A Participação Portuguesa em Programas Comunitários e de Cooperação Internacional

A evolução das sociedades dos últimos anos deste século tem tido fortes repercussões sociais, económicas e políticas. Como se afirma no Livro Branco da Comissão Europeia, sobre educação e formação Ensinar e Aprender - Rumo à Sociedade Cognitiva, o mundo atravessa um período de profundas transformações no contexto da actividade económica e das relações sociais, constituindo este final de século uma fase de rápida transição para uma nova era de mundialização das relações e de globalização da informação, de que o acelerado progresso científico e técnico tem sido o principal suporte

Some observations on the renormalization of membrane rigidity by long-range interactions

We consider the renormalization of the bending and Gaussian rigidity of model membranes induced by long-range interactions between the components making up the membrane. In particular we analyze the effect of a finite membrane thickness on the renormalization of the bending and Gaussian rigidity by long-range interactions. Particular attention is paid to the case where the interactions are of a van der Waals type.Comment: 11 pages RexTex, no figure

A magnocellular contribution to conscious perception via temporal object segmentation

The human visual system is continuously confronted with dynamic visual input. One challenge that the visual system must solve, therefore, is recognizing when two distinct objects have appeared at a given location despite their brief presentation and rapid succession, that is, temporal object segmentation. Here we examined the role of magnocellular neurons in this process. We measured temporal object segmentation via object substitution masking (OSM), which reflects the failure to distinguish the target and mask as distinct objects through time. We isolated the selective role of magnocellular neurons by comparing performance under conditions of pulsed luminance pedestals, which are designed to saturate the magnocellular response, with that in a steady-pedestal condition that leaves both magnocellular and parvocellular channels available to process the target. Across two experiments, we found that OSM magnitude was enhanced under pulsed-pedestal conditions, in which the magnocellular response was impaired. This indicates that magnocellular neurons contribute to temporal object segmentation. Given that temporal object segmentation has consequences for which stimuli are consciously perceived, this demonstrates a functional mechanism via which magnocellular neurons contribute to determining the contents conscious perception. Implications for models of specialization of dorsal and ventral cortical streams are discussed.Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE140101734 [ 2014 - 2016

Monotherapy with major antihypertensive drug classes and risk of hospital admissions for mood disorders

Major depressive and bipolar disorders predispose to atherosclerosis, and there is accruing data from animal model, epidemiological, and genomic studies that commonly used antihypertensive drugs may have a role in the pathogenesis or course of mood disorders. In this study, we propose to determine whether antihypertensive drugs have an impact on mood disorders through the analysis of patients on monotherapy with different classes of antihypertensive drugs from a large hospital database of 525 046 patients with follow-up for 5 years. There were 144 066 eligible patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria: age 40 to 80 years old at time of antihypertensive prescription and medication exposure >90 days. The burden of comorbidity assessed by Charlson and Elixhauser scores showed an independent linear association with mood disorder diagnosis. The median time to hospital admission with mood disorder was 847 days for the 299 admissions (641 685 person-years of follow-up). Patients on angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers had the lowest risk for mood disorder admissions, and compared with this group, those on β-blockers (hazard ratio=2.11; [95% confidence interval, 1.12–3.98]; P=0.02) and calcium antagonists (2.28 [95% confidence interval, 1.13–4.58]; P=0.02) showed higher risk, whereas those on no antihypertensives (1.63 [95% confidence interval, 0.94–2.82]; P=0.08) and thiazide diuretics (1.56 [95% confidence interval, 0.65–3.73]; P=0.32) showed no significant difference. Overall, our exploratory findings suggest possible differential effects of antihypertensive medications on mood that merits further study: calcium antagonists and β-blockers may be associated with increased risk, whereas angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers may be associated with a decreased risk of mood disorders

Stochastic Lag Time in Nucleated Linear Self-Assembly

Protein aggregation is of great importance in biology, e.g., in amyloid fibrillation. The aggregation processes that occur at the cellular scale must be highly stochastic in nature because of the statistical number fluctuations that arise on account of the small system size at the cellular scale. We study the nucleated reversible self-assembly of monomeric building blocks into polymer-like aggregates using the method of kinetic Monte Carlo. Kinetic Monte Carlo, being inherently stochastic, allows us to study the impact of fluctuations on the polymerisation reactions. One of the most important characteristic features in this kind of problem is the existence of a lag phase before self-assembly takes off, which is what we focus attention on. We study the associated lag time as a function of the system size and kinetic pathway. We find that the leading order stochastic contribution to the lag time before polymerisation commences is inversely proportional to the system volume for large-enough system size for all nine reaction pathways tested. Finite-size corrections to this do depend on the kinetic pathway

Path integrals for stiff polymers applied to membrane physics

Path integrals similar to those describing stiff polymers arise in the Helfrich model for membranes. We show how these types of path integrals can be evaluated and apply our results to study the thermodynamics of a minority stripe phase in a bulk membrane. The fluctuation induced contribution to the line tension between the stripe and the bulk phase is computed, as well as the effective interaction between the two phases in the tensionless case where the two phases have differing bending rigidities.Comment: 11 pages RevTex, 4 figure

Relative space-time asymmetries in pion and nucleon production in non-central nucleus-nucleus collisions at high energies

We propose to use the ratio of the pion-proton correlation functions evaluated under different conditions to study the relative space-time asymmetries in pion and proton emission (pion and nucleon source relative shifts) in high energy heavy ion collision. We address the question of the non-central collisions, where the sources can be shifted spatially both in the longitudinal and in the transverse directions in the reaction plane. We use the RQMD event generator to illustrate the effect and the technique.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 3 figures included as eps file

Improved Coulomb Correction Formulae for Bose-Einstein Correlations

We present improved Coulomb correction formulae for Bose-Einstein correlations including also exchange term and use them to calculate appropriate correction factors for several source functions. It is found that Coulomb correction to the exchange function in the Bose-Einstein correlations cannot be neglected.Comment: LaTex file, 8 pages, hard copies of 6 (multiple) figures available on request to [email protected] or [email protected]

An Improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics Model and its Applications to Fusion Reaction near Barrier

An improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics model is proposed. By using this model, the properties of ground state of nuclei from $^{6}$Li to $^{208}$Pb can be described very well with one set of parameters. The fusion reactions for $^{40}$Ca+$^{90}$Zr, $^{40}$Ca+$^{96}$Zr and $^{48}$Ca+$^{90}$Zr at energy near barrier are studied by this model. The experimental data of the fusion cross sections for $^{40}$Ca+$^{90,96}$Zr at the energy near barrier can be reproduced remarkably well without introducing any new parameters. The mechanism for the enhancement of fusion probability for fusion reactions with neutron-rich projectile or target is analyzed.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, 3 table

Spicules and the effect of rigid rods on enclosing membrane tubes

Membrane tubes (spicules) arise in cells, or artificial membranes, in the nonlinear deformation regime due to, e.g. the growth of microtubules, actin filaments or sickle hemoglobin fibers towards a membrane. We calculate the axial force exerted by the cylindrical membrane tube, and its average radius, by taking into account steric interactions between the fluctuating membrane and the enclosed rod. The force required to confine a fluctuating membrane near the surface of the enclosed rod diverges as the separation approaches zero. This results in a smooth crossover of the axial force between a square root and a linear dependence on the membrane tension as the tension increases and the tube radius shrinks. This crossover can occur at the most physiologically relevant membrane tensions. Our work may be important in (i) interpreting experiments in which axial force is related to the tube radius or membrane tension (ii) dynamical theories for biopolymer growth in narrow tubes where these fluctuation effects control the tube radius.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur