Methylmercury exposure and developmental neurotoxicity

Comment on: Global methylmercury exposure from seafood consumption and risk of developmental neurotoxicity: a systematic review. [Bull World Health Organ. 2014]

What can ecosystems learn? Expanding evolutionary ecology with learning theory.

BACKGROUND: The structure and organisation of ecological interactions within an ecosystem is modified by the evolution and coevolution of the individual species it contains. Understanding how historical conditions have shaped this architecture is vital for understanding system responses to change at scales from the microbial upwards. However, in the absence of a group selection process, the collective behaviours and ecosystem functions exhibited by the whole community cannot be organised or adapted in a Darwinian sense. A long-standing open question thus persists: Are there alternative organising principles that enable us to understand and predict how the coevolution of the component species creates and maintains complex collective behaviours exhibited by the ecosystem as a whole? RESULTS: Here we answer this question by incorporating principles from connectionist learning, a previously unrelated discipline already using well-developed theories on how emergent behaviours arise in simple networks. Specifically, we show conditions where natural selection on ecological interactions is functionally equivalent to a simple type of connectionist learning, 'unsupervised learning', well-known in neural-network models of cognitive systems to produce many non-trivial collective behaviours. Accordingly, we find that a community can self-organise in a well-defined and non-trivial sense without selection at the community level; its organisation can be conditioned by past experience in the same sense as connectionist learning models habituate to stimuli. This conditioning drives the community to form a distributed ecological memory of multiple past states, causing the community to: a) converge to these states from any random initial composition; b) accurately restore historical compositions from small fragments; c) recover a state composition following disturbance; and d) to correctly classify ambiguous initial compositions according to their similarity to learned compositions. We examine how the formation of alternative stable states alters the community's response to changing environmental forcing, and we identify conditions under which the ecosystem exhibits hysteresis with potential for catastrophic regime shifts. CONCLUSIONS: This work highlights the potential of connectionist theory to expand our understanding of evo-eco dynamics and collective ecological behaviours. Within this framework we find that, despite not being a Darwinian unit, ecological communities can behave like connectionist learning systems, creating internal conditions that habituate to past environmental conditions and actively recalling those conditions. REVIEWERS: This article was reviewed by Prof. Ricard V Solé, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and Prof. Rob Knight, University of Colorado, Boulder.

A técnica de dispersão de taylor para estudos de difusão em líquidos e suas aplicações

This paper describes the theoretical basis and the experimental requirements for the application of the Taylor dispersion technique for measurements of diffusion coefficients in liquids, emphasizing its simplicity and accuracy in comparison to other usual techniques. Some examples are discussed describing the use of this methodology on studies of solute-solvent interactions, solute aggregation, solute partitioning into macromolecular systems and on the assessment of nanoparticles sizes.

Sistemas aquosos bifásicos: fundamentos e aplicações para partição/purificação de proteínas

By the year 2005 the world biochemical market will reach an estimated $ 100 billion and separation processes are a vital link between lab discoveries and the fulfillment of this commercialization potential. The practical application of aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) to extraction processes has been exploited for several years for the recovery of biological products. Unfortunately, this has not resulted in an extensive presence of the technique in commercial processes. In this paper a critical overview of the fundamental thermodynamic properties related to formation of aqueous two-phase systems and their application to extraction and purification of bioparticules is presented.

Avaliação da filtração e ozonização de efluente sanitário primário: aspectos de inativação microbiana e variáveis de ozonização

Ozonation tests with and without prior filtration by means of a 50 micron mesh cartridge filter were conducted with primary sanitary effluents. Filtration led to increased inactivation efficiencies with regard to total and thermotolerant coliforms but it did not seem to influence heterotrophic plate count (HPC) bacteria inactivation efficiencies significantly. Application of the Chick-Watson model to experimental data obtained in the situation of constant inactivation showed that the ozone dosage was more important to bacterial inactivation than the contact time with regard to the cases of thermotolerant coliform inactivation in filtered samples and HPC bacteria and total coliform inactivation in non-filtered samples.

Alographia dos álkalis... de Frei Conceição Veloso: um manual de química industrial para produção da potassa no Brasil colonial

Potassium carbonate, or potash, was the most important industrial chemical of the 18th century. It was essential for producing glass, soap, saltpeter, dyes, several drugs, and also used for bleaching linens, paper, and sugar. We examine here a book in which Brazilian author José Mariano da Conceição Veloso gathered his translations into Portuguese of English and French articles, letters, patents, and pamphlets with instructions on how to prepare potash. We discuss especially his version of Richard Watson's essay entitled 'Of saline substances', and Veloso's own 'Flora Alographica', a description of the Brazilian plants that could be used to prepare potash.

Aspectos biológicos de Halysidota pearsoni (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae) com folhas de amoreira

O objetivo deste trabalho foi estudar aspectos biológicos de Halysidota pearsoni Watson, 1980 (Lepidoptera: Arctiidae). Lagartas de H. pearsoni foram criadas com folhas de Morus alba L. em potes plásticos até a fase de pupa. Dez casais desse lepidóptero foram individualizados em gaiolas para obtenção de ovos à temperatura de 25 ± 2 °C, umidade relativa de 60 ± 10% e fotofase de 12 horas. Halysidota pearsoni teve período de oviposição de 3,5 ± 0,17 com 141,00 ± 9,18 ovos por fêmea, período de incubação de 7,5 ± 0,17 dias e viabilidade de ovos de 53,34 ± 5,24%. A fase larval de H. pearsoni teve seis estádios, com duração total de 28 dias, viabilidade de 91,78 ± 3,24%. A duração e a viabilidade dos períodos pré-pupal e pupal de H. pearsoni foram, respectivamente, de 7,0 ± 00 e 19,39 ± 0,74 dias e de 70,15 ± 5,63 e 93,62 ± 3,60%. O peso médio de suas pupas foi de 464,17 ± 7,70 mg e a razão sexual e de 0,45. A longevidade (dias) de machos e fêmeas de H. pearsoni, com folhas de M. alba, foi de 7,40 ± 0,34 e 9,50 ± 0,45, respectivamente.

Onko elinikäisellä oppimisella tulevaisuutta?

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Dekkari vai tutkija? : molempi pahempi

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Kadonneen aarteen metsästyksestä eksaktiksi tieteeksi

Kirjallisuusarvostelu