Browsing by Author "Freitas, Ana"
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- Europa criativaPublication . Freitas, Ana; Jesus, Mara; Fernandes, Maria; Martins, PatríciaA presente investigação empírica tem como objetivo avaliar o pensamento divergente, com base, em quatro critérios de cotação, a Fluência, a Flexibilidade, a Elaboração e a Originalidade. A amostra foi selecionada por conveniência, sendo composta por um total de 40 participantes, dos quais 20 sujeitos correspondem ao sexo feminino, enquanto que, os restantes elementos constituem o sexo masculino. As idades abrangem a faixa etária dos 12 aos 69 anos. O método utilizado compreende a aplicação de uma prova de avaliação, constituída por 3 questões e com uma duração total de 8 minutos. Os resultados permitem concluir que, no âmbito geral, existe um bom acordo entre os observadores, atendendo à Fluência e Flexibilidade. No que concerne ao pensamento divergente, não foram identificadas diferenças significativas entre os sexos e os resultados obtidos apresentam um determinado nível de criatividade. É de salientar que a amostra não é representativa, pelo que os resultados não devem ser generalizados.
- Profiling of passion fruit volatiles: an effective tool to discriminate between species and varietiesPublication . Porto-Figueira, Priscilla; Freitas, Ana; Cruz, Catarina J.; Figueira, José; Câmara, José S.The aim of this work was to gain insights on the volatile composition of nine passion fruits grown at Madeira Island (Portugal) – Yellow, Purple, Lemon, Orange, Pineapple, Peach, Melon, Banana and Tomato – and discriminate between them. The volatile composition of these fruits has been investigated using the same analytical technique, HS–SPME/GC–MS and multivariate analysis (MVA). The selected SPME methodology (DVB/CAR/PDMS fiber at 40 ± 1 °C for 30 min and 10% (w/w) of NaCl under stirring mode (47 × g)) was applied in the profiling of nine different passion fruit samples by GC–MS, allowing the identification of up to 169 volatile compounds belonging to different chemical groups, namely linear and branched esters, terpenes, alcohols and others. Esters were found to be the dominant metabolites regardless of passion fruit sample, with hexyl hexanoate (ranging from 6 to 31%), methyl hexanoate (14–75%) ethyl hexanoate (12–53%) and hexyl butanoate (11–26%) being the principal volatile compounds found, followed by cis-β-ocimene (from 8 to 55%), (E)-2-hexenal (4 to 10% for Banana and Tomato passion fruit samples) and eucalyptol (18% for Tomato passion fruit). The results revealed that the differences in the volatile profile among the studied passion fruits were essentially qualitative, with only 7 common volatiles found in all samples, in different abundance. Advanced statistical techniques (PCA and PLS-DA) were used to explore data. Characteristic markers were successively identified using the NIST library, thus showing that the volatile profile was able to differentiate all nine species and varieties. Profiling of passion fruit volatile metabolites can provide an effective tool to characterize the product and to extract useful information concerning its quality or geographic origin.
- Y-chromosome lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores record elements of sephardim and berber ancestryPublication . Gonçalves, Rita; Freitas, Ana; Branco, Marta; Rosa, Alexandra; Fernandes, Ana T.; Zhivotovsky, Lev A.; Underhill, Peter A.; Kivisild, Toomas; Brehm, AntónioA total of 553 Y-chromosomes were analyzed from mainland Portugal and the North Atlantic Archipelagos of Ac¸ores and Madeira, in order to characterize the genetic composition of their male gene pool. A large majority (78–83% of each population) of the male lineages could be classified as belonging to three basic Y chromosomal haplogroups, R1b, J, and E3b. While R1b, accounting for more than half of the lineages in any of the Portuguese subpopulations, is a characteristic marker of many different West European populations, haplogroups J and E3b consist of lineages that are typical of the circum-Mediterranean region or even East Africa. The highly diverse haplogroup E3b in Portuguese likely combines sub-clades of distinct origins. The present composition of the Y chromosomes in Portugal in this haplogroup likely reflects a pre-Arab component shared with North African populations or testifies, at least in part, to the influence of Sephardic Jews. In contrast to the marginally low sub-Saharan African Y chromosome component in Portuguese, such lineages have been detected at a moderately high frequency in our previous survey of mtDNA from the same samples, indicating the presence of sex-related gene flow, most likely mediated by the Atlantic slave trade.
- Y-chromosome lineages in Cabo Verde Islands witness the diverse geographic origin of its first male settlersPublication . Gonçalves, Rita; Rosa, Alexandra; Freitas, Ana; Fernandes, Ana; Kivisild, Toomas; Villems, Richard; Brehm, AntónioThe Y-chromosome haplogroup composition of the population of the Cabo Verde Archipelago was profiled by using 32 single-nucleotide polymorphism markers and compared with potential source populations from Iberia, west Africa, and the Middle East. According to the traditional view, the major proportion of the founding population of Cabo Verde was of west African ancestry with the addition of a minor fraction of male colonizers from Europe. Unexpectedly, more than half of the paternal lineages (53.5%) of Cabo Verdeans clustered in haplogroups I, J, K, and R1, which are characteristic of populations of Europe and the Middle East, while being absent in the probable west African source population of Guiné-Bissau. Moreover, a high frequency of J* lineages in Cabo Verdeans relates them more closely to populations of the Middle East and probably provides the first genetic evidence of the legacy of the Jews. In addition, the considerable proportion (20.5%) of E3b(xM81) lineages indicates a possible gene flow from the Middle East or northeast Africa, which, at least partly, could be ascribed to the Sephardic Jews. In contrast to the predominance of west African mitochondrial DNA haplotypes in their maternal gene pool, the major west African Y-chromosome lineage E3a was observed only at a frequency of 15.9%. Overall, these results indicate that gene flow from multiple sources and various sex-specific patterns have been important in the formation of the genomic diversity in the Cabo Verde islands.