O natural e o farmacológico: padrões de consumo terapêutico na população portuguesa

Neste artigo identificam-se os padrões de consumo terapêutico na população portuguesa, visando dar conta de um novo padrão emergente nas sociedades modernas, aqui designado de Pluralismo Terapêutico, noção com a qual se categoriza o uso conjugado ou alternado de recursos farmacológicos e naturais nas trajetórias terapêuticas dos indivíduos. O respetivo suporte empírico decorre de uma investigação, já concluída, que teve por base uma amostra nacional representativa. Os resultados mostram uma dualização dos consumos terapêuticos que é constituída por um padrão dominante de Farmacologismo – i.e., uso exclusivo de fármacos – coexistente com uma tendência crescente de pluralismo terapêutico. O efeito das fontes de informação terapêutica e dos seus usos leigos, bem como das perceções sociais de risco sobre o natural e o farmacológico, constitui neste estudo uma referência analítica central para a interpretação dos padrões encontrados. - ABSTRACT: In this article we identify patterns of therapeutic consumption, with the purpose of assessing an emerging pattern in modern societies, here designated as Therapeutic Pluralism, referring to the conjugated or alternated use of pharmacological and natural resources in the therapeutic trajectories of individuals. The empirical basis for this analysis stems from a concluded research on the topic, and is focused on a questionnaire administered to a representative sample of the Portuguese population. The results show a duality in therapeutic consumptions, expressed in the coexistence of a dominant pattern of Pharmacologism – that is, the exclusive therapeutic consumption of pharmaceuticals – and a growing trend towards therapeutic pluralism. The effects of information sources on health and its lay uses, as well as of the social perceptions of risk concerning the natural and the pharmacological, constitute key analytical references for this study’s interpretation of the identified patterns.

Deep crustal structure across a young passive margin from wide-angle and reflection seismic data (The Sardinia Experiment) - I. Gulf of Lion's margin

The conjugate margins system of the Gulf of Lion and West Sardinia (GLWS) represents a unique natural laboratory for addressing fundamental questions about rifting due to its landlocked situation, its youth, its thick sedimentary layers, including prominent palaeo-marker such as the MSC event, and the amount of available data and multidisciplinary studies. The main goals of the SARDINIA experiment, were to (i) investigate the deep structure of the entire system within the two conjugate margins: the Gulf of Lion and West Sardinia, (ii) characterize the nature of the crust, and (iii) define the geometry of the basin and provide important constrains on its genesis. This paper presents the results of P-wave velocity modelling on three coincident near-vertical reflection multi-channel seismic (MCS) and wide-angle seismic profiles acquired in the Gulf of Lion, to a depth of 35 km. A companion paper [part II Afilhado et al., 2015] addresses the results of two other SARDINIA profiles located on the oriental conjugate West Sardinian margin. Forward wide-angle modelling of both data sets confirms that the margin is characterised by three distinct domains following the onshore unthinned, 33 km-thick continental crust domain: Domain I is bounded by two necking zones, where the crust thins respectively from 30 to 20 and from 20 to 7 km over a width of about 170 km; the outermost necking is imprinted by the well-known T-reflector at its crustal base; Domain II is characterised by a 7 km-thick crust with anomalous velocities ranging from 6 to 7.5 km/s; it represents the transition between the thinned continental crust (Domain I) and a very thin (only 4-5 km) "atypical" oceanic crust (Domain III). In Domain II, the hypothesis of the presence of exhumed mantle is falsified by our results: this domain may likely consist of a thin exhumed lower continental crust overlying a heterogeneous, intruded lower layer. Moreover, despite the difference in their magnetic signatures, Domains II and III present the very similar seismic velocities profiles, and we discuss the possibility of a connection between these two different domains.