Os animais não humanos no material didático do programa São Paulo Faz Escola

The relationship between humans and non-human animals dates back to the Prehistoric Era, when groups of humans migrated from the nomadic and extractive stage to sedentariness, starting to develop agriculture and animal husbandry. Ancient Greek philosophy, notably the Aristotelian school of philosophy, posited that nature has not done anything for nothing, and all things have a purpose: plants were created for the sake of animals, and these for the good of men, while the Bible preaches the view that the world was created for the good of men and other species were subordinated to their wants and needs. During the Renaissance, centuries XIV to XVI, anthropocentrism was established as the main philosophical concept. However, in relation to the treatment of animals, Renaissance did not differ substantially from medieval scholasticism, considering animals like machines, devoid of pain and immortal soul. In this context, scientific knowledge about plants, non-human animals and nature in general, is built on anthropocentric values, thus influencing the construction of school education in the disciplines of Science and Biology. Nowadays, at São Paulo state schools, specifically in the Ensino Fundamental II (6th to 9th grade), the program of the discipline Ciências da Natureza e suas Tecnologias is set by the Currículo Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, via the São Paulo Faz Escola Program, implemented by the Secretaria Estadual de Educação in 2010. This documentary research used the methodology of Content Analysis and aimed to analyze the presentation of non-human animals in Caderno do Professor and Caderno do Aluno, from 6th to 9th grades of the discipline Ciências da Natureza e suas Tecnologias. The analysis of the courseware revealed that its contents were influenced by the anthropocentric view, in both implicitly and explicitly ways, conveying anthropomorphic, utilitarian, stereotyped and derogatory statements towards...

Os animais não humanos no material didático do programa São Paulo Faz Escola

The relationship between humans and non-human animals dates back to the Prehistoric Era, when groups of humans migrated from the nomadic and extractive stage to sedentariness, starting to develop agriculture and animal husbandry. Ancient Greek philosophy, notably the Aristotelian school of philosophy, posited that nature has not done anything for nothing, and all things have a purpose: plants were created for the sake of animals, and these for the good of men, while the Bible preaches the view that the world was created for the good of men and other species were subordinated to their wants and needs. During the Renaissance, centuries XIV to XVI, anthropocentrism was established as the main philosophical concept. However, in relation to the treatment of animals, Renaissance did not differ substantially from medieval scholasticism, considering animals like machines, devoid of pain and immortal soul. In this context, scientific knowledge about plants, non-human animals and nature in general, is built on anthropocentric values, thus influencing the construction of school education in the disciplines of Science and Biology. Nowadays, at São Paulo state schools, specifically in the Ensino Fundamental II (6th to 9th grade), the program of the discipline Ciências da Natureza e suas Tecnologias is set by the Currículo Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, via the São Paulo Faz Escola Program, implemented by the Secretaria Estadual de Educação in 2010. This documentary research used the methodology of Content Analysis and aimed to analyze the presentation of non-human animals in Caderno do Professor and Caderno do Aluno, from 6th to 9th grades of the discipline Ciências da Natureza e suas Tecnologias. The analysis of the courseware revealed that its contents were influenced by the anthropocentric view, in both implicitly and explicitly ways, conveying anthropomorphic, utilitarian, stereotyped and derogatory statements towards...

Two-Item Sentence Comprehension by a Dog (Canis familiaris)

Syntax use by non-human animals remains a controversial issue. We present here evidence that a dog may respond to verbal requests composed of two independent terms, one referring to an object and the other to an action to be performed relative to the object. A female mongrel dog, Sofia, was initially trained to respond to action (point and fetch) and object (ball, key, stick, bottle and bear) terms which were then presented as simultaneous, combinatorial requests (e. g. ball fetch, stick point). Sofia successfully responded to object-action requests presented as single sentences, and was able to flexibly generalize her performance across different contexts. These results provide empirical evidence that dogs are able to extract the information contained in complex messages and to integrate it in directed performance, an ability which is shared with other linguistically trained animals and may represent a forerunner of syntactic functioning.

Visual-somatosensory interactions in mental representations of the body and the face

The body is represented in the brain at levels that incorporate multisensory information. This thesis focused on interactions between vision and cutaneous sensations (i.e., touch and pain). Experiment 1 revealed that there are partially dissociable pathways for visual enhancement of touch (VET) depending upon whether one sees one’s own body or the body of another person. This indicates that VET, a seeming low-level effect on spatial tactile acuity, is actually sensitive to body identity. Experiments 2-4 explored the effect of viewing one’s own body on pain perception. They demonstrated that viewing the body biases pain intensity judgments irrespective of actual stimulus intensity, and, more importantly, reduces the discriminative capacities of the nociceptive pathway encoding noxious stimulus intensity. The latter effect only occurs if the pain-inducing event itself is not visible, suggesting that viewing the body alone and viewing a stimulus event on the body have distinct effects on cutaneous sensations. Experiment 5 replicated an enhancement of visual remapping of touch (VRT) when viewing fearful human faces being touched, and further demonstrated that VRT does not occur for observed touch on non-human faces, even fearful ones. This suggests that the facial expressions of non-human animals may not be simulated within the somatosensory system of the human observer in the same way that the facial expressions of other humans are. Finally, Experiment 6 examined the enfacement illusion, in which synchronous visuo-tactile inputs cause another’s face to be assimilated into the mental self-face representation. The strength of enfacement was not affected by the other’s facial expression, supporting an asymmetric relationship between processing of facial identity and facial expressions. Together, these studies indicate that multisensory representations of the body in the brain link low-level perceptual processes with the perception of emotional cues and body/face identity, and interact in complex ways depending upon contextual factors.

Change Detection Memory in Rhesus Monkeys and Humans

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is the storage of visual information over a brief time period (usually a few seconds or less). Over the past decade, the most popular task for studying VSTM in humans has been the change detection task. In this task, subjects must remember several visual items per trial in order to identify a change following a brief delay interval. Results from change detection tasks have shown that VSTM is limited; humans are only able to accurately hold a few visual items in mind over a brief delay. However, there has been much debate in regard to the structure or cause of these limitations. The two most popular conceptualizations of VSTM limitations in recent years have been the fixed-capacity model and the continuous-resource model. The fixed-capacity model proposes a discrete limit on the total number of visual items that can be stored in VSTM. The continuous-resource model proposes a continuous-resource that can be allocated among many visual items in VSTM, with noise in item memory increasing as the number of items to be remembered increases. While VSTM is far from being completely understood in humans, even less is known about VSTM in non-human animals, including the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta). Given that rhesus monkeys are the premier medical model for humans, it is important to understand their VSTM if they are to contribute to understanding human memory. The primary goals of this study were to train and test rhesus monkeys and humans in change detection in order to directly compare VSTM between the two species and explore the possibility that direct species comparison might shed light on the fixed-capacity vs. continuous-resource models of VSTM. The comparative results suggest qualitatively similar VSTM for the two species through converging evidence supporting the continuous-resource model and thereby establish rhesus monkeys as a good system for exploring neurophysiological correlates of VSTM.

El problema de la condición de persona aplicada a los animales no humanos : Antropocentrismo especista, subjetividad y derecho

En este trabajo de tesis de grado buscaremos indagar, desde una perspectiva no-antropocéntrica, una temática contemporánea y de plena actualidad, que se está produciendo en las sociedades occidentales. Se trata del problema de la condición de persona aplicada a animales no humanos, enfocándonos principalmente en tres ejes de análisis: como hemos dicho, la noción de persona, el antropocentrismo especista, y la noción de sujeto. El marco general para pensar estas cuestiones es el cambio de perspectiva en la filosofía y en la ciencia, que comienza a darse con mayor ímpetu desde el último tercio del s. XX. Este cambio en el marco conceptual general, puede entenderse como una crisis en la forma de pensar al ser humano y su relación con el mundo no humano. Este cambio, a su vez, repercute en la sociedad en términos de la emergencia de nuevas reivindicaciones, entre ellas, la de los animales como sujetos de derecho y la plausibilidad de adscribir a algunos de ellos la condición de persona a partir de una serie de características que comparten con los seres humanos. ;Antes de proseguir, consideremos lo siguiente. Tal como señaló Niko Tinbergen con su "¿Qué pregunta, preguntas?" (Stamp Dawkins, 2007) resulta fundamental formular claramente la pregunta que guía nuestras hipótesis de trabajo, para dar cuenta de su sentido. De esta manera, explicitaremos la pregunta desde la que partimos, a saber, ¿Qué pone en juego o en duda la hipótesis de antropocentrismo especista y la de sujeto y persona aplicada a animales no humanos? Claramente es una cuestión compleja. No la abordaremos en la infinidad de sus aristas y derivaciones. Aun así, buscaremos un recorrido temático para pensar las dificultades que se imponen en este tópico contemporáneo

El problema de la condición de persona aplicada a los animales no humanos : Antropocentrismo especista, subjetividad y derecho

En este trabajo de tesis de grado buscaremos indagar, desde una perspectiva no-antropocéntrica, una temática contemporánea y de plena actualidad, que se está produciendo en las sociedades occidentales. Se trata del problema de la condición de persona aplicada a animales no humanos, enfocándonos principalmente en tres ejes de análisis: como hemos dicho, la noción de persona, el antropocentrismo especista, y la noción de sujeto. El marco general para pensar estas cuestiones es el cambio de perspectiva en la filosofía y en la ciencia, que comienza a darse con mayor ímpetu desde el último tercio del s. XX. Este cambio en el marco conceptual general, puede entenderse como una crisis en la forma de pensar al ser humano y su relación con el mundo no humano. Este cambio, a su vez, repercute en la sociedad en términos de la emergencia de nuevas reivindicaciones, entre ellas, la de los animales como sujetos de derecho y la plausibilidad de adscribir a algunos de ellos la condición de persona a partir de una serie de características que comparten con los seres humanos. ;Antes de proseguir, consideremos lo siguiente. Tal como señaló Niko Tinbergen con su "¿Qué pregunta, preguntas?" (Stamp Dawkins, 2007) resulta fundamental formular claramente la pregunta que guía nuestras hipótesis de trabajo, para dar cuenta de su sentido. De esta manera, explicitaremos la pregunta desde la que partimos, a saber, ¿Qué pone en juego o en duda la hipótesis de antropocentrismo especista y la de sujeto y persona aplicada a animales no humanos? Claramente es una cuestión compleja. No la abordaremos en la infinidad de sus aristas y derivaciones. Aun así, buscaremos un recorrido temático para pensar las dificultades que se imponen en este tópico contemporáneo

El problema de la condición de persona aplicada a los animales no humanos : Antropocentrismo especista, subjetividad y derecho

En este trabajo de tesis de grado buscaremos indagar, desde una perspectiva no-antropocéntrica, una temática contemporánea y de plena actualidad, que se está produciendo en las sociedades occidentales. Se trata del problema de la condición de persona aplicada a animales no humanos, enfocándonos principalmente en tres ejes de análisis: como hemos dicho, la noción de persona, el antropocentrismo especista, y la noción de sujeto. El marco general para pensar estas cuestiones es el cambio de perspectiva en la filosofía y en la ciencia, que comienza a darse con mayor ímpetu desde el último tercio del s. XX. Este cambio en el marco conceptual general, puede entenderse como una crisis en la forma de pensar al ser humano y su relación con el mundo no humano. Este cambio, a su vez, repercute en la sociedad en términos de la emergencia de nuevas reivindicaciones, entre ellas, la de los animales como sujetos de derecho y la plausibilidad de adscribir a algunos de ellos la condición de persona a partir de una serie de características que comparten con los seres humanos. ;Antes de proseguir, consideremos lo siguiente. Tal como señaló Niko Tinbergen con su "¿Qué pregunta, preguntas?" (Stamp Dawkins, 2007) resulta fundamental formular claramente la pregunta que guía nuestras hipótesis de trabajo, para dar cuenta de su sentido. De esta manera, explicitaremos la pregunta desde la que partimos, a saber, ¿Qué pone en juego o en duda la hipótesis de antropocentrismo especista y la de sujeto y persona aplicada a animales no humanos? Claramente es una cuestión compleja. No la abordaremos en la infinidad de sus aristas y derivaciones. Aun así, buscaremos un recorrido temático para pensar las dificultades que se imponen en este tópico contemporáneo

Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

This article addresses the reluctance of mainstream corporate and commercial media to critically address major environmental and conservation issues. The resulting public pedagogy largely reproduces the neoliberal ideology informing much conservation practice and discourse. Nonetheless, the media retains an unrealised critical educative potential that needs to be drawn upon by critical media practitioners and educators. To do this, educators need to be cognisant of the phenomenological experience of spectatorship, the aesthetic form and relational contexts of media consumption, production and informal learning. Referring to the work of Vivian Sobchack, Henry Giroux, Pierre Bourdieu and Gilles Deleuze, the article argues that if critical practitioner-educators apply an analytic framework informed by critical realism, counter-hegemonic elements found within corporate and independent media productions and conservation initiatives may be rearticulated and re-presented in a more positive manner. For this to occur, critical media practitioners-educators need to recognise that feasible political and normative alternatives are both available and practically possible. The article ends by discussing some relatively recent non-fiction productions that express a commonality between human and non-human animals and so form the basis of a critical environmental education-media practice.

Medicina veterinária de desastres e catástrofes : contributo para a extensão do Plano Municipal de Emergência de Proteção Civil de Lisboa aos animais de companhia

Dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Medicina Veterinária

Inoculation of Triatoma Virus (Dicistroviridae: Cripavirus) elicits a non-infective immune response in mice

Background: Dicistroviridae is a new family of small, non-enveloped, +ssRNA viruses pathogenic to both beneficial arthropods and insect pests. Little is known about the dicistrovirus replication mechanism or gene function, and any knowledge on these subjects comes mainly from comparisons with mammalian viruses from the Picornaviridae family. Due to its peculiar genome organization and characteristics of the per os viral transmission route, dicistroviruses make good candidates for use as biopesticides. Triatoma virus (TrV) is a pathogen of Triatoma infestans (Hemiptera: Reduviidae), one of the main vectors of the human trypanosomiasis disease called Chagas disease. TrV was postulated as a potential control agent against Chagas' vectors. Although there is no evidence that TrV nor other dicistroviruses replicate in species outside the Insecta class, the innocuousness of these viruses in humans and animals needs to be ascertained. Methods: In this study, RT-PCR and ELISA were used to detect the infectivity of this virus in Mus musculus BALB/c mice. Results: In this study we have observed that there is no significant difference in the ratio IgG2a/IgG1 in sera from animals inoculated with TrV when compared with non-inoculated animals or mice inoculated only with non-infective TrV protein capsids. Conclusions: We conclude that, under our experimental conditions, TrV is unable to replicate inmice. This study constitutes the first test to evaluate the infectivity of a dicistrovirus in a vertebrate animal model.

Photodynamic therapy with mTHPC and polyethylene glycol-derived mTHPC: a comparative study on human tumour xenografts.

The photosensitizing properties of m-tetrahydroxyphenylchlorin (mTHPC) and polyethylene glycol-derivatized mTHPC (pegylated mTHPC) were compared in nude mice bearing human malignant mesothelioma, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma xenografts. Laser light (20 J/cm2) at 652 nm was delivered to the tumour (surface irradiance) and to an equal-sized area of the hind leg of the animals after i.p. administration of 0.1 mg/kg body weight mTHPC and an equimolar dose of pegylated mTHPC, respectively. The extent of tumour necrosis and normal tissue injury was assessed by histology. Both mTHPC and pegylated mTHPC catalyse photosensitized necrosis in mesothelioma xenografts at drug-light intervals of 1-4 days. The onset of action of pegylated mTHPC seemed slower but significantly exceeds that of mTHPC by days 3 and 4 with the greatest difference being noted at day 4. Pegylated mTHPC also induced significantly larger photonecrosis than mTHPC in squamous cell xenografts but not in adenocarcinoma at day 4, where mTHPC showed greatest activity. The degree of necrosis induced by pegylated mTHPC was the same for all three xenografts. mTHPC led to necrosis of skin and underlying muscle at a drug-light interval of 1 day but minor histological changes only at drug-light intervals from 2-4 days. In contrast, pegylated mTHPC did not result in histologically detectable changes in normal tissues under the same treatment conditions at any drug-light interval assessed. In this study, pegylated mTHPC had advantages as a photosensitizer compared to mTHPC. Tissue concentrations of mTHPC and pegylated mTHPC were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography in non-irradiated animals 4 days after administration. There was no significant difference in tumour uptake between the two sensitizers in mesothelioma, adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma xenografts. Tissue concentration measurements were of limited use for predicting photosensitization in this model.

Temple Grandin fonds, 1974-2006 (non-inclusive)

Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 29,1947 to Richard Grandin and Eustacia Cutler. She was diagnosed with autism at age 2. She suffered from delayed speech development and did not begin to speak until the age of 4. Temple’s mother defied the doctors and kept her out of institutions. Temple was given speech therapy as well as an intensive education. Her high school science teacher and her aunt on a ranch in Arizona inspired Temple to continue her studies and pursue a career as a scientist and livestock equipment designer.She graduated from Hampshire Country School (a boarding school for gifted children) in Ridge, New Hampshire in 1966, and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970. In 1975, she received a master’s degree in animal science from Arizona State University and then a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois in 1989. She is currently a professor at Colorado State University. Dr. Grandin is one of the world’s leaders in the design of livestock handling facilities. She has done extensive work in design of handling facilities for animals and has developed animal welfare guidelines for the meat industries. Dr. Grandin is a past member of the board of directors of the Autism Society of America. She lectures to parents and teachers throughout the U.S. on her experiences with autism. She makes the case that the world needs people on the autism spectrum: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers and verbal thinkers. Some of Temple Grandin’s books include: Animals Make Us Human, Animals in Translation, The Way I See It, The Autistic Brain, and Different…Not Less. In 2010, a movie entitled “Temple Grandin” starring Clare Danes was released. The movie was based on Grandin’s own writings. Temple Grandin is an expert on animal behavior, a bestselling author, and an autism activist. In 2010, she was listed in the “Heroes” category in the “Time” list of the world’s 100 most influential people. She has received numerous awards including an honorary doctorate from McGill, the University of Illinois and Duke University. Temple Granin is a philosophical leader of both the animal welfare and autism advocacy movements. sources: http://www.templegrandin.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin

Humankindness: Illness, Animality, and the Limits of the Human in the Victorian Novel

This project posits a link between representations of animals or animality and representations of illness in the Victorian novel, and examines the narrative uses and ideological consequences of such representations. Figurations of animality and illness in Victorian fiction have been examined extensively as distinct phenomena, but examining their connection allows for a more complex view of the role of sympathy in the Victorian novel. The commonplace in novel criticism is that Victorian authors, whether effectively or not, constructed their novels with a view to the expansion of sympathy. This dissertation intervenes in the discussion of the Victorian novel as a vehicle for sympathy by positing that texts and scenes in which representations of illness and animality are conjoined reveal where the novel draws the boundaries of the human, and the often surprising limits it sets on sympathetic feeling. In such moments, textual cues train or direct readerly sympathies in ways that suggest a particular definition of the human, but that direction of sympathy is not always towards an enlarged sympathy, or an enlarged definition of the human. There is an equally (and increasingly) powerful antipathetic impulse in many of these texts, which estranges readerly sympathy from putatively deviant, degenerate, or dangerous groups. These two opposing impulses—the sympathetic and the antipathetic—often coexist in the same novel or even the same scene, creating an ideological and affective friction, and both draw on the same tropes of illness and animality. Examining the intersection of these different discourses—sympathy, illness, and animality-- in these novels reveals the way that major Victorian debates about human nature, evolution and degeneration, and moral responsibility shaped the novels of the era as vehicles for both antipathy and sympathy. Focusing on the novels of the Brontës and Thomas Hardy, this dissertation examines in depth the interconnected ways that representations of animals and animality and representations of illness function in the Victorian novel, as they allow authors to explore or redefine the boundary between the human and the non-human, the boundary between sympathy and antipathy, and the limits of sympathy itself.

MRI indices of functional recovery following intracerebral implantation of a human neural stem cell line in a pre-clinical model of ischaemic stroke

Stem cell therapy for ischaemic stroke is an emerging field in light of an increasing number of patients surviving with permanent disability. Several allogenic and autologous cells types are now in clinical trials with preliminary evidence of safety. Some clinical studies have reported functional improvements in some patients. After initial safety evaluation in a Phase 1 study, the conditionally immortalised human neural stem cell line CTX0E03 is currently in a Phase 2 clinical trial (PISCES-II). Previous pre-clinical studies conducted by ReNeuron Ltd, showed evidence of functional recovery in the Bilateral Asymmetry test up to 6 weeks following transplantation into rodent brain, 4 weeks after middle cerebral artery occlusion. Resting-state fMRI is increasingly used to investigate brain function in health and disease, and may also act as a predictor of recovery due to known network changes in the post-stroke recovery period. Resting-state methods have also been applied to non-human primates and rodents which have been found to have analogous resting-state networks to humans. The sensorimotor resting-state network of rodents is impaired following experimental focal ischaemia of the middle cerebral artery territory. However, the effects of stem cell implantation on brain functional networks has not previously been investigated. Prior studies assessed sensorimotor function following sub-cortical implantation of CTX0E03 cells in the rodent post-stroke brain but with no MRI assessments of functional improvements. This thesis presents research on the effect of sub-cortical implantation of CTX0E03 cells on the resting- state sensorimotor network and sensorimotor deficits in the rat following experimental stroke, using protocols based on previous work with this cell line. The work in this thesis identified functional tests of appropriate sensitivity for long-term dysfunction suitable for this laboratory, and investigated non-invasive monitoring of physiological variables required to optimize BOLD signal stability within a high-field MRI scanner. Following experimental stroke, rats demonstrated expected sensorimotor dysfunction and changes in the resting-state sensorimotor network. CTX0E03 cells did not improve post-stroke functional outcome (compared to previous studies) and with no changes in resting-state sensorimotor network activity. However, in control animals, we observed changes in functional networks due to the stereotaxic procedure. This illustrates the sensitivity of resting-state fMRI to stereotaxic procedures. We hypothesise that the damage caused by cell or vehicle implantation may have prevented functional and network recovery which has not been previously identified due to the application of different functional tests. The findings in this thesis represent one of few pre-clinical studies in resting-state fMRI network changes post-stroke and the only to date applying this technique to evaluate functional outcomes following a clinically applicable human neural stem cell treatment for ischaemic stroke. It was found that injury caused by stereotaxic injection should be taken into account when assessing the effectiveness of treatment.