Qualified intervention/qualifying formation

An education promoting scientific literacy (SL) that prepares the citizens to a responsible citizenship has persisted as an argument across discussions on curricula design. The ubiquity of science and technology on contemporary societies and the ideological requirement of informed democratic participation led to the identification of relevant categories that drive curriculum reforms towards a humanistic approach of school science. The category ‘Science as culture’ acquires in the current work a major importance: it enlightens the meaning of scientific literacy. Looking closely to the French term, culture scientifique et tecnologique, turns science simultaneously into a cultural object and product that can be both received and worked at different levels and within several approaches by the individuals and the communities. On the other hand, nonformal and informal education spaces gain greater importance. Together with the formal school environment these spaces allow for an enrichment and diversification of learning experiences. Examples of nonformal spaces where animators can develop their work may be science museums or botanical gardens; television and internet can be regarded as informal education spaces. Due to the above mentioned impossibility of setting apart the individual or community-based experiences from Science and Technology (S&T), the work in nonformal and informal spaces sets an additional challenge to the preparation of socio-cultural animators. Socio-scientific issues take, at times, heavily relevance within the communities. Pollution, high tension lines, spreading of diseases, food contamination or natural resources conservation are among the socio-scientific issues that often call upon arguments and emotions. In the context of qualifying programmes on socio-cultural animation (social education and community development) within European Higher Education Area (EHEA) the present study describes the Portuguese framework. The comparison of programmes within Portugal aims to contribute to the discussion on the curriculum design for a socio-cultural animator degree (1st cycle of Bologna process). In particular, this study intends to assess how the formation given complies with enabling animators to work, within multiple scenarios, with communities in situations of socio-scientific relevance. A set of themes, issues and both current and potential fields of action, not described or insufficiently described in literature, is identified and analysed in the perspective of a qualified intervention of animators. One of these examples is thoroughly discussed. Finally, suggestions are made about curriculum reforms in order, if possible, to strongly link the desired qualified intervention with a qualifying formation.

Trajectórias de profissionalidade e ciclo de vida profissional: um contributo para o conhecimento dos professores de educação especial

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção de grau de mestre em Ciências da Educação - Especialidade Educação Especial

Óbidos, literary village: innovation in the creative industries?

The village of Óbidos was recognized in 2015 as a creative city in the area of literature, becoming a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. The attribution of the title depends on the fulfillment of a number of criteria the regions have to integrate. In addition to Óbidos, UNESCO attributed the same title in the same year to other European cities, including Barcelona, Nottingham, Ljubljana, Tartu and Lviv. This article intends to co nduct a case study to the cultural and artistic offer, as well as the cultural and literary legacy that different cities provide to be able to inquire the innovation of the proposals. The study aims to assess how much Óbidos, compared to other cities with the same title, is creative. Knowing that the concept of creative city (Landry and Bianchini, 1995) results from the emergence of new technologies and a new type of economy based on creativity and innovation and that creativity implies removing economic or social value of the creative work or talent, the study aims to determine to what extent the processes generated gave rise to new ideas (creativity) and what processes led to its implementation (innovation). Being innovation in the creative industries asso ciated with product, process, positioning, paradigmatic and social innovation (Storsul and Krumsvik, 2013), it is concluded that, in Óbidos, the entrepreneurship initiatives are more focused on tourists who occasionally visit the village and the business o pportunities that are generated there. New innovative and creative spaces were created, promoting literature and adding value and quality to urban space. This urban intervention resulted in the attraction of individuals who streamlined new habits of being and acting in the village

Ventilation influence in occupational exposure to fungi and volatile organic compounds: poultry case

Introduction - In poultry houses, large-scale production has led to increased bird densities within buildings. Such high densities of animals kept within confined spaces are a source of human health problems related to occupational organic dust exposure. This organic dust is composed of both non-viable particles and viable particulate matter (also called bioaerosols). Bioaerosols are comprised by airborne bacteria, fungi, viruses and their by-products, endotoxins and mycotoxins. Exposure to fungi in broiler houses may vary depending upon the applied ventilation system. Ventilation can be an important resource in order to reduce air contamination in these type of settings. Nevertheless, some concerns regarding costs, sensitivity of the animal species to temperature differences, and also the type of building used define which type of ventilation is used. Aim of the study - A descriptive study was developed in one poultry unit aiming to assess occupational fungal and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) exposure.

Chaos and crises in a model for cooperative hunting: A symbolic dynamics approach

In this work we investigate the population dynamics of cooperative hunting extending the McCann and Yodzis model for a three-species food chain system with a predator, a prey, and a resource species. The new model considers that a given fraction sigma of predators cooperates in prey's hunting, while the rest of the population 1-sigma hunts without cooperation. We use the theory of symbolic dynamics to study the topological entropy and the parameter space ordering of the kneading sequences associated with one-dimensional maps that reproduce significant aspects of the dynamics of the species under several degrees of cooperative hunting. Our model also allows us to investigate the so-called deterministic extinction via chaotic crisis and transient chaos in the framework of cooperative hunting. The symbolic sequences allow us to identify a critical boundary in the parameter spaces (K, C-0) and (K, sigma) which separates two scenarios: (i) all-species coexistence and (ii) predator's extinction via chaotic crisis. We show that the crisis value of the carrying capacity K-c decreases at increasing sigma, indicating that predator's populations with high degree of cooperative hunting are more sensitive to the chaotic crises. We also show that the control method of Dhamala and Lai [Phys. Rev. E 59, 1646 (1999)] can sustain the chaotic behavior after the crisis for systems with cooperative hunting. We finally analyze and quantify the inner structure of the target regions obtained with this control method for wider parameter values beyond the crisis, showing a power law dependence of the extinction transients on such critical parameters.

Study of the one dimensional and transient bioheat transfer equation: Multi-layer solution development and applications

: In this work we derive an analytical solution given by Bessel series to the transient and one-dimensional (1D) bioheat transfer equation in a multi-layer region with spatially dependent heat sources. Each region represents an independent biological tissue characterized by temperature-invariant physiological parameters and a linearly temperature dependent metabolic heat generation. Moreover, 1D Cartesian, cylindrical or spherical coordinates are used to define the geometry and temperature boundary conditions of first, second and third kinds are assumed at the inner and outer surfaces. We present two examples of clinical applications for the developed solution. In the first one, we investigate two different heat source terms to simulate the heating in a tumor and its surrounding tissue, induced during a magnetic fluid hyperthermia technique used for cancer treatment. To obtain an accurate analytical solution, we determine the error associated with the truncated Bessel series that defines the transient solution. In the second application, we explore the potential of this model to study the effect of different environmental conditions in a multi-layered human head model (brain, bone and scalp). The convective heat transfer effect of a large blood vessel located inside the brain is also investigated. The results are further compared with a numerical solution obtained by the Finite Element Method and computed with COMSOL Multi-physics v4.1 (c). (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.