Ecological Apparency Hypothesis and Availability of Useful Plants: Testing different seu values

The present study tested the ecological apparency hypothesis in a Brazilian rural community. It used the use value to test the information gained through three types of calculations (UVchange, UVgeneral, UVpotential). A vegetation inventory was performed in two areas near Capivara, Paraíba, Brazil, and 112 informants were interviewed. For the hypothesis test, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used to correlate the phytosociological (vegetation) and ethnobotanical data (use value). The study recorded 25 useful species in the first site and 20 in the second site. Positive correlations were found in the first site, between the UVg to basal area and dominance, and between the UVc and basal area, dominance, and importance value. In the second site, between the UVg and both basal area and dominance and between UVc and basal area, density, and dominance. Apparency explained the local importance of useful plants in construction, technology, and fuel, but was not explanative of medicine. Also, important responses were observed for the different use values

Desenvolvimento e validação de um método para quantificação de citrato de sildenafila em CLAE-UV/ Development and validation of a method for quantification of sildenafil citrate in UV-HPLC

O citrato de sildenafila é um inibidor potente e seletivo da PDE5, presente em vários tecidos, tais como o vascular e o muscular liso. É comercializado por diferentes origens no mercado, que podem não estar em conformidade com as especificações da legislação brasileira. Com isso, é essencial a identificação e quantificação do princípio ativo mencionado no rótulo do produto. Utilizou-se amostras de medicamentos referência, genérico e similar, em forma de comprimido, na dose de 50 mg. O método foi desenvolvido por meio de CLAE acoplado a um detector de espectroscopia UV de comprimento de onda fixo com os seguintes parâmetros: fase estacionária foi a coluna Kinetex C18 de fase reversa 150 x 4,6 mm (5 μm) com fase móvel constituída por acetonitrila e água em modo isocrático com fluxo de 0,8 mL/min e injeção de 20 μL com detecção a 230 nm. O desenvolvimento e validação de método analítico foram realizados conforme os parâmetros segundo a RDC 166/2017.Na linearidade, foi feita uma curva de calibração de 5 pontos, com coeficiente de variação (CV) menores que 1,85, cada um em triplicata, resultando em: r= 0,9995, y= 159085,8x + (-3102497). A exatidão foi testada com injeções em triplicata, resultando nas seguintes médias: 39,884; 49,940 e 60,123 respectivamente. Na precisão do método realizou-se a injeção da solução de 50 µg/mL em dois dias diferentes, por diferentes analistas, totalizando 18 injeções e resultando em CV abaixo de 1,85. Para o efeito matriz, seguiu-se do mesmo modo da linearidade, obtendo-se: r= 0,9924221 e y= 154533.3x + (-3080449). A robustez foi avaliada injetando-se 6 vezes a solução padrão e teste (1 e 2), resultando no CV de 0,84; 1,08; 1,22 na devida ordem. No doseamento dos medicamentos de referência, genérico e similar, o teor resultou de 95,43-100,00; O método desenvolvido através de CLAE revelou-se adequado para a quantificação de Sildenafila em comprimido. Os três produtos analisados, todos obtiveram dados dentro da faixa preconizada pela RDC 166/2017 da Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (ANVISA)

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

Treatment with tocilizumab or corticosteroids for COVID-19 patients with hyperinflammatory state: a multicentre cohort study (SAM-COVID-19)

Objectives: The objective of this study was to estimate the association between tocilizumab or corticosteroids and the risk of intubation or death in patients with coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) with a hyperinflammatory state according to clinical and laboratory parameters. Methods: A cohort study was performed in 60 Spanish hospitals including 778 patients with COVID-19 and clinical and laboratory data indicative of a hyperinflammatory state. Treatment was mainly with tocilizumab, an intermediate-high dose of corticosteroids (IHDC), a pulse dose of corticosteroids (PDC), combination therapy, or no treatment. Primary outcome was intubation or death; follow-up was 21 days. Propensity score-adjusted estimations using Cox regression (logistic regression if needed) were calculated. Propensity scores were used as confounders, matching variables and for the inverse probability of treatment weights (IPTWs). Results: In all, 88, 117, 78 and 151 patients treated with tocilizumab, IHDC, PDC, and combination therapy, respectively, were compared with 344 untreated patients. The primary endpoint occurred in 10 (11.4%), 27 (23.1%), 12 (15.4%), 40 (25.6%) and 69 (21.1%), respectively. The IPTW-based hazard ratios (odds ratio for combination therapy) for the primary endpoint were 0.32 (95%CI 0.22-0.47; p < 0.001) for tocilizumab, 0.82 (0.71-1.30; p 0.82) for IHDC, 0.61 (0.43-0.86; p 0.006) for PDC, and 1.17 (0.86-1.58; p 0.30) for combination therapy. Other applications of the propensity score provided similar results, but were not significant for PDC. Tocilizumab was also associated with lower hazard of death alone in IPTW analysis (0.07; 0.02-0.17; p < 0.001). Conclusions: Tocilizumab might be useful in COVID-19 patients with a hyperinflammatory state and should be prioritized for randomized trials in this situatio

A ética do silêncio racial no contexto urbano: políticas públicas e desigualdade social no Recife, 1900-1940

Mais de meio século após o preconceito racial ter se tornado o principal alvo dos movimentos urbanos pelos direitos civis nos Estados Unidos e na África do Sul, e décadas depois do surgimento dos movimentos negros contemporâneos no Brasil, o conjunto de ferramentas legislativas criado no Brasil para promover o direito à cidade ainda adere à longa tradição brasileira de silêncio acerca da questão racial. Este artigo propõe iniciar uma exploração das raízes históricas desse fenômeno, remontando ao surgimento do silêncio sobre a questão racial na política urbana do Recife, Brasil, durante a primeira metade do século XX. O Recife foi eé um exemplo paradigmático do processo pelo qual uma cidade amplamente marcada por traços negros e africanos chegou a ser definida política e legalmente como um espaço pobre, subdesenvolvido e racialmente neutro, onde as desigualdades sociais originaram na exclusão capitalista, e não na escravidão e nas ideologias do racismo científico. Neste sentido, Recife lança luzes sobre a política urbana que se gerou sob a sombra do silêncio racial.More than half a century after racial prejudice became central to urban civil rights movements in the United States and South Africa, and decades after the emergence of Brazil’s contemporary Black movements, Brazil's internationally recognized body of rights-to-the-city legislation still adheres to the country's long historical tradition of racial silence. This article explores the historical roots of this phenomenon by focusing on the emergence of racial silence in Recife, Brazil during the first half of the 20th Century. Recife was and remains a paradigmatic example of the process through which a city marked by its Black and African roots came to be legally and politically defined as a poor, underdeveloped and racially neutral space, where social inequalities derived from capitalist exclusion rather than from slavery and scientific racism. As such, Recife'sexperience sheds light on the urban policies that were generated in the shadow of racial silence

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