“The Past Tense of Our Selves: ‘Um adeus português’ in 1980s Portugal”

The central topic of João Botelho’s “Um adeus português” (1986), is memory in 1980s Portuguese society. The film alternates scenes from 1973, during the colonial war in Africa, with scenes set in 1985, in rural and urban areas of Portugal. In the present essay, I argue that the film enacts the need for a conversation among the Portuguese by opting for a structure that puts its own elements in dialogue. I analyze the film’s stylistic features while also contextualizing it within 1980s Portugal. This study is anchored in five themes: war, race, class, labor, and religion

“Kino Kino Kino Kino Kino: el cine de artificio de Guy Maddin”

Las películas de Maddin absorben al espectador inmediatamente al mismo tiempo que su complejidad resulta agotadora. Dejan una impresión perdurable de un mundo efímero y distanciado, extrañamente cercano al nuestro —como una sombra profunda de él—. Nuestro propósito es reflexionar sobre esta impresión, dando cuenta de cómo la obra del cineasta canadiense logra este efecto. Su arte puede entenderse como anti-naturalista y anti-mimético, ya que no representa nuestra vida cotidiana por simple imitación. Sin embargo, este es un cine en el que la representación del mundo (y sus criaturas) y la construcción a partir de imágenes del pasado (y su artificio) no son opuestos. Ambos rasgos se vuelven significativos porque se basan en la imaginación y la sedimentación de la memoria con el fin de activar el reconocimiento. Recientemente, Guy Maddin ha desarrollado un compromiso más personal con sus propios recuerdos en lo que él llama la Me Trilogy, un aspecto que vale la pena analizar

Religion and Film: Representation, Experience, Meaning

This is a book review of Stefanie Knauss, Religion and Film: Representation, Experience, Meaning (Brill, 2020)

Laughing in Friendship: The Intimate Ensemble Comedy of “Friends”

This paper analyses the sitcom “Friends” (1994-2004) and its performance motifs

Information sharing performance management: a semantic interoperability assessment in the maritime surveillance domain

Information Sharing (IS) is essential for organizations to obtain information in a cost-effective way. If the existing information is not shared among the organizations that hold it, the alternative is to develop the necessary capabilities to acquire, store, process and manage it, which will lead to duplicated costs, especially unwanted if governmental organizations are concerned. The European Commission has elected IS among public administrations as a priority, has launched several IS initiatives, such as the EUCISE2020 project within the roadmap for developing the maritime Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE), and has defined the levels of interoperability essential for IS, which entail Semantic Interoperability (SI). An open question is how can IS performance be managed? Specifically, how can IS as-is, and to-be states and targets be defined, and how can organizations progress be monitored and controlled? In this paper, we propose 11 indicators for assessing SI that contribute to answering these questions. They have been demonstrated and evaluated with the data collected through a questionnaire, based on the CISE information model proposed during the CoopP project, which was answered by five public authorities that require maritime surveillance information and are committed to share information with each other.Postprint (published version

Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, no. 1

For the inaugural issue of “Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies”, we solicited papers discussing Stanley’s autobiographical writings. To mirror types of conversations, we asked for both short and long (though we received mostly the latter)

Cyanotoxins: from poisoning to healing – A possible pathway?

[ENG] Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms known for their multiple, and occasionally dual, ecologic roles. Cyanobacteria are major contributors to oxygen production on earth, but they often bloom in freshwater environments, depleting oxygen and inducing massive fish kills by anoxia. In addition, cyanobacteria are primary producers and the base of the food web in aquatic ecosystems, but they often “crowd out” other phytoplanktonic organisms by competing for nutrients. Cyanobacteria produce an array of beneficial, biologically active compounds, but some of their secondary metabolites are also known to be highly toxic to humans. Many cyanobacterial characteristics are still a mystery and raise many unsolved questions: Why do they bloom? How do they “communicate” with each other and “synchronise” to flourish? How do they colonise so many diverse habitats and are resistant to the most adverse of environments? Why do some strains produce toxins while others do not? Current research on cyanobacteria may provide answers to these “old” questions, but may also challenge us to consider new perspectives. In this paper, we will discuss the potential therapeutic application of cyanobacterial toxins, most of which are known as potent toxicants, but some of which have a non-negligible potential for drug discovery.[ES] Las cianobacterias son microorganismos fotosintéticos conocidos por sus múltiples y a veces opuestos, roles ecológicos: son importantes contribuyentes en la producción de oxígeno en la Tierra, pero a menudo tienen floraciones en ambientes de agua dulce y llegan a agotar el oxígeno del agua, en este caso inducen la muerte masiva de peces por anoxia; son productores primarios y la base de la cadena alimenticia en los ecosistemas acuáticos, pero a menudo impiden la presencia de otros organismos fitoplanctónicos con los que compiten por los nutrientes disponibles; producen una amplia diversidad de compuestos biológicamente activos explotables para aplicaciones útiles, pero algunos de sus metabolitos secundarios también son conocidos por ser altamente tóxicos para los seres humanos. Muchas características de las cianobacterias son todavía un misterio y plantean muchas preguntas sin resolver: ¿por qué tienen floraciones? ¿cómo se comunican entre sí y se sincronizan para producir floraciones? ¿cómo se las arreglan para colonizar hábitats tan diversos y resistir en los entornos más adversos? ¿por qué algunas cepas producen toxinas, mientras que otras no lo hacen? etc. La investigación actual sobre cianobacterias puede dar respuestas a esas preguntas antiguas, pero también puede desafiarnos para debatir nuevas perspectivas. En este artículo discutiremos la posible aplicación terapéutica de las cianotoxinas, más conocidas por ser tóxicos potentes aunque empiezan a mostrar tímidamente una potencialidad creciente en el descubrimiento y desarrollo de nuevos fármacos.Elsa Dias- Foundation for Science and Technology for the grant SFRH/BPD/77981/201

Explosion of differentiability for equivalencies between Anosov flows on 3-manifolds

For Anosov flows obtained by suspensions of Anosov diffeomor- phisms on surfaces, we show the following type of rigidity result: if a topolog- ical conjugacy between them is differentiable at a point, then the conjugacy has a smooth extension to the suspended 3-manifold. This result generalizes the similar ones of Sullivan and Ferreira-Pinto for 1-dimensional expanding dynamics and also a result of Ferreira-Pinto for 2-dimensional hyperbolic dynamics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio