da informação acumulada e do contexto histórico da sua produção. O enfoque encontra-se na produção da informação em estreita relação com o seu contexto de produção e com as formas da sua materialização. A história administrativa e custodial dos sistemas de informação permite compreender o contexto de produção.

Levosimendan is a drug developed and approved in the EU to treat severe heart failure by intravenous administration. Its principal pharmacological effect is to increase cardiac contractility by calcium sensitisation of troponin C. Because of the positive action of the drug on the neuromechanical efficiency and contractile function of the diaphragm in healthy controls, levosimendan was considered potentially useful for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease characterised by progressive upper and lower motor neuron deficits. This hypothesis was tested in the phase LEVALS 2 trial, in which the drug was given orally.

With a diverse set of neuronal and glial cell populations, Central Nervous System (CNS) has one of the most complex structures in the body. Intercellular communication is therefore highly important to coordinate cell-to-cell interactions. Besides electrical and chemical messengers, CNS cells also benefit from another communication route, what is known as extracellular vesicles, to harmonize their interactions. Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) and their subtype exosomes are membranous particles secreted by cells and contain information packaged in the form of biomolecules such as small fragments of DNA, lipids, miRNAs, mRNAs, and proteins. They are able to efficiently drive changes upon their arrival to recipient cells. EVs actively participate in all stages of CNS development by stimulating neural cell proliferation, differentiation, synaptic formation, and mediating reciprocal interactions between neurons and oligodendrocyte for myelination process. The aim of the present review is to enlighten the presence and contribution of EVs at each CNS developmental milestone.