Abstract The consolidation of the welfare state that took place after the 1974 revolution, particularly in the 1980s, improved the living standards of Portuguese citizens. The improvements were directly reflected in Portuguese Cigano families and individuals, although the great majority remain at high risk of poverty. In 2011 the European Council proposed the definition of national strategies for integration of Ciganos, opening the door for achieving better living conditions of European Roma citizens. The national strategies focus on four fundamental domains: education, employment, healthcare and housing. At the present time, Portugal is implementing its National Strategy for the Integration of Cigano Communities. In terms of education, compared to previous generations, Cigano children complete more years of education. However, after the fifth and sixth year of schooling, the number of Cigano children dropping out of formal education increases. Based on a literature review and a survey of policies, programmes and projects, and the analysis of interviews with individual and institutional stakeholders, the aim of this article is to present results of a research project that intends to identify key factors for the success and continuity of Cigano schooling paths.
Stimulated emission depletion (STED) fluorescence microscopy squeezes an excited spot well below the wavelength scale using a doughnut-shaped depletion beam. To generate a doughnut, a scale-free vortex phase modulation (2D-STED) is often used because it provides maximal transverse confinement and radial-aberration immunity (RAI) to the central dip. However, RAI also means blindness to a defocus term. making the axial origin of fluorescence photons uncertain within the wavelength scale provided by the confocal detection pinhole. Here, to reduce the uncertainty, we perturb the 2D-STED phase mask so as to change the sign of the axial concavity near focus, creating a dilated dip. By providing laser depletion power, the dip can be compressed back in three dimensions to retrieve lateral resolution, now at a significantly higher contrast. We test this coherent-hybnd STED (CHSTED) mode in x-y imaging of complex biological structures, such as the dividing cell. The proposed strategy creates an orthogonal direction in the STED parametric space that uniquely allows independent tuning of resolution and contrast using a single depletion beam in a conventional (circular polarization-based) STED setup. ; European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (681443) and FLAD Life Science 2020. The grant PPBI-POCI-01- 0145-FEDER-022122. Project Norte-01-0145-FEDER-000029, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund ...