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Objectives:

- To contribute to the improvement of lifelong health and well-being;

- In particular, promoting an active and independent elderly population for longer and supporting the development of new, safer and more effective social interventions;

- To promote the sustainability and excellence of the health care systems;

- To promote efficiency in information management relative to health, demographic change and well-being;

- To understand health and well-being determinant factors (such as nutrition, physical activity, gender issues, environmental, economics and occupational aspects);

- To contribute to an understanding of diseases and to the improvement of diagnostics and prognostics methodologies;

- To prevent, cure and manage diseases;

- To develop effective prevention and screening programs and to improve disease susceptibility evaluation methodologies;

- To promote sustainable, efficient and integrated healthcare services.

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Projects:

- Socio- demographic study of informal caregivers.

- Biochemical changes (antioxidant species in the serum and DEHA hormone) related to exercise in the elderly population who attends the physical activity classes at ESE.

- Allele frequencies of polymorphisms of APOE, levels of alpha-tocopherol and incidence of Alzheimer detected in the elderly population of the district of Bragança.

- Elderly pharmacology.

- Active and healthy ageing.

- Resources use in elderly residences.

- Effectiveness of the seasonal flu vaccine.

- Prevalence of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ) at CHN-Bragança.

- Prevalence and factors associated to insomnia.

- Adherence to drug therapy in older people in the Parish of Santa Maria, Bragança.

- Quality of life of diabetic type 2 patients.

- Analysis of the quality of life of the elderly population with varied physical activity.

- Evaluation of quality of life, functional ability and strength of different manifestations of postmenopausal osteoporotic women.

- Physical autonomy of patients under continuing care.

- Prevalence of atrial fibrillation in persons over 60.

- Impact on quality of life of patients with COPD with oxygen therapy after the implementation of a domiciliary program of respiratory physiotherapy.

- Assessment of physical fitness, body composition, and fear of falling of a group of elderly.

- Effects of a force intradialytic training on muscle strength , bone mineral density and functional capacity in hemodialysis patients.

- BIOMIMETIC: A biomimetic biochip for diagnosis of diseases related to the deformability of erythrocytes.

- CSD-Chip: Development of a biochip for the separation and deformation of blood cells.

- "Hemo-Networks": Experimental and numerical investigation of the factors influencing the flow of blood in microvascular networks.

- New heterocyclic antitumor and anti-angiogenic compounds: synthesis, molecular modelling, and screening enzyme inhibition studies in tumour and endothelial cell lines with membrane receptors that target tyrosine kinase.

- MicroBlood Systems: Study of the rheology of blood and blood cell migration in microfluidic systems.

- The application of Computational Fluid Dynamics research in sports (watersports): an hydrodynamic analysis.

- Cardiovascular events risk in chronic kidney disease patients on hemodialysis. Lipid profile, anaemia, vascular access and inflammation.

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Researcher Profiles:

(If you are a researcher at IPB and would like to publish a profile please contact the Research Support Office) 

Topics	Target Sectors/Organisations
Plants, traditional knowledge, agroecosystems and new trends in rural development. Flora diversity, traditional plant use, management and conservation. Interdisciplinary study of plants and human cultures, including past and present relationships between people and environment. Management and conservation of plant genetic resources. Medicinal plants, wild edibles, local food and medicine, nutraceuticals and mediterranean food. Safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, valorization of underutilized and underexploited plants and crops and impacts in rural development. +INFO.	Authorities and institutions for biodiversity management and conservation; Educational and promotional initiatives on sustainable agriculture and rural development; Institutions and networks linking cultural heritage and new approaches for rural development.
Chemistry of natural products: extraction, identification, fractionation and isolation of chemical compounds in natural matrices (focused on food matrices). Chromatographic and spectrometric techniques: GC-FID, GC-MS, HPLC-DAD, HPLC-RI, HPLC-FL, LC-MS, NMR. Nutraceuticals and functional foods: development of nutraceuticals and innovative food formulations with functional properties. Evaluation of antioxidant properties by chemical and biochemical assays with animal cells. Evaluation of antitumor properties though screening in human tumor cell lines, cell cycle and apoptosis analysis; Hepatotoxicity assays. Incorporation of natural extracts/fractions/compounds (free or protected) in food formulations. Technology of natural products: emergent technologies for conservation of food matrices (guaranteeing food quality, safety and security). Gamma and electron beam irradiation of food products. Application of natural preserving ingredients. +INFO.	Agro-Food Industry; Pharmaceutical Industry; Cosmetics Industry.
Development of new products, namely fermented, development of probiotics, natural products for food preservation, determination of the nutritional and bioactive properties (antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumoral and action mechanisms) of natural and synthesized products, development of electrochemical sensors to assess the physicochemical properties of food, evaluation of food safety and quality. +INFO.	Food and Pharmaceutical Industries; Catering companies; Companies of food transaction.
Intelligent systems on a chip: creating intelligent algorithmic solutions suitable to run on inexpensive microprocessors. This approach allows us to develop standalone devices that show intelligent behaviors and help in the daily tasks, saving energy or giving support to the elderly people. +INFO.	Health sector; Electric power companies; Communications companies.
Econometric methods, promoting the evaluation of labor market policies, the market of health and the promotion of businesses policies and regional development policies. Acting on reality implies its knowledge. Only then is it possible to design and promote policies and measures that act on reality and could be effective in that role. +INFO.	Consultancy agencies and companies; Employment Centres; Healthcare institutions; Development agencies.
Organic horticulture: plant physiology, nutrition and crop protection. Technology: climatic conditions and ecology. Social and therapeutic horticulture. +INFO.	Farms; Horticultural production organizations; Social farms and care organizations (disabled, children, elderly, others).
Electrochemical sensors for food analysis and health applications: development of new portable potentiometric and voltammetric multi-sensor devices for cost-effective, fast and in-situ applications. Qualitative (PCA and LDA), semi-quantitative and quantitative (MLRM and PLS) analysis: honey classification according to its colour and pollen profile, dentification of goat milk adulterations with bovine milk, juice level evaluation in non-alcoholic beverages, semi-quantitative and quantitative analysis of soft drinks, gliadins semi-quantitative detection in foodstuffs, quantification of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole at ppt level in aqueous industrial cork solutions, development of aptasensors for detection of protein biomarkers for tumor activity assessment. +INFO.	Food industry and retailers: authentication and/or adulteration evaluations; Health sector: early detection of tumor activity.
Performance assessments, data mining, data analysis and statistic methods and demand planning. +INFO.	Health, Retail, Energy, Mobility and Manufacturing.
Polymer reaction engineering: experimental and theoretical studies with linear/non-linear polymerizations: free radical polymerizations involving transfer to polymer, terminal double bonds/multifunctional monomers, ionic polymerizations of multifunctional monomers, coordination polymerizations with crosslinking and terminal branching. Synthesis, characterization, testing of polymer networks and gels. Controlled radical polymerization (NMRP, ATRP, RAFT): batch, semi-batch and continuous reactors (micro-reactors), characterization of the products using Size Exclusion Chromatography (SEC) with refractive index (RI) and Multi-Angle Laser Light Scattering (MALLS) detectors. Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR) Spectrophotometry with Attenuated Total Reflection (ATR): FTIR-ATR. Assessment of hydrogels/molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs)/interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) for controlled drug release and biomolecules immobilization. +INFO.	Chemical Industries; Pharmaceutical Industries; Environmental Industries.