Climate change (CC) is one of the most urgent problems to solve in this century, the effects of which cover a wide range of disciplines that go beyond the environmental component, becoming a social and economic problem as well. Social educators are professionals who must ensure that the quality of life in socially vulnerable societies is improved. In order to mitigate the problem of climate change, it is necessary for all professionals in the most varied areas to have climate literacy, so that they can adopt behaviors that comply with the objectives of sustainable development. Recognizing the importance of the social educator in the context of contemporary societies, we intended to find out the university students’ perceptions on the social education course. With this in mind, we set out to carry out this study, which was based on the application of a questionnaire using a Likert scale. The respondents were 161 social education students at a higher education institution in Portugal. In order to carry out the inferential analysis, we took care to meet the necessary criteria for carrying out parametric tests. The results showed that a majority (72.6 %) of students were concerned about climate change. They (54.7 %) also stated that they would like their course to deal more with climate change, as 74 % acknowledged that they did not have the skills to deal with climate change as a future professional. The results also showed that the students were incapable of correctly listing a consequence of climate change. The data collected and analyzed in this study allowed us to conclude that Environmental Education played a fundamental role in the academic training of social educators, suggesting the need for its reinforcement and inclusion in their training plans. We also found that greater efforts were needed to improve students’ climate literacy.

Climate denialism represents a significant challenge to public awareness and the implementation of effective environmental policies. In Portugal, as in other countries, social networks have been the place where denialist ideas are disseminated, influencing the public perception of the climate crisis. This research aims to understand how denialist discourse manifests and spreads on digital platforms. The research question of this work is: how does climate denialist discourse manifest itself on social media in Portugal? This work has two objectives: (1) to analyze the arguments and discursive strategies used by climate deniers in comments on Facebook, specifically on the pages of the three largest Portuguese newspapers, and (2) to understand the social and discursive dynamics that underpin their beliefs. This work adopted a qualitative methodology that involved manual data collection during the month of September 2024. Posts about climate that were informative were selected. The comments were examined manually and categorized by type of discourse. This approach enabled capturing specific nuances and contexts of denial discourses, providing a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. The study concluded that (I) comments that use fallacies or rhetoric that deny the climate crisis tended to receive more “likes” and approval from users; (II) fallacies that do not offer scientific evidence to refute the existence of climate change were identified in all these comments.

Background: Loneliness in older people seems to have emerged as an increasingly prevalent social problem. Objective: To apply a machine learning (ML) algorithm to the task of understanding the influence of sociodemographic variables, physical fitness, physical activity levels (PAL), and sedentary behavior (SB) on the loneliness feelings of physically trained older people. Materials and Methods: The UCLA loneliness scale was used to evaluate loneliness, the Functional Fitness Test Battery was used to evaluate the correlation of sociodemographic variables, physical fitness, PAL, and SB in the loneliness feelings scores of 23 trained older people (19 women and 4 men). For this purpose, a naive Bayes ML algorithm was applied. Results: After analysis, we inferred that aerobic fitness (AF), hand grip strength (HG), and upper limb strength (ULS) comprised the most relevant variables panel to cause high participant loneliness with 100% accuracy and F-1 score. Conclusions: The naive Bayes algorithm with leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) predicted loneliness in trained older with a high precision. In addition, AF was the most potent variable in reducing loneliness risk.

The diversity transferred through the migratory pathways conveys new challenges to the higher education institutions regarding the conception of new strategies and educational resources that promote integration, interaction, intercultural dialogue, collective social capital, and individual skills. Thus, between 2016-2018, Bragança Ciência Viva Science Center in partnership with Polytechnic Institute of Bragança promoted the project “INTEGRA(-TE): Scientific Routes for an Intercultural Integration.” This project aimed a group of young foreigner students from a Community of Portuguese Language Countries who studied at IPB and lived in Bragança, using scientific, technological, pedagogical, and entrepreneurial experiences. The first edition of the project involved n=110 students and the second n=124 students. Overall, results from these editions pointed a very positive result and suggested an increased labor opportunity created by practical entrepreneurial actions.

Apresenta-se o projeto “Rotas Científicas para uma Integração Intercultural”, promovido pelo Centro de Ciência Viva de Bragança, em colaboração com a Escola Superior de Educação do Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, financiado pelo programa “INTEGRA – Ciência Viva”. Este projeto assenta no desenvolvimento de atividades educativas, direcionadas para uma comunidade de jovens provenientes de Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa e tem por base três ilhas de conhecimento: Ciência e Tecnologia, Multiculturalidade e Diversidade Cultural, Pedagogia e Educação na exploração de novos desafios. Apresentam-se os pilares do projeto, respetivos objetivos e os resultados obtidos a partir das principais atividades.