Nowadays, generic medicines are used to reduce the health expenses in Portugal. These medicines arise when the reference medicine patent expires and have usually a lower price in order to contribute to the sustainability of the National Health Service. The Portuguese market of generic medicines began to increase since 2003. This was the consequence of the policies implemented to promote generic medicines. The prices of generic medicines have been declining constantly over the years, with a decrease of 42 % only from 2011 to 2012. The average reimbursement of medicines has a tendency to decrease which increases the amount that the patients pay. In this context, pharmacies live a critical period because of the decrease of the profit margins that are in some cases negative. Due to these situations, the accessibility to medicines by patients is questioned, since Portugal live in an economic and social crisis accompanied by a potential decrease of the pharmaceutical services coverage. 

In this paper the problem of the meaning of the joint strength tests is analysed in view of the probable hypothesis which says that in Nature, the sliding movements of the joints are more frequent as the discontinuity sizes increase (large joints, faults) and on account of this reason, the morphology of their walls must be mismatched. The paper ends by concluding that the small samples of matched joints with the middle plane in horizontal position provide safe strength values. But if the joints are mismatched, the small samples provide values with doubtful meaning and only "in situ" tests of large samples have some interest and are meaningful.

An experimental study on identification of nineteen Brazilian tropical swelling soils using elementary laboratory tests such as Atterberg limits and LNEC swelling test was carried out. Results of the tested soils showed excellent correlation between the soil swelling potencial measured in the oedometer test and the variables clay content, plasticity and LNEC swelling indexes. A swelling scale was proposed for the tested soils.

ln this paper the meaning of the hierarchization of the heterogeneity is referred as the essential reason of the scale effect, not only on the mechanical properties of the rocks but on the general propert1es of the rocks and rock masses. So, some intricate results, such as the absence of scale effect on the uniaxial tensile strength and the normal and the reverse scale effects on the uniaxial compressive strength and deformability of some rocks, are easily explained when analysed under this point of view. The rule that prohibits extrapolations out of the tested sizes and among close lithologies, is justified, at last.

 ln this paper we try to analyse the role and the influence of the small size particles included in the rockfills on their behaviour, emphasizing the complex and the little clarified meaning of their size and their percentage in the rockfills, over the behaviour and stability, usually translated in harder safety factors of project. It is related the Jack of a clear definition when the smallness of the particles and their proportion give to the whole rockfills diferent attributes from the clean coarse rockfill, mainly those unfavourable to the engineering works. The study comprises mainly dams till 50 meter in height (the most usual works), but probably some present considerations may be applied to harder situations. We finish referring a "tout venant" dam with clay core where it was necessary the considera­ tion of the admission of the small size particles (soils) in the rockfill and their possible migration through the dam in spite of the Jack of conclusive antecedents.

When, at the end of a medical visit, a doctor prescribes medication, he may be unaware that writing is unknown to the patient. This fact compromises the patient's understanding of disease and therapeutics and thus the importance of diagnosing illiteracy. The A.A studied prospectively 200 consecutive patients admitted to a Medical Ward at Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon, from 13/3/1997 to 8/7/1998. The study included age, gender, social environment, evaluation of the ability to read and write, years of scholarship and the principal diagnosis. The results were to chi 2 (Yates) and Student's T-tests. RESULTS: 94 patients were male and 106 female, aged between 18 and 95 years (mean 62.3), 106 from an urban environment, 54 from a rural environment and 37 had lived their adult life in a rural environment but were at present living in an urban environment. The percentage of illiteracy was 30.5%, being considerably higher in the females (43.4%) than in the males (15.96%), in patients above 65 years (49%) compared to patients from 15 to 64 years old (12%), in non-urban patients (55%) opposed to urban born patients (10.4%). Any of these variables, gender, age and social environments had statistical significance to P < 0.001 when associated to illiteracy. CONCLUSIONS: The comparative analysis of the official results for the general Portuguese Population study, Census 91, shows an important analogy. In both studies illiteracy was worst in females and in those above 65 years of age. Today illiteracy is still days a serious National problem, with important medical implications, a troublesome obstacle to the understanding of the disease and compliance with therapy.

ln this paper we try to analyse the problematic of the opening of the underground excavations attending to the energy balance considerations over their periphery and we do some remarks about basic rules related with the stability of the excavations and related with those balances.

ln this paper are drawn some considerations about geomechanical principles for the design of anchor sistems in underground rock excavations. The fundamental problems related to tunnels and power plants are discussed; an optimum anchor sistem concept is introduced and some design principles wich can produce significant economy in confrontation with the classical ones are suggested.