Construção de um banco de informações sobre compostagem de animais na Embrapa.

A pecuária produz grandes quantidades de resíduos, como dejetos e animais mortos, que podem provocar problemas sanitários e poluição. Esses resíduos devem ser reciclados. A ANVISA possui a Resolução RDC nº 306, de 07/12/2004, que define compostagem como um ?processo de decomposição biológica de fração orgânica biodegradável de resíduos sólidos, efetuado por uma população diversificada de organismos em condições controladas de aerobiose e demais parâmetros?. O Projeto Corporativo da Embrapa ?Implantação das Diretrizes Institucionais de Gestão Ambiental nas Unidades da Embrapa?, quer utilizar a compostagem como solução final para cadáveres de animais nas propriedades rurais. O objetivo aqui é levantar informações para construção de banco de dados sobre compostagem de animais. As publicações são denominadas metadados, preferencialmente do Brasil. Utilizaram-se buscadores de metadados na internet, assim como teses, papers e livros sobre o assunto, com apoio da Biblioteca da Embrapa Gado de Corte. Esta possui parceria com bibliotecas eletrônicas online que disponibilizam revistas e artigos científicos. Os dois buscadores eletrônicos utilizados foram: Google e Yahoo. Os dados atualmente estão armazenados em planilhas Excel e em programa de referências bibliográficas: Fichamento. Utilizando o termo em português ?compostagem? no Google encontraram-se aproximadamente 266.000 resultados. E o termo em inglês ?composting? no mesmo site encontrou aproximadamente 4.300.000 resultados. Os links encontrados demonstram importância dada ao tema. Até o momento catalogaram-se os seguintes números de referencias: bovinos (482), suínos (445), caprinos (185), aves (789), frango (560) e peixes (697). Baseando-se nas publicações a Europa, EUA e Canadá são os locais mais desenvolvidos no assunto. No Brasil, existem poucos trabalhos realizados diretamente com animais mortos. A aquisição de conhecimento é fundamental para o Brasil construir a própria legislação nacional sobre compostagem. Pretende-se disponibilizar essas informações ainda neste ano de 2009. Os trabalhos práticos iniciar-se-ão em novembro de 2009

The potential of robotics for the development and wellbeing of children with disabilities as we see it.

BACKGROUND: Rapid technological development has been opening new possibilities for children with disabilities. In particular, robots can enable and create new opportunities in therapy, rehabilitation, education, or leisure. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to share experiences, challenges and learned lessons by the authors, all of them with experience conducting research in the field of robotics for children with disabilities, and to propose future directions for research and development. METHODS: The article is the result of several consensus meetings to establish future research priorities in this field. RESULTS: Robots have a huge potential to support children with disabilities: they can play the role of a play buddy, of a mediator when interacting with other children or adults, they can promote social interaction, and transfer children from the role of a spectator of the surrounding world to the role of an active participant. To fulfill their potential, robots have to be “smart”, stable and reliable, easy to use and program, and give the just-right amount of support adapted to the needs of the child. Interdisciplinary collaboration combined with user centered design is necessary to make robotic applications successful. Furthermore, real-life contexts to test and implement robotic interventions are essential to refine them according to real needs. CONCLUSIONS: This article outlines a research agenda for the future of robotics in childcare and supports the establishment of R4C – Robots for Children, a network of experts aimed at sharing ideas, promoting innovative research, and developing good practices on the use of robots for children with disabilities

Sympatric woodland Myotis bats form tight-knit social groups with exclusive roost home ranges

Background: The structuring of wild animal populations can influence population dynamics, disease spread, and information transfer. Social network analysis potentially offers insights into these processes but is rarely, if ever, used to investigate more than one species in a community. We therefore compared the social, temporal and spatial networks of sympatric Myotis bats (M. nattereri (Natterer's bats) and M. daubentonii (Daubenton's bats)), and asked: (1) are there long-lasting social associations within species? (2) do the ranges occupied by roosting social groups overlap within or between species? (3) are M. daubentonii bachelor colonies excluded from roosting in areas used by maternity groups? Results: Using data on 490 ringed M. nattereri and 978 M. daubentonii from 379 colonies, we found that both species formed stable social groups encompassing multiple colonies. M. nattereri formed 11 mixed-sex social groups with few (4.3%) inter-group associations. Approximately half of all M. nattereri were associated with the same individuals when recaptured, with many associations being long-term (>100 days). In contrast, M. daubentonii were sexually segregated; only a quarter of pairs were associated at recapture after a few days, and inter-sex associations were not long-lasting. Social groups of M. nattereri and female M. daubentonii had small roost home ranges (mean 0.2 km2 in each case). Intra-specific overlap was low, but inter-specific overlap was high, suggesting territoriality within but not between species. M. daubentonii bachelor colonies did not appear to be excluded from roosting areas used by females. Conclusions: Our data suggest marked species- and sex-specific patterns of disease and information transmission are likely between bats of the same genus despite sharing a common habitat. The clear partitioning of the woodland amongst social groups, and their apparent reliance on small patches of habitat for roosting, means that localised woodland management may be more important to bat conservation than previously recognised

Constraints on Energy Intake in Fish: The Link between Diet Composition, Energy Metabolism, and Energy Intake in Rainbow Trout

The hypothesis was tested that fish fed to satiation with iso-energetic diets differing in macronutrient composition will have different digestible energy intakes (DEI) but similar total heat production. Four iso-energetic diets (2×2 factorial design) were formulated having a contrast in i) the ratio of protein to energy (P/E): high (HP/E) vs. low (LP/E) and ii) the type of non-protein energy (NPE) source: fat vs. carbohydrate which were iso-energetically exchanged. Triplicate groups (35 fish/tank) of rainbow trout were hand-fed each diet twice daily to satiation for 6 weeks under non-limiting water oxygen conditions. Feed intake (FI), DEI (kJ kg−0.8 d−1) and growth (g kg−0.8 d−1) of trout were affected by the interaction between P/E ratio and NPE source of the diet (P<0.05). Regardless of dietary P/E ratio, the inclusion of carbohydrate compared to fat as main NPE source reduced DEI and growth of trout by ∼20%. The diet-induced differences in FI and DEI show that trout did not compensate for the dietary differences in digestible energy or digestible protein contents. Further, changes in body fat store and plasma glucose did not seem to exert a homeostatic feedback control on DEI. Independent of the diet composition, heat production of trout did not differ (P>0.05). Our data suggest that the control of DEI in trout might be a function of heat production, which in turn might reflect a physiological limit related with oxidative metabolism

What Might Have Been Lost

This article examines the role of “independent” folk music (indie-folk) in personal identity formation. It builds upon Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, which argues (i) that it is through the mechanism of narrative that people build a more or less coherent life-story, and (ii) emphasizes the role of art (most notably literary fiction and poetry) as a mediator in the comprehension and regulation of transitory life experiences. This article aims to apply these insights to studying the role of indie-folk, a narrative art form adhering to the traditional understanding of folk music as a genre rooted in oral tradition, in the construction of personal identity. Studying the daily use of indie-folk songs by audience members through in-depth interviewing, it shows that (i) the reception of indie-folk music results in ritualistic listening behavior aimed at coping with the experience of accelerating social time; (ii) that respondents use indie-folk narratives as resources for reading the self, and (iii) that indie-folk songs provide healing images that are effective in coping with the experience of narrated time as discordant. In arguing for the central role of narrative in identity formation, this article aims to contribute to existing research on music as a “technology of the self” (DeNora). It specifically emphasizes how narrative particles are tools and building blocks in identity construction, a process characterized by the oscillation between narrative coherence and disruption

Benefits of protected areas for nonbreeding waterbirds adjusting their distributions under climate warming

Climate warming is driving changes in species distributions and community composition. Many species have a so-called climatic debt, that is, shifts in range lag behind shifts in temperature isoclines. Inside protected areas (PAs), community changes in response to climate warming can be facilitated by greater colonization rates by warm-dwelling species, but also mitigated by lowering extirpation rates of cold-dwelling species. An evaluation of the relative importance of colonization-extirpation processes is important to inform conservation strategies that aim for both climate debt reduction and species conservation. We assessed the colonization-extirpation dynamics involved in community changes in response to climate inside and outside PAs. To do so, we used 25 years of occurrence data of nonbreeding waterbirds in the western Palearctic (97 species, 7071 sites, 39 countries, 1993-2017). We used a community temperature index (CTI) framework based on species thermal affinities to investigate species turnover induced by temperature increase. We determined whether thermal community adjustment was associated with colonization by warm-dwelling species or extirpation of cold-dwelling species by modeling change in standard deviation of the CTI (CTISD). Using linear mixed-effects models, we investigated whether communities in PAs had lower climatic debt and different patterns of community change than communities outside PAs. For CTI and CTISD combined, communities inside PAs had more species, higher colonization, lower extirpation, and lower climatic debt (16%) than communities outside PAs. Thus, our results suggest that PAs facilitate 2 independent processes that shape community dynamics and maintain biodiversity. The community adjustment was, however, not sufficiently fast to keep pace with the large temperature increases in the central and northeastern western Palearctic. Our results underline the potential of combining CTI and CTISD metrics to improve understanding of the colonization-extirpation patterns driven by climate warming

World Wide Web. Perspektiven für die multimediale Kommunikation

Die wachsende Vernetzung dezentraler Arbeitsablaeufe, Integration verteilter Fertigungsprozesse und Internationalisierung von Geschaeftsvorgaengen bei gleichzeitig steigender, kostenguenstiger Verfuegbarkeit schneller Wide Area Netzwerke fuehren zu stark wachsender Bedeutung des Austauschs und des Transports multimedialer Daten, also multimedialer Kommunikation. An der multimedialen Kommunikation partizipiert vermehrt auch der Endbenutzer im Privathaushalt, sei es als Informationssuchender, Medienkonsument oder Kunde. Das World Wide Web weist als ein erster, auf breiter Basis verfuegbarer Dienst Perspektiven fuer neue und zukuenftige multimediale Kommunikationsarten auf