Yes, we fuck! Challenging the misfit sexual body through disabled women’s narratives

Southern European society has been described in sociological literature as ableist, patriarchal and male-oriented. Under such conditions, many disabled women face multiple oppressions on grounds of gender, disability, class, age, sexual orientation, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The social construction of the impaired body as passive and dependent is conducive to a process of desexualization, presenting disabled people as inadequate for a full intimate life. The dominant biomedical model reinforces this process. This article draws on selected works in feminist disability studies to argue that rather than a body which is unfit, or does not fit, the ‘misfit’ is instead a cultural failure in accommodating and cherishing diversity. The authors also suggest that the desexualization of disabled women is replicating, as well as resulting from, historical tendencies to dehumanize and infantilize women. The empirical data is drawn from a larger project ‘Disabled Intimacies? Sexual and Reproductive Citizenship of Disabled Women in Portugal’. Biographical narrative interviews with disabled women are analyzed to explore the notion of ‘misfit’ sexual bodies. Theirs are stories of counter-norms and the struggle for sexual fulfilment and recognition. The women’s discussions of sexuality point to a need to change the ways that disability and intimacy are addressed in mainstream scholarly literature, institutions and the state. Narrow, heteronormative and ableist understandings of sexual intercourse and the linear character of mainstream stories of intimacy are shown as hindering the prospect of the recognition of disabled women as sexual citizens

Skewness in Financial Returns: Evidence from the Portuguese Stock Market (in English)

This paper addresses the issue of symmetry in financial returns. The return distributions of the major stocks traded on the Portuguese market and included in the PSI-20 Index are examined for periods from four to nine years. The results show that the symmetry of the returns is rejected against several alternative distributions. Statistically significant differences between returns below and above the mean are detected, which provides additional evidence of skewness in the return distributions. In addition, as observed in other studies, it is interesting to note that such results are similar to other low-capitalization and low-volume markets, which also exhibit asymmetric return distributions.stock markets, skewness, financial returns

Modeling disinhibition within a layered structure of the LGMD neuron

Due to their relatively simple nervous system, insects are an excellent way through which we can investigate how visual information is acquired and processed in order to trigger specific behaviours, as flight stabilization, flying speed adaptation, collision avoidance responses, among others. From the behaviours previously mentioned, we are particularly interested in visually evoked collision avoidance responses. These behaviors are, by necessity, fast and robust, making them excellent systems to study the neural basis of behavior. On the other hand, artificial collision avoidance is a complex task, in which the algorithms used need to be fast to process the captured data and then perform real time decisions. Consequently, neurorobotic models may provide a foundation for the development of more effective and autonomous devices

Computational model of the LGMD neuron for automatic collision detection

In many animal species it is essential to recognize approach predators from complex, dynamic visual scenes and timely initiate escape behavior. Such sophisticated behaviours are often achieved with low neuronal complexity, such as in locusts, suggesting that emulating these biological models in artificial systems would enable the generation of similar complex behaviours with low computational overhead. On the other hand, artificial collision detection is a complex task that requires both real time data acquisition and important features extraction from a captured image. In order to accomplish this task, the algorithms used need to be fast to process the captured data and then perform real time decisions. Taking into account the previous considerations, neurorobotic models may provide a foundation for the development of more effective and autonomous devices/robots, based on an improved understanding of the biological basis of adaptive behavior. In this paper, we make a comparative analysis between the new computational model of a locust looming-detecting pathway and the model previously proposed by us. The obtained results proved the improvement provided by the pixel remapping in the model performance

Concepção e elaboração de "guião de actividades experimentais de química" para o ensino profissional

A introdução do Ensino Profissional nas nossas escolas, não trouxe consigo os necessários materiais de apoio que permitiram que os alunos desenvolvam as competências preconizadas no programa de Química emanado pelo Ministério de Educação para estes cursos. Não existindo, actualmente manual ou guião de protocolos experimentais para esta disciplina, a qual faz parte dos currículos destes cursos, conceberam-se e testaram-se actividades adequadas á realização em sala de aula ou laboratório. O guião aqui apresentado pretende ser um auxiliar dirigido a professores e alunos deste nível de ensino. A compreensão, adesão e atracção por esta disciplina será tanto mais eficaz quanto os alunos as considerem como importantes nas suas vivências diárias e por isso as actividades propostas envolvem materiais e situações comuns ao quotidiano. Para cada um dos módulos da componente da Química foi seleccionada uma actividade experimental, tendo sido criados protocolos para o professor, com mais promenores teóricos e para o aluno com espaço para registos e observações. Considerou-se importante elaborara um fundamento teórico, onde se insere o enquadramento histórico e algumas reflexões da revisão da literatura efectuada sobre as actividades experimentais

Elipse do SV e distribuição de advérbios em Português Língua de Herança e L2

This study compares the performance of adult L2 speakers of European Portuguese (EP) and 9-10 year-old heritage children acquiring EP concerning their knowledge of two aspects of grammar, adverb placement and VP ellipsis, which depend on knowledge of a core syntactic property of the language, verb movement. Regarding adverbs, the results do not show evidence of German V2 influence: both heritage children and L2 adults accept non V2 word orders. Performance in the VP ellipsis task is more complex: heritage children produce VP ellipsis at the level of controls, as opposed to L2 speakers; however, L2 and (possibly also) heritage speakers show some crosslinguistic influence effects.Este trabalho foi desenvolvido no âmbito do projeto Completivas na Aquisição do Português, financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (referência: PTDC/CLE-LIN/120897/2010

War on images: the art of provoking (re)actions

info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Comparing heritage speakers and late L2-learners of European Portuguese: verb movement, VP ellipsis and adverb placement

This study compares the performance of Portuguese-German heritage children and adult L2 speakers of European Portuguese whose L1 is German with respect to two aspects of grammar, adverb placement and VP-ellipsis, which depend on a core syntactic property of the language, verb movement. The results show that both groups have acquired V-to- I and adverb placement, showing no influence of a V2 grammar. Performance in the VP-ellipsis task is more complex: heritage children produce VP-ellipsis at the level of controls, as opposed to L2 speakers; however, both L2 and heritage speakers show that cross-linguistic influence may produce a preference for pronoun substitution over VPellipsis in a task asking for redundancy resolution. Nevertheless, given that overall results show that heritage children perform at the level of L1 children, we take our results to support approaches to heritage bilingualism which suggest the development of an intact grammar in childhood.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Green roofs as a biotechnological tool to urban climate change mitigation

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio