Green processing of porous chitin structures for biomedical applications combining ionic liquids and supercritical fluid technology

The application of green chemistry principles in the processing of materials for advanced technologies is a steadily increasing field of research. In this work porous chitin-based materials were developed by combining the processing of chitin using ionic liquids (ILs)as a green solvent together with the use of super- critical fluid technology(SCF) as clean technology.Chitin was dissolved in 1-butyl-3-imidazolium acetate,followed by regeneration of the polymer in ethanol in specific moulds.The IL was removed using Soxhlet extraction and successive steps of extraction with SCF using carbon dioxide/ethanol ratios of 50/ 50 and70/30.The developed porous chitin-based structures (ChIL)can be classified as mesoporous materials,with very low density and high porosity.The cytotoxicity of ChIL extracts was investigated using L929 fibroblast like cells,and the results demonstrated that the produced materials have extremely lowcytotoxicityl evels.Therefore,the findings suggest that the porous chitin structures may be potential candidates for a number of biomedical applications,including tissue engineering.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)S.S.S. and A.R.C.D. thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for post-doctoral fellowships (SFRH/BPD/ 45307/2008 and SFRH/BDP/34994/2007, respectively). This work was partially supported by the FCT (Project PTDC/QUI/68804/ 2006) and was carried out under the scope of the European NoE EXPERTISSUES (NMP3-CT-2004-500283)

Committed to quality in physical activity programmes for elderly people – The customer results

There has been a growing concern in conceiving physical activity (PA) programmes for elderly people since the evidence indicates that this type of health promotion interventions may reduce the deleterious effects of the aging process. In Portugal, the Public Administration is the sector that offers the largest supply of goods and services and as such, it is the sector that must devote most attention to Quality Some studies support the EFQM Excellence Model as an operational framework for Total Quality Management. Excellent Results with respect to Performance, Customers, People and Society are achieved through Leadership driving Policy and Strategy that is delivered through People, Partnerships and Resources, as well as Processes. Consequently, the EFQM Model might be used as a self-assessment instrument, to discern the strengths of the programmes, as well as areas in which improvement can be made. The purposes of this study were 1) to examine the existence of customers’ outcomes measurement in Portuguese PA programmes for elderly people, comparing it with programmes’ characteristics and 2) to analyse the associations between the different evaluated items. Data were collected by an on-line questionnaire sent to 26 Coordinators of PA Programmes. Descriptive statistics were used in order to characterize de PA programmes and the participants’ outcome measurement items. Statistical analysis was performed using Fisher’s Exact Test and Pearson’s Qui-square test. 57,7 % of the programmes recorded participants’ outcome measures at regular intervals. Most of them (73,3%; p 0.05) were free of charge programmes. Statistically significant associations were found between the following outcomes items: cardiorespiratory fitness, flexibility, muscular strength, coordination, balance and body composition. Portuguese PA programmes for elderly people showed a feeble attention on participants’ outcome measures, even though the measurement process represents one of the most important components of customer results from an exercise programme. Furthermore, there are significant differences between customers’ outcome measures chosen by each programme.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cosmological constraints from lensing statistics and supernovae on the cosmic equation of state

We investigate observational constraints from lensing statistics and high-z type Ia supernovae on flat cosmological models with nonrelativistic matter and an exotic fluid with equation of state, $p_x=(m/3 -1)\rho_x$. We show that agreement with both tests at the 68% confidence level is possible if the parameter $m$ is low ($m \lesssim 0.85$) and $0.24 \lesssim \Omega_{m0} \lesssim 0.38$ with lower values of $\Omega_{m0}$ corresponding to higher $m$. We find that a conventional cosmological constant model with $\Omega_{m0}\simeq 0.33$ is the best fit model of the combined likelihood.Comment: 7 pages, 4 postscript figures, revtex, submitted to Phys. Rev.