Altruistic Worker Policing in Honey Bees, A Multi-Level Approach

Dissertação de mestrado em Exercício e Saúde em Populações Especiais, apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências do Desporto e Educação Física da Universidade de CoimbraAs atitudes dos alunos face à inclusão de alunos com deficiência nas aulas de educação física surgem como um estudo importante, trazendo desta forma informações vantajosas para a inclusão e por sua vez para o sucesso educativo. Os objetivos principais deste estudo centram-se em investigar as atitudes dos alunos face à inclusão de alunos com deficiência nas aulas de Educação física, e a influência das variáveis “género “presença de colegas da turma com deficiência nas aulas de educação física”, “ano de escolaridade. A amostra é constituída por 458 alunos do ensino regular, da região centro, a frequentarem o 6º ano e o 12º ano de escolaridade, sendo 227 do sexo feminino e 231 do sexo masculino, com idades compreendidas entre 10 e 19 anos (M=14,03; DP=2,25) O instrumento utilizado na recolha de dados para medir as atitudes dos alunos face à inclusão foi o questionário Children‘s Attitudes Towards Integrated Physical Education- Revised (CAIPE-R), Block, 1995, traduzido e adaptado para a população portuguesa por Campos, Ferreira e Block (2013) composta por duas sub escalas de atitudes gerais face às aulas de educação física e atitudes face à alteração de regras. Do presente estudo podemos aferir que relativamente à variável género, as atitudes globais dos alunos do sexo feminino, nas aulas de EF são mais favoráveis face à inclusão de alunos com deficiência, a presença de colegas com deficiência nas aulas de educação física têm atitudes mais favoráveis face à atitude global e o ano de escolaridade, podemos afirmar que os alunos com nível de escolaridade mais baixo apresentam atitudes menos favoráveis face á atitude global e face á alteração das regras. Os resultados obtidos levaram-nos a concluir que de uma forma geral os alunos têm uma melhor atitude face à inclusão de alunos com deficiência nas aulas de EF do que relativamente à alteração de regras. The attitudes towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in physical education appear as an important study, bringing useful information for inclusion and by its time for educational success. The main purposes of this study focuses on investigating the attitudes of students towards the inclusion of peers with disabilities in physical education classes, and ascertain the influence of variables such as, "gender", "presence of classmates with disabilities in physical education classes", and "school grade level". Participants were 458 students, 227 females and 231 males from the central region, of Portugal, at the 6th grade and 12th grade levels,their ages varied between 10 and 19 years old (M=14,03;SM=2,25) The instrument used for collecting data to measure student attitudes towards inclusion was the questionnaire, Children's Attitudes Towards Integrated Physical Education - Revised (CAIPE-R), Block, (1995), translated and adapted for the Portuguese population by Campos, Ferreira and Block (2013). From this study we can infer that, regarding the gender variable, the overall attitudes of female students, in physical education classes, are more favorable towards inclusion of students with disabilities, the presence of classmates with disabilities in physical education classes, have more favorable attitudes with regard to overall attitude and grade level. We can affirm that students at lower grade levels have less favorable attitudes regarding overall attitude and changing the rules. Our results led us to conclude that students have a relatively better attitude towards the inclusion of students with disabilities in physical education classes than toward changing the rules

Aspartyyliglukosaminuria

Tiivistelmä. Aspartyyliglukosaminuria on resessiivisesti periytyvä sairaus. AGU-tauti kuuluu suomalaiseen tautiperintöön, sillä sitä esiintyy Suomessa huomattavasti enemmän kuin muualla maailmassa. Sairaus on kuitenkin todella harvinainen. AGU-taudin selkein piirre on kehitysvammaisuus. Elinajanodote on selkeästi lyhentynyt, naisille ollessa vain 35 vuotta ja miehillä 40 vuotta. AGU-taudille ei ole olemassa parannuskeinoa, joten sairautta hoidetaan vain ilmenevien oireiden mukaisesti. Kuitenkin useita eri mahdollisuuksia tutkitaan AGU-taudin parantamiseksi. AGU-tauti aiheutuu aspartyyliglukosaminidaasi-entsyymiä koodaavan geenin mutaatiosta. AGA-entsyymi on lysosomaalinen hydrolaasi, joka osallistuu oligosakkaridien hajotukseen. Maailmalla tunnetaan useita erilaisia mutaatioita, jotka aiheuttavat erilaisia rakenteellisia muutoksia AGA-entsyymiin. Suomessa yleisin mutaatio on kaksoispistemutaatio, jonka seurauksena tapahtuu kahden aminohapon korvautuminen toisilla aminohapoilla. Tämä mutaatio aiheuttaa AGA-entsyymin laskostumisen epäonnistumisen ja täten entsyymi jää epäaktiiviseksi. Oligosakkaridien kertyminen vaurioittaa etenkin keskushermostoa, jonka vuoksi potilaiden kognitiiviset kyvyt heikkenevät merkittävästi vuosien varrella. Mahdollisiksi parannuskeinoiksi on tutkittu eri menetelmiä, jotka keskittyvät entsyymin aktiivisuuden lisäämiseen tai substraatin synteesin inhiboimiseen. Lisäksi geeninsiirtoa on tutkittu esimerkiksi adenovirusvektoreilla. Näillä AAV-vektoreilla on saatu lupaavia tuloksia AGU-hiirillä

Biotic analogies for self-organising cities

Nature has inspired generations of urban designers and planners in pursuit of harmonious and functional built environments. Research regarding self-organisation has encouraged urbanists to consider the role of bottom-up approaches in generating urban order. However, the extent to which self-organisation-inspired approaches draw directly from nature is not always clear. Here, we examined the biological basis of urban research, focusing on self-organisation. We conducted a systematic literature search of self-organisation in urban design and biology, mapped the relationship between key biological terms across the two fields and assessed the quality and validity of biological comparisons in the urban design literature. Finding deep inconsistencies in the mapping of central terms between the two fields, a preponderance for cross-level analogies and comparisons that spanned molecules to ecosystems, we developed a biotic framework to visualise the analogical space and elucidate areas where new inspiration may be sought

The Recent Past and Possible Futures of Citizen Science: Final Remarks

Podeu consultar el llibre complet a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/173349This book is the culmination of the COST Action CA15212 Citizen Science to Promote Creativity, Scientific Literacy, and Innovation throughout Europe. It represents the final stage of a shared journey taken over the last 4 years. During this relatively short period, our citizen science practices and perspectives have rapidly evolved. The COST Action started in 2016, when citizen science was gaining momentum in Europe and worldwide. The first international citizen science conference took place in San José, California, in 2012. This period also saw the foundation of citizen science organisations, such as the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, in 2014. These milestones were not isolated events in the evolution of citizen science. There was a confluence of factors on multiple levels: globally, nationally, and locally. There was a sense of urgency to find common spaces to discuss the widespread flourishing of citizen science practices. These factors led to the formation of the citizen science COST Action. The impetus for citizen science in Europe over the last few years is partially indebted to the activities and interactions of this COST Action. This has offered a panoramic view of new initiatives, recently built digital platforms, and ongoing hot topic debates in the citizen science community of practitioners. It also helped spark several European-funded projects. The most relevant example is EU-Citizen. Science, a coordination and support platform launched in 2019. Its goal is to become the European reference point for citizen science, through cross-network knowledge sharing on a multi-language repository website with access to projects and resources for all stakeholders...

A model structure-driven hierarchical decentralized stabilizing control structure for process networks

Based on the structure of process models a hierarchically structured state-space model has been proposed for process networks with controlled mass convection and constant physico-chemical properties. Using the theory of cascade-connected nonlinear systems and the properties of Metzler and Hurwitz matrices it is shown that process systems with controlled mass convection and without sources or with stabilizing linear source terms are globally asymptotically stable. The hierarchically structured model gives rise to a distributed controller structure that is in agreement with the traditional hierarchical process control system structure where local controllers are used for mass inventory control and coordinating controllers are used for optimizing the system dynamics. The proposed distributed controller is illustrated on a simple non-isotherm jacketed chemical reactor

Promoting scientific literacy in evolution through citizen science

Evolutionary understanding is central to biology. It is also an essential prerequisite to understanding and making informed decisions about societal issues such as climate change. Yet, evolution is generally poorly understood by civil society and many misconceptions exist. Citizen science, which has been increasing in popularity as a means to gather new data and promote scientific literacy, is one strategy through which people could learn about evolution. However, despite the potential for citizen science to promote evolution learning opportunities, very few projects implement them. In this paper, we make the case for incorporating evolution education into citizen science, define key learning goals, and suggest opportunities for designing and evaluating projects in order to promote scientific literacy in evolution

Personality May Confound Common Measures of Mate-Choice

The measurement of female mating preferences is central to the study of the evolution of male ornaments. Although several different methods have been developed to assess sexual preference in some standardized way, the most commonly used procedure consists of recording female spatial association with different males presented simultaneously. Sexual preference is then inferred from time spent in front of each male. However, the extent to which the measurement of female mate-choice is related to exploration tendencies has not been addressed so far. In the present study we assessed the influence of variation in exploration tendencies, a trait closely associated to global personality, on the measurement of female mating preference in the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) using the widely used four-chamber choice-apparatus. The number of movements performed within both exploration and mate-choice apparatus was consistent within and across the two contexts. In addition, personality explained variation in selectivity, preference strength and consistency. High-exploratory females showed lower selectivity, lower preference scores and displayed more consistent preference scores. Our results suggest that variation in personality may affect the measurement of female mating preference and may contribute to explain existing inconsistencies across studies