Sara Azevedo

Bioinspired Ultratough Hydrogel with Fast Recovery, Self-Healing, Injectability and Cytocompatibility

Inspired by the mussel byssus adhesiveness, a highly hydrated polymeric structure is designed to combine, for the first time, a set of interesting features for load-bearing purposes. These characteristics include: i) a compressive strength and stiffness in the MPa range, ii) toughness and the ability to recover it upon successive cyclic loading, iii) the ability to quickly self-heal upon rupture, iv) the possibility of administration through minimally invasive techniques, such as by injection, v) the swelling ratio being adjusted to space-filling applications, and vi) cytocompatibility. Owing to these characteristics and the mild conditions employed, the encapsulation of very unstable and sensitive cargoes is possible, highlighting their potential to researchers in the biomedical field for the repair of load-bearing soft tissues, or to be used as an encapsulation platform for a variety of biological applications such as disease models for drug screening and therapies in a more realistic mechanical environment. Moreover, given the simplicity of this methodology and the enhanced mechanical performance, this strategy can be expanded to applications in other fields, such as agriculture and electronics. As such, it is anticipated that the proposed strategy will constitute a new, versatile, and cost-effective tool to produce engineered polymeric structures for both science and technology.

Private Tutoring in Portugal

Project ‘Xplika’, undertaken at the University of Aveiro, studies the private tutoring market, school effectiveness and students’ performance in Portugal. This chapter summarises and integrates the findings of the main project, and a number of further related studies.

AS EXPLICAÇÕES (AULAS PARTICULARES) NO ENSINO SECUNDÁRIO E SUPERIOR EM PORTUGAL: APRESENTAÇÃO DE UM ESTUDO

In this article we present some of the work that is currently being undertaken as part of a PhD dissertation. This research has as its goal to study the private tutoring phenomenon in secondary and higher education. To deepen our knowledge about this phenomenon we decided to explore the reasons that lead students to use this type of service, the existing legislation that regulates this activity in different countries and how this service is used by students. To attain these goals we will make use of different methods: reading specific bibliography, undertaking a questionnaire directed at higher education students and conducting interviews with students, individuals in charge of private tutoring centres and private tutors. In this text we present some preliminary results obtained through the questionnaires undertaken with higher education students attending two Portuguese universities that were collected in the 2008/2009 academic year. This preliminary analysis shows that the use of private tutoring is a practice that occurs in both secondary and higher education, although the attendance registered in the former case is about six times that of the latter. Key words : Private tutoring, secondary education, higher education, Portugal