Duration: 04/2023 – 03/2028
Abstract: The aim of HealthyW8 is to advance the efficacy of current and future efforts and investments in obesity prevention initiatives across Europe. Initiatives on obesity prevention in policy and practice are often of marginal impact. HealthyW8 will address these shortcomings by iteratively developing, together with stakeholders, a digital-based healthy lifestyle recommender for evidence-based, tailored interventions and tools including a human digital twin to bridge the gap between science, societal actors and stakeholders (e.g. healthcare professionals, food industries, policymakers) and EU citizens.
Coordinator (PI): Torsten Bohn, Luxembourg Institute of Health
Participants (CIAS): Daniela Rodrigues; Helena Nogueira; Licínio Manco; Maria-Raquel G. Silva
Partner institutions:
- Luxembourg Institute Of Health – LIH (998331858) – COORDINATOR
- Luxembourg Institute Of Science And Technology – LIST (934320200) – BENEFICIARY
- NIUM – (898185954) – BENEFICIARY
- Deutsches Forschungszentrum Fur Kunstliche Intelligenz GMBH – DFKI (999607602) – BENEFICIARY
- VIRTECH OOD – (997240705) – BENEFICIARY
- Leibniz-Institut Fur Praventionsforschung Und Epidemiologie – BIPS GMBH – LEIBNIZ-Institut Fur Praventionsforschung Und Epidemiologie – BIPS GMBH (962342336) – BENEFICIARY
- SPORA SINERGIES SCCL – (986594082) – BENEFICIARY
- Centre De Recerca En Economia I Desenvolupament Agroalimentari-UPC-IRTA – CREDA (986340815) – BENEFICIARY
- Universita Degli Studi Di Scienze Gastronomiche – University Of Gastronomic Sciences (949553468) – BENEFICIARY
- Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche – CNR (999979500) – BENEFICIARY
- Centro De Investigacion Y Tecnologia Agroalimentaria De Aragon – CITA (997262142) – BENEFICIARY
- Universidade De Evora (998269196) – BENEFICIARY
- Fundacio Institut D’investigacio Sanitaria Illes Balears – Foundation Health Research Institute Of The Balearic Islands (974340460) – BENEFICIARY
- IRCCS Azienda Ospedaliero- Universitaria Di Bologna – IRCCS AOU BO (991016991) – BENEFICIARY
- Danmarks Tekniske Universitet – Technical University Of Denmark DTU (999990655) – BENEFICIARY
- Universiteit Twente (999900833) – BENEFICIARY
- Universidade De Coimbra (997826391) – BENEFICIARY
- Regional Cluster North-East – (935248296) – BENEFICIARY
- Technische Universiteit Eindhoven – TU/e (999977269) – BENEFICIARY
- MEDEA SRL – (951976140) – BENEFICIARY
- Asociatia Euro Atlantic Diplomacy Society – (890633243) – BENEFICIARY
- Stichting European Nutrition For Health Alliance – European Nutrition For Health Alliance (883383269) – BENEFICIARY
- KNEIA SL – (936881582) – BENEFICIARY
- Europese Federatie Van Verenigingen Van Dietisten – The European Federation Of The Associations Of Dietitians EFAD (947201412) – BENEFICIARY
Financial support: European Commission, HORIZON Programme – 10.000.000€
Reference: 101080645
Duration: 2023-2027
Abstract: The core mission of NeoProModels Project is to research evolutionary cultural patterns within the context of the Neolithic process throughout the South of the Iberian Peninsula. The main goal is to tackle several major questions about continuities and discontinuities over space and time focusing on population thinking and the notion of cultural transmission. Evolutionary archaeology has become a powerful theoretical tool to gain knowledge on human behaviour. It can help us to formulate precise contextual explanatory models for one of the most important phenomena in human history: the origin and expansion of the farming way of life. This project will place the emphasis on identifying histories of cultural transmission within long-term dynamics of cultural change (ca. 5600-4000 cal BC). The project focuses on the Andalusian region within the wider sphere of the western-most regions of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic façade of the Southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. It will address historical questions related to the processes of Neolithisation in the different contexts of human populations.
Coordinator: Daniel García Rivero (University of Seville, and CIAS)
Participants: Cláudia Umbelino (CIAS)
Financial support: Ministry of Science and Innovation, Government of Spain
Reference: PID2022-137946NB-I00
Duration: 01.2023 – 01.01.2026
Abstract: This project represents the first study to rely on the articulation of six disciplines (osteology, archaeology, history, chemistry, paleoparasitology, and genomics) to better understand the health of the military in the past and how they were cared for. The results of this research will be an important new asset to historians who study the military, science, medicine, and care offered to diseased people by providing them not only new data to work with but also new methodologies and sampling strategies.
The study of human remains provide a direct window into the life of past populations, specially when combined with other methodologies. The osteological analysis allows to reconstruct the biological (sex, age at death, stature…) and health (diseases, signs of physiological stress…) profile of the individuals and select key skeletons to whom it would
be relevant to perform other types of analysis. Recently, methodologies developed from different fields have been more frequently applied to social sciences such as history. DNA analysis, for example, may identify pathogens responsible for diseases such as plague and influenza, as well as relate a specific disease to vague symptoms descriptions in historical records and ambiguous skeletal lesions. Stable isotopes and trace elements provide information about the people’s diet and possible dietary changes, migrations, and medicament intake. Parasitology can also be effective in reconstructing dietary habits and cooking techniques, additionally to identifying parasites that could affect the individual’s health.
The multidisciplinary team in this project combines various expertise (from natural sciences to humanities) that will work together to achieve the research objectives: 1) Identify parasites and pathogens affecting the soldiers’ health; 2) Relate mass graves to possible epidemics; 3) Identify medication intake and treatments; 4) Better understand hospitals and medical care; 5) Better understand military life.
Knowing that health can be reflected in skeletal indicators of physiological stress and skeletal lesions, this project combines osteological, archaeometric and historic analyses to investigate the relationship between diet, health, and treatments in military hospitals in the 17th and 18th centuries. This study will give a better understanding of medical care in historic periods by providing a direct timeframe difference between before, during and after the disease. It will be possible, for example, to know how mercury was used to treat diseases in Portugal: which diseases were treated this manner and if these treatments were frequent. The study will rely on an osteological collection (made of 947 individuals) associated with the Military Hospital of São Jorge Castle in Lisbon, used from the 17th to the 18th centuries. Historical and archaeological records will be compared with osteological, genetical, chemical, and parasitological data to reconstruct the individual’s life, where they are from, their diet before and after the hospitalization, the diseases and parasites that affected them and the use of substances such as mercury as treatment. Hazard models will be used to assess differences in survivorship and survivor/non-survivor analysis to assess differences in lesion frequency and severity between the different phases of the graveyard. This project follows the research funded by the University of Kent 50th Anniversary Scholarship carried out by the PI. During that project, the PI developed the novel sampling strategy, key for the current project’s success, and became a reference using biochemical analysis to study the synergy between diet, health and metabolism in past populations. The previous research developed by the co-PI, a historian with vast experience studying health and medical care, will allow us to historically frame the data collected from the different disciplines in this project.
Coordinator: Ana Rita Quito Curto
Participants: Sofia Wasterlain (CIAS), Ana Amarante (CIAS), Liliana Matias de Carvalho (CIAS)
Partner institutions: Universidade de Évora, Laboratório HERCULES – Herança Cultural Estudos e Salvaguarda, Centro Interdisciplinar de História, Culturas e Sociedades, Universidade de Coimbra, Centro de Investigação em Antropologia e Saúde, Universidad Complutense de Madrid – Departamento de Medicina Legal, Psiquiatría y Patología, Universidade de Lisboa, Centro de História, Chrono-environment laboratory – Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, EON, Indústrias Criativas Ltda
Financial support: Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Reference: 2022.03576.PTDC
Duration: 2023-2026
Abstract: The SINDIA project aims to understand how socio-spatial inequalities affect people living with dementia and their informal caregivers.
This is an interdisciplinary project whose objectives are:
1. Understand how socio-spatial inequalities affect people living with dementia and their informal caregivers throughout the disease trajectory;
2. Understand how measures, policies and strategies can be promoted to reduce health inequalities between populations and territories.
Coordinator: Miguel Padeiro
Participants: Helena Guilhermina Nogueira
Financial support: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Reference: 2022.04684.PTDC
Duration: 03/2023 – 02/2026
Abstract: The SCREENHEALTH Project will be the first Portuguese 3-yr prospective study to document the impact of screen use trajectories on obesity and mental health among preschool children. It aims to: 1) identify the trajectories related to screen use in children aged 3-5yrs; 2) identify the socio-ecological factors that predict trajectory membership, 3) analyze the association between screen use trajectories and health-related behaviors, and 4) assess causal pathways (& direction) linking children’s screen use trajectories, obesity and mental health. The Project will adopt a socio-biological approach to follow a large sample of 3-5-yr-old children from Coimbra, Portugal.
Coordinator (PI): Daniela Rodrigues, CIAS, Universidade de Coimbra
Participants (CIAS): Aristides M. Machado-Rodrigues, Cristina Padez, Helena Nogueira
Partner institutions:
- Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brasil)
- Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, E.P.E. – Hospital Pediátrico de Coimbra
- University of Oulu (Finland)
- Universidade do Porto – Instituto de Saúde Pública da Universidade do Porto
- University of Sydney (Australia)
Financial support: Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (através de Fundos Europeus) – 243.868.88€
Reference: 2022.07652.PTDC
Duration: May 2023 – April 2025
Abstract: Climate and socio-cultural changes are major ongoing concerns in our modern societies, their impacts on past populations are also central to understand the evolution of the human species, its resilience, and its capacity to adapt to new environments. 8200 years ago, the Mesolithic populations (hunter-gatherers) from Portugal faced a climatic event that profoundly changed their environment in a similar way to what is expected to happen in the next decades. In addition to these challenges, they were also confronted with
the arrival of migrating Neolithic populations introducing farming, plant and animal domestication, and sedentism, gradually leading to the disappearance of the hunter-gatherer nomadic way of life.
MUGE project aims to unveil the life story of the last hunter-gatherers from the Tagus valley (Muge village) in Portugal and to understand whether the environmental, and socio-cultural changes during the Late Mesolithic (ca. 8200-7100 cal B.P.) impacted the composition and health of these past populations. Discovered 150 years ago and representing the largest European anthropological collection for the Mesolithic (more than 250 individuals), humans from Muge are still poorly studied from a biological perspective because of the state of preservation of the skeletons. Cutting-edge imaging techniques will allow us to correct the taphonomic alterations and go into great detail in the analysis of skeletal remains, providing crucial information about the biological profile of the individuals (age-at-death, sex, etc.), the structure of the populations, and their health status.
With more than 1000 years of occupation, Muge furnishes an ideal skeletal sample for exploring changes in health status through time and between sexes, adults, and non-adults but also between sites and understand the impact of each change on these populations. This project is the first to combine both palaeodemographic, palaeopathological, and palaeoimaging approaches to the Muge populations.
Coordinator: Dany Coutinho Nogueira (CIAS)
Supervisor: Cláudia Umbelino (CIAS), Ricardo Miguel Godinho.
Financial support: European Research Area (ERA) fellowship, HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-02-01, European Commission, 156 778.56€
Reference: 101090304 — MUGE — HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-02
Duration: 10/2023 – 09/2025
Abstract: The primary goal of this project is to expand understanding of how young people are exposed to, experience, and interact with the urban lived places in ways that affect their health. There are three sub-objectives: 1) analyze individuals’ sensory experience (e.g. wellbeing, happiness, anxiety, stress) during city routes; 2) analyze individuals’ physical and sedentary behaviors along the day; and 3) interpret patterns of variation in PA and sedentary behaviors in relation with people’s surroundings (e.g. social, physical, and the sensory/emotional experience).
Coordinator: Daniela Rodrigues (CIAS), Universidade de Coimbra
Participants (CIAS): Helena Nogueira, Maria-Raquel G. Silva
Partner institutions:
- University of Limerick
- Universidade Fernando Pessoa
Financial support: Prémio Maria de Sousa 2ª Edition, Ordem dos Médicos and Fundação BIAL – 30.000€
Duration: 2023-2025
Abstract:
Coordinator: Leandro Luna
Participants: Ana Luísa Santos
Financial support: Fondo para la Investigación Científica y Tecnológica, Argentina
Reference: PICT-2021-I-GRF1
Duration: 2023 – 2024
Abstract: To evaluate the association of genetic variants at the HBB gene cluster, BCL11A gene, and HMIP region ((HBS1L-MYB intergenic polymorphisms) with HbF levels in Hemoglobin S carriers and in normal individuals of São Tomé e Príncipe.
Coordinator: Licínio Manco (CIAS)
Participants: Licínio Manco (CIAS), Celeste Bento (CIAS), Afonso Morais (CIAS)
Financial support: CIAS
Duration: 2023-2024
Abstract: Amber is a fossil resin that has had a social value since the Upper Paleolithic. This is due to its unique natural characteristics, which have made it widely used and socially valued throughout prehistory, especially as a decorative and as a symbolic element. The Baltic coast and Sicily are the main natural sources of amber exploited in prehistory. Since the beginning of modern research, the presence of amber outside these regions has been used as an indicator of the existence of long-distance exchange networks (de Navarro, 1925), and consequently amber has been considered an exotic and prestigious material. On this basis, a solid tradition of research has been established to identify the origin of amber objects (Beck, 1995; Beck et al., 1965, 1964; Beck and Hartnett, 1993), which has led to the identification of spatiotemporal patterns of their consumption. The characterization of prehistoric amber ornaments has been extensively addressed in recent years (Murillo-Barroso et al., 2018; Murillo-Barroso and Martinón-Torres, 2012; Odriozola et al., 2019b), given the strong tradition of studies on this raw material of high symbolic value.
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses have confirmed long-distance exchange as the main form of access to amber, allowing the identification of two large-scale trends in exchange flows, starting from Sicily in the 4th-3rd millennia BC and swinging to the Baltic Sea from the 2nd millennium BC (Odriozola et al., 2019b). Despite this exogenous trend, in the last decades the focus has also been put on the geological deposits of Iberian amber, with the documentation of different local sources of amber on the Cantabrian coast (Álvarez Fernández et al., 2005; Murillo-Barroso et al., 2018). On the other hand, numerous local amber outcrops remain to be characterized, such as those between the Tagus and Mondego estuaries in Portugal (Peñalver et al., 2018). Despite the acknowledged long-distance exchange of Baltic and Sicilian amber, and the lack of a comprehensive spectral record of Portuguese amber, scientists have recently suggested that Sicilian and Portuguese amber have similar spectral characteristics, compromising origin identification. Consuming local instead of foreign amber would therefore completely change the image of a united Europe.
IberAmber is a project conceived and designed in a multidisciplinary way, using chemical-analytical techniques, classical statistical methods, and more modern approaches such as machine learning to deepen the archaeological knowledge of amber trade and exchange.The principal objectives are to locate amber deposits; To characterize the amber deposits by means of FTIR, GC-MS and 13C-MAS-NMR in order to obtain more detailed information about the chemical composition of the deposits, the aging processes and the botanical origin of the amber; To create a reference spectral library of Portuguese amber;To generate a classification tool by supervised statistical analysis of geological amber;To provide a web application that predicts the origin of archaeological amber artifacts through their FTIR signatures.
In order to create a library of standardized reference spectra for each deposit, IberAmber aims to locate and chemically characterize the Portuguese amber deposits. The standardized reference spectra of the amber deposits will then be used as a fingerprint of the Portuguese amber deposits. These, in turn, will later be compared with the spectra of archaeological artifacts to determine their origin.
Coordinator: Carlos P. Odriozola Lloret
Participants: José Eduardo de Oliveira (FCUL) ; Ana Catarina Sousa (UNIARQ/FLUL); João Daniel Casal duarte (FCUL); José María Martínez Blanes (Universidade de Sevilha);José Ángel Garrido Cordero (UNIARQ/FLUL);
Daniel Sánchez Gómez (UNIARQ/FLUL); Maria Dolores Zambrana Vega (Universidade de Sevilha); Jose Luis Molina Gonzalez (Universidade de Sevilha); Victor S. Gonçalves (UNIARQ/FLUL); Cátia Delicado (UNIARQ/FLUL, CIAS/FLUC)
André Texugo (UNIARQ/FLUL, CEG) e Daniel van Calker (UNIARQ/FLUL).
Partner institutions: Universidade de Sevilha e a Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa
Financial support: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Reference: 2022.09207.PTDC
