Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2011-07"
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- Exploring the micro-politics of place: lifestyle migrants, collective identities and modes of belongingPublication . Torkington, KateTaking up Hopkins and Dixon’s (2006) call to attend to the micro-politics of everyday constructions of space and place, which necessarily involves psychological concepts such as identity, belonging and attachment, this paper aims to show how a critical socio-cognitive approach to discourse analysis is an effective means of unpacking the ways in which versions of place are (re)produced and negotiated through discursive practices, and in particular the ways in which ‘legitimate’ collective identities are constructed in relation to place. I focus on the contemporary social phenomenon of lifestyle migration. Within Europe, this typically involves relatively affluent northern Europeans moving to destinations in southern Europe that are strongly linked to tourism. Although lifestyle migrants are generally viewed by their hosts as ‘desirable’ migrants due to their perceived economic and socio-cultural capital, their integration into destination communities is often minimal. The question arises as to how these migrants construct modes of belonging in relation to their adopted home-place and how they relate to the other social groups with whom they share it. Using texts from a variety of sources, including in-depth interviews with British migrants in Portugal, I explore not only how migrants position themselves (and others) discursively in relation to places, but also how they are already positioned by discursive practices in the public sphere. I also examine to what extent the construction of a ‘legitimate’ mode of belonging involves the construction of intergroup cooperation within that place.
- The ligands of estrogen receptor alpha regulate Cytochrome P4502C9 (CYP2C9) expressionPublication . Mwinyi, Jessica; Cavaco, Isa; Yurdakok, Begum; Mkrtchian, Souren; Ingelman-Sundberg, MagnusCytochrome P4502C9 (CYP2C9) is an important drug-metabolizing enzyme responsible for the metabolism of approximately 16% of all clinically relevant drugs. It was shown previously that the activity of CYP2C9 in vivo is inhibited by oral contraceptives. The mechanisms of this effect have not been elucidated. We hypothesize that this may occur because of the sex steroid-dependent activation of estrogen receptor alpha (ER alpha) with further transactivation of the CYP2C9 gene. Here, we show that the CYP2C9 promoter indeed contains a functionally relevant estrogen responsive element (ERE) half-site at position -149/-145. Its ER alpha binding activity was tested by the luciferase gene reporter assay. Promoter constructs bearing this site were cotransfected with ER alpha into Huh7 hepatoma cells and treated with various ER alpha ligands including 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4-OHT), raloxifene (R), 17 beta-estradiol (EE), and 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol (ETE). The luciferase activity driven by the wild-type CYP2C9 promoter construct was up-regulated by 4-OHT and R and significantly or marginally suppressed by ETE and EE, respectively. An identical effect was observed in primary hepatocytes treated with these compounds. Mutations introduced into the ERE half-site abolished the observed effects in the Huh7 cells. Electrophoretic mobility-shift assay revealed sequence-specific binding of a nuclear protein to the oligonucleotide containing the ERE half-site, which was identified as ER alpha by antibody supershift analysis. In addition, the association of ER alpha with CYP2C9 promoter was strongly supported by chromatin immunoprecipitation data. Taken together, these results indicate that ER alpha and its ligands play an important role in the regulation of CYP2C9 expression.
- Storm impacts along European coastlines. Part 2: lessons learned from the MICORE projectPublication . Ciavola, Paolo; Ferreira, Óscar; Haerens, Piet; Van Koningsveld, Mark; Armaroli, ClaraThis paper describes the MICORE approach to quantify for nine field sites the crucial storm related physical hazards (hydrodynamic as well as morphodynamic) in support of early warning efforts and emergency response. As a first step historical storms that had a significant morphological impact on a representative number of sensitive European coastal stretches were reviewed and analysed in order to understand storm related morphological changes and how often they occur around Europe. Next, an on-line storm prediction system was set up to enable prediction of storm related hydro- and morphodynamic impacts. The system makes use of existing offthe- shelf models as well as a new open-source morphological model. To validate the models at least one year of fieldwork was done at nine pilot sites. The data was safeguarded and stored for future use in an open database that conforms to the OpenEarth protocols. To translate quantitative model results to useful information for Civil Protection agencies the Frame of Reference approach (Van Koningsveld et al., 2005, 2007) was used to derive Storm Impact Indicators (SIIs) for relevant decision makers. The acquired knowledge is expected to be directly transferred to the civil society trough partnerships with end-users at the end of the MICORE project.
- The Oberbeck-Boussinesq problem modified by a thermo-absorption termPublication . Antontsev, S. N.; de Oliveira, H. B.We consider the Oberbeck-Boussinesq problem with an extra coupling, establishing a suitable relation between the velocity and the temperature. Our model involves a system of equations given by the transient Navier-Stokes equations modified by introducing the thermo-absorption term. The model involves also the transient temperature equation with nonlinear diffusion. For the obtained problem, we prove the existence of weak solutions for any N >= 2 and its uniqueness if N = 2. Then, considering a low range of temperature, but upper than the phase changing one, we study several properties related with vanishing in time of the velocity component of the weak solutions. First, assuming the buoyancy forces field extinct after a finite time, we prove the velocity component will extinct in a later finite time, provided the thermo-absorption term is sublinear. In this case, considering a suitable buoyancy forces field which vanishes at some instant of time, we prove the velocity component extinct at the same instant. We prove also that for non-zero buoyancy forces, but decaying at a power time rate, the velocity component decay at analogous power time rates, provided the thermo-absorption term is superlinear. At last, we prove that for a general non-zero bounded buoyancy force, the velocity component exponentially decay in time whether the thermo-absorption term is sub or superlinear. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
- Assessing the efficiency of mother-to-child HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries using DEA: an exploratory studyPublication . Santos, Sérgio Pereira dos; Amado, Carla; Santos, MauroAIDS is one of the most significant health care problems worldwide. Due to the difficulty and costs involved in treating HIV, preventing infection is of paramount importance in controlling the AIDS epidemic. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to establish international comparisons on the efficiency of implementation of HIV prevention programmes. To do this we use data from 52 low- and middle-income countries regarding the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Preliminary results indicate that there is a remarkable variation in the efficiency of prevention services across nations, suggesting that a better use of resources could lead to more and improved services, and ultimately, prevent the infection of thousands of children.
- A literacia da leitura literária no ensino universitárioPublication . Baleiro, Rita Salomé Varela Andrade RodriguesEsta tese apresenta uma definição do conceito de literacia da leitura literária no ensino superior. Simultaneamente, neste estudo identificam-se e analisam-se as competências ou capacidades de literacia da leitura literária activadas nos ensaios sobre textos literários escritos por alunos que frequentaram a Licenciatura em Línguas, Literaturas e Culturas, variante de Estudos Portugueses e Ingleses, da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, no ano lectivo 2006/2007. A tese apresenta também os resultados de um inquérito por questionário aplicado a noventa e quatro alunos desta licenciatura. Este inquérito foi aplicado com o objectivo de obter informação sobre as razões para a escolha da licenciatura e os hábitos de leitura extra-curriculares dos alunos; de identificar as percepções que revelam sobre os métodos de ensino, de avaliação e de estudo do texto literário; de identificar os parâmetros que definem um texto como literário, na opinião dos alunos; de identificar as preferências genológicas deste grupo de estudantes, bem como o seu grau de conhecimento de textos literários do cânone clássico português e do cânone clássico inglês. Neste estudo foram utilizadas quatro fontes de dados (quarenta e seis ensaios escritos pelos alunos, um inquérito por questionário, doze entrevistas a professores de literatura e catorze programas de unidades curriculares de literatura de quatro universidades portuguesas) e dois métodos (análise de conteúdo e inquérito por questionário). Quanto aos resultados da investigação, uma das principais conclusões é a de que no acto de interpretação do texto literário, a maioria dos alunos opta mais frequentemente por se focar no conteúdo semântico dos textos (personagens e núcleos temáticos) e menos nos seus pormenores formais e na informação extratextual (dados biográficos do autor, contextualização histórico-sociocultural do texto ou intenção autoral). Outra das principais conclusões a retirar é a reduzida importância atribuída ao estudo da bibliografia de autoridade sobres os textos literários. Por último, este estudo revelou que, no momento de estudar um texto literário, a maioria dos alunos está muito dependente dos comentários dos professores sobre os textos literários.
- Noise cancellation technique for Doppler ultrasound spectrogram enhancementPublication . Zabihian, B.; Teixeira, C. A.; Ruano, M. GraçaDoppler ultrasound (DU) automatic detection of clinically relevant blood flow spectral parameters may be a difficult task when the spectrogram is corrupted with different types of noise. This paper introduces a technique to eliminate the spectrogram background noise without damaging the blood flow signals' content. Tests were performed on simulated signals with known spectral characteristics. Different signal to noise ratios were tested. Results of 100 signals were averaged. Based on the STFT spectrogram the center frequency and bandwidth of the simulated noisy signals were computed and evaluated against the deterministic curve. Results obtained by defining the background area of DU simulated signals and applying 7% of Cancellation level on signals with 10 dB of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) produced mean frequency estimations with a maximum bias of 106 Hz. The maximum bias of the bandwidth estimations in this case was 124 Hz. Since the sampling frequency of the DU simulated signals were 12800 Hz, usage of the proposed noise cancelation technique enabled spectral parameters estimations with meaningless errors demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed technique. © 2011 IEEE.