Research In Portugal Research Articles

Portugal's research funding is secure

Portugal's research funding is secure

Bibliometric Analysis of Portuguese Research in e-government

Abstract In this article we present a bibliometric analysis of journal articles, conference papers and book chapters published internationally by researchers affiliated to Portuguese institutions in the subject of e-government in the past ten years. The Scopus® database was used as source. The identified articles were analyzed concerning year of publication, citations, topics addressed, scope, methods used, and authors and their affiliation institutions. A benchmark exercise was also performed by comparing Portuguese bibliometrics with all the other countries in the European Union. We conclude that e-government research in Portugal still has a substantial room for improvement. This is apparent from the small number of researchers and institutions involved in e-government research, the limited number of topics addressed, and the results of the international benchmark. By establishing the evolution and current standing of e-government research in Portugal our conclusions are useful to researchers in the area of e-government, and to research managers and research policy makers.

The Past and Present of Medical Museums in Portugal

This article examines the emergence, expansion and transformations of museums of medicine in Portugal. It aims to further the understanding of these museums by placing them in relation to multiple settings: the appearance of similar institutions throughout Europe, the development of medical teaching and research in Portugal, and the growth of scientific museums. It seeks to identify the individual and institutional actors behind the creation of museums, their motivations and the purposes these institutions aim to serve. The article shows that, although the trend for setting up these museums started in the eighteenth century and gained significant momentum in the early decades of the twentieth century, most of them were short-lived and failed to meet their creators’ expectations and intentions. It is only in recent years that the twin purposes of protecting historical medical heritage and promoting the public understanding of medical sciences have supported the growth of medical museums and exhibitions.

A investigação em turismo em Portugal: um contributo para a sua caracterização

Este trabalho pretende ser um primeiro contributo para a caracterização da investigação em Turismo em Portugal, focando a sua atenção no perfil do investigador e nas características da investigação. Para o efeito e tendo por base uma rede de investigadores em Turismo em Portugal, foi possível identificar 166 investigadores a trabalhar nesta área, distribuídos por cerca de 30 instituições de ensino superior, posteriormente convidados a preencher um questionário online. A fase de recolha de dados, em Março de 2013, permitiu obter 111 respostas válidas cuja análise se apresenta neste estudo. Os resultados evidenciam uma comunidade científica predominantemente jovem e em crescimento e sublinham igualmente uma diversa, sólida e estimulante perspectiva disciplinar.

Nurses in advanced roles: a review of acceptability in Portugal

OBJECTIVE: This paper focuses on the policy context for the deployment of nurses in advanced roles, with particular reference to Portugal. The health sector in Portugal, as in all countries, is labour intensive, and the scope to utilise nurses in more advanced roles is currently being debated. METHODS: Mixed methods were used: an analysis of international data on the nursing workforce; an analysis of documents and media articles; interviews with key-informants; an online survey of managers, and a technical workshop with key-informants. CONCLUSIONS: The limited evidence base on nurses in advanced roles in Portugal is a constraint on progress, but it is not an excuse for inaction. Further research in Portugal on health professionals in innovative roles would assist in informing policy direction. There is the need to move forward with a fully informed policy dialogue, taking account of the current political, economic and health service realities of Portugal.

Master's in Autonomous Systems: An Overview of the Robotics Curriculum and Outcomes at ISEP, Portugal

Robotics research in Portugal is increasing every year, but few students embrace it as one of their first choices for study. Until recently, job offers for engineers were plentiful, and those looking for a degree in science and technology would avoid areas considered to be demanding, like robotics. At the undergraduate level, robotics programs are still competing for a place in the classical engineering graduate curricula. Innovative and dynamic Master's programs may offer the solution to this gap. The Master's degree in autonomous systems at the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP), Porto, Portugal, was designed to provide a solid training in robotics and has been showing interesting results, mainly due to differences in course structure and the context in which students are welcomed to study and work.

Special Issue dedicated to the XVIII Meeting of the Portuguese Electrochemical Society – A glimpse into the electrochemical research in Portugal

The Organizing Committee was composed of the following members: Aquiles Araujo Barros, Beatriz Quinaz, Daniel Carvalho, Diana Fernandes, Ines Valente, Jose Antonio Rodrigues, Luisa Martins, Luis Guido, Luis Moreira Goncalves, Manuela Moreira, Maria Isabel Rocha, Paulo Almeida and Rui Ramos. The Scientific Committee was composed by: Ana Carreira Lopes (Universidade da Beira Interior), Ana Cristina Oliveira (Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro), Angela Molina (Universidad de Murcia), Antonio Rangel (Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Porto), Armando Pombeiro (Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa), Beatriz Quinaz (Faculdade de Farmacia, Universidade do Porto), Carlos Pereira (Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade do Porto), Cristina Delerue-Matos (Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto), Cristina Freire (Faculdade de Ciencias, Universidade do Porto), Jiři Barek (Přirodovědecka fakulta, Univerzita Karlova v Praze), Joao Rodrigues (Universidade da Madeira), Jose Moura (Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Jorge Ginja Teixeira (Universidade de Evora),

Drenagem e acumulação de ar frio em noites de arrefecimento radiativo. Um exemplo no vale de Barcarena (Oeiras)

THE COLD AIR DRAINAGE DURING CALM CLEAR NIGHTS: AN EXAMPLE IN HE BARCARENA VALLEY (OEIRAS, PORTUGAL) - The cold air drainage system is a recent climatological field research in Portugal. In the valley of Barcarena, a few kilometres westward from Lisbon, it was possible to detect the intermittent flow of the cold air drainage during two calm clear nights. We came to the conclusion that the cold air lakes are formed in situ by the irradiation process and also by the accumulation of the cold air drained along the valley slopes. The rugosity of the surface and the slow down of the cold air along the slope could be responsible for the oscillations of the cold air lakes thickness

Physical Activity, Physical Fitness, Gross Motor Coordination, and Metabolic Syndrome: Focus of Twin Research in Portugal

A very brief history of Portuguese twin research in sport and human movement sciences is presented. Recruitment procedures, zygosity determination, and phenotypes are given for twins and their parents from the mainland, and Azores and Madeira archipelagos. Preliminary findings are mostly related to physical activity, health-related physical fitness, gross motor coordination, neuromotor development, and metabolic syndrome traits.

The combined use of radio frequency‐electromagnetic surveys and chemical and biological analyses to study the role of groundwater discharge into the Guadiana estuary

ABSTRACTThis paper intends to show how the radio frequency‐electromagnetic (RF‐EM) method can be successfully used in coastal wetlands, onshore and in shallow water. It characterizes and reveals geological and hydrogeological singularities that are often hidden by recent sediments and allows target sampling and consequent detection of ecological particularities. RF‐EM methods have traditionally been used to detect the presence of groundwater or the existence of subsurface contamination plumes. The great majority of such studies have been conducted on land and to a lesser extent on freshwater lakes but rarely in coastal waters. Previous research in Portugal has shown that despite the attenuation effect of salt water, very valuable information can be obtained with the use of electromagnetic methods, wherever resistivity contrasts exist. In the current case study, RF‐EM surveys were carried out in the Estuary of the Guadiana River, in order to understand the importance of geological structures on the formation of the wetland and the influence of groundwater discharge on the existing ecosystem. Structures detected on land were also identified in the tidal channels. Freshwater fault springs were localized; their biota is characterized and the nutrients analysed. The results showed a clear increase in nitrate and silica concentration near the submarine springs, with impact on the planktonic communities, which is most evident in chlorophyll a. This is especially relevant during the end of summer and autumn when a potential limitation of these nutrients exists that can increase the occurrence of toxic blooms in the salt marshes and lower estuary. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mathematics Education and Ethnomathematics. A Connection in Need of Reinforcement.

In this article we analyze Ethnomathematics research in Portugal in the recent past and the way it has been used in Education. We divide our reflection in three main parts. One is about people’s discourse and actions and how to use them to uncover mathematical thinking. The second is about artifacts and how to use them to uncover mathematical thinking. The third is about how to use ethnomathematics research to improve mathematics education. In each of these sections we reflect on some of what has been made and we propose paths we think are worth pursuing.

Views of disability in Portugal: ‘fado’ or citizenship?

Disability research in Portugal is scarce and often lacks the perspective of disabled people. This paper tries to bring insights from leaders of disability associations about the community of disabled people in Portugal, the barriers to their politicization and links with disabled identity. It seems that most disabled people get trapped in a tragic paradigmatic vicious cycle due to a system-induced disempowerment which is sustained by a dominant individual and remediation model that extends to families, society, policies and politicians. The disabled associative movement has been unable to reach the majority of disabled people. Suggestions are thus made in order to transform this social reality by disseminating politically aware alternative disability paradigms and the possibility of a positive disabled identity, as well as by generating societal involvement in disability as a public matter.

Research on corporate social responsibility and disclosure in Portugal

PurposeThis descriptive paper seeks to explore the role of Portuguese academics within corporate social responsibility and disclosure (CSR&D) research. It aims to give some insight into the nature and the extent of research on CSR&D being undertaken by Portuguese authors.Design/methodology/approachThis review specifically targeted international journals to see how much Portuguese research had penetrated the international business, management and accounting (BMA) academic discourse. The research that is reported in this paper is based on an electronic search of the online databases which include journals in these areas. The paper reviews journal articles published in BMA journals over the period 1998 to 2008.FindingsThe paper reaches several conclusions: the volume of published research in international journals is still very low; most papers focus on CSR; research is overwhelmingly empirical in orientation; and most papers focus on Portugal. Hence, there is great scope for expanding the amount of research on CSR&D in Portugal, as well as improving the diversity of its content and its geographical coverage.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is not expected to be a complete study, but rather a stimulus for future research. It is intended to provide a basis for comparison with further studies on CSR&D research in Portugal with studies from other geographical areas.Originality/valueThe paper provides the first survey on CSR&D research in Portugal. It also provides the first opportunity to reflect on the current state of these still emerging academic fields.

A nova face da medicina Portuguesa: a geração de 1911 e a escola de investigação de Marck Athias.

This paper aims to demonstrate that with Marck Athias, the Portuguese medicine inaugurated a new chapter in its history, in the Republic period, characterized by the experimental training at the laboratory. Thus, book-based knowledge gave way to a more clinically based approach favouring laboratory practice and basic research within several scientific domains. This new perspective operated important changes in the Portuguese medical community in the first half of century XX. Marck Athias (1857-1946), a Portuguese, was a physician trained at the University of Paris under Mathias Duval (a former student of Santiago Rámon y Cajal). It was in his laboratory that Athias began his career as researcher. Returning to Portugal, Athias founded a research school in physiology and histology which stressed a new approach in medicine based on experimental research. At the beginning of the twentieth century, scientific research in Portugal was virtually devoid of any of the practical clinic aspects. It is in fact Athias who introduced a new scientific perspective in Portuguese scientific community as well as influenced generations of graduate students in several national higher education and scientific research centres associated with Medicine. His influence and impact was due in great part to the underlying ideology of a positivist nature which succeeded in attracting several generations of followers, promoting a new step for the modernization of Portuguese medicine.

Questões científicas nos projetos de investigação em embriões realizados em Portugal

Na medicina personalizada e regenerativa capitaliza-se a genómica e a esperança na sustentação do apoio público à investigação em embriões. Neste artigo analisam-se as questões científicas associadas aos projetos de investigação em embriões realizados em Portugal e financiados pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia entre 2000 e 2009, a partir da caracterização destes segundo o ano de candidatura, área científica, instituições proponentes e participantes, financiamento atribuído e temática de saúde estudada. Num total de 34 projetos, 65% incluem-se nas ciências da saúde e biológicas. As temáticas de saúde mais estudadas recaem sobre fenómenos e processos, anatomia e organismos. Conclui-se que nos projetos de investigação em embriões usam-se a saúde humana e a saúde pública como um argumento que justifica o financiamento e as expectativas depositadas sobretudo na investigação em células estaminais embrionárias e terapias celulares.

The ELO Project – Educational Leadership Observatory

In spite of the great importance that is given to school leadership as a relevant factor in school improvement and of the increasing number of studies that are being developed in this area in several countries, in Portugal only recently did we begin to have studies that are focused directly in this issue.Perhaps due to the slow development of this area of research in Portugal, there is still no gathering and conceptual systemization of the research that has been done on school leadership in our country. Thus, one of the main goals of the project that we are presenting is the creation of a School Leadership Observatory, gathering and making available information and research work on school leadership that have been recently carried out in Portugal. We have specifically focused on PhD thesis, Master dissertations, articles in scientific journals and proceedings of scientific meetings. This information that is being collected will be analyzed according to a theoretic-conceptual framework that will allow drawing a portrait of the results, perspectives and tendencies of this kind of research in our country.

Science Policy and the Internationalisation of Research in Portugal

This article will examine Portuguese and European science and higher education policies and their impact on international collaborations. It will do so by looking at two key indicators: international academic mobility and the coauthored international scientific publications. The data show Portugal as an attractive country for foreign students and the increasing participation of Portuguese undergraduates in exchange programmes. The increase in the number of new PhDs in the last decade has been accompanied by an international academic experience. The analysis of international publications (Thomson Scientific) over a 25-year period show that Portugal is one of the most collaborative countries in Europe and that the highest rate of collaboration is now occurring with Spain.

Teaching and research on Developmental Biology in Portugal

Developmental Biology has established itself as a solid field of teaching and research in Portugal. Its history is recent, generally considered to have started with the pioneering work of Augusto Celestino da Costa at the beginning of the 20th century. However, research groups were very few and, until the early 1990s, teaching beyond morphological and comparative embryology was uncommon. In 1994, the first university course dedicated to Developmental Biology as a separate field from Embryology was created at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and a course on Plant Differentiation and Morphogenesis was also initiated. A Masters programme in Developmental Biology followed at the Lusofona University in 1996. Subsequently, modules of Developmental Biology were included in many Embryology courses and eventually more Developmental Biology courses were created. From 1999 onwards, the number of research groups working in Developmental Biology started to increase, many of which were initiated by researchers who had had the opportunity to pursue their PhD and/or post-doc studies abroad. The Instituto Gulbenkian de Cincia (Gulbenkian Institute of Science) became the first home of most of these groups, but several later spread to other institutions. This increased activity in turn has stimulated teaching of Developmental Biology and more students have been getting interested in the field. This positive feedback loop makes it a nice time to be teaching and working in Developmental Biology in Portugal.

A personal account of the development of modern biological research in Portugal

Portugal celebrated in 2006 its first 20 years of the formal introduction of the practice of external evaluation of research proposals in the national funding system. Accounts of changes in numbers of publications, citations, numbers of research projects funded and budget figures can be found in Government Reports (www.oces.mctes.pt.). An offshoot of the decisive and firm implementation of that practice in what was to become the Health Sciences was that the area became an attractor for young researchers in the basic biological sciences, namely, molecular, cellular and developmental biology. Reciprocally, the entry of basic biological scientists into medically oriented groups totally changed the landscape, the soil, the seeding, the cross-fertilization and the flowering of biomedical research in the country. This paper is a personal account of the experience of a scientist who was asked by the then President of the National Research Council, Jose Mariano Gago to co-ordinate the introduction of external evaluation of research projects and research institutes in the Health Sciences in Portugal between 1986 and 1997.

Níveis econômicos de prejuízos de plantas infestantes nas culturas agrícolas: conceitos, definições e formas de cálculo

Uma das áreas da matologia (herbologia em Portugal) que tem avançado nas pesquisas científicas em Portugal e no Brasil nas últimas três décadas é a de nível de prejuízo das infestantes às culturas agrícolas. Contudo, durante esse período ocorreu uma multiplicidade de traduções de termos técnicos para a língua portuguesa, que atualmente dificultam o intercâmbio de informações técnico-científicas. Os objetivos desta revisão de literatura foram: definir os cinco diferentes termos referentes aos níveis de prejuízos das infestantes utilizados em herbologia; consolidar no idioma português os acrônimos utilizados para esses termos; apresentar as designações que têm correspondência nas línguas francesa e inglesa; indicar as perguntas científicas a que o termo responde; e apresentar as formas de cálculo que podem ser utilizadas para cada nível de prejuízo definido. Os termos estudados nesta revisão foram: densidade crítica, nível prejudicial de ataque (NPA ou nível de dano econômico = NDE), nível econômico de ataque, nível de tolerância e nível de segurança de ataque. Os modelos de cálculo do NPA = NDE no caso de infestações contendo uma única espécie vegetal são deduzidos a partir dos modelos linear, hiperbólico, múltiplo linear e múltiplo não linear; e para as situações de infestações com mais de uma espécie vegetal, a partir da equação linear múltipla entre a densidade de plantas e o rendimento da cultura.