Tradição em políticas ativas do mercado de trabalho e o impacto da crise das dívidas soberanas: Uma análise comparativa

Com a crise de 2008 a União Europeia (UE) viu-se mergulhada em problemas como o desemprego jovem e défices públicos elevados. Como resposta, a UE adotou a estratégia do Investimento Social (IS) para reduzir o desemprego, nomeadamente através de Políticas Ativas do Mercado de Trabalho (PAMT), enquanto apostou na austeridade para reduzir as dívidas públicas elevadas. Estas duas abordagens políticas incompatíveis geraram uma tensão em países que combinavam desempregos elevados e dívidas públicas altas, algo particularmente visível nos países mais afetados pela crise das dívidas soberanas, como sejam os países do Sul da Europa, Portugal e Espanha. A questão que procuramos responder neste trabalho é: “Terá a crise das dívidas soberanas dificultado a continuidade no investimento em PAMT nos países do Sul da Europa?”. Para tal, irei efetuar uma análise qualitativa dos dados de 69 PAMT, recolhidos no período de 2008 a 2017, recorrendo à base de dados Labour Market Reforms Database (LABREF), e analisar os países Portugal, Espanha, Dinamarca e Suécia. Os resultados obtidos sugerem que existe descontinuidade no investimento em PAMT nos países Portugal e Espanha, enquanto que os países Dinamarca e Suécia mantiveram a sua aposta consistente em PAMT, mesmo no pico da crise.When the crises began in 2008 the European Union started to have a lot of issues with youth unemployment and high public deficits. To tackle this issue, the European Union, used a strategic based on Social Investment with the goal of reducing the unemployment, namely with active labour market policies, while use austerity to reduce the high public debts. These two political approaches are incompatible and create a conflict, namely in countries that combine high youth unemployment levels with high public debts, some that is particularly visible in the most affected countries by the sovereign debt crisis, such as the ones of the South of Europe like Portugal and Spain. The question of this work is: “Has the sovereign debt crisis hindered the continuing investment in active labour market policies in South of Europe countries?”. To answer that, I will make a qualitative analysis of 69 active labour market policies, that were collected between 2008 and 2017, using the LABREF database, and analyzing the countries Portugal, Spain, Denmark and Sweden. The results suggest that there is a discontinuity in investment in active labour market policies in the countries Portugal and Spain, while the countries Denmark and Sweden still have consistent investment in active labour market policies, even though the crisis was in the peak

Proteasome inhibition prevents cell death induced by the chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin downstream of DNA damage

Cisplatin is a highly effective chemotherapeutic drug acting as a DNA-damaging agent that induces apoptosis of rapidly proliferating cells. Unfortunately, cellular resistance still occurs. Mutations in p53 in a large fraction of tumor cells contribute to defects in apoptotic pathways and drug resistance. To uncover new strategies to eliminate tumors through a p53-independent pathway, we established a simplified model devoid of p53 to study cisplatin-induced regulated cell death, using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We previously showed that cisplatin induces an active form of cell death accompanied by DNA condensation and fragmentation/degradation, but no significant mitochondrial dysfunction. We further demonstrated that proteasome inhibition, either with MG132 or genetically, increased resistance to cisplatin. In this study, we sought to determine how proteasome inhibition is important for cisplatin resistance by analyzing how it affects several phenotypes associated with the DNA damage response. We found MG132 does not seem to affect the activation of the DNA damage response or increase damage tolerance. Moreover, central modulators of the DNA damage response are not required for cisplatin resistance imparted by MG132. These results suggest the proteasome is involved in modulation of cisplatin toxicity downstream of DNA damage. Proteasome inhibitors can sensitize tumor cells to cisplatin, but protect others from cisplatin-induced cell death. Elucidation of this mechanism will therefore aid in the development of new strategies to increase the efficacy of chemotherapy.We thank Dr. Richard Kolodner, Dr. Steven Reed, and Dr. Xiaolan Zhao for strains, as well as Dr. Vincent Pennaneach for help with the mutation frequencies protocol. This work was supported by FCT I.P. through the strategic funding UID/BIA/04050/2013 and FCT-ANR/BEX-BCM/0175/2012, as well as a Post-doc fellowship to S. Chaves (SFRH/BPD/89980/2012) and a PhD fellowship to A. Rego (SFRH/BD/79523/2011)

Monitoring COVID-19 and Influenza: The Added Value of a Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System in Portugal

Background: Severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) surveillance is recommended to assess the severity of respiratory infections disease. In 2021, the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge, in collaboration with two general hospitals, implemented a SARI sentinel surveillance system based on electronic health registries. We describe its application in the 2021/2022 season and compare the evolution of SARI cases with the COVID-19 and influenza activity in two regions of Portugal. Methods: The main outcome of interest was the weekly incidence of patients hospitalized due to SARI, reported within the surveillance system. SARI cases were defined as patients containing ICD-10 codes for influenza-like illness, cardiovascular diagnosis, respiratory diagnosis, and respiratory infection in their primary admission diagnosis. Independent variables included weekly COVID-19 and influenza incidence in the North and Lisbon and Tagus Valley regions. Pearson and cross-correlations between SARI cases, COVID-19 incidence and influenza incidence were estimated. Results: A high correlation between SARI cases or hospitalizations due to respiratory infection and COVID-19 incidence was obtained (ρ = 0.78 and ρ = 0.82, respectively). SARI cases detected the COVID-19 epidemic peak a week earlier. A weak correlation was observed between SARI and influenza cases (ρ = -0.20). However, if restricted to hospitalizations due to cardiovascular diagnosis, a moderate correlation was observed (ρ = 0.37). Moreover, hospitalizations due to cardiovascular diagnosis detected the increase of influenza epidemic activity a week earlier. Conclusion: In the 2021/2022 season, the Portuguese SARI sentinel surveillance system pilot was able to early detect the COVID-19 epidemic peak and the increase of influenza activity. Although cardiovascular manifestations associated with influenza infection are known, more seasons of surveillance are needed, to confirm the potential use of cardiovascular hospitalizations as an indicator of influenza activity.The data of the study were originally collected as part of the project “Establishing Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SARI) surveillance and performing hospital-based COVID-19 transmission studies,” and the “Vaccine Effectiveness, Burden, and Impact Studies (VEBIS) of COVID-19 and Influenza,” funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control through a service contract with Epiconcept (ECD.11236 and Amendment Nos. 1 ECD.11810 and ECDC/2021/016).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Estudo Prospetivo de Coorte

INTRODUCTION: The biggest challenge in the treatment of acute ankle sprain is the uncertainty of the prognosis. The traditional classifications have several interpretations and little correlation with prognosis. In this study we propose a new classification for acute ankle sprain only based on clinical criteria. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We prospectively evaluated all patients with an ankle sprain, aged between 18 and 45 years, admitted to a hospital during a 24 month period. The minimum follow-up period was 12 months. The sprains were classified, in the first few days (CASCaIS-Initial), according to autonomous gait capacity, inspection and palpation. After a few weeks (CASCaIS-Deferred), it was complemented with the mechanical evaluation of ligaments through the ankle pivot test. RESULTS: Among the 49 patients who completed the follow-up, none of those who had a pivot-negative test progressed to chronic ankle instability (CAI). Nine of the 33 patients (27%) with a positive pivot progressed to CAI (p = 0.022). The evaluation of CASCaIS-Deferred demonstrated an association with CAI (p = 0.018). CONCLUSION: This classification proved to be a simple, inexpensive, and reliable tool that clinicians can use to determine the prognosis of the sprain.publishersversionepub_ahead_of_prin

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Algorithms for the star discrepancy subset selection problem

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Informática apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaAs discrepâncias quantificam diferenças entre duas medições de conjuntos de pontos. A discrepância estrela é um tipo particular de discrepância com aplicações em áreas como a estatística e a geração de números pseudo-aleatórios. Pode ser definida como o supremo do valor absoluto da discrepância local para todos os pontos no hipercubo unitário. A selecção de subconjuntos baseada na discrepância estrela consiste em encontrar o subconjunto de k pontos de um conjunto de n pontos, n ≥ k, que minimiza a discrepância estrela. O objectivo deste trabalho é desenvolver algoritmos de branch and bound que sejam capazes de resolver este problema para um conjunto arbitrário de pontos, número de dimensões e valor de k. Foram desenvolvidas duas funções de bound que podem ser usadas para resolver este problema para qualquer número de dimensões, bem como um conjunto de melhorias para o algoritmo base de branch and bound. A nossa abordagem revelou uma melhoria evidente de desempenho, em multiplos cenários diferentes, quando comparada com um algoritmo simples de pesquisa que avalia todos os possíveis subconjuntos. Esta melhoria foi mais significativa para conjuntos de pontos num espaço com duas dimensões.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Discrepancies quantify differences between two measurements of point sets. The star discrepancy is a particular type of discrepancy with application in areas such as statistics and pseudo-random number generation. It can be defined as the supremum of the absolute value of the local discrepancy for all points in the unit hypercube. The star discrepancy subset selection consists of finding the subset of k out of n points that minimizes the star discrepancy. The goal of this work is to develop branch-and-bound algorithms that are able to solve this problem for an arbitrary set of points, number of dimensions and value of k. We have developed two bounding functions that can be used to solve this problem for any number of dimensions, as well as a set of improvements to the base branch-and-bound algorithm. Our approach showed a clear increase in performance, on multiple different scenarios, when compared to a simple search algorithm that evaluates all possible subsets. This increase was most significant for point sets in a two-dimensional space.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Digital Communication: The Case of the University of Aveiro

Relatório de Estágio do Mestrado em Jornalismo e Comunicação apresentado à Faculdade de LetrasPerante um mundo cada vez mais ligado em rede, a importância e o poder do digital está presente em todas as fações da sociedade, influenciando a forma como comunicamos e estabelecemos contactos com indivíduos, instituições, organizações e empresas. O panorama comunicacional, em todo o mundo, alterou-se profundamente, abrindo precedentes até então inexistentes. No presente trabalho refletimos sobre a emergência da sociedade de informação, impulsionada pelo aparecimento e, consequente impacto resultante da internet, da world wide web e das redes sociais. Ainda na mesma linha de pensamento, abordamos questões relacionadas com o digital e a forma como as instituições utilizam o mesmo para comunicarem com o seu público, principalmente, no caso das universidades e dos institutos politécnicos. É objetivo do presente trabalho empírico analisar e compreender em que pressupostos se sustenta a comunicação digital praticada na secção de notícias do website da Universidade de Aveiro. O recurso a estas plataformas online permite, às universidades, manter o público interno e externo informado dos acontecimentos mais marcantes para a instituição. Desta forma, à distância de um clique, os utilizadores das plataformas digitais acedem a uma série de informações relevantes.Para analisar os conteúdos partilhados na secção de notícias, foram definidos pressupostos específicos: temáticas, tipos de suporte, hiperligações, tipos de hiperligação, comunicação de ciência, público-alvo e conteúdos relacionados com a universidade. Para este efeito, foi definido um período de análise de seis meses, o que permitiu uma avaliação mais detalhada e abrangente. A análise destes pressupostos permitiu aferir os principais suportes da comunicação digital praticada na Universidade de Aveiro.Faced with an increasingly networked world, the importance and power of the digital is present in all factions of society, influencing the way we communicate and establish contacts with individuals, institutions, organizations and companies. The communication landscape around the world has changed profoundly, opening up precedents that did not exist until then. In the present work we reflect on the emergence of the information society, driven by the emergence and consequent impact resulting from the internet, the world wide web and social networks. Still in the same line of thought, we address issues related to the digital and how institutions use it to communicate with their audience, especially in the case of universities and polytechnic institutes.The goal of this empirical work is to analyze and understand in which assumptions the digital communication practiced in the news section of the website of the University of Aveiro is based. The use of these online platforms allows universities to keep the internal and external public informed of the most important events for the institution. This way, at the distance of a click, users of the digital platforms access a series of relevant informations.To analyze the content shared in the news section, specific assumptions were defined: themes, types of support, hyperlinks, types of hyperlink, science communication, target audience and content related to the university. For this purpose, a six-month analysis period was defined, which allowed a more detailed and comprehensive evaluation. The analysis of these assumptions allowed to assess the main supports of digital communication practiced at the University of Aveiro