School meal reform and feeding ordering in Portugal: conventions and controversies

Children and young people's food practices are nowadays more visible, surveyed and contested than ever before. There are unprecedented levels of public and media discussion concerning young people's practices, their exposure to marketing and advertisements, concerns around their health education, leisure activities, internet safety, and eating. Regarding the latter: food issues have gained increasing attention from the media and conquered central stage in the policy agendas of several countries. For example, in the UK, the growing interest in children and food consumption is visible in several policy initiatives that commenced in the present century (see Graham et aI., this volume). Some of these attempted to tackle the perceived unbalanced nutritional quality of school meals, to encourage children to eat better (e.g. reduced intake of sugary, fatty foods and fizzy drinks). Other than the UK, more countries are putting considerable efforts to reform school meaIs towards healthier and nutritionally balanced meaIs including sourcing organic and local produce, thus combining an agenda of health with one of sustainability (Morgan and Sonnino, 2008).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Helicobacter pylori—Associated Dyspepsia in Paediatrics

Helicobacter pylori ubiquitously infects the human gastric mucosa since time immemorial,predictably before the man’s diaspora out of East Africa around 58,000 years ago [1].Colonization may have been somehow beneficial for human carriers, allowing the coevolutionof this gram-negative bacterium and its host over the centuries. Yet, at leastnowadays [2], this may not be a peaceful association, with infection almost invariablycausing an acute host immune response. However, in a fully adapted manner, H. pyloriavoids recognition and, thus, clearance, by the host immune system, with both infectionand the consequent gastritis persisting throughout the patients’ life. The clinical outcomeof this persistence is dependent on a sophisticated crosstalk between the host and thepathogen. If often asymptomatic, the H. pylori-associated non-ulcer dyspepsia is clearly thestrongest aetiological factor for severe gastric diseases that will develop late in adult life ina minority of infected patients, i.e., peptic ulcer disease, both gastric and duodenal ulcers,and gastric cancer, namely, adenocarcinoma and mucosa associated lymphoid tissue(MALT) lymphoma (reviewed in [3]). Peptic ulcer disease rarely occurs soon after H. pyloriinfection [4-8] that generally starts in childhood; this presumably reflects marked differencesin the virulence [9-16] and/or in the susceptibility of young patients [17-19].This chapter, focussing on the paediatric population, seeks to explore: the prevalence of H.pylori infection; the molecular mechanism used by H. pylori during colonization and infection;the role of this bacterium in the development of peptic ulcer-related organic dyspepsia; andthe genetic/proteome profile of the H. pylori-strains associated with peptic ulcer disease.BNP Paribas, Sociedade Portuguesa de Gastrenterologi

Los "Bandos". La lucha por el individualismo agrario en Cataluña. Primeras hipótesis (Siglos XVII-XIX)

En este artículo se presentan los primeros resultados de un proyecto de investigación (el estudio de los "bandos" sobre cerramientos de tierras concedidos a lo largo de los siglos XVII, XVIII Y XIX) Y se reivindica un tema de estudio: la lucha por el individualismo agrario, en la línea iniciada por Marc Bloch hace más de sesenta años. El estudio de los "bandos" -documentos solícitados por particulares y concedidos por autoridades públicas-: revela un proceso de cerramiento de propiedades anterior a las primeras disposiciones legislativas sobre el tema. El análisis de este tipo de documentos aporta noticias sobre una conflictividad rural latente que va más allá de la dicotomía señores-campesinos y sobre prácticas unilaterales de defensa de "la propiedad" que anticipan el futuro cuerpo de la guardia rural.The aim of this article is to present the first results of a research project (the study of the "bans" about enclosures conceded during the 17th, 18lh and 19th centuries) and to lay claim to a subject of study: the fight for agrarian individualism in the line trend started by Marc Bloch more than sixty years ago. The study of the "bans" –documents requested by individuals and conceded by public authorities-, shows a process of enclosure that precedes the former laws about this subject. The analysis of this kind of documents offers information about a latent rural conflictivity that goes further from the dichotomy lords-peasants and about unilateral Practices of defense of "the property" that precedes the future corps of the Rural Guard

The Zebrafish Kupffer’s Vesicle: A Special Organ in a Model Organism to Study Human Diseases

The Kupffer’s vesicle (KV) is a small, ciliated organ transiently present during embryogenesis of the zebrafish and other teleosts. The KV is required to the establishment of visceral laterality, such as the heart on the left side, being also known by the name left-right organizer (LRO). The LRO is found in other vertebrates, including mice, rabbits, frogs and human embryos. Among these, the KV became an excellent model organ to investigate the early left-right events during development and in disease. Many ciliary molecular players associated to the human disease primary ciliary dyskinesia have been tested in the zebrafish looking at KV cilia and its downstream effects on flow and left-right markers. Additionally, given its morphology and molecular features, we proposed the KV as a model organ to study the molecular mechanisms of the renal cyst inflation that occurs in the autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. Although having no connection to the kidney, the KV mimics a renal cyst because it is a fluid-filled vesicle, lined by monociliated epithelial cells that express polycystin-2, which knockdown leads to the organ luminal enlargement through changes in ion/water epithelial transport. Here, we explore the usefulness of the zebrafish KV to model these diseases

Effects of carbon source, carbon concentration and culture conditions on in vitro rooting of Pinus pinea L. microshoots

In stone pine (Pinus pinea L.), clonal propagation via adventitious shoot formation from cotyledons has been reported before but rooting of these shoots is poor. The number of rooted shoots had low frequency limiting the used of micropropagation protocols as a choice for mass propagation of superior genotypes. Therefore the main objective of the present work was to increase the number and quality of roots per shoot in order to ensure the survival and growth of a great number of plants in the acclimation phase. To achieve this, different combinations of carbon source (sucrose or glucose) at different concentrations, under different environmental conditions (temperature and light), were tested in the induction and expression phases of the adventitious root formation. Shoots of different clones obtained via organogenesis have been employed for the experiments. Observations were made on the rooting percentage, root length and number of roots per shoot. The results showed a general increased of the number of roots per shoot and an earlier root formation when glucose was used as a carbon source. However, there were no differences in the percentage of rooting between the carbons sources tested. The best results were obtained using 0.117 M of glucose and dark treatment combined with 19°C during the induction phase of the rhizogenic process. Light and low sugar concentration proved to be beneficial for the expression phase, increasing the root length. A remarkable interclonal difference in the ability to form roots was observed. It was possible to obtain a rooting percentage of more than 75% in several of the tested clones

El mercader de Venecia

Análisis jurídico de la obra literaria "El Mercader de Venecia" / William Shakespear

Prácticas pedagógicas de las docentes de matemática frente a estándares y lineamientos curriculares en educación básica en la institución educativa de San Cayetano

El objetivo de esta investigación de corte cualitativo, es determinar cuál es la coherencia entre la actual propuesta teórico-pedagógica del Ministerio de Educación Nacional (MEN) y las práctica pedagógicas del docente de matemática de la Institución Educativa San Cayetano. Con la población sujeto-objeto de la muestra se desarrolló una entrevista estructurada a un grupo docentes del área de matemática, los cuales laboran en la institución donde se realizó la investigación. Los resultados de la entrevista fueron contrastados con los hallazgos arrojados por la revisión documental y los elementos que los lineamientos y estándares curriculares de matemática propuestos por el MEN, lo cual brindó elementos significativos para un análisis global de la información recogida. Lo anterior permitió inferir la realidad en la cual se desarrollan las prácticas pedagógicas de los docentes de matemática, resaltando la necesidad de implementar una propuesta curricular fundamentada en la propuesta ministerial

Insights on Cadmium Removal by Bioremediation: The Case of Haloarchaea

Although heavy metals are naturally found in the environment as components of the earth’s crust, environmental pollution by these toxic elements has increased since the industrial revolution. Some of them can be considered essential, since they play regulatory roles in different biological processes; but the role of other heavy metals in living tissues is not clear, and once ingested they can accumulate in the organism for long periods of time causing adverse health effects. To mitigate this problem, different methods have been used to remove heavy metals from water and soil, such as chelation-based processes. However, techniques like bioremediation are leaving these conventional methodologies in the background for being more effective and eco-friendlier. Recently, different research lines have been promoted, in which several organisms have been used for bioremediation approaches. Within this context, the extremophilic microorganisms represent one of the best tools for the treatment of contaminated sites due to the biochemical and molecular properties they show. Furthermore, since it is estimated that 5% of industrial effluents are saline and hypersaline, halophilic microorganisms have been suggested as good candidates for bioremediation and treatment of this kind of samples. These microorganisms, and specifically the haloarchaea group, are of interest to design strategies aiming the removal of polluting compounds due to the efficiency of their metabolism under extreme conditions and their significant tolerance to highly toxic compounds such as heavy metals, bromate, nitrite, chlorate, or perchlorate ions. However, there are still few trials that have proven the bioremediation of environments contaminated with heavy metals using these microorganisms. This review analyses scientific literature focused on metabolic capabilities of haloarchaea that may allow these microbes to tolerate and eliminate heavy metals from the media, paying special attention to cadmium. Thus, this work will shed light on potential uses of haloarchaea in bioremediation of soils and waters negatively affected by heavy metals, and more specifically by cadmium.This work was funded by research grant from the MINECO Spain (RTI2018-099860-B-I00) and University of Alicante (VIGROB-309)

Reflections on my experience as a learner of languages and on how that experience may have influenced my teaching style and practice

En este artículo pretendo hacer una reflexión personal desde mi infancia sobre mi propia adquisición y aprendizaje de idiomas tomando el castellano como punto de partida y siguiendo con el posterior estudio y adquisición de otras lenguas extranjeras. Esta introspección me llevará a analizar hasta qué punto las experiencias vividas, tanto positivas como negativas, han podido influir en los métodos y estilos de aprendizaje que imparto en mis clases al día de hoy.The following article is an introspection into my childhood and early youth memories in relation to language acquisition and learning of foreign languages. This analysis will help me determine to what extent these experiences, positive and negative ones, may have influenced my teaching methods and style to the present day