Protein changes as robust signatures of fish chronic stress: a proteomics approach to fish welfare research

Background Aquaculture is a fast-growing industry and therefore welfare and environmental impact have become of utmost importance. Preventing stress associated to common aquaculture practices and optimizing the fish stress response by quantification of the stress level, are important steps towards the improvement of welfare standards. Stress is characterized by a cascade of physiological responses that, in-turn, induce further changes at the whole-animal level. These can either increase fitness or impair welfare. Nevertheless, monitorization of this dynamic process has, up until now, relied on indicators that are only a snapshot of the stress level experienced. Promising technological tools, such as proteomics, allow an unbiased approach for the discovery of potential biomarkers for stress monitoring. Within this scope, using Gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) as a model, three chronic stress conditions, namely overcrowding, handling and hypoxia, were employed to evaluate the potential of the fish protein-based adaptations as reliable signatures of chronic stress, in contrast with the commonly used hormonal and metabolic indicators. Results A broad spectrum of biological variation regarding cortisol and glucose levels was observed, the values of which rose higher in net-handled fish. In this sense, a potential pattern of stressor-specificity was clear, as the level of response varied markedly between a persistent (crowding) and a repetitive stressor (handling). Gel-based proteomics analysis of the plasma proteome also revealed that net-handled fish had the highest number of differential proteins, compared to the other trials. Mass spectrometric analysis, followed by gene ontology enrichment and protein-protein interaction analyses, characterized those as humoral components of the innate immune system and key elements of the response to stimulus. Conclusions Overall, this study represents the first screening of more reliable signatures of physiological adaptation to chronic stress in fish, allowing the future development of novel biomarker models to monitor fish welfare.This study received Portuguese national funds from FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology through project UIDB/04326/2020 and project WELFISH (Refª 16–02-05-FMP-12, “Establishment of Welfare Biomarkers in farmed fish using a proteomics approach”) financed by Mar2020, in the framework of the program Portugal 2020. Cláudia Raposo de Magalhães acknowledges an FCT PhD scholarship, Refª SFRH/BD/138884/2018. Denise Schrama acknowledges an FCT PhD scholarship, Refª SFRH/BD/136319/2018.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Organização dos serviços para garantir acesso e promover vinculação do usuário de drogas

Na primeira unidade aborda os desafios e as propostas existentes para a organização do trabalho de acolhimento e cuidado do usuário de álcool e outras drogas por equipes multidisciplinares capazes de escuta qualificada. Trata da importância do registro como ferramenta de vinculação e das demais estratégias para garantir o acesso da clientela aos serviços. Na segunda unidade trata da construção do vínculo por meio da abertura de portas em diferentes lugares, da importância de conhecer o usuário, da flexibilidade do cuidado como ferramenta fundamental. Aborda, também, a consolidação do vínculo, por meio do trabalho em equipes interdisciplinares e em redes, da adequação da comunicação, das boas condições do ambiente e da construção do PTS. Em ambas as unidades, apresenta leituras complementares e referências.1.0Ministério da Saúd

Cordel Corrido: What Are the Implications of Creating a New Narrative Voice for Education?

In this article the author proposes queering the teaching of Brazilian and Mexican popular poetry, cordel and corrido, for students in high school or freshmen in college engaging with a curriculum of the brown bodies and aesthetic currere. The author criticizes the teaching of canonic literature in classrooms usually written by white, straight, and middle-class men, and proposes teaching popular poetry from Latin America as a project to interrupt that canon. Teaching and encouraging students to write poetry is a way to oppose the epistemicide in classrooms, and students of color (African descendants, Native peoples, and with roots in Latin America) have “sacred truth spaces” to be who they are

Asymmetric c-fos expression in the ventral orbital cortex is associated with impaired reversal learning in a right-sided neuropathy

BACKGROUND: Recently we showed that unilateral peripheral neuropathic lesions impacted differentially on rat's emotional/cognitive behavior depending on its left/right location; importantly, this observation recapitulates clinical reports. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), a brain region morphofunctionally affected in chronic pain conditions, is involved in the modulation of both emotion and executive function and displays functional lateralization. To test whether the PFC is involved in the lateralization bias associated with left/right pain, c-fos expression in medial and orbital areas was analyzed in rats with an unilateral spared nerve injury neuropathy installed in the left or in the right side after performing an attentional set-shifting, a strongly PFC-dependent task. RESULTS: SNI-R animals required more trials to successfully terminate the reversal steps of the attentional set-shifting task. A generalized increase of c-fos density in medial and orbital PFC (mPFC/OFC), irrespectively of the hemisphere, was observed in both SNI-L and SNI-R. However, individual laterality indexes revealed that contrary to controls and SNI-L, SNI-R animals presented a leftward shift in c-fos density in the ventral OFC (VO). None of these effects were observed in the neighboring primary motor area. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate that chronic neuropathic pain is associated with a bilateral mPFC and OFC hyperactivation. We hypothesize that the impaired performance of SNI-R animals is associated with a left/right activity inversion in the VO, whose functional integrity is critical for reversal learning.This work was granted by the Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) project PTDC/SAU-NEU/108557/2008 and grant SFRH/BPD/80118/2011

BEYOND THE MEETING ROOM – ON-SITE VS. REMOTE INTERPRETING: A SET OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

This paper presents the background of a doctoral investigation in interpreting studies and is mainly focused on a set of experiments carried out in on-site (OSI) and remote interpreting (RI) settings, involving two groups of interpreter trainees and one group of professional interpreters. The procedures adopted to evaluate both the performance of these subjects and the quality of the interpreting tasks in the two different environments revealed the absence of statistically significant differences in the two scenarios compared. This research is therefore also devoted to reflect upon the reluctance shown by professional interpreters towards RI, even though discrepancies between both distinct settings may not necessarily be perceived.O presente artigo insere-se no âmbito de um trabalho de investigação doutoral em estudos da interpretação e centra-se num conjunto de experiências realizadas em ambientes de interpretação in situ e remota, envolvendo dois grupos de alunos-intérpretes e um grupo de intérpretes profissionais. Os procedimentos adotados para avaliar tanto o desempenho dos sujeitos experimentais como a qualidade das tarefas interpretativas nos dois ambientes acima referidos revelaram a ausência de discrepâncias estatisticamente significantes nos dois cenários comparados. Como tal, este trabalho de investigação propõe-se igualmente refletir sobre a relutância mostrada por intérpretes profissionais face à interpretação remota, não obstante o facto de não terem necessariamente a perceção de diferenças entre os dois ambientes

Benefits of spine stabilization with biodegradable scaffolds in spinal cord injured rats

Spine stabilization upon spinal cord injury (SCI) is a standard procedure in clinical practice, but rarely employed in experimental models. Moreover, the application of biodegradable biomaterials for this would come as an advantage as it would eliminate the presence of a nondegradable prosthesis within the vertebral bone. Therefore, in the present work, we propose the use of a new biodegradable device specifically developed for spine stabilization in a rat model of SCI. A 3D scaffold based on a blend of starch with polycaprolactone was implanted, replacing delaminated vertebra, in male Wistar rats with a T8-T9 spinal hemisection. The impact of spinal stabilization on the locomotor behavior was then evaluated for a period of 12 weeks. Locomotor evaluation—assessed by Basso, Beatie, and Bresnahan test; rotarod; and open field analysis—revealed that injured rats subjected to spine stabilization significantly improved their motor performance, including higher coordination and rearing activity when compared with SCI rats without stabilization. Histological analysis further revealed that the presence of the scaffolds not only stabilized the area, but also simultaneously prevented the infiltration of the injury site by connective tissue. Overall, these results reveal that SCI stabilization using a biodegradable scaffold at the vertebral bone level leads to an improvement of the motor deficits and is a relevant element for the successful treatment of SCI.The authors would like to acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Doctoral fellowship to Nuno Silva, SFRH/BD/40684/2007; Ciência 2007 Program to António Salgado; Grant N PTDC/SAU-BMA/114059/2009) and the Foundation Calouste de Gulbenkian to funds attributed to A.J. Salgado under the scope of the The Gulbenkian Programme to Support Cutting Edge Research in the Life Sciences

O Papel da Interculturalidade na Internacionalização das Start-Ups: O Caso do Programa de Aceleração Virtual do Eligent Club

This article focuses on entrepreneurship, in particular startups and the emerging need they have to go international since its creation or shortly thereafter. Only in this way will they be able to guarantee their survival and achieve the necessary scalability to grow rapidly across new markets acting globally. There are several barriers in an internationalization process, such as language and culture, and as a result, reaching and creating a worth-lasting effective business relationship it\u27s a hard task to undertake, therefore we will address interculturality and its fundamental role in the process. Finally, we address Eligent Club, its origin and development since its creation, its role in supporting startups acting as facilitator, providing access to international opportunities beneficial to both global and local economies, namely international projects, partners, academics, experts, and investors. We will approach in detail, Eligent Accelerator 2 Program case, a virtual program that fits the reality of the ongoing and increasing, business digital transformation movement we are living in the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic but will certainly fit also the period that will follow it. With the virtual accelerator programs being recent, their advantages will be highlighted, as well as the many challenges they face.Este artigo foca o empreendedorismo, em particular as start-ups e a necessidade emergente que elas têm de se internacionalizar logo no momento em que são criadas ou pouco tempo depois. Só assim elas poderão garantir a sua sobrevivência e alcançar a escalabilidade necessária para crescer rapidamente e entrar em novos mercados atuando globalmente. Existem várias barreiras num processo de internacionalização, tais como a língua e a cultura, e em consequência, criar uma relação comercial eficaz e duradoura é uma tarefa difícil de empreender, iremos por isso evidenciar o tema da interculturalidade e o seu papel fundamental no processo. Por fim, abordamos o Eligent Club, a sua origem e desenvolvimento desde a sua criação, o seu papel no apoio às start-ups atuando como facilitador, proporcionando acesso a oportunidades internacionais, benéficas tanto para a economia local como global, nomeadamente projetos internacionais, parceiros, académicos, especialistas e investidores. Analisaremos em detalhe, o caso do programa de aceleração virtual do Eligent Club, um programa que se adequa à realidade em que vivemos atualmente de transformação digital dos negócios, movimento em aceleração, em consequência COVID-19, mas que certamente se adequará também no período pós-pandemia. Sendo os programas virtuais de aceleração, iniciativas recentes, realçamos as suas vantagens, mas também os diversos desafios que lhe estão associados

Plantifa: Antifascist Guerrilla Gardening Curriculum

This paper suggests that an anti-fascist guerilla gardening (Plantifa) curriculum offers unique educational opportunities in the form of wholesome, and much needed, praxis. Utilizing anti-fascist (Bray, 2017), decolonizing (Tuck et al., 2014), and eco-justice frameworks (Shiva, 2015), Plantifa presents community activism that connects people with place, history, permaculture, and subversion of hegemony. In the context of education, a Plantifa curriculum offers learners to be immersed with their communities and local ecosystems, beyond mere classroom walls. It is a process of mapping local terrain and history, identifying non-invasive plants and suitable locations, considering food-bearing plants for community needs, as well as the afterward tasks of watering and nurturing. Questions of, Why is \u27democracy\u27 as we understand and practice limited to humans, and who, what, or where ought to be included in a democracy? ; “Is planting local flora legally or ethically wrong?” and “Why is anti-fascism important to our community and our eco-system?” are just some of the questions learners can consider during this process of eco-revanchism. Ultimately, we are connecting wholeheartedly with the anti-fascist movement all over the world by appropriating their acronym (Antifa) with deference as a way to plant seeds of love against hierarchies. We are Plantifa

Behavioural stress responses predict environmental perception in European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)

Individual variation in the response to environmental challenges depends partly on innate reaction norms, partly on experience-based cognitive/emotional evaluations that individuals make of the situation. The goal of this study was to investigate whether pre-existing differences in behaviour predict the outcome of such assessment of environmental cues, using a conditioned place preference/avoidance (CPP/CPA) paradigm. A comparative vertebrate model (European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax) was used, and ninety juvenile individuals were initially screened for behavioural reactivity using a net restraining test. Thereafter each individual was tested in a choice tank using net chasing as aversive stimulus or exposure to familiar conspecifics as appetitive stimulus in the preferred or non preferred side respectively (called hereafter stimulation side). Locomotor behaviour (i.e. time spent, distance travelled and swimming speed in each tank side) of each individual was recorded and analysed with video software. The results showed that fish which were previously exposed to appetitive stimulus increased significantly the time spent on the stimulation side, while aversive stimulus led to a strong decrease in time spent on the stimulation side. Moreover, this study showed clearly that proactive fish were characterised by a stronger preference for the social stimulus and when placed in a putative aversive environment showed a lower physiological stress responses than reactive fish. In conclusion, this study showed for the first time in sea bass, that the CPP/CPA paradigm can be used to assess the valence (positive vs. negative) that fish attribute to different stimuli and that individual behavioural traits is predictive of how stimuli are perceived and thus of the magnitude of preference or avoidance behaviour.European Commission [265957]; Portuguese Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) [FRH/BPD/72952/2010]; FCT [SFRH/BD/80029/2011