Collaborative learning in the office management studies field: a COIL experience between Portugal and Cabo Verde

The internationalisation of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) can occur across borders and at home. In recent years, the option for virtual mobility or collaborative online international learning (COIL) has been gaining special relevance. COIL "encompasses projects based on the involvement of teachers and students with different geographical, language and cultural backgrounds, for the development of collaborative teaching and learning processes using online communication tools" [1], thus facilitating not only the consolidation of technical skills, but also of transversal skills. This article describes a COIL project that took place between March and June 2021, involving 26 students from the degree in Office Management and Business Communication (OMBC) of the University of Aveiro (Portugal) and the degree in Public Relations and Executive Secretariat (PRES) of the Public University of Cape Verde. The project, entitled "Communication tools in the context of job search in Portuguese-speaking markets: Portugal and Cape Verde", was streamlined in a context of competences aggregation between disciplines in the area of Portuguese and Computer Science, with the participation of 5 teachers. Each student selected a job offer in the partner country and produced a multiformat CV (digital support and video CV), adapting it to a situation of applying for real job opportunities. The project included familiarisation sessions, open classes regarding the labour market in both countries, extra class meetings between students and moments (in class and extra-class) to follow up the work in progress. After the end of the project, a questionnaire was applied to the students involved, and 24 answers were obtained: 13 from Portugal (all participants) and 11 from Cape Verde (out of 13 possible). The respondents indicated curiosity, the possibility of meeting new cultures/people and acquiring new knowledge as factors that motivated them to participate in this COIL project. Overall, participants were very satisfied with the development of this project. The answers obtained also made it possible to identify the most and least positive aspects in the implementation of the project, to find out the technical and transversal skills developed from this experience, and to list the communication tools/digital tools that the students used the most.publishe

Collaborative learning and ICT use in French for specific purposes classes

In recent decades, telecollaboration has become more frequent in different teaching contexts, with regular publication of studies on this type of practice [1]. Based on the interaction, mediated by digital communication tools, between students from different geographical, cultural and/or linguistic contexts, telecollaboration favours sharing, dialogue and debate, contributing to the consolidation of linguistic, cultural and digital competences and, therefore, being a pedagogical option increasingly valued in the context of foreign language teaching-learning [2]. This paper describes a collaborative learning experiment developed (from October 2020 to January 2021) between two French for Specific Purposes (FOS) classes (25 students), from two undergraduate courses taught in Portuguese higher education institutions. This project, which took place in the first semester of 2020/2021, aimed, above all, to interact with FOS students from different scientific areas (Office Management and Business Communication (OMBC) and Tourism and Cultural Management (TCM)), thus favouring interdisciplinarity. This article, based on data collected through a questionnaire applied to participants in January 2021, presents some digital tools that students used to accomplish the work and describes the technical and soft skills developed by the participants. The technological solutions that students preferred to communicate and share information were WhatsApp, Zoom and MSTeams. Web pages of companies, airlines and accommodation/restaurant service providers were the most used sources of information by the students. For French text validation, students refer to Linguee and GoogleTranslator as the most relevant. The soft skills that were mentioned by the respondents as being the most developed were "tolerance", "resilience" and "autonomy".publishe

Occurrence of chiral bioactive compounds in the aquatic environment: A review

In recent decades, the presence of micropollutants in the environment has been extensively studied due to their high frequency of occurrence, persistence and possible adverse effects to exposed organisms. Concerning chiral micropollutants in the environment, enantiomers are frequently ignored and enantiomeric composition often neglected. However, enantioselective toxicity is well recognized, highlighting the need to include enantioselectivity in environmental risk assessment. Additionally, the information about enantiomeric fraction (EF) is crucial since it gives insights about: (i) environmental fate (i.e., occurrence, distribution, removal processes and (bio)degradation); (ii) illicit discharges; (iii) consumption pattern (e.g., illicit drugs, pharmaceuticals used as recreational drugs, illicit use of pesticides); and (iv) enantioselective toxicological effects. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review about the enantioselective occurrence of chiral bioactive compounds in aquatic environmental matrices. These include pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic musks (PCMs). Most frequently analytical methods used for separation of enantiomers were liquid chromatography and gas chromatography methodologies using both indirect (enantiomerically pure derivatizing reagents) and direct methods (chiral stationary phases). The occurrence of these chiral micropollutants in the environment is reviewed and future challenges are outlined. © 2017 by the authors.This work was developed at Laboratory of Environmental Research area/Environmental and Applied Chemistry research line of the IINFACTS-CESPU. The authors acknowledge the financial support from PARMADRUGS-CESPU-2014 and ChiralDrugs_CESPU_2017. This research was partially supported through national funds provided by FCT/MCTES: Foundation for Science and Technology from the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education (PIDDAC) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE: Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade (POFC) programme, under the Strategic Funding UID/Multi/04423/2013, in the framework of the programme PT2020. ARR and MSM acknowledge Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) for their grants, SFRH/BD/86939/2012 and SFRH/BPD/101703/2014, respectivel

A kinetic approach to homogeneous Ziegler type polymerization. Transient state

In this paper we present a kinetic approach to the analysis of transient-state homogeneous Ziegler-Natta polymerization activity data. The main features of the experimental data are discussed and fitted to transient kinetic models.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Polymerization of ethylene using metallocene and aluminoxane systems

This paper describes ethylene polymerization using a number of metal-locene and aluminoxane catalyst systems, Cp2MR2 and methylaluminoxane [M = Zr, W, Nb; R = Cl, CH3]. Two types of methylaluminoxane, MAO (1) and MAO (2), were used as cocatalysts. The polymerization activities of the complexes Cp2WCl2 and Cp2NbCl2 were compared with that of Cp2ZrCl2. The Nb and W complexes were found to be less active than the Zr complex. Polyethylene characterization was also carried out by the following methods: gel permeation chromatography (GPC), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Homogeneous Ziegler-Natta polymerisation: A kinetic approach .2. Transient-state kinetics

An integrated view is presented of several possible mechanisms applicable to the interpretation of homogeneous Ziegler-Natta polymerisation. In this paper, the transient aspects related to the kinetics of Ziegler-Natta polymerisation are investigated. Extensive data are used to construct kinetic profiles (rM vs. t) from a theoretical approach. Special attention is given to the duration of the transient period as a function of the different kinetic parameters. The kinetic models developed are fitted to experimental data, either directly obtained by the authors or published in the literature. These general models have a broad range of application.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Damage detections in nonlinear vibrating thermally loaded plates

In this work, geometrically nonlinear vibrations of fully clamped rectangular plates subjected to thermal changesare used to study the sensitivity of some vibration response parameters to the presence of damage and elevated temperature. The geometrically nonlinear version of the Mindlin plate theory is used to model the plate behaviour.Damage is represented as a stiffness reduction in a small area of the plate. The plates are subjected to harmonicloading leading to large amplitude vibrations and temperature changes. The plate vibration response is obtained by a pseudo-load mode superposition method. The main results are focussed on establishing the influence of damage on the vibration response of the heated and the unheated plates and the change in the time-history diagrams and the Poincaré maps caused by damage and elevated temperature. The damage criterion formulated earlier for nonheated plates, based on analyzing the points in the Poincaré sections of the damaged and healthy plate, is modified and tested for the case of plates additionally subjected to elevated temperatures. The importance of taking into account the actual temperature in the process of damage detection is shown

Raw meat-based diet for pets: a neglected source of human exposure to Salmonella and pathogenic Escherichia coli clones carrying mcr, Portugal, September 2019 to January 2020

Background: The pet industry is expanding worldwide, particularly raw meat -based diets (RMBDs). There are concerns regarding the safety of RMBDs, especially their potential to spread clinically relevant antibioticresistant bacteria or zoonotic pathogens. Aim: We aimed to investigate whether dog food, including RMBD, commercially available in Portugal can be a source of Salmonella and/or other Enterobacteriaceae strains resistant to last -line antibiotics such as colistin. Methods: Fifty-five samples from 25 brands (21 international ones) of various dog food types from 12 suppliers were screened by standard cultural methods between September 2019 and January 2020. Isolates were characterised by phenotypic and genotypic methods, including whole genome sequencing and comparative genomics. Results: Only RMBD batches were contaminated, with 10 of 14 containing polyclonal multidrug-resistant (MDR) Escherichia coli and one MDR Salmonella . One turkey -based sample contained MDR Salmonella serotype 1,4,[5],12:i:- ST34/ cgST142761 with similarity to human clinical isolates occurring worldwide. This Salmonella exhibited typical antibiotic resistance ( bla TEM + strA-strB + sul2 + tet(B) ) and metal tolerance profiles ( pco + sil + ars ) associated with the European epidemic clone. Two samples (turkey/veal) carried globally dispersed MDR E. coli (ST3997-complexST10/cgST95899 and ST297/ cgST138377) with colistin resistance (minimum inhibitory concentration: 4 mg/L) and mcr-1 gene on IncX4 plasmids, which were identical to other IncX4 circulating worldwide. Conclusion: Some RMBDs from European brands available in Portugal can be a vehicle for clinically relevant MDR Salmonella and pathogenic E. coli clones carrying genes encoding resistance to the last -line antibiotic colistin. Proactive actions within the One Health context, spanning regulatory, pet -food industry and consumer levels, are needed to mitigate these public health risks