Parental and peer support on physical activity among portuguese children and adolescents

Objetivo: A presente dissertação de mestrado teve como principal objetivo estudar a associação entre o suporte parental e dos pares na atividade física das crianças e adolescentes dos 10 aos 17 anos de idade. Método: Foi efetuada uma revisão sistemática de literatura (RSL) onde se sumarizou o estado da arte sobre a temática. Posteriormente foi realizado um estudo observacional transversal onde se investigou como o suporte dos pais (tangível e intangível) e dos pares estão associados com a atividade física entre crianças e adolescentes, examinando as diferenças entre géneros e a sua variação com a idade. Participaram no estudo 1876 crianças e adolescentes, de ambos os sexos, entre os 10 aos 17 anos de idade, participantes do projeto PESSOA. Resultados: Os resultados do estudo transversal corroboram os resultados de alguns estudos da revisão sistemática de literatura uma vez que, apesar das diferenças metodológicas entre os estudos, foram encontradas correlações significativas entre o suporte parental e o nível de atividade física das crianças e adolescentes. Há diferenças entre géneros no tipo de suporte parental e no suporte dos pares. O estudo transversal demonstrou uma associação positiva entre o suporte dos pares e a idade. Esta associação destaca-se na transição da infância para a adolescência. Em ambos os géneros, o suporte dos pares registou uma maior associação à atividade física do que o suporte dos pais. Conclusões: A realização deste estudo demonstra que os pais e os pares são fatores chave na atividade física das crianças e adolescentes. Em diferentes fases da infância e da adolescência, o papel de cada um deles altera-se de acordo com vários fatores do envolvimento físico e social. É necessário mais investigação nesta área, preferencialmente estudos longitudinais que permitam uma melhor compreensão de como as diferentes fontes (pais e pares) e os diferentes tipos de suporte (tangível e intangível) evoluem ao longo da infância e da adolescência e qual o seu impacto nos diferentes níveis de atividade física.

A police state? The Nyasaland emergency and colonial intelligence.

The Nyasaland Emergency in 1959 proved a decisive turning point in the history of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which from 1953 to 1963 brought together the territories of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) under a settler-dominated federal government. The British and Nyasaland governments defended the emergency by claiming to have gathered intelligence which showed that the Nyasaland African Congress was preparing a campaign of sabotage and murder. The Devlin Commission, appointed to investigate the emergency, dismissed the evidence of a ‘murder plot’, criticised the Nyasaland government's handling of the Emergency and, notoriously, described Nyasaland as a ‘police state’. This article has two principal aims. First, using the recently declassified papers of the Intelligence and Security Department (ISD) of the Colonial Office, it seeks to provide the first detailed account of what the British government knew of the intelligence relating to the ‘murder plot’ and how they assessed it, prior to the outbreak of the emergency. It demonstrates that officials in the ISD and members of the Security Service adopted a far more cautious attitude towards the intelligence than did Conservative ministers, and had greater qualms about allowing it into the public domain to justify government policy. Second, the article examines the implications of Devlin's use of the phrase ‘police state’ for Nyasaland and for the late colonial state in general. It contrasts Devlin's use of the term with that of security experts in the ISD, who routinely applied it to policing systems that diverged from their own preferred model. Hence, whereas Devlin compared policing in Nyasaland unfavourably with that in Southern Rhodesia, implying, ironically, that Nyasaland was ‘under-policed’ (because there were fewer police per head of population in Nyasaland than in Southern Rhodesia), the ISD regarded the intensive system of policing operated by the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia as characteristic of a ‘police state’. The article suggests that the frequent use of the term ‘police state’ was indicative of broader anxieties about what Britain's legacy would be for the post-independence African state.

Sharing power? Prospects for a U.S. concert-balance strategy

The Pax Americana and the grand strategy of hegemony (or “Primacy”) that underpins it may be becoming unsustainable. Particularly in the wake of exhausting wars, the Global Financial Crisis, and the shift of wealth from West to East, it may no longer be possible or prudent for the United States to act as the unipolar sheriff or guardian of a world order. But how viable are the alternatives, and what difficulties will these alternatives entail in their design and execution? This analysis offers a sympathetic but critical analysis of alternative U.S. National Security Strategies of “retrenchment” that critics of American diplomacy offer. In these strategies, the United States would anticipate the coming of a more multipolar world and organize its behavior around the dual principles of “concert” and “balance,” seeking a collaborative relationship with other great powers, while being prepared to counterbalance any hostile aggressor that threatens world order. The proponents of such strategies argue that by scaling back its global military presence and its commitments, the United States can trade prestige for security, shift burdens, and attain a more free hand. To support this theory, they often look to the 19th-century concert of Europe as a model of a successful security regime and to general theories about the natural balancing behavior of states. This monograph examines this precedent and measures its usefulness for contemporary statecraft to identify how great power concerts are sustained and how they break down. The project also applies competing theories to how states might behave if world politics are in transition: Will they balance, bandwagon, or hedge? This demonstrates the multiple possible futures that could shape and be shaped by a new strategy. viii A new strategy based on an acceptance of multipolarity and the limits of power is prudent. There is scope for such a shift. The convergence of several trends—including transnational problems needing collaborative efforts, the military advantages of defenders, the reluctance of states to engage in unbridled competition, and hegemony fatigue among the American people—means that an opportunity exists internationally and at home for a shift to a new strategy. But a Concert-Balance strategy will still need to deal with several potential dilemmas. These include the difficulty of reconciling competitive balancing with cooperative concerts, the limits of balancing without a forward-reaching onshore military capability, possible unanticipated consequences such as a rise in regional power competition or the emergence of blocs (such as a Chinese East Asia or an Iranian Gulf), and the challenge of sustaining domestic political support for a strategy that voluntarily abdicates world leadership. These difficulties can be mitigated, but they must be met with pragmatic and gradual implementation as well as elegant theorizing and the need to avoid swapping one ironclad, doctrinaire grand strategy for another.

‘Low carbon’ scenarios, roadmaps, transitions and pathways: an overview and discussion

There are a range of studies based in the low carbon arena which use various ‘futures’- based techniques as ways of exploring uncertainties. These techniques range from ‘scenarios’ and ‘roadmaps’ through to ‘transitions’ and ‘pathways’ as well as ‘vision’-based techniques. The overall aim of the paper is therefore to compare and contrast these techniques to develop a simple working typology with the further objective of identifying the implications of this analysis for RETROFIT 2050. Using recent examples of city-based and energy-based studies throughout, the paper compares and contrasts these techniques and finds that the distinctions between them have often been blurred in the field of low carbon. Visions, for example, have been used in both transition theory and futures/Foresight methods, and scenarios have also been used in transition-based studies as well as futures/Foresight studies. Moreover, Foresight techniques which capture expert knowledge and map existing knowledge to develop a set of scenarios and roadmaps which can inform the development of transitions and pathways can not only help potentially overcome any ‘disconnections’ that may exist between the social and the technical lenses in which such future trajectories are mapped, but also promote a strong ‘co-evolutionary’ content.

Impacto da servitização no modelo de negócio de empresas manufatureiras : o caso Scania

Muitas empresas manufatureiras buscam aumentar a participação dos serviços em seus negócios. Essa estratégia é conhecida como servitização e significa aumentar a oferta de pacotes combinados de produtos e serviços com foco nos clientes e seus negócios. Porém, a servitização constitui um grande desafio para essas empresas, pois seus modelos de negócio tradicionais tem foco no desenvolvimento, produção e venda de produtos. Esta pesquisa investiga como uma empresa manufatureira modifica seu modelo de negócio para aumentar sua servitização. A pesquisa também analisa quais são as motivações para que uma empresa busque isso e quais são os desafios que ela enfrenta nessa busca. Com esses objetivos, realizou-se um estudo de caso de uma montadora de veículos pesados com operações globais e presença consolidada no Brasil. Conduziu-se entrevistas com 8 executivos da empresa, responsáveis por Vendas, Serviços, Marketing e Produção no Brasil e América Latina. As entrevistas foram combinadas com análise de documentos da empresa entre os anos de 1996 e 2011. Utilizou-se o conceito de modelo de negócio como unidade básica de análise, já que este conceito explica como uma empresa cria, entrega e captura valor. Os resultados mostram que o modelo de negócio da empresa está em transição, de seu foco tradicional em produto, para maior centralidade do cliente e suas operações. A proposta de valor da empresa passou a enfatizar o desempenho de seus pacotes de produtos e serviços nas operações dos clientes, ao invés do foco tradicional na qualidade dos produtos. A empresa também criou novas organizações, processos e métricas com foco nos clientes e novos modelos de receitas, baseados em contratos de risco e na venda de desempenho e disponibilidade. Os resultados mostram que a empresa possui motivações estratégicas, financeiras e de marketing para buscar a servitização. Eles também mostram que o alinhamento das diversas áreas da empresa e de sua rede de parceiros, para maior foco nos clientes e em serviços, ao invés do seu foco tradicional no produto, ainda representa um importante desafio empresarial.

Entry strategies into biosimilars: assessment of entry modes into the field of biosimilars from the perspective of pharmaceuticals, generics and biologics companies

Indústria farmacêutica de hoje está em transição. Como grandes blockbuster drogas estão perdendo ou estão prestes a perder a proteção de patente, e as grandes empresas farmacêuticas não estão substituindo os produtos com novas drogas químicas inovadoras, a indústria busca novas áreas de crescimento. Uma dessas áreas é o mercado de biossimilares, que está sendo inseridos por produtos farmacêuticos, genéricos e empresas de produtos biológicos. Mesmo que o grande potencial de mercado será acordado por volta de 2020, quando importantes blockbusters biológicos perder a proteção de patente, as empresas precisam decidir logo se querem participar ou não devido a elevadas barreiras à entrada técnicos, bem como de desenvolvimento de longo prazos. Como todas as empresas vêm de diferentes origens, compreendem capacidades diferentes e têm diferentes incentivos de entrada, a questão que surge é se esses fatos estão relacionados com as suas estratégias de entrada correspondentes. A tese utiliza estudos de caso de cada segmento da indústria farmacêutica - produtos farmacêuticos, biológicos e genéricos - e examina através de entrevistas semi-estruturadas, por isso que os participantes do estudo de caso entrevistados explicitamente escolhido sua estratégia de entrada. Os dados de entrevistas será então ligada a quadros estratégicos da revisão da literatura e irá ser utilizado para uma comparação global e análise. O estudo revelou que o fundo do participante do mercado que influenciam a sua estratégia de entrada. Os principais pontos de influência derivam tanto as barreiras à entrada, bem como os incentivos de entrada. A tese não é possível determinar o sucesso futuro do modo de entrada analisados no novo mercado.

Mãe-esposa e professora: educadoras no final do século XIX

This text is organized through discussions undertaken in the area of the History of Education in Rio Grande do Norte, circumscribed to the History of Women from the first decades of the Brazilian Republic, and to the analysis of what was expected of this education. We examined representations of women in Natal, between 1889 and 1914, with the goal of configuring relations between the sexes with the emphasis on moral, intellectual and pedagogical aspects required of these women. As documental sources we utilized the educational, civil and criminal Legislation, on a National scope, as well as on a State and Municipal scope. We circumscribed our search to the newspaper A República, in which we found literature that circulated in Natal in the form of pamphlets, short stories and poetry, as well as other texts by authors that were part of the corpus of analysis of this study, located in public and private archives in Rio Grande do Norte, such as the Historical and Geographic Institute of Rio Grande do Norte (IHGRN) and the State Public Archive of Rio Grande do Norte (APE-RN). The use of the indexing method and the propositions of Cultural History were the appropriate theoretical-methodological framework to complete studies of this nature. This operational perspective permitted us to elaborate nuances about this time of transition from the 19th to the 20th Century, and to spotlight the fire of the women from this period. The basis of the argument that related women to maternity and domesticity, and within the ideals of abnegation and religious leadership, aligned to a demand coming from the increase in the quantity of schools for women, allocated women as the most appropriate for superior in educational performance in the country, based on its foundations: primary education. Beyond the universe of formal education, the other side of women appeared in republican politics. The mother-spouse and the institutionalization of domestic education associated the female gender with the role of educator at home as well. Be it in the public sphere, as a teacher, or in private, as mother-spouse, female care is perceived in this configuration, as an educational base that the Republic, and in transition, bequeathed to the Brazilian 20th Century

Um olhar sobre o cotidiano e as re-definições espaciais no Bairro Potengi, Natal/RN

This work aims to conduct an analysis on the production of space and the dynamics between social agents that act and interact, albeit in different ways, in the production and re-production space in the Neighborhood Potengi in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte. The neighborhood is undergoing a process of dynamism undeniable and has a daily marked by heterogeneity, especially as a neighborhood in transition. So your analysis, from the perspective of the dialectical method, contributes to the understanding of the production space can be analyzed through the study of the forms and content, and may contribute to its real apprehension. After all, the city reflects forms, assumes functions, features and content that dynamic influences and is influenced by human relationships. Thus, this research seeks to analyze the production of space, based on the observation and study of the rich daily life of different social agents that operate within concrete quoted

Diversidade de ácaros (Arachnida: Acari) em Hymenaea martiana (Leguminosae) em gradiente de tamanho de plantas

Foram estudadas as comunidades de ácaros em indivíduos de Hymenaea martiana Hayne (Leguminosae) com diferentes tamanhos, localizados em fragmento de Mata Estacional Semidecidual com transição para o Cerrado. As plantas analisadas foram selecionadas com base no gradiente de altura e perímetro do tronco a 10 cm acima do solo. Foram realizadas coletas quinzenais no período de março de 2007 a março de 2008. em cada amostragem foram retiradas três folhas dos ramos externos e três dos ramos internos, ao redor da região mediana da copa de cada planta selecionada. Para comparar os padrões ecológicos das comunidades de ácaros entre as plantas, foram aplicados índices descritores da diversidade. em H. martiana, foram registrados 109.445 ácaros pertencentes a 28 espécies de 14 famílias. Nove espécies de ácaros, dentre as 19 classificadas como frequentes e acessórias, tiveram sua densidade populacional influenciada pelo tamanho da planta. Enquanto a densidade populacional de Chiapacheylus edentatus de Leon, 1962, Euseius cf. errabundus, Pronematus sp., Brevipalpus phoenicis (Geijskes, 1939) e Tarsonemus sp., apresentou correlação positiva com a altura da planta, a de Aberoptus aff. cerostructor, Euseius sibelius (De Leon, 1962), Typhlodromalus aripo de Leon, 1967 e Phytoseius nahuatlensis de Leon, 1959, apresentou correlação negativa. Não houve influência da altura da planta sobre a riqueza de espécies e densidade total de ácaros entre ramos internos e externos das plantas com diferentes alturas. As variações fisiológicas entre os indivíduos de diferentes estágios ontogenéticos de H. martiana, juntamente com fatores abióticos, podem ter influenciado a ocorrência e a distribuição dessas espécies de ácaros sobre essa planta.

Aqueous solution behavior of thermosensitive (N-isopropylacrylamide-acrylic acid-ethyl methacrylate) terpolymers

A series of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM)-acrylic acid-ethyl methacrylate terpolymers with varied monomer compositions was prepared by radical polymerization. The solution behavior of these polymers was studied in dilute aqueous solution using spectrophotometry, fluorescence spectroscopy and high-sensitivity differential scanning calorimetry. The results obtained revealed that the lower critical solution temperatures depend strongly on the copolymer composition, solution pH and ionic strength. At a high pH, the ionization of acrylic acid (AA) units leads to an increase in solution cloud points (T-c). Solutions of polymers containing 10% or less of AA display a constant T-c for pH above 5.5, with 15% there is a continuous increase in T-c with pH and, for higher AA contents, no clouding was observed within the studied temperature range. Fluorescence probe studies were conducted by following the I (1)/I (3) ratio of pyrene vibronic bands and the emission of anilinonaphtalene sulfonic acid, sodium salt (ANS), both approaches revealing the existence of hydrophobic domains for polymers with higher ethyl methacrylate content at temperatures lower than T-c, suggesting some extent of aggregation and/or a coil-to-globule transition. Scanning calorimetry measurements showed an endothermic transition at temperatures agreeing with the previously detected cloud points. Moreover, the transition curves became broader and with a smaller transition enthalpy, as both the AA content and the solution pH were increased. These broader transitions were interpreted to be the result of a wider molecular distribution upon polymer ionization, hence, displaying varied solution properties. The decrease in transition enthalpy was rationalized as a consequence of reminiscent hydration of NIPAM units, even after phase separation, owing to the presence of electric charges along the polymer chain.

Regional financial cooperation

Includes bibliography