Química no Brasil: perspectivas e necessidades para a próxima década - Documento básico

Over the past years the Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ) has been working on different projects related to the development of Chemistry in Brazil. After a discussion throughout the country two documents have been published in Quimica Nova: "Mobilizing Axes in Chemistry" and "The Chemist's Education". Here, we describe the initial document which was the starting point for the discussion of a new series of papers published in this special issue of Quimica Nova which presents an overview of the Chemistry in our country and the perspectives and needs for the next decade.

Rock outcrop vegetation in Brazil: a brief overview

This paper overviews the special issue of the Brazilian Journal of Botany dedicated to "Rock outcrop vegetation in Brazil". The main topics covered by this issue are phytogeography and vegetation ecology, plant life on shallow soils, plant reproduction and auto-ecology, morpho-physiology and plant adaptation, and finally conservation and global change. This collection of studies, in addition to other recent publications on Brazilian rocky outcrop vegetation, show that measurements of most of the relevant ecological and evolutionary parameters are under way and that scientific attention is now given to most Brazilian regions. However, there are still several gaps to be bridged: 1) inselbergs and high mountains in the Amazon and the Brazilian northeast, in particular, are still largely unknown to science; 2) long-term studies are almost totally unavailable, which hinders global change monitoring and assessment; 3) national and international networking are urgently needed to speed up scientific production about such habitats.