Liquid Intersection Types

We present a new type system combining refinement types and the expressiveness of intersection type discipline. The use of such features makes it possible to derive more precise types than in the original refinement system. We have been able to prove several interesting properties for our system (including subject reduction) and developed an inference algorithm, which we proved to be sound.Comment: In Proceedings ITRS 2014, arXiv:1503.0437

The Aging Neuromuscular System and Motor Performance

Age-related changes in the basic functional unit of the neuromuscular system, the motor unit, and its neural inputs have a profound effect on motor function, especially among the expanding number of old (older than ∼60 yr) and very old (older than ∼80 yr) adults. This review presents evidence that age-related changes in motor unit morphology and properties lead to impaired motor performance that includes 1) reduced maximal strength and power, slower contractile velocity, and increased fatigability; and 2) increased variability during and between motor tasks, including decreased force steadiness and increased variability of contraction velocity and torque over repeat contractions. The age-related increase in variability of motor performance with aging appears to involve reduced and more variable synaptic inputs that drive motor neuron activation, fewer and larger motor units, less stable neuromuscular junctions, lower and more variable motor unit action potential discharge rates, and smaller and slower skeletal muscle fibers that coexpress different myosin heavy chain isoforms in the muscle of older adults. Physical activity may modify motor unit properties and function in old men and women, although the effects on variability of motor performance are largely unknown. Many studies are of cross-sectional design, so there is a tremendous opportunity to perform high-impact and longitudinal studies along the continuum of aging that determine 1) the influence and cause of the increased variability with aging on functional performance tasks, and 2) whether lifestyle factors such as physical exercise can minimize this age-related variability in motor performance in the rapidly expanding numbers of very old adults

A anotação sintática de textos medievais portugueses

Este trabalho tem como principal objetivo descrever o sistema adotado pelo projeto WOChWEL para a anotação sintática de textos medievais do português antigo. Paralelamente, pretende-se mostrar as vantagens da utilização deste tipo de anotação para estudar propriedades gramaticais de construções específicas. Como caso ilustrativo, são aqui consideradas as construções com verbos causativos e complemento não finito cuja pesquisa é feitaa partir da construção e não do verbo. Para além dos verbos causativos existentes em português europeu contemporâneo (deixar, fazer e mandar), os dados revelam a possibilidade de outros verbos (como achar, por exemplo) também ocorrerem nestas construções em português antigo.This paper aims to describe the system adopted by the WOChWEL project for the syntactic annotation of medieval texts of Old Portuguese. At the same time, we intend to show the advantages of using this type of annotation to study grammatical properties of specific constructions. As an illustrative case, we consider here the constructions with causative verbs and infinitival complements whose search is based on the construction and not on the verb. Inaddition to the existing causative verbs in contemporary European Portuguese (deixar, fazer e mandar), the data shows the possibility of other verbs also occurring in these constructions in Old Portuguese (as achar, for example)

Casandra entre dos mundos: de personaje secundario a protagonista en la Alemania nazi

En uno de sus primeros discursos, Joseph Goebbels, Ministro de la Propaganda Nazi, refería que uno de sus objetivos era crear una Gleichschaltung, es decir, una coordinación ideológica entre el Gobierno y el Pueblo Alemán. Para el nacional-socialismo la cultura se restringía así a ser solamente una herramienta del Estado y el teatro uno de los medios para alcanzar esa coordinación. En ese tiempo, varios autores, valorados por el régimen Nazi, hicieron adaptaciones de tragedias griegas. No siendo el mito una realidad petrificada en el tiempo, la plasticidad que lo caracteriza permite que sea aprovechado para la defensa de nuevos valores. Es nuestro objetivo mostrar cómo uno de esos autores, Hans Schwarz, eleva la figura secundaria de Casandra a protagonista, transformando el poder de su conocimiento en un importante vehículo de una ideología: el nacional-socialismo. Mediante una interacción entre el tiempo mítico y el tiempo presente, encontramos una Casandra defendiendo valores absolutamente esenciales para el III Reich y para su motivación ideológica, entre los cuales se destacan la exaltación del nacionalismo exacerbado, la justificación de la guerra contra los enemigos de la Patria y la proclamación de la sumisión necesaria y sacrificio del individuo a las exigencias de la Nación.In one of his first speeches, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, declared having the aim of creating a Gleichschaltung, i.e., an harmonization between the Reich and the German People. This way, to National Socialist ideology, Culture was restricted to being a State tool and theatre one of the ways to achieve such coordination. During that time, several authors valued by the Nazi regime, made adaptations of Greek tragedies. Since the myth is not a reality petrified in time, the plasticity that characterizes it allows it to be reused to defend new values. It is our goal to demonstrate how one of these authors, Hans Schwarz, elevates the secondary figure of Cassandra to protagonist, transforming the power of her knowledge in an important vehicle for one ideology: the national-socialism. Via an equivalence of the mythical time with the current time, one finds a Cassandra that defends values absolutely essentials for the Third Reich and its ideological framework, such as the exaltation of nationalism, the justification of war against the enemies of the homeland and the proclamation of individual sacrifice to the nation’s demands

Troubleshooting with Surveys

This presentation discusses ways to identify and avoid the problems commonly encountered in draft surveys

Spitzmesser, Ana María: «Álvaro Cunqueiro: la fabulación del franquismo».

Sin resume

Inferências acerca de uma eventual relação entre relações públicas e tecnologias de informação e comunicação

The idea for the present article came from a Thematic Categorical Analysis made to a set of nine interviews to Portuguese enterprises occurred between July and November 2007. The semi-directive interviews that where submitted to a content analysis aim to focus upon an eventual relationship between the public relations function and the information and communication technologies (ICT). This text mainly explores the codification process of ‘registration unities’ (made from cutting the transcript interviews) and the inferences resulting from that. This work is reduced to brief passages taken from one of the several investigation techniques used in a larger research which integrates a PhD thesis in sociology. In this thesis we try to discover if public relations effectiveness is better achieved, or not, by recurring to information and communication technologies in different scenarios from an infrastructural component to an organic design of the PR function or even to the tasks and policies performance & control.Electronic Public Relations, ICT, Content Analysis

Words of welcome

Dear Colleagues, dear Friends; It is a pleasure to welcome you to the 18th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care in Rotterdam. This 2023 congress is the first face-to-face congress organized by the EAPC since 2019. Like other EAPC congresses, this congress is the result of two years of planning, organisation, meetings, reflection, and decision-making. Finally, here we are! It has been my honour to co-chair the Scientific Committee of this congress together with my colleague Agnes Csikos. For the first time, as far as I remember, the Scientific Committee, composed of a dedicated group of colleagues (thank you Alberto Alonso, Augusto Caraceni, Fin Craig, Jeroen Hasselaar, Martin Loucka, Wendy Oldenmenger, Christoph Ostgathe, Danai Papadatou, Nancy Preston, Audrey Roulston, and Rainer Simader), was co-chaired by two women who have the particularity of living in the South and Eastern parts of Europe. Under the theme “Equity and Diversity in Palliative Care”, the EAPC 2023 congress focuses on understanding health inequities and diversity in palliative care. Through a rich and diversified program, this congress draws attention to the utmost need and goal of creating equity of fair access, opportunity, and advancement in palliative care for all people in need of this care, within a context of diversity. We will have the opportunity to reflect on ways to better understand why and how inequities in palliative care occur, develop strategies aimed at reducing those inequities, and identify which challenges and policies could help to improve equity in palliative care. That is why, determining the prominent factors in the production of inequities in palliative care and deciding which ones are most amenable to change is paramount. As an operational definition of equity in palliative care, we adapted the definition proposed by the International Society for Equity in Health. Equity in palliative care is the absence of systematic and potentially remediable differences in one or more aspects of palliative care outcomes across socially, demographically, or geographically defined population groups. There is no basis for expecting a single characteristic or set of characteristics to be most influential in causing inequities in palliative care. Evidence suggests otherwise. To complement the understanding of health inequities in palliative care, we need to take diversity in palliative care into account. The definition of diversity encompasses variety and the condition of being different or having differences. Rarely are diverse influences simultaneously explored in the literature to better understand and tackle plausible explanations for inequities in palliative care. Sometimes, diversity is used as a euphemism for “outside the majority” or “different from the dominant group”. Yet, as human beings, diversity is part of who we are. We are inherently diverse, and evidence shows that when reflecting on and discussing palliative care, there is no “one size fits all”. Are we promoting equity in palliative care? If not, why are we failing on equity in palliative care? Do we spend inadequately or inappropriately on palliative care provision? Why in a world now much more aware of the impact of the social determinants of health are the world’s most vulnerable persons still missing out? Why are we still failing in providing increased or augmented palliative care services for socially, demographically, or geographically defined population groups with greater palliative care needs? How can diversity help to understand and tackle inequities in palliative care? These are just a few examples of questions that will certainly become “food for thought” during our days together in Rotterdam. And, we are so grateful to all and each one of you for your contributions to the scientific programme. The 18th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care gives us the opportunity to reconnect and share all the exiting work that is being developed within our worldwide palliative care community. These days together offer us the amazing chance to meet colleagues and friends, to be inspired and inspire others, and to re-energise ourselves to face the future challenges for palliative care.Promoting equity and taking diversity into account is not only the theme of the 18th World Congress of the EAPC. They should also be at the heart of palliative care practice, organisation, research, education, advocacy, and policy. I wish you a wonderful and exciting congress and look forward to meeting you in Rotterdam.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

ASPECTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ANTI-LEISHMANIA DRUGS: FROM CONTROL OF NEGLECTED INFECTIONS TO PARASITE-HOST INTERACTIONS AND DRUG-RESISTANT PARASITES

Leishmaniasis is a neglected disease caused by parasites of the genus Leishmania. The disease leads to different clinical manifestations determined by parasite features like heterogeneity in the virulence of distinct species-zymodemes and host parameters such as genetic characteristics and immunological status./nVisceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the most severe disease form and is potentially fatal if untreated. Drugs in use against VL present several drawbacks including high toxicity, relevant contraindications and complicated administration regimens. In addition, 90% of world´s VL cases are concentrated in poorest locations like the Indian sub-continent where a number of factors contribute to an ineffective disease control including access to medicines and its relatively expensive price and the development of resistant Leishmania strains, not only to the classical antimonials drugs but also to miltefosine, the only oral drug available./nTherefore, the development of new drugs against VL is urgent and must have in consideration several aspects in order to achieve and be effective to most of the disease cases. Indeed, treatment outcomes vary substantially between different geographic regions and depend on the drug(s) used, drug exposure, severity of disease, host immunity, and the presence of coinfections.  /nSo, in order to improve the drug discovery process for anti-leishmanials the drug screening should involve recent clinical isolates of the L. donovani complex, with different susceptibility profiles to existing drugs and from different geographical origin./nBoth synthetic and natural product libraries might be screened, but evaluation of drugs already in use by developing new formulations or even drug repurposing might also contribute to a faster identification of new candidates. Additional short-term approaches might be combinatory therapies, some of which have proven to be useful mainly in coinfections with HIV./nOther important issue is the establishment of standard techniques for the selection of ’hit compounds‘  and the criteria established by the Global Health Innovative Technology  Fund represent an interesting approach: a given hit should present a 50% effective concentration (EC50 value) lower than 10?M against intracellular amastigotes of Leishmania sp. and for the in vivo model of VL (i.e. mouse or hamster infected with L. infantum or L. donovani), treatment schemes should result in 70% reduction of liver parasite load after up to 5 doses of 50mg/kg, orally, one or two times a day./nIn the last decades, technology advances have allowed the establishment of High-throughput screening (HTS), a potential efficient way of identifying active compounds able to eliminate the parasite without affecting the host. However, the lack of central database capable of concentrating positive and negative results from different research groups and compounds tested also contributes to delaying the identification of potential candidates against Leishmania protozoa. Also by applying bioinformatic tools such as a systematic in silico chemogenomics strategy in combination with the classical approach, its expected to identify new antiparasitic compounds that will be available for application in the pharmaceutical industry and further research lines./nA relevant portion of drug prospection for neglected diseases relies on academic and research institution but dealing with diseases of such relevance worldwide must require the incorporation of Government and private funding for basic and clinical research projects through direct investments and incentives to both academia and the private sector.Leishmaniasis is a neglected disease caused by parasites of the genus Leishmania. The disease leads to different clinical manifestations determined by parasite features like heterogeneity in the virulence of distinct species-zymodemes and host parameters such as genetic characteristics and immunological status./nVisceral leishmaniasis (VL) is the most severe disease form and is potentially fatal if untreated. Drugs in use against VL present several drawbacks including high toxicity, relevant contraindications and complicated administration regimens. In addition, 90% of world´s VL cases are concentrated in poorest locations like the Indian sub-continent where a number of factors contribute to an ineffective disease control including access to medicines and its relatively expensive price and the development of resistant Leishmania strains, not only to the classical antimonials drugs but also to miltefosine, the only oral drug available./nTherefore, the development of new drugs against VL is urgent and must have in consideration several aspects in order to achieve and be effective to most of the disease cases. Indeed, treatment outcomes vary substantially between different geographic regions and depend on the drug(s) used, drug exposure, severity of disease, host immunity, and the presence of coinfections.  /nSo, in order to improve the drug discovery process for anti-leishmanials the drug screening should involve recent clinical isolates of the L. donovani complex, with different susceptibility profiles to existing drugs and from different geographical origin./nBoth synthetic and natural product libraries might be screened, but evaluation of drugs already in use by developing new formulations or even drug repurposing might also contribute to a faster identification of new candidates. Additional short-term approaches might be combinatory therapies, some of which have proven to be useful mainly in coinfections with HIV./nOther important issue is the establishment of standard techniques for the selection of ’hit compounds‘  and the criteria established by the Global Health Innovative Technology  Fund represent an interesting approach: a given hit should present a 50% effective concentration (EC50 value) lower than 10?M against intracellular amastigotes of Leishmania sp. and for the in vivo model of VL (i.e. mouse or hamster infected with L. infantum or L. donovani), treatment schemes should result in 70% reduction of liver parasite load after up to 5 doses of 50mg/kg, orally, one or two times a day./nIn the last decades, technology advances have allowed the establishment of High-throughput screening (HTS), a potential efficient way of identifying active compounds able to eliminate the parasite without affecting the host. However, the lack of central database capable of concentrating positive and negative results from different research groups and compounds tested also contributes to delaying the identification of potential candidates against Leishmania protozoa. Also by applying bioinformatic tools such as a systematic in silico chemogenomics strategy in combination with the classical approach, its expected to identify new antiparasitic compounds that will be available for application in the pharmaceutical industry and further research lines./nA relevant portion of drug prospection for neglected diseases relies on academic and research institution but dealing with diseases of such relevance worldwide must require the incorporation of Government and private funding for basic and clinical research projects through direct investments and incentives to both academia and the private sector

Comunicação organizacional eficaz e tecnologias da informação e da comunicação

Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutoramento em Sociologia da ComunicaçãoA presente pesquisa versa um campo ainda pouco debatido no nosso País: a comunicação organizacional e a avaliação da sua eficácia. Nesta Era digital na qual as empresas em Portugal se encontram no limiar de uma mudança de paradigma a nível dos seus processos e modelos comunicacionais, pretende averiguar-se se as tecnologias de informação e de comunicação (TIC) jogam um papel fundamental no desenvolvimento de uma comunicação organizacional eficaz. Os crescentes desafios colocados às empresas inovadoras pelos rápidos e complexos progressos tecnológicos, levam-nos a reflectir sobre o impacto das TIC no modo como a comunicação organizacional contribui para o sucesso dessas mesmas empresas. Através de um estudo comparativo levado a cabo junto de um grupo empresas inovadoras em Portugal, conseguiu criar-se um „Modelo de Avaliação da Eficácia da Comunicação Organizacional na Era Digital‟, capaz de dar conta de diferentes estádios de eficácia associados ao nível de incorporação das TIC na função de comunicação organizacional. Com esta pesquisa respondemos a questões como, por exemplo: Que papel desempenha a comunicação organizacional nas empresas inovadoras em Portugal? Como comunicam as empresas inovadoras? Uma empresa inovadora desenvolve uma comunicação organizacional eficaz? A função de comunicação organizacional nas empresas inovadoras está a adaptar-se às actuais exigências estratégicas da economia da informação e do conhecimento? Quais os recursos tecnológicos em que mais se aposta na comunicação organizacional? Que suportes de comunicação digitais são mais utilizados? Com a resposta a estas e outras questões, conseguimos no final desta pesquisa deixar algumas pistas às empresas inovadoras em Portugal para que desenvolvam uma comunicação organizacional eficaz.ABSTRACT: The present research focuses a field of study that is yet poorly discussed in our country: organizational communication and the assessment of its effectiveness. In this digital Era in which Portuguese enterprises find themselves at the edge of a paradigm turnover both in their processes and communication models, we want to know if information and communication technologies (ICT) play an important role in the development of organizational communication effectiveness. As we speak growing challenges are being presented to these innovative enterprises by complex and fast technological progresses, forcing us to reflect upon the impact of ICT in the way organizational communication contributes for the success of those same enterprises. Through a comparative study made with a group of Portuguese innovative enterprises we have create an „Assessment Model of Organizational Communication Effectiveness in the Digital Era‟, capable of identifying different effectiveness states associated with different levels of ICT incorporation in the organizational communication function. This research intends to answer questions such as: What role does organizational communication plays in Portuguese innovative enterprises? In which ways these innovative enterprises communicate? Does an innovative enterprise develop an organizational communication that is effective? Organizational communication function in innovative enterprises manages to adapt to current strategic demands of the information and knowledge economy? Which technological resources are being used in organizational communication function? And which digital communication instruments are trendier? The response to these and other questions will enable us to give some clues at the end of this research to help Portuguese innovative enterprises to strive for organizational communication effectiveness