The archaeogenetics of european ancestry

The archaeogenetics of Europe remains deeply controversial. Advances in ancient deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis have suggested gene flow between Neanderthals and modern humans, who arrived in Europe <50 000 years ago, but have so far failed to support evolution of Neanderthals from a population of Homo heidelbergensis represented by remains in northern Spain. The extent to which European Mesolithic forager populations versus Neolithic pioneers from the Near East contributed to the extant gene pool of Europeans also continues to be contested. Whilst analyses of extant mitochondrial lineages have emphasised late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic expansions, ancient DNA (aDNA) results suggest significant Neolithic dispersals from the southern ‘refugial’ zone into the northern ‘bio-tidal’ zone. However, whether these had a primarily Near Eastern or North Mediterranean source remains a matter for debate. Meanwhile, aDNA has also begun to highlight an important role for later dispersals, especially during the late Neolithic, in shaping the European gene pool.

Topography of aligned PNIPAm nanogels determines cell motility and cytoskeleton architecture

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Biomédica (área de especialização em Engenharia Clínica)

Tradição em continuidade: monitorização das estratégias bioclimáticas das Quintas no Nordeste Transmontano

In recent decades the vernacular architecture has been recognized as an important source of knowledge in the adaptation of construction to the climate and other specific local characteristics. However, the systematized information is still scarce to quantitatively understand the hydrothermal behaviour of bioclimatic strategies identified in previous surveys to this type of architecture. Using the farmsteads in the northeast region of Portugal as a case study, this article presents the results of hygrothermal monitoring carried out during the heating and cooling seasons. The data obtained enabled to verify and quantify the effective performance of the identified bioclimatic strategies, which are presented as opportunities for contemporary architecture.

Planeamento e controlo de projetos em ambiente colaborativo com recurso a ferramentas BIM

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

Development of advanced cell/tissue culture systems, based on enhanced polymeric scaffolds and sophisticated bioreactors, for tissue engineering applications

Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Biomédica

All over the place localization system

The MAP-i Doctoral Programme in Informatics, of the Universities of Minho, Aveiro and Porto

Fueling the bio-economy: european culture collections and microbiology education and training

A survey of European Microbial Biological Resource Centers and their users provided an overview on Microbiology education and training. The results identified future increases in demand despite several shortcomings and gaps in the current offer. Urgent adjustments are needed to match users' needs, integrate innovative programs, and adopt new technologies.

Modelling and verifying smell-free architectures with the Archery language

Architectural (bad) smells are design decisions found in software architectures that degrade the ability of systems to evolve. This paper presents an approach to verify that a software architecture is smellfree using the Archery architectural description language. The language provides a core for modelling software architectures and an extension for specifying constraints. The approach consists in precisely specifying architectural smells as constraints, and then verifying that software architectures do not satisfy any of them. The constraint language is based on a propositional modal logic with recursion that includes: a converse operator for relations among architectural concepts, graded modalities for describing the cardinality in such relations, and nominals referencing architectural elements. Four architectural smells illustrate the approach.

A modular traffic sampling architecture for flexible network measurements

Dissertação de Mestrado (Programa Doutoral em Informática)

Introduction to special Issue: future priorities in European media and communication research

(Excerto) The European Journal of Communication seeks to present the best in current research in the broad field of media and communication research. Irregularly, we seek to take stock by inviting a small group of leading scholars to present their work at a symposium on a common theme, which then forms the basis for a Special Issue of the Journal. In 2014, the European Science Foundation (ESF) published one of their ‘Forward Looks’ entitled Media in Europe: New Questions for Research and Policy. We subsequently invited several of the Forward Look’s authors to meet and discuss their work with us at a symposium hosted by the European University Cyprus, and the discussion and revised papers that resulted are published here.

Adhesive bioactive coatings inspired by sea life

Inspired by nature, in particular by the marine mussels adhesive proteins (MAPs) and by the tough brick-and-mortar nacre-like structure, novel multilayered films are prepared in the present work. Organic-inorganic multilayered films, with an architecture similar to nacre based on bioactive glass nanoparticles (BG), chitosan and hyaluronic acid modified with catechol groups, which are the main responsible for the outstanding adhesion in MAPs, are developed for the first time. The biomimetic conjugate is prepared by carbodiimide chemistry and analyzed by ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry. The build-up of the multilayered films is monitored with a quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring and their topography is characterized by atomic force microscopy. The mechanical properties reveal that the films containing catechol groups and BG present an enhanced adhesion. Moreover, the bioactivity of the films upon immersion in a simulated body fluid solution for 7 days is evaluated by scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. It was found that the constructed films promote the formation of bone-like apatite in vitro. Such multifunctional mussel inspired LbL films, which combine enhanced adhesion and bioactivity, could be potentially used as coatings of a variety of implants for orthopedic applications.

Comparing heritage speakers and late L2-learners of European Portuguese: verb movement, VP ellipsis and adverb placement

This study compares the performance of Portuguese-German heritage children and adult L2 speakers of European Portuguese whose L1 is German with respect to two aspects of grammar, adverb placement and VP-ellipsis, which depend on a core syntactic property of the language, verb movement. The results show that both groups have acquired V-to-I and adverb placement, showing no influence of a V2 grammar. Performance in the VP-ellipsis task is more complex: heritage children produce VP-ellipsis at the level of controls, as opposed to L2 speakers; however, both L2 and heritage speakers show that crosslinguistic influence may produce a preference for pronoun substitution over VP-ellipsis in a task asking for redundancy resolution. Nevertheless, given that overall results show that heritage children perform at the level of L1 children, we take our results to support approaches to heritage bilingualism which suggest the development of an intact grammar in childhood.

Towards a pervasive data mining engine: architecture overview

Current data mining engines are difficult to use, requiring optimizations by data mining experts in order to provide optimal results. To solve this problem a new concept was devised, by maintaining the functionality of current data mining tools and adding pervasive characteristics such as invisibility and ubiquity which focus on their users, providing better ease of use and usefulness, by providing autonomous and intelligent data mining processes. This article introduces an architecture to implement a data mining engine, composed by four major components: database; Middleware (control); Middleware (processing); and interface. These components are interlinked but provide independent scaling, allowing for a system that adapts to the user’s needs. A prototype has been developed in order to test the architecture. The results are very promising and showed their functionality and the need for further improvements.

Competências digitais e desenvolvimento profissional de professores em rede: The Voice of the European Teachers

Publicado em "Anais eletrônicos. ISSN 1984-1175"