Minimum Social Standards in Portugal: changes and adequacy from the pre to the post austerity period

Several international and European commitments recognize the right for all to have an adequate level of resources to lead a decent and dignified life and the need for an adequate income support for those who lack sufficient resources (i.e. for those living in poverty). In the last eleven years some important changes were introduced in Portugal affecting this right. Some, like the introduction of the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly, were positive moves towards the realization of this right, others, like some of the changes introduced in the non-contributory protection system during the period of social and economic crisis in Portugal, had a clear negative impact on the level of income guaranteed by the state for different households types. Using six vignettes for different household types this paper aims: a) to identify the impact on the minimum income guaranteed by the state (for the considered households types) of the main changes introduced after 2006 in minimum wage and in the non-contributory protection system, namely in Social Insertion Income and in Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly, b) to compare the minimum income guaranteed for the considered household types since 2006 and c) to assess the adequacy of the minimum income guaranteed, between 2016 and 2015, considering the relative at risk of poverty line.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Learning energy storage in hybrid/electric vehicles: Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Sustainable Transportation & Electrical Power Systems

The "Erasmus Mundus Master Course in Sustainable Transportation & Electrical Power Systems" is supported by three universities, located in Spain, Italy and United Kingdom, and a Polytechnic Institute in Portugal. One of the main goals is the training of qualified staff in areas related to electrical energy management, emphasizing in power systems for electric propulsion vehicles and renewable energies. Among others, the subject "Energy Storage and Recovery in Power Systems and Hybrid/Electric Vehicles" is considered a keystone in the Master. During third semester, the students who follow the technical track, have to develop small projects and tasks related to electric vehicles, battery management, power stages for battery charger and so on. This paper show the goals and the results obtained in these topics. All of these topics are partially collected in one subject, with a high practical content. The students have to learn not only the theoretical topics, but they have to elaborate a project, in a work team and use modern laboratory equipment as well. It should be noted that the students have to work and collaborate in a multicultural environment, with students and professors. This paper describes the subject methodology, and the results obtained

The steroid-hormone ecdysone coordinates parallel pupariation neuromotor and morphogenetic subprograms via epidermis-to-neuron Dilp8-Lgr3 signal induction

Funding Information: We thank Drs. Carlos Ribeiro, Christen Mirth, Elio Sucena, Filip Port, Frank Schnorrer, Julien Colombani, Maria Dominguez, Maria Luisa Vasconcelos, Pierre Leopold, Simon Bullock, Rita Teodoro, Gerald Rubin, Melissa Harrison, Kate O’Connor-Giles, Jill Wildonger, Mariana Melani, Pablo Wappner, and Christian Wegener for fly stocks and reagents. We thank Ryohei Yagi and Konrad Basler for the LHV2 plasmid and Brain McCabe for the mhc-Gateway destination plasmid. We thank Carlos Ribeiro and Dennis Goldschmidt for help in designing and constructing one of the pupariation arenas and Mariana Melani, Pablo Wappner, Arash Bashirullah, and Filip Port for sharing resources and unpublished data. We thank Arash Bashirullah, Fillip Port, and Carlos Ribeiro for discussions and/or comments on the manuscript, and Jim Truman for discussions on Fraenkel’s pupariation factors. Stocks obtained from the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (NIH P40OD018537) were used in this study. Work in the Integrative Biomedicine Laboratory was supported by the European Commission FP7 (PCIG13-GA-2013-618847), by the FCT (IF/00022/2012; Congento LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022170, cofinanced by FCT/Lisboa2020; UID/Multi/04462/2019; PTDC/BEXBCM/1370/2014; PTDC/MED-NEU/30753/2017; PTDC/BIA-BID/31071/2017; FCT SFRH/BPD/94112/ 2013; SFRH/BD/94931/2013), the MIT Portugal Program (MIT-EXPL/BIO/0097/2017), and FAPESP (16/09659-3, 16/10342-4, and 17/17904-0). AG is a CONICET researcher, YV holds a CONICET postdoctoral fellowship and FPS and MJD hold a PhD fellowship from CONICET. Work in the Garelli lab was supported by ANPCyT (Agencia Nacional para la Promoción de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, PICT 2014-2900 and PICT 2017-0254) and CONICET (PIP11220150100182CO). Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Innate behaviors consist of a succession of genetically-hardwired motor and physiological subprograms that can be coupled to drastic morphogenetic changes. How these integrative responses are orchestrated is not completely understood. Here, we provide insight into these mechanisms by studying pupariation, a multi-step innate behavior of Drosophila larvae that is critical for survival during metamorphosis. We find that the steroid-hormone ecdysone triggers parallel pupariation neuromotor and morphogenetic subprograms, which include the induction of the relaxin-peptide hormone, Dilp8, in the epidermis. Dilp8 acts on six Lgr3-positive thoracic interneurons to couple both subprograms in time and to instruct neuromotor subprogram switching during behavior. Our work reveals that interorgan feedback gates progression between subunits of an innate behavior and points to an ancestral neuromodulatory function of relaxin signaling.publishersversionpublishe

Redesigning European Public Transport: Impact of New Battery Technologies in the Design of Electric Bus Fleets

Conference on Transport Engineering, CIT2018 (13th, 2018, Gijón, Asturias, Spain

Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging Controller

Abstract—For domestic consumers, electricity tariffs usually have two components: one is related to the maximum available current/total power (billed in C/day) and the other concerns to the energy consumption (C/kWh). The main switchboard current is usually limited, according to the contracted power level, by way of automatic switches. To avoid main switchboard tripping by current limit violation, Electric Vehicle (EV) owners may decide to increase their contracted power (and the energy bill) or to adopt charging strategies that limit the global consumption (EV plus house needs) to the contracted current/power. In this paper, an Intelligent Electric Vehicle Charging Controller (IEVCC), allowing to use the contracted power to the maximum extent, is presented. A set of user configurable parameters can be used to define the controller behavior, in order to prevent a full switch-off. Two versions are described: a single user version that can be used at private houses and a mesh version that can be used in multi apartment buildings, providing information about consumed energy, time of use, costs and past bills.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Difference in atherosclerosis burden in different nations and continents assessed by coronary artery calcium

We utilized coronary artery calcium scores(CACS) to assess differences in atherosclerosis burden between asymptomatic White populations living in continents with different cardiovascular disease rates. The similarities in the genetic pool between Brazilian and Portuguese Caucasian subjects offered an opportunity to assess the influence of environmnetal factors on the development of atherosclerosis. We reviewed CACS data from 17,563 individuals (12,378 men and 5169 women) collected in the USA (74% of the subjects), Brazil (15% of the subjects) and Portugal (11% of the subjects). CACS was absent in 80 and 88% of Portuguese men and women, compared with 46 and 62% and 33 and 59% of Brazilian and US counterparts (p < 0.0001). Although the US subjects showed the lowest prevalence of risk factors they had a higher median (interquartile range) CACS than the Brazilian and the Portuguese cohorts: 4 (0;87), 1 (0;68) and 0 (0;0), respectively (p < 0.0001). After adjusting for differences in age and cardiovascular risk factors, US men showed higher relative risk ratios of having any CACS than either Brazilian or Portuguese men. Brazilian and US women did not differ as far as risk of CACS although they demonstrated a greater risk than Portuguese women. In this study, significant differences in CACS were detected among three nations in different continents. The CACS differences paralleled the respective cardiovascular mortality rates