Gamificação de Ambientes Reais

Alfândega da Fé é uma pequena vila do Interior Norte Português, que sofre de problemas de desertificação e de uma taxa crescente de envelhecimento da população. Estes problemas, em conjunto com falhas de divulgação deste território, e a falta de informação relevante ao mesmo, não ajudam o crescimento turístico da região. Assim sendo, tornou-se uma necessidade superar estes obstáculos e dinamizar o setor turístico dos territórios alfandeguenses. Desta necessidade de dinamização, suportada por estudos de mercado, resultou a criação de “Segredo Transmontano”, e a gamificação de parte de Alfândega da Fé, como forma de partilhar o património natural e cultural da vila. De modo a atingir estes objetivos, o aspeto de gamificação deste projeto foi desenvolvido com base em jogos como Pokémon Go (Niantic, 2016), a franchise Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft, 2007-2018), e o conceito de Mirror Worlds apresentado por David Gelernter, no seu livro Mirror Worlds or: The day software puts the Universe in a shoebox… How it will happen and what it will mean (Gelernter, 1991). O processo de desenvolvimento teve um início bastante positivo, contudo, tornou-se rapidamente evidente que este tinha de estar mais aberto ao input do utilizador, uma vez que o que eu tinha como simples, poderia não o ser para outros utilizadores. De forma a garantir que o protótipo de jogo, a ser criado, era o mais acessível e user-friendly possível, e de modo a evitar desenvolver algo apenas observado e testado por uma única pessoa – o desenvolvedor – tornou-se necessário implementar diversos métodos de testes de utilizador, tanto para a interface gráfica, como para o gameplay. O método de Think Aloud, e o método de Usabilidade Comparativa provaram ser bastante eficientes em tornar o protótipo mais usável e acessível, independentemente do grau de conforto (para jogos e plataformas móveis) do utilizador. Foram aplicados três ciclos de testes, os quais forneceram insumos de melhorias que foram iterativamente incluídos no desenvolvimento do protótipo. Como qualquer jogo na sua fase de prototipagem, foram encontrados obstáculos de desenvolvimento, tanto a nível da interface de utilizador, como a nível das mecânicas de gameplay. Além destes pontos, também apresentamos os próximos passos para o protótipo enquanto jogo em desenvolvimento como também como empreendimento no contexto turístico de Alfândega da Fé.Alfândega da Fé is a small town located in the Northern interior region of Portugal, that suffers from desertification and an ever-increasing rate of ageing population. These problems, along with faults regarding this territory’s divulgation, and the lack of information, relevant to it, hinder this region’s touristic growth. As such, overcoming these obstacles and dynamizing the touristic sector of Alfândega da Fé’s territories became a necessity. From this need of dynamicity, supported by market studies, rose the creation of “Segredo Transmontano”, and the gamification of part of Alfândega da Fé, as a way to share this town’s natural and cultural patrimony. In order to reach these goals, the gamification aspect of this project was built around games like Pokémon Go (Niantic, 2016), the Assassin’s Creed franchise (Ubisoft, 2007-2018), and the concept of Mirror Worlds presented by David Gelernter, in his book Mirror Worlds or: The day software puts the Universe in a shoebox… How it will happen and what it will mean (Gelernter, 1991). The development process started out fairly well, however, it soon became obvious that it needed to be more open to user input, as what I saw as simple may not have been so for other people. To ensure that the game prototype being created was as accessible and user-friendly as possible, and to avoid developing something only seen and tested by one person — the developer — it became necessary to implement various user testing methods, both for user interface elements and for gameplay. The Think Aloud, and the Comparative Usability methods proved to be very efficient in making the prototype usable and accessible, regardless of the users’ comfort level with games and mobile platforms. Three testing cycles were carried out, which provided input on improvements that were iteratively implemented, during prototype development. Much like any game in its prototyping phase, development obstacles were encountered, both in user interface and gameplay levels. In addition to these points, we also presented the next steps for this prototype, both as a developing game, and as an enterprising context of Alfândega da Fé’s tourism

Os ciganos vistos pelos outros: coexistência inter-étnica em espaços urbanos

O presente artigo sintetiza os principais resultados da investigação “Coexistência inter-étnica, espaços e representações sociais: os ciganos vistos pelos outros”. Esta pesquisa incidiu sobre a comunidade cigana em três espaços de co-presença (espaços residencial, profissional e ocasional), numa tentativa de compreender em que medida as práticas e as representações sociais que os não-ciganos tinham sobre os ciganos – práticas e representações sociais marcadas por (des)encontros de natureza esporádica e/ou quotidiana – variavam em função da natureza de cada espaço.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a TecnologiaDGOTDU - Direcção Geral do Ordenamento do Território e Desenvolvimento UrbanoREFER EPCâmara Municipal de Lisboa - Cultur

Hepatitis C among former athletes: association with the use of injectable stimulants in the past

This study was performed with the purpose of testing the hypothesis that the high prevalence of hepatitis C among former athletes is associated with their past use of injectable stimulants. The study involved the participation of 208 former professional and amateur soccer and basketball players from the region of Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, who answered a questionnaire regarding their exposure to risk factors, including the use of injectable stimulants in the time they were engaged in sporting activities. ELISA tests were used to detect infection by the hepatitis C virus, and confirmed with PCR and genotyping for the positive cases. It was observed that the former use of injectable stimulants was a practice disseminated among the participants (24.5%), reaching 50.8% in the professionals. The overall prevalence for hepatitis C was 7.2%, with values of 11% among professionals and 5.5% among amateurs. In both categories, the presence of infection was markedly higher among those who admitted past use of injectable stimulants when compared to those who denied such practice (36% and 0.8% among amateurs; 21.9% and 0% among professionals, respectively). Multivariate analysis showed that the use of those substances was the only variable associated with the risk of hepatitis C. This confirms previous observations, performed with reduced sample sizes and without comparison groups, which indicated that the use of injectable vitamins was a risk factor of hepatitis C among former athletes.CNPqUSP - FAEP

Streptococcus pyogenes Causing Skin and Soft Tissue Infections Are Enriched in the Recently Emerged emm89 Clade 3 and Are Not Associated With Abrogation of CovRS

Although skin and soft tissue infections (SSTI) are the most common focal infections associated with invasive disease caused by Streptococcus pyogenes (Lancefield Group A streptococci - GAS), there is scarce information on the characteristics of isolates recovered from SSTI in temperate-climate regions. In this study, 320 GAS isolated from SSTI in Portugal were characterized by multiple typing methods and tested for antimicrobial susceptibility and SpeB activity. The covRS and ropB genes of isolates with no detectable SpeB activity were sequenced. The antimicrobial susceptibility profile was similar to that of previously characterized isolates from invasive infections (iGAS), presenting a decreasing trend in macrolide resistance. However, the clonal composition of SSTI between 2005 and 2009 was significantly different from that of contemporary iGAS. Overall, iGAS were associated with emm1 and emm3, while SSTI were associated with emm89, the dominant emm type among SSTI (19%). Within emm89, SSTI were only significantly associated with isolates lacking the hasABC locus, suggesting that the recently emerged emm89 clade 3 may have an increased potential to cause SSTI. Reflecting these associations between emm type and disease presentation, there were also differences in the distribution of emm clusters, sequence types, and superantigen gene profiles between SSTI and iGAS. According to the predicted ability of each emm cluster to interact with host proteins, iGAS were associated with the ability to bind fibrinogen and albumin, whereas SSTI isolates were associated with the ability to bind C4BP, IgA, and IgG. SpeB activity was absent in 79 isolates (25%), in line with the proportion previously observed among iGAS. Null covS and ropB alleles (predicted to eliminate protein function) were detected in 10 (3%) and 12 (4%) isolates, corresponding to an underrepresentation of mutations impairing CovRS function in SSTI relative to iGAS. Overall, these results indicate that the isolates responsible for SSTI are genetically distinct from those recovered from normally sterile sites, supporting a role for mutations impairing CovRS activity specifically in invasive infection and suggesting that this role relies on a differential regulation of other virulence factors besides SpeB

Identification of clusters of asthma control: A preliminary analysis of the inspirers studies

This work was funded by ERDF (European Regional Development Fund) through the operations: POCI- -01-0145-FEDER-029130 (“mINSPIRERS—mHealth to measure and improve adherence to medication in chronic obstructive respiratory diseases - generalisation and evaluation of gamification, peer support and advanced image processing technologies”) co-funded by the COMPETE2020 (Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização), Portugal 2020 and by Portuguese Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).© 2020, Sociedade Portuguesa de Alergologia e Imunologia Clinica. All rights reserved. Aims: To identify distinct asthma control clusters based on Control of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma Test (CARAT) and to compare patients’ characteristics among these clusters. Methods: Adults and adolescents (≥13 years) with persistent asthma were recruited at 29 Portuguese hospital outpatient clinics, in the context of two observational studies of the INSPIRERS project. Demographic and clinical characteristics, adherence to inhaled medication, beliefs about inhaled medication, anxiety and depression, quality of life, and asthma control (CARAT, >24 good control) were collected. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using CARAT total score (CARAT-T). Results: 410 patients (68% adults), with a median (percentile 25–percentile 75) age of 28 (16-46) years, were analysed. Three clusters were identified [mean CARAT-T (min-max)]: cluster 1 [27(24-30)], cluster 2 [19(14-23)] and cluster 3 [10(2-13)]. Patients in cluster 1 (34%) were characterised by better asthma control, better quality of life, higher inhaler adherence and use of a single inhaler. Patients in clusters 2 (50%) and 3 (16%) had uncontrolled asthma, lower inhaler adherence, more symptoms of anxiety and depression and more than half had at least one exacerbation in the previous year. Further-more, patients in cluster 3 were predominantly female, had more unscheduled medical visits and more anxiety symp-toms, perceived a higher necessity of their prescribed inhalers but also higher levels of concern about taking these inhalers. There were no differences in age, body mass index, lung function, smoking status, hospital admissions or specialist physician follow-up time among the three clusters. Conclusion: An unsupervised method based on CARAT--T, identified 3 clusters of patients with distinct, clinically meaningful characteristics. The cluster with better asthma control had a cut-off similar to the established in the validation study of CARAT and an additional cut-off seems to distinguish more severe disease. Further research is necessary to validate the asthma control clusters identified.publishersversionpublishe

Streptococcus canis Are a Single Population Infecting Multiple Animal Hosts Despite the Diversity of the Universally Present M-Like Protein SCM

Streptococcus canis is an animal pathogen which occasionally causes infections in humans. The S. canis M-like protein (SCM) encoded by the scm gene, is its best characterized virulence factor but previous studies suggested it could be absent in a substantial fraction of isolates. We studied the distribution and variability of the scm gene in 188 S. canis isolates recovered from companion animals (n = 152), wild animal species (n = 20), and humans (n = 14). Multilocus sequence typing, including the first characterization of wildlife isolates, showed that the same lineages are present in all animal hosts, raising the possibility of extensive circulation between species. Whole-genome analysis revealed that emm-like genes found previously in S. canis correspond to divergent scm genes, indicating that what was previously believed to correspond to two genes is in fact the same scm locus. We designed primers allowing for the first time the successful amplification of the scm gene in all isolates. Analysis of the scm sequences identified 12 distinct types, which could be divided into two clusters: group I (76%, n = 142) and group II (24%, n = 46) sharing little sequence similarity. The predicted group I SCM showed extensive similarity with each other outside of the N-terminal hypervariable region and a conserved IgG binding domain. This domain was absent from group II SCM variants found in isolates previously thought to lack the scm gene, which also showed greater amino acid variability. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the possible host interacting partners of the group II SCM variants and their role in virulence

MAMMALS IN PORTUGAL : A data set of terrestrial, volant, and marine mammal occurrences in P ortugal

Mammals are threatened worldwide, with 26% of all species being includedin the IUCN threatened categories. This overall pattern is primarily associatedwith habitat loss or degradation, and human persecution for terrestrial mam-mals, and pollution, open net fishing, climate change, and prey depletion formarine mammals. Mammals play a key role in maintaining ecosystems func-tionality and resilience, and therefore information on their distribution is cru-cial to delineate and support conservation actions. MAMMALS INPORTUGAL is a publicly available data set compiling unpublishedgeoreferenced occurrence records of 92 terrestrial, volant, and marine mam-mals in mainland Portugal and archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira thatincludes 105,026 data entries between 1873 and 2021 (72% of the data occur-ring in 2000 and 2021). The methods used to collect the data were: live obser-vations/captures (43%), sign surveys (35%), camera trapping (16%),bioacoustics surveys (4%) and radiotracking, and inquiries that represent lessthan 1% of the records. The data set includes 13 types of records: (1) burrowsjsoil moundsjtunnel, (2) capture, (3) colony, (4) dead animaljhairjskullsjjaws, (5) genetic confirmation, (6) inquiries, (7) observation of live animal (8),observation in shelters, (9) photo trappingjvideo, (10) predators dietjpelletsjpine cones/nuts, (11) scatjtrackjditch, (12) telemetry and (13) vocalizationjecholocation. The spatial uncertainty of most records ranges between 0 and100 m (76%). Rodentia (n=31,573) has the highest number of records followedby Chiroptera (n=18,857), Carnivora (n=18,594), Lagomorpha (n=17,496),Cetartiodactyla (n=11,568) and Eulipotyphla (n=7008). The data setincludes records of species classified by the IUCN as threatened(e.g.,Oryctolagus cuniculus[n=12,159],Monachus monachus[n=1,512],andLynx pardinus[n=197]). We believe that this data set may stimulate thepublication of other European countries data sets that would certainly contrib-ute to ecology and conservation-related research, and therefore assisting onthe development of more accurate and tailored conservation managementstrategies for each species. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite thisdata paper when the data are used in publications.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Práticas artísticas no ensino básico e secundário

O terceiro número da Revista Matéria-Prima afirma-se como mais uma plataforma de disseminação e de registo na área da educação e ensino artísticos. Ao propor-se o desafio da Matéria-Prima está a lançar-se um repto de intervenção e partilha a três tipos de intervenientes na educação pela arte: — Os professores, profissionais experimentados; — Os que se iniciam na profissão, através da frequência de mestrados e estágios formativos; — Os investigadores e professores universitários desta área. Esta chamada coloca em cima da mesa a partilha das experiências didácticas em sala de aula, a pesquisa sobre práticas profissionais. Experiências, algumas bem-sucedidas, outras menos, porventura, todas com um mérito substancial, que é a vontade de estabelecer comunidade entre os interessados pela educação artística. Este conjunto de textos poderá ajudar a cartografar práticas que se observam bastante distintas, entre as realidades dos países representados, Portugal, Espanha, Brasil, Argentina. Observa-se também que a prática dos educadores está longe de ser homogénea. É surpreendente determinar as diferenças entre contextos e regiões. Se umas são mais metódicas, e por isso consistentes, outras abrem-se à descoberta. Em todas um ponto de encontro: a revista Matéria-Prima, que assim assume cada vez mais o seu nome como um desígnio de intervenção.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio