Structural Aspects of the Distinct Biochemical Properties of Glutaredoxin 1 and Glutaredoxin 2 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Glutaredoxins (Grxs) are small (9-12 kDa) heat-stable proteins that are ubiquitously distributed. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, seven Grx enzymes have been identified. Two of them (yGrx1 and yGrx2) are dithiolic, possessing a conserved Cys-Pro-Tyr-Cys motif. Here, we show that yGrx2 has a specific activity 15 times higher than that of yGrx1, although these two oxidoreductases share 64% identity and 85% similarity with respect to their amino acid sequences. Further characterization of the enzymatic activities through two-substrate kinetics analysis revealed that yGrx2 possesses a lower Km for glutathione and a higher turnover than yGrx1. To better comprehend these biochemical differences, the pK(a) of the N-terminal active-site cysteines (Cys27) of these two proteins and of the yGrx2-C30S mutant were determined. Since the pK(a) values of the yGrx1 and yGix2 Cys27 residues are very similar, these parameters cannot account for the difference observed between their specific activities. Therefore, crystal structures of yGrx2 in the oxidized form and with a glutathionyl mixed disulfide were determined at resolutions of 2.05 and 1.91 angstrom, respectively. Comparisons of yGrx2 structures with the recently determined structures of yGrx1 provided insights into their remarkable functional divergence. We hypothesize that the substitutions of Ser23 and Gln52 in yGrx1 by Ala23 and Glu52 in yGrx2 modify the capability of the active-site C-terminal cysteine to attack the mixed disulfide between the N-terminal active-site cysteine and the glutathione molecule. Mutagenesis studies supported this hypothesis. The observed structural and functional differences between yGrx1 and yGrx2 may reflect variations in substrate specificity. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

New worlds and new churches: The Orthodox Church(es) and the European Union

The Orthodox church(es) share a common commitment to the unity of dogma and spirituality. There is, however, no doctrinal formulation that comes close to a form of political theology at a pan-Orthodox level. This means that the Orthodox churches’ attitude towards the European Union (EU) is driven by their ecclesial diversity and by complex inter-ecclesial relations. More fundamentally they share a fragmented and plural, theological objection to the very ideas of Europe and the West. This has been further complicated by the emergence of a substantial Orthodox diaspora from Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East living across the breadth of the European continent. Consequently the ecclesial identity and self-perception of the autocephalous Orthodox churches is changing. These churches are becoming increasingly transnational and extra-territorial. With this, their perception of Europe and the West, as seen through the eyes of their diaspora communities, is altering from “threat” to “home” (Makrides and Uffelmann, 2003). The growing diaspora will not only impact the Christian demographics of Europe but will also transform the Eastern Churches’ view of Europe and the EU (Leustean, 2009; 2011; 2013; 2014a; 2014b).

A importância da música na transmissão de identidade e valores : o caso do grupo Noite de Mindelo : investigação ação através de um concerto pedagógico realizado em São Vicente, Cabo Verde

O propósito deste trabalho consistiu em elaborar uma análise aprofundada da música cabo-verdiana no contexto educativo enquanto expressão artística, identificando e valorizando o seu papel na identidade nacional e descrevendo os fatores que interferem na sua implementação e generalização a todos os níveis do ensino. Tendo como modelo de pesquisa uma investigação-ação e utilizando uma metodologia qualitativa e interpretativa, desenvolvida no contexto da Educação Artística em Cabo Verde a nível formal e informal, realizou-se um concerto pedagógico no Centro Cultural de Mindelo, ilha de São Vicente Cabo Verde. O projeto debruçou-se sobre a análise dos dois principais géneros musicais cabo-verdianos, a Morna e a Coladeira, os grandes compositores e intérpretes destes géneros, no sentido de provocar uma reflexão e inclusão do estudo da Expressão Musical no contexto educativo cabo-verdiano, como disciplina autónoma capaz de despertar o sentimento de identidade e valores que caracterizam uma Nação. A escolha do concerto através da avaliação dos espectadores permitiu concluir que o ensino aprendizagem da Música em Cabo Verde no contexto educativo requer uma outra abordagem, a elaboração de programas, assim como a contratação de docentes competentes para desenvolvimento dos conteúdos. Mindelo, como ilha tradicionalmente artística, está aquém desta referência e impõe a introdução de políticas educativas que possam inverter esta tendência e criar condições adequadas para que os alunos e a população se interiorizem da importância do ensino das Expressões Artísticas como vetores importantes na transmissão de identidade e valores. A prossecução de investigação nesta área e o incentivo ao desenvolvimento desta temática recomendam-se como forma de dar a conhecer os grandes artistas cabo-verdianos, as grandes composições e despertar o interesse no seio das crianças e dos jovens para a importância do estudo das Artes como uma forma lúdica de aprender e uma possibilidade de ser um artista como tantos que cantaram e cantam Cabo Verde.

Algarve – relação enogastronómica

Dissertação de Mestrado, Direção e Gestão Hoteleira, Escola Superior de Gestão, Hotelaria e Turismo, Universidade do Algarve, 2015

GENETIC VARIATION, LOCAL ADAPTATION AND POPULATION STRUCTURE IN NORTH AMERICAN RED OAK SPECIES, QUERCUS RUBRA L. AND Q. ELLIPSOIDALIS E. J. HILL

Forest trees, like oaks, rely on high levels of genetic variation to adapt to varying environmental conditions. Thus, genetic variation and its distribution are important for the long-term survival and adaptability of oak populations. Climate change is projected to lead to increased drought and fire events as well as a northward migration of tree species, including oaks. Additionally, decline in oak regeneration has become increasingly concerning since it may lead to decreased gene flow and increased inbreeding levels. This will in turn lead to lowered levels of genetic diversity, negatively affecting the growth and survival of populations. At the same time, populations at the species’ distribution edge, like those in this study, could possess important stores of genetic diversity and adaptive potential, while also being vulnerable to climatic or anthropogenic changes. A survey of the level and distribution of genetic variation and identification of potentially adaptive genes is needed since adaptive genetic variation is essential for their long-term survival. Oaks possess a remarkable characteristic in that they maintain their species identity and specific environmental adaptations despite their propensity to hybridize. Thus, in the face of interspecific gene flow, some areas of the genome remain differentiated due to selection. This characteristic allows the study of local environmental adaptation through genetic variation analyses. Furthermore, using genic markers with known putative functions makes it possible to link those differentiated markers to potential adaptive traits (e.g., flowering time, drought stress tolerance). Demographic processes like gene flow and genetic drift also play an important role in how genes (including adaptive genes) are maintained or spread. These processes are influenced by disturbances, both natural and anthropogenic. An examination of how genetic variation is geographically distributed can display how these genetic processes and geographical disturbances influence genetic variation patterns. For example, the spatial clustering of closely related trees could promote inbreeding with associated negative effects (inbreeding depression), if gene flow is limited. In turn this can have negative consequences for a species’ ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In contrast, interspecific hybridization may also allow the transfer of genes between species that increase their adaptive potential in a changing environment. I have studied the ecologically divergent, interfertile red oaks, Quercus rubra and Q. ellipsoidalis, to identify genes with potential roles in adaptation to abiotic stress through traits such as drought tolerance and flowering time, and to assess the level and distribution of genetic variation. I found evidence for moderate gene flow between the two species and low interspecific genetic differences at most genetic markers (Lind and Gailing 2013). However, the screening of genic markers with potential roles in phenology and drought tolerance led to the identification of a CONSTANS-like (COL) gene, a candidate gene for flowering time and growth. This marker, located in the coding region of the gene, was highly differentiated between the two species in multiple geographical areas, despite interspecific gene flow, and may play a role in reproductive isolation and adaptive divergence between the two species (Lind-Riehl et al. 2014). Since climate change could result in a northward migration of trees species like oaks, this gene could be important in maintaining species identity despite increased contact zones between species (e.g., increased gene flow). Finally I examined differences in spatial genetic structure (SGS) and genetic variation between species and populations subjected to different management strategies and natural disturbances. Diverse management activities combined with various natural disturbances as well as species specific life history traits influenced SGS patterns and inbreeding levels (Lind-Riehl and Gailing submitted).

SECURITY, PRIVACY AND APPLICATIONS IN VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

With wireless vehicular communications, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) enable numerous applications to enhance traffic safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. However, VANETs also impose severe security and privacy challenges which need to be thoroughly investigated. In this dissertation, we enhance the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, by 1) designing application-driven security and privacy solutions for VANETs, and 2) designing appealing VANET applications with proper security and privacy assurance. First, the security and privacy challenges of VANETs with most application significance are identified and thoroughly investigated. With both theoretical novelty and realistic considerations, these security and privacy schemes are especially appealing to VANETs. Specifically, multi-hop communications in VANETs suffer from packet dropping, packet tampering, and communication failures which have not been satisfyingly tackled in literature. Thus, a lightweight reliable and faithful data packet relaying framework (LEAPER) is proposed to ensure reliable and trustworthy multi-hop communications by enhancing the cooperation of neighboring nodes. Message verification, including both content and signature verification, generally is computation-extensive and incurs severe scalability issues to each node. The resource-aware message verification (RAMV) scheme is proposed to ensure resource-aware, secure, and application-friendly message verification in VANETs. On the other hand, to make VANETs acceptable to the privacy-sensitive users, the identity and location privacy of each node should be properly protected. To this end, a joint privacy and reputation assurance (JPRA) scheme is proposed to synergistically support privacy protection and reputation management by reconciling their inherent conflicting requirements. Besides, the privacy implications of short-time certificates are thoroughly investigated in a short-time certificates-based privacy protection (STCP2) scheme, to make privacy protection in VANETs feasible with short-time certificates. Secondly, three novel solutions, namely VANET-based ambient ad dissemination (VAAD), general-purpose automatic survey (GPAS), and VehicleView, are proposed to support the appealing value-added applications based on VANETs. These solutions all follow practical application models, and an incentive-centered architecture is proposed for each solution to balance the conflicting requirements of the involved entities. Besides, the critical security and privacy challenges of these applications are investigated and addressed with novel solutions. Thus, with proper security and privacy assurance, these solutions show great application significance and economic potentials to VANETs. Thus, by enhancing the security, privacy, and applications of VANETs, this dissertation fills the gap between the existing theoretic research and the realistic implementation of VANETs, facilitating the realistic deployment of VANETs.

Off-line and On-line Affective Recognition of a Computer User through A Biosignal Processing Approach

Physiological signals, which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS), could be used to detect the affective state of computer users and therefore find applications in medicine and engineering. The Pupil Diameter (PD) seems to provide a strong indication of the affective state, as found by previous research, but it has not been investigated fully yet. In this study, new approaches based on monitoring and processing the PD signal for off-line and on-line affective assessment (“relaxation” vs. “stress”) are proposed. Wavelet denoising and Kalman filtering methods are first used to remove abrupt changes in the raw Pupil Diameter (PD) signal. Then three features (PDmean, PDmax and PDWalsh) are extracted from the preprocessed PD signal for the affective state classification. In order to select more relevant and reliable physiological data for further analysis, two types of data selection methods are applied, which are based on the paired t-test and subject self-evaluation, respectively. In addition, five different kinds of the classifiers are implemented on the selected data, which achieve average accuracies up to 86.43% and 87.20%, respectively. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is utilized to investigate the discriminating potential of each individual feature by evaluation of the area under the ROC curve, which reaches values above 0.90. For the on-line affective assessment, a hard threshold is implemented first in order to remove the eye blinks from the PD signal and then a moving average window is utilized to obtain the representative value PDr for every one-second time interval of PD. There are three main steps for the on-line affective assessment algorithm, which are preparation, feature-based decision voting and affective determination. The final results show that the accuracies are 72.30% and 73.55% for the data subsets, which were respectively chosen using two types of data selection methods (paired t-test and subject self-evaluation). In order to further analyze the efficiency of affective recognition through the PD signal, the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) was also monitored and processed. The highest affective assessment classification rate obtained from GSR processing is only 63.57% (based on the off-line processing algorithm). The overall results confirm that the PD signal should be considered as one of the most powerful physiological signals to involve in future automated real-time affective recognition systems, especially for detecting the “relaxation” vs. “stress” states.

How monuments shape urban identity

Monuments in our society commemorate historical events, acts or heroes, and educate people about them. Monuments are landmarks that stand out from other buildings to give the city identity and order. This thesis asks how a monument can be designed to project a clear image at a distance and articulate a spatial experience at close range. Two important monuments that form part of the life of America serve as examples: (1) The Statue of Liberty, in the New York Harbor, that has become the visual icon of New York if not the nation and (2) The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, Florida, that leads the visitor through a poignant experience at close range. The second part of the thesis is the design of a monument and museum for The Port of Miami, as part of the Port Boulevard Enhancement Project, sponsored by the Florida Foreign Trade Association, to celebrate the trade pioneers who helped Miami-Dade County achieve its prominence. The site for the monument is located at Biscayne Boulevard and Fifth Street, between Bayside Market Place and The American Airlines Arena in downtown Miami, at the Biscayne Bay.

Processos de inclusão: uma análise do percurso formativo de alunos surdos do IFB Campus Gama

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Educação Social e Intervenção Comunitária

The Complications of the Erotic: Eroticism in Last Tango in Paris and Une liaison pornographique

Even more so than in other arts, film has tried to draw an artificial but clear line between eroticism and pornography, nonetheless perpetuating moral judgments about movies marketed as “erotic”. The explicit and repeated portrayal of sex in such films would place them dangerously near the vortex of the pornographic, and thus, since they are not concerned with transcendental issues, they would require little or no critical attention. I will however try to argue, using Last Tango in Paris and Une liaison pornographique, that many of these “erotic” films conclude that a relationship based solely on sex (i.e. “pornographic”), which ignores the complexities of individual identity and the interpersonal is doomed to fail. Also, I would like to show how these films ultimately conceive of sex as something that goes beyond the merely physical and walks the grounds of such transcendental issues as despair, loneliness, death, or love.

Processos de inclusão: uma análise do percurso formativo de alunos surdos do IFB Campus Gama

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Educação Social e Intervenção Comunitária

Corporate identity manifested through historical references

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on how firms draw on historical references in corporate marketing. The paper seeks to analyze the logic behind such efforts from a corporate identity perspective and to propose potential risks and/or benefits of doing so. The paper aims to inspire the understanding of how references to history are used in marketing and the outcome of such use. Design/methodology/approach – The paper mainly draws on literature relating to corporate marketing and the use of history in organizations. Combining these theories, and pointing at empirical examples, the paper clarifies why references to history can be important mani-festations of corporate identity. The paper comes up with propositions concerning what consequences the reference to history in corporate marketing can have for firms’ marketing strategies and business development. Findings – The paper outlines a connection among corporate identity, organizational identity, and image through corporate communications. It suggests that among the range of corporate characteristics, historical references can be particular valuable for corporate communications thanks to the reliability age can provide (as opposed to liabilities of newness). Still, elaborations suggest that the planned use of historical references has both pros and cons in terms of business development. Originality/value – Despite the notion that history, as an inevitable and distinctive firm feature, can play an important role in corporate marketing, research on the topic is quite scarce. This paper offers some remedy to this gap by elaborating on the internal and external rationales for applying historical references and how these can be explained in connections between corporate identity and history.

Social Tagging and the Next Steps for Indexing: Fordist Relexivity and Intertextuality

Social tagging, as a particular type of indexing, has thrown into question the nature of indexing. Is it a democratic process? Can we all benefit from user-created tags? What about the value added by professionals? Employing an evolving framework analysis, this paper addresses the question: what is next for indexing? Comparing social tagging and subject cataloguing; this paper identifies the points of similarity and difference that obtain between these two kinds of information organization frameworks. The subsequent comparative analysis of the parts of these frameworks points to the nature of indexing as an authored, personal, situational, and referential act, where differences in discursive placement divide these two species. Furthermore, this act is contingent on implicit and explicit understanding of purpose and tools available. This analysis allows us to outline desiderata for the next steps in indexing.

Collocative Integrity and Our Many Varied Subjects: What the Metric of Alignment between Classification Scheme and Indexer Tells Us About Langridge’s Theory of Indexing

As the universe of knowledge and subjects change over time, indexing languages like classification schemes, accommodate that change by restructuring. Restructuring indexing languages affects indexer and cataloguer work. Subjects may split or lump together. They may disappear only to reappear later. And new subjects may emerge that were assumed to be already present, but not clearly articulated (Miksa, 1998). In this context we have the complex relationship between the indexing language, the text being described, and the already described collection (Tennis, 2007). It is possible to imagine indexers placing a document into an outdated class, because it is the one they have already used for their collection. However, doing this erases the semantics in the present indexing language. Given this range of choice in the context of indexing language change, the question arises, what does this look like in practice? How often does this occur? Further, what does this phenomenon tell us about subjects in indexing languages? Does the practice we observe in the reaction to indexing language change provide us evidence of conceptual models of subjects and subject creation? If it is incomplete, but gets us close, what evidence do we still require?

Swedish-speaking Finns: a multi-method qualitative study of belonging and identification

The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, often described as an ‘elite minority’, holds a special position in the country. With linguistic rights protected by the constitution of Finland, Swedish-speakers, as a minority of only 5.3%, are often described in public discourse and in academic and statistical studies as happier, healthier and more well off economically than the Finnish-speaking majority. As such, the minority is a unique example of language minorities in Europe. Knowledge derived from qualitatively grounded studies on the topic is however lacking, meaning that there is a gap in understanding of the nature and complexity of the minority. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in four different locations in Finland over a period of 12 months, this thesis provides a theoretically grounded and empirically informed rich account of the identifications and sites of belonging of this diverse minority. The thesis makes a contribution to theoretical, methodological and empirical research on the Swedish-speaking minority, debates around identity and belonging, and ethnographic methodological approaches. Making use of novel methodology in studying Swedish-speaking Finns, this thesis moves beyond generalisations and simplifications on its nature and character. Drawing on rich ethnographic empirical material, the thesis interrogates various aspects of the lived experience of Swedish-speaking Finns by combining the concepts of belonging and identification. Some of the issues explored are the way in which belonging can be regionally specific, how Swedish-speakers create Swedish-spaces, how language use is situational and variable and acts as a marker of identity, and finally how identifications and sites of belonging among the minority are extremely varied and complex. The thesis concludes that there are various sites of belonging and identification available to Swedish-speakers, and these need to be studied and considered in order to gain an accurate picture of the lived experience of the minority. It also argues that while identifications are based on collective imagery, this imagery can vary among Swedish-speakers and identifications are multiple and situational. Finally, while language is a key commonality for the minority, the meanings attached to it are not only concerned with ‘Finland Swedishness’, but connected to various other factors, such as the context a person grew up in and the region one lives in. The complex issues affecting the lived experience of Swedish-speaking Finns cannot be understood without the contribution of findings from qualitative research. This thesis therefore points towards a new kind of understanding of Swedish-speaking Finns, moving away from stereotypes and simplifications, shifting our gaze towards a richer perception of the minority.