21 de Julho de 2018.
Let me give you some non-qualified tips for the months to come. To be honest, I have not been in Madeira during the hottest months of summer. My experience started in September what I would still call summer due to the heat. Madeira is very versatile and full of possible activities. That is the reason why I love this island. People who love the sea have several options to explore the Atlantic Ocean. Snorkeling and scuba diving let you discover the biodiversity of the sea dwellers. But not everyone likes to dive in the dark and deep ocean and some rather stay above the surface of the water, at least with their heads. There are still enough activities, such as […]
20 de Julho de 2018.
Ministro da Ciência espera que até ao final do ano sejam concluídos os outros três estudos aprovados pela Agência Espacial Europeia sobre a viabilidade da criação de uma base de lançamentos de pequenos satélites nos Açores. O processo que poderá vir a resultar na criação de um porto espacial dos Açores para o lançamento de pequenos foguetes e micro-satélites, numa carga que não deverá ultrapassar os 150 quilos, está em curso mas ainda há um longo caminho a percorrer. Sem se querer comprometer com prazos, custos ou sequer como a concretização do projecto, o ministro da Ciência, Manuel Heitor, vai avisando que “se o porto espacial vier a nascer nos Açores terá de ser maioritariamente com investimento privado”. E enquanto […]
19 de Julho de 2018.
Vincent van Gogh: of the most famous artists of the 19th century. This fame is not only because his art, but also because of his life. He was born in 1853, in a village near the Belgian border. When starting adulthood he did not really know what to do. He first became a schoolteacher, then a book salesman, studied theology and became a preacher in a coal mine. He did not really do well in all these jobs and got fired for all of them. Eventually, his brother Theo convinced Vincent to become an artist after seeing the sketches he made. He moved around in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Paris before eventually moving to the village of Arles in France, […]
18 de Julho de 2018.
Experiência em ratinhos demonstrou que é possível activar o gene que produz uma enzima que não está presente nas pessoas com doença de Gaucher, que é rara e nas suas formas mais graves pode ser fatal. Uma equipa de cientistas conseguiu, numa experiência com ratinhos, evitar o desenvolvimento da forma mais grave da doença de Gaucher através de uma intervenção pré-natal. Os cientistas usaram um vírus para conseguir chegar até ao cérebro dos ratinhos ainda em gestação e “acordar” um gene que produz a enzima que não está presente nas pessoas que sofrem desta doença rara. O artigo foi publicado na última edição da revista Nature Medicine. A doença de Gaucher é uma doença genética e autossómica recessiva, ou seja, […]
17 de Julho de 2018.
Jan Matejko is probably the most known Polish painter. He born in 1838 in Krakow and he specialized in historical and battle paintings. One of his most famous canvas is “The Battle of Grunwald”, painted in 1872–1878. It represents a really important event in Polish history, the victory of the allied Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania over the Teutonic Order in 1410. It is displayed in the National Museum in Warsaw. His other famous paintings which we can find there are: “Stańczyk” and “The Prussian Homage”, among others. It is worth to mention that Matejko is an author of the 320 or so known oil paintings mainly depicting the most momentous events in Polish […]
13 de Julho de 2018.
The world’s highest paid living artist Gerhard Richter, born 1932 in Dresden, Germany is one of the most famous German painters of all time and called the best living painter by many. He has huge national and international success and won many notable awards again both national and international. His style changed a lot during his long career which he started in the 1950s in East Germany. In 1961 Richter fled with his wife to West Germany, he is said to have burned parts of his paintings before he left. Here he studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1964 he had his first solo exhibition which was the cornerstone for his success. Noteworthy is that Richter is not only […]
11 de Julho de 2018.
Ingentia prima foi o nome dado à nova espécie de saurópodes descoberta na Argentina – expressão em latim para “o primeiro grande” –, que veio revolucionar as teorias sobre a evolução destes animais. Foram descobertos novos fósseis de saurópodes em San Juan, no Oeste da Argentina, que revelaram que os dinossauros gigantes apareceram na Terra cerca de 30 milhões de anos antes do que se pensava anteriormente. Um estudo de uma equipa de investigadores argentinos, intitulado Uma tendência inicial para o gigantismo em dinossauros sauropodomorfos do Triásico, publicado nesta segunda-feira na revista Nature Ecology & Evolution, analisou fósseis de uma nova espécie de saurópodes (os conhecidos dinossauros herbívoros quadrúpedes, de longo pescoço e cauda e crânio pequeno), descobertos em 2015 […]
11 de Julho de 2018.
He did some really nice pieces of art. We were supposed to write about a painter from our own countries. But to be honest, in Finland, we don’t have any painters who would be really impressive for me or either known world-wide. So I decided to write about Alvar Aalto, an architect and a designer I personally like. Alvar Aalto was born in the 3rd of February 1898 in Kuortane. In 1921 he graduated from Helsinki’s technical academy. During his time in the academy, he took part in the civil war in Finland. After graduating he moved away from the capital city, to Jyväskylä. There he made his own architect office, following the Scandinavian design, which was popular at that time. […]
9 de Julho de 2018.
Equipa internacional de cientistas produziu o primeiro embrião híbrido de rinoceronte-branco no laboratório. O objectivo é implantar um embrião numa “barriga de aluguer”, esperar pelo sucesso da gravidez de 16 meses, e ter uma primeira cria daqui a cerca de três anos. Que se saiba, restam apenas duas fêmeas, mãe e filha, da subespécie de rinoceronte-branco-do-norte na Terra. Na tentativa de manter este precioso animal entre nós, uma equipa de cientistas está há vários anos a trabalhar no laboratório, recorrendo às mais recentes técnicas de procriação medicamente assistida e da investigação na área de células estaminais. Para já, segundo um artigo publicado na última edição da revista Nature Communications, conseguiram produzir o primeiro embrião híbrido, com ovócitos do rinoceronte-branco-do-sul e […]
9 de Julho de 2018.
The paintings look (a little bit) like child drawings. This man is an internationally renowned Dutch painter, whose paintings look (at least according to critics) like they were painted by a child himself. Also, Karel stated: ´I just mess up something´. Others say this was not completely true, they say there was a big theory behind the paintings. Christiaan Karel Appel was born in 1921 in Amsterdam, he studied there at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. At the academy, he met two other artists with who he became close friends, Corneille and Constant. With these friends and a few others, he founded Cobra in 1948 at an international conference in Paris. This was an international movement of painters and […]
20 de Janeiro de 2018.
The strange case of the Principality of Pontinha. Due to their isolated nature, island nations tend to exhibit a heightened sense of the bizarre. I am well aware of this from my home country, with its Byzantine cultural norms and eccentric Monarchy. Madeira is no different, a notable example being the existence of the Principality of Pontinha. Founded by the now Dom Renato Barros I, a former art teacher, Pontinha is a micronation based around an islet on Funchal’s harbour. It was purchased for just shy of £20,000 from the Blandy family, who had themselves purchased the land from the city of Funchal in order to fund a redevelopment of the port in 1903. Barros himself has speculated that if […]
19 de Janeiro de 2018.
My time here on Madeira Island stays very nice, tiring but increasingly interesting. Let’s talk about another subject than food, that is to say food, and two famous pastries in all Portugal! My pleasure, shared I’m pretty sure by many other people, is eating pastries, all bakeries Portuguese have! And the one I could go for from France to Portugal by foot or even by swimming to enjoy is definitely “Pastéis de nata”. This is a little eggs flan tartlet, sold in other countries in a sad way in supermarkets when It’s not artisanal. Indeed I tasted it in France just before coming to Madeira and to Portugal, and that wasn’t such a nice moment. Because when It’s industrial you […]
18 de Janeiro de 2018.
“Alguns têm na vida um grande sonho e faltam a esse sonho. Outros não têm na vida nenhum sonho e faltam a esse também.” — Livro do desassossego, Fernando Pessoa. Prólogo: Sem destino continuei a caminhada, o meu objectivo vago… Tentando dissipar a ansiedade construída no meu peito. Eu entendi porque é que estava perdido, eu tinha falhado em compreender a situação diante de mim. Por mais que eu tentasse convencer a minha mente a aceitar que meia vida era suficiente, mais que isso, a emoção que surgia dentro de mim era de mágoa, e eu sabia que acabaria sendo consumido por esse veneno. “Talvez fiquem zangados mas isso vai tornar-te livre.” — Se ninguém te disse, a tua liberdade […]
18 de Janeiro de 2018.
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes”. This is a phrase Madeira definitely lives by Whenever people ask me about Madeiran weather I simply just say “mood swings”. You just never know. During the summer it is mostly warm, dry but also humid. And even I, who arrived here in the beginning of September, had to wait a month or more to experience rain in Funchal. By now I am always carrying an umbrella. The biggest city on Madeira is located in the south, where it is usually sunnier than in the north. This island can have all four seasons at once. And that is during the summer. In winter a single city often has all […]
17 de Janeiro de 2018.
How Indian cuisine found its way to Madeira (en route from England and South Africa). Paradoxically, Indian food is the national dish of the United Kingdom. For many British people a curry is a frequent treat, so my surprise was palpable when I found several Indian restaurants in Funchal serving British-Indian fusion classics such as Tikka Masala. Perhaps this is a consequence of the myriad British tourists who holiday in Madeira every year. But there is usually a deeper justification. My initial assumption was that one of the many British expatriates of Madeira’s history had popularised the cuisine here. This notion was substantiated by the presence of an Indian Infantry Division at the Jesuits’ College in 1941. The company was […]
16 de Janeiro de 2018.
I have already experienced so much, and there is still so much to do! The most beautiful places and moments in your life will always stay in your heart and memories. But what I’m scared of here is that I experience so many moments and see so many places that I want to remember the rest of my life, but the memories just fade away. I can’t choose if I will remember my last weekend’s hike or the moments when I’m laughing with my roommates so hard, that I fall from my bed. When I’m going to be 55 and I will look back to this year, I hope I’ll remember how I felt in the special moments. The other […]