Morphodynamics of structurally controlled headland-bay beaches in southeastern Brazil: A review

This paper presents a comprehensive review on the interaction between hydrodynamic processes, beach morphology and sedimentology at large scale coastal behaviour along the coastline of Santa Catarina, between Laguna and Sao Francisco Island, a microtidal east coast swell environment with headland and bay geomorphologies. The parabolic bay shape equation has proven to be a convenient and practical tool for studying the stability of the headland-bay beaches, tombolos, and salients in Santa Catarina. The beaches exhibit different patterns of sediment removal as a function of the degree of beach curvature. In highly curved beaches, there is a well-developed shadow zone and a range of morphodynamic conditions, from a sheltered low-energy beach adjacent to the downdrift headland to a high-energy exposed beach on the straight end of the headland-bay beach. The less curved beaches instead, tend to show more uniform behaviour since they are directly exposed to incident waves. There is no obvious relationship between average wave height and mean grain size, showing the importance of sediment source to characterize the sedimentary distribution patterns in the study area. The analysis of beaches showed that beach morphodynamics and sequence profiles for a bay-headland coast in a microtidal east coast environment is a function of geological inheritance (e.g., distance between headlands and orientation, nearshore and inner shelf morphology, coastal plain morphology, and sediment source), and hydrodynamic factors (wave conditions, oceanic wave exposure and relative tidal range). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Does Evolution matter?: a case study in Brazil of the effects of an evolutionary-thinking academic atmosphere in postgraduate students' belief in God/religious belief

Although the theory of evolution is more than 150 years old, a substantial proportion of the world population does not mention it when explaining the origin of human beings. The usual alternative conception is offered by creationism, one of the main obstacles to full acceptance of evolution in many countries. National polls have demonstrated that schooling and religiosity are negatively correlated, with scientists being one of the least religious professionals. Herein we analyzed both (1) the profile of 1st semester undergraduate students and (2), thesis and dissertations, concerning religious and evolutionary thoughts from Biology and Veterinary Schools at the largest university of South America. We have shown that students of Biology are biased towards evolution before they enter university and also that the presence of an evolutionary-thinking academic atmosphere influences the deism/religiosity beliefs of postgraduate students.