Science In Portugal Research Articles

Monitoring a National Open Access Funder Mandate

Acknowledging the benefits associated with open access (OA) to scientific literature, the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCT), the national funding agency for science in Portugal, defined an OA policy that aims at ensuring free, online access to publications arising from FCT-funded research. Key to the implementation of FCT OA policy is the existence of a solid and mature repository infrastructure, the Scientific Open Access Repository of Portugal – RCAAP. Furthermore, RCAAP is part of PTCRIS, an integrated research information ecosystem whose holistic vision of the research information landscape allow us to link implementation of FCT OA mandate to added value services, with great benefits for the research community. In these paper, we describe the strategy adopted to implement and monitor a funder's OA mandate in an unprecedented integrated manner, using ground-breaking technical solutions built upon an existing infrastructure to address new challenges.

A sociologia histórica em Portugal: depoimento, crítica e história

This text is a testimony for a history or a historical sociology of the social sciences in Portugal. Although it is a personal statement, some notions of strong critical meaning are incorporated in this reflection, such as academic institutionalization, the field of relations, competition and clientelism.

ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN LIFE SCIENCES: THE CASE OF A MODERATE INNOVATOR COUNTRY

The commercialization of research done by universities and research institutes is seen as a key element of entrepreneurship, justifying a better understanding of the entrepreneurial process within those institutions. Despite efforts in recent decades, there remains a widespread ignorance about who are the individuals with a greater vocation for research and marketing of knowledge. Focusing on a relatively unexplored context — the field of life sciences in a moderate innovator country, Portugal — this study adds new empirical evidence to the precedents of academic entrepreneurship. The results, based on 247 responses, evidence that entrepreneurship (including patent production, consultancy work and creation of start-up companies) is still very incipient. The econometric analysis of the “Index of entrepreneurial activity,” shows that: (1) the phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship is within everyone’s reach, but embraced by very few; and (2) academic entrepreneurship feeds on the exchange of knowledge and resources among universities and research institutes and their socio-economic environment. Thus, to increase academic entrepreneurship in life science in Portugal, the mechanisms to facilitate the interactions between universities and the business community must be strengthened, promoting the development of business clusters with the integration of the academic world, which will enable the transformation of knowledge into market products and services.

Brutalism and Nature. The Gulbenkian Foundation Buildings (1959-1969)

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation headquarters and museum complex (1959–1969) headed a fundamental role in building science in Portugal, as it contributed to the accomplishment of a Modern Movement design committed with a high level of construction quality, showing that there was more beyond Modern Movement formalism. Inaugurated in 1969, it was designed to create a pleasant environment, providing prospects from inside at various angles to the grove of trees and the surrounding land. As a mega-structure designed under a multi-disciplinary design and construction team it achieved a high level of technical excellence and comfort, whilst beautifully linking the building and garden. Located in central Lisbon, within a park with an area of 7.5 ha, occupying an area of 25.000 m2, it was designed by the architects Alberto Pessoa (1919–1985), Pedro Cid (1925–1983) and Ruy Jevis d’Athouguia (1917–2006) with the collaboration of the landscape designers Ribeiro Barreto (1924–2013) and Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles (1922–). The construction gathered an international interdisciplinary team of specialists. The most up-to-date techniques were adopted, including reinforced and pre-stressed concrete in its construction. Some figures illustrate the volume of these buildings: 150,000 m3 of excavation, 45,000 m3 of concrete, 3,200 t of steel, 100 km of power cables, 50,000 m of air conditioning pipes and 3,500 kW of installed electrical capacity. The architectural design expresses the structure. The aim of having a dominant horizontal line that guaranteed the image of a low building hugging the land and the wish to emphasize the long slabs of concrete that constituted the visible image of the built complex called for a very creative structural concept. The impact that the complex has had and the way in which it has manifested the effectiveness of its qualities, such as formal sobriety and restraint, have confirmed the close relationship between the conception process and the construction site. With its garden it has created the very image of the prestige and innovation of the Foundation itself.

Teaching forensic medicine in the University of Porto

The University of Porto (UP) provides education in Forensic Medicine (FM) through the 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycle of studies, post-graduation and continuing education courses. This education is related to forensic pathology, clinical forensic medicine (including forensic psychology and psychiatry), forensic chemistry and toxicology, forensic genetics and biology, and criminalistics. With this work we intent to reflect on how we are currently teaching FM in the UP, at all levels of university graduation. We will present our models, regarding the educational objectives, curricular program and teaching/learning methodologies of each cycle of studies as well as in post-graduate and continuing education courses. Historically, and besides related administratively to the Ministry of Justice, the Portuguese Medico-Legal Institutes (since 1918) and more recently the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (INMLCF) also have educational and research responsibilities. Thus, it lends space and cooperates with academic institutions and this contribution, namely regarding teaching forensic sciences in Portugal has been judged as an example for other Countries. This contribution is so important that in UP, the Department of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine (FMUP) shares, until now, the same physical space with North Branch of the INMLCF, which represents a notorious advantage, since it makes possible the “learning by doing”.

A epidemia de cólera de 1853-1856 na imprensa portuguesa

The article examines science and technology communication aimed at a non-specialized audience, using the general press as the main source in this endeavor to capture an image of the popularization of science in Portugal. Based on the fact that the nineteenth-century press was overtly concerned with garnering an audience and spreading knowledge, the study uses news, articles, and advertisements about the 1853-1856 cholera epidemic to assess the era's scientific knowledge (especially about prevention and treatment) and how this information was conveyed to society and used by it.

The Environmental History of Cetaceans in Portugal: Ten Centuries of Whale and Dolphin Records

The history between cetaceans and humans is documented throughout time not only in reports, descriptions, and tales but also in legal documents, laws and regulations, and tithes. This wealth of information comes from the easy spotting and identification of individuals due to their large size, surface breathing, and conspicuous above water behaviour. This work is based on historical sources and accounts accounting for cetacean presence for the period between the 12th and 17th centuries, as well as scientific articles, newspapers, illustrations, maps, non-published scientific reports, and other grey literature from the 18th century onwards. Information on whale use in Portugal's mainland has been found since as early as the 12th century and has continued to be created throughout time. No certainty can be given for medieval and earlier events, but both scavenging of stranded whales or use of captured ones may have happened. There is an increasing number of accounts of sighted, stranded, used, or captured cetaceans throughout centuries which is clearly associated with a growing effort towards the study of these animals. Scientific Latin species denominations only started to be registered from the 18th century onwards, as a consequence of the evolution of natural sciences in Portugal and increasing interest from zoologists. After the 19th century, a larger number of observations were recorded, and from the 20th century to the present day, regular scientific records have been collected. Research on the environmental history of cetaceans in Portugal shows a several-centuries-old exploitation of whales and dolphins, as resources mainly for human consumption, followed in later centuries by descriptions of natural history documenting strandings and at sea encounters. Most cetaceans species currently thought to be present in Portuguese mainland waters were at some point historically recorded.

Searching for Modernization-Instruments in the Development of Earth Sciences in Portugal (18th Century)

In the 1700s the Portuguese government endorsed a mercantilist vision of the kingdom's wealth based in part on an industrialization process relying on mineral resources. The production cycles of gold and diamonds in colonial Brazil were declining and new methods and instruments were needed to revitalize the mining industry. A new enlightened citizen was required and a reform of institutions took place, namely the University of Coimbra. The Lisbon Academy of Sciences and the Ajuda Museum also favoured scientific studies. The quantification spirit of the time helped support the careful practices used in the analyses of minerals, ores and water. Preparing naturalists to travel in Portugal and her colonies was also a task of the institutions, supplemented by prolonged study periods in reputed European centres to get a better education in earth sciences. Books, instruments, mineralogical collections, models and machines were acquired. Several authors wrote about mineralogy, mining, docimasy and metallurgy, while referring to instruments. The circulation of knowledge and instruments came to be one of the important means for modernization, and determined the use of several instruments, such as the barometer and the balance, while the new programme of education was itself a powerful instrument.

Exhibiting science in Portugal: Practices and representations in museums

This article discusses the role played by science museums in the public understanding of science in a semi-peripheral country, Portugal. It is based on the assumption that museums are at the intersection of science and society, being strongly influenced by what happens in the scientific field and in society at large, and that in a globalised world, they are susceptible to both international trends and national specificities. The article describes how in the last decade both the scientific system and the field of science museums have developed in Portugal, whereas visitor numbers and the connection to society have remained weak. The content analysis of a scientific exhibition on nuclear research and technology shows that the deficit mode of envisaging the relation between science and the public still persists.

La Revista <i>Broteria</i>, los jesuitas naturalistas y Gonçalo Sampaio. Intercambio de plantas e ideas y el desarrollo de la botánica en Portugal

The journal Broteria has covered a long path, since its foundation in 1902 until the mid 20's, when it stands as one of the best journals of natural history and a voice of the renewal of the natural sciences in Portugal. Broteria's success was due, mainly, to the remarkable qualities of its founders and main editors: their working capacity, intellectual standards and perseverance as well as the ability to establish a network of naturalists who sent them biological collections from remote regions and the ability to adapt to exile, while continuing to work and focusing their studies on the natural history of the exile country. The maintenance, in regular functioning, of their schools, and the opening to the collaboration of non Jesuit naturalists, such as the botanists from Oporto, also contributed to the success of Broteria.

Forensic Medicine And Forensic Sciences in Portugal

The first legal texts to contain any rules relating forensic medicine expertises in Portugal date back to the 16th century. But the qualitative leap that actually allowed Portuguese Forensic Medicine to develop, bringing it to the stage where it is today, only occurred three centuries later, in the 19th century. Indeed, the first university teaching of forensic medicine appeared in 1836, with independent courses bearing this title, and in 1899 the first official forensic medical services were set up. A number of changes took place thereafter, and throughout the 20th century, always serving to improve the system. They culminated in a thorough reorganisation of the entire framework of forensic medicine in Portugal in the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, more exactly in 2000/1001. This consisted of unifying the Portuguese forensic medical services in a single National Institute of Legal (Forensic) Medicine (“Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal” - INML). In the following pages we shall concentrate particularly on the present situation of forensic medicine and other forensic sciences in Portugal and on the glimmering future prospects.

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.

As atividades científicas do naturalista Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada na capitania de São Paulo (1800-1805)

Martim Francisco Ribeiro de Andrada é conhecido sobretudo por sua atuação como integrante do Gabinete dos Andradas e primeiro ministro da Fazenda do Brasil. Sua obra como naturalista, no entanto, foi pouco estudada. Nosso objetivo é resgatá-la, contribuindo para a historiografia das ciências no iluminismo luso-americano. Formado em matemática e filosofia natural pela Universidade de Coimbra, ele atuou ao lado do frei naturalista José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, na Tipografia do Arco do Cego, traduzindo obras de mineralogia e de agricultura. De volta ao Brasil, como diretor geral das Minas de Ouro, Prata e Ferro, realizou diversas viagens pela capitania de São Paulo.

Secondary Student Perceptions of Factors Effecting Failure in Science in Portugal

High rates of failure in secondary level science classes are a problem worldwide. Effective teaching and efficient management of schools requires information as to the causes of failure. One approach to acquiring this information is to improve our understanding of what the students themselves perceive as the causes and antecedents of school failure. In this article, we analyze the perceptions of the factors of academic failure among grade-ten, science-tracked students. Students from eight schools in southern Portugal (N=346) participated in the study. The major factors of failure in 10th grade science courses, according to students, are quality of teaching and previous student preparation. One third of the students did not think that secondary science education prepared them for life in a scientific-technological society. A culture of high expectancy on the part of teachers, parents and administrators may be key to influencing rates of success.

Gender and science in Portugal

The situation of women in science in Portugal stands out as a particular case in international comparisons. The argument of this article is that this case is not so particular after all. To pursue this argument, gender and science is approached in two ways. In the first part historical and social factors that may have contributed to the significant presence of women in science will be discussed. The second part focuses on scientific careers and institutions, especially universities, and aims at unveiling gender processes that have been evidenced by research on gender and science in other countries. Throughout the article, evidence will be presented that shows that despite some specificities pertaining to the rapid process of modernization experienced by Portugal during the last 30 years, science has been institutionalized as a gendered profession.

The role of eprint archives in the access to, and dissemination of, scientific grey literature: LIZA - a case study by the National Libraryof Portugal

Grey literature is now universally recognized as an important information resource. For industrial and business organizations, it contains much knowledge and know-how that are vital business assets. Grey literature in an R&D environment can represent the cutting edge of this knowledge, so its efficient management is essential. The increasing possibilities brought about by electronic scholarly publishing, in the context of scholarly information communication, together with the developments of the World Wide Web, are the driving forces behind the implementation of projects for archiving, preservation and provision of access to electronic scientific grey literature collections. This paper discusses the significance of grey literature in an environment where the function of the scientific journal, as the privileged media for efficient dissemination of R&D results, has been under some criticism by researchers and scholars. A literature survey on digital grey literature access and preservation projects is summarized. The last part of the paper briefly outlines the main results of a survey on the attitudes and expectancies of researchers and academics in the Mathematics and Agricultural Sciences in Portugal, regarding the creation of a scientific grey literature archive by the National Library of Portugal - the LIZA initiative - allowing self-posting of articles in electronic media by the Portuguese academic and R&D communities.

Science in Portugal joins the mainstream

Science in Portugal joins the mainstream

Political images of science in Portugal

In the mid-1980s, as a result of pressure from the national scientific community and the influence of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 1984 science and technology policy review, science was introduced into the Portuguese political agenda. A Framework Law and a series of institutional reforms were the most visible signs of change. Admission to the EC in 1986, however, provided an excuse for reducing the public R&D budget. While science policy remains, in the 1990s, a priority in the political discourse, there is a lack of correspondence between this discourse and policy practice. A survey of members of the Portuguese Parliament undertaken in 1995 was designed to shed some light on their perceptions and opinions concerning the value of science and the role of the Parliament in science policy, and, therefore, on the reasons for the gap between the discourse and practical behaviour of policy-makers in this field.

Political science in Portugal: the ideological obstacles to its incipient autonomy *

Political science in Portugal: the ideological obstacles to its incipient autonomy *