O papel da escola na sociedade actual: implicações no ensino das ciências

Longe vai o tempo em que o livro único permanecia inalterável por longos e longos anos, símbolo da estabilidade do sistema educativo. Longe vai o tempo em que a sociedade sabia o que exigir da Escola e, por seu lado, esta sabia o que oferecer à sociedade. Longe vai o tempo em que os filhos estudavam pelos livros dos pais e o domínio dos conteúdos chavões (sobretudo na História e Geografia de Portugal) era glória nos serões familiares

Educação em Ciências: Novas Orientações

Ao pretender apresentar uma panorâmica sobre as tendências actuais no ensino das ciências, forçoso se torna fazer alguma referência acerca do que tem sido o ensino das ciências nas últimas décadas e do seu efeito na aprendizagem dos alunos. Durante muitos anos o ensino das ciências nos diferentes níveis de escolaridade esteve centrado na memorização de conteúdos (factos e leis), na realização de actividades de mecanização e na aplicação de regras à resolução de questões semelhantes às anteriormente apresentadas e resolvidas pelo professor (Costa,1999). Esta visão mecanicista entendia as ciências como um corpo organizado de conhecimentos e regras a aprender e a aplicar sem qualquer ligação com a realidade (Domingos, Neves & Galhardo, 1987)

Tunable CAR T Cell Responses Achieved by the Disruption of Protein-Protein Interactions via the Administration of a Small Molecule

Introduction: The adoptive transfer of T-cells engineered to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) has significantly widened the applicability of passive immunotherapy in cancer. Up until now, several studies of CAR therapy have emerged as a promising treatment for cancer, although there are serious concerns regarding potential risk of acute and chronic toxicity. Given the ability of CAR T-cells to engraft and proliferate in the patient, toxicity from excessive activity can be progressive and fulminant. This highlights the need for technologies to remotely control and tune the potency of the CAR T-cells after administration. Suicide gene approaches allow a level of control of CAR T-cell therapy. However, as suicide switches result in permanent loss of all engineered T-cells, a new strategy which can temporarily reduce or stop CAR T-cell activity without triggering CAR T-cell apoptosis is desirable. One way to achieve this is to use small molecules that present desired pharmacologic properties, such as tetracycline and analogues doxycycline and minocycline. Results: Therefore, we developed a Tet-Off signalling switch that enables tetracycline-dependent, titratable, and reversible control over CAR T-cells. The CAR was split into two: an antigen recognition component fused with TetR (Tet repressor) and a signalling component fused with TiP (TetR interacting peptide). Both TiP and tetracycline are known to bind to TetR with a high affinity. We predicted that although TiP bound to the same part of TetR as tetracycline, Tetracycline would bind with a much higher affinity than TiP and hence rapidly displace TiP. First with eGFP, we showed that in the absence of tetracycline such a system results in membrane localization of a TiP fusion protein, with the eGFP being displaced to the cytoplasm in the presence of tetracycline. Next as a CAR, we showed that in the absence of tetracycline, the two CAR components associate and the CAR signals in the presence of cognate antigens. On the addition of tetracycline, TiP was displaced and the receptor stopped signalling. Depending on the concentration of tetracycline present, tetCAR T-cells showed titratable activity, from as strong as that of conventional CAR T-cells to undetectable. Similar results were obtained when using the analogues doxycycline and minocycline. We tested the effectiveness of this tetCAR in murine and human T-cells. These results included IL-2 and IFN-γ production, the tetCAR T-cell ability to control target cell killing and also the killing of multiple types of target cells by the tetCAR T-cells. Regarding reversibility, we showed that the inhibition process is reversible. Once we wash off the tetracycline from the cultures, tetCAR T-cells regain activity. Conclusion: We successfully generated and controlled the activity of tetCAR T-cells by tetracycline administration

Disparities in geographical access to hospitals in Portugal

UIDB/04647/2020 UIDP/04647/2020 UIDB/04084/2020Geographical accessibility to health care services is widely accepted as relevant to improve population health. However, measuring it is very complex, mainly when applied at administrative levels that go beyond the small-area level. This is the case in Portugal, where the municipality is the administrative level that is most appropriate for implementing policies to improve the access to those services. The aim of this paper is to assess whether inequalities in terms of access to a hospital in Portugal have improved over the last 20 years. A population-weighted driving time was applied using the census tract population, the roads network, the reference hospitals' catchment area and the municipality boundaries. The results show that municipalities are 25 min away from the hospital-3 min less than in 1991-and that there is an association with premature mortality, elderly population and population density. However, disparities between municipalities are still huge. Municipalities with higher rates of older populations, isolated communities or those located closer to the border with Spain face harder challenges and require greater attention from local administration. Since municipalities now have responsibilities for health, it is important they implement interventions at the local level to tackle disparities impacting access to healthcare.publishersversionpublishe

Unveiling the gene-expression profile of pollen

Four recent papers have characterized the transcription profile of pollen grains, showing striking differences between gene expression in pollen and other plant tissues. These studies increase the number of known pollen-expressed genes by as much as 50-fold and have identified many novel genes that are potentially pollen-specific

L’enseignement de la modalité linguistique en primaire – des voies méthodologiques possibles et souhaitables

Le fait que les enfants sont exposés dès un âge précoce à des énoncés modalisés (Choi, 2006), exprimant surtout l'obligation et la permission, aurait pu faire croire que ce sujet prenait part à l'école primaire, mais ce n’était pas le cas qu’avant les 12 ans dans plusieurs pays, tels que le Portugal, l’Espagne et la France. Après une caractérisation linguistique de la modalité (van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998 ; Oliveira & Mendes, 2013), nous présentons un parcours didactique conçu pour des élèves de 3ème année de l’enseignement primaire, dans lequel on envisage une approche implicite de la modalité dans le but de contribuer à l'éducation linguistique des élèves et à la formation de citoyens informés et socialement compétents (Vieira, 2006). Pour cela, on utilise des méthodologies diversifiées (Arslan, 2010 ; Fernández-Corbacho, 2014 ; Figueiroa-Rego, 2015), de façon à promouvoir des pratiques de réflexion critique sur le monde à travers le langage

Providing multiple external views on directory user interfaces

Although there are many types of Directory User Interfaces they ali tend to give to their users the same global view of the Directory. However, a typical user will only be interested in some portion of the total Directory database. Providing such specific view might be done for instance by restricting the default DUA display to a subset of object classes or attribute types meaningful to a particular application. The work described in this paper is not about interface styles or user friendliness. It is about defining mechanisms that allow for users to easily setup several configurations based on the information they intend to access. They should be adaptable to a variety of interfaces and, to demonstrate that, as well as raising some practical implementation issues, two interfaces based on these concepts are presented: A windows LDAP DUA and a WWW to X.500 gateway. Directory interfaces adopting this model are expected to help users make more advanced uses of the Directory and at the same time not need such a good knowledge of X.SOOand its operations

Analysis of Dyscalculia Evidences through Artificial Intelligence Systems

Dyscalculia is usually perceived of as a specific learning difficulty for mathematics or, more appropriately, arithmetic. Because definitions and diagnoses of dyscalculia are in their infancy and sometimes are contradictory. However, mathematical learning difficulties are certainly not in their infancy and are very prevalent and often devastating in their impact. Co-occurrence of learning disorders appears to be the rule rather than the exception. Co-occurrence is generally assumed to be a consequence of risk factors that are shared between disorders, for example, working memory. However, it should not be assumed that all dyslexics have problems with mathematics, although the percentage may be very high, or that all dyscalculics have problems with reading and writing. Because mathematics is very developmental, any insecurity or uncertainty in early topics will impact on later topics, hence to need to take intervention back to basics. However, it may be worked out in order to decrease its degree of severity. For example, disMAT, an app developed for android may help children to apply mathematical concepts, without much effort, that is turning in itself, a promising tool to dyscalculia treatment. Thus, this work will focus on the development of a Decision Support System to estimate children evidences of dyscalculia, based on data obtained on-the-fly with disMAT. The computational framework is built on top of a Logic Programming approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, grounded on a Case-based approach to computing, that allows for the handling of incomplete, unknown, or even self-contradictory information