The Role of the European Inspections in the European Educational Space - Echoes from Portugal Regarding the Assessment of Schools

This paper is an approach to the construction of a European educational space (Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002), which is due to new modes of regulation in education. The policy under consideration is the institutional evaluation of schools carried out by the Portuguese General Inspectorate of Education. The aim is to explore how concepts and policies get “contaminated” by the European models (Barroso, 2003, 2006) and understanding how the regulation is outlined by the Inspectorates in some European countries, including Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. This paper owes to the phenomena associated to “travelling policies” (Alexiadou & Jones, 2001), to “policy transfer” (Dolowitz et al, 2000; Stone, 2001), and to “policy borrowing” (Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). The authors‟ perspective on the influences of the international movement of policies is free from simplistic and deterministic logics (Lingard & Rizvi, 2000), advocating that the internationalization of ideas come along with national reflections on how these ideas are materialized (Popkewitz, 1996). At the local/regional levels, the regulation of educational systems can be characterized as a growing „multi-regulation' - that comes from a growing number of sources and a variety of tools (assessment, monitoring and sharing best practices) - which mingle with modes that exist in a more traditional, bureaucratic regulation (Afonso & Costa, 2010). Thus, each country has its own overview about the structures, and effects of globalization, which do not occur simultaneously, nor in the same way in the different 'nation states' (Lingard & Rizvi, 2000)

Travel Agencies: From online channel conflict to multi-channel harmony

The adoption of Internet as a distribution channel and a privileged e-commerce tool has pressed Travel Agencies (TAs) to a latent channel conflict. Our main interest is to understand how the traditional independent travel agencies in Portugal deal with the online channel. We suggest that TAs have to develop an innovative business model based on the online and offline complementary channels, in order to achieve a multi-channel harmony

The Forward Premium of Euro Interest Rates

We show that euro forward rates are biased predictors of future interest rates. A small part of this bias arises from unexpected changes in interest rates, while a larger part is explained by the forward premia, which are generally not time-varying. We estimate the the 3-month forward premia for different horizons using forecasts of yields obtained with the Diebold and Li (2006) approach, extended by the inclusion of macroeconomic variables. Confidence intervals for the estimates are computed using a novel bootstrap approach. When using German data for the period before 1999, we detect a break in the dynamic correlation between yield factors, implying that estimates of the euro forward premium using pre-euro data are biased. Although the forward premia of horizons up to 36 months are on average positive, their confidence intervals indicate that they are significantly equal to zero in some periods of time. They are also positively correlated with the ECB policy rate and with a measure of the market perception that future interest rates could be higher than expected.

Economics for marketing revisited

This paper aims to provide evidence supporting the following: that recent theoretical, empirical and methodological advances in microeconomics are decisive to the progress of marketing science. That such a notion is not yet mainstream and uncontroversial, we contend, is more due to insufficient knowledge dissemination and outdated perceptions about irreconcilable differences between economists and psychologists than to lack of intrinsic value or cognitive appeal. Evidence is provided by describing these advances in a concise manner, showing how they can contribute to tackle complex marketing issues and providing examples from published matter in which this contribution already takes place.Marketing Science, Economic Psychology, Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics

Accumulation and elimination dynamics of the hydroxybenzoate saxitoxin analogues in mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis exposed to the toxic marine Dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is a severe food-borne illness, caused by the ingestion of seafood containing paralytic shellfish toxins (PST), which are naturally produced by marine dinoflagellates and accumulate in shellfish during algae blooms. Novel PST, designated as hydroxybenzoate analogues (also known as GC toxins), was relatively recently discovered in Gymnodinium catenatum strains worldwide. However, to date, there have been no studies examining their accumulation in shellfish. In this study, mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) were exposed to G. catenatum for five days and then exposed to a non-toxic diet for 24 h, to investigate the toxin's accumulation/elimination dynamics. As determined by UHPLC-HILIC-MS/MS, the hydroxybenzoate analogues, GC1 to GC6, comprised 41% of the algae toxin profile and only 9% in mussels. Elimination of GC toxins after 24 h was not evident. This study highlights that a relevant fraction of PST in mussels are not routinely analysed in monitoring programs and that there is a need to better understand the toxicological potential of the hydroxybenzoate analogues, in order to properly address the risk of G. catenatum blooms.Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science - contract code DP402; Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia - PD/BD/113484/2015; FCT Investigator; Mar2020 - SNMB-INOV: Innovation for a more competitive shellfish sector, co-financed by the Operational Program Mar 2020, Portugal 2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Entropic Steering Criteria: Applications to Bipartite and Tripartite Systems

The effect of quantum steering describes a possible action at a distance via local measurements. Whereas many attempts on characterizing steerability have been pursued, answering the question as to whether a given state is steerable or not remains a difficult task. Here, we investigate the applicability of a recently proposed method for building steering criteria from generalized entropic uncertainty relations. This method works for any entropy which satisfy the properties of (i) (pseudo-) additivity for independent distributions; (ii) state independent entropic uncertainty relation (EUR); and (iii) joint convexity of a corresponding relative entropy. Our study extends the former analysis to Tsallis and R\'enyi entropies on bipartite and tripartite systems. As examples, we investigate the steerability of the three-qubit GHZ and W states.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures. Published version. Title change

An integrative assessment to determine the genotoxic hazard of estuarine sediments: combining cell and whole-organism responses

The application of the Comet assay in environmental monitoring remains challenging in face of the complexity of environmental stressors, e.g., when dealing with estuarine sediments, that hampers the drawing of cause-effect relationships. Although the in vitro Comet assay may circumvent confounding factors, its application in environmental risk assessment (ERA) still needs validation. As such, the present work aims at integrating genotoxicity and oxidative DNA damage induced by sediment-bound toxicants in HepG2 cells with oxidative stress-related effects observed in three species collected from an impacted estuary. Distinct patterns were observed in cells exposed to crude mixtures of sediment contaminants from the urban/industrial area comparatively to the ones from the rural/riverine area of the estuary, with respect to oxidative DNA damage and oxidative DNA damage. The extracts obtained with the most polar solvent and the crude extracts caused the most significant oxidative DNA damage in HepG2 cells, as measured by the formamidopyrimidine-DNA glycosylase (FPG)-modified Comet assay. This observation suggests that metals and unknown toxicants more hydrophilic than polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons may be important causative agents, especially in samples from the rural part of the estuary, where oxidative DNA damage was the most significant. Clams, sole, and cuttlefish responded differentially to environmental agents triggering oxidative stress, albeit yielding results accordant with the oxidative DNA damage observed in HepG2 cells. Overall, the integration of in vivo biomarker responses and Comet assay data in HepG2 cells yielded a comparable pattern, indicating that the in vitro FPG-modified Comet assay may be an effective and complementary line-of-evidence in ERA even in particularly challenging, natural, scenarios such as estuarine environments