Culture as investment in Europe

The European cultural and creative sector contributes to economic growth, employment, innovation and social cohesion. Only in the European Union is responsible for more than seven million jobs. Thirty million worldwide. The potential of culture in terms of economic growth and job creation is indisputable. This is a perspective on culture that cannot be neglected. But this cannot be the only aspect of culture to be taken into account.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

European Union: the commitment of hope, human rights, equality, development and education

The European Union is strongly committed to the idea of equal rights and respect for difference in all its dimensions. In this reflection I will address the gender perspective and the importance of foreign policies to strengthen strategies and measures that promote education for equality and its implications in terms of health and personal, social, cultural, and economic empowerment. The vulnerability of girls and young women requires a specific focus on gender issues and access to all levels of education. Thus, education is assumed as a commitment to equality, that is, a broad education for behavior changes in relation to gender violence, involving all men, women, boys, girls and communities. In fact, we consider women's rights to be human rights and we want to show why human rights and their empowerment are fundamental to the development of a region and a country.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Epistemological foundations of research in social sciences

Abstraction, deductive discourse, and logic relegate this primary/first form of knowledge expatriating it in the name of objectivity. But intuition can be the free vision of taskmaster rationality that in metaphor and symbol apprehends the reality from which it is born. The analogy, not being translatable by concepts of understanding, can be experienced by active and existential subjectivity, by the privilege of creation (plastic and artistic) that is expressed in the insinuation of intelligibility. Is the non-submission of research to the rules of the scientific method capital? Allegiance to scientific criteria expels criticism of scientific instruments and methods. Without expressing necessary and universal truths, the research we defend makes possible their existence without their permanence being monolithic and invariant. Truth is no longer absolute, still less valid ad aeternum in space and time.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ethical procedures in scientific research

This work has as its theme the ethical procedures of research and aims to provide a framework of practical guidelines to ensure the protection of all actors involved in the development of scientific knowledge, particularly at the stage of research design and project. This is a theoretical reflection on the ethical dimension of data collection practices and the limits that the researcher should consciously attend to in the scientific research process. For this reflection, I carried out a literature review and a document analysis of several legal documents, highlighting the European directive on data protection. This led to several questions, namely: what documents should be ensured in the research project design process? What is the scope of informed consent and how can anonymity and confidentiality of data be preserved? These and other questions are answered in a thoughtful way for those who understand that there is no science without ethics, nor ethics without conscience. Here the hermeneutic method is the natural choice because it allows the interpretation of questions related to values and principles that must be contextualized. This interpretative analysis requires asking questions related to duty, but also to the norm or law. With this questioning it is hoped that the reader will understand in a systematized way the ethical procedures of research and will be able to draw on a documentary listing of the ethical point of view that will protect the informants, but also the researcher himself and affiliating institutions or participants.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Transgredir para empoderar: o empoderamento das jovens mulheres pela educação

Este trabalho é a base científica, e também podemos dizer, ideológica, de um relatório solicitado pelo Parlamento Europeu à Comissão dos Direitos das Mulheres e da Igualdade dos Géneros que pretende assegurar uma educação democrática e a educação para a igualdade dos géneros. Em Setembro de 2015 este relatório foi aprovado como resolução por uma larga maioria parlamentar, apoiando a ideia da educação e do currículo como instrumentos de poder. Acredito que a educação tem um papel fundamental na mudança e que é responsável pelo desenvolvimento da personalidade e pela criação de ideias que determinam atitudes, acções e perspectivas sobre o mundo, guiando-nos na vida pessoal e influenciando as escolhas profissionais. Este trabalho foi o primeiro momento de reflexão sobre esta questão e mostra o importante papel da investigação em educação e do currículo no âmbito das políticas europeias.This work is the scientific basis, and we can also say, ideological, of a report requested by the European Parliament to the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality aimed at ensuring a democratic and gender equality education. In September 2015 this report was approved as a resolution by a large majority of parliamentarians1, supporting the idea of education and curriculum as power instruments. I believe that education plays a key role in changing and that is responsible for the personality development and the creation of ideas that determine attitudes, actions and perspectives on the world, guiding us in our personal lives and influencing career choices. This work was the first moment of reflection on this issue and shows the important role of research in education and curriculum within the framework of European policies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Accountability towards citizens: stakeholder perception from Portuguese local government

New Public Management reform puts an all-new perspective on public managers and politician’s accountability towards citizens. It tends to shift public administration to an open system making citizens an important stakeholder. Public participation has been reported as frequently used in service delivery and management (mostly budgetary) decisions. Public administration scholars and practitioners analysed, in the last decade, the different ways of citizens participation, their motivation, impact on public management and public officer opinion concerning citizen’s co-management (Yang & Callaham, 2007; Handely, Milam, & Howell-Moroney, 2010; Wang, 2001). This paper proposes to test the relation between the mechanisms to voce citizen, political responsiveness and citizen political culture. Firstly, we argue that citizens participation is greater and meaningful according to the level of ethical responsibility displayed by politicians. The second explanation is based on the degree of citizen political culture and agues that in jurisdiction where citizens are more aware of and more motivated to follow public policies, there will be a higher level of public participation. Finally, we argue that there are contextual factors, that also play and important role in this accountability process. We gathered data for this paper from a survey conducted among local governments in Portugal. Citizen Participation, as a dependent variable, was studied in two alternative dimensions: on the one hand, use of participation mechanism and on the other decision making process. In the survey respondents were asked to rank how often they use participation mechanism and in which specific decision making process. As independent variables, we use political responsiveness and citizen political culture. Responsiveness to participation values was obtained from a ranking based on respondents’ perception on public participation. Citizen political culture was measured using a set of three indicators: concentration of mass media; education level; electoral participation.The authors would like to express their appreciation for the research assistance provided by Catarina Magalhães. We acknowledge the support .The Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation provided financial support for this research. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Portuguese Scienc

Development of a "green process" for the isolation of natural functional extracts with anti-cancer activity - Application of high-pressure technology

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Química e BioquímicaThe knowledge of the healing power of some species of plants is ancient. Nowadays, the preference for natural products has increased, and with it, the interest in recover and isolate bioactive phytochemicals with potential health benefits. The main goal of this thesis was to isolate anticancer bioactive compounds, namely terpenes and fatty acids, from Portuguese Lavandula (L. angustifolia and L. stoechas) and Mentha species (M. spicata, M. piperita var. citrata and M. pulegium), using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). All extractions were performed at 50ºC and 250 bar in a two step methodology: a first step with supercritical CO2, during 60 minutes, followed by a second step, with a mixture of CO2 and ethanol (90:10 %v/v), for 180 minutes. Different fractions of the extracts were recovered every 30 minutes, and the resulting samples were characterized in terms of global yield (% g/g), screened for the presence of terpenes, by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and analyzed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS). Furthermore, ORAC, HORAC and HOSC assays were conducted for the determination of antioxidant activity. Cell-based assays in human HT-29 colorectal adenocarcinoma cells were also performed, in order to determine the potential of the extracts as cancer cell-growth inhibitors. The fractions of the extract of M. piperita var. citrata presented the highest antioxidant activity, whereas the fractions of L. angustifolia, L. stoechas and M. spicata extracts revealed to be the most promising colorectal cancer cell-growth inhibitors. The bioactive responses were correlated with the phytochemical composition of the extracts, and the main compounds, such as camphor, fenchone, carvone, linoleic acid, among others, were highlighted. However, it is possible that the bioactivities were due to synergistic effects between several compounds. Results of this thesis demonstrated that SFE is a reliable tool to extract anticancer bioactive components from some Lavandula and Mentha plants

On developing critical thinking: a narrative overview

This study provides an overview on the contextual factors, educational practices and teaching methods that develop critical thinking on students. To provide this overview, we synthesized the meta-analysis and reviews of studies published be tween 1940 and 2017. For outlining the contextual factors, we present the three lev els that promote or inhibit critical thinking: (1) institutional level, (2) teaching level, and (3) course level. We further synthesized the literature on educational practices that develop critical thinking and outline the teaching methods from three catego ries: (1) oral (e.g., debate, dialogues etc.), (2) written (e.g., debate, dialogues etc.), and (3) applied (e.g., experiential learning, problem solving etc.). This literature review study provides theoretical implications for the literature on critical thinking. These implications consist of an overview of the contextual factors, educational practices and teaching methods that develop critical thinking.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A importância do estudo, organização e disponibilização de arquivos de cientistas para a história do ambiente : o Arquivo Rui Serpa Pinto do Museu de História Natural da Universidade do Porto

A construção de uma história ambiental da Europa (ou do mundo) é um objectivo recorrente, por seentender que evolução das relações entre a natureza e os homens ultrapassa as fronteiras nacionalistas.É nossa convicção que a monitorização destas relações, no sentido de avaliar a circulação e transferência de conhecimento, paralelismos e desfasamentos, passa pelo estudo do papel desempenhado por figuras chave do mundo da ciência, reconhecendo o seu percurso, plasmado na informação que produziram ao longo do tempo. Não basta construir biografias avulsas e evocativas dos seus méritos, mas compreender, de forma sistémica, os seus percursos, entre a vida pessoal, académica e a disseminação científica.Esta visão holística só será possível com uma organização integral da informação, do percurso de um cientista, como foi o caso de Rui Serpa Pinto (1907-1933), da Universidade do Porto, organizando, de forma sistémica, o seu legado documental.The construction of an environmental history of Europe (and of the world) is a recurring assignmentto understand the nature of the relationship between nature and men, its evolution, beyond the nationalistboundaries.We believe that monitoring these relationships, in order to assess the movement and transfer of knowledge, parallels and discrepancies, is only possible through the study of the role played by key figures in the world of science, reflected in the information produced by them throughout of time. Not just build spare and evocative biographies but understand, systemically, their paths, between personal, academic and scientific life.This holistic view is only possible with an integral organization of information, a paradigm used in this study case as was the professor Rui Serpa Pinto (1907-1933) of the University of Porto, organizing, systemically, his documental archive

Comprehension view about critical thinking: narrative review

The critical thinking literature emphasizes the continuous need of understanding the meaning of a complex concept as critical thinking. Previous research provides multiple theoretical approaches on critical thinking, including different theoretical and operational definition, methods for developing critical thinking and measurements tools within formal educations. In this study, we focus on reviewing the main insights from previous studies with the specific aim of proposing a structured overview of how critical thinking can be defined, developed and measured according to multiple approaches (i.e., philosophical, psychological, educational). Results of this study showed the development of the critical thinking concept, consisting of a broad perspective of multiple approaches of critical thinking. This further enables an overview of critical thinking particularities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio