Genetic and environmental contributions to variations on appetitive traits at 10 years of age: a twin study within the Generation XXI birth cohort

Purpose Given the variability in adiposity despite ubiquitous exposure to obesogenic food environments, it has been suggested that individuals respond in divergent ways to the environment they live in. The food environment becomes more ‘permissive’ as children age; therefore, genetic predisposition for a more avid appetite can be better expressed, influencing dietary quality, energy intake and weight gain. Our aim was to explore the genetic and environmental contribution of variations on appetitive traits in a sample of 10-year-old Portuguese children. Methods Participants were twins enrolled in the Generation XXI birth cohort (n = 86 pairs). Parents reported twin’s zygosity and child appetitive traits at 10 years of age through the Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Intra-class correlations (ICCs) for all appetitive traits were calculated for monozygotic and dizygotic twins separately to examine patterns of resemblance, and structural equation modeling was conducted aiming to estimate the genetic (A), shared (C) and non-shared (E) environmental variances. Results Moderate to strong heritability were found for child appetitive traits, with higher ICCs among monozygotic twin pairs. For all appetitive traits, with the exception of emotional undereating, genetic and non-shared environmental effects contributed to appetite variability. For emotional undereating, environmental effects seem to be more important than genetic effects (C: 0.81; 95% CI 0.71; 0.88 and E: 0.19; 95% CI 0.12; 0.29). Conclusion There was a significant genetic contribution, followed by non-shared environmental contribution, towards variation in appetitive traits in school-age children. Variation in emotional undereating was primarily explained by shared and non-shared environmental factors. Level of evidence Evidence obtained from well-designed cohort or case–control analytic studies.

1334Appetitive behaviors in school-age and their genetic and environmental predisposition

Background Given the great variability in adiposity and the exposure to obesogenic food environments, it has been suggested that individuals respond in divergent ways to the environment they live in. Our aim was to explore the genetic and environmental contribution of variations on appetitive behaviors in 10-year-old Portuguese children. Methods Participants were twins from the Generation XXI cohort (n = 86 pairs). Appetitive behaviors at 10 years was assessed through the Children Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Intra-class correlations for appetitive behaviors were calculated for monozygotic and dizygotic twins, and structural equation modelling was conducted to estimate genetic (A), shared (C) and non-shared (E) environmental variances. Results Twins were mainly dizygotic (65%), and a third was classified as having excess weight (30.2%). For all appetitive behaviors, with exception to Emotional Undereating, moderate to strong heritability were found and non-shared environmental effects contributed to appetite variability. For Emotional Undereating, environmental effects seem to be more important than genetic effects (C: 0.81; 95%CI 0.71;0.88 and E: 0.19; 95%CI 0.12;0.29). Conclusions There is a significant genetic contribution, followed by non-shared environmental effects, on appetitive behaviors in school-age years. Results indicate that Emotional Undereating was not heritable, being explained by shared and non-shared environmental factors. Key messages Appetitive behaviors among 10-year-olds seem to be genetically determined, with exception to Emotional Undereating, which showed to be explained by environmental factors. Understanding which genes are associated with child appetitive behaviors would give an insight in biological and behavioral influences on child eating and obesity risk.

Correlation of grammatical and semantic parameters in portuguese change-of-state verbs

Verbs denoting change of state are a semantic-syntactic universal as they share common patterns in languages of different types. One of such patterns is their ability to take part in causative-inchoative alternation when one and the same situation codified by certain language units can be seen both from the viewpoint of the actor vs recipient (transitive model) and from the viewpoint of the recipient only, provided that the recipient is the only agent in the verb’s structure (inchoative model), unlike in passive constructions. In causative-inchoative alternation situations these verbs choose one of the three alternation types: a) suppletive (matar – morrer), b) anticausative, when the inchoative meaning is codified morphologically with the help of the pronominal particle se (espantar – espantar-se) and c) labile, when the inchoative meaning is optionally marked by se without any change in grammaticality or semantics. The present paper argues that the choice of pronominal or non-pronominal form of the verb in the inchoative meaning with an inanimate subject (A janela (se) quebrou) depends on the parameter of animate / inanimate subject in the corresponding transitive construction and, to a certain extent, on the graduality inherent to the verb’s semantics (the acceptability of quantification). It is also shown that Brasilian Portuguese reveals the tendency to realize the labile type of alternation when the subject of the inchoative verb is inanimate; in Old Portuguese, on the contrary, the anticausative type (marked by se) was more frequent.

Flatware Cases in the Second Half of the 20th Century

Maria da Conceição Cardoso de Menezes (Guimarães, 1903 – Porto, 1989) revisited the old Portuguese tradition of making cases for flatware, producing especially designed cases for tea and coffee spoons. Endowed with great manual skill, she replicated models of the 19th century. The novelty consisted on luxurious coffee spoons cases’ of small dimensions. With wooden structure, these presented a leather lining on the outside enriched with metal fittings, while crimson velvet and gallons lined the inside. Some oral memoirs will also be hereby presented giving the context of her production.

In The Middle: Being Portuguese And Gay In The Wake Of The Emanuel Jaques Murder In 1977 Toronto

This thesis revisits the murder of the 12-year-old Portuguese immigrant boy Emanuel Jaques in Toronto in 1977 and the cultural response it ignited through qualitative interviews with five Portuguese gay men who were coming of age around this moment. Homosexual men across the city were conflated with the men who murdered Jaques because of their sexualities and depicted as a threat to children by politicians, law officials, protestors, and members of the media. Young Portuguese gay men found themselves in between two sides of an intense moral panic yet their experiences had not previously been sought out and recorded. They recall facing a fear of self and of others following the murder, a questioning or rejection of their sexualities, and in one case, continuing guilt. These experiences are considered within a broader context of what it meant to be Portuguese and gay in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Toronto.

In The Middle: Being Portuguese And Gay In The Wake Of The Emanuel Jaques Murder In 1977 Toronto

This thesis revisits the murder of the 12-year-old Portuguese immigrant boy Emanuel Jaques in Toronto in 1977 and the cultural response it ignited through qualitative interviews with five Portuguese gay men who were coming of age around this moment. Homosexual men across the city were conflated with the men who murdered Jaques because of their sexualities and depicted as a threat to children by politicians, law officials, protestors, and members of the media. Young Portuguese gay men found themselves in between two sides of an intense moral panic yet their experiences had not previously been sought out and recorded. They recall facing a fear of self and of others following the murder, a questioning or rejection of their sexualities, and in one case, continuing guilt. These experiences are considered within a broader context of what it meant to be Portuguese and gay in the ‘70s and ‘80s in Toronto.

Dynamics of a Dual SARS-CoV-2 Lineage Co-Infection on a Prolonged Viral Shedding COVID-19 Case: Insights into Clinical Severity and Disease Duration

A few molecularly proven severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) cases of symptomatic reinfection are currently known worldwide, with a resolved first infection followed by a second infection after a 48 to 142-day intervening period. We report a multiple-component study of a clinically severe and prolonged viral shedding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case in a 17-year-old Portuguese female. She had two hospitalizations, a total of 19 RT-PCR tests, mostly positive, and criteria for releasing from home isolation at the end of 97 days. The viral genome was sequenced in seven serial samples and in the diagnostic sample from her infected mother. A human genome-wide array (>900 K) was screened on the seven samples, and in vitro culture was conducted on isolates from three late samples. The patient had co-infection by two SARS-CoV-2 lineages, which were affiliated in distinct clades and diverging by six variants. The 20A lineage was absolute at the diagnosis (shared with the patient’s mother), but nine days later, the 20B lineage had 3% frequency, and two months later, the 20B lineage had 100% frequency. The 900 K profiles confirmed the identity of the patient in the serial samples, and they allowed us to infer that she had polygenic risk scores for hospitalization and severe respiratory disease within the normal distributions for a Portuguese population cohort. The early-on dynamic co-infection may have contributed to the severity of COVID-19 in this otherwise healthy young patient, and to her prolonged SARS-CoV-2 shedding profile.

Bocado: scalar semantics and polarity sensitivity

This paper traces the developments of the noun bocado as it participates in two polarity-sensitive constructions in the history of Portuguese: the minimizer bocado ‘[not even] a bit’, a negative polarity item in Old Portuguese, and the degree adverbial um bocado ‘a bit’, which emerges in the 1700 s and is a positive polarity item. I adopt Israel’s (2011) grammar of polarity based on two lexical features, a quantitative value (q-value) and an informative value (i-value), in order to analyze the properties of these constructions as they reveal the interaction between lexical meaning and the logic of scalar reasoning. By applying this model in diachrony, I show how the logic of pragmatic scales underlies the patterns observed: a low q-value (lexical meaning) constrains the possible contexts of use of the expression in terms of the informativity of the propositions conveyed. Diachronic studies can thus shed light on the types of meaning associated with scalar terms as well as on types of scalar items.

Implementation of a Sleep Hygiene Program in 4 - 6 Year Old Portuguese Children: the “It is Time to Sleep” Project First Results

Introduction Sleep, as one of the most determining and present factors in our life, is fundamental for humans, and especially during childhood: it is indispensable for good cognitive, physical and emotional development. Objectives Designed in the scope of the Portuguese National School Health Program, the objectives of this project were to promote adequate sleep routines, raise awareness of children’s sleep deprivation and to the consequences of an abusive contact with technologies. At the end of this activity, children should be able to recognize the importance of these dimensions. Methodology The formative activity, performed by 2 school nurses, was applied to 104 children (from 3 different schools from a northern city of Portugal), with 4 (41.3 %), 5 (44.2 %) and 6 years old (14.4 %), and lasted 45 minutes. The project comprises 4 stages: the first one relates to nurses and project theme presentation; the second one is the implementation of a theatre where major issues of the project are presented, namely the importance of sleep and nap, sleep hygiene rules, consequences of sleep deprivation and the influence of technologies on sleep; the third one is the discussion of the main ideas using the song "Sleep Hour"; at the end, a questionnaire was applied to assess children knowledge about sleep hygiene habits divided into six questions with two images each, in which one corresponds to a healthy practice and the other does not. Results The percentage of correct answers ranged between 96.6 to 98.3 %, suggesting that the formative activity had a positive impact on children’s knowledge about healthy sleep hygiene habits. The 2 questions on which the rate of incorrect answers was higher relate to the fact that sleeping with parents is better than sleeping alone (6.3 %) and that watching TV before going to sleep is a better option than reading a story (4.4 %). Conclusion This intervention has given children important knowledge about healthy sleep hygiene habits, resulting in its understanding through an approach tailored to their age.