Suchergebnisse

After 3 decades of economic growth and significant improvement of social conditions, Portugal is now going through a profound social and economic crisis. Following the international financial crisis of 2008, Portugal signed four-year structural adjustment programme agreement with the 'Troika' (i.e. European Commission; European Central Bank; International Monetary Fund) in May 2011. Under a right-wing coalition government, the programme's implementation was shaped by harsh tax increases, spending cuts, and reduction of welfare benefits. Similarly, to other countries on the indebted periphery of the Eurozone, the core of Portuguese policies of austerity centered on measures of internal devaluation mainly constituted by wage repression; employment precariousness, labour devaluation and mass unemployment – contributing to the most violent and rapid transfer of income from labour to capital in democratic Portugal (Reis et. al. 2013). The human and social costs of austerity measures were devastating. While increasingly larger sectors of the population see their living conditions deteriorate and become increasingly unstable. In order to face up to everyday basic needs, and given the welfare state's collapse, citizens are resuming informal routes to provide for their daily needs, such as the support provided by interpersonal networks or non-governmental organizations. Public actions of social solidarity grow day by day, the personal stories of help received by friends, neighbours, relatives or mere acquaintances are commonly heard among almost all social groups (young people, old people, poor classes, middle classes…) I will discuss some of these different dimensions of care using a broad notion of concept - one that can tackle the multiple ways of helping and support to ensure that needs are met, - and building on ethnographic work done among middle class families in Lisbon and Oporto between 2012 and 2015, I will argue (i) that provision of care, such as it has become in the present situation, takes on a central role in the processes of everyday livelihood, in national economy, and (ii) that these informal strategies are effective means of survival in a context of crisis. Confronted with increasing shortcomings in the state care system, people return to informal ways of making ends meet. Actions borne out of personal initiative, imbued of the morality of "care" and the common good, have become frequent making life possible in moments of crisis. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

High status groups in Portuguese society constitute a social context in which familial relations are of great importance, both at the level of family members' daily agency and on the far broader scale of their social and professional relations. The author analyses in this article the way familial relations become important processes by which an elite social position may be maintained. The argument is based on fieldwork carried out by the author on seven leading business families in Lisbon who own large firms in operation for at least three generations. This research has showed that the processes by which these families manage to remain majority shareholders and in the top management position in the large companies they have owned for several generations is due, to a great extent, to the fact that these economic investments are considered the symbolic materialisation of a familial project. It is by means of carefully managing familial relations that those involved in these projects are able to ensure and reproduce their belonging to Portugal's financial and social upper set. This argument is illustrated throughout my research into the processes by which the leading families in Portugal's economic setting before the democratic revolution in 1974 have recovered their top financial and social positions in Portugal today.

The present book collects selected contributions from researchers working in the field of food science, and participating at the second spring school for "Food Quality, Safety and Technology," which was held in Botucatu (São Paulo, Brazil), from September 24th to 27th, 2012, at the Botucatu Campus of the Universidade Estadual Paulista "Julio Mesquita Filho" (UNESP). The goal of the conference was to provide a scientific forum covering large areas of agronomy, nutrition, food science and technology, veterinary and other areas related to food technology development. Teachers, professionals, graduate and post-graduate students in Food Science; Food and Agriculture Engineering; Veterinary, Science and Food Technology and related areas were addressed by providing an exchange of knowledge and technologies. The initiative aimed to establish uniform, globally recognized scientific principles on food safety and quality, which could be consistently applied to industry and production sectors and stakeholders, taking into account that effective food control systems are essential to protecting the health and safety of domestic consumers, to guaranteeing the safety and quality of foods entering international trade, and to ensuring that imported foods conform to national requirements.

The subject of the research is the role played by the Social Assistance Specialized Reference Center (CREAS) in assisting children and teenagers who are victims of intra-family violence. The general aim of the research is to analyze CREAS' responsibilities in providing care to children and teenagers who are victims of intra-family violence. To this end, the specific objectives are to analyze the modalities, causes and consequences of intra-family violence against children and teenagers, to verify the legal protection safeguarding the rights of children and teenagers based on the theory of comprehensive protection, and to study the role of the Social Assistance Specialized Reference Center as a public policy for providing assistance in situations of intra-family violence against children and teenagers. The question guiding the research is to ask what role the Social Assistance Specialized Reference Center plays as an entity active in public service policies in situations of intra-family violence against children and teenagers. The initial hypothesis suggests that CREAS provides special social protection in caring for victims of intra-family violence, providing the services of shelter, monitoring, guidance, and protection, in a coordinated fashion. The method of approach is deductive, and the procedural method is monographic, utilizing bibliographic research techniques. With intra-family violence a means of de-humanization and manifesting in many ways, public service policies play an essential role in its prevention and in the restoration of the rights violated.

ABSTRACT Purpose: The objective of this study was to verify the difference in levels of satisfaction among retirees residing in Brazil and Portugal. Originality/value: The world aging process creates challenges in the sense of providing well-being for those who have decided to retire, considering the importance of this moment in people's lives. Despite this, there are many gaps in studies on well-being in retirement, especially cross-cultural studies. Design/methodology/approach: This is a cross-sectional, quantitative study involving 1,441 retirees, 997 Brazilians and 444 Portuguese, who responded to the Retirement Satisfaction Inventory (RSI) and sociodemographic issues. For the analyses of the data, we performed multi-group confirmatory factor analyses, internal consistency and validity analyses, invariance verification and comparison of latent means of the instrument factors between the two countries. Findings: The results pointed to a consistent instrument structure for the two countries, which made it possible to compare them. There were no significant differences between countries in the factors related to satisfaction with individual resources and social relationships. However, in the third factor of the instrument - satisfaction with collective resources - the participants in Portugal presented a mean significantly higher than the Brazilian participants. At the end, the conclusion of the measure of satisfaction in retirement is concluded, and the differences in public service offerings between Brazil and Portugal are discussed, pointing to the specific needs of the retired population.

This worked was support by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the project POCTI/FAT/40924/2001 co-financed by European Union fund FEDER. ; In this work the depth of interfaces in multilayered structures was estimated. The fractions of positron annihilation as function of the implantation energy were estimated from an S-W plot and then converted into a function of the sample depth through the positron implantation profile in the multilayer system computed from a reduced positron profile. The results of this method in Ti/Al samples are comparable to those using the common analysis based on positron diffusion equations. The positron analyses results were compared with SIMS profiles for the same samples. ; authorsversion ; published

23 páginas, 6 figuras, 3 tablas.-- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited ; Different combinations of behavioural and physiological responses may play a crucial role in the ecological success of species, notably in the context of biological invasions. The invasive mussel Xenostrobus securis has successfully colonised the inner part of the Galician Rias Baixas (NW Spain), where it co-occurs with the commercially-important mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis. This study investigated the effect of a heatwave on the physiological and behavioural responses in monospecific or mixed aggregations of these species. In a mesocosm experiment, mussels were exposed to simulated tidal cycles and similar temperature conditions to those experienced in the field during a heat-wave that occurred in the summer of 2013, when field robo-mussels registered temperatures up to 44.5°C at low tide. The overall responses to stress differed markedly between the two species. In monospecific aggregations M. galloprovincialis was more vulnerable than X. securis to heat exposure during emersion. However, in mixed aggregations, the presence of the invader was associated with lower mortality in M. galloprovincialis. The greater sensitivity of M. galloprovincialis to heat exposure was reflected in a higher mortality level, greater induction of Hsp70 protein and higher rates of respiration and gaping activity, which were accompanied by a lower heart rate (bradycardia). The findings show that the invader enhanced the physiological performance of M. galloprovincialis, highlighting the importance of species interactions in regulating responses to environmental stress. Understanding the complex interactions between ecological factors and physiological and behavioural responses of closely-related species is essential for predicting the impacts of invasions in the context of future climate change ; This research was supported by the Autonomous government Xunta de Galicia-FEDER (GRC2013-004) and the Spanish government (AGL2010-16464 and AGL2013-45945-R). IG was supported by a pre-doctoral contract funded by the University of Vigo (P.P. 00VI 131H 64103). FPL ; Peer reviewed

Plastics are dominant pollutants in freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Scientific studies that investigated the interaction between plastics and freshwater biodiversity are incipient, especially if compared to the marine realm. In this review, we provide a brief overview of plastic pollution in freshwater ecosystems around the world. We found evidence of plastic ingestion by 206 freshwater species, from invertebrates to mammals, in natural or semi-natural ecosystems. In addition, we reported other consequences of synthetic polymers in freshwater ecosystems—including, for instance, the entanglement of animals of different groups (e.g., birds). The problem of plastic pollution is complex and will need coordinated actions, such as recycling programs, correct disposal, stringent legislation, regular inspection, replacement of synthetic polymers with other materials, and ecological restoration. Current information indicates that the situation in freshwater ecosystems may be as detrimental as the pollution found in the ocean, although highly underappreciated. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01496-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.