Approaches in biotechnological applications of natural polymers

Natural polymers, such as gums and mucilage, are biocompatible, cheap, easily available and non-toxic materials of native origin. These polymers are increasingly preferred over synthetic materials for industrial applications due to their intrinsic properties, as well as they are considered alternative sources of raw materials since they present characteristics of sustainability, biodegradability and biosafety. As definition, gums and mucilages are polysaccharides or complex carbohydrates consisting of one or more monosaccharides or their derivatives linked in bewildering variety of linkages and structures. Natural gums are considered polysaccharides naturally occurring in varieties of plant seeds and exudates, tree or shrub exudates, seaweed extracts, fungi, bacteria, and animal sources. Water-soluble gums, also known as hydrocolloids, are considered exudates and are pathological products; therefore, they do not form a part of cell wall. On the other hand, mucilages are part of cell and physiological products. It is important to highlight that gums represent the largest amounts of polymer materials derived from plants. Gums have enormously large and broad applications in both food and non-food industries, being commonly used as thickening, binding, emulsifying, suspending, stabilizing agents and matrices for drug release in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. In the food industry, their gelling properties and the ability to mold edible films and coatings are extensively studied. The use of gums depends on the intrinsic properties that they provide, often at costs below those of synthetic polymers. For upgrading the value of gums, they are being processed into various forms, including the most recent nanomaterials, for various biotechnological applications. Thus, the main natural polymers including galactomannans, cellulose, chitin, agar, carrageenan, alginate, cashew gum, pectin and starch, in addition to the current researches about them are reviewed in this article.. }To the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfíico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for fellowships (LCBBC and MGCC) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nvíel Superior (CAPES) (PBSA). This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, the Project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) (JAT)

Ethnoecology in pluricultural contexts: Theoretical and methodological contributions

This chapter is a contribution to current ethnoecology from a complex perspective, through a revision of the presuppositions that constitute its theoretical–methodological framework. The systemic approach of ecology understood as a science of synthesis based on relationships between the organism and its environment is discussed. The complex thinking applied to biocultural ecology, based on the relationships between the people and their environment is also discussed, including a reflection about the dissociation between nature and culture, and its conceptual implications. Ethnoecology as the study of local people knowledge system about their own relationships with their environment poses a discussion on sciences and ethnosciences, and its relationships with ecology and biocultural ecology. The reflection about the relationships between the observer and the observed people implies a discussion upon the researcher’s presence in his own research, and how he manages his thinking categories. The role of interviews as communication systems in which the generated knowledge is embodied in actions (discourses and behaviors) is revalued. Ultimately, three cases for the Rio de la Plata riverside (Buenos Aires province, Argentina) are presented. These cases illustrate how the local people identify and value the environmental changes in the pluricultural contexts of the urban areas, and how the obtained results have meaning in the theoretical–methodological framework developed. In conclusion, complex thinking allows us to construct adequate explanations for complex phenomena that ethnoecology tries to explain, and to avoid reductionisms.Fil: Hurrell, Julio Alberto. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Laboratorio de Etnobotánica y Botánica Aplicada; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Stampella, Pablo César. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Laboratorio de Etnobotánica y Botánica Aplicada; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Doumecq, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Laboratorio de Etnobotánica y Botánica Aplicada; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Pochettino, María Lelia. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Laboratorio de Etnobotánica y Botánica Aplicada; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentin

Four generations of regional policies for the (free) movement of persons in South America (1977–2016)

First Online: 30 August 2020In the last two decades, South America created a regional regime for human mobility that is regarded as the most developed one after the EU. This regime is characterized by equal social and economic rights, working conditions and family reunion, as well as the right to reside and work in other Member States. Despite these important advances and the ground-breaking positions that this region sustains at the global level, South America remains understudied in governance, Regional Integration (RI) and migration studies. This chapter will make a contribution to the literature on regional migration governance in the Global South by proposing to assess the human mobility agenda in Regional Organizations (ROs) by identifying ‘generations’ of policies. I will argue that South American migration governance has gone through four of these generations, evolving from regional legislation that mainly focused on labor migration to the current ‘liberal’ regime (Cantor et al., 2015). In spite of being a ‘younger’ RO, Mercosur turned out to be the leader in proposing regional migration policies for the whole of South America by multilateralizing its Residence Agreement in the early 2010s, and by developing farther-reaching measures than the Andean Community. I will explain the main characteristics of each policy ‘generation’ and will briefly look into the reasons that explain these developments and Mercosur’s leadership. I will finally open the debate for the possible beginning of a ‘fifth generation’ of regional policies, beginning in 2015 with the change in the political orientation of the governments in the region and the possible upcoming modifications of regionalism in South America. This article draws information from more than a hundred in-depth interviews conducted between 2012 and 2018 with key governance actors in both the Mercosur and the CAN. It is also based on an analysis of the legislation on migration and institutional policy documents.The findings on which this research is based were supported by European Research Council funding for the project Prospects for International Migration Governance (MIGPROSP) agreement no. 340430 awarded to Professor Andrew Geddes

Mercosur and the Pacific alliance convergence in building a labor level playing field across Latin America

Whilst walls have been erected in other regions, the construction of bridges seems to be the path explored by Latin America. Despite the rivalries created by the fast development of trade organizations, economic growth, and profits between Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance in the region, Latin American countries, through their foreign policies, have found a way to work out their divergences. They have created convergence and cooperation on key issues such as transnational migration, migrant workers’ rights, free movement of people, and educational training—and more importantly fill the gap between the two organizations by a full regional economic integrative process