Genetic conectivity patterns in Holothuria Mammata considering different spatial scales

Dissertação de Mestrado, Biologia Marinha, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2015As a consequence of the world population growth, the demand for sea food resources is increasing. Consequently, worldwide fisheries transition from depleted finfish resources to alternative invertebrates species created a massive industry. Sea cucumber stocks have been overfished in Indo-Pacific Oceans as result of lack of effective management, non-regulated fisheries and an increasing demand from Oriental countries. The “beche de mer” demands have induced expansion of their fisheries worldwide and have resulted in catches of new target species from the Mediterranean Sea and NE Atlantic Ocean. With high commercial value and fragile life-history traits, sea cucumbers are particularly vulnerable to commercial fisheries, especially when there are no scientific knowledge to support their effective management. This study aims to fill in some of the gap in scientific data about sea cucumber populations, namely Holothuria mammata. It was assessed the genetic diversity and structure, connectivity and effective population size with novel polymorphic molecular markers (microsatellites). This analysis was done in several spatial scales and considering oceanographic patterns. Some morphometric traits were also analysed, such as the distribution of length and weight classes. The results showed that Holothuria mammata has globally high genetic diversity, higher genetic connectivity between Atlantic populations and genetic differentiation between Atlantic/Mediterranean and eastern/western Mediterranean basins. Effective population sizes were smaller in the Atlantic, showing some mutationdrift disequilibrium. Oceanographic patterns were strongly correlated with the genetic differentiation patterns. Atlantic populations presented bigger individuals (i.e. length and weight) than Mediterranean ones, clearly associated with environmental conditions, and ecology features. Biometric data and genetic analysis allowed us to establish the three potential stocks inhabiting the geographic area and improve the biological knowledge of this new target species. This information will be useful to suggest the first recommendations to its effective fishery management, and future comparisons in order to assess the fishery effects either at genetic and/or morphometric level

Caracterização do interactoma da proteina fosfatase 1 na polpa dentária humana

Tooth’s decay is the most common infectious disease worldwide. It is a pathological condition characterized by the (partial or total) breakdown of teeth’s mineralized structures, due to the activity of cariogenic bacteria, potentially developing into the affection of pulp and periapical tissues. After damage, the dental pulp has a regenerative and reparative potential that is activated in response to microrganisms. Serine/threonine phosphatase 1 (PP1) seems to play a role in the differentiation of odontoblasts (pulp cells) and in angiogenesis, since its expression is upregulated in these cellular processes. PP1 has regenerative activity in the cardiac and nervous systems and has been identified in the tongue and in the dental pulp. With this work, we aim to characterize the PP1 isoforms expressed in dental pulp cells and to identify PP1γ interactors (RIPPOs), known to play a role in the modulation of the reparative/regenerative activity of dental pulp cells. We were able to show that PP1α, PP1β and PP1γ isoforms are expressed in dental pulp cells, while PP1γ2 expression was not observed. Also, the expression of RIPPOs involved in the signalling pathways that lead to regenerative and repair processes by dental pulp cells, like AKT, p38 MAPK and MAPK1 was confirmed. Our preliminary results suggest that PP1γ is important in modulating the activation of signalling pathway involved in tooth repair/regeneration.A cárie dentária é a doença infecciosa mais comum em todo o mundo. É uma patologia caracterizada pela destruição (parcial ou total) das estruturas dentárias mineralizadas, devido à atividade de bactérias cariogénicas, podendo evoluir para a afeção dos tecidos pulpares e periapicais. Na sequência do dano, a polpa dentária apresenta um potencial regenerativo e reparador que é ativado em resposta à presença de microrganismos. A proteína serina/treonina fosfatase 1 (PP1) parece desempenhar um papel importante na diferenciação de odontoblastos (células da polpa dentária) e na angiogénese, uma vez que a sua expressão é regulada positivamente nesses processos celulares. A PP1 possui atividade regenerativa nos sistemas cardíaco e nervoso e foi identificada na língua e na polpa dentária. Com este trabalho pretendemos caracterizar as isoformas da PP1 expressas nas células da polpa dentária e identificar interatores (RIPPOs) da PP1γ, conhecidos por modualrem a atividade reparadora/regenerativas das células da polpa dentária. Após uma análise por SDS-PAGE mostrou-se que as isoformas PP1α, PP1β e PP1γ são expressas em células da polpa dentária, ao contrário da isoforma PP1γ2. Além disso, foi confirmada a expressão de RIPPOs envolvidos nas vias de sinalização que levam a processos regenerativos e de reparação pelas células da polpa dentária, como a AKT, p38 MAPK e MAPK1. Estes resultados preliminares evidenciam que a PP1γ é importante na modulação da ativação da via de sinalização envolvida na reparação/regeneração dentária.Mestrado em Biomedicina Molecula

Characterizing and Enforcing Consistency of Online Services

While several proposals for the specification and implementation of various consistency models exist, little is known about what is the consistency currently offered by online services with millions of users. Such knowledge is important, not only because it allows for setting the right expectations and justifying the behavior observed by users, but also because it can be used for improving the process of developing applications that use APIs offered by such services and for creating tools that facilitate this process. To fill this gap, in the first part of this thesis, we present a measurement study of the consistency of the APIs exported by four widely used Internet services, the Facebook Feed, Facebook Groups, Blogger, and Google+. To conduct this study, our work develops a simple, yet generic methodology comprising a small number of tests, which probe these services from a user perspective, and try to uncover consistency anomalies, and reports on the analysis of the data obtained from running these tests for a period of several weeks. Our measurement study shows that some of these services do exhibit consistency anomalies, including some behaviors that may appear counter-intuitive for users, such as the lack of session guarantees for write monotonicity. The results show that developers have to deal with consistency anomalies, to provide consistency guarantees they need. To address the challenge of enforcing consistency guarantees on top of existing systems, in the second part of this thesis, we show that it is possible to deploy a middleware between the application and the service, which enables a fine-grained control over the session guarantees that comprise the consistency semantics provided by these APIs, without having to gain access to the implementation of the underlying services. Our solution intercepts all interactions of the client with the online service and uses four different algorithms to enforce each of the session guarantees and also their combination. We evaluated our middleware using the Facebook public API and the Redis data store, and our results show that we are able to provide fine-grained control of the consistency semantics, while incurring in a small local storage and modest latency overhead

Um estudo mitanalítico do (des)envolvimento : implicações educacionais

Esta conferência foi realizada no âmbito do II Colóquio Internacional Antropologia do Imaginário e Educação do Envolvimento/Desenvolvimento (Garanhuns, 1 a 3 de Outubro de 2008) com um duplo objectivo, o de detectar, na base do modelo hermenêutico da mitanálise tal como Gilbert Durand o concebeu, os contornos míticos dos seguintes conceitos: desenvolvimento (Prometeu - Fausto); desenvolvimento sustentável (Frankenstein - Idade de Ouro) e envolvimento sustentável (Gaia); e um outro de perceber as implicações educacionais subjacentes a esses mesmos conceitos.CIEd - U.

...And justice for all? : the role of meritocracy in legal decisions towards black individuals

Tese de mestrado, Psicologia (Secção de Cognição Social Aplicada), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2018The impact of race on criminal-sentencing decisions has been investigated before (e.g. Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006). However, this research has never considered the influence of a social norm previously identified as important in several group-based distinctions – the norm of Meritocracy (e.g. Costa-Lopes, Wigboldus, & Vala, 2017). Although seen as an important social norm that regulates society, descriptive Meritocracy - i.e. the belief that people are rewarded based on their efforts - is however associated with intolerance and dislike of members of low status groups and may therefore be logically associated with more unfavourable decisions towards low status groups such as racial minorities. In the current study, the influence of Meritocracy on criminal-sentencing decisions was examined using a mock-jurors paradigm, while also examining the degree to which a defendant’s race affects those same decisions. A total of 143 participants responded to two critical cases within a total of six criminal cases that were presented, after performing a Scrambled Sentence Task either priming Meritocracy tenets or a neutral content (McCoy & Major, 2007). We hypothesized that mock-jurors’ criminal-sentence recommendations are influenced by defendants’ race and that when Meritocracy is made salient participants tend to recommend longer sentences to Black defendants only for Black-stereotyped crimes. Results show that participants attributed longer sentences to the Black defendant (vs. White defendant) and that this effect was magnified when he committed a Black-stereotyped crime. However, this effect was not more pronounced in the Meritocratic condition (vs. neutral condition). Implications are discussed in terms of further studiesO impacto da raça nas decisões de condenação criminal foi previamente estudado (e.g., Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006). Contudo, a investigação realizada não tem considerado a influência de uma norma social considerada importante em várias diferenças baseadas em grupos sociais – a norma da Meritocracia (e.g. Costa-Lopes, Wigboldus, & Vala, 2017). Embora percebida como uma norma social importante que regula a sociedade, a Meritocracia descritiva – i.e. a crença de que os indivíduos são recompensados com base nos seus esforços – está associada a intolerância e antipatia perante membros de grupos de baixo estatuto e pode, por esse motivo, estar logicamente associada a decisões mais desfavoráveis relativamente a grupos de baixo estatuto, tal como minorias raciais. No presente estudo, a influência da Meritocracia nas decisões de condenação criminal relativamente a pessoas negras foi examinada utilizando um paradigma de “mock-jurors”, sendo que o grau em que a raça do réu afeta essas mesmas decisões será igualmente analisado. Um total de 143 participantes respondeu a dois casos críticos de entre um total de seis casos criminais apresentados, após desempenharem uma Tarefa de Desembaralhamento de Frases que primou princípios de Meritocracia ou um conteúdo neutro (McCoy & Major, 2007). Foi hipotetizado que as recomendações de condenação/sentença criminal dos mock-jurors são influenciadas pela raça do réu e que, quando a norma meritocrática é tornada saliente, os participantes tendem a recomendar sentenças mais longas para os réus negros, apenas quando o crime é estereotipicamente negro. Os resultados mostram que os participantes atribuíram sentenças mais longas ao réu negro (vs. réu branco) e que este efeito foi mais forte quando o réu cometeu um crime estereotipicamente negro. Contudo, este efeito não foi mais marcado na condição Meritocrática (vs. condição neutra). São discutidas implicações em termos de estudos futuros