Projected Reorganization of Florida Bay Seagrass Communities in Response to the Increased Freshwater Inflow of Everglades Restoration

Historic changes in water-use management in the Florida Everglades have caused the quantity of freshwater inflow to Florida Bay to decline by approximately 60% while altering its timing and spatial distribution. Two consequences have been (1) increased salinity throughout the bay, including occurrences of hypersalinity, coupled with a decrease in salinity variability, and (2) change in benthic habitat structure. Restoration goals have been proposed to return the salinity climates (salinity and its variability) of Florida Bay to more estuarine conditions through changes in upstream water management, thereby returning seagrass species cover to a more historic state. To assess the potential for meeting those goals, we used two modeling approaches and long-term monitoring data. First, we applied the hydrological mass balance model FATHOM to predict salinity climate changes in sub-basins throughout the bay in response to a broad range of freshwater inflow from the Everglades. Second, because seagrass species exhibit different sensitivities to salinity climates, we used the FATHOM-modeled salinity climates as input to a statistical discriminant function model that associates eight seagrass community types with water quality variables including salinity, salinity variability, total organic carbon, total phosphorus, nitrate, and ammonium, as well as sediment depth and light reaching the benthos. Salinity climates in the western sub-basins bordering the Gulf of Mexico were insensitive to even the largest (5-fold) modeled increases in freshwater inflow. However, the north, northeastern, and eastern sub-basins were highly sensitive to freshwater inflow and responded to comparatively small increases with decreased salinity and increased salinity variability. The discriminant function model predicted increased occurrences ofHalodule wrightii communities and decreased occurrences of Thalassia testudinum communities in response to the more estuarine salinity climates. The shift in community composition represents a return to the historically observed state and suggests that restoration goals for Florida Bay can be achieved through restoration of freshwater inflow from the Everglades.

Areia sob os pés da alma: uma leitura da vida e obra de Oswaldo Lamartine de Faria

This study followed the development of Oswaldo Lamartine de Faria as an intellectual, with the aim of establishing the emergence of that de Faria’s work under the umbrella of the sertão (hinterland) in Northeast Brazil. It accompanied the emergence of the researcher, his discovery of his mission to study the sertão in Seridó and the vital importance of his relationship with Luís da Câmara Cascudo, since despite being a natural born observer, Oswaldo Lamartine embarked on a career as a researcher after encouragement by Cascudo. The first chapter of this study, denominated The Gates of Time, portrays the country during the drought of 1919, the year Lamartine was born. It describes his childhood and first encounters with Câmara Cascudo; his urban exile in Rio de Janeiro; the books written by the young Oswaldo, those that came later, and his definitive return to the state of Rio Grande do Norte. The following two chapters, Sand beneath the Feet of the Soul and Images of a Nobleman from the Sertão, summarize Lamartine’s books and describe his entry into the canon of the state’s culture, with particular prominence given to his interview for the documentary “Oswaldo Lamartine: prince of the sertão”, highlighting his attempt (through his writing) to preserve his own existence. In the second section, Verses, Bold, Between the Lines features analyses of texts dedicated to Oswaldo Lamartine, such as those written by de Zila Mamede, Maria Lúcia Dal Farra and Paulo de Tarso Correia de Melo. The next chapter, entitled Warm and Vivid Ashes, highlights Lamartine’s correspondence with Luís da Câmara Cascudo and the incredible friendship between the two researchers. Cascudo’s letters are analyzed through the book De Cascudo para Oswaldo (From Cascudo to Oswaldo) and and are a powerful testimony of Oswaldo Lamartine’s permanent connection to Rio Grande do Norte. In conclusion, the final chapter entitled Combine, Tattoo, Imprint analyzes the writer’s five-book collection entitled Sertões do Seridó (Hinterlands of Seridó). In reading each of these, it becomes clear that observing reality was vital to the writer’s work. This is one of the first studies to be conducted about Oswaldo Lamartine at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and its main theoretical references were the reflections of authors Jacques Le Goff (2003), Lejeune (1994; 2008), Maurice Blanchot (1987; 2005), Alfredo Bosi (1987) and Gaston Bachelard (n.d.).

An integrative case study of positive youth development in a recreational community sport program

Participation in organized activities is associated with many markers of positive youth development (PYD) such as improved self-esteem, social competence, and academic achievement (Mahoney et al., 2009). Sport is an extra-curricular activity that is particularly popular among youth, as nearly three quarters of Canadian children and adolescents are engaged in organized sport or physical activity (CFLRI, 2012). Much of the research in this area has examined sport programs which are explicitly structured to promote life skills or PYD outcomes; however, the sustainability of such programs has recently been called into question (Turnnidge, Hancock, & Côté, 2014). The purpose of this program of research was to conduct an in-depth case study of a successful, sustainable community youth basketball league. Study 1 was a qualitative descriptive exploration of coaches’ perceptions of the basketball league. This study provided a general overview of the structure and perceived benefits of the league, from the perspective of current coaches. Coaches highlighted the unique emphasis that the league places on fun and positive immediate sport experiences. Study 2 expanded on selected themes from Study 1, namely, the salience of the league’s culture and tendency for former players to return to the league as volunteers. This study used an ethnographic approach wherein the first author volunteered as an assistant coach on a basketball team over the course of a six-month season. This approach enabled him to gain considerable first hand insight into the organizational culture of the basketball league. The third and final study adopted a quantitative approach using both systematic observation and questionnaires to investigate the relationship between PYD outcomes and observed athlete behaviour during basketball games. A cluster analysis revealed the presence of two distinct groups of athletes characterized by relatively high and low perceptions of PYD outcomes, which were also associated with varying behavioural characteristics during competition. The results of these three studies provide a detailed blueprint of a successful youth sport program that has been sustained over 60 years. While not without limitations, many characteristics of the league should prove useful in structuring youth sport programs in other contexts.

The difficulty of measuring culture and diversity. Comparison of three international models of cultural measurement: FCS-2009, ESSnet-2012 and CAB-2015

The growing interest in quantifying the cultural and creative industries, visualize the economic contribution of activities related to culture demands first of all the construction of internationally comparable analysis frameworks. Currently there are three major bodies which address this issue and whose comparative study is the focus of this article: the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics (FCS-2009), the European Framework for Cultural Statistics (ESSnet-Culture 2012) and the methodological resource of the “Convenio Andrés Bello” group for working with the Satellite Accounts on Culture in Ibero-America (CAB-2015). Cultural sector measurements provide the information necessary for correct planning of cultural policies which in turn leads to sustaining industries and promoting cultural diversity. The text identifies the existing differences in the three models and three levels of analysis, the sectors, the cultural activities and the criteria that each one uses in order to determine the distribution of the activities by sector. The end result leaves the impossibility of comparing cultural statistics of countries that implement different frameworks.

Return Migration in the Ecuadorian and Bolivian population: motivations, strategies and discourses

This article analyses the motivations for return migration among the Ecuadorians and Bolivians who, after living in Spain, returned to their countries of origin during the economic crisis that started in 2008. From the analysis of 22 interviews in-depth which took place in Ecuador and 38 in Bolivia to women, men and young people from migrant families, this decision-making process is shown to be embedded into a gendered dynamics of relationships. Particular detail is given to affective and economic elements that had an influence on the decision to return, as well as to the strategies deployed to project their readjustment back in origin. Males and females occupy differential positions within the family, work and social circle, their expectations being built in a gendered manner. Despite the fact migration has brought women greater economic power within the family group, their reintegration upon return redefines their role as main managers in the household and the dynamics that allow their social reproduction. Men, for their part, aspire to refresh their role as providers in spite of their frail labour position upon return. Social mobility for females is passed on through generations by a strong investment on education for their daughters and sons, while for males this mobility revolves around setting up family businesses and around their demonstrative abilities.

Mathematical Modeling to Assess the Drivers of the Recent Emergence of Typhoid Fever in Blantyre, Malawi

BACKGROUND: Multiyear epidemics of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi have been reported from countries across eastern and southern Africa in recent years. In Blantyre, Malawi, a dramatic increase in typhoid fever cases has recently occurred, and may be linked to the emergence of the H58 haplotype. Strains belonging to the H58 haplotype often exhibit multidrug resistance and may have a fitness advantage relative to other Salmonella Typhi strains.

METHODS: To explore hypotheses for the increased number of typhoid fever cases in Blantyre, we fit a mathematical model to culture-confirmed cases of Salmonella enterica infections at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre. We explored 4 hypotheses: (1) an increase in the basic reproductive number (R0) in response to increasing population density; (2) a decrease in the incidence of cross-immunizing infection with Salmonella Enteritidis; (3) an increase in the duration of infectiousness due to failure to respond to first-line antibiotics; and (4) an increase in the transmission rate following the emergence of the H58 haplotype.

RESULTS: Increasing population density or decreasing cross-immunity could not fully explain the observed pattern of typhoid emergence in Blantyre, whereas models allowing for an increase in the duration of infectiousness and/or the transmission rate of typhoid following the emergence of the H58 haplotype provided a good fit to the data.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that an increase in the transmissibility of typhoid due to the emergence of drug resistance associated with the H58 haplotype may help to explain recent outbreaks of typhoid in Malawi and similar settings in Africa.

Cultural Nationalism

Nationalism may involve the combination of culture and politics, but for many of its most prominent students, the former is subordinate to the latter. In this view, nationalist appeals to culture are a means to a political end; that is, the achievement of statehood. Hence, for Ernest Gellner (2006 [1983]: 124), culture is but an epiphenomenon, a ‘false-consciousness … hardly worth analyzing …’. For their part, Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (1983) suggest that national traditions are ‘invented’ by elites concerned with the legitimization of state power. Similarly, John Breuilly (2006 [1982]: 11) defines national movements as ‘political movements … which seek to gain or exercise state power and justify their objectives in terms of nationalist doctrine’. A broadly similar characterization of nationalism can be found in the writings of many other esteemed scholars (Giddens, 1985; Laitin, 2007; Mann, 1995; Tilly, 1975). The privileging of politics over culture remains the dominant approach to understanding nationalism, but it is not without criticism. There is now a vast and rapidly growing body of literature insisting that the role of culture should be made more prominent. In opposition to the argument that nationalist appeals to culture are but an exercise in legitimation, this body of literature suggests that they can be ends unto themselves. This latter phenomenon, generally referred to as cultural nationalism, is the subject of this chapter. The chapter proceeds as follows. I begin with the definition and history of cultural nationalism before discussing several key themes in its study. To conclude, I briefly outline several lines of research that I believe hold particular potential for developing the field. In the light of the huge array of literature on cultural nationalism, the review is focused on seminal contributions.

Twitter e ciberativismo: o movimento social da hashtag #ForaMicarla em Natal-RN

The spatial and temporal fluidity conditioned by the technologies of social interaction online have been allowing that collective actions of protest and activism arise every day in cyberspace - the cyber-activism. If before these actions were located in geographical boundaries, today's demands and mobilizations extrapolate the location, connect to the global, and at the same time, return to the regional through digital virtuality. Within this context of the relationship between digital technology and global flow of sociability, emerges in October 2010 the social movement of the hashtag "#ForaMicarla", which means the dissatisfaction of cibernauts from Natal of Twitter with the current management of the municipality of Natal-RN, Micarla de Sousa (Green Party). We can find in the center of this movement and others who appeared in the world at the same time a technological condition of Twitter, with the hashtag "#". Given this scenario, this research seeks to analyze how the relationship of the agents of movement hashtag "ForaMicarla", based on the principle that it was formed in the Twitter network and is maintained on the platform on a daily basis, it can create a new kind of political culture. Thus, this study discusses theoretically the importance of Twitter and movements that emerge on the platform and through it to understand the social and political demands of the contemporary world and this public sphere, which now seems to include cyberspace

Farm practices to manage the impact of severe tropical cyclone damage on banana production – a case study from tropical Australia

Most Australian banana production occurs on the north-eastern tropical coast between latitudes 15-18°S, and can experience summer cyclone activity. Damage from severe tropical cyclones has serious impact on banana-based livelihoods. The most significant impacts include immediate loss of production and income for several months, the region-wide synchronization of cropping and the expense of rehabilitating affected plantations. Severe tropical cyclones have directly affected the main production region twice in recent years Tropical Cyclone (TC) Larry (Category 4) in March 2006 and TC Yasi (Category 5) in February 2011. Based on TC Larry experiences, pre- and post-cyclone farm practices were developed to reduce these impacts in future cyclonic events. The main pre-cyclone farm practice focused on maintaining production units and an earlier return to fruit production by partially or completely removing the plant canopy to reduce wind resistance. Post-cyclone farm practices focused on managing the industry-wide crop synchronization using crop timing techniques to achieve a staggered return to cropping by scheduling production to provide continuous fruit supply. With TC Yasi in 2011, some banana producers implemented these practices, allowing them to examine their effectiveness in reducing cyclonic impacts. Additional research and development activities were conducted to refine our understanding of their effectiveness and improve their application for future cyclonic events. Based on these activities and farm-based observations, suggested practice-based management strategies can be developed to help reduce the impact of severe tropical cyclones in the future. Canopy removal maintained banana plants as productive units, and provided earlier but smaller bunches, generating earlier-than-expected income. Queensland producers expressed willingness to adopt canopy removal for future cyclone threats where appropriate, despite its labor-intensiveness. Mechanization would allow larger scale adoption. Implementing a staggered cropping program successfully achieved a consistent, continuous fruit supply after a cyclone impact. Both techniques should be applicable to other cyclone-prone regions.

Reproducing Women: Female Bodily Narratives and English Patriarchies, 1600-1660

During the early Stuart period, England’s return to male monarchal rule resulted in the emergence of a political analogy that understood the authority of the monarch to be rooted in the “natural” authority of the father; consequently, the mother’s authoritative role within the family was repressed. As the literature of the period recognized, however, there would be no family unit for the father to lead without the words and bodies of women to make narratives of dynasty and legitimacy possible. Early modern discourse reveals that the reproductive roles of men and women, and the social hierarchies that grow out of them, are as much a matter of human design as of divine or natural law. Moreover, despite the attempts of James I and Charles I to strengthen royal patriarchal authority, the role of the monarch was repeatedly challenged on stage and in print even prior to the British Civil Wars and the 1649 beheading of Charles I. Texts produced at moments of political crisis reveal how women could uphold the legitimacy of familial and political hierarchies, but they also disclose patriarchy’s limits by representing “natural” male authority as depending in part on women’s discursive control over their bodies. Due to the epistemological instability of the female reproductive body, women play a privileged interpretive role in constructing patriarchal identities. The dearth of definitive knowledge about the female body during this period, and the consequent inability to fix or stabilize somatic meaning, led to the proliferation of differing, and frequently contradictory, depictions of women’s bodies. The female body became a site of contested meaning in early modern discourse, with men and women struggling for dominance, and competitors so diverse as to include kings, midwives, scholars of anatomy, and female religious sectarians. Essentially, this competition came down to a question of where to locate somatic meaning: In the opaque, uncertain bodies of women? In women’s equally uncertain and unreliable words? In the often contradictory claims of various male-authored medical treatises? In the whispered conversations that took place between women behind the closed doors of birthing rooms? My dissertation traces this representational instability through plays by William Shakespeare, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, and William Rowley, as well as in monstrous birth pamphlets, medical treatises, legal documents, histories, satires, and ballads. In these texts, the stories women tell about and through their bodies challenge and often supersede male epistemological control. These stories, which I term female bodily narratives, allow women to participate in defining patriarchal authority at the levels of both the family and the state. After laying out these controversies and instabilities surrounding early modern women’s bodies in my first chapter, my remaining chapters analyze the impact of women’s words on four distinct but overlapping reproductive issues: virginity, pregnancy, birthing room rituals, and paternity. In chapters 2 and 3, I reveal how women construct the inner, unseen “truths” of their reproductive bodies through speech and performance, and in doing so challenge the traditional forms of male authority that depend on these very constructions for coherence. Chapter 2 analyzes virginity in Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s play The Changeling (1622) and in texts documenting the 1613 Essex divorce, during which Frances Howard, like Beatrice-Joanna in the play, was required to undergo a virginity test. These texts demonstrate that a woman’s ability to feign virginity could allow her to undermine patriarchal authority within the family and the state, even as they reveal how men relied on women to represent their reproductive bodies in socially stabilizing ways. During the British Civil Wars and Interregnum (1642-1660), Parliamentary writers used Howard as an example of how the unruly words and bodies of women could disrupt and transform state politics by influencing court faction; in doing so, they also revealed how female bodily narratives could help recast political historiography. In chapter 3, I investigate depictions of pregnancy in John Ford’s tragedy, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1633) and in early modern medical treatises from 1604 to 1651. Although medical texts claim to convey definitive knowledge about the female reproductive body, in actuality male knowledge frequently hinged on the ways women chose to interpret the unstable physical indicators of pregnancy. In Ford’s play, Annabella and Putana take advantage of male ignorance in order to conceal Annabella’s incestuous, illegitimate pregnancy from her father and husband, thus raising fears about women’s ability to misrepresent their bodies. Since medical treatises often frame the conception of healthy, legitimate offspring as a matter of national importance, women’s ability to conceal or even terminate their pregnancies could weaken both the patriarchal family and the patriarchal state that the family helped found. Chapters 4 and 5 broaden the socio-political ramifications of women’s words and bodies by demonstrating how female bodily narratives are required to establish paternity and legitimacy, and thus help shape patriarchal authority at multiple social levels. In chapter 4, I study representations of birthing room gossip in Thomas Middleton’s play, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613), and in three Mistris Parliament pamphlets (1648) that satirize parliamentary power. Across these texts, women’s birthing room “gossip” comments on and critiques such issues as men’s behavior towards their wives and children, the proper use of household funds, the finer points of religious ritual, and even the limits of the authority of the monarch. The collective speech of the female-dominated birthing room thus proves central not only to attributing paternity to particular men, but also to the consequent definition and establishment of the political, socio-economic, and domestic roles of patriarchy. Chapter 5 examines anxieties about paternity in William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1611) and in early modern monstrous birth pamphlets from 1600 to 1647, in which children born with congenital deformities are explained as God’s punishment for the sexual, religious, and/or political transgressions of their parents or communities. Both the play and the pamphlets explore the formative/deformative power of women’s words and bodies over their offspring, a power that could obscure a father’s connection to his children. However, although the pamphlets attempt to contain and discipline women’s unruly words and bodies with the force of male authority, the play reveals the dangers of male tyranny and the crucial role of maternal authority in reproducing and authenticating dynastic continuity and royal legitimacy. My emphasis on the socio-political impact of women’s self-representation distinguishes my work from that of scholars such as Mary Fissell and Julie Crawford, who claim that early modern beliefs about the female reproductive body influenced textual depictions of major religious and political events, but give little sustained attention to the role female speech plays in these representations. In contrast, my dissertation reveals that in such texts, patriarchal society relies precisely on the words women speak about their own and other women’s bodies. Ultimately, I argue that female bodily narratives were crucial in shaping early modern culture, and they are equally crucial to our critical understanding of sexual and state politics in the literature of the period.

Creating a modern home: homeowners in post-war suburban Glasgow, 1945-1975

This thesis examines how married couples bought and created a modern home for their families in suburban Glasgow between 1945-1975. New homeowners were on the cusp of the middle-classes, buying in a climate of renters. As they progressed through the family lifecycle women’s return to work meant they became more comfortably ensconced within the middle-classes. Engaged with a process of homemaking through consumption and labour, couples transformed their houses into homes that reflected themselves and their social status. The interior of the home was focused on as a site of social relations. Marriage in the suburbs was one of collaboration as each partner performed distinct gender roles. The idea of a shared home was investigated and the story of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ emerged from both testimony and contemporary literature. This thesis considers decision-making, labour and leisure to show the ways in which experiences of home were gendered. What emerged was that women’s work as everyday and mundane was overlooked and undervalued while husband’s extraordinary contributions in the form of DIY came to the fore. The impact of wider culture intruded upon the ‘private’ home as we see they ways in which the position of women in society influences their relationship to the home and their family. In the suburbs of post-war Glasgow women largely left the workforce to stay at home with their children. Mothers popped in and out of each other houses for tea and a blether, creating a homosocial network that was sociable and supportive unique to this time in their lives and to this historical context. Daily life was negotiated within the walls of the modern home. The inter-war suburbs of Glasgow needed modernising to post-war standards of modern living. ‘Modern’ was both an aesthetic and an engagement with new technologies within the house. Both middle and working-class practices for room use were found through the keeping of a ‘good’ or best room and the determination of couples to eat in their small kitchenettes. As couples updated their kitchen, the fitted kitchen revealed contemporary notions of modern décor, as kitchens became bright yellow with blue Formica worktops. The modern home was the evolution of existing ideas of modern combined with new standards of living. As Glasgow homeowners constructed their modern home what became evident was that this was a shared process and as a couple they placed their children central to all aspects of their lives to create not only a modern home, but that this was first and foremost a family home

Survival, differentiation, and neuroprotective mechanisms of human stem cells complexed with neurotrophin-3-releasing pharmacologically active microcarriers in an ex vivo model of Parkinson's disease

International audience

French good practice guidelines for medical and occupational surveillance of the low back pain risk among workers exposed to manual handling of loads

International audience

Twitter e ciberativismo: o movimento social da hashtag #ForaMicarla em Natal-RN

The spatial and temporal fluidity conditioned by the technologies of social interaction online have been allowing that collective actions of protest and activism arise every day in cyberspace - the cyber-activism. If before these actions were located in geographical boundaries, today's demands and mobilizations extrapolate the location, connect to the global, and at the same time, return to the regional through digital virtuality. Within this context of the relationship between digital technology and global flow of sociability, emerges in October 2010 the social movement of the hashtag "#ForaMicarla", which means the dissatisfaction of cibernauts from Natal of Twitter with the current management of the municipality of Natal-RN, Micarla de Sousa (Green Party). We can find in the center of this movement and others who appeared in the world at the same time a technological condition of Twitter, with the hashtag "#". Given this scenario, this research seeks to analyze how the relationship of the agents of movement hashtag "ForaMicarla", based on the principle that it was formed in the Twitter network and is maintained on the platform on a daily basis, it can create a new kind of political culture. Thus, this study discusses theoretically the importance of Twitter and movements that emerge on the platform and through it to understand the social and political demands of the contemporary world and this public sphere, which now seems to include cyberspace

Sodium chloride added to transport water and physiological responses of Matrinxã Brycon amazonicus (Teleost: Characidae)

A adição de sal à água tem sido utilizada para a mitigação de estresse e aumento da taxa de sobrevivência em peixes. O presente estudo avaliou o efeito do cloreto de sódio (0,0; 1,0; 3,0 e 6.0 g/l) nas concentrações de cortisol plasmático, glicemia, triglicerídios, proteínas total plasmática, hematócrito, hemoglobina, número de eritrócitos, glicogênio e lipídio hepáticos, e lipídio muscular em matrinxã Brycon amazonicum adultos após quatro horas de transporte e durante período de recuperação de 96 h. Amostras foram coletadas antes e depois do transporte, bem como 24 e 96 h após a chegada. O nível de cortisol plasmático estava mais elevado logo após o transporte quando comparado à condição inicial (pré-transporte), exceto para os peixes transportados com sal nas concentrações 3,0 e 6,0 g/l. Comportamento semelhante foi observado para a glicemia, porém os peixes dos tratamentos 0,0, 1,0 e 3,0 g/l necessitaram de período superior a 24 h para recuperar a condição inicial. Foram registrados níveis mais baixos de glicogênio hepático em peixes do tratamento controle (0,0 g/l). Os parâmetros hemoglobina, número de eritrócitos, proteína plasmática total e lipídio hepático não apresentaram alterações durante o período experimental. Os valores de hematócrito diminuíram logo após o transporte em todos os tratamentos, retornando aos níveis iniciais após 24 h. Todos os tratamentos apresentaram redução nos níveis de lipídio muscular e triglicerídios durante o período de recuperação. Os resultados sugerem que a adição de 6,0 g/l de sal na água de transporte reduz as alterações fisiológicas de estresse e que é necessário período de 96 h após o transporte para a recuperação da condição inicial de matrinxãs transportados sem a adição de sal.