3D Multi-Material Laser Powder Bed Fusion: a disruptive approach to design/manufacture unparalleled multi-functional solutions

[Excerpt] Engineering has been so far a mono-dimension tool where components are mono-material, dense unoptimized and designed for one or two requirements, due to processes’ limitations. Traditional components diverge entirely from lightweight and multi-material nature structures endowed with a high level of multi-functionality. [...]This work was supported by FCT national funds, under the national support to R&D units grant, through the reference projects UIDB/04436/2020 and UIDP/04436/2020

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

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

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 understanding 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,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 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 underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 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,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 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

O uso de grupos focais na pesquisa etnográfica com crianças

Partindo de experiências empíricas de pesquisa, o presente trabalho visa problematizar algumas questões metodológicas na pesquisa etnográfica com crianças. Destacaremos o uso da etnografia como metodologia principal, sobretudo quando se tem a possibilidade de realização de uma pesquisa prolongada, mas nos deteremos principalmente no uso da técnica dos grupos focais. O grupo focal pode auxiliar a etnografia em pesquisas menos prolongadas e com restrição orçamentária. A partir de experiências do Grupo de Pesquisa CRIAS – Criança, Sociedade e Cultura, da Universidade Federal da Paraíba, buscamos apresentar as vantagens e os limites da utilização dessa técnica de pesquisa que ainda é pouco explorada pelas ciências sociais e humanas e pelos estudos da infância.Draw from empirical research experiments, the present work aims to problematize some methodological issues in ethnographic research with children. We will emphasize the use of ethnography as the main methodology, especially when one has the possibility of conducting an extended research, but we will focus mainly on the use of the focal group technique. The focal group may assist ethnography in less time-consuming and budget constrained research. Based on the experiences of the Research Group CRIAS - Child, Society and Culture of the Federal University of Paraíba, we seek to present the advantages and limitations of the use of this research technique that is still little explored by the social and human sciences and by Childhood Studies