Avaliação do efeito da Grande Área Metropolitana do Porto nas concentrações de Dióxido de Carbono sobre a zona costeira adjacente

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Ambiental.

Energia eólica

Actualmente, é indiscutível a importância das energias ditas renováveis no contexto da produção mundial de energia, destacando-se, dentro destas, a energia eólica pelas suas inúmeras vantagens. Neste artigo descrevem-se as vantagens e desvantagens deste tipo de energia e apresenta-se uma discussão da evolução da potência instalada de acordo com os dados fornecidos pelos organismos correspondentes. Pretende-se, além disso, explicar a evolução da potência instalada na Europa e, mais especificamente, no caso de Portugal, explicar a baixa potência instalada tendo em conta o elevado potencial eólico disponível. The importance of renewable energies in the context of the world energy production is nowadays unquestionable, namely in the case of the eolic energy, due to its specific advantages. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of this type of energy are described, and a discussion of the evolution of the wind power installed is presented according to the data published by the different organisms involved. It is intended to show and explain the evolution of the wind power capacity installed in the European Union. Finally, it is discussed the Portuguese specificity characterized by a low wind power installed despite the high eolic potential available.

Co-incineração em fornos de cimenteiras

Com o objectivo de conhecer o processo da co-incineração, foram realizadas visitas ao sistema integrado de tratamento e eliminação de resíduos, sA (sisAV), na chamusca, e à cimpor, em souselas. pode concluir-se que o tratamento das emissões gasosas, principal questão conflituosa associada à co-incineração, não difere substancialmente daquele realizado nas instalações onde se procede à queima de combustíveis fósseis, excepto no tocante à instalação de algum equipamento adicional. Não podendo afirmar-se que se trate da solução ideal para a eliminação dos resíduos perigosos, apresenta vantagens como seja o aproveitamento de instalações pré-existentes, ao mesmo tempo que se minimiza a utilização de energia não renovável. Aiming to understand the co-incineration process, the sistema integrado de tratamento e eliminação de resíduos, sA (sisAV), in chamusca, and the cimpor, in souselas, both in portugal, were the two facilities visited to that purpose. It is possible to conclude that the treatment of atmospheric emissions, the main concern associated to conflicts in co-incineration, does not substantially differ from the one used in facilities where fossil fuel is burnt,except in what concerns to some additional equipment that must be installed. though it is not possible to state that this is the ideal solution to solve the hazard waste problem, it has advantages such as the use of pre-existing facilities and, at the same time, the use of nonrenewable energy sources is minimized.

Qualidade do ar interior e os requisitos de ar novo numa unidade hospitalar

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Ambiental, ramo de Sistemas Industriais

O processo de consumo de e-books

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Comunicação, ramo de Marketing e Publicidade

As neurotoxinas de clostridium sp.

Projeto de Pós-Graduação/Dissertação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências Farmacêuticas

Christian adventures in South Africa

http://www.archive.org/details/christianadventu00tayluoft

Bible illustrations from the New Hebrides : with notices of the progress of the mission / by John Inglis.

http://www.archive.org/details/bibleillustratio00ingluoft

Khirbet et-Tannur Excavation Records

The Khirbet et-Tannur Excavation Records document the 1938 excavation of a Nabataean temple. The excavation was directed by Nelson Glueck. The collection includes level books, excavation diaries, artifacts, and photographs. The collection is being processed. A finding aid for the document portion of the collection is available.

William F. Albright Papers

This file contains a finding aid for the William F. Albright Collection. To access the collection, please contact the archivist (asorarch@bu.edu) at the American Schools of Oriental Research, located at Boston University.

Leisure and surveillance in Irish childhoods: A cross-class study of Cork city

This research provides an interpretive cross-class analysis of the leisure experience of children, aged between six and ten years, living in Cork city. This study focuses on the cultural dispositions underpinning parental decisions in relation to children’s leisure activities, with a particular emphasis on their child-surveillance practices. In this research, child-surveillance is defined as the adult monitoring of children by technological means, physical supervision, community supervision, or adult supervised activities (Nelson, 2010; Lareau, 2003; Fotel and Thomsen, 2004). This research adds significantly to understandings of Irish childhood by providing the first in-depth qualitative analysis of the surveillance of children’s leisure-time. Since the 1990s, international research on children has highlighted the increasingly structured nature of children’s leisure-time (Lareau, 2011; Valentine & McKendrick, 1997). Furthermore, research on child-surveillance has found an increase in the intensive supervision of children during their unstructured leisure-time (Nelson, 2010; Furedi, 2008; Fotel and Thomsen, 2004). This research bridges the gap between these two key bodies of literature, providing a more integrated overview of children’s experience of leisure in Ireland. Using Bourdieu’s (1992) model of habitus, field and capital, the dispositions that shape parents’ decisions about their children’s leisure time are interrogated. The holistic view of childhood adopted in this research echoes the ‘Whole Child Approach’ by analysing the child’s experience within a wider set of social relationships including family, school, and community. Underpinned by James and Prout’s (1990) paradigm on childhood, this study considers Irish children’s agency in negotiating with parents’ decisions regarding leisure-time. The data collated in this study enhances our understanding of the micro-interactions between parents and children and, the ability of the child to shape their own experience. Moreover, this is the first Irish sociological research to identify and discuss class distinctions in children’s agentic potential during leisure-time.

Evangelicals, Islamists and the globalisation of apocalyptic discourse

After 9/11, it has become increasingly obvious that strongly held religious convictions about the end of the world cannot be dismissed as the predictable consequences of deprivation, as several generations of social scientists once claimed. Instead, it has become clear that these kinds of ideas, having a life of their own, may establish discourses which may have extraordinary capacity to cross nations, cultures and even religions, encouraging passive withdrawal from the political world as well as inspiring vicious and sometimes violent attempts at its subjugation, underwriting the ‘war on terror’ as well as inspiring some of those intent on the destruction of the United States. This article describes one of Ireland’s most successful intellectual exports – a very specific system of thinking about the end of the world known as ‘dispensational premillennialism.’ And the article will move from county Wicklow in the early nineteenth century, through the troubled decades of American modernity, to arrive, perhaps unexpectedly, in the company of the soldiers of radical jihad. The article will describe the globalisation of a discourse which was developed among the most privileged classes of early nineteenth-century Ireland to explain and justify their attempt to withdraw from the world, and which has more recently been used to explain and justify sometimes violent political interventions by both prominent Western politicians and some of the most marginalised and desperate inhabitants of our broken twenty-first century.

Coordinated analysis of delayed sprites with high-speed images and remote electromagnetic fields

Simultaneous measurements of high-altitude optical emissions and magnetic fields produced by sprite-associated lightning discharges enable a close examination of the link between low-altitude lightning processes and high-altitude sprite processes. We report results of the coordinated analysis of high-speed sprite video and wideband magnetic field measurements recorded simultaneously at Yucca Ridge Field Station and Duke University. From June to August 2005, sprites were detected following 67 lightning strokes, all of which had positive polarity. Our data showed that 46% of the 83 discrete sprite events in these sequences initiated more than 10 ms after the lightning return stroke, and we focus on these delayed sprites in this work. All delayed sprites were preceded by continuing current moments that averaged at least 11 kA km between the return stroke and sprites. The total lightning charge moment change at sprite initiation varied from 600 to 18,600 C km, and the minimum value to initiate long-delayed sprites ranged from 600 for 15 ms delay to 2000 C km for more than 120 ms delay. We numerically simulated electric fields at altitudes above these lightning discharges and found that the maximum normalized electric fields are essentially the same as fields that produce short-delayed sprites. Both estimated and simulation-predicted sprite initiation altitudes indicate that long-delayed sprites generally initiate around 5 km lower than short-delayed sprites. The simulation results also reveal that slow (5-20 ms) intensifications in continuing current can play a major role in initiating delayed sprites. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union.

Folate regulation of axonal regeneration in the rodent central nervous system through DNA methylation.

The folate pathway plays a crucial role in the regeneration and repair of the adult CNS after injury. Here, we have shown in rodents that such repair occurs at least in part through DNA methylation. In animals with combined spinal cord and sciatic nerve injury, folate-mediated CNS axon regeneration was found to depend on injury-related induction of the high-affinity folate receptor 1 (Folr1). The activity of folate was dependent on its activation by the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (Dhfr) and a functional methylation cycle. The effect of folate on the regeneration of afferent spinal neurons was biphasic and dose dependent and correlated closely over its dose range with global and gene-specific DNA methylation and with expression of both the folate receptor Folr1 and the de novo DNA methyltransferases. These data implicate an epigenetic mechanism in CNS repair. Folic acid and possibly other nontoxic dietary methyl donors may therefore be useful in clinical interventions to promote brain and spinal cord healing. If indeed the benefit of folate is mediated by epigenetic mechanisms that promote endogenous axonal regeneration, this provides possible avenues for new pharmacologic approaches to treating CNS injuries.

Two genes on A/J chromosome 18 are associated with susceptibility to Staphylococcus aureus infection by combined microarray and QTL analyses.

Although it has recently been shown that A/J mice are highly susceptible to Staphylococcus aureus sepsis as compared to C57BL/6J, the specific genes responsible for this differential phenotype are unknown. Using chromosome substitution strains (CSS), we found that loci on chromosomes 8, 11, and 18 influence susceptibility to S. aureus sepsis in A/J mice. We then used two candidate gene selection strategies to identify genes on these three chromosomes associated with S. aureus susceptibility, and targeted genes identified by both gene selection strategies. First, we used whole genome transcription profiling to identify 191 (56 on chr. 8, 100 on chr. 11, and 35 on chr. 18) genes on our three chromosomes of interest that are differentially expressed between S. aureus-infected A/J and C57BL/6J. Second, we identified two significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) for survival post-infection on chr. 18 using N(2) backcross mice (F(1) [C18A]xC57BL/6J). Ten genes on chr. 18 (March3, Cep120, Chmp1b, Dcp2, Dtwd2, Isoc1, Lman1, Spire1, Tnfaip8, and Seh1l) mapped to the two significant QTL regions and were also identified by the expression array selection strategy. Using real-time PCR, 6 of these 10 genes (Chmp1b, Dtwd2, Isoc1, Lman1, Tnfaip8, and Seh1l) showed significantly different expression levels between S. aureus-infected A/J and C57BL/6J. For two (Tnfaip8 and Seh1l) of these 6 genes, siRNA-mediated knockdown of gene expression in S. aureus-challenged RAW264.7 macrophages induced significant changes in the cytokine response (IL-1 beta and GM-CSF) compared to negative controls. These cytokine response changes were consistent with those seen in S. aureus-challenged peritoneal macrophages from CSS 18 mice (which contain A/J chromosome 18 but are otherwise C57BL/6J), but not C57BL/6J mice. These findings suggest that two genes, Tnfaip8 and Seh1l, may contribute to susceptibility to S. aureus in A/J mice, and represent promising candidates for human genetic susceptibility studies.