Can Grazing Behaviour Support Innovations in Grassland Management?

Grazing is a fundamental process affecting grassland ecosystem dynamics and functioning. Its behavioural components comprise how animals search for feed, and gather and process plant tissues in different spatio-temporal scales of the grazing process. Nowadays, there is an increasing emphasis on grazing management and the role of the grazing animal on ecosystem services, concomitantly with a decreasing emphasis on grazing management generating animal production outputs. Grazing behaviour incorporates both approaches, which are not necessarily dichotomist. It would help in order to support innovation in grazing systems. However, it is unclear how the significant knowledge, developed in this research area since Agronomy and Ecology disciplines began to interact, have supported creativity in grazing science. It seems there is a current gap in this context, which was a major concern of researcher leaders like Harry Stobbs. This paper pays tribute to him, reviewing recent grazing behaviour research and prioritising those studies originating in the favourable tropics and subtropics. New evidence on how pasture structure limits forage intake in homogeneous and heterogeneous pastures is presented. Pasture management strategies designed to maximise bite mass and forage intake per unit grazing time are assumed to promote both animal production and landscape value. To conclude, a Brazilian case study (PISA) is briefly described to illustrate how grazing behaviour research can reach farmers and change their lives by using simple management strategies (take the best and leave the rest rule) supported by reductionist approaches applied in holistic frameworks

Flutuações dos níveis dos carboidratos de reserva disponíveis nas raízes e no caule do marmeleiro (Croton sonderianus Muell. Arg.).

Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho foi estudar as flutuações dos níveis dos carboidratos de reserva (Carboidratos Ácido-Digeríveis, CAD), nas raízes e no caule do marmeleiro (Croton sonderianus Muell.Arg.), durante seu ciclo fenológico. Um delineamento experimental inteiramente casualizado, com quatro repetições e distribuição fatorial de 3 x 9 (diâmetro de raiz ou caule vs estádios fenológicos), foi usado na análises estatísticas das variáveis raiz e caule. Os níveis dos CAD nas raízes apresentaram duas fases distintas: a de depleção-reposição das reservas, no período compreendido entre o intumescimento das gemas e a de frutificação, em que não ocorreram diferenças entre as classes de diâmetro nos diferentes estádios fenológicos. Houve uma fase de armazenamento, no período entre a frutificação e a queda das folhas, que variou conforme o diâmetro da raiz. Os níveis de CAD no caule mostraram o menor padrão de depleção-reposição e armazenamento, em função dos estádios fenológicos, mas não variaram em função do diâmetro do caule. [Change in the available storage carbohydrate levels on the roots and on the stems of marmeleiro (Croton sonderianus Muell. Arg.]. Abstract: The objective of this work was to study the change of the storage carbohydrate levels (Acid Digestible Carbohydrate, ADC) on the roots and on the stems of marmeleiro (Croton sonderianus Muell. Arg.), during its phenologic cycle. A complete randomized experimental design with four replicatos in a 3 × 9 factorial arrangement (roots and stems fraction x phenophase) was used in statistical analyses of the root and stems variables. The levels of the ADC in the roots showed two distinct stages, a depletion-reposition storage phase in the period between the tumescence of the aerial buds and the fruiting, when effect was found for root diameter and a storage phase, during the period between the fruiting and the falling of the leaves where differences among the smallest diameter class and the biggest diameter class were observed. The phases of depletion-reposition and storage of the ADC in the stems did not present differences among the three classes of length in each phenophase. However, the phenophase affected the depletion-reposition and the storage phases

O uso do motor stirling no ensino de termodinâmica : uma estratégia metodológica

Neste trabalho propomos a utilização do motor Stirling de forma contextualizada, em aulas de Física, no Ensino Médio, mediante uma estratégia metodológica fundamentada na teoria de Ausubel, a partir dos subsunçores presentes na estrutura cognitiva dos estudantes. Nessa perspectiva, sugerimos uma abordagem que utilize questionamentos que possam viabilizar o ancoramento dos novos conhecimentos nos referidos subsunçores, tornando-os mais elaborados. Com isso, acreditamos que essa estratégia pode facilitar a aprendizagem significativa do ciclo de Carnot, bem como o tratamento dos aspectos sócio-ambientais relacionados ao motor Stirling

Quantum statistical correlations in thermal field theories: boundary effective theory

We show that the one-loop effective action at finite temperature for a scalar field with quartic interaction has the same renormalized expression as at zero temperature if written in terms of a certain classical field $\phi_c$, and if we trade free propagators at zero temperature for their finite-temperature counterparts. The result follows if we write the partition function as an integral over field eigenstates (boundary fields) of the density matrix element in the functional Schr\"{o}dinger field-representation, and perform a semiclassical expansion in two steps: first, we integrate around the saddle-point for fixed boundary fields, which is the classical field $\phi_c$, a functional of the boundary fields; then, we perform a saddle-point integration over the boundary fields, whose correlations characterize the thermal properties of the system. This procedure provides a dimensionally-reduced effective theory for the thermal system. We calculate the two-point correlation as an example.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur