Reflexão sobre a problemática do debt-equity bias : a proposta DEBRA

A nossa dissertação propõe-se a explorar o problema da distorção, a nível fiscal, entre os rendimentos provenientes de dívida e de capitais próprios. A esse respeito debruçar-nos-emos sobre a recente proposta de Diretiva do Conselho Europeu, denominada de DEBRA, apresentada a 11 de maio de 2022. Com vista a estimular o financiamento das empresas com recurso a capitais próprios, a proposta de Diretiva estabelece um conjunto de regras relativas a uma dedução em matéria de capitais próprios e quanto à limitação da dedutibilidade dos juros para efeitos do imposto sobre o rendimento das sociedades. De modo a levar a cabo essa análise, começaremos por refletir sobre as diferenças de tratamento, a nível societário, que opõem ambas as formas de financiamento, o rationale por detrás dessa diferenciação, e ainda, o recurso à subcapitalização como forma de planeamento fiscal. De seguida, abordaremos as consequências desse tratamento desigualitário entre rendimentos e apontaremos quais as soluções, que têm sido endereçadas, a esse problema. Por último, refletiremos sobre vários aspetos, que compõem a proposta DEBRA, sinalizando incongruências e pontos de melhoria.Our thesis proposes to explore the different treatment, at the tax level, between debt and equity income. In this regard, we will look at the recent proposal for Council Directive, known as DEBRA, presented on 11 May 2022 to tackle the debt-equity bias. This initiative aims to encourage companies to finance their investments through equity, by laying down rules on a debt-equity bias reduction allowance and limiting the deductibility of interest for corporate income tax purposes. In order to carry out this analysis, we will start by reflecting on the differences, at the corporate level, that oppose both types of financing, the rationale behind this differentiation and the use of thin capitalisation as a form of tax planning. Next, we will discuss the consequences of debt-equity distortion and point out the solutions that have been addressed to solve the problem. Finally, we will reflect on several aspects, which compose the DEBRA proposal, pointing out inconsistencies and areas for improvement

Greetings in Africa - beyond the handshake: An essay on greeting and leave-taking rituals as communication practice in Sub-Saharan African Agrarian Societies

In African Agrarian Societies greeting and leave-taking rituals are an essential part of the communication processes that constitute these societies as collective entities. Through elaborate forms of greeting and leave-taking people initiate and end communication and interaction processes within a framework of collective identities and cultures. Intricate greeting rituals allow to deal with all forms of encounters, with living people as well as with the spirits of the deceased. Greeting rituals are acquired through lengthy periods of learning. Their mastery is the sign of being an adult and competent member of society. External actors from different cultures often seem to be unaware of the subtleties of these greeting rituals. They ignore them at a cost. This essay provides some insights into the inner workings of African societies concerning the framing of most of their internal and external communication processes that are as vital for their lifeworlds as they are for their interaction with external actors from different spheres. Analysing the societies in a comprehensive manner as self-organising entities within an ethnic matrix clearly shows the limits of reducing greeting rituals to mere speech acts between individuals and proves that some of the fundamental assumptions of modern communication theories are not valid for African Agrarian Societies

Greetings in Africa – Beyond the Handshake: An essay on greeting and leave-taking rituals as communication practice in Sub-Saharan African Agrarian Societies

In African Agrarian Societies greeting and leave-taking rituals are an essential part of the communication processes that constitute these societies as collective entities. Through elaborate forms of greeting and leave-taking people initiate and end communication and interaction processes within a framework of collective identities and cultures. Intricate greeting rituals allow to deal with all forms of encounters, with living people as well as with the spirits of the deceased. Greeting rituals are acquired through lengthy periods of learning. Their mastery is the sign of being an adult and competent member of society. External actors from different cultures often seem to be unaware of the subtleties of these greeting rituals. They ignore them at a cost. This essay provides fundamental insights into the inner workings of African societies as well as practical advice for outside actors in a wide area of interventions, such as development, public policies, administration, business, humanitarian assistance, and research. It aims to help them to avoid some of the most common pitfalls and put their communication on more solid bases

a brief note on oceanic history, science and literacy

UID/HIS/04666/2013The UNESCO Chair “Ocean’s Cultural Heritage” held by NOVA University (Lisbon, Portugal) since 2016 is unique worldwide and brings to the spotlight the importance of obtaining knowledge on and of the management of tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage of the open oceans, underwater realm and coastlines. Supported on a transatlantic network of researchers and their respective scientific and educational activities, topics under the umbrella of the early modern history of oceans such as underwater archaeology, maritime cultural landscapes, marine environmental history, cultures and societies, environments and resources management, are to be addressed and developed. These themes are part of the current international agendas for science, development and cooperation, and the UNESCO Chairs programme offers the adequate framework for the establishment of networking, for new common and integrated projects. This Chair also enhances the UNESCO principles of knowledge sharing, social solidarity, and establishing the basis for the development of good practices. As such, social sciences and humanities can contribute to inform on multiple societal challenges such as the changing conditions of marine ecosystems, climate change, heritage preservation and, also, ocean literacy. Here we are presenting the insights and motivations to develop such a UNESCO Chair and a related networking European project, both including components of research, education and outreach. Not aiming at presenting research or a global review, we intend to present main goals of the UNESCO Chair “Ocean’s Cultural Heritage” and to highlight how different disciplines can contribute to the construction of knowledge and preservation of memory about the Atlantic since early modern times.publishersversionpublishe

Investigating LGALS3BP/90 K glycoprotein in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with neurological diseases

© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Galectin-3 binding protein (LGALS3BP or 90 K) is a secreted glycoprotein found in human body fluids. Deregulated levels were observed in cancer and infection and its study in neurological diseases is more recent. Here, we have investigated 90 K from human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, n = 35) and other neurological diseases (n = 23). CSF was fractionated by ultrafiltration/size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) and eluted fractions were analysed by complementary techniques including immunoblotting, electron microscopy and nano-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. A fraction of 90 K appeared as nanoparticles of irregular shape with heterogeneous dimensions of 15-60 nm that co-eluted with extracellular vesicles in SEC. Median levels of 90 K quantified by ELISA were not different between ALS patients (215.8 ng/ml) and controls (213.3 ng/ml) in contrast with the benchmark biomarker for ALS phosphoneurofilament heavy chain (1750 and 345 pg/ml, respectively). A multiregression model supported age is the only independent predictor of 90 K level in both groups (p < 0.05). Significant correlation was found between 90 K levels and age for the ALS group (r = 0.366, p = 0.031) and for all subjects (r = 0.392, p = 0.003). In conclusion, this study unveils the presence of 90 K-containing nanoparticles in human CSF and opens novel perspectives to further investigate 90 K as potential aging marker.This work was supported by Euronanomed 2 ERA-NET project GlioEx (ENMed/0001/2013), Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal; iNOVA4Health Research Unit (LISBOA-01–0145-FEDER-007344), which is cofunded by FCT/Ministério da Ciência e do Ensino Superior, through national funds; and by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Achados da biomecânica de deglutição em pacientes com megaesôfago chagásico

O megaesôfago chagásico é uma alteração do trato gastrointestinal caracterizada pela destruição ou ausência de plexos nervosos intramurais do esôfago. Alterações nutricionais e da saúde pulmonar são descritas como consequentes a esse diagnóstico. Objetivo: descrever os achados das fases oral e faríngea da deglutição em indivíduos portadores de Megaesôfago Chagásico Metodologia: participaram desta pesquisa 26 voluntários com diagnóstico confirmado de doença de Chagas. Todos realizaram avaliação videofluoroscópica da deglutição, ao deglutir sólido, líquido, semilíquido e pastoso. Resultados: observou-se prevalência do sexo feminino (73,1%), e os graus I e II de classificação do megaesôfago foram os mais encontrados. A ausência de unidades dentárias posteriores esteve presente em mais de 90% na população e o tipo de mastigação anterior foi observado em 40,7% da amostra. Durante o exame videofluoroscópico , a presença de resíduo oral, faríngeo e em região de transição faringoesofágica foi mais encontrado na consistência semilíquida, além de um tempo de trânsito oral total aumentado para o sólido. Conclusão: escape posterior, resíduos orais, faríngeos e na transição faringoesofágica na consistência semi-líquida foram os achados mais encontrados no grupo estudado

A Metabolomics Study

Funding Information: This work is financed by national funds from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), I.P., in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences (UCIBIO) and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy—i4HB and through the project EXPL/MEDFAR/0203/2021. A. Dias-Carvalho acknowledges FCT and UCIBIO for her PhD grant (UI/BD/151318/2021). V.M.C acknowledges FCT for her grant (SFRH/BPD/110001/2015) that was funded by national funds through FCT under the Norma Transitória–DL57/2016/CP1334/CT0006. A.R.-M. acknowledges FCT for her grant SFRH/BD/129359/2017. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Long-term cognitive dysfunction, or “chemobrain”, has been observed in cancer patients treated with chemotherapy. Mitoxantrone (MTX) is a topoisomerase II inhibitor that binds and intercalates with DNA, being used in the treatment of several cancers and multiple sclerosis. Although MTX can induce chemobrain, its neurotoxic mechanisms are poorly studied. This work aimed to identify the adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) activated in the brain upon the use of a clinically relevant cumulative dose of MTX. Three-month-old male CD-1 mice were given a biweekly intraperitoneal administration of MTX over the course of three weeks until reaching a total cumulative dose of 6 mg/kg. Controls were given sterile saline in the same schedule. Two weeks after the last administration, the mice were euthanized and their brains removed. The left brain hemisphere was used for targeted profiling of the metabolism of glutathione and the right hemisphere for an untargeted metabolomics approach. The obtained results revealed that MTX treatment reduced the availability of cysteine (Cys), cysteinylglycine (CysGly), and reduced glutathione (GSH) suggesting that MTX disrupts glutathione metabolism. The untargeted approach revealed metabolic circuits of phosphatidylethanolamine, catecholamines, unsaturated fatty acids biosynthesis, and glycerolipids as relevant players in AOPs of MTX in our in vivo model. As far as we know, our study was the first to perform such a broad profiling study on pathways that could put patients given MTX at risk of cognitive deficits.publishersversionpublishe

Cerebrospinal fluid chitinases as biomarkers for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative neuromuscular disease that affects motor neurons controlling voluntary muscles. Survival is usually 2-5 years after onset, and death occurs due to respiratory failure. The identification of biomarkers would be very useful to help in disease diagnosis and for patient stratification based on, e.g., progression rate, with implications in therapeutic trials. Neurofilaments constitute already-promising markers for ALS and, recently, chitinases have emerged as novel marker targets for the disease. Here, we investigated cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) chitinases as potential markers for ALS. Chitotriosidase (CHIT1), chitinase-3-like protein 1 (CHI3L1), chitinase-3-like protein 2 (CHI3L2) and the benchmark marker phosphoneurofilament heavy chain (pNFH) were quantified by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from the CSF of 34 ALS patients and 24 control patients with other neurological diseases. CSF was also analyzed by UHPLC-mass spectrometry. All three chitinases, as well as pNFH, were found to correlate with disease progression rate. Furthermore, CHIT1 was elevated in ALS patients with high diagnostic performance, as was pNFH. On the other hand, CHIT1 correlated with forced vital capacity (FVC). The three chitinases correlated with pNFH, indicating a relation between degeneration and neuroinflammation. In conclusion, our results supported the value of CHIT1 as a diagnostic and progression rate biomarker, and its potential as respiratory function marker. The results opened novel perspectives to explore chitinases as biomarkers and their functional relevance in ALS.We acknowledge iNOVA4Health – UIDB/04462/2020 and UIDP/04462/2020, a program financially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia/Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, through national funds.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio