Results from a 15-year study on hydrocarbon concentrations in water and sediment from Admiralty Bay, King George Island, Antarctica

Admiralty Bay on the King George Island hosts the Brazilian, Polish and Peruvian research stations as well as the American and Ecuadorian field stations. Human activities in this region require the use of fossil fuels as an energy source, thereby placing the region at risk of hydrocarbon contamination. Hydrocarbon monitoring was conducted on water and sediment samples from the bay over 15 years. Fluorescence spectroscopy was used for the analysis of total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in seawater samples and gas chromatography with flame ionization and/or mass spectrometric detection was used to analyse individual n-alkanes and PAHs in sediment samples. The results revealed that most sites contaminated by these Compounds are around the Brazilian and Polish research stations due to the intense human activities, mainly during the summer. Moreover, the sediments revealed the presence of hydrocarbons from different sources, suggesting a mixture of the direct input of oil or derivatives and derived from hydrocarbon combustion. A decrease in PAH concentrations occurred following improvement of the sewage treatment facilities at the Brazilian research station, indicating that the contribution from human waste may be significant.

Super-ego: ego tenant

The process of metapsychologic concepts development in Freud`s works is not linear; on the contrary, it oscillates, with comings and goings, temporary abandonments, ambiguities, contradictions. Within key metapsychology concepts, the concept of superego is certainly complex and troublesome, for not only it holds many definitions but its scope is also wide. From clinic to metapsychology, going across the theory of culture, the superego plays a role in all aspects of psychoanalytic investigation, misunderstandings appearing quite frequently, therefore, among those who comment it. In addition to it, Freud himself was no faithful historian of his own concepts. The present paper proposes to undo a few ambiguities in what concerns the evolution process of ego conception, beginning from a fundamental metapsychologic problem, which is the remake of the notion of ego. We support that changes in the ego theory were crucial to the elaboration of conceptual basis of super-ego in its legislative function. We will see that the super-ego begins its story as a discreet tenant to the ego to become tyrannical and usurper, threatening the ego integrity.

Discrimination of media moments and media intervals: sticker-based watch-and-comment annotation

In this paper we discuss the problem of how to discriminate moments of interest on videos or live broadcast shows. The primary contribution is a system which allows users to personalize their programs with previously created media stickers-pieces of content that may be temporarily attached to the original video. We present the system's architecture and implementation, which offer users operators to transparently annotate videos while watching them. We offered a soccer fan the opportunity to add stickers to the video while watching a live match: the user reported both enjoying and being comfortable using the stickers during the match-relevant results even though the experience was not fully representative.