Conceptualizando… De anormal a pessoa em situação de deficiência: revisitando e contextualizando conceitos

EntretextosSabendo que os conceitos são portadores de significado e indutores de comportamentos, importa enquadrá-los nos contextos sócio-educativos em que se originam e evoluem. Como mostra a reflexão que se segue, as diferentes denominações das situações de deficiência reflectem ou tentam reflectir os diferentes “olhares” que a sociedade em geral e a escola em particular veiculam e operacionalizam. Partindo do conceito de anormal, de utilização ainda bem recente (anos setenta, século passado), hoje considerado um insulto, até ao conceito de pessoa em situação de deficiência, hoje o mais adequado, mas muito pouco utilizado, fez-se um longo percurso conceptual, na forma e no conteúdo (deficiente e pessoa com deficiência), que é também um bocadinho da história das mentalidades e dos comportamentos, no que à deficiência diz respeito.Bearing in mind that the concepts convey meaning and induce behaviours, it is important to make them fit into the socio-educational contexts from where they originate and evolve. As shown in the discussion bellow, the different denominations of disabilities reflect or attempt to reflect the different "looks" that society in general and the school in particular convey and make operational. Beginning at the concept of abnormal that has been used until very recently (the seventies, last century) and is now considered as an insult, to reach the concept of a person in the context of disability, now considered the most appropriate but very little used, there was a long conceptual way, in form and content (abnormal, person with disability), which is also in part the history of mentalities and behaviour, with regard to disability

Sobrevoando a deficiência: do que os portugueses pensam ao que os políticos fazem

EntretextosEste “olhar” sobre a deficiência, em Portugal, procura dar conta do que para os portugueses significa ser contemplado com uma deficiência, qualquer que ela seja. Nascer deficiente ou adquirir a deficiência pelos azares da vida é a maior tragédia que pode acontecer ao próprio e aos familiares. Uma cultura de inferiorização, de incapacidade, de inutilidade e de comiseração está patente nas relações entre os « normais » e os considerados deficientes. Pelos obstáculos que a sociedade portuguesa normalizada cria (in)conscientemente, as pessoas em situação de deficiência têm uma vida cheia de barreiras que impede o seu acesso a cidadão de pleno direito. A caminhada para um outro “olhar” já começou, derrubando barreiras sociais e humanas, num jeito de maior humanização e cidadania plena.With this "glance" over deficiency, in Portugal, we intend to realize what it means for the Portuguese to have a deficiency, whatever it is. Being born or becoming deficient by misfortunes of life is the greatest tragedy that can happen to a person and family. There is a culture of inferiority, powerlessness, uselessness and of sympathy that is evident in relationships between the 'normal' and those considered with deficiency. Because of the obstacles that the standardised Portuguese society (un)consciously creates, people with deficiency have a life full of barriers that prevent their access to fully-fledged citizen. We have already begun the pathway for another "glance" at deficiency, one that enable breaking down social and human barriers, achieving humanization and full citizenship

The overall redistributive effect and progressivity of the Portuguese tax-transfer system

The redistribution effect of the tax-transfer system is a first-order issue for policymakers. The degree of progressivity of taxes and transfers plays a central role in this respect. We apply the Kakwani index to evaluate the redistributive effect and progressivity of the overall tax and transfer system - including cash transfers, direct taxes and indirect tax liabilities - for Portugal in 2010 and 2015. To the best of our knowledge, this computation is novel for the Portuguese case. The first stage of our research project involves using parametric statistical techniques to link expenditure data from the HBS dataset with information on income and transfers from the EU-SILC. After building this new dataset, we assess both the overall redistributive effect and progressivity of the tax-transfer system, as well as the contribution of each tax and benefit instrument. Our empirical analysis shows that the overall redistributive effect translates into an inequality reduction of approximately 6 and 7 Gini percentage points, respectively for 2010 and 2015. The decrease in inequality is mainly driven by direct taxes, and this impact increased between 2010 and 2015. Corroborating the existing literature, cash benefits and direct taxes are progressive, while indirect taxes are regressive. The overall tax-transfer system is progressive. From 2010 to 2015, the Portuguese tax-transfer system became less progressive, yet the overall redistribution effect increased, mostly due to increased average direct tax rates.O efeito redistributivo de um sistema fiscal e uma quest ´ ao primordial para os decisores pol ˜ ´ıticos e o grau de progressividade dos impostos e das transferencias desempenha um papel central a ˆ este respeito. Nesta dissertac¸ao, aplicamos o ˜ ´ındice Kakwani para avaliar o efeito redistributivo e a progressividade do sistema global de impostos e transferencias - incluindo as prestac¸ ˆ oes so- ˜ ciais em dinheiro e impostos diretos e indiretos - para Portugal, em 2010 e 2015. No nosso melhor conhecimento, e a primeira vez que esta an ´ alise ´ e feita para o caso portugu ´ es. A primeira ˆ etapa do nosso projeto envolve a utilizac¸ao de m ˜ etodos estat ´ ´ısticos parametricos para combinar ´ dados sobre a despesa do IDEF com dados sobre o rendimento e transferencias das fam ˆ ´ılias do EU-SILC. Apos a construc¸ ´ ao deste novo conjunto de dados, avaliamos tanto o efeito redis- ˜ tributivo total e a progressividade do sistema fiscal, como a contribuic¸ao de cada instrumento ˜ de impostos e benef´ıcios. A nossa analise emp ´ ´ırica mostra que o efeito global redistributivo se traduz numa reduc¸ao da desigualdade de aproximadamente 6 e 7 pontos percentuais de Gini, ˜ respetivamente para 2010 e 2015. A diminuic¸ao da desigualdade ˜ e maioritariamente impul- ´ sionada pelos impostos diretos, e este impacto aumentou entre 2010 e 2015. Corroborando a literatura existente, as transferencias e os impostos diretos s ˆ ao progressivos, enquanto os im- ˜ postos indiretos sao regressivos. O sistema fiscal ˜ e progressivo. De 2010 a 2015, este tornou-se ´ menos progressivo, porem o efeito redistributivo total aumentou, devido sobretudo a um au- ´ mento da taxa media de impostos diretos

Vencer barreiras. O acesso dos cegos à escolarização

EntretextosPretende-se com este artigo fazer o retrato de uma época, no que à escolarização dos cegos diz respeito, através do testemunho de quem viveu e venceu as barreiras que o sistema educativo e a própria sociedade impunha. É uma aventura contada, na primeira pessoa, por quatro protagonistas que encontraram na sua deficiência visual a pedra de toque para uma vida cheia de desafios e de conquistas que os tornou únicos na sua família e na comunidade à qual pertencem. Todos são pessoas realizadas, em termos pessoais e profissionais, sem medo de enfrentar os seus colegas de profissão, os amigos e os menos amigos.The intention of this article is to make the portrait of an era concerning the education of the blind people, through the testimony of those who lived and won the barriers that the education system and society imposed on them. It's an adventure told in first person, by four actors who found their visual impairment in the cornerstone for a life full of challenges and achievements that made them unique to their family and community. All of them are fulfilled people, personally and professionally, and are not afraid to face their colleagues, friends and less friends

Competências na formação inicial do educador de infância-professor: entre práticas e representações

Este pequeno estudo é uma tentativa de análise e reflexão relativa às representações que os futuros educadores de infância/professores apresentam das competências profissionais, em situação de estágio. Explora formas de personalização da sua formação inicial, em registos de reflexões individuais, fruto de vivências experienciadas em contextos reais

“Consumers’ emotions in the digital world: brand love, fomo, and their connection to social media content”

Understanding the emotions consumers go through in relation to brands is a never-ending study, and many concepts have been created to describe these emotions, two of them are brand love, a highly positive passionate emotional connection between consumers and brands, and fear of missing out (FOMO), a fear of not participating in desirable experiences that affects consumers. With the rise of social media, it’s safe to say brands have to find innovative ways to connect and establish healthy relationships with consumers in the digital world, and brands like Spotify are excelling at tampering with positive and negative consumer emotions. This study’s focus and main objective is exploring the manifestations of Brand love and FOMO in the digital context, and discovering if they are connected through content shared on social media. The present exploratory research takes a qualitative approach, and benefited from testimony of 14 participants, of diverse backgrounds, to comprehend the concerned topics. The results showcased a previously unexplored connection between brand love and FOMO and describes how it is established through content sharing, while commenting on topics such as brand love and FOMO, and surrounding topics like overall social media behavior, advertisement, and joy of missing out. This knowledge serves companies by instructing them on how important sharable content can be in the future of digital advertisement

Fluorescence microscopy imaging denoising with Log-Euclidean priors and photobleaching compensation

Fluorescent protein microscopy imaging is nowadays one of the most important tools in biomedical research. However, the resulting images present a low signal to noise ratio and a time intensity decay due to the photobleaching effect. This phenomenon is a consequence of the decreasing on the radiation emission efficiency of the tagging protein. This occurs because the fluorophore permanently loses its ability to fluoresce, due to photochemical reactions induced by the incident light. The Poisson multiplicative noise that corrupts these images, in addition with its quality degradation due to photobleaching, make long time biological observation processes very difficult. In this paper a denoising algorithm for Poisson data, where the photobleaching effect is explicitly taken into account, is described. The algorithm is designed in a Bayesian framework where the data fidelity term models the Poisson noise generation process as well as the exponential intensity decay caused by the photobleaching. The prior term is conceived with Gibbs priors and log-Euclidean potential functions, suitable to cope with the positivity constrained nature of the parameters to be estimated. Monte Carlo tests with synthetic data are presented to characterize the performance of the algorithm. One example with real data is included to illustrate its application

Asociación de Difusión de Educación a Distancia A.D.E.D.

Conscious of the present needs, we enhance the idea of distance education. First, as a project and then as an educational program, in order to train women and children, bearing family and society in mind. A short and specific training that enables students retake abandoned studies was elaborated as the first step. It has been proved that forming an Executive Assistant on a course of MERCOSUR Secretariat would become an efficient intermediate way to a program which will determine new conducts and promote to undertake higher studies. Having achieved this experience as a distance education centre in the city of Mar del Plata. The following characteristics and results have been evaluated: * It is an ethical and social educational work. * It is an educational offer that responds to regional requirements.* The learning-teaching material and tutelage are plurilingual and in accordance with the needs of the countries in which they will be implemented (Argentia, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile and Uruguay). * It focuses on educational quality and makes use of technology, being adaptable to the students' different levels. * With adequate financing, it has the capacity of continuous growth. * It allows the creation of new distance educational centres in the region, enabling the intervening countries to both emit and receive the program. * It teaches the characteristics and prospects of the common markets, considering their assets and liabilities. * It complies with the principles of the last women's conference in China with the objectives of FIMU1, FLAMU2, UNESCO, OREALC, ADED3, meeting the needs of emerging countries. Besides, it expands educational frontier within the frame of globalization and interconnected present day world fostering job insertion4

Exploratory study on axonal excitability with threshold tracking technique : in healthy controls and patients with familial amyloid polyneuropathy

Tese de mestrado, Neurociências, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, 2015Clinical neurophysiology provides quantitative measurements of peripheral nerve function. However, limits for measurements evaluating peripheral nerve function are difficult to establish as they depend on temperature, age, body mass index and, possibly, gender. Recently, nerve excitability testing using threshold tracking has been developed as a method to complement nerve conduction studies. We used this technique to study Portuguese population. The technique of threshold tracking to test axonal excitability gives information about nodal and intermodal ion channel function. We aimed to investigate variability of the motor excitability measurements in healthy controls, taking into account age, gender, body mass index (BMI) and of small changes in skin temperature and to in early affected patients with transthyretin (TTR)-type familial amyloid polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP) before and during tafamidis treatment. The changes related to demographic features on TRONDE protocol parameters are small and less important than in conventional nerve conduction studies. Nonetheless, our results underscore the relevance of a careful temperature control, and indicate that interpretation of stimulusresponse slope and accommodation half-time should take into account age and BMI. In contrast, gender is not of major relevance to appreciate axonal threshold findings in motor nerves. Threshold-tracking of motor fibers of the median nerve is not a sensitive test to support early diagnosis of TTR-FAP patients. Tafamidis was well tolerated. We observed a significant reduction of nerve excitability, not explained by channel function changes or overlying tissue edema. Threshold tracking can contribute to detail the action of new drugs to treat neuropathies. Tafamidis can change nerve electrical properties by reducing amyloid burden.A neurofisiologia clínica permite avaliar quantitativamente a função dos nervos periféricos. No entanto, é difícil estabelecer valores limite para a função do nervo periférico sendo que este depende da temperatura, idade, índice de massa corporal e possivelmente, do género. Recentemente, tem sido utilizada uma nova metodologia – tracking threshold – que estuda vários parâmetros da excitabilidade do nervo e complementa os estudos de condução do nervo. Nós utilizámos esta técnica para estudar a população portuguesa. A técnica tracking threshold avalia a excitabilidade do axónio e fornece informação sobre a funcionalidade dos canais iónicos ao longo de toda a membrana axonal – nodal e internodal. O nosso objetivo foi investigar a variabilidade dos parâmetros de excitabilidade do nervo motor em controlos saudáveis, analisando a idade, género, índice de massa corporal e pequenas variações de temperatura superficial, e nos indivíduos com polineuropatia amilóide familiar associada à transtirretina (TTR-FAP) na fase inicial da doença, antes e durante o tratamento com tafamidis. As variações relacionadas com as características demográficas, analisadas com o protocolo TRONDE, são pequenas e de menor importância em relação aos estudos de condução do nervo convencionais. No entanto, os nossos resultados realçam a importância de manter um controlo rigoroso da temperatura, e que nos parâmetros stimulus-response slope e accomodation half time, a idade e índice de massa corporal parecem ter influência. Em relação ao género, não é um fator relevante quando se analisam os parâmetros de excitabilidade com a técnica tracking threshold no nervo motor. A utilização de tracking threshold nas fibras motores do nervo mediano não é um teste sensível para apoiar o diagnóstico precoce nos doentes TTR-FAP. O tratamento com Tafamidis foi bem tolerado. Observámos uma redução significativa de excitabilidade do nervo, que não se explica pelas alterações dos canais iónicos ou pelo edema de tecido sobrejacente. A técnica tracking threshold pode contribuir para compreender e identificar o mecanismo de acção de novos fármacos no tratamento das neuropatias. Tafamidis pode alterar as propriedades elétricas do nervo ao reduzir o peso da substância amiloide

Starbucks : the growth trap

The key to achieve organizational success has been subject of much discussion throughout the years. Many theories tried to explain it, from the industrial organization model to the resource-based view. Still, there was a gap regarding how companies succeeded in dynamic markets. The dynamic capabilities view appeared in response to this breach, arguing that a firm could outperform others if it had a stronger market adaptation’s ability. The present dissertation intends to illustrate this view by using a real business case, pointing out how adaptation to market changes can influence a company’s performance. At a first stage, the case shows the negative impact of not being attentive to changes, and in a second period shows performance improvement by the strengthening of dynamic capabilities. When writing this thesis, I attempted to provide responses to the following questions: What dimensions can lead a strong company to fail? What factors are crucial in a turnaround? How do strategic decisions translate into changes in the resource base? The main findings of the case suggest that the dimensions that form dynamic capabilities are crucial to explain both failure and rebound, depending on the extent by which a given firm exhibits such dimensions in each relevant period. These dimensions can be interrelated, meaning that the lack of one, can affect another. In addition, it shows that dynamic capabilities are not a dichotomous issue (i.e., it is not a matter of having or not, it is rather a question of degree). Furthermore, while having dynamic capabilities can help a company to achieve success, the case suggests that, to achieve this potential, all dimensions included in the dynamic capabilities concept are important