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- Advancing diabetes treatment: from human beta cell technology to bioartificial pancreas developmentPublication . Sá, Joana; Sá, Simone; Leménager, Hélène; Costa, Raquel; Onteniente, Brigitte; Soares, Raquel; Ribeiro, Viviana P.; Oliveira, Ana L.In 2021, approximately 537 million people worldwide, primarily in low- and middle-income countries, were affected by diabetes, leading to approximately 6.7 million deaths annually or severe secondary complications including life-threatening hyperglycemia. For nearly 50 years, current therapeutic approaches include full pancreas transplantation and isolated pancreatic islets, more recently, cell therapy such as in vitro generated islets and stem cell derived. The transplantation of pancreatic islet cells can be less invasive than full organ transplantation, however, does not achieve the same rate of functional success due to the low survival of the engrafted cells. Tissue-engineered bioartificial pancreas has been designed to address such issues, improving cell engraftment, survival, and immune rejection problems, with the added advantage that the tissue produced in vitro has an unlimited source of material.
- Media multitasking scale: validation study with Portuguese adolescentsPublication . Campos, Luísa; Nobre, Bárbara; Morais, Catarina; Veríssimo, Lurdes; Dias, Pedro; Luo, JiutongThe increasing presence of digital media has amplified the need to study media multitasking (both multiple media activities simultaneously and using media while doing non-media activities). Media Multitasking Scale (MMS) has been used to assess this phenomenon, but it is yet to be validated for a Portuguese population. This study analysed the validity of a Portuguese Version of the MMS (n = 171 Portuguese adolescents) based on inter-item correlations and confirmatory factor analysis. The results suggest changes in the original version to reflect more recent digital media tendencies for a better fit to the Portuguese adolescents’ sample. Additionally, results showed that Multitasking with Media and Non-Media and Concentration Without Multitasking were partially predictors of mental health problems (predictive validity), highlighting the scale’s utility in assessing media multitasking behaviours and their impact on psychological well-being.
- "Learn to fly": nurturing child development, intergenerational connection, and social engagementPublication . Matos, Margarida Gaspar de; Branquinho, Cátia; Noronha, Catarina; Moraes, Bárbara; Gaspar, TaniaLearn to Fly was developed between February 2022 and March 2023 with the goal of fostering greater social participation and intergenerational dialogue around the recognition and solution of pertinent social issues through the development of psychological flexibility and socioemotional competences in children at the start of their academic careers. Based on a participatory methodology and the concepts of the third generation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapies (CBTs) and ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy), the target audience included children of ages 5 and 6 (pre-school and first grade), their teachers, and their families. The Learn to Fly pilot initiative was implemented in eight partner institutions on the Portuguese mainland with the participation of 289 children, their families, and 22 educators. Learn to Fly was evaluated after 12 weeks of implementation using a combination of methodologies, including interviews, focus groups, and pre- and post-tests. Teachers emphasized that the initiative brought families closer to the school, thereby strengthening connections between the school and the community, when analyzing the impact of the project on the school community. Positive changes were observed in the children’s behaviors, particularly with respect to hyperactivity, relationship problems with colleagues, prosocial behavior, socioemotional skills, their perceptions of their participation in various scenarios (their city and country), and intergenerational dialogue with their parents. In addition to the teachers’ preconceived notions about child participation, they became more aware of the possibility of children having a say in decision-making and discovered that the program promoted this aspect. Presently equipped with resources, it is envisaged that teachers trained to implement Learn to Fly will play a significant role in promoting positive child development and social engagement.
- The satisfaction of higher education students with sex education training: a cross-sectional studyPublication . Frias, Ana; Barros, Maria da Luz; Bia, Florbela; Santiago, Conceição; Guerra, Açucena; Gómez-Cantarino, Sagrario; Pereira-Afonso, Monica Raquel; Mecugni, Daniela; Aaberg, Vicki; Frade, FátimaTo maximize the potential of sex education, it is essential to optimize aspects related to the environment, the trainer–trainee interaction, and the quality of training. The objective of the present study was to identify and describe the satisfaction of higher education students with sex education training. An exploratory, descriptive, and cross-sectional study was carried out using the Student Satisfaction with Higher Education questionnaire, which was applied to a sample of 132 higher education students from several countries. In the statistical analysis using the SPSS software version 28, non-parametric tests were used, namely, the Mann–Whitney test and the Kruskal–Wallis test, in addition to Spearman’s correlation coefficient. Overall, the participants considered themselves very satisfied with the sex education training provided (χ = 4.77). The largest contribution to the satisfaction of the higher education students with the sex education training was the “quality of the training organization (environment and content)” (χ = 4.79). Educators and policymakers have the role of designing, implementing, and evaluating programs that satisfy college students and encourage them to strive for more sex education training aimed at promoting well-being, happiness, and sexual health.
- Recipient passives in the Portuguese of Mozambique : a sociocognitive approach to a constructional innovation in a nativising varietyPublication . Mevis, Alice Marie-Paule Emmanuel; Silva, Augusto Soares daThis PhD dissertation investigates the ongoing nativisation of the Mozambican variety of Portuguese, through the lens of one specific syntactic innovation: the Recipient passive construction. This construction, which occurs with TRANSFER verbs, is a type of ditransitive passive which promotes the recipient, rather than the theme, to subject position – an innovation absent in the grammar of European Portuguese and other national varieties of Portuguese. Although previous studies on Mozambican Portuguese (MP) have consistently mentioned the Recipient passive, it remains unclear whether this constructional innovation represents transitional variation due to second language acquisition or a structural change in progress. The present study therefore proposes a detailed examination of these innovative passive structures from both linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives, following the theoretical framework of Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics (e.g., Geeraerts & Cuyckens 2007, Wen & Taylor 2021; Kristiansen & Dirven 2008, Geeraerts et al. 2010) and the grammatical models of Construction Grammar (e.g., Goldberg 2006, Diessel 2019) and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 2008). By assessing the systematicity and productivity of the Recipient passive in MP and mapping its linguistic and social distribution, this dissertation contributes to a broader understanding of grammatical change in postcolonial varieties of Portuguese. The dissertation is structured into two parts and comprises ten chapters. Part I lays the theoretical and methodological groundwork for the analysis, beginning with an overview of Mozambique’s sociolinguistic landscape (Chapter 2). This contextual background helps explain the conditions under which the new Recipient passive construction has emerged and the broader dynamics shaping MP’s current nativisation process. The discussion draws on Schneider’s (2003, 2007) Dynamic Model for World Englishes – which aligns with Cognitive (Socio)Linguistics in its view of language as a dynamic and adaptive complex system –, extending its applicability to African varieties of Portuguese. The nativisation of MP is reflected in the increasing number of monolingual Portuguese speakers, particularly in urban centres. Historically, Mozambique’s population primarily spoke Bantu languages, with Portuguese functioning as a second language (L2). However, following independence in 1975, Portuguese began to play an increasingly significant role, first as a reinforced lingua franca and later as a native language (L1), largely due to its institutional status and the mass expansion of Portuguese-medium education across the country. This ongoing shift, which comes at a cost to indigenous languages, clearly demonstrates how the sociolinguistic landscape of a country can undergo profound transformation within a relatively short period. The remaining sections of Part I establish the theoretical (Chapters 3 and 4) and methodological (Chapter 5) framework of the analysis. First, by shifting the focus from a derivational syntax-based model to a constructional approach – where grammar is conceived as a dynamic network of interrelated constructions –, this study offers a more comprehensive, integrated and economical account of linguistic change, particularly in the domains of semantic and syntactic change. Second, by incorporating semantic considerations, especially regarding the concept of transitivity, it underscores the conceptual coherence and plausibility of the emergence of alternative grammatical structures. Lastly, by shifting the perspective from linguistic structures and languages in contact to speakers in contact, it accounts for the complexity of multilingualism and diglossia, which are typical of postcolonial contexts where individuals with diverse linguistic repertoires and worldviews interact. This dissertation thus embraces a cognitive and constructional approach to linguistic structure, variation and change, speaker-centred and empirically grounded in corpus and survey data, while also attending to the complex sociolinguistic dynamics of postcolonial settings. This perspective reveals the intricate interplay between the grammatical system of Portuguese, Bantu contact languages, culturally embedded mental representations and (presumed universal) cognitive factors underlying language use, in line with Cognitive Sociolinguistics and Cognitive Contact Linguistics. Part II constitutes the empirical core of this dissertation, focusing on an in-depth exploration of the Recipient passive construction in MP. The investigation unfolds in four key stages. First, a preliminary analysis highlights the need to move beyond the derivational hypothesis of transitivisation proposed in previous studies (e.g., Gonçalves 2010), which considers Recipient passives to be the outcome of a structural shift in ditransitive verbs involving the loss of the preposition a ‘to’ that introduces indirect objects in standard Portuguese (Chapter 6). Second, an initial corpus analysis examines the conceptual foundations of ditransitive and passive constructions, allowing to delineate the context of occurrence of Recipient passives and better understand the motivations behind their emergence. This analysis sketches the linguistic profile of the Recipient passive construction and confirms its systematicity and productivity within MP (Chapter 7). Third, a second corpus-based study, employing advanced multivariate statistical techniques, investigates the innovative Recipient passive in relation to its closest structural counterpart, the Theme passive construction (or standard ditransitive passive). Using random forest models and conditional inference trees, the analysis reveals a constructional alternation primarily governed by pragmatic-discursive factors (such as topicality and accessibility) as well as conceptual factors, particularly the perspective through which the transfer event is construed, either as a result-oriented or process-oriented event (Chapter 8). Finally, the last case study explores the social dimension of the Recipient passive by means of an acceptability judgment task conducted in four Mozambican cities over a ten-week fieldwork period. This experimental analysis provides insights into the speakers’ perception and usage of the construction (Chapter 9). The main findings of this dissertation, resulting from the four analyses conducted in Part II, demonstrate that: (i) the emergence of the Recipient passive construction in MP reflects an ongoing process of constructionalisation (Traugott & Trousdale 2013), rather than a derivational restructuring; (ii) this Mozambican innovation has become a stable form-meaning pairing with a coherent semantic structure, exhibiting increasing degrees of schematicity and productivity; (iii) the new grammatical construction represents structured variation, responsive to a set of intralinguistic criteria, including discursive salience and conceptual perspectivisation (or construal, Langacker 2008), and has moreover naturally integrated into the constructional network of Portuguese, interacting with pre-existing grammatical patterns; and finally, (iv) Recipient passive constructions are widely accepted across different regions of Mozambique, and among speakers with diverse linguistic backgrounds and educational levels, suggesting that they are no longer confined to specific social groups or speaker profiles. By examining the development and productivity of the Recipient passive construction in MP, this thesis sheds light on the mechanisms of linguistic change in postcolonial varieties. These findings, in turn, contribute to a broader understanding of the ongoing nativisation process of African varieties of Portuguese, while also documenting further the increasingly pluricentric nature of the Portuguese language on the global stage (Soares da Silva 2018, 2022).