The effects caused by the replacement of native riparian forest with Eucalyptus sp. on the benthic macro-invertebrate community.

The replacement of native riparian forests with exotic plants, especially Eucalyptus sp. can cause changes in ecological processes of small orders rivers. The leaves of Eucalyptus sp. have lower nutrients concentration, higher hardness and secondary metabolites which inhibit the decomposing micro-organisms and benthic macro-invertebrate colonization, which are the connection between the dead organic matter and the rest of the food chain. Thus the aim of the study was to test the following hypothesis: leaf decomposition rate will be lower in the substrate composed of Eucalyptus sp. leaves, when compared to the substrate composed of native tree species leaves; the benthic macro-invertebrates diversity will be lower in the substrate composed of Eucalyptus sp. leaves than the one composed of native tree species leaves. Sixty litter bags were used in the experiment, 30 of them were filled with 5 g of Eucalyptus sp leaves and the other 30 with a mixture of native trees leaves. From the results it was concluded that leaf decomposition rates were similar for both substrates, substrate composed of native trees leaves and substrate composed of Eucalyptus sp. leaves; the benthic macroinvertebrates diversity was lower in the substrate composed of Eucalyptus sp. leaves when compared to the substrate composed of native tree species leaves

New Criteria of Indication and Selection of Patients to Cochlear Implant

Numerous changes continue to occur in cochlear implant candidacy. In general, these have been accompanied by concomitant and satisfactory changes in surgical techniques. Together, this has advanced the utility and safety of cochlear implantation. Most devices are now approved for use in patients with severe to profound unilateral hearing loss rather then the prior requirement of a bilateral profound loss. Furthermore, studies have begun utilizing short electrode arrays for shallow insertion in patients with considerable low-frequency residual hearing. This technique will allow the recipient to continue to use acoustically amplified hearing for the low frequencies simultaneously with a cochlear implant for the high frequencies. The advances in design of, and indications for, cochlear implants have been matched by improvements in surgical techniques and decrease in complications. The resulting improvements in safety and efficacy have further encouraged the use of these devices. This paper will review the new concepts in the candidacy of cochlear implant. Medline data base was used to search articles dealing with the following topics: cochlear implant in younger children, cochlear implant and hearing preservation, cochlear implant for unilateral deafness and tinnitus, genetic hearing loss and cochlear implant, bilateral cochlear implant, neuropathy and cochlear implant and neural plasticity, and the selection of patients for cochlear implant

Shallow reef fish communities of South Bahia coast, Brazil

Este trabalho descreve pela primeira vez as comunidades de peixes em cinco recifes rasos de Santa Cruz de Cabrália e Porto Seguro (Araripe-AR, Itacipanema-IT, Alagados-AL, Naufrágio-NA e Recife de Fora Marine Park-RF), sul da Bahia, nordeste do Brasil. A densidade e riqueza foram obtidas utilizando censos estacionários de 2 m de raio para espécies pequenas e criptobênticas e 3 m de raio para espécies conspícuas. Um total de 1802 peixes pertencentes a 23 famílias e 54 espécies foram registrados, sendo as espécies mais abundantes dos pomacentrídeos Stegastes fuscus e Abudefduf saxatilis. Nenhuma diferença significativa foi encontrada para a riqueza entre os recifes e também para a densidade de espécies vágeis. Entretanto, a densidade de espécies criptobênticas foi mais alta em lugares com maior rugosidade. Herbívoros foram dominantes nos recifes AR, AL e RF, invertívoros em AL e a dominância dos dois grupos ocorreram em IT. Algumas variáveis ambientais como rugosidade e cobertura bentônica estão fortemente relacionadas às espécies e diferentes recifes. Estes são fisicamente heterogêneos, mas a composição e riqueza de espécies similares, o que seria esperado em comunidades recifais abrangendo estudos em pequena-escala, pois peixes recifais estão amplamente distribuídos.This study aims to describe for the first time the fish community structure of five shallow reefs located off the cities of Santa Cruz de Cabrália and Porto Seguro (Araripe-AR, Itacipanema-IT, Alagados-AL, Naufrágio-NA and Recife de Fora Marine Park-RF Reefs), South Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Fish density and richness were assessed through stationary point counts of 2 m radius for small cryptic species and 3 m for more conspicuous species. A total of 1 802 fishes belonging to 23 families and 54 species were observed. The most abundant species were the pomacentrids Stegastes fuscus and Abudefduf saxatilis. No significant differences were found for species richness or density of conspicuous species, but density of small cryptic species was low on reefs with high bottom rugosity, where there were more holes and crevices available. Herbivores were dominant on AR, AL and RF, invertivores on AL and both groups were dominant on IT. Some habitat variables such as rugosity and benthic cover were strongly correlated to species and sites. High bottom heterogeneity was found among reefs but they still presented similar species composition, richness and density. Within small-scale studies, such similarities in composition and richness are to be expected for reef fish communities, as most of the species concerned have a wide distribution range

Influência da utilização de fertilizantes adicionados de substâncias húmicas sobre o florescimento de duas variedades de cana-de-açúcar.

O objetivo do presente trabalho foi avaliar a influência de diferentes fertilizantes adicionados de substâncias húmicas sobre a incidência de florescimento de duas variedades de canade- açúcar. Para tanto, a combinação de diferentes fontes de fertilizantes (adubos minerais, organominerais, silicatos de Ca e Mg e substâncias húmicas extraídas de leonardita) foram aplicados ao solo de modo a atender às necessidades nutricionais da cultura da cana de açúcar. Aos 310 dias após o plantio foi realizado contagem do número de inflorescência em cada parcela experimental. A variedade de cana RB867515 apresentou maior incidência de florescimento enquanto que a variedade RB 92579 praticamente não emitiu pendão; a aplicação de gafisa e de silicato de Ca e Mg adicionados de substâncias húmicas contribuiu para redução de incidência de florescimento na cana de açúcar

Synthetic route to low damping in ferromagnetic thin-films

Previous theory indicated that the individual monolayers within transition metal ferromagnet thin-films contribute different magnitudes to the total ferromagnetic damping. Here, the aim was to investigate if the thin-film damping could be reduced by electronic engineering of the higher damping regions via localized doping. We present new theoretical analysis and experimental results for sputtered Co thin-films in which the upper and lower surface regions were locally doped with Cr. Theory indicates that local doping does reduce the damping and the experiments show a comparable reduction of the damping with increasing local doping up to 30% Cr, while the measured damping falls further with higher local doping, which may be attributed to changes in the film structure. This work opens a route to create low-damping magnetic thin-films

Atrazine bound residues formation and dissipation in subtropical soil under swine wastewater application

The effects of swine wastewater on atrazine dissipation and formation of bound residues in subtropical clay soil were investigated in this study. The experiment was carried out in laboratory, under room conditions, where samples of Rhodic Hapludox soil received 168.61 mg kg-1 of atrazine and were incubated for 60 days in the following treatments: T1 (sterilized soil + swine wastewater), T2 (sterilized soil + distilled water), T3 (Non sterilized soil + swine wastewater) and T4 (Non sterilized soil + distilled water). The extractable residues and bound residues of atrazine were extracted and analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography. The results showed no effect of swine wastewater on atrazine dissipation. However, the addition of swine wastewater favored the increase of bound residues, which can increase the persistence of atrazine in the environment and reduce its bioavailabilityinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Systematic Implementation of Implicit Regularization for Multi-Loop Feynman Diagrams

Implicit Regularization (IReg) is a candidate to become an invariant framework in momentum space to perform Feynman diagram calculations to arbitrary loop order. In this work we present a systematic implementation of our method that automatically displays the terms to be subtracted by Bogoliubov's recursion formula. Therefore, we achieve a twofold objective: we show that the IReg program respects unitarity, locality and Lorentz invariance and we show that our method is consistent since we are able to display the divergent content of a multi-loop amplitude in a well defined set of basic divergent integrals in one loop momentum only which is the essence of IReg. Moreover, we conjecture that momentum routing invariance in the loops, which has been shown to be connected with gauge symmetry, is a fundamental symmetry of any Feynman diagram in a renormalizable quantum field theory