Departamento de Geografia da Faculdade de Letras

Los editores agradecen la colaboración de los evaluadores que se detallan debajo. Cada uno de ellos emitió informes sobre uno o varios manuscritos recibidos en el periodo 2005-2009. Sus informes sirvieron para fundamentar las decisiones de los miembros del Consejo ...

Resumo Sendo o Ruído Ambiente um Factor Ambiental importante, interessa conhecer e comparar os limites legais de Ruído Ambiente em vigor nos diferentes Estados Membros da União Europeia, e tentar perceber quais as vantagens e desvantagens das diferentes ...

Influenza surveillance is usually based on nationally organized sentinel networks of physicians and on hospital reports. This study aimed to test a different report system, based on parents' phone contact to the research team and in home collection of samples by a dedicated team. The identification of influenza and other respiratory viruses in children who attended a Hospital Emergency Department was also recorded. Real-time PCR and reverse transcription PCR were performed for influenza A and B, parainfluenza 1-4, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, respiratory syncytial virus A and B, rhinovirus, enterovirus, group 1 coronaviruses, group 2 coronaviruses, and human bocavirus. One hundred children were included, 64 from the day care centers and 36 from the Hospital. Overall, 79 samples were positive for at least one respiratory virus. Influenza A (H3) was the virus most frequently detected: 25 cases, 20 of these in children under 5 years of age (ten from day care centers and ten who went to the hospital) which was higher than those reported by the National Influenza Surveillance Programme for this age. The results obtained in this study suggest that a surveillance system based on parents' reports could complement the implanted system of the National Influenza Surveillance Programme.

ABSTRACT Purpose: To characterize the conjunctival flora of patients receiving antibiotics before intravitreal (IVT) antivascular endothelial growth factor injections. Methods: We studied 31 eyes of 30 patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration scheduled to receive IVT antivascular endothelial growth factor injections. The patients were all given a preinjection of topical ofloxacin 3 days before the injections. Conjunctival cultures from the injection eye were collected before antibiotic prophylaxis (sample A) and on the injection day, both before (sample B) and after (sample C) povidone-iodine (PVI) application. Results: Culture positivity was significantly different between samples A (50%) and C (4.5%; p < 0.001) as well as samples B (30.4%) and C (4.5%; p = 0.015), but not between samples A and B. Positive cultures were mainly coagulase-negative staphylococci (CNS; 57% of sample A, 62.5% of sample B and 100% of sample C) susceptible to vancomycin (100%), moxifloxacin (90%), levofloxacin (70%) and ofloxacin (60%). Conclusion: In our study, most of the bacteria isolated were CNS. PVI application but not antibiotics reduced culture positivity.

Urinary tract infection is the most common infectious complication following renal transplantation and its frequency is insufficiently studied in Portugal. The aim of this study was to characterize the incidence of urinary tract infections and recurrent urinary tract infections in renal transplant recipients. This was a retrospective cohort observational study, obtained from clinical files of all patients who received a renal transplant at the Hospital of Santa Cruz, from January 2004 to December 2005, with a mean follow-up period of five years or until date of graft loss, death or loss of follow-up. After a descriptive analysis of the population, we used bivariate tests to identify risk factors for urinary tract infections. A total of 127 patients were included, with a 593 patients.year follow-up. We detected 53 patients (41.7%) presenting with at least one episode of urinary tract infection; 21 patients (16.5%) had recurrent urinary tract infection. Female gender was the only risk...

The Project “LX Gardens - Lisbon’s Historic Gardens and Parks: Study and Landscape Heritage Inventory” aims to undertake an historical, artistic and botanical study on 60 Lisbon's gardens and parks, from the 18th century up to the 1960's. One of the aims of the project is to define the criteria that should support the classification of Landscape Heritage and the layout of a relational database: LX Gardens Database. This database enables the creation of a network of information and the establishment of relationships between the various parameters, namely between gardens and the city's development or between the history of gardens and plants' introduction dates. The data collected and the connections established led to the interpretation of results such as the gardens' role in urban ecology, city's sustainability and aesthetics.

The Upper River Douro Valley Wine Region, in the northern inland area of Portugal, is a UNESCO Cultural Landscape World Heritage Site. Shaped by the meandering water plan of the river, this landscape produces the Porto wine on sloping hillsides, terraced and extensively cultivated with vineyards, often bordered by olive trees and punctuated by the Italian-cypress. The basic unit of production is the large estate known as Quinta. It integrates the vineyards and other productive areas, the rural constructions, and sometimes, not far away from the main house, a vegetable garden and an ornamental garden and woodland. This study intends to analyse the integration and scenic value of the Quintas in the landscape of Douro. It focuses on the exceptional recreational and ornamental characteristics of these Quintas and aims at describing and analysing the existing types of ornamental gardens. It is based on the collection of data on 28 sites and on the analysis of their structure, the aesthet...

The purpose of this study is to determine the variability of noise levels associated with the pass-by of the same type of train at a point, near a railway, and compare this variability with the standard uncertainty, due to the operation of the source, established in ISO 1996-2: 2007, and in the document ―Determination of Lden and Lnigth Using Measurements: 2006‖, from the European Work Group IMAGINE. With these results we can know the measurement effort required to achieve a certain standard uncertainty.