La enseñanza de las ciencias y la formación de profesores de enseñanza primaria para la reforma curricular : de la teoría a la práctica

This papers presents a qualitative study aiming to investigate how new Portuguese curriculum proposals from primary school (the intentional curriculum) are translated in the teaching of science of four prospective teachers (the operational curriculum). The research adopted a case study methodology in order to describe main features of the pedagogical profile of classroom practices of those teachers. Three different profiles were identified. Some interpretative aspects are outlined and important implications for pre-service education are put forward

Coupling dye-integrated polymeric membranes with smartphone detection to classify bacteria

We report the use of a colorimetric plastic-based device to discriminate four pathogenic bacteria: Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus vulgaris, Proteus mirabilis and Escherichia coli. The colour changes of the plastic membranes were analysed with RGB values extracted from dye-integrated polymeric membrane images obtained with a smartphone and used as input data for non-supervised pattern recognition methods. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

The Impact of Code Review on Architectural Changes

Although considered one of the most important decisions in the software development lifecycle, empirical evidence on how developers perform and perceive architectural changes remains scarce. Architectural decisions have far-reaching consequences yet, we know relatively little about the level of developers' awareness of their changes' impact on the software's architecture. We also know little about whether architecture-related discussions between developers lead to better architectural changes. To provide a better understanding of these questions, we use the code review data from 7 open source systems to investigate developers' intent and awareness when performing changes alongside the evolution of the changes during the reviewing process. We extracted the code base of 18,400 reviews and 51,889 revisions. 4,171 of the reviews have changes in their computed architectural metrics, and 731 present significant changes to the architecture. We manually inspected all reviews that caused significant changes and found that developers are discussing the impact of their changes on the architectural structure in only 31% of the cases, suggesting a lack of awareness. Moreover, we noticed that in 73% of the cases in which developers provided architectural feedback during code review, the comments were addressed, where the final merged revision tended to exhibit higher architectural improvement than reviews in which the system's structure is not discussed

Use of plastic-based analytical device, smartphone and chemometric tools to discriminate amines

Amine-based volatile compounds released bymicroorganisms offer an alternative diagnostic approach for the identification of foodborne pathogens. Our objective has been to solvent cast cellulose acetate membranes to immobilise dyes and to use the resultant membranes as a plastic device to discriminate between different types of amines (triethylamine, isobutylamine, isopentylamine). The plastic device consisted of an array of membranes with five pH indicators (namely alizarin, bromophenol blue, chlorophenol red, methyl red and thymol blue). To analyse the data using a portable instrument, we used an iPhone (R) to obtain images and to extract red, green and blue colours (RGB) using in-house software before and after contact with each individual amine. All the RGB values extracted for each analyte allowed us to generate a unique colour pattern, which was used as input for non-supervised pattern recognition methods. Based on this analysis, it was possible to clearly discriminate between the amines studied without any misclassification, demonstrating that the device is well-suited for large-scale applications such as non-destructive methods to discriminate amines and, in future, for smart packaging applications in order to give early warning of rotting food that may lead to food poisoning. Additionally, a semi-quantitative analysis was performed and we have demonstrated that it is possible to quantify concentrations of amines down to 1 ppm

Searching for configurations in clone evaluation - A replication study

Clone detection is the process of finding duplicated code within a software code base in an automated manner. It is useful in several areas of software development such as code quality analysis, bug detection, and program understanding.We replicate a study of a geneticalgorithm based framework that optimises parameters for clone agreement (EvaClone). We apply the framework to 14 releases of Mockito, a Java mocking framework. We observe that the optimised parameters outperform the tools’ default parameters in term of clone agreement by 19.91% to 66.43 %. However, the framework gives undesirable results in term of clone quality. EvaClone either maximises or minimises a number of clones in order to achieve the highest agreement resulting in more false positives or false negatives introduced consequently

On the ordeal of quinolone preparation via cyclisation of aryl-enamines; synthesis and structure of ethyl 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-(3-iodo-4-methylphenoxy)-quinoline-3-carboxylate

Recent studies directed to the design of compounds targeting the bc(1) protein complex of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for most lethal cases of malaria, identified quinolones (4-oxo-quinolines) with low nanomolar inhibitory activity against both the enzyme and infected erythrocytes. The 4-oxo-quinoline 3-ester chemotype emerged as a possible source of potent bc(1) inhibitors, prompting us to expand the library of available analogs for SAR studies and subsequent lead optimization. We now report the synthesis and structural characterization of unexpected ethyl 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-(3-iodo-4-methylphenoxy)quinoline-3-carboxylate, a 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester formed during attempted preparation of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate (4-oxo-quinoline 3-ester). We propose that the 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester derives from 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate (4-hydroxy-quinoline 3-ester), the enol form of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate. Formation of the 4-aryloxy-quinoline 3-ester confirms the impact of quinolone/hydroxyquinoline tautomerism, both on the efficiency of synthetic routes to quinolones and on pharmacologic profiles. Tautomers exhibit different cLogP values and interact differently with the enzyme active site. A structural investigation of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-oxo-quinoline-3-carboxylate and 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate, using matrix isolation coupled to FTIR spectroscopy and theoretical calculations, revealed that the lowest energy conformers of 6-methyl-7-iodo-4-hydroxy-quinoline-3-carboxylate, lower in energy than their most stable 4-oxo-quinoline tautomer by about 27 kJ mol(-1), are solely present in the matrix, while the most stable 4-oxo-quinoline tautomer is solely present in the crystalline phase.Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT - Portugal) [UID/Multi/04326/2013]; QREN-COMPETE-UE; CCMAR; FCT [SFRH/BD/81821/2011, RECI/BBB-BQB/0230/2012, UI0313/QUI/2013, UID/FIS/04564/2016]; FEDER/COMPETE-UE; [PTDC/QEQ-QFI/3284/2014 - POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016617]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Brain Age from the Electroencephalogram of Sleep

The human electroencephalogram (EEG) of sleep undergoes profound changes with age. These changes can be conceptualized as "brain age", which can be compared to an age norm to reflect the deviation from normal aging process. Here, we develop an interpretable machine learning model to predict brain age based on two large sleep EEG datasets: the Massachusetts General Hospital sleep lab dataset (MGH, N = 2,621) covering age 18 to 80; and the Sleep Hearth Health Study (SHHS, N = 3,520) covering age 40 to 80. The model obtains a mean absolute deviation of 8.1 years between brain age and chronological age in the healthy participants in the MGH dataset. As validation, we analyze a subset of SHHS containing longitudinal EEGs 5 years apart, which shows a 5.5 years difference in brain age. Participants with neurological and psychiatric diseases, as well as diabetes and hypertension medications show an older brain age compared to chronological age. The findings raise the prospect of using sleep EEG as a biomarker for healthy brain aging

CROP: linking code reviews to source code changes

Code review has been widely adopted by both industrial and open source software development communities. Research in code review is highly dependant on real-world data, and although existing researchers have attempted to provide code review datasets, there is still no dataset that links code reviews with complete versions of the system's code base mainly because reviewed versions are not kept in the system's version control repository. Thus, we present CROP, the Code Review Open Platform, the first curated code review repository that links review data with isolated complete versions (snapshots) of the source code at the time of review. CROP currently provides data for 8 software systems, 48,975 reviews and 112,617 patches, including versions of the systems that are inaccessible in the systems' original repositories. Moreover, CROP is extensible, and it will be continuously curated and extended