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Refletindo sobre a Prática Pedagógica: A consciencialização para a preservação dos Oceanos
No full textO presente relatório, realizado no âmbito do Mestrado em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, é composto por duas dimensões: a reflexiva e a investigativa.
Na dimensão reflexiva, são analisadas as experiências e aprendizagens vivenciadas, ao longo do Mestrado, nos contextos de Creche, Jardim de Infância e 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. A reflexão aborda o crescimento pessoal e profissional, destacando a adaptação às necessidades dos diferentes contextos pedagógicos e a evolução das práticas educativas. Na dimensão investigativa, é apresentado um estudo realizado com uma turma do 1.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. O estudo visou compreender como é que uma sequência didática de cariz CTS(A) promove o desenvolvimento de competências sobre a preservação do Oceano. Utilizando questionários, notas de campo e produções dos alunos, o estudo revelou uma a evolução na consciencialização e mudança de atitudes sobre o impacto da poluição oceânica, das crianças de uma turma do 1.º CEB. Observou-se uma mudança comportamental
positiva nos alunos, revelando desenvolvimento da sua consciência crítica e responsabilidade ambiental no que se refere ao Oceano
The Practices of Portuguese Primary Health Care Professionals in Palliative Care Access and Referral: A Focus Group Study
No full textArticle number - 1576This article belongs to the Special Issue New Advances in Palliative CareBackground/Objectives: The prevalence of people with incurable and progressive diseases in primary health care is high. Family doctors and nurses must be active agents in the early identification of palliative needs and the implementation of palliative approaches in cases of low to intermediate complexity. While there is a need for early referral of more complex palliative care (PC) cases to specialized teams, primary health care (PHC) professionals lack the confidence or skill to describe their role. This study sought to explore and describe (a) the practices of PHC professionals regarding their PC provision; (b) the barriers regarding access and referral of patients to specialized PC services; and (c) the strategies used or recommended to mitigate difficulties in accessing and referring to specialized PC. Methods: A descriptive qualitative study was carried out, using five focus groups conducted with nursing and medical staff at three local health units in the central region of Portugal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and then recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through a thematic analysis approach. The reporting of this research follows the COREQ checklist. Results: In total, 34 PHC professionals participated in this study. The majority of participants were women (n = 26) and family doctors (n = 24). Their mean age was 43.8 ± 11.9 (range: 29 to 65 years). The findings were organized into three core themes: (1) the contours of palliative action developed by PHC teams; (2) barriers to access and safe transition between PHC and specialized PC; and (3) ways to mitigate difficulties in accessing and referring to specialized PC. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the fundamental role of PHC professionals in providing primary PC, and in identifying PC needs and referring patients to PC early on, while exposing the systemic and interpersonal challenges that hinder these processes. To overcome these challenges, it is essential to invest in the development of integrated care models that promote practical, low-bureaucratic referral processes and capture the human resources necessary for the adequate follow-up of users.This work is supported by national funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (UID/05704/2023)—and under the Scientific Employment Stimulus-Institutional Call
(https://doi.org/10.54499/CEECINST/00051/2018/CP1566/CT0012, accessed on 20 June 2025)
A influência da personalização da comunicação como estratégia para a fidelização
No full textNum mercado cada vez mais competitivo, a fidelização dos clientes revela ser uma estratégia crucial para a sustentabilidade das empresas. Este estudo procura compreender a influência da comunicação personalizada como estratégia para a fidelização, com foco no setor das farmácias. A investigação teve como base a aplicação do modelo ECSI (European Customer Satisfaction Index), com a introdução de duas variáveis adicionais, personalização da comunicação e confiança, que permitiram aprofundar a ligação entre os fatores que influenciam a satisfação e, consequentemente, a lealdade.
Foi realizado um estudo quantitativo junto de 200 clientes da Farmácia Moreira Padrão, através de um questionário, analisado com recurso ao software SmartPLS. Os resultados indicam que a personalização da comunicação tem um impacto positivo e significativo tanto na satisfação como na confiança dos clientes. Verificou-se também que a confiança influencia positivamente a satisfação e a lealdade, comprovando que a comunicação personalizada contribui para fortalecer o vínculo emocional e a continuidade da relação. A imagem da farmácia e a qualidade percebida também se revelaram determinantes na satisfação, enquanto que o impacto das reclamações mostrou-se pouco significativo.
Estes dados reforçam a importância da estratégia da personalização da comunicação no setor das farmácias, onde a relação de proximidade com o cliente é fulcral. A investigação apresenta contributos relevantes para quem pretende investir em estratégias centradas no cliente.In an increasingly competitive market, customer retention stands out as a crucial strategy for business sustainability. This study aims to understand the influence of personalized communication as a retention strategy, with a particular focus on the pharmacy sector. The research was based on the application of the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) model, with the inclusion of two additional variables—personalized communication and trust—which enabled a deeper analysis of the relationship between the factors influencing satisfaction and, consequently, loyalty.
A quantitative study was conducted with 200 clients of Farmácia Moreira Padrão, through a questionnaire analysed using SmartPLS software. The results show that personalized communication has a positive and significant impact on both customer satisfaction and trust. It was also observed that trust positively influences both satisfaction and loyalty, confirming that personalized communication strengthens the emotional bond and the continuity of the relationship. The pharmacy's image and the perceived quality of service were also found to be decisive in customer satisfaction, whereas the impact of complaint management proved to be negligible.
These findings reinforce the importance of adopting personalized communication strategies in the pharmacy sector, where proximity and relationship with the customer are essential. This research offers relevant insights for those wishing to invest in customer-centric strategies
T/V Distinction in Second Language Acquisition
No full textThe T/V distinction refers to the use of different second-person pronouns to signal social relationships, such as familiarity, respect, or formality, a phenomenon common in many languages, including Chinese Mandarin and European Portuguese. Modern European Portuguese has lost its traditional V-form, with younger generations often using você to express formality and seniority. In contrast, the younger generations often using você to express formality and seniority. In contrast, the posteriorly developed V-form nin has been well preserved and remains frequently used in Chinese Mandarin. This study investigates whether learning a foreign language influences speakers’ choices of address forms in their first language and examines cross-linguistic associations in pronoun use. Three experiments were conducted to examine the influence of a first language on a second language, the reverse influence of a second language on a first language, and the differences in address form preferences between Chinese and Portuguese speakers. Quantitative and qualitative analyses show that learning a foreign language does not effectively influence speakers’ decisions regarding pronoun usage in their first language. Learners tend to establish a direct association between pronoun usage in the two languages. For instance, Chinese speakers generally favor the V-form in most contexts, except when addressing friends or peers of the same age. In contrast, Portuguese speakers consider factors such as formality of the context, age, social relationships, respectfulness, and social status when choosing address forms.N/
PM4IPLeiria – Implementação de um Data Warehouse e de técnicas de Process Mining para análise de processos do Politécnico de Leiria
No full textpresente projeto, desenvolvido no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática – Computação Móvel, aborda a análise e otimização dos processos administrativos do Instituto Politécnico de Leiria (IPLeiria). O ponto de partida foi a identificação de significativas ineficiências e não conformidades nos processos atuais da instituição, o que motivou a criação do projeto PM4IPLeiria.
Para responder a este desafio, foi concebida e implementada uma solução completa de Business Intelligence, assente numa arquitetura de Data Warehouse. O objetivo central foi consolidar os dados dispersos de 16 processos de negócio distintos, provenientes de Vistas SQL. Para tal, foi desenvolvido um pipeline de Extração, Transformação e Carga (ETL) automatizado, orquestrado pelo Azure Data Factory. Este pipeline executou uma lógica de transformação complexa em Python, que realizou operações de limpeza, normalização de dados, cálculo de métricas de performance baseadas em horas úteis e de custos associados. Adicionalmente, foram aplicados algoritmos de Process Mining da PM4Py, uma biblioteca open-source de referência nesta área, nomeadamente a descoberta de Directly-Follows Graphs (DFG) e a análise de variantes, e foram carregados os dados processados para o Data Warehouse final. A estrutura de dados resultante foi um Esquema em floco de neve composto por nove tabelas (oito de dimensão e uma de factos), populado através de estratégias de carga híbridas: incremental para dimensões simples e "delete-and-insert" por processo para garantir a consistência das métricas.
Com esta abordagem, pretende-se dotar os dirigentes do IPLeiria de uma ferramenta robusta de suporte à decisão. A solução permite monitorizar indicadores de desempenho, identificar atempadamente anomalias e, consequentemente, fundamentar ações de melhoria contínua dos processos administrativos.his Project, developed as part of the Master's program in Computer Engineering – Mobile Computing, addresses the analysis and optimization of administrative processes at the Polytechnic University of Leiria (IPLeiria). The project was prompted by the identification of significant inefficiencies and non-conformities within the institution's current workflows, which motivated the creation of the PM4IPLeiria project.
To address this challenge, a complete Business Intelligence solution was designed and implemented, based on a Data Warehouse architecture. The central objective was to consolidate scattered data from 16 distinct business processes, sourced from SQL Views. To this end, an automated Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) pipeline was developed, orchestrated by Azure Data Factory. This pipeline executed a complex transformation logic in Python, which performed data cleaning and normalization operations, calculated performance metrics based on business hours, and their associated costs. Additionally, it applied Process Mining algorithms from the PM4Py library—namely the discovery of Directly-Follows Graphs (DFG) and variant analysis—and loaded the processed data into the final Data Warehouse. The resulting data structure was a Snowflake Schema composed of nine tables (eight dimension tables and one fact table), populated through hybrid loading strategies: incremental for simple dimensions and 'delete-and-insert' per process to ensure metric consistency. Data exploration and visualization are performed using interactive dashboards developed in the Microsoft Power BI tool.
With this approach, the goal is to provide IPLeiria's managers with a robust decision-support tool. The solution enables the monitoring of performance indicators, the timely identification of anomalies, and consequently, supports data-driven actions for the continuous improvement of administrative processes
The Combined Effect of the Mediterranean Diet and Physical Activity on the Components of Metabolic Syndrome in Adults: A Systematic Review of Randomised Controlled Trials
No full textMetabolic syndrome (MetS) is a global public health challenge, characterized by the coexistence of cardiometabolic risk factors such as abdominal obesity, dyslipidaemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance. Non-pharmacological strategies, including the Mediterranean diet (MD) and physical activity (PA), have been widely studied for their potential to prevent and manage MetS. This systematic review aimed to synthesize the evidence on the combined effect of MD and PA on MetS components in adults, based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Twenty-two RCTs published between 2018 and 2024 were included, involving 11,478 participants. The interventions ranged from 8 weeks to 3 years and combined adapted or hypocaloric MDs with moderate-to-high-intensity PA, typically including walking, aerobic exercise, or high-intensity interval training (HIIT), performed 3 to 7 times per week. The combined interventions resulted in reductions in body weight (−2.5 to −7.2 kg), body mass index (−0.7 to −2.2 kg/m2), waist circumference (−5.1 to −7.8 cm), and blood pressure (up to −9.0 mmHg systolic and −6.7 mmHg diastolic). Improvements in HDL cholesterol, triglyceride levels, and insulin sensitivity were also observed. These findings suggest that integrated interventions based on the Mediterranean lifestyle are effective in reducing MetS components and may support future public health strategies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Discriminative influence of persistent organic pollutants on nesting green sea turtles through genotoxicity, oxidative stress and reproductive related markers
No full textPersistent organic pollutants (POPs) including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and organochloride pesticides (OCPs) affect biodiversity by bioaccumulating through food webs, impacting marine organisms like endangered sea turtles. This study represents the first evaluation of these contaminants in sea turtles nesting in São Tomé and Príncipe. The main goal was to evaluate PCBs, PBDEs and OCPs levels in sea turtles' blood and investigate their potential effects on erythrocytes’ nuclear abnormalities (ENAs) and oxidative stress and reproduction-related gene expression. The relative mean abundance for contaminants was ΣPCBs > ΣOCPs > ΣPBDEs. Contaminants such as PCB-28, PCB-138, PCB-153, PCB-180 and p,p’-DDE were associated with ENAs, suggesting potential genetic instability and cellular disruption. PCB-126, PBDE-100, and o,p’-DDD correlated with antioxidant and detoxification genes (glrx3, gst, txnip, txnrd2, and gclc), suggesting oxidative stress responses. The reproduction-related gene est17 was correlated with α and β-HCH, potentially affecting ovary development. Correlations between ace2 and various PCBs, PBDEs, and o,p'-DDD suggest disruptions in follicular development and egg transport. Embryo development genes (hoxA1 and tuba1) were associated with PBDE-154, PBDE100 and o,p’-DDD, suggesting possible embryonic alterations. These findings highlight the impacts of POPs on nesting female green turtles in São Tomé, threatening this endangered population.This study was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Strategic Project granted to MARE (UID/04292/MARE-Centro de Ciências do Mar e do Ambiente), the project granted to the Associated Laboratory ARNET (doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0069/2020), the grant awarded to Inês Morão (https://doi.org/10.54499/PD/BD/150562/2019), and contracts to Tiago Simões (https://doi.org/10.54499/2021.02559.CEECIND/CP1671/CT0001) and Sara Novais (https://doi.org/10.54499/CEECINST/00060/2021/CP2902/CT0007). We are thankful to all the members of NGO Programa Tatô, Fundação Príncipe and research assistants (marine biologists Maria Branco and Yedda Oliveira) working at Jalé Beach and to Aurélio Evaristo and João Evaristo that helped us in the field under challenging conditions
Empoderamento Comunitário para o Controlo do Peso Infantil Associado ao Tempo de Exposição aos Ecrãs (ECRAN)
No full textEnquadramento: O relatório descreve o percurso do estágio, numa análise crítico-reflexiva do processo de aquisição e desenvolvimento de competências inerentes à prática especializada em Enfermagem de Saúde Comunitária na área de Saúde Comunitária e de Saúde Pública. O estágio decorreu na Unidade de Saúde Pública e na Unidade de Cuidados na Comunidade da Unidade Local de Saúde da Região de. Após definir o perfil de saúde da comunidade e considerando a problemática do aumento da prevalência do excesso de peso/obesidade infantil a nível nacional, surgiu o Projeto ECRAN - Empoderamento Comunitário para a Regulação do Acesso às Novas tecnologias.
Objetivos: O Projeto ECRAN pretende avaliar o nível de empoderamento comunitário e o processo comunitário, identificar os fatores de risco do excesso de peso/obesidade infantil associado ao uso de ecrãs pelas crianças e orientar para estratégias de intervenção.
Metodologia: O projeto considerou as etapas da metodologia do planeamento em saúde, a incorporação do Modelo de Avaliação, Intervenção e Empoderamento Comunitário e o Modelo de Promoção da Saúde. A população-alvo do estudo foram as crianças do 1º e 2º ano, com idades entre os 6 e 8 anos, inscritas no Agrupamento de Escolas de .A amostra é não probabilística por conveniência e corresponde a um total de 392 crianças e respetivos Encarregados de Educação, sendo que destes aderiram 157. O projeto consistiu na aplicação de um Questionário aos Encarregados de Educação e de uma Escala de Avaliação do Empoderamento Comunitário ao grupo focal de Encarregados de Educação. Posteriormente foi realizada uma Revisão Integrativa da Literatura que permitiu completar as propostas de intervenção em saúde escolar lideradas por Enfermeiros Especialistas que reduzem o tempo de ecrã a que as crianças estão expostas. Todos os pressupostos éticos foram respeitados.
Resultados: Cerca de 63% das crianças (n=99) utilizam maioritariamente a televisão. A exposição aos ecrãs ocorre diariamente em 58% das crianças (n=91) e quase todos os dias em 27% das crianças (n=42). Quanto às horas de exposição aos ecrãs estas são excedidas com mais frequência durante o fim-de-semana, em 41% das crianças (n=64). Curiosamente não se identificou excesso de peso na faixa etária dos 6 aos 8 anos. Quanto ao nível de empoderamento comunitário existem diversos domínios que necessitam de ser melhorados, nomeadamente o da liderança comunitária.
Conclusão: Durante o desenvolvimento do Projeto ECRAN foi essencial a articulação com os diferentes parceiros comunitários para alcançar os objetivos
The Impact of Leadership on the Perception of Organizational Belonging and the Mediating Effect of Job Crafting on IT Workers in Portugal
No full textThis study investigates the impact of leadership on organizational belonging among IT
workers in Portugal, focusing on the mediating effect of job crafting. Using validated scales,
a questionnaire was applied to measure these constructs, collecting data from IT workers
from various organizations operating in Portugal, working full or partially remote. Despite
growing interest in leadership and employee engagement, limited research has explored how
leadership styles influence organizational belonging through job crafting, particularly in the
IT sector. To address this gap, our work was arranged in the form of two studies where we
intend to measure the direct effect of different styles of leadership on job crafting and
organizational belonging, the direct effect of job crafting on organizational belonging and
the mediating effect of job crafting between leadership and organizational belonging. Study
1 examined the direct and indirect effects of empowering leadership on job crafting and
organizational belonging. Study 2 expanded the model to include five leadership behavioural
types (aversive, directive, transactional, transformational and empowering), assessing their
individual impacts on job crafting and organizational belonging. For study 1, a crosssectional
study design was followed, delivering a sample of 213 participants of IT workers.
For study 2, a time-lagged research design was implemented across a two-wave
questionnaire to reduce common method bias and strengthen causal inference, with a total
of 121 participants working on an IT company in Portugal. Results show that empowering
leadership significantly enhances both job crafting and organizational belonging, with job
crafting partially mediating this relationship. By understanding these dynamics,
organizations can better design leadership development programs and job structures that
enhance employee well-being and organizational performance