Importance of Grazing Management in Improving Water Use Efficiency of Tropical Forage Grasses

The growing number of extreme weather events has created the need to identify tropical forage grasses with greater water use efficiency (WUE) to cope with water-limited conditions. WUE can be defined as the ratio of forage biomass produced per unit of water used. However, WUE is a dynamic ratio that changes according to environmental gradients (e.g., water or nutrient availability) or ontogenetic drift (e.g., changes in root to shoot biomass allocation across phenological stages). Furthermore, genetic improvement leading to greater WUE is likely to result in smaller plants that produce less than the required forage biomass to sustain good animal performance. Bearing that in mind, other alternatives for improving WUE must be taken into consideration. Grazing management is one among such alternatives. Results from a greenhouse experiment conducted with a number of forage grasses (Cenchrus ciliaris, Chloris gayana, Megathyrsus maximus, Urochloa spp.) at the Alliance of Bioversity-CIAT showed that different grazing intensities lead to various WUEs. Improved WUE values in grasses can be achieved through grazing management if it moderates the process of evapotranspiration by 1) reducing leaf area per plant; and 2) maintaining soil cover from pasture growth and productivity. Our results suggest that WUE in pastures planted with tropical forage grasses can be enhanced through moderate rotational grazing

Beyond Prejudice as Simple Antipathy: Hostile and Benevolent Sexism Across Cultures

The authors argue that complementary hostile and benevolent componen:s of sexism exist ac ro.ss cultures. Male dominance creates hostile sexism (HS). but men's dependence on women fosters benevolent sexism (BS)-subjectively positive attitudes that put women on a pedestal but reinforce their subordination. Research with 15,000 men and women in 19 nations showed that (a) HS and BS are coherenl constructs th at correlate positively across nations, but (b) HS predicts the ascription of negative and BS the ascription of positive traits to women, (c) relative to men, women are more likely to reject HS than BS. especially when overall levels of sexism in a culture are high, and (d) national averages on BS and HS predict gender inequal ity across nations. These results challenge prevailing notions of prejudice as an antipathy in that BS (an affectionate, patronizing ideology) reflects inequality and is a cross-culturally pervasive complement to HS

'Diverse mobilities': second-generation Greek-Germans engage with the homeland as children and as adults

This paper is about the children of Greek labour migrants in Germany. We focus on two life-stages of ‘return’ for this second generation: as young children brought to Greece on holidays or sent back for longer periods, and as young adults exercising an independent ‘return’ migration. We draw both on literature and on our own field interviews with 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans. We find the practise of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Adult relocation to the parental homeland takes place for five reasons: (i) a ‘search for self’; (ii) attraction of the Greek way of life; (iii) the actualisation of the ‘family narrative of return’ by the second, rather than the first, generation; (iv) life-stage events such as going to university or marrying a Greek; (v) escape from a traumatic event or oppressive family situation. Yet the return often brings difficulties, disillusionment, identity reappraisal, and a re-evaluation of the German context

Compósitos de colagénio/apatite de origem marinha para aplicação em engenharia de tecidos mineralizados

Devido ao aumento de lesões associadas ao envelhecimento da população, a regeneração do tecido ósseo tem sido alvo de estudo. Apesar da vasta investigação neste sentido, os auto-enxertos continuam a prevalecer como tratamento de primeira linha, apesar das suas limitações. A extração de compostos de recursos marinhos para uso em abordagens de engenharia de tecidos emerge como uma alternativa promissora para regeneração de lesões ósseas. Neste capítulo apresenta-se um biomaterial promissor para aplicação em engenharia de tecidos duros tendo como base uma estratégia de valorização de sub-produtos marinhos, nomeadamente pele e dentes de tubarão.Os autores agradecem o apoio financeiro recebido da União Europeia através do Programa INTERREG—POCTEP, no âmbito dos Projetos 0687_NOVOMAR_1_P e 0245_IBEROS_1_E, através do Programa de cooperação transnacional Espaço Atlântico, no âmbito do Projeto MARMED (2011-1/164) e através do 7º Programa-Quadro de Investigação e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico (FP7), através do Projeto POLARIS (REGPOT-CT2012-316331). Os autores gostariam de agradecer também ao Centro Tecnológico del Mar (CETMAR, Vigo, Espanha) e COPEMAR SA (Espanha) pelo fornecimento dos subprodutos de tubarão. G.S.D agradece ao Programa Norte2020 (Portugal2020) pela bolsa de doutoramento (NORTE-08-5369-F SE-000044) e R.P. agradece à Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia pelo contrato IF/00347/2015

Marine collagen/apatite composite scaffolds envisaging hard tissue applications

The high prevalence of bone defects has become a worldwide problem. Despite the significant amount of research on the subject, the available therapeutic solutions lack efficiency.  Autografts, the most common used approaches to treat bone defects have limitations such as donor site morbidity, pain and lack of donor site. Marine resources emerge as an attractive alternative to extract bioactive compounds for further use in bone tissue engineering approaches. On one hand they can be isolated from by-products, at low costs, creating value from products that are considered waste for the fish transformation industry. One the other hand, religious constraints will be avoided. We isolated two marine origin materials, collagen from shark skin (Prionace glauca) and calcium phosphates from teeth of two different shark species (Prionace glauca and Isurus oxyrinchus), and further proposed to mix them to produce 3D composite structures for hard tissue applications. Two crosslinking agents, EDC/NHS and HMDI, were tested to enhance scaffoldsâ properties, with EDC/NHS resulting in better properties. The characterization of the structures showed that the developed composites could support attachment and proliferation of osteoblast-like cells. A promising scaffold for the engineering of bone tissue is thus proposed, based on a strategy of marine by-products valorisation.This work was funded by INTERREG under the POCTEP Project 0687_NOVOMAR_1_P and the Atlantic Area Transnational Cooperation Programme Project MARMED (2011-1/164), as well as by European Union FP7 under the project POLARIS (REGPOT-CT2012-316331).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n = 157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n = 22), returned students in New Delhi (n = 21), and with parents of students abroad (n = 22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return

Optimizing the Activity of Nanoneedle Structured WO3 Photoanodes for Solar Water Splitting: Direct Synthesis via Chemical Vapor Deposition

Solar water splitting is a promising solution for the renewable production of hydrogen as an energy vector. To date, complex or patterned photoelectrodes have shown the highest water splitting efficiencies, but lack scalable routes for commercial scale-up. In this article, we report a direct and scalable chemical vapor deposition (CVD) route at atmospheric pressure, for a single step fabrication of complex nanoneedle structured WO3 photoanodes. Using a systematic approach, the nanostructure was engineered to find the conditions that result in optimal water splitting. The nanostructured materials adopted a monoclinic γ-WO3 structure and were highly oriented in the (002) plane, with the nanoneedle structures stacking perpendicular to the FTO substrate. The WO3 photoanode that showed the highest water splitting activity was composed of a ∼300 nm seed layer of flat WO3 with a ∼5 μm thick top layer of WO3 nanoneedles. At 1.23 VRHE, this material showed incident photon-to-current efficiencies in the range ∼35–45% in the UV region (250–375 nm) and an overall solar predicted photocurrent of 1.24 mA·cm–2 (∼25% of the theoretical maximum for WO3). When coupled in tandem with a photovoltaic device containing a methylammonium lead iodide perovskite, a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of ca. 1% for a complete unassisted water splitting device is predicted

Hyper-precarious lives : Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North

This paper unpacks the contested inter-connections between neoliberal work and welfare regimes, asylum and immigration controls, and the exploitation of migrant workers. The concept of precarity is explored as a way of understanding intensifying and insecure post-Fordist work in late capitalism. Migrants are centrally implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets in Global North countries, including becoming trapped in forced labour. Building on existing research on the working experiences of migrants in the Global North, the main part of the article considers three questions. First, what is precarity and how does the concept relate to working lives? Second, how might we understand the causes of extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious lifeworlds? Third, how can we adequately theorize these particular experiences using the conceptual tools of forced labour, slavery, unfreedom and precarity? We use the concept of ‘hyper-precarity’ alongside notions of a ‘continuum of unfreedom’ as a way of furthering human geographical inquiry into the intersections between various terrains of social action and conceptual debate concerning migrants’ precarious working experiences