This article shares the results of the investigation on environmental sustainability practices within public libraries in Portugal for the Master Course in Library and Information Science at Lisbon University.

The work intends to be a line of thought that meets the goals for sustainable development outlined by the United Nations and the International Federation of Libraries Association – a proposal for the inclusion of libraries and information in the post-2015 agenda.

The research of green libraries around the world demonstrated a growing number that applies environmental sustainability criteria in their strategic and management action.

Are emerging academic research, conferences and seminars devoted to the theme, proposals for revision of the academic curriculum in Library Information Science. Library professional associations worldwide are creating working groups and encourage debate on environmental sustainability and the concept of "global library".

To understand the Portuguese situation in this matter, questionnaires were sent to all municipal libraries in each district, resulting in a sample of 84 public libraries.

RNA binding proteins (RBPs) are an important but a poorly characterized group of proteins that affect all stages of the lifecycle of RNA transcripts, also known as post-transcriptional regulation. Within this class of proteins are RNA endonucleases. These RNA endonucleases have been shown to, both, upregulate and downregulate the propensity of a cell to undergo programmed cell death, known as apoptosis. The endoribonuclease poly-U specific, EndoU, is one such RNA endonuclease that has been implicated in promoting apoptosis but has not been fully characterized to show how it elicits this cell death. EndoU shows a tissue expression pattern in highly transient cells that are primed for cell death. Here, EndoU was investigated using the immature thymocyte cell line, VL3-3M2, at the biochemical level to show that the mammalian EndoU used calcium, likely as an allosteric cofactor, for its activity. Further biochemical characterization revealed that it was regulated by a large-transiently interacting cofactor that broadened its activity. This cell line was also used to characterize the cellular role for EndoU and was found that it positively regulated pro-apoptotic, calcium homeostasis, and cell motility related genes. Further support was given to this regulation by EndoU, when protein sequencing of the likely EndoU complex was shown that it included the pro-apoptotic proteases, calpain 1 and 2. The complex also likely included RBPs that bound ribosomal RNA and were involved in tRNA processing, an indication that EndoU may cleave these RNAs during a calcium burst. Finally, it was shown that, in mice, EndoU promoted the negative selection of self-reactive thymocytes but not death by neglect, a result not previously seen before. While EndoU could be characterized further, the results showed that this enzyme was a highly regulated endoribonuclease that, in vitro, did not prefer a specific substrate, but, in vivo, it was shown to enhance apoptosis likely due to the release of these regulating factors.

In this dissertation, I examine how skin color, class status, and gender shape labor market outcomes in Brazil. In spite of overwhelming evidence that racial inequality pervades almost every aspect of Brazilian life, there is still much disagreement among researchers and policy-makers as to the root causes of this form of inequality. According to one school of thought, racial inequality in Brazil is not the product of active contemporary discrimination, but related to the legacies of slavery as well as class-based inequalities, such as differential access to education. Others, however, argue that in spite of class-based factors, skin color has an independent effect on shaping racial inequalities. This dissertation, adjudicates between these competing explanations. Moreover, I examine whether perceived class status moderates the effects of skin color in shaping labor market outcomes. However, I take it two steps further. First, I test for the possibility that the effect of race is moderated by gender. Second, I test the validity of the “mulatto-escape hatch” hypothesis, which predicts that lighter skinned Afro-descendents (browns) suffer less discrimination than their darker skinned counterparts (blacks).

In this dissertation, I use a field-experiment to adjudicate between these competing theoretical perspectives and related contingencies. Whereas existing research on racial inequality in Brazil relies on indirect methods to estimate racial discrimination (e.g. “wage regression” analysis), I deploy a field experimental methodology to directly test for discrimination. After identifying job vacancies in newspapers, I sent 1,200 fictitious resumes to employers of entry-level jobs in two major metropolitan areas in Brazil: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. I signaled the skin color of job candidates through photographs attached on resumes, and class status through class-specific first and last names. There were several important findings from the field experiment. First, I found that skin color does shape labor market outcomes, but it is moderated by class status. Second, I found that the effect of skin color is also gendered. While skin color did not affect the likelihood of receiving a callback among men, it did so among women, in particular women with “poor” class status and with dark skin. Moreover, I found that the “mulatto escape hatch” hypothesis is also contingent on the intersection of skin color, class status, and gender as well as labor market contexts. The implications of these findings for the literature on racial inequality in Brazil are considered.