International Nascent Entrepreneurship: The role of Individuals and Governments

Dissertação de Mestrado em Gestão e Internacionalização de EmpresasEntrepreneurship research has increased over the time, the role of this phenomenon in the economy is indisputable, being considered a motor for the growth of economy, wealth and recent studies even found that entrepreneurship as an important role on well-being too. Despite the large number of studies about the stimulus and favorable environment created by the governments to increase the creation of new business, there are some gaps in the literature of this event. In this study is intended to fill some of this gaps, exploring the principal objective of this research, being to understand the priority given by the government in incentives for entrepreneurship as well to study the impact in the perceptions and characteristics of the individuals in the decision to become entrepreneurs. In order to achieve the principal objective of this dissertation, as well of the secondary objectives, two studies were carried. In the first phase, using recent theory and data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor - National Expert Survey (GEM NES), which is at this time one of the main international research databases, are studied the factors found on the literature that helps to stimulate the creation of new business and which of them are more important. To achieve this aim, multivariate analysis techniques were used, in particular factor analysis and multiple linear regression models. In the second article, in order to study the variables mentioned in literature that influence the decision to become entrepreneur and international entrepreneur, the database Global Entrepreneurship Monitor - Adult Population Survey (GEM APS) was used, with responses from 60 countries. To achieve the goal, were used nine logistic regression models. Our results from the first study suggest that Government Policies, Financing, Taxes and R&D are all relevant and significant in evaluating the priority given by the government in the creation of firms but also on the growing firms. In more detail, the most important factor to the experts to evaluate the importance given by the government in the entrepreneurship is the Government Policies. In the second research, the results show that all three demographic and economic variables, perceptual variables and national environment are significant when evaluating the decision to become entrepreneur and international entrepreneur, focusing on the fact that principal perceptual variables and country-effects variables help to explain better this decision.A investigação acerca da temática do empreendedorismo tem vindo a aumentar ao longo do tempo, o papel que este fenómeno representa na economia é indiscutível, sendo considerado um motor de crescimento da economia, riqueza e estudos recentes chegam a constatar que o empreendedorismo tem um papel importante também no bem-estar da população empreendedora. Apesar do grande número de estudos sobre os estímulos e ambiente favorável criado pelos governos para aumentar a criação de novos negócios, existem algumas lacunas na literatura deste evento. Neste estudo pretende-se preencher algumas dessas lacunas, explorando o objetivo principal desta pesquisa, passando por compreender a prioridade dada pelo governo nos incentivos ao empreendedorismo bem como estudar o impacto nas perceções e características dos indivíduos na escolha para se tornarem empreendedores. Para atingir o objetivo principal desta dissertação, assim como os objetivos secundários, foram realizados dois estudos. Num primeiro estudo, utilizando teoria recente e dados do Global Entrepreneurship Monitor - National Expert Survey (GEM NES), que é neste momento uma das principais bases de dados de investigações internacionais, foram estudados os fatores encontrados na literatura que estimulam a criação de negócio e qual deles é mais importante. Para atingir esse objetivo, foram utilizadas técnicas de análise multivariada, em particular a análise fatorial e a análise de regressão linear múltipla. No segundo artigo, para estudar as variáveis apontadas na literatura que influenciam na decisão de se tornar empreendedor e empreendedor internacional, foi utilizada a base de dados Global Entrepreneurship Monitor - Adult Population Survey (GEM APS), com respostas de 60 países. Para atingir o propósito deste estudo, foram utilizados nove modelos de regressão logística. Os resultados do primeiro estudo sugerem que Políticas Governamentais, Financiamento, Impostos e I&D são todos relevantes e significativos na avaliação da prioridade dada pelo governo na criação de negócios, mas também nas empresas em crescimento. Mais detalhadamente, o fator mais importante para os especialistas avaliarem a importância dada pelo governo no apoio ao empreendedorismo são a qualidade das políticas governamentais definidas para ajudar este fenómeno. Na segunda pesquisa, os resultados mostram que todos os três tipos de variáveis, sendo elas demográficas e económicas, variáveis percetuais e ambiente macroeconómico nacional são significativas quando se avalia a decisão de se tornar empreendedor e empreendedor internacional, com foco no facto de que as variáveis que avaliam as perceções e variáveis que analisam o diferente ambiente de cada país ajudam a explicar melhor o modelo apresentado

Práticas artísticas no ensino básico e secundário

A mediação entre os conteúdos culturais e a Educação Artística formal tem emergido como uma distinta área de inovação e de intervenção, como o mostram os 18 artigos selecionados nesta nona edição da revista Matéria-Prima.Entre a identidade, fundada nos focos de conhecimento local, e uma inserção integrada nos problemas e conteúdos globais joga-se a problematização da Educação Artística. As propostas articulam quer discursos curatoriais (museu, bienal, exposição), como ações de mediação visando uma expansão das atividades, a que se juntam as reflexões sobre a realidade da formação de professores, nas suas diversas modalidades, em diversas realidades sociais.Propiciam-se oportunidades de ações de intervenção, concertadas ou não, entre os agentes artísticos e os educadores. O resultado pode ser potenciado se se conseguir uma perspetiva informada e integrada das realidades artísticas: pede-se a todos os intervenientes mais integração e disponibilidade para um conhecimento mútuo consequente.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

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

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Quantification of Cholesterol Solubilized in Dietary Micelles: Dependence on Human Bile Salt Variability and the Presence of Dietary Food Ingredients

The solubility of cholesterol in bile salt (BS) micelles is important to understand the availability of cholesterol for absorption in the intestinal epithelium and to develop strategies to decrease cholesterol intake from the intestinal lumen. This has been the subject of intense investigation, due to the established relation between the development of diseases such as atherosclerosis and high levels of cholesterol in the blood. In this work we quantify the effect of BS variability on the amount of cholesterol solubilized. The effect of some known hypocholesterolemic agents usually found in the diet is also evaluated, as well as some insight regarding the mechanisms involved. The results show that, depending on the bile salt composition, the average value of sterol <i>per</i> micelle is equal to or lower than 1. The amount of cholesterol solubilized in the BS micelles is essentially equal to its total concentration until the solubility limit is reached. Altogether, this indicates that the maximum cholesterol solubility in the BS micellar solution is the result of saturation of the aqueous phase and depends on the partition coefficient of cholesterol between the aqueous phase and the micellar pseudophase. The effect on cholesterol maximum solubility for several food ingredients usually encountered in the diet was characterized using methodology developed recently by us. This method allows the simultaneous quantification of both cholesterol and food ingredient solubilized in the BS micelles even in the presence of larger aggregates, therefore avoiding their physical separation with possible impacts on the overall equilibrium. The phytosterols stigmasterol and stigmastanol significantly decreased cholesterol solubility with a concomitant reduction in the total amount of sterol solubilized, most pronounced for stigmasterol. Those results point toward coprecipitation being the major cause for the decrease in cholesterol solubilization by the BS micelles. The presence of tocopherol and oleic acid leads to a small decrease in the amount of cholesterol solubilized while palmitic acid slightly increases the solubility of cholesterol. Those dietary food ingredients are completely solubilized by the BS micelles, indicating that the effects on cholesterol solubility are due to changes in the properties of the mixed micelles

In Vitro Hypocholesterolemic Effect of Coffee Compounds

(1) Background: Cholesterol bioaccessibility is an indicator of cholesterol that is available for absorption and therefore can be a measure of hypocholesterolemic potential. In this work, the effect of commercial espresso coffee and coffee extracts on cholesterol solubility are studied in an in vitro model composed by glycodeoxycholic bile salt, as a measure of its bioaccessibility. (2) Methods: Polysaccharide extracts from coffees obtained with different extraction conditions were purified by selective precipitation with ethanol, and their sugars content were characterized by GC-FID. Hexane extraction allowed us to obtain the coffee lipids. Espresso coffee samples and extracts were tested regarding their concentration dependence on the solubility of labeled 13C-4 cholesterol by bile salt micelles, using quantitative 13C NMR. (3) Results and Discussion: Espresso coffee and coffee extracts were rich in polysaccharides, mainly arabinogalactans and galactomannans. These polysaccharides decrease cholesterol solubility and, simultaneously, the bile salts’ concentration. Coffee lipid extracts were also found to decrease cholesterol solubility, although not affecting bile salt concentration. (4) Conclusions: Coffee soluble fiber, composed by the arabinogalactans and galactomannans, showed to sequester bile salts from the solution, leading to a decrease in cholesterol bioaccessibility. Coffee lipids also decrease cholesterol bioaccessibility, although the mechanism of action identified is the co-solubilization in the bile salt micelles. The effect of both polysaccharides and lipids showed to be additive, representing the overall effect observed in a typical espresso coffee. The effect of polysaccharides and lipids on cholesterol bioaccessibility should be accounted on the formulation of hypocholesterolemic food ingredients