The program for biodiversity research in Brazil: The role of regional networks for biodiversity knowledge, dissemination, and conservation

The Program for Biodiversity Research (PPBio) is an innovative program designed to integrate all biodiversity research stakeholders. Operating since 2004, it has installed long-term ecological research sites throughout Brazil and its logic has been applied in some other southern-hemisphere countries. The program supports all aspects of research necessary to understand biodiversity and the processes that affect it. There are presently 161 sampling sites (see some of them at Supplementary Appendix), most of which use a standardized methodology that allows comparisons across biomes and through time. To date, there are about 1200 publications associated with PPBio that cover topics ranging from natural history to genetics and species distributions. Most of the field data and metadata are available through PPBio web sites or DataONE. Metadata is available for researchers that intend to explore the different faces of Brazilian biodiversity spatio-temporal variation, as well as for managers intending to improve conservation strategies. The Program also fostered, directly and indirectly, local technical capacity building, and supported the training of hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students. The main challenge is maintaining the long-term funding necessary to understand biodiversity patterns and processes under pressure from global environmental changes

Learning of Teaching in the Professional Socialization in Physical Education

Abstract AIMS to investigate how the professional socialization happens through teacher education. METHODS a qualitative research, descriptive, was developed using exploratory interview and narrative interview to clarify and deepen the collected information. Two Physical Education teachers with different stories of personal and professional development participated in this study. Through content analysis the data was organized in themes: the cultural capital and the learning of teaching, as a social, spatial and temporal process; a cognitive, plural and heterogenic process and a human, moral and relational process. RESULTS life settings can be viewed as the building scaffoldings of a professional socialization with the aim of understanding teachers and their practices in the knowledge of their lives, as influenced by social interactions. In this process of successive socializations, teachers build their professional identity, valuing social interactions in the environments they inhabit. In this study, practice was viewed as a site for training, the production of knowledge, and professional socialization in the acquisition of cultural capital. The knowledge of teachers was conceived as having a social nature, bringing underlying sources of acquisition associated with the family, school, and university because they decisively contribute to the structure of the educational practice. CONCLUSION the professional socialization is a dynamic process which involves not only the learning, but the acquisition of a professional ethos and, mainly, a teacher's identity and a base of knowledge that support the social interaction and the teaching culture in the activities and individual socialization in the habitus perspective

Prevention of repeated episodes of type 2 reaction of leprosy with the use of thalidomide 100 mg/day

BACKGROUND: Leprosy can have its course interrupted by type 1 and 2 reactional episodes, the last named of erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL). Thalidomide has been the medication of choice for the control of ENL episodes since 1965. OBJECTIVES: These episodes can repeat and cause damages to the patient. In order to prevent these episodes, an extra dose of 100 mg/day thalidomide was used during six months, followed by a follow-up period of six more months after thalidomide discontinuation. METHODS: We included 42 patients with multibacillary (MB) leprosy who had episodes of ENL. They were male and female patients aged between 18 and 84 years. RESULTS: Of the 42 patients, 39 (92.85%) had the lepromatous form and three (7.15%) had the borderline form. We found that 100% of patients had no reactional episode during the use of the drug. During the follow-up period after thalidomide discontinuation, 33 (78.57%) patients had no reactional episode and nine (21.43%), all of them with the lepromatous form, had mild episodes, which were controlled using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. There were no thalidomide-related side effects. CONCLUSION: A maintenance dose of 100 mg/day of thalidomide showed to be effective to prevent repeated type 2 reactional episodes of ENL.Univ Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho Un, Botucatu, SP, BrazilUniv Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho Un, Botucatu, SP, Brazi