La importancia y la aplicabilidad de la Filosofía para niños en la sociedad actual

Should Philosophy be made accessible and applied to children? In what way can Philosophy for Children help children/youngsters to think better? How can we learn to think? This article shows what Philosophy for Children is meant to be, pointing out its real impact in a society where we increasingly find children and youngster gravitating towards “standardized” [“patterned”] behaviours, opinions, attitudes, and values, who lack their own opinions, don't want to waste time thinking, and without the awareness of how important thinking is to their lives, thus stifling the natural curiosity that is a quality of every human being, and so are alienated from society's real consciousness. It is necessary to predispose children and young people to stop and think, to know how to listen and make themselves heard, to contemplate the unknown with serenity and to enjoy it as something wonderful and undiscovered. Philosophy can be applied to children. We must put the natural and spontaneous restlessness of children to use. Philosophy for Children can aid children and youngsters in developing their reasoning, can teach them to think how to think better, leaving them more critical, argumentative, creative, inquisitive, introspective and with their own opinionsDeberá la filosofía volverse accesible y aplicarse a los niños? De qué forma la Filosofía para niños puede ayudar a los niños/jóvenes a pensar mejor? Cómo podemos aprender a pensar? Este artículo demuestra lo que es la Filosofía para niños, realzando su real importancia en una sociedad donde cada vez hay más niños y jóvenes que se limitan a estandarizar comportamientos, opiniones, actitudes y valores, que no tienen opinión propia, que no quieren perder su tiempo pensando, que no tienen conciencia del pensar en sus vidas, matando así la curiosidad natural que persiste en todo el ser humano, y por eso alienados de la conciencia real de la sociedad. Es necesario preceptuar los niños y jóvenes a parar para que piensen, a saber oír y a hacerse oír, a contemplar y mirar el incógnito con placidez y a apreciarlo como algo maravilloso y por descubrir. La filosofía puede aplicarse a los niños. Tenemos que usar la inquietud natural y espontánea de los niños. La filosofía para niños puede ayudar a los niños y a los jóvenes en el desarrollo del razonamiento, puede enseñarlos a pensar cómo podemos pensar mejor, volviéndolos más críticos, argumentativos, creativos, preguntones, reflexivos y con opiniones propias

Water Supply in Rural Ghana: Do Women Benefit?

Women?s income poverty in developing countries is usually associated with time poverty. The time that women spend on domestic chores represents significant forgone income. Infrastructure provision potentially reduces women?s time burden. The saving includes time spent on collecting, loading and purifying water. That saving would enable women to engage in remunerated activities, dedicate more time to pursuing education, or have a little leisure. In this One Pager, we investigate the impact of water provision on women?s time allocation in rural Ghana.Water Supply in Rural Ghana: Do Women Benefit?

On Poisson quasi-Nijenhuis Lie algebroids

We propose a definition of Poisson quasi-Nijenhuis Lie algebroids as a natural generalization of Poisson quasi-Nijenhuis manifolds and show that any such Lie algebroid has an associated quasi-Lie bialgebroid. Therefore, also an associated Courant algebroid is obtained. We introduce the notion of a morphism of quasi-Lie bialgebroids and of the induced Courant algebroids morphism and provide some examples of Courant algebroid morphisms. Finally, we use paired operators to deform doubles of Lie and quasi-Lie bialgebroids and find an application to generalized complex geometry.Comment: 12 page

The impact of team work engagement on team satisfaction and the role of psychological safety as a moderator

The purpose of this master thesis is the study of the impact of Team Work Engagement (TWE) on Team Satisfaction in the presence or absence of Psychological Safety. Data was collected through a laboratory study and by running a survey in real world teams in organizations. It was expected from the research that TWE would have a positive effect on Team Satisfaction and that teams who experienced high levels of TWE and high levels of Psychological Safety, would be more satisfied than teams who experienced high levels of TWE but low levels of Psychological Safety. The results confirmed that TWE positively impacts Team Satisfaction. They also showed that TWE has only a small impact on Team Satisfaction when Psychological Safety is already high.O objectivo desta tese de mestrado é o estudo do impacto do Team Work Engagement (TWE) na Satisfação da equipa na presença ou ausência de Segurança Psicológica. Os dados foram recolhidos através de um estudo de laboratório e da realização de um inquérito a equipas reais em organizações. Seria esperado que o TWE tivesse um impacto positivo na Satisfação da equipa e que equipas com elevados níveis de TWE e de Segurança Psicológica apresentassem uma maior Satisfação do que equipas com elevados níveis de TWE mas baixos níveis de Segurança Psicológica. Os resultados confirmam que o TWE influencia positivamente a Satisfação da equipa e revelam que o TWE tem apenas um ligeiro impacto na Satisfação da equipa quando a Segurança Psicológica é alta

Ligand discovery and structural-functional analysis of proteins involved in plant cell wall degradation

The plant cell wall is constituted by recalcitrant polysaccharides with diverse sequences that comprise an abundant source of terrestrial biomass. To efficiently degrade plant cell wall polysaccharides, some cellulolytic bacterial organisms, such as Clostridium thermocellum and Ruminococcus flavefaciens, have an extracellular multi-enzyme complex with catalytic and non-catalytic carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs). CBMs play a crucial role in enhancing the catalytic efficiency of the enzymes by proximity effect, cell attachment or targeting and disruptive function. The Carbohydrate Active enZymes database (CAZy) organizes the identified CBMs by sequence similarity into different families. Deposition of CBM sequences in the CAZy database is continually growing for which characterization and structure-function analysis is required. In this study we aim to characterize the carbohydrate ligand specificities of C. thermocellum ATCC 27405 and R. flavefaciens FD-1 CBMs assigned to different families in the CAZy database. We performed carbohydrate microarray screening analysis for ligand discovery and crystallization screenings aiming to solve the 3D structures of the CBM-ligand complexes by X-ray crystallography. To complement the information provided by these methodologies we also performed ITC (Isothermal Titration Calorimetry), MST (Microscale Thermophoresis) and affinity gel electrophoresis. With the implementation of this approach it was possible to elucidate different carbohydrate binding specificities for biotechnologically relevant CBMs. The results from the initial carbohydrate microarray screening constitute a functional start point to target CBMs for structural-functional analysis of carbohydrate-recognition. C. thermocellum family 50 (CtCBM50) reveals to be a novel chitin binding LysM domain and binding with insoluble chitin and a β-(1-4)-GlcNAc chitin oligosaccharide was identified. R. flavefaciens FD-1 family 62 CBM (RfCBM62) reveals to be highly specific for a pectic polysaccharide for which the structure is being investigated and binding to galacturonan DP4 was observed. In the scope of this thesis, and as the structural characterization was not achieved in due time, the sequence similarity to known structures inspired the attempt to computationally produce similarity models for the two CBMs. The (hypothetical) conservation of the secondary structures revealed some structural features of the proteins under study. An important outcome from this integrative study is the possibility to understand the versatility of plant and fungal saccharide sequences and their recognition by the different CBM families. The different binding patterns observed could reflect adaptive pressures of the microorganisms to their respective ecological niches, translating in divergent evolution of the proteome

Entrepreneurship, methodologies in higher education an experience in a portuguese business school

Today entrepreneurship education is an important issue to improve the process of creating new firm assuming new risks and rewards. The theoretical discussion about around the question: “Entrepreneurs are born or made?” assume that is possible educate to be entrepreneurs. Schools have an important role in this process. Believing in this possibility our Business School developed a set of pedagogical methodologies supported in apprenticeship based on “learning by doing”. This pedagogical methodology was created through a study of best practices. This study aims to propose a set of innovative methodologies and students perceptions about their apprenticeship experience/process. The study concludes with a set of recommendations and a best practices manual useful to appliance in higher education.Innovative methodologies; entrepreneurship education; learning by doing

Mother's stress, mood and emotional involvement with the infant: 3 months before and 3 months after childbirth

Adverse effects of maternal anxiety and depression are well documented, namely on the foetus/child behaviour and development, but not as much attention has been given to the mother's emotional involvement with the offspring. To study mother's prenatal and postpartum stress, mood and emotional involvement with the infant, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the Mother-to-Infant Bonding Scale were filled in and cortisol levels were measured, 3 months before and 3 months after childbirth, in a sample of 91 Portuguese women. From pregnancy to the postpartum period, mother's cortisol levels, anxiety and emotional involvement toward the child decrease. No significant change was observed regarding mother's depression. Mother's depression predicted a worse emotional involvement before childbirth, while mother's anxiety predicted a worse emotional involvement with the infant after childbirth. Additionally, pregnant women with a worse emotional involvement with the offspring are at risk of poorer emotional involvement with the infant and higher anxiety and depression at 3 months postpartum. It should be given more attention to mother's poor emotional involvement with the offspring during pregnancy, as it interferes with her emotional involvement with the infant and her psychological adjustment 3 months after childbirth.We would like to thank the Human Development and Health Service of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Ref. 48914), the Bial Foundation (Ref. 58/02) and all the mothers that participated in this study

Atitudes e perspectivas de conflitos com o lobo no centro de Portugal

Portuguese wolf populations suffered a decrease during the 20th century mainly due to the expansion of road network, increasing number of forest fires, decrease of wild prey populations, and human persecution. This is particularly worrying in Central Portugal, South of River Douro, where populations are small, highly fragmented and isolated, with little genetic variability and instable reproduction, and low density of wild prey. Conflict in this area is aggravated by high levels of livestock depredation, where livestock makes up for more than 90% of wolves diet. This antagonizes Humans towards wildlife, that typically respond by recurring to activities such as illegal pouching or poisoning in order to solve their problem. This problematic is recognized as the first cause of large carnivores’ persecution and population decline. By surveying individual attitudes toward wolves in central Portugal, we believe that it is possible to understand and even predict behaviour towards the specie. This was done using a questionnaire to sample local population, a total of 222 questionnaires from three interest groups (general public, N=119; livestock owners, N=88; and hunters, N=24) were analysed. We measured Attitude, Fear and Knowledge Index, tested correlation between Index and examined which variables influenced Attitudes and Fear. Attitudes towards wolves were positive, even though Fear high and Knowledge was low. We also found that attitudes tend to be more positive with the decrease of fear and the increase of knowledge, and fear tends to decrease with the increase of knowledge. The main variable influencing attitudes negatively was found to be Fear, and age for the livestock owners, where people older than 60 years old tend to have more negative attitude. As for Fear the main influenceable variables belong to the female gender, a low knowledge index and the knowledge/having suffered from wolf depredation. These results can be used to increase locals’ tolerance, by creating tailored conservational measures together with all the stakeholders’ groupDurante o século XX, a população portuguesa de lobos sofreu um decréscimo devido à expansão rodoviária, aumento de fogos florestais, diminuição de presas selvagens e à perseguição humana. Isto é particularmente preocupante no centro de Portugal, a sul do rio Douro, onde as populações são pequenas, altamente fragmentadas e isoladas, com baixa variabilidade genética e reprodução instável e baixa densidade de presas selvagens. Nesta área, os conflitos são agravados devido aos altos níveis de predação a gado doméstico, que constitui mais de 90% da dieta dos lobos. Este tipo de comportamentos dificulta as interações entre os humanos e a vida selvagem, instigando muitas vezes, comportamentos como a caça ilegal ou envenenamento para solucionar o “problema”, sendo esta a principal causa de perseguição e decréscimo das populações de grandes carnívoros. Avaliando as atitudes individuais para com o lobo no centro de Portugal, acreditamos ser possível perceber e prever comportamentos para com a espécie. Recorremos a um questionário para amostrar a população local, um total de 222 questionários de três grupos alvo (publico geral, N= 119; donos de gado, N= 88; e caçadores, N= 24) foram analisados. Medimos os Índices de Atitude, Medo e Conhecimento, testamos a correlação entre índices e examinamos quais as variáveis que influenciavam as Atitudes e o Medo. As atitudes para com o lobo são positivas, apesar do índice de Medo ser elevado e o Conhecimento baixo. Também descobrimos que as atitudes tendem a ser mais positivas quando o medo é baixo e o conhecimento alto. As principais variáveis que influenciam as atitudes negativamente são o medo e a idade no caso dos donos de gado, em que pessoas mais velhas que 60 anos tinham atitudes negativas. Em relação ao medo, as principais variáveis que o influenciam são pessoas do género feminino, o baixo índice de conhecimento e ter conhecimento/sofrido ataques a gado doméstico. Estes resultados podem ser utilizados para aumentar a tolerâncias dos locais, criando medidas conservacionista personalizadas em conjunto com todos os grupos de interesseMestrado em Ecologia Aplicad