The Manchu conquest of China seen through Iberian accounts

UID/HIS/04666/2019publishersversionpublishe

Echoes from Antiquity in D. João de Castro’s Maritime Rutters

UIDB/04666/2020 UIDP/04666/2020D. João de Castro was born to an illustrious Portuguese family, and received the same education that was given to other young noblemen of his time and status: in the enlightened environment of the court of King D. Manuel I, they received at the same time a military training and an introduction to a traditional classical learning. Thus it is possible to understand how years later, in his writings, he showed an assiduous conviviality with Pliny, Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela, Vitruvius, and other authors of Antiquity. It is not improbable that the readings of his first years included also romances of chivalry, because he admired the exploits of Alexander the Great. The present paper, in addition to following briefly the military career of D. João de Castro, will be interested in his nautical writings, three rutters that were written in so many maritime journeys between 1538 and 1541: the «Rutter from Lisbon to Goa», the «Rutter from Goa to Diu», and the «Rutter of the Red Sea».. Some attention will also merit the numerous letters he wrote during his years of residence in India. Thus, an attempt will be made to enumerate the literary echoes of Antiquity in the writings of D. João de Castro, bearing in mind that unlike many humanists of the time, whose life was completely passed in Europe, the celebrated Portuguese fidalgo and rutter-writer had the opportunity to travel extensively through extra-European spaces, confronting firsthand the geographical lesson of the classical authors with the human and geographical realities of the East.publishersversionpublishe

the description of the Philippines in Gemelli Careri’s Giro del Mondo (1699-1700)

UID/HIS/04666/2013publishersversionpublishe

Differences of gender in oral and written communication apprehension of university students

Oral and written skills are increasingly considered to be essential tools in the job market for the success of any worker, and are thus called soft skills. Nevertheless, most graduates who enter the labor market experience di culties in the apprehension of communication, not only with regard to writing, but also in oral communication. These di culties are also noticeable in the classroom, for instance when students need to participate by expressing their doubts when they have to present research work within the curricular units they attend, or when they have to write their answers in assessment tests. In this paper, we explore the communication skills of students fromdi erent graduate degrees (n = 345) in order to understand how they prepare for oral and written communication. We made use of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA), validated by McCroskey, Beatty, Kearney, and Plax (1985), in order to understand students’ oral communication apprehension. To understand the levels of written communication apprehension, we applied the Daly–Miller Writing Apprehension Test (DMWA). We thus analyzed the communicational skills and the communication apprehension of students from social and human sciences courses in order to understand how they prepare for oral and writing communication, and whether there were di erences between genders and between di erent graduate courses regarding communication apprehension. The main results of this research confirm that the students experienced di culties with and fear of communication, especially for oral communication. Furthermore, the results indicate that female students showed more significant levels of anxiety with regard to oral and written communication than male students. This exploratory study also makes it possible to distinguish areas of communication apprehension according to the di erent genders, and even with regard to the degree courses students belonged to.This work is supported by national funds, through the FCT—Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the project UIDB/04011/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Portugueses nas viagens de Cristovão Colombo

pags. 171-18

MAGELLAN’S MAP

In August 1519, five ships departed from the Seville, under the command of the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (known as Magellan). The expedition was bound for the eastern islands of Indonesia, the fabled Spice Islands. Magellan had presented to the Spanish Crown the project of sailing to the Maluku archipelago by a western route, thus avoiding the route of the Cape of Good Hope, which was then controlled by the Portuguese. To devise and accomplish his sailing project, Magellan used a series of innovative maps, produced by Portuguese cartographers, based on the most recent voyages of exploration in America and in Asia. The purpose of this text is to identify Magellan’s maps.

Disclosing the aggregation mechanism of β2-microglobulin in amyloid disease

Protein β2-microglobulin (β2-m) is the causative agent of dialysis-related amyloidosis (DRA), a prevalent pathology affecting individuals undergoing long-term hemodialysis. The goal of this PhD project is to explore the early stage of the aggregation mechanism of β2-m with molecular simulations, using two model systems: the ΔN6 variant, a cleaved form lacking the six N-terminal residues, which is a major component of ex vivo amyloid plaques from DRA patients, and the single point D76N mutant, recently identified as the cause of an hereditary systemic amyloidosis affecting visceral organs. Methodologically, the main goal of this research project is the development of a Monte Carlo Ensemble Docking method with a cost function that considers shape, hydrophobic and electrostatic complementarity, the major drivers of protein-protein association. The D76N mutant populates two folding intermediates called I1 and I2, which display an unstructured C-terminus and two unstructured termini, respectively. The ΔN6 variant populates one folding intermediate, with an unstructured N-terminus. Protein-protein docking simulations predict an essential role for the termini and for the DE-loop (both variants), EF-loop (D76N mutant) and BC-loop (ΔN6 variant) in the dimerization mechanism of β2-m. The terminal regions are more relevant under acidic conditions while the BC-, DE- and EF-loops gain importance at physiological pH. Our results recapitulate experimental evidence according to which Phe30 and His31 (BC-loop), Arg45 (CD-loop), and Trp60 and Phe62 (DE-loop) are dimerization hotspots (i.e. residues triggering dimerization). Additionally, we predicted the involvement of new residues such as Tyr10 (A-strand), Lys75 (EF-loop), and Trp95 and Arg97 (C-terminus), thus providing new testable predictions to guide the research on β2-m amyloidogenesis. Finally we predicted that β2-m tetramerization is mainly driven by the self-association of dimers via the N- and C-terminal regions and the DE-loop, and identify Arg3 (N-terminus), Tyr10, Arg45, Phe56 (D-strand), Trp60 and Arg97 as essential residues in the process

Homem, a ciência e a bioética

O Homem actual continua com a (e pela) ciência, a gozar das inovações que quase diariamente ela lhe proporciona, a acreditar no seu potencial benéfico, a investir no seu fomento, a aceitá-la como indiscutível e dogmático factor do seu próprio desenvolvimento. Mas o uso de algumas descobertas científicas, vieram demonstrar que a ciência nem sempre se faz a favor, mas algumas vezes contra o Homem. A ficção tornou-se realidade e ao Homem parece nada ser impossível. Os únicos limites apontados à ciência são os que ela própria encerra, decorrentes de conhecimentos ainda não plenamente desenvolvidos e capacidades ainda não totalmente dominadas. Mas estes limites intrínsecos à ciência afinal são sempre provisórios e ultrapassáveis. É neste progresso desenfreado que urge dominar, orientar o seu desenvolvimento, o que exige o estabelecimento prioritário de limites nas área de investigação a empreender. O problema do aparente irreprimível progresso científicotecnológico vem a ser travado pela bioética, entendida então primariamente como um meio de imposição de limites à ciência, através da criação de orientações diversas de pensamento e de acção que determinam modos de pensar e agir, de interpretar e de intervir, às vezes bem distintos entre si, e de normas que regulamentam algumas intervenções. O problema que se evidencia então como prioritário é o de defender a dignidade do Homem, de preservar a sua identidade face ao perigo eminente da sua artificialização. Exige-se assim uma reflexão sobre a especificidade do ser Homem que venha a possibilitar, com uma legitimidade acrescida fundada na identidade do Homem, o estabelecimento de parâmetros para a intervenção científico-tecnológica. Esta só se justificará na medida em que promova as condições de realização do Homem, que contribua para a perfectibilidade do seu modo de ser e de existir