Europe's Top Research Universities in FP 6: Scope and Drivers of Participation

The present note characterises the participation of universities in the European Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development (FP) with a substantive focus on the profile of participation of the top research universities on FP6. A commonly held belief is that top research universities prefer not to participate to the FP. Purported 'cumbersome' administrative procedures, 'low content of basic research' and availability of other, 'more attractive' sources of funding have been put forward as possible explanations. Another stereotype is that the principle of symmetric representation of member states' interests, often leads to charitable participations to organisations from less well-off countries. The present policy note takes a step back and puts such commonly held beliefs to the test. Collectively our findings lend support to the view that FP 6 has managed to involve excellent universities regardless of where they come from, maintaining overall neutrality despite political pressure for either "cohesion" or "juste retour". Europe's top research universities account for the lion's share of higher education participations to the FP6 and act as leading coordinators and key partners. Top research universities participate more in thematic priorities that are close to the knowledge frontier. NoE was the main instrument used by top research universities, in accordance with policy expectations. These findings need to be seen under the light of the study's limitations. First, the quantitative bibliometric criteria employed in the construction of our sample of top research universities may underestimate important research activities that do not usually register on standard bibliometric indicators. Second, the narrow definition of universities chosen may not be representative of the full range of academic research in Europe. Nevertheless, the fact that our sample compares favourably with well-known university rankings makes it likely that our results hold more broadly. We conclude identifying a number of areas worthy of further investigation.JRC.J.3-Knowledge for Growt

Towards a Horizontal Reading of the ERAWATCH Inventory: A Case Study on Policies in Support of Human Resources for Research

The present policy note makes use of information reported in ERAWATCH (EW) national profiles of research policies and the combined EW and TRENDCHART (TC) inventories of support measures to perform a selective review of policies introduced by EU member states in support of Human Resources for Research and Development (HRRD). Despite their limitations, the unique character of the databases permits an overview of the policy landscape in the EU which has been previously impossible to perform in a systematic manner. An original analytical framework has been devised, aiming to extract information relevant to current policy needs and to facilitate comparisons at the levels of policy initiatives and countries. The study¿s main findings can be summarised as follows: -Reported initiatives for HRRD are opening-up to foreign participants and are becoming more internationally oriented; -The overall majority of reported initiatives for HRRD have no thematic / sectoral focus; -Relatively few of the reported policy initiatives aim at improving employment conditions and social security benefits; -At the country level, there are important differences regarding reported policy objectives, target populations, policy domains, instruments and time horizons; -Differences are more pronounced between countries at the low- and high-ends of research capacity (with relative homogeneity around the average). Our exploratory analysis of three experimental indicators - centralisation of governance, diversity of policy domain and specialisation of thematic priorities - shows interesting patterns, some of which are consistent with prior knowledge about national research systems. However, improvements in data consistency across countries will be needed before such indicators become useful policy tools. It should be stressed that the above findings reflect the information reported in the EW and TC inventories and that more general inferences should be complemented with additional sources. The note concludes with lessons for future horizontal analyses and suggestions for improving the reporting of human resource policies.JRC.DDG.J.3-Knowledge for Growt

A importância da equidade no pré-natal em uma estratégia saúde da família (ESF) / The importance of prenatal equity in a family health strategy (ESF)

Objtivo. Relatar experiência durante a prática de enfermagem na assistência ao pré-natal e sua relação com a equidade no atendimento, vivenciada por discentes do 6º semestre de enfermagem da Universidade da Amazônia. Métodos. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo com abordagem qualitativa, do tipo relato de experiência, realizado a partir da vivência de acadêmicos de enfermagem. Resultados. Durante as consultas de enfermagem realizadas com gestantes, identificou-se a importância de o enfermeiro realizar uma boa classificação, afim de reconhecer qual grávida deveria ser atendida de forma mais prioritária. Nessa circunstância, percebia-se princípios do SUS como a equidade, quando as gestantes eram classificadas segundo o risco de sua gravidez e assim a assistência tornava-se diferenciada ao existir uma gestante de alto risco. Conclusão. O trabalho da enfermagem prestado às gestantes é de suma importância para que a mesma possa ser assistida da melhor forma possível, além disso, ao se realizar uma boa consulta de enfermagem, proporciona-se uma assistência humanizada e equânime

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

Educomunicação, Transformação Social e Desenvolvimento Sustentável

Esta publicação apresenta os principais trabalhos dos GTs do II Congresso Internacional de Comunicação e Educação nos temas Transformação social, com os artigos que abordam principalmente Educomunicação e/ou Mídia-Educação, no contexto de políticas de diversidade, inclusão e equidade; e, em Desenvolvimento Sustentável os artigos que abordam os avanços da relação comunicação/educação no contexto da educação ambiental e desenvolvimento sustentável

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Measurement of the inclusive isolated prompt photon cross-section in pp collisions at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV using 35 pb-1 of ATLAS data

A measurement of the differential cross-section for the inclusive production of isolated prompt photons in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is presented. The measurement covers the pseudorapidity ranges |eta|<1.37 and 1.52<=|eta|<2.37 in the transverse energy range 45<=E_T<400GeV. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 35 pb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The yields of the signal photons are measured using a data-driven technique, based on the observed distribution of the hadronic energy in a narrow cone around the photon candidate and the photon selection criteria. The results are compared with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations and found to be in good agreement over four orders of magnitude in cross-section.Comment: 7 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 4 tables, final version published in Physics Letters

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011