HPLC determination of theophylline and paracetamol in fresh and powdered milk

Poster presented at the 1st International Congress of CiiEM - From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research. 27-28 November 2015, Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal"Theophylline and paracetamol are drugs used worldwide both in human and veterinary medicine. Paracetamol (or acetaminophen) is employed as analgesic and antipyretic, and theophylline is a bronchodilator drug used in the treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Both drugs are extensively used in pediatrics and their dosage is based on the child's body weight. Due to possible liver toxicity (paracetamol) and narrow therapeutic index (theophylline) it is imperative to carefully select and monitor the dose administered to children. Additionally, the recent proposal of milk as a platform to deliver drugs in pediatrics has prompted the development of a simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) quantification method, of both theophylline and paracetamol, in the complex matrix that milk represents."Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/DTP-FTO/1057/2012

Divergent nematic susceptibility in an iron arsenide superconductor

Within the Landau paradigm of continuous phase transitions, ordered states of matter are characterized by a broken symmetry. Although the broken symmetry is usually evident, determining the driving force behind the phase transition is often a more subtle matter due to coupling between otherwise distinct order parameters. In this paper we show how measurement of the divergent nematic susceptibility of an iron pnictide superconductor unambiguously distinguishes an electronic nematic phase transition from a simple ferroelastic distortion. These measurements also reveal an electronic nematic quantum phase transition at the composition with optimal superconducting transition temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Simple and sensitive HPLC determination of paracetamol and theophylline in fresh and powdered milk

Poster presented at the 10th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology. 4-7 April 2016, Glasgow, UKN/

Child-driven design of milk micelles for drug delivery

Poster presented at the 9th EuPFI Conference [European Paediatric Formulation Initiative], 19-21th Sep 2017, Warsaw, PolandN/

Milk as a drug delivery platform in paediatrics

Communication presented at the PSSRC − 9th Annual Symposium. 16-18 September 2015, Ghent, Belgium"Purpose: to assess the physical properties of spray dried milk powders and evaluate drug-milk interactions.

Runoff at the micro-plot and slope scale following wildfire, central Portugal

Through their effects on soil properties and vegetation/litter cover, wildfires can strongly enhance overland flow generation and accelerate soil erosion [1] and, thereby, negatively affect land-use sustainability as well as downstream aquatic and flood zones. Wildfires are a common phenomenon in present-day Portugal, devastating in an average year some 100.000 ha of forest and woodlands and in an exceptional year like 2003 over 400.000 ha. There therefore exists a clear need in Portugal for a tool that can provide guidance to post-fire land management by predicting soil erosion risk, on the one hand, and, on the other, the mitigation effectiveness of soil conservation measures. Such a tool has recently been developed for the Western U.S.A. [3: ERMiT] but its suitability for Portuguese forests will need to be corroborated by field observations. Testing the suitability of existing erosion models in recently burned forest areas in Portugal is, in a nutshell, the aim of the EROSFIRE projects. In the first EROSFIRE project the emphasis was on the prediction of erosion at the scale of individual hill slopes. In the ongoing EROSFIRE-II project the spatial scope is extended to include the catchment scale, so that also the connectivity between hill slopes as well as channel and road processes are being addressed. Besides ERMiT, the principal models under evaluation for slope-scale erosion prediction are: (i) the variant of USLE [4] applied by the Portuguese Water Institute after the wildfires of 2003; (ii) the Morgan–Morgan–Finney model (MMF) [5]; (iii) MEFIDIS [6]. From these models, MEFIDIS and perhaps MMF will, after successful calibration at the slope scale, also be applied for predicting catchment-scale sediment yields of extreme events

Medicinal powders made of fresh milk for pediatric use

Communication presented at the 1st International Congress of CiiEM - From Basic Sciences to Clinical Research. 27-28 November 2015, Egas Moniz, Caparica, Portugal"Nowadays, the need to formulate medicines specifically designed for children is imperative [1] and solid dosage forms are the first choice for providing the required drug stability and dose accuracy. Milk, as a worldwide accepted food, is proposed in this study as a platform to deliver drugs orally in pediatrics. Therefore, the main goals of this project are: (a) to assess the properties of spray-dried milk powders, (b) to evaluate drug-milk interactions and (c) to ascertain the stability of the spray-dried milk powders."Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Runoff and erosion at the micro-plot and slope scale in a small burnt catchment, central Portugal

Wildfires can have important impacts on hydrological processes and soil erosion in forest catchments, due to the destruction of vegetation cover and changes to soil properties. However, the processes involved are non-linear and not fully understood. This has severely limited the understanding on the impacts of wildfires, especially in the up-scaling from hillslopes to catchments; in consequence, current models are poorly adapted for burnt forest conditions. The objective of this presentation is to give an overview of the hydrological response and sediment yield from the micro-plot to slope scale, in the first year following a wildfire (2008/2009) that burnt an entire catchment nearby the Colmeal village, central Portugal. The overview will focus on three slopes inside the catchment, with samples including: • Runoff at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots); • Sediments and Organic Matter loss at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots plus 3 Sediment fences); • Rainfall and Soil moisture data; • Soil Water Repellency and Ground Cover data. The analysis of the first year following the wildfire clearly shows the complexity of runoff generation and the associated sediment transport in recently burnt areas, with pronounced differences between hillslopes and across spatial scales as well as with marked variations through time. This work was performed in the framework of the EROSFIRE-II project (PTDC/AGR-CFL/70968/2006) which has as overall aim to predict soil erosion risk in recently burnt forest areas, including common post-fire forest management practices; the project focuses on the simultaneous measurement of runoff and soil erosion at multiple spatial scales.The results to be presented in this session are expected to show how sediment is generated, transported and exported in the Colmeal watershed; and contribute to understand and simulate erosion processes in burnt catchments, including for model development and evaluation