Nucleation in tropical ecological restoration A nucleação na restauração ecológica de ecossistemas tropicais

Ecological theories of facilitation and nucleation are proposed as a basis for environmental restoration in tropical ecosystems. The main goal of this paper is to present restoration techniques based on the concept of nucleation, in which small nuclei of vegetation are established within a degraded land. The nucleation techniques (artificial shelters for animals, planting of herbaceous shrub life forms, soil and seed bank translocation, seed rain translocation, soil and seed rain translocation's seedling set, artificial perches, planting of native trees in groups, and ecological stepping-stones with functional groups) promote the landscape connectivity on two flows: inward: receiver connectivity and outward: donor connectivity. The nuclei development represents an alternative for restoration by prioritizing the natural processes of succession. This methodology appears to take long to generate vegetation corresponding to tropical climates, but is fundamental in the formation of communities capable of acting, in the future, as a new functional nuclei within the current fragmented landscape. This strategy also encourages greater integration between the theories and projects of ecological restoration for the development of human resources and to benefit the restoration practitioner.<br>As teorias ecológicas da facilitação e nucleação são propostas como base para a restauração ambiental de ecossistemas tropicais. Nesse "Ponto de Vista" apresentam-se técnicas de restauração fundamentadas no conceito de nucleação, onde pequenos núcleos de vegetação são implantados em uma área degradada. As técnicas de nucleação (abrigos artificiais para animais, plantio de espécies herbáceo-arbustivas, transposição de solo e banco de sementes, transposição de chuva de sementes, blocos de mudas procedentes de transposição de solo e chuva de sementes, poleiros artificiais, plantio de árvores nativas em grupos de Anderson, e trampolins ecológicos com grupos funcionais) promovem a conectividade da paisagem sob dois fluxos: interno: conectividade recebedora; e externo: conectividade doadora. O desenvolvimento dos núcleos representa uma alternativa de restauração que prioriza os processos de sucessão natural. A restauração através das técnicas de nucleação pode parecer muito lenta para atingir uma vegetação que corresponda ao clima tropical, porém representa uma base para a constituição de comunidades que, no futuro, poderão potencialmente atuar como novos núcleos funcionais dentro da atual paisagem fragmentada. Encoraja-se maior integração entre teorias ecológicas e projetos de restauração para desenvolvimento de recursos humanos e formação de restauradores ecológicos

Narrative vigilance: the analysis of stories in health care

The idea of narrative has been widely discussed in the recent health care literature, including nursing, and has been portrayed as a resource for both clinical work and research studies. However, the use of the term 'narrative' is inconsistent, and various assumptions are made about the nature (and functions) of narrative: narrative as a naive account of events; narrative as the source of 'subjective truth'; narrative as intrinsically fictional; and narrative as a mode of explanation. All these assumptions have left their mark on the nursing literature, and all of them (in our view) are misconceived. Here, we argue that a failure to distinguish between 'narrative' and 'story' is partly responsible for these misconceptions, and we offer an analysis that shows why the distinction between them is essential. In doing so, we borrow the concept of 'narrativity' from literary criticism. Narrativity is something that a text has degrees of, and our proposal is that the elements of narrativity can be 'sorted' roughly into a continuum, at the 'high narrativity' end of which we find 'story'. On our account, 'story' is an interweaving of plot and character, whose organization is designed to elicit a certain emotional response from the reader, while 'narrative' refers to the sequence of events and the (claimed) causal connections between them. We suggest that it is important not to confuse the emotional persuasiveness of the 'story' with the objective accuracy of the 'narrative', and to this end we recommend what might be called 'narrative vigilance'. There is nothing intrinsically authentic, or sacrosanct, or emancipatory, or paradigmatic about narrative itself, even though the recent health care literature has had a marked tendency to romanticize it