Adolescent parents’ values: the role played by retrospective perceptions of the family-of-origin

Family-of-origin is an important system in individual’s lives, and its influence is extensive over the life cycle. The aim of this study was to investigate, in a sample of adolescents’ parents, whether their retrospective perceptions of parenting and relationship qualities within their families-of-origin during adolescence predicted their current collectivist and individualist values. Participants included 110 Portuguese adults with a mean age of 46.86 years old. The results of structural equation modeling supported that retrospective perceptions of parenting and relationship qualities in the family-of-origin predicted the adults’ collectivist values but not their individualist values. This study highlights the importance of retrospective perceptions of supporting and non-rejecting parenting for value acquisition. The results also suggest that values that preserve and protect family connections and collaborations are more likely to be socialized by families. Implications for practice and for the theories on parenting, values, family-of-origin influences and family intergenerational transmission are discussed.

School governance and academic excellence: the representations of distinguished students in an annual award of excellence

Within a research project on «academic excellence in the state school», this paper is a contribution to the sociological reflection on the cultural and organisational characteristics of the school and its relationship with the academic success of students. The data we present stem from a case study underway at a secondary school in the north of Portugal, referring to the universe of students that since 2003 have distinguished themselves for achieving grades equal to or greater than 18 (on a scale of 0 to 20) and have thus been included in the school’s Framework of Excellence. From a contextual approach to this educational practice, we focused on the cultural characteristics of the school/subject as analytical support for the study of school and non-school dimensions in their mutual connections. To this end, we used the information from document analysis and data collected from a questionnaire survey administered to more than two-thirds of the students included in the above-mentioned Framework of Excellence. Subsequently, we will use the data from this survey to understand the extent to which academic excellence is perceived as an indivisible social construction of the school’s political and organisational matrix, particularly in terms of the educational and teaching guidelines adopted by the management body. We will conclude by questioning the meaning of the school’s management policies regarding the emphasis on educational outcomes, with particular focus on the representations of excellent students in the processes of school leadership, teaching organisation, school merit and justice.

Abnormal interactions between context, memory structure, and mood in schizophrenia: an ERP investigation

This study used event-related potentials to examine interactions between mood, sentence context, and semantic memory structure in schizophrenia. Seventeen male chronic schizophrenia and 15 healthy control subjects read sentence pairs after positive, negative, or neutral mood induction. Sentences ended with expected words (EW), within-category violations (WCV), or between-category violations (BCV). Across all moods, patients showed sensitivity to context indexed by reduced N400 to EW relative to both WCV and BCV. However, they did not show sensitivity to the semantic memory structure. N400 abnormalities were particularly enhanced under a negative mood in schizophrenia. These findings suggest abnormal interactions between mood, context processing, and connections within semantic memory in schizophrenia, and a specific role of negative mood in modulating semantic processes in this disease.

Structural analysis of the timber structure of Ica Cathedral, Peru

Dissertação de mestrado em Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Constructions

Reducing seismic vulnerablity: Retrofitting historic buildings

The value of preserving historic buildings is increasingly accepted by society, which not only recognizes built cultural heritage as a part of its identity but is also more cognizant of its economic value. In Europe, for example, tourism accounts for 10 percent of the GDP in the EU and 12 percent of employment.1 Built cultural heritage is a fundamental element of what draws tourists to European destinations. To a great extent, the value of historic buildings rests in the integrity of their components as unique products of the technology of their time and place. Unfortunately, cultural heritage buildings are particularly vulnerable to disasters, for a variety of reasons. They are often damaged or in a state of deterioration; they were built with materials with low resistance; they are heavy; and the connections among their various structural components are frequently insufficient. The main causes of damage are lack of maintenance, water-induced deterioration (from rain or rising damp), soil settlement, and extreme events such as earthquakes. Earthquakes have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last decade, in addition to the tremendous losses in built cultural heritage.

Measurement of colour flow with the jet pull angle in t(t)over-bar events using the ATLAS detector at root s=8 TeV

The distribution and orientation of energy inside jets is predicted to be an experimental handle on colour connections between the hard--scatter quarks and gluons initiating the jets. This Letter presents a measurement of the distribution of one such variable, the jet pull angle. The pull angle is measured for jets produced in tt¯ events with one W boson decaying leptonically and the other decaying to jets using 20.3 fb−1 of data recorded with the ATLAS detector at a centre--of--mass energy of s√=8 TeV at the LHC. The jet pull angle distribution is corrected for detector resolution and acceptance effects and is compared to various models.

Multiphasic, multistructured and hierarchical strategies for cartilage regeneration

Cartilage tissue is a complex nonlinear, viscoelastic, anisotropic, and multiphasic material with a very low coefficient of friction, which allows to withstand millions of cycles of joint loading over decades of wear. Upon damage, cartilage tissue has a low self-reparative capacity due to the lack of neural connections, vascularization, and a latent pool of stem/chondroprogenitor cells. Therefore, the healing of articular cartilage defects remains a significant clinical challenge, affecting millions of people worldwide. A plethora of biomaterials have been proposed to fabricate devices for cartilage regeneration, assuming a wide range of forms and structures, such as sponges, hydrogels, capsules, fibers, and microparticles. In common, the fabricated devices were designed taking in consideration that to fully achieve the regeneration of functional cartilage it is mandatory a well-orchestrated interplay of biomechanical properties, unique hierarchical structures, extracellular matrix (ECM), and bioactive factors. In fact, the main challenge in cartilage tissue engineering is to design an engineered device able to mimic the highly organized zonal architecture of articular cartilage, specifically its spatiomechanical properties and ECM composition, while inducing chondrogenesis, either by the proliferation of chondrocytes or by stimulating the chondrogenic differentiation  of stem/chondro-progenitor cells. In this chapter we present the recent advances in the development of innovative and complex biomaterials that fulfill the required structural key elements for cartilage regeneration. In particular, multiphasic, multiscale, multilayered, and hierarchical strategies composed by single or multiple biomaterials combined in a welldefined structure will be addressed. Those strategies include biomimetic scaffolds mimicking the structure of articular cartilage or engineered scaffolds as models of research to fully understand the biological mechanisms that influence the regeneration of cartilage tissue.

Efeito da dissipação térmica nas juntas de soldagem de componentes through hole

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia de Materiais

Análise estrutural e dimensionamento de estruturas de membrana

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Civil

A possible contribution to improving the therapeutic potentials of Babor's Typology of Alcohol Dependent Patients

ABSTRACT Objective The objective of this study was to replicate Babor's Typology and to explore clinical features related to personality traits that may underlie this classification, in order to improve its therapeutic possibilities. Methods Observational prospective study on a group of 273 male alcoholics. After a replication of Babor's variables, Cluster Analysis, Chi-Square – applied on clinical variables related to a Lappda Tipology – and Kappa tests were performed. Results The study identified two distinct clusters that held similar features to those described for the Type A/Type B classification. Besides presenting a lower socio-economic situation, Cluster 2 patients were associated with higher vulnerability and severe clinical features and also differed from Cluster 1 in their response to treatment. These replicated clusters retained connections and also differences in relation to the variables derived from the Lappda Typology. Conclusion Considering that each of the two replicated clusters seem to be associated to different personality traits – according to their correlations to the affective, cognitive and behavioral dimensions brought forward by the Lappda Typology – it is acceptable that this study may contribute to the development of more comprehensive and effective therapeutic strategies specifically tailored to target more specific personality traits of these subgroups of alcoholic patients.

O hospital da misericórdia de Penafiel (1600-1850)

Tese de Doutoramento em História - Especialidade de Idade Moderna

Comportamentos de risco na juventude: Uma perspetiva de género e interseccional

Tese de Doutoramento em Psicologia - Especialidade em Psicologia Social

A spin-offs journey into achieving marketable products from bacterial cellulose

[Excerpt] Academic spin-offs, technological ventures born inside Universities, have increasingly strengthen the connections between the scholarship and the economy, by fostering the role of technology transfer and knowledge commercialization. This presentation will outline the major steps in taking an idea or a technology to market, growing the venture and aiming at securing a successful exit. Also, it will present BCTechnologies (Bacterial Cellulose Technologies), a spin-off from the University of Minho (Portugal). (...)

Contributos dos ambientes digitais online para a aprendizagem em contexto de atividades de apoio extraescolar

Dissertação de mestrado em Ciências da Educação (área de especialização em Tecnologia Educativa)

Climate change research and policy in Portugal

This article offers a review of research and policy on climate change in Portugal and is organized into three main themes: scientific knowledge and assessment of climate change; policy analysis and evaluation; and public engagement. Modern scientific research on meteorology and climatology started in Portugal in the 1950s and a strong community of researchers in climate science, vulnerabilities, impacts, and adaptation has since developed, particularly in the last decade. Nevertheless, there are still many gaps in research, especially regarding the economic costs of climate change in Portugal and costs and benefits of adaptation. Governmental policies with a strong emphasis on mitigation were introduced at the end of the 1990s. As greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise beyond its Kyoto target for 2012, the country had to resort to the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms in order to comply. Climate change adaptation policies were introduced in 2010 but are far from being fully implemented. Regarding public engagement with climate change, high levels of concern contrast with limited understanding and rather weak behavioral dispositions to address climate change. Citizens display a heavy reliance on the media as sources of information, which are dominated by a techno-managerial discourse mainly focused on the global level. The final part of the article identifies research gaps and outlines a research agenda. Connections between policy and research are also discussed