Communicative function of pointing and expressive vocabulary acquisition

There is evidence of a strong association between the pointing gesture and early vocabulary acquisition. This study examined the extent to which this association is moderated by the communicative function of children’s pointing. A total of 35 children participated in the study. Their use of the pointing gesture and their expressive vocabulary were assessed at 13 and 18 months using the Early Social Communication Scales and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, respectively. The results of multiple linear regression analyses indicated that variations in the frequency of declarative pointing at 13 months significantly contributed to variations in vocabulary size at both 13 and 18 months, independently of variations in maternal education. In contrast, variations in the frequency of imperative pointing did not concurrently or longitudinally correlate with children’s vocabulary sizes. These results suggest that the relation between pointing and early vocabulary acquisition is moderated by the communicative function of the pointing gesture.Há evidência de forte associação entre o gesto de apontar e a aquisição inicial do vocabulário. Este estudo teve por objetivo examinar em que medida essa associação é moderada pela função comunicativa do gesto de apontar. Participaram do estudo 35 crianças. O uso do gesto de apontar e o vocabulário expressivo foram avaliados aos 13 e 18 meses através das Escalas de Comunicação Social Inicial e do Inventário MacArthur-Bates de Desenvolvimento Comunicativo, respectivamente. Análises de regressão linear múltipla mostraram que variações na frequência do apontar declarativo aos 13 meses contribuíram significativamente para variações no vocabulário aos 13 e 18 meses, independentemente de diferenças na educação materna. Por outro lado, variações na frequência do apontar imperativo não se correlacionaram, concorrentemente ou longitudinalmente, com variações no vocabulário das crianças. Esses resultados sugerem que a relação entre o apontar e a aquisição do vocabulário é moderada pela função comunicativa do gesto de apontar.Hay evidencia de fuerte asociación entre el gesto de señalar y la adquisición temprana del vocabulario. Este estudio tuvo como objetivo examinar en que medida esa asociación es moderada por la función comunicativa del señalar. Participaron del estudio 35 niños. El uso del  señalar y el vocabulario expresivo fueron evaluados a los 13 y 18 meses con las Escalas de Comunicación Social Temprana y el Inventario MacArthur-Bates de Desarrollo Comunicativo, respectivamente. Análisis de regresión lineal múltiple mostraron que variaciones en la frecuencia del señalar declarativo a los 13 meses contribuyeron significativamente para variaciones en el vocabulario a los 13 y 18 meses, independientemente de diferencias en la educación materna. En cambio, variaciones en el señalar imperativo no se correlacionaron, concurrentemente o longitudinalmente, con diferencias de vocabulario entre los niños. Esos resultados sugieren que la función comunicativa del señalar modera la relación entre ese gesto y la adquisición del vocabulario

Manifestações festivas na Misericórdia de Braga (século XVIII)

Dissertação de mestrado em HistóriaAs manifestações festivas nas Misericórdias remontam desde os primórdios da sua fundação, com a Misericórdia de Lisboa, em 1498, e promoveram-se com a instituição desta confraria em território nacional e no seu vasto império, ao longo dos séculos. Estas celebrações, estipuladas no Compromisso de 1516, eram o dia da confraria, a 2 de julho, que ficaria conhecido como o dia de Santa Isabel; o dia de Todos os Santos, com um ritual em cortejo, ir buscar as ossadas à forca e, ainda a procissão de Endoenças na quinta-feira Santa. Porém, rapidamente outras se lhes foram associando, patrocinadas pelas próprias Misericórdias e também por particulares. A par das suas congéneres, a irmandade da Misericórdia de Braga, fundada provavelmente em 1513, foi uma das principais dinamizadoras das festas e devoções da cidade. Apesar de remontar à centúria de quinhentos, o nosso objetivo de estudo situa-se no século XVIII, período demarcado pela exuberância do barroco nas diversas manifestações públicas. Abordaremos e recriaremos os cenários e vivências das festas religiosas, demarcadas pelos sermões, procissões, o vasto património e a mão-de-obra, que contribuiu para todo este aparato. Estas manifestações festivas eram patrocinadas pela Santa Casa bracarense em ambas as igrejas; a da Misericórdia, e a de S. Marcos, esta ultima situada no hospital com o mesmo nome. Associadas a estes momentos encontram-se igualmente as práticas caritativas. A confraria combinava caridade com festa, não só nas festividades mencionadas, mas igualmente, nos novos cultos por si desenvolvidos.The festive manifestations in the Misericórdias date from the beginnings of its foundation, with the Misericórdia of Lisbon, in 1498, and were promoted with the institution of this confraternity in national territory and in its vast empire, throughout the centuries. These celebrations, stipulated in the Commitment of 1516, were the day of the confraternity, the 2 of July, that would be known like the day of Santa Isabel; All Saints' Day, with a ritual in procession, to fetch the bones from the gallows, and the procession of Endoenças on Maundy Thursday. However, others quickly joined them, sponsored by the Misericórdias themselves and also by individuals. Along with its fellows, the Misericórdia brotherhood of Braga, probably founded in 1513, was one of the main dynamizers of the city's celebrations and devotions. Despite going back to the five hundredth century, our objective of study is in the eighteenth century, a period marked by the exuberance of baroque in the various public manifestations. We will approach and recreate the scenes and experiences of the religious festivals, demarcated by the sermons, processions, the vast patrimony and the manpower, that contributed to all this apparatus. These festive manifestations were sponsored by the Santa Casa of Braga in both churches; the one of Misericórdia, and that of S. Marcos, the latter located in the hospital with the same name. Associated with these moments are also charitable practices. The confraternity combined charity with celebration, not only in the festivities mentioned, but also in the new services developed by them

As infraestruturas portuárias em Cabo Verde: eficiência no curto e no longo prazo

Relatório de estágio de mestrado de Economia Industrial e da EmpresaO transporte marítimo tem aumentado significativamente ao longo dos anos, tornandose necessário melhorar as condições em que as atividades portuárias são desenvolvidas. Cabo Verde tem acompanhado esta evolução, tornando-se essencial que as suas condições de prestação de serviços portuários se adaptem a realidade atual de forma a poder competir no mercado internacional. Tendo em vista o cenário atual do setor portuário, torna-se essencial o estudo dos vários modelos de gestão portuária existentes de forma a ver qual melhor se adapta as características de determinado porto. Por isso ao longo deste Relatório serão analisadas reformas portuárias já efetuadas por forma a tirar alusões das possíveis consequências da adaptação de um determinado modelo. O presente trabalho pretende analisar a eficiência no curto e longo prazo com que a atividade portuária é desenvolvida em Cabo Verde, através da identificação de indicadores de desempenho que nos permitam analisar a produtividade dos portos de Cabo Verde e compará-los com os seus concorrentes africanos.Maritime transport has increased significantly over the years, making it necessary to improve the conditions under which port activities are developed. Cape Verde has followed this evolution, making it essential that the conditions for the provision of port services to adapt to the current reality in order to be able to compete in the international market. Given the current scenario of the port sector, it is essential the study of the various existing models of port management in order to see which best fits the characteristics of a particular port. So throughout this Report will be analyzed the port reforms already made in order to take hints of the possible consequences of adapting a particular model. This paper aims to analyze the short and long term efficiency with which port activity is developed in Cape Verde, through performance indicators identification that allow us to analyze the productivity of Cape Verde ports and compare them with their African competitors

Obliteration of Dentinal Tubules by Desensitizing Agents Based on Silver Fluoride/Potassium Iodide or Pre-Reacted Glass Particles: An in Vitro Study

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of desensitizing agents for the obliteration of dentinal tubules subjected or not to a simulated oral environment. Material and Methods: Dentinal discs (n=8) treated with Riva-Star (RS) or PRG-Barrier-Coat (PRG) were submitted (cycled) or not submitted (control) to erosive-abrasive-thermal cycles and evaluated using scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectroscopic analysis. The variables analyzed were tubule obliteration and dentin surface chemical composition. Data were analyzed by non-parametric tests (p<0.05). Results: The cycled and control groups did not differ significantly for the responses in each material. The PRG control and cycled groups had fewer visible tubules and a higher proportion of totally obliterated tubules than the RS groups. The percentages of silver coverage were higher in the RS-control than in the RS-cycled. There was a significant inverse correlation between the presence of silver and non-obliterated tubules (R=-0.791; p<0.001). The percentages of carbon, aluminum, strontium, and potassium were significantly higher in the PRG-control and PRG-cycled compared to the RS control. The percentages of calcium, phosphorus, and silver were significantly higher in the RS compared to the PRG groups. PRG-control showed a higher percentage of boron than RS-control. Conclusion: PRG promoted greater tubule obliteration than SR. Simulated stress did not affect the obliterating effect of each agent. Greater silver coverage corresponded to a lower proportion of non-obliterated tubules in RS. Carbon, aluminum, strontium, boron, and potassium predominated in the dentin surface treated with PRG, while calcium, phosphorus, and silver prevailed in RS groups

Natural food colorants and preservatives: a review, a demand, and a challenge

The looming urgency of feeding the growing world population along with the increasing consumers’ awareness and expectations have driven the evolution of food production systems and the processes and products applied in the food industry. Although substantial progress has been made on food additives, the controversy in which some of them are still shrouded has encouraged research on safer and healthier next generations. These additives can come from natural sources and confer numerous benefits for health, beyond serving the purpose of coloring or preserving, among others. As limiting factors, these additives are often related to stability, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness issues, which justify the need for innovative solutions. In this context, and with the advances witnessed in computers and computational methodologies for in silico experimental aid, the development of new safer and more efficient natural additives with dual functionality (colorant and preservative), for instance by the copigmentation phenomena, may be achieved more efficiently, circumventing the current difficulties.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (Grant UIDB/00690/2020); national funding by F.C.T. and P.I., through the Institutional Scientific Employment Program-Contract for C.P. and L.B. contracts and C.N. (Grant 2021.05369.BD) and A.K.M. (Grant 2020.06231.BD) Ph.D. grants. The authors acknowledge the FEDER-Interreg España-Portugal Programme for financial support through the Project TRANSCoLAB 0612_TRANS_CO_LAB_2_P; to ERDF through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project Mobilizador Norte-01-0247-FEDER-024479: Valor- Natural. The GIP-USAL is financially supported by the Spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia and Innovación” (Grant PID2019-106167RB-I00) and “Junta de Castilla y León” (Grants SA093P20 and CLU-2018-04).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Comparison of major LiDAR data-driven feature extraction methods for autonomous vehicles

Object detection is one of the areas of computer vision that has matured very rapidly. Nowadays, developments in this research area have been playing special attention to the detection of objects in point clouds due to the emerging of high-resolution LiDAR sensors. However, data from a Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensor is not characterised by having consistency in relative pixel densities and introduces a third dimension, raising a set of drawbacks. The following paper presents a study on the requirements of 3D object detection for autonomous vehicles; presents an overview of the 3D object detection pipeline that generalises the operation principle of models based on point clouds; and categorises the recent works on methods to extract features and summarise their performance.FEDER - Federación Española de Enfermedades Raras(POCI-01-0247-FEDER-037902). European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project no 037902; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-03790

Bioactive potential of aromatic and medicinal plants traditionally used as condiments

Aromatic and medicinal plants are highly appreciated and used worldwide as condiments, tinctures, and preservatives. Due to their nutritional value and chemical composition, related to beneficial properties to health, their inclusion in the human diet has gained increasing expression[1]. Certain mixtures of plants have greater potential when compared to isolated plants, due to synergistic effects, and these properties make them of great interest in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. They have been consumed directly in prepared dishes, but also by incorporation into foods, making them bioactive and functional[2]. In the present study, two mixtures of aromatic plants used to season meat (Petroselinum crispum L., Salvia officinalis L., Thymus mastichina L., and Rosmarinus officinalis L.) and salads (Allium schoenoprasum L., P. crispum, Origanum vulgare L., and T. mastichina) were characterized in terms of phenolic compounds (HPLC-DAD-ESI/MS), organic acids (UFLC-PDA), and tocopherols (HPLC-fluorescence). The antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and anti-proliferation capacities were also evaluated to validate their bioactive properties. Twenty-four phenolic compounds were identified, with concentrations of 101.2±0.6 mg/g and 52.1±0.8 mg/g of total phenolics in meat and salad seasoning mixtures, respectively, being apigenin-O-malonyl-pentoside-hexoside the most abundant compound in both extracts. Oxalic, citric, and malic acids were detected in both samples, as well as the four isoforms of tocopherols, namely, α, β, γ, and δ. In terms of bioactive properties, the meat blend extract revealed the best results for antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activities. For the antioxidant activity, both extracts showed good results in the TBARS test, while in the OxHLIA assay, the mixture for meat stood out. On the other hand, the salad seasoning mixture had the best anti-proliferation property. In conclusion, these aromatic and medicinal plant mixtures demonstrated valuable bioactive properties, conferred by their chemical composition and cumulative and synergistic effects observed in the mixtures, which corroborates the importance of their inclusion in the Human diet.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020); national funding by FCT, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract for C. Pereira, M.I. Dias, R.C. Calhelha, and L. Barros contracts and A.K. Molina PhD grant (2020.06231.BD). To ERDF through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project GreenHealth - Norte-01-0145-FEDER-000042.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Valorização de recursos endógenos em Tierras de Miranda de l Burro i l Gueiteiro

A criação de valor no turismo é alcançada através de experiências autênticas, diferenciadoras e sustentáveis, que preservam os recursos locais. Com base nas propriedades anti-envelhecimento do leite de burra de de raça autóctone, foi desenvolvida uma linha de produtos cosméticos para enriquecer a experiência turística e aumentar o potencial comercial do pacote turístico.Os autores agradecem o apoio financeiro do Projeto NORTE 2020 - SIAC: EMER-n – Empreendedorismo em Meio Rural da Região do Norte. Os autores agradecem à Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) e ao FEDER no âmbito do programa PT2020 pelo apoio financeiro ao CIMO (UID/AGR/00690/2019).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Helicobacter pylori prophages: screening, detection, induction and potential therapeutic use

Helicobacter pylori is a microaerophilic bacterium that chronically infects the human gastric mucosa. Infections caused by this pathogen are difficult to treat, mainly due to the increased resistance of this species to conventional antibiotics. Therefore, it is important to develop antibiotic alternative or complementary approaches to tackle H. pylori infections. Bacterio(phages) have proven to be efficient antibacterial agents, however it is very difficult to isolate strictly lytic phages infecting H. pylori. Nevertheless, this bacterial species presents prophages in their genomes and although strictly lytic phages have been consensually preferred for phage therapy purposes, temperate prophages holds a great but an exploited potential. In the present work, we developed a new PCR-based screening method to detect the presence of prophages genes in a set of H. pylori Portuguese clinical strains. The genomes of selected strains were then sequenced using a combined Illumina platform and MinION nanopore-based sequencing strategy. Prophages content was then analysed using the PHASTER tool. After sequencing analysis, UV light was used to induce phages, from which one was further characterized in terms of morphology, host range, stability on an in vitro gastric model, genome analysis and efficacy against a H. pylori culture. The complementarity between Illumina and Nanopore results, allowed us to identify a total of 10 intact, 7 questionable and 47 incomplete prophages on the 14 sequenced strains. One predicted intact prophage was induced successfully, and presents a genome length of 31 162 bp with 37.1 % G+C content. Interestingly, this new podovirus infects five H. pylori strains, and in the gastric in vitro model only a small loss of phage titer was observed in the gastric phase, suggesting that this phage could be adapted to the stomach environment. Farther, this phage demonstrated to be capable of maintaining the H. pylori population at low levels for up to 24 h post-infection with MOIs of 0.01, 0.1 and 1. Overall, a new PCR screening method was developed to detect prophages on H. pylori and positive correlations with sequencing results were observed. Moreover, this new isolated phage seems to have therapeutic potential to treat H. pylori gastric infections.This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020 unit, and Project PTDC/SAU-PUB/29182/2017 [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029182]. Rute Ferreira is recipient of a FCT PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/146496/2019info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Screening and in silico characterization of prophages in Helicobacter pylori genomes

Temperate bacterio(phages) play an important role on the evolution of pathogenic bacteria. Nevertheless, information on their role in Helicobacter pylori (an important gastric pathogen bacterium) is scarce. The present study developed a workflow for the identification of prophages in Portuguese H. pylori clinical strains, proposing the use of a new PCR-based screening method. The genome of strains with different PCR profiles were then sequenced. In the fourteen genomes analysed, nine intact prophages were identified by PHASTER. These prophages were annotated by analogy with other identified phages, where seven contained the integrase gene, corroborating the results obtained in the PCR screening, with only one exception. Still, in PCR screening, the holin gene was identified in 75 % of the strains containing intact phages, but BLASTp homologies only recognized this gene in one of the prophages. Fifty-six percent are podovirus, while in 44 % it was not possible to assign any family, according to the VirFam tool. Using the Resistance Gene Identifier of CARD it was identified the Acinetobacter mutant Lpx gene conferring resistance to colistin in two intact prophages. The BLASTp search identified a putative ABC binding cassette transporter in one of the intact prophages. On the bacterial genomes, 71 % have the CRISPR-Cas system classified as evidence level 1 by CRISPRCasFinder, which typically indicate potentially invalid CRISPR arrays. The use of an initial PCR screening method increased the identification of intact prophage-containing strains from 20 % to 57 %. Furthermore, the few virulence factors identified in prophages, and the possible inactivity of CRISPR-Cas in the bacterial genomes, allow the choice of strains for the isolation of phages for future studies. Overall, our results represent a significant contribution to the knowledge of prophages in H. pylori, and provide valuable insights into their potential use in phage therapy.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio