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from Dr. Eusébio Conceição Every year, a kindergarten in Olhão used to be ravaged by flu and colds. Today, the children are healthier and do their activities in airier rooms with improved air quality. It doesn’t involve any magic, improvisation or divine intervention; but is rather the fruit of a scientific study and the application of such simple measures as …

Imagine free public transport. Would you leave your car at home? For many years, public transport in Lisbon and Porto has been both declining and running at a loss. The system is being used to only just over 22% of capacity. In contrast, private use of cars has risen fivefold in the past 12 years. Serious problems are the result: …

Rcicla was the first shop in Portugal devoted to building and repairing customised bicycles by recycling material from other bicycles. Now it is also the first to build a bike entirely out of parts from a disused car, everything from the bodywork to the upholstery. The challenge was set by the Leo Burnett advertising agency, which produced a promotional video …

“Since the start of the Garbags project in 2009, we have collected 28,456 coffee packets, 21,450 milk and juice packets, 1,180 shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes, 1,265 coffee capsules and 2,350 assorted used packages, stopping them going to land-fill,” said Tânia Sofia Moreira Anselma, the manager of Garbags. This is the equivalent of transporting all the furniture from a three-bedroom …

Getting international business, innovating and creating sustainable value. Cova da Beira was on show in the Arab world in November and got everyone talking. The olive oil with its flakes of gold, rose-flavoured jelly, wine, cured meats, cheeses, jams and the famous cherries whet people’s appetites in the food market in Abu Dhabi and awoke the locals’ curiosity. To such …

In 2008, the team led by Professor Elvira Fortunato of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FCT) of Lisbon’s Universidade Nova publicly announced the creation in a laboratory of the first paper transistors. Since then, they have participated in international projects with companies aiming to develop a paper with suitable properties for electronics. This discovery was regarded as being revolutionary …