Alcáçova do Castelo de Mértola : necrópole medieval e moderna

Mértola’s Archaeological Site began its work in the Alcáçova of the Castle of Mértola. Since 1978 we uncovered a dense necropolis from the Late Middle Ages/ Early Modern Period, an intricate Islamic neighbourhood and an impressive paleo-christian religious complex that integrates a crypto-porticus, a 6th century baptistery and an interesting collection of mosaics with a strong Byzantine influence, which have been largely studied and divulged. After the Christian conquest, in 1238, this entire area, formerly occupied by the Islamic neighbourhood, was converted by the victors into a graveyard, from which already more than 700 graves were exhumed. In this article we present one of the less known phases of this important site, the Medieval / Modern necropolis, excavated during the last 35 years of research. The more than 700 graves excavated until now brought to light several Archaeological and Anthropological data, which combined allow a better understanding of this necropolis, of the population that inhabited Mértola, and of the innumerable pathologies that were identified. The study of the graves and human remains allows for the characterisation of ancient societies, particularly of their way of life, religious beliefs, funerary rituals, and in some cases of the activities to which the populations dedicated themselves. This is a work in progress, since the excavations in this site are still underway and each year new subjects are exhumed, allowing further study and also the analysis of older data. In spite of the large quantity of excavated graves, a more systematic Anthropological study only began to be realised a few years ago, now showing its first results

A necrópole medieval e moderna de Mértola : arqueologia funerária

Em Mértola os trabalhos arqueológicos desenvolvem-se desde 1978. Através destes, hoje temos um vasto conhecimento dos diferentes períodos históricos e das diversas funcionalidades das estruturas escavadas. Na zona alta da vila foram postos a descoberto uma densa necrópole da Baixa Idade Média/Moderna, um intrincado bairro de época islâmica e um impressionante complexo religioso paleocristão que integra um criptopórtico, um baptistério do séc. VI e um interessante conjunto de mosaicos de forte influência bizantina, os quais tem sido largamente estudados e divulgados. Depois da conquista cristã, em 1238, toda esta zona, antes ocupada pelo bairro islâmico, é transformada pelos vencedores em cemitério de onde já foram exumadas mais de 700 sepulturas. Desta densa necrópole é possível recolher inúmeras informações antropológicas e arqueológicas. Numa altura em que temos muita informação recolhida, há a necessidade de apresentar a planta geral da necrópole com o número de sepulturas, a sua localização no espaço e a respectiva tipologia, possibilitado um melhor conhecimento do mesmo. Este é um trabalho em progresso, visto que as escavações prosseguem neste local e todos os anos são exumados novos indivíduos, possibilitando a continuidade do estudo e também a análise dos dados mais antigos

Os elementos de adorno na necrópole medieval e moderna da Alcáçova do Castelo de Mértola

Mértola’s Archaeological Site began its work in the Alcáçova of the Castle of Mértola. Since 1978 we uncovered a dense necropolis from the Late Middle Ages /Early Modern Period, an intricate Islamic neighbourhood and an impressive paleo-christian religious complex that integrates a crypto-porticus, a 6th century baptistery and an interesting collection of mosaics with a strong Byzantine influence, which have been largely studied and divulged. After the Christian conquest, in 1238, this entire area, formerly occupied by the Islamic neighbourhood, was converted by the victors into a graveyard, from which already more than 700 graves were exhumed. In this communication, we present the many ornaments found in this Medieval / Modern necropolis, excavated during more than 35 years of research. The exhumed ornaments are mainly metallic objects related to the clothing and adornment of the body. Through these years it has been of great interest to study and identify these objects. Nevertheless we find ourselves in a time in which it becomes of fundamental importance to systematise and to divulge these spoils. The study of the graves and human remains allows for the characterisation of ancient societies, particularly of their way of life, religious beliefs, funerary rituals, and in some cases of the activities to which the populations dedicated themselves. This is a work in progress, since the excavations in this site are still underway and each year new subjects are exhumed, allowing further study and also the analysis of older data. This article complements the communication entitled “The Alcáçova of the Castle of Mértola – a Medieval and Modern necropolis”

The thyroid hormone triiodothyronine controls macrophage maturation and functions: protective role during inflammation.

The endocrine system participates in regulating macrophage maturation, although little is known about the modulating role of the thyroid hormones. In vitro results demonstrate a negative role of one such hormone, triiodothyronine (T 3 ), in triggering the differentiation of bone marrow–derived monocytes into unpolarized macrophages. T 3 -induced macrophages displayed a classically activated (M1) signature. A T 3 -induced M1-priming effect was also observed on polarized macrophages because T 3 reverses alternatively activated (M2) activation, whereas it enhances that of M1 cells. In vivo , circulating T 3 increased the content of the resident macrophages in the peritoneal cavity, whereas it reduced the content of the recruited monocyte-derived cells. Of interest, T 3 significantly protected mice against endotoxemia induced by lipopolysaccharide i.p. injection; in these damaged animals, decreased T 3 levels increased the recruited (potentially damaging) cells, whereas restoring T 3 levels decreased recruited and increased resident (potentially beneficial) cells. These data suggest that the anti-inflammatory effect of T 3 is coupled to the modulation of peritoneal macrophage content, in a context not fully explained by the M1/M2 framework. Thyroid hormone receptor expression analysis and the use of different thyroid hormone receptor antagonists suggest thyroid hormone receptor β1 as the major player mediating T 3 effects on macrophages. The novel homeostatic link between thyroid hormones and the pathophysiological role of macrophages opens new perspectives on the interactions between the endocrine and immune systems

Follistatin induction by nitric oxide through cyclic GMP: a tightly regulated signaling pathway that controls myoblast fusion

The mechanism of skeletal myoblast fusion is not well understood. We show that endogenous nitric oxide (NO) generation is required for myoblast fusion both in embryonic myoblasts and in satellite cells. The effect of NO is concentration and time dependent, being evident only at the onset of differentiation, and direct on the fusion process itself. The action of NO is mediated through a tightly regulated activation of guanylate cyclase and generation of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), so much so that deregulation of cGMP signaling leads to a fusion-induced hypertrophy of satellite-derived myotubes and embryonic muscles, and to the acquisition of fusion competence by myogenic precursors in the presomitic mesoderm. NO and cGMP induce expression of follistatin, and this secreted protein mediates their action in myogenesis. These results establish a hitherto unappreciated role of NO and cGMP in regulating myoblast fusion and elucidate their mechanism of action, providing a direct link with follistatin, which is a key player in myogenesis

Zanine, inovação social e móveis de madeira

José Zanine Caldas (1919-2001), self-taught Brazilian designer and architect, was responsible for not only developing iconic products and houses but also design processes with artisans he worked with. In the design area, his two most important productive moments have significant differences in relation to the technique used, the inclusion of native workers' technical knowledge in the production process, the target audience of the products produced and the concern with the environment. To demonstrate the development of Zanine's thinking, we will compare his work at two different times: the time when he was at the head of Fábrica Móveis Artístico Z, in the 1950s, using imported technology and unspecialized workers in the 1950s. The second is his later “Móveis-Denúncia” series realized in the south of Bahia, designed from building techniques from locals and woodworking non-electrical tools. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion on designer’s role on managing the relation between a group of workers responsible for making the products, the design process and their building techniques from the methods applied by Zanine. . José Zanine Caldas (1919-2001), designer e arquiteto autodidata brasileiro, foi responsável pelo desenvolvimento de produtos e casas icônicas em madeira e também de processos projetuais com artesãos com os quais trabalhava. Na área de design, seus dois momentos produtivos mais importantes apresentam significativas diferenças em relação à técnica utilizada, à inclusão do conhecimento técnico autóctone dos trabalhadores no processo produtivo, ao público-alvo dos produtos realizados e à preocupação com o meio-ambiente. Para demonstrar o desenvolvimento do pensamento de Zanine, compararemos seu trabalho nesses dois momentos diferentes: a época em que esteve à frente da Fábrica Móveis Artísticos Z, década de 1950, usando tecnologia importada e trabalho pouco especializado; e a produção de seus "Móveis-Denúncia", na década de 1970, em que fez móveis no sul da Bahia a partir do conhecimento dos construtores de canoas, de técnicas e ferramentas tradicionais. O artigo visa contribuir com a discussão sobre a função do designer e da produção material em um grupo de trabalhadores responsáveis pela confecção dos produtos a partir de diferentes metodologias projetuais adotadas pelo mesmo autor.

Carolina: a General Corpus of Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese with Provenance, Typology and Versioning Information

This paper presents the first publicly available version of the Carolina Corpus and discusses its future directions. Carolina is a large open corpus of Brazilian Portuguese texts under construction using web-as-corpus methodology enhanced with provenance, typology, versioning, and text integrality. The corpus aims at being used both as a reliable source for research in Linguistics and as an important resource for Computer Science research on language models, contributing towards removing Portuguese from the set of low-resource languages. Here we present the construction of the corpus methodology, comparing it with other existing methodologies, as well as the corpus current state: Carolina's first public version has $653,322,577$ tokens, distributed over $7$ broad types. Each text is annotated with several different metadata categories in its header, which we developed using TEI annotation standards. We also present ongoing derivative works and invite NLP researchers to contribute with their own.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 1 appendi

Nitric Oxide Confers Therapeutic Activity to Dendritic Cells in a Mouse Model of Melanoma

Susceptibility of dendritic cells (DCs) to tumor-induced apoptosis reduces their efficacy in cancer therapy. Here we show that delivery within exponentially growing B16 melanomas of DCs treated ex vivo with nitric oxide (NO), released by the NO donor (z)-1-[2-(2-aminoethyl)-N-(2-ammonioethyl)amino]diazen-1-ium-1,2-diolate (DETA-NO), significantly reduced tumor growth, with cure of 37% of animals. DETA-NO-treated DCs became resistant to tumor-induced apoptosis because DETA-NO prevented tumor-induced changes in the expression of Bcl-2, Bax, and Bcl-xL; activation of caspase-9; and a reduction in the mitochondrial membrane potential. DETA-NO also increased DC cytotoxic activity against tumor cells and DC ability to trigger T-lymphocyte proliferation. All of the effects of DETA-NO were mediated through cGMP generation. NO and NO-generating drugs may therefore be used to increase the anticancer efficacy of DCs

The Fine Tuning of Drp1-Dependent Mitochondrial Remodeling and Autophagy Controls Neuronal Differentiation

Mitochondria play a critical role in neuronal function and neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, that show mitochondrial dysfunctions associated with excessive fission and increased levels of the fission protein dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1). Our data demonstrate that Drp1 regulates the transcriptional program induced by retinoic acid (RA), leading to neuronal differentiation. When Drp1 was overexpressed, mitochondria underwent remodeling but failed to elongate and this enhanced autophagy and apoptosis. When Drp1 was blocked during differentiation by overexpressing the dominant negative form or was silenced, mitochondria maintained the same elongated shape, without remodeling and this increased cell death. The enhanced apoptosis, observed with both fragmented or elongated mitochondria, was associated with increased induction of unfolded protein response (UPR) and ER-associated degradation (ERAD) processes that finally affect neuronal differentiation. These findings suggest that physiological fission and mitochondrial remodeling, associated with early autophagy induction are essential for neuronal differentiation. We thus reveal the importance of mitochondrial changes to generate viable neurons and highlight that, rather than multiple parallel events, mitochondrial changes, autophagy and apoptosis proceed in a stepwise fashion during neuronal differentiation affecting the nuclear transcriptional program