Structural proteins of enveloped virus : from biochemistry to molecular medicine : a focus on dengue virus

Tese de doutoramento, Ciências Biomédicas (Bioquímica Médica), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2016

Global sport in the suburbs: the Regent Street Polytechnic’s sports facilities at Chiswick, 1888–1938

This article shows how the elite origins and religious mission of the Regent Street Polytechnic encouraged participation in amateur sport in London, and promoted the suburb of Chiswick as a global context for competitive sports. From the 1880s to the outbreak of World War 2, the Polytechnic and its facilities forged synergies between the city centre and the burgeoning suburbs in London, engendering a city-wide culture of amateur sports, and embedding the Polytechnic into a global network of athletes. Suburbs are typically presented by writers as being ‘on the edge’ of metropolitan life, but such perspectives are wrong. The West London suburb of Chiswick was the home of Polytechnic facilities that provided a dynamic context for the internationalization and modernization of sport in the capital.

Transmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China

Historians of Chinese medicine acknowledge the plurality of Chinese medicine along both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Yet, there remains a tendency to think of tradition as being defined by some unchanging features. The Chinese medical body is a case in point. This is assumed to have been formalised by the late Han dynasty around a system of internal organs, conduits, collaterals, and associated body structures. Although criticism was voiced from time to time, this body and the micro/ macrocosmic cosmological resonances that underpin it are seen to persist until the present day. I challenge this view by attending to attempts by physicians in China and Japan in the period from the mid 16th to the late 18th century to reimagine this body. Working within the domain of cold damage therapeutics and combining philological scholarship, empirical observations, and new hermeneutic strategies these physicians worked their way towards a new territorial understanding of the body and of medicine as warfare that required an intimate familiarity with the body’s topography. In late imperial China this new view of the body and medicine was gradually re-absorbed into the mainstream. In Japan, however, it led to a break with this orthodoxy that in the Republican era became influential in China once more. I argue that attending further to the innovations of this period—commonly portrayed as one of decline—from a transnational perspective may help to go beyond the modern insistence to frame East Asian medicines as traditional.

Food habits and sport activity during adolescence: differences between athletic and non-athletic teenagers in Switzerland.

OBJECTIVE: To describe food habits and dietary intakes of athletic and non-athletic adolescents in Switzerland. SETTING: College, high schools and professional centers in the Swiss canton of Vaud. METHOD: A total of 3,540 subjects aged 9-19 y answered a self-reported anonymous questionnaire to assess lifestyles, physical plus sports activity and food habits. Within this sample, a subgroup of 246 subjects aged 11-15 also participated in an in-depth ancillary study including a 3 day dietary record completed by an interview with a dietician. RESULTS: More boys than girls reported engaging in regular sports activities (P<0.001). Adolescent food habits are quite traditional: up to 15 y, most of the respondents have a breakfast and eat at least two hot meals a day, the percentages decreasing thereafter. Snacking is widespread among adolescents (60-80% in the morning, 80-90% in the afternoon). Food habits among athletic adolescents are healthier and also are perceived as such in a higher proportion. Among athletic adolescents, consumption frequency is higher for dairy products and ready to eat (RTE) cereals, for fruit, fruit juices and salad (P<0.05 at least). Thus the athletic adolescent's food brings more micronutrients than the diet of their non-athletic counterparts. Within the subgroup (ancillary study), mean energy intake corresponds to requirements for age/gender group. CONCLUSIONS: Athletic adolescents display healthier food habits than non-athletic adolescents: this result supports the idea that healthy behavior tends to cluster and suggests that prevention programs among this age group should target simultaneously both sports activity and food habits.