A sense of change: media designers and artists communicating about complexity in social-ecological systems

To take on the current and future challenges of global environmental change, fostering a widespread societal understanding of and engagement with the complex dynamics that characterize interacting human and natural systems is essential. Current science communication methods struggle with a number of specific challenges associated with communicating about complex systems. In this study we report on two collaborative processes, a short workshop and longer course, that aimed to harness the insights of interactive media designers and artists to overcome these challenges. The two processes resulted in 86 new interactive media concepts which were selected by the participants and organizers using set criteria and then evaluated using the same criteria by a panel of communication and media design experts and a panel of complex systems scientists using the same criteria. The top eight concepts are discussed in this paper. These concepts fell into the categories of serious games, group interaction concepts, and social media storytelling. The serious games focused directly on complex systems characteristics and were evaluated to be intuitive and engaging designs that combined transparency and complexity well. The group interaction concepts focused mostly on feedbacks and nonlinearity but were fully developed and tested in the workshops, and evaluated as engaging, accessible, and easy to implement in workshops and educational settings. The social media storytelling concepts involved less direct interactions with system dynamics but were seen as highly accessible to large scale audiences. The results of this study show the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration between complex systems scientists, designers, and artists. The results and process discussed in this paper show the value of more structural engagement of interactive media designers and artist communities in the development of communication tools about human and natural systems change

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes, vast areas of the tropics remain understudied. In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity, but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases. To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge, 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 organism 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 neglected 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 lost

Bench-scale Production of Biopolyesters from waste glycerol

Bioproductio

Physico-chemical characterization of new polyhydroxyburates (PHB).

Bioproductio

Desempenho de pastagem nativa e pastagem sobre-semeada com forrageiras hibernais com e sem glifosato Performance of native pasture and pasture sodseeded with winter species with or without glyphosate

O experimento foi desenvolvido em Bagé-RS, visando avaliar a produção de matéria seca (MS), taxa de lotação (kg de PV ha-1), ganho de peso vivo por animal (GMD, kg an-1 dia-1) e ganho por hectare (GPV ha-1) em: T1-pastagem nativa (testemunha); T2-pastagem nativa sobre-semeada com azevém (Lolium multiflorum), trevo branco (Trifolium repens) e cornichão (Lotus corniculatus); T3- semelhante ao anterior, mais aplicação de glifosato; T4- semelhante ao anterior, porém com adubação dobrada. Foram utilizados novilhos Braford. O sistema de pastejo foi o contínuo com ajustes na lotação para manter um nível de oferta de forragem de 10% (10kg de MS 100kg PV-1 dia-1). Para a determinação da MS da pastagem, utilizou-se o método da dupla amostragem com uso de disco e para a determinação da taxa de acúmulo de MS, utilizou-se o método da gaiola de exclusão. As análises estatísticas foram feitas no programa SAS (1997). O delineamento experimental foi blocos inteiramente casualizados, tendo dois blocos e quatro tratamentos. A introdução de espécies hibernais em pastagem nativa com ou sem uso de glifosato contribuiu para aumentar a produtividade do campo nativo. A sobre-semeadura de espécies hibernais permitiu maior carga e ganho por animal e por área comparados com a pastagem nativa.<br>The experiment was developed in Bagé-RS, Brazil, to evaluate the dry matter production (DM), stocking rate (kg LW ha-1), live weight gain per animal (ADG, kg head-1 day-1) and gain per area (GPA, kg LW ha-1) in: T1-native pasture (control); T2-native pasture sodseeded with Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), white clover (Trifolium repens) and birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus); T3-similar to anterior, plus glyphosate spraying; T4-similar to anterior, but with double fertilization. It were utilized Braford steers. The grazing method was the continuous stocking, with stocking adjustments to maintain a level of forage on offer of 10% (10kg of DM 100kg LW-1 day-1). To determine the DM of pasture, it was utilized the double sample method with a disc meter and the cage method for the pasture accumulation rate. The experimental design was a complete randomized blocks, with two blocks and four treatments. The introduction of cool season species in native pasture, with or without glyphosate spraying, contributes to increase native pasture productivity. Over-seeding cool season species allowed a higher stocking rate and animal production per animal and per area as compared to natural pasture