A avaliação institucional como instrumento de racionalização e o retorno à escola como organização formal

O papel central da avaliação, da avaliação institucional e dos processos de garantia da qualidade de escolas e universidades nas políticas educacionais é objeto de discussão, também considerando a reforma do Estado. As teorias da nova gestão pública e as perspectivas gestionárias são consideradas como algumas das principais fontes de inspiração e de legitimação no contexto dominante de uma educação contábil. Dados empíricos preliminares resultantes do processo de avaliação externa de escolas básicas e secundárias portuguesas são apresentados e interpretados de acordo com os principais conceitos e representações organizacionais de escola presentes nos relatórios externos. Examinando algumas das imagens e dos significados de escola, cultura de escola, autonomia, objetivos, liderança e eficácia presentes nos relatórios de avaliação, o autor releva a importância das imagens formais, racionais e burocráticas de escolas. Várias questões de investigação são apresentadas tendo por base aquilo a que o autor chama o processo da hiperburocratização das organizações educativas. Algumas dimensões do conceito de burocracia de Max Weber são revisitadas, em articulação com perspectivas neocientíficas de garantia da qualidade e com as tecnologias da informação e comunicação. O autor sugere que maior relevância deve ser atribuída aos modelos formais e racionais de interpretação das organizações educativas, pois os processos de avaliação e de garantia da qualidade estão a contribuir para a formalização de escolas e universidades e para a intensificação do seu processo de racionalização, isto é, para a emergência de uma imagem analítica das escolas como hiperburocracias.

Projeto de um centro de reabilitação física no complexo do Forte Portuense em Roma

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Arquitectura (área de especialização em Cultura Arquitectónica)

Modelação de processos num serviço de uma organização de ensino superior

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial

Modeling microbes: New methods for integrated metabolic and regulatory network reconstruction

PhD Thesis in Bioengineering

A new perspective of students allocation satisfaction in engineering courses in Portugal

Publicado em "AIP Conference Proceedings" Vol. 1648

Gender in focus: (new) trends in media

(Excerto) Nowadays, the public discourses about gender equality are commonly accepted in Western society. In fact, we live in an era of “equality illusion” (Banyard, 2010) because the mainstream discourses incorporate gender in the agenda, conveying the message that feminist struggles are unnecessary today. At the same time, postfeminism (McRobbie, 2004) gains importance and demonstrates the intricacies of a neoliberal, highly individualist culture that subtly imprisons the freedoms that it is supposed to grant (Gill & Scharff, 2011).

New bio-strategies for ochratoxin A detoxification using lactic acid bacteria

The occurrence of mycotoxigenic moulds such as Aspergillus, Penicillium and Fusarium in food and feed has an important impact on public health, by the appearance of acute and chronic mycotoxicoses in humans and animals, which is more severe in the developing countries due to lack of food security, poverty and malnutrition. This mould contamination also constitutes a major economic problem due the lost of crop production. A great variety of filamentous fungi is able to produce highly toxic secondary metabolites known as mycotoxins. Most of the mycotoxins are carcinogenic, mutagenic, neurotoxic and immunosuppressive, being ochratoxin A (OTA) one of the most important. OTA is toxic to animals and humans, mainly due to its nephrotoxic properties. Several approaches have been developed for decontamination of mycotoxins in foods, such as, prevention of contamination, biodegradation of mycotoxins-containing food and feed with microorganisms or enzymes and inhibition or absorption of mycotoxin content of consumed food into the digestive tract. Some group of Gram-positive bacteria named lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are able to release some molecules that can influence the mould growth, improving the shelf life of many fermented products and reducing health risks due to exposure to mycotoxins. Some LAB are capable of mycotoxin detoxification. Recently our group was the first to describe the ability of LAB strains to biodegrade OTA, more specifically, Pediococcus parvulus strains isolated from Douro wines. The pathway of this biodegradation was identified previously in other microorganisms. OTA can be degraded through the hydrolysis of the amide bond that links the L-β-phenylalanine molecule to the ochratoxin alpha (OTα) a non toxic compound. It is known that some peptidases from different origins can mediate the hydrolysis reaction like, carboxypeptidase A an enzyme from the bovine pancreas, a commercial lipase and several commercial proteases. So, we wanted to have a better understanding of this OTA degradation process when LAB are involved and identify which molecules where present in this process. For achieving our aim we used some bioinformatics tools (BLAST, CLUSTALX2, CLC Sequence Viewer 7, Finch TV). We also designed specific primers and realized gene specific PCR. The template DNA used came from LAB strains samples of our previous work, and other DNA LAB strains isolated from elderberry fruit, silage, milk and sausages. Through the employment of bioinformatics tools it was possible to identify several proteins belonging to the carboxypeptidase family that participate in the process of OTA degradation, such as serine type D-Ala-D-Ala carboxypeptidase and membrane carboxypeptidase. In conclusions, this work has identified carboxypeptidase proteins being one of the molecules present in the OTA degradation process when LAB are involved.