Family farming and sustainable rural development: a case study in a settlement in the Brazilian Amazon

The struggle for a fair distribution of land consolidated social movements and put pressure on the Brazilian government to carry out agrarian reform. The government allocated rural workers to the settlements and created programs to strengthen family farming. The global concern with the sustainability of the planet has led scholars to think that family farming is an alternative for the reduction of poverty and for the preservation of the environment. Based on this principle, the objective of this study was to analyze whether family farming used in the family units of the Joana Darc III settlement in Rondônia contributes to sustainable development. Materials and methods: The research is characterized as descriptive and a case study. We use an instrument developed by Anjos17, semi-structured, divided into 6 blocks: Identification of the profile of farmers; Characterization of the production unit; Characterization of crop production; Production commercialization; Financing and infrastructure and, Life conditions. The sample granted for accessibility was a group formed by 30 (26.3%) rural farmers from the Joana Darc III settlement who cultivate different crops, harvested from a population of 114 farmers. For the sample size, the systematic sampling formula presented by Barbetta26 was used. The research project considers the ethical aspect and is in accordance with CNS Resolution 196/96. Results: The results showed that the settlers received financing from Pronaf for investments in increasing production and technical assistance from EMATER. However, the production system adopted is traditional, with the use of pesticides in crops and the use of pesticides in animals and they practice burning to clean the land. This practice goes against the principles of clean agriculture, which aims to preserve the environment. It was also found that the settled farmers sell their products below the market price, reducing their profit margin. However, all were unanimous in ensuring that they would have better living conditions compared to the life before the settlement and believe in improvements in the future. Conclusions: It was rejected the hypothesis that family farming used in the family units of the Joana Darc III settlement in Rondônia contributes to sustainable development

Removing astringency of ‘Rama Forte’ persimmon by using high CO2 levels within pallet covers

deastringency process using high CO2 concentrations on ‘Rama Forte’ persimmon within pallet covers under ambient and refrigerated conditions. The CO2 treatment for orange persimmons in cardboard boxes is to completely enclose pallet loads of fruits in sealed LDPE bags (90 μm), pull a slight vacuum, then add CO2 to create a 70 – 90 kPa CO2 atmosphere within the bag and around the fruit. Two pallets were hold at 20oC for 5 days and two others were kept at 1oC for 21 days. After these periods of time, the LDPE films were removed and the fruits were left at 25oC. Periodically, boxes from the bottom, middle and top layers of each pallet were sorted for the following analysis: astringency index, firmness, soluble solids and peel color were evaluated. The experimental design was a factorial 2x3, with 10 replicates by plot. The results showed that high CO2 atmosphere (70 – 90 kPa) for 5 days at 20ºC promoted both the astringency removal and the maintenance of the fruit firmness. High CO2 concentrations at 1oC for 21 days were equally efficient in the astringency removal of the fruits but it caused uneven ripening and peel browning occasionally, impairing its use.FAPESP – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, pelo auxílio financeiro (processo n.2003/06445-2). AIR LIQUIDE BRASIL LTDA

Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers. These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30 to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components. The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy -- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy

We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of 15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI. Supplemental material in the ancillary file

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Studies of the mass composition of cosmic rays and proton-proton interaction cross-sections at ultra-high energies with the Pierre Auger Observatory

In this work, we present an estimate of the cosmic-ray mass composition from the distributions of the depth of the shower maximum (Xmax) measured by the fluorescence detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. We discuss the sensitivity of the mass composition measurements to the uncertainties in the properties of the hadronic interactions, particularly in the predictions of the particle interaction cross-sections. For this purpose, we adjust the fractions of cosmic-ray mass groups to fit the data with Xmax distributions from air shower simulations. We modify the proton-proton cross-sections at ultra-high energies, and the corresponding air shower simulations with rescaled nucleus-air cross-sections are obtained via Glauber theory. We compare the energy-dependent composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays obtained for the different extrapolations of the proton-proton cross-sections from low-energy accelerator data

Study of downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes with the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The surface detector (SD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory, consisting of 1660 water-Cherenkov detectors (WCDs), covers 3000 km2 in the Argentinian pampa. Thanks to the high efficiency of WCDs in detecting gamma rays, it represents a unique instrument for studying downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) over a large area. Peculiar events, likely related to downward TGFs, were detected at the Auger Observatory. Their experimental signature and time evolution are very different from those of a shower produced by an ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray. They happen in coincidence with low thunderclouds and lightning, and their large deposited energy at the ground is compatible with that of a standard downward TGF with the source a few kilometers above the ground. A new trigger algorithm to increase the TGF-like event statistics was installed in the whole array. The study of the performance of the new trigger system during the lightning season is ongoing and will provide a handle to develop improved algorithms to implement in the Auger upgraded electronic boards. The available data sample, even if small, can give important clues about the TGF production models, in particular, the shape of WCD signals. Moreover, the SD allows us to observe more than one point in the TGF beam, providing information on the emission angle