An Ethos Theory of Party Positions on European Integration: Poland and Beyond

Since 1989, five parliamentary elections have been the stage for the foundation and demise of political parties aspiring to govern the new democratic Polish state. The demise of the AWS before the 2001 elections after ten years of attempts to create a centre-right core party resulted in a new splintering of the right-wing, and the centre-right became again devoid of a pivotal formation. While Eurosceptic parties in average gain 8 percent of the vote, in the 2001 Polish parliamentary elections Eurosceptic parties gained around 20 percent of the vote. In Poland right-wing parties show an unusual propensity for Euroscepticism. The persistence and increased importance of nationalism in Poland, which has prevented the development of a strong Christian democratic party, effectively explains the levels of Euroscepticism on the right. After the autumn 2005 parliamentary elections the national conservative party, Law and Justice, formed a governing coalition with the national Catholic League of Polish Families, creating one of the first Eurosceptic governments. Although this work does not intend to provide a theorisation of party systems development, it shows that the context of European integration fostered nationalists’ divisiveness of, and provoked the splitting of the right the unusual propensity of parties for Euroscepticism makes Poland a paradigmatic case of the kind of conflicts over European integration emerging in Central and Eastern European party systems.

The Role of Actin-Capping Protein and Src signalling in tissue growth and apoptosis during Drosophila wing development

Dissertation presented to obtain the Ph.D degree in Developmental Biology

Molecular tools to dissect the role of Dmrt2a and Dmrt2b in the left-right axis formation in zebrafish

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Genética Molecular e Biomedicina

Macroeconomic impacts of politics and policy: Applications to financial and real markets

A PhD Dissertation, presented as part of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the NOVA - School of Business and Economics

Health expenditures in the OECD: A political economy analysis using structural breaks

A Masters Thesis, presented as part of the requirements for the award of a Research Masters Degree in Economics from NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Using cilia mutants to study left-right asymmetry in zebrafish

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of the Masters in Molecular Genetics and Biomedicine

Fate map of zebrafish left-right organizer

The organizer is a ciliated signalling transient organ, responsible for the patterning of embryo tissues during embryonic development. In higher vertebrates, such as mouse and chick, this organizer (the node and the Hensen’s node, respectively) performs dorsalventral and anteriorposterior axis definition, as well as left-right patterning of the internal organs. In lower vertebrates, such as frog and zebrafish, there is a separate specialized organ for left-right purposes called the Gastrocoel Roof Plate (GRP) and Kupffer’s Vesicle (KV), respectively. It is known that mouse and chick organizer cells give rise to structures like floor plate, notochord, hypochord and somites. Frog GRP originates all these but floor plate. In zebrafish, at 13-14 somite stage (ss) the KV finished its left-right patterning but what happens to this organizer’ cells is still poorly studied. This research attempts to understand the fate and behaviour of the KV cells. We followed the fate of KV cells by live imaging and by tight time-courses with fixed larvae. We assessed in detail their proliferative and death profile, as well as cilia length progression from 9-10 ss until 29-30 ss. We conclude that the KV cells mostly follow the evolutionarily conserved fates described for other organizers. These cells mainly incorporate the notochord and hypochord; few cells incorporate the floor plate and the somites. As a novelty, it is also hypothesized that the hypural cell fate may be among the KV cell fates.