"Can Portugal Escape Stagnation without Opting Out from the Eurozone?"

The creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has not brought significant gains to the Portuguese economy in terms of real convergence with wealthier eurozone countries. We analyze the causes of the underperformance of the Portuguese economy in the last decade, discuss its growth prospects within the EMU, and make two proposals for urgent institutional reform of the EMU. We argue that, under the prevailing institutional framework, Portugal faces a long period of stagnation, high unemployment, and painful structural reform, and conclude that, in the absence of institutional reform of the EMU, getting out of the eurozone represents a serious political option for Portugal.Nominal Wage Cuts; Eurozone; Relative Unit Labor Costs; Zero-sum Game

Sociología de la vejez versus economía de la vejez

La complementariedad de enfoques entre la economía y la sociología referido a los mayores es necesaria desde el punto de vista conceptual y metodológico. La sociología de la vejez y la economía de la vejez deberán buscar su punto de encuentro, no tanto en la perspectiva macro del envejecimiento demográfico y sus costos y consecuencias económicas, sino en un nivel cotidiano, privado y familiar, prestándole atención a la economía no monetaria. Se analizan desde esta perspectiva los distintos tipos de trabajos existentes, así como algunos de los hechos económicos más relevantes en la vida del mayor: trabajo, atención, situación familiar y económica, consumo y ahorro.The complement of approaches between the economy and the sociology related to the ederly is necesary fron the conceptual and methodological point of view. The Sociology of Aging and Economics Aging must find their place at some point, not only fron the macro perspective of demographically growing old and its costs and economic consecuences, but also in the daily, private and family levels, paying attention to the «no monetary» economy. The different types of existing research works and some of the most inportant economic facts in the life of the ederly are analyzeed from this perspective: work, attention, familiy and economical situation, spending and saving

Arqueología y restauración arquitectónica: el caso del monasterio de Santa María La Real (Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia)

Las intervenciones restauradoras llevadas a cabo durante las últimas décadas en el monasterio de Santa Mª la Real (ss. VII-XIX) y su repercusión en el edificio y en el yacimiento se estudian en este trabajo. El análisis arqueológico de un edificio de estas características ha requerido un tratamiento especial tanto en la excavación como en el estudio de la arquitectura del conjunto monástico

Anatomical location of Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor in urogenital tissues, peripheral ganglia and lumbosacral spinal cord of the rat

BACKGROUND: Previous work suggested that macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) may be involved in bladder inflammation. Therefore, the location of MIF was determined immunohistochemically in the bladder, prostate, major pelvic ganglia, sympathetic chain, the L6-S1 dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and the lumbosacral spinal cord of the rat. RESULTS: In the pelvic organs, MIF immunostaining was prominent in the epithelia. MIF was widely present in neurons in the MPG and the sympathetic chain. Some of those neurons also co-localized tyrosine hydroxylase (TH). In the DRGs, some of the neurons that stained for MIF also stained for Substance P. In the lumbosacral spinal cord, MIF immunostaining was observed in the white mater, the dorsal horn, the intermediolateral region and in the area around the central canal. Many cells were intensely stained for MIF and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) suggesting they were glial cells. However, some cells in the lumbosacral dorsal horn were MIF positive, GFAP negative cells suggestive of neurons. CONCLUSIONS: Therefore, MIF, a pro-inflammatory cytokine, is localized to pelvic organs and also in neurons of the peripheral and central nervous tissues that innervate those organs. Changes in MIF's expression at the end organ and at peripheral and central nervous system sites suggest that MIF is involved in pelvic viscera inflammation and may act at several levels to promote inflammatory changes

Bases y fundamentos para una aproximación sociológica a la vejez

Es tracta de realitzar una aproximació a la sociologia de la vellesa. Per a això, s'exposen en aquest article algunes de les reflexions i dels arguments més globals que des de la sociologia es fan sobre la vellesa i la seva relació amb la societat i la producció. S'assenyalen també les relacions de la vellesa amb les "plusvàlues socials", el "temps", el concepte de "generació" i "les edats", la "mort" i el "cos". Els factors diferencials dintre de la població anciana són els més importants i els que cal ressaltar dins una sociologia de la vellesa.Se trata de realizar una aproximación a la sociología de la vejez. Para esto, se exponen en este articulo algunas de las reflexiones y de los argumentos más globales que desde la sociología se hacen sobre la vejez y su relación con la sociedad y la producción. Se indican también las relaciones de la vejez con las plusvalías sociales, con el "tiempo", con el concepto de "generación" y las "edades", con la "muerte" y con el "cuerpo". Los factores diferenciales dentro de la población anciana son los más importantes y los que se deben resaltar dentro de una sociologia de la vejez.This article is an approach to the sociology of the old age. To realize this approach, it exposes some of the more global thoughts and,arguments which from sociology are made about the old age and its relationship whith society and production. It also underlines the relationships of the old age with the "social increased values" with "time", with the concept of "generations" and "ages", with "death" and with the "body". Those differential factors within the elder population are the most important to underline within a sociology of the old age

Paralytic shellfish toxins and ocean warming: bioaccumulation and ecotoxicological responses in jujvenile Gilthead Seabream (Sparus aurata)

Warmer seawater temperatures are expected to increase harmful algal blooms (HABs) occurrence, intensity, and distribution. Yet, the potential interactions between abiotic stressors and HABs are still poorly understood from ecological and seafood safety perspectives. The present study aimed to investigate, for the first time, the bioaccumulation/depuration mechanisms and ecotoxicological responses of juvenile gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) exposed to paralytic shellfish toxins (PST) under different temperatures (18, 21, 24 °C). PST were detected in fish at the peak of the exposure period (day five, 0.22 µg g-1 N-sulfocarbamoylGonyautoxin-1-2 (C1 and C2), 0.08 µg g-1 Decarbamoylsaxitoxin (dcSTX) and 0.18 µg g-1 Gonyautoxin-5 (B1)), being rapidly eliminated (within the first 24 h of depuration), regardless of exposure temperature. Increased temperatures led to significantly higher PST contamination (275 µg STX eq. kg-1). During the trial, fish antioxidant enzyme activities (superoxide dismutase, SOD; catalase, CAT; glutathione S-transferase, GST) in both muscle and viscera were affected by temperature, whereas a significant induction of heat shock proteins (HSP70), Ubiquitin (Ub) activity (viscera), and lipid peroxidation (LPO; muscle) was observed under the combination of warming and PST exposure. The differential bioaccumulation and biomarker responses observed highlight the need to further understand the interactive effects between PST and abiotic stressors, to better estimate climate change impacts on HABs events, and to develop mitigation strategies to overcome the potential risks associated with seafood consumption.Agência financiadora European Union (EU) 678193 Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) IF/00253/2014 CEECIND/01739/2017 UID/Multi/04326/2019info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fusion of facial regions using color information in a forensic scenario

Comunicación presentada en: 18th Iberoamerican Congress on Pattern Recognition, CIARP 2013; Havana; Cuba; 20-23 November 2013The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41827-3_50This paper reports an analysis of the benefits of using color information on a region-based face recognition system. Three different color spaces are analysed (RGB, YCbCr, lαβ) in a very challenging scenario matching good quality mugshot images against video surveillance images. This scenario is of special interest for forensics, where examiners carry out a comparison of two face images using the global information of the faces, but paying special attention to each individual facial region (eyes, nose, mouth, etc.). This work analyses the discriminative power of 15 facial regions comparing both the grayscale and color information. Results show a significant improvement of performance when fusing several regions of the face compared to just using the whole face image. A further improvement of performance is achieved when color information is consideredThis work has been partially supported by contract with Spanish Guardia Civil and projects BBfor2 (FP7-ITN-238803), bio-Challenge (TEC2009-11186), Bio Shield (TEC2012-34881), Contexts (S2009/TIC-1485), TeraSense (CSD2008-00068) and "Cátedra UAM-Telefónica

Técnicas de inferencia estadística para percepción del entorno : aplicación a vehículos autónomos

Como ya hemos comentado anteriormente, este proyecto se centra en vehículos autónomos en entornos interiores, bien en oficinas, hospitales, industrias, etc. El principal problema de la navegación de vehículos autónomos es conseguir procesar correctamente la gran cantidad de datos obtenidos mediante los sensores de los que está provisto el vehículo. Esto se debe a que pese a contar en la actualidad con sensores de muy buenas características, no resulta sencillo conseguir que los datos obtenidos por los sensores sean procesados de forma adecuada para percibir el entorno que le rodea. De forma resumida estos van a ser los objetivos del presente proyecto: 1. Plantear las distintas técnicas utilizadas. 2. Obtener mapas con los datos captados por el sensor en el PC. 3. Diseñar un algoritmo con el que procesar estos datos mediante inferencia estadística.Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería IndustrialUniversidad Politécnica de Cartagen

The pine wood nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, in Portugal: possible introductions and spread routes of a serious biological invasion revealed by molecular methods

The pine wood nematode (PWN), Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, the causal agent of pine wilt disease (PWD), is a major world-wide pathogen and pest of pine, with impacts on forest health, natural ecosystem stability and international trade. In Portugal, PWN was first diagnosed in 1999, the first occurrence also for Europe. The disease was recently detected on the island ofMadeira and in northern Spain. In an attempt to search for more reliable and robust molecular markers that enable the study of intraspecific variability of B. xylophilus from different geographic locations, the intergenic spacer (IGS) region of the 5S rRNA gene and inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) analysis were used to determine the genetic relationships among 43 B. xylophilus isolates from Portugal, China, Japan, South Korea and USA. IGS sequence analysis showed that this region can only be used to establish interspecific relationships, since no differences were detected among Portuguese isolates from different geographic locations. Fingerprints obtained with ISSR show high genetic variability among Portuguese isolates, except for the ones obtained prior to 2008. The ISSR dendrogram suggests the spread of the disease inside continental Portugal and to Madeira. Until 2008, B. xylophilus populations found in continental Portugal showed low genetic diversity, pointing to a single introduction, probably from Asia, whereas recent populations from continental Portugal (2009-2010) and Madeira show high genetic diversity, suggesting multiple introductions from different origins