The financial sustainability of Microcredit in Portugal

Microcredit and microfinance emerged in the 1970’s in Bangladesh and other developing countries and expanded rapidly worldwide as a business model financially sustainable and able to fight poverty and social exclusion. Empirical evidence confirms microcredit ability to mitigate poverty but its financial sustainability is controversial. Using 2006-2009 Portuguese micro-level data, we estimate the failure rate of Portuguese micro-credit projects as 20,6%/year that, to be financially sustainable, would require a real interest rate by 25%/year. Using a territorial variable on a discrete Cox proportional hazard model with censured data, we estimate that the failure rate of those micro-credit projects located in the worst-case NUTS II Portuguese regions (Alentejo and Centro) and promoted by lower schooling people is significantly higher than best-case.Microcredit, Firms failure rate, Poverty, Financial sustainability

O Microcrédito em Portugal

Micro-credit and micro-finance emerged in the 1970’s in some Asian and Latin American countries as an instrument for fighting poverty and social exclusion. Using 2006-9 portuguese micro-level data, we estimate the failure rate of Portuguese micro-credit projects as 18,4%/year. This failure rate is incompatible with a no-subsidised system that would require a 25.5%/year interest rate. Using territorial variable on a Cox proportional hazard model, we estimate that the failure rate of those micro-credit projects located in the worst case NUTS II Portuguese regions (Alentejo e Centro, 26.1%/year) is significantly higher than that of those projects located in the best case region (Norte, 14.7%/year).Microcrédito, Microfinanças, Modelos de sobrevivência

First-episode psychosis in a 15 year-old female with clinical presentation of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis: a case report and review of the literature

© 2016 The Author(s). Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is an autoimmune disease that was identified in 2007, and manifests in a stepwise manner with psychiatric, neurological and autonomic symptoms. The disease is caused by autoantibodies against NMDA receptors. It can have a paraneoplastic origin, mainly secondary to ovarian teratomas, but it can also be unrelated to the tumor. This disease can affect both sexes and all ages. Case presentation: Here, we present a case of a 15 year-old female adolescent with first-episode psychosis with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis not related to tumor, which manifested with delusion, hallucinations, panic attacks, agitation, and neurological symptoms, and later with autonomic instability. She was treated with immunotherapy and psychiatric medication resulting in improvement of her main psychiatric and neurological symptoms. Conclusion: Our main objective in presenting this case is to alert clinicians to this challenging and recent disease that has a clinical presentation that might resemble a functional psychiatric condition and can be underdiagnosed in the context of child and adolescent psychiatry.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Vectores e intencionalidade na Banda Desenhada

Neste estudo são abordados alguns dos resultados obtidos durante a realização da tese teórico-prática de Doutoramento “Multiplicidade Narrativa na Banda Desenhada Influência dos Novos Media”. Procuraram-se respostas no domínio das potencialidades que uma narrativa pode ter nos mais variados suportes, assentando no conceito de “transmedia”, uma resposta à convergência dos novos media e às novas exigências dos leitores. Os formatos e suportes escolhidos no projeto têm as suas particularidades, e apesar de em termos estilísticos e de registo todas as traduções obedecerem às mesmas lógicas, o desenho e a narrativa tiveram de ser adaptadas para cada um deles. Esta análise aprofunda a confrontação das escolhas de vetores e forças direcionais entre os vários suportes, verificando como os vários elementos do desenho podem guiar a leitura, formando assim uma intencionalidade.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio