Belief in a just world and self-efficacy to promote justice in the world predict helping attitudes, but only among volunteers

Previous studies have shown that willingness to help particular victims is predicted separately, or in combination, by the belief in a just world (BJW) and self-efficacy to promote justice in the world (SEJW). Our goal was to extend this knowledge by studying general attitudes towards helping and the association between BJW and SEJW in people that do volunteer service, and by comparing the predictive power of two spheres of BJW, personal BJW and general BJW, on helping attitudes. We measured personal BJW, general BJW, SEJW and helping attitudes in two samples (one comprising university students and the other only volunteers). The results differed in the two samples. For volunteers endorsing strong self-efficacy to promote justice in the world, personal BJW was associated positively with helping attitudes (p = .007). For participants endorsing weak self-efficacy to promote justice in the world, personal BJW was not associated with helping attitudes in either sample. General BJW was not associated with helping attitudes in either sample, either independently or in interaction with self-efficacy to promote justice in the world. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Caracterização dos sedimentos da Lagoa da Apúlia (PNLN), Esposende, NW de Portugal

A Lagoa da Apúlia é um espaço natural enquadrado no Parque Natural Litoral do Norte (PNLN). Tem existido interesse, por parte do PNLN, em reabilitar este ambiente classificado como zona de proteção parcial do tipo 1 e com o seu Habitat classificado como prioritário pela Diretiva Habitats. O objetivo do estudo é compreender os processos que controlam o enchimento da lagoa e, para tal, aproveitou-se uma intervenção levada a cabo pelo PNLN, para amostrar o material proveniente até 4 metros profundidade. Foram recolhidas 10 amostras provenientes de 3 perfis. As amostras foram sujeitas ao seguinte tratamento laboratorial: secagem em estufa a temperatura inferior a 40 °C; quartilhamento; análise dimensional obtida por crivação no RoTap durante 15 minutos, segundo uma escala dimensional com intervalos iguais a √2, e por Sedigraph, para as partículas inferiores a 62 μm. Para os cálculos granulométricos e dos parâmetros estatísticos foi usado o programa SEDMAC/SEDPC (Henriques, 2003). Cada fração retida nos crivos foi observada à lupa binocular, tendo sido registada qualitativamente a composição, a sua abundância relativa, a forma e o desgaste dos grãos. O enchimento da Lagoa da Apúlia, até 4 metros de profundidade, é genericamente constituído por sedimentos areno-lodosos, variando de areão, 15 % nas camadas mais profundas, a areia, 30 % nas intermédias, contendo uma fração fina abundante, até cerca de 60 % de limo e argila nas camadas do topo. Os grãos são, na sua maioria, de quartzo, biotite e moscovite, de modo geral, com forma esférica a subdiscoide e apresentando-se angulosos a subangulosos. No estudo à lupa existiu uma especial atenção para a pesquisa de organismos (ou seus restos) de origem marinha e terrestre, que se verificou serem inexistentes, no caso dos de origem marinha, aparecendo apenas restos de origem vegetal. Os resultados indicam que os sedimentos até à profundidade amostrada, são de origem próxima, cujo transporte ocorreu com variações de energia, atingindo condições para a deposição gravítica da fração fina de lodo. Conclui-se que a Lagoa da Apúlia tem sido dominada por assoreamento, por ação de transporte fluvial. A condição lacustre com interesse a ser preservada em termos de Habitat, embora historicamente instalada, está ameaçada, sendo a colmatação da lagoa a tendência dominante atualmente. Os estudos realizados na região por Granja, et al. (2010), indicam que a área esteve sujeita a três fases distintas, sendo a primeira correspondente a um ambiente do tipo estuarino ou fluvial, a segunda a um ambiente de lagoa e a terceira a um ambiente eólico, terminando com a pedogénese deste. Neste contexto, a Lagoa da Apúlia pode ser usada como testemunho da evolução ambiental da zona litoral norte.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fermentative bio-hydrogen production from organic wastes and sugars

Utilization of renewable energy has been identified as a priority within the “European Energy Policy” which stresses the need to develop new sources of green energy. A follow-up of the programme “Intelligent Energy – Europe” (Decision No. 1230/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2003) is projected for the 7th Framework Programme (2007-2013). The main focus of the programme is the production of electricity from renewable sources of energy, as described in Directive 2001/77/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 September 2001. According to this document, Portugal has committed to raise the national electricity production exclusively from renewable sources to 39% by 2010. In addition, it constitutes an essential part of the package of measures necessary to comply with the commitments made by the EU under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrogen is a CO2-neutral energy source with a very promising future as an alternative to fossil fuels for energy production. The treatment and disposal of wastes by conventional methods poses many problems throughout the world and may result in the consumption of energy. In addition, costs to dispose and treat wastes are escalating. Hydrogen can be produced, from undesirable waste products by bacterial fermentation, to generate electricity. The Centre for Biological Engineering at the University of Minho is studying bio-hydrogen production from organic wastes and sugars. The specific tasks of the project (FCT/POCI/ENR/57786/2004) include the utilization of different waste compositions from a real kitchen waste and sugars to produce and optimize H2 yields, methanogenesis inhibition strategies, design, construction and operation of batch and continuous lab scale reactors for mesophilic (37 °C), thermophilic (55 °C), and hyperthermophilic (70 °C) conditions. In addition, molecular ecology techniques are being used to study bacterial community dynamics in the different bioreactors, comparing the microbial communities developed at different temperatures and different OLR. One objective is to determine the optimal conditions to select the most important microorganisms involved in H2 production

Error threshold in the evolution of diploid organisms

The effects of error propagation in the reproduction of diploid organisms are studied within the populational genetics framework of the quasispecies model. The dependence of the error threshold on the dominance parameter is fully investigated. In particular, it is shown that dominance can protect the wild-type alleles from the error catastrophe. The analysis is restricted to a diploid analogue of the single-peaked landscape.Comment: 9 pages, 4 Postscript figures. Submitted to J. Phy. A: Mat. and Ge

Vanadium pentoxide: an oxidative stress agent which disturbs glutathione conjugates metabolization in Saccharomyces cerevisiae UE-ME3

Under physiological conditions the vanadium can be detected in the oxidation state V (+5), a very toxic specie. In this study we used a wine wild-type Saccharomyces cerevisiae UE-ME3 to assess how eukaryotic cells respond to V2O5. Yeast cells in exponential phase were inoculated into YEPD medium with 2% (w / v) glucose and allowed to grow in the absence or presence of 0.5 to 2.0 mM V2O5 during 72 h. The results show that the cellular environment became more oxidizing, cell damages increase and failures in the transport and excretion of amino acids to the vacuole ocurr in yeast cells grown in the presence of vanadium (+5), as can be inferred by the decrease of GSH/GSSG ratio, increase of MDA cytoplasmic level and the sharp decrease of g-GT activity observed. Although there was an apparent response anti-stress to V2O5, reflected in an increase of GR activity in all trials of metal exposure and of GPx in cells exposed to 1.5 and 2.0 mM, this was probably mitigated by the decrease in activity G6PD and consequent availability of NADPH which compromise cell viability

Decrease in carbon stocks in an oxisol due to land use and cover change in southwestern Amazon.

This study presents data on the influence of the land cover type on soil carbon stocks in an Oxisol in southwestern Amazon, Acre, Brazil, under three land cover types: mature forest, pasture and rubber tree plantation. Total soil carbon was calculated using carbon concentration in soil and soil bulk density. Accumulated soil carbon stock up to 1 m depth was greater in mature forest (96 Mg ha-1), followed by pasture (79.7 Mg ha-1) and then by rubber tree plantation (56.3 Mg ha-1); also the greatest carbon accumulation in the surface layers was in pasture. Such results demonstrate that we need not only carbon stocks information by soil type, but also precise information on the land cover classification within a region in order to generate better soil carbon stocks estimations. Also, it is important to notice that mature forest conversion to other land covers can be the source to the atmosphere of about 20 to 40% of the carbon stocked in the soil previously

Error threshold in finite populations

A simple analytical framework to study the molecular quasispecies evolution of finite populations is proposed, in which the population is assumed to be a random combination of the constiyuent molecules in each generation,i.e., linkage disequilibrium at the population level is neglected. In particular, for the single-sharp-peak replication landscape we investigate the dependence of the error threshold on the population size and find that the replication accuracy at threshold increases linearly with the reciprocal of the population size for sufficiently large populations. Furthermore, in the deterministic limit our formulation yields the exact steady-state of the quasispecies model, indicating then the population composition is a random combination of the molecules.Comment: 14 pages and 4 figure