A "cookbook" for vulnerability research

There is a growing need to facilitate the interdisciplinary study of the relationship between the environment and human health and well-being. It is increasingly recognized that vulnerability is a key construct allowing discipline-specific research questions on these topics to be meaningfully contextualized. However, there is little consensus regarding the meaning of the concept of vulnerability or how it can best be utilized in research studies. In this perspective article, we use the metaphor of a "cookbook" to review promising trends in vulnerability research and to make this body of research accessible to a multi-disciplinary audience. Specifically, we discuss a selection of "recipes" (theoretical frameworks), "ingredients" (vulnerability domains), "cooking tools" (qualitative and quantitative methods), and approaches to "meal presentation" (communication of results) drawn from vulnerability studies published in the past 15 years. Our aim is for this short "cookbook" to serve as a jumping-off point for scholars unfamiliar with the vulnerability literature and an inspiration for scholars more familiar with this topic to develop new ways to navigate the tension between locally-specific assessments of vulnerability and attempts at standardization. Our ultimate take-home message is that the specifics theories and methods used in vulnerability research are less important than attention to what we see as the 3 'T's of transparency, triangulation, and transferability, and to efforts to make vulnerability research both "place-based" and comparable

Critical linkages between land use change and human health in the Amazon region : a scoping review

Land use change (LUC) is a main cause of global environmental change, and is an important activity to be studied. Our research aims to examine the current state of evidence on the link between LUC and human health in the Amazon region. We conducted a scoping review of literature in two research databases, resulting in 14 papers for analysis. Our analysis demonstrated a lack of clear definitions for LUC, a wide variety of negative health effects from LUC, the lack of qualitative articles, a lack of studies exploring the potential positive health effects of LUC, and the predominance of studies coming from the Brazilian Amazon. Our study validated the prevailing idea that LUC can lead to negative health consequences, if not managed properly

Females of the four-eyed frog, Pleurodema thaul (Anura, Leptodactylidae), respond behaviourally to conspecific male scent

Among amphibians, conspecific chemical communication has been widely studied in Caudata. Adult anurans, by contrast, have received less attention. Recently, it was shown that chemical scents are also relevant for adult anuran intraspecific communication. In this context, we evaluate whether females of the four-eyed frog (Pleurodema thaul) respond to conspecific male scents. We carried out a double choice experiment in a Y-maze. Females were repeatedly presented with the scents of several males versus distilled water. To extract the scent from males, we acoustically stimulated males and then used the water from their aquaria for the experiments. Our data suggest that females are capable of responding behaviourally to male scents, since they spent longer periods in the zones with male scent, rather than in zones with water. We propose that under natural breeding conditions, females of P. thaul may use either their chemical sense or chemical cues to facilitate their encounters with males

Intercambio cultural de la danza folclórica entre estudiantes de grado octavo de tres instituciones educativas, de tres regiones de Colombia, Caribe, Orinoquia y Andina, a través de Google Sites

El presente artículo es el resultado de una investigación realizada como trabajo de grado en la maestría denominada Recursos Digitales Aplicados a la Educación. Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo promover el intercambio cultural de la danza folclórica entre estudiantes de octavo grado de tres instituciones educativas, de tres regiones de Colombia, Caribe, Orinoquia y Andina, a través de Google sites. Dicho ejercicio estuvo orientado a partir del enfoque cualitativo, mediante el modelo de Investigación Acción Pedagógica (IAP), los participantes propuestos para este ejercicio fueron 114 estudiantes de ambos sexos con edades comprendidas de 11 y 15 años de 3 colegios pertenecientes a 3 regiones diferentes (Andina, Caribe y Orinoquia). La realización de este ejercicio estuvo compuesta por 4 fases: diagnóstico, diseño de unidad y secuencia didáctica, implementación y evaluación. El principal hallazgo obtenido fue el incremento de medio a superior en los niveles de pre-saberes folclóricos de la danza en estudiantes, evidenciado en el uso de Google Sites como herramienta tecnológica y un mayor sentido de identidad por la cultura propias de las regiones mencionadas. A modo de conclusión, se ratifica que el uso de herramientas tecnológicas facilita el alcance de la zona de desarrollo próximo en los estudiantes, debido a la interacción constante entre los actores de la práctica educativa, Sin embargo, es importante resaltar que las dificultades en el acceso a internet y/o dispositivos tecnológicos, fueron limitantes al momento de realizar la aplicación disminuyendo la muestra final a 62 estudiantesMaestríaMagister en Recursos Digitales Aplicados a la Educació

Caracterización del grado de complejidad del sistema solar mediante la ley de Zipf/Mandelbrot

The Zipf/Mandelbrot law has allowed to characterize phenomena with a hyperbolic organization in biomedical sciences and natural languages, among others; however, its application could be extended to study planetary characteristics. Therefore, the objective of this research is to apply the Zipf/Mandelbrot law to characterize the degree of complexity of the orbital period, the planetary mean orbital velocity, and the mean distance to the sun of the planets of the solar system. For this purpose, the values of the orbital period, the mean orbital velocity, and the mean distance of the planets of the solar system to the sun were taken to evaluate their hyperbolic distribution. Subsequently, the Zipf/Mandelbrot law was applied to calculate the fractal dimension of both variables. The values of orbital period, orbital velocity and planetary mean distance were found to be hierarchically distributed, which allowed the fractal dimension values to be calculated. These values were 0.28, 0.88 and 0.42, with R2 coefficients of 0.92, 0.87 and 0.92, respectively. The above suggests that the application of the Zipf/Mandelbrot law reveals the existence of undescribed mathematical orders in the celestial kinematics by finding a greater degree of complexity of the mean orbital velocity with respect to the mean planetary distance to the sun and the orbital period, implying that the analysis parameters of planetary systems could be complemented with this approach.La ley de Zipf/Mandelbrot ha permitido caracterizar fenómenos con una organización hiperbólica en las ciencias biomédicas y los lenguajes naturales, entre otros; sin embargo, su aplicación podría extenderse a estudiar características planetarias. Por tanto, el objetivo de esta investigación consiste en aplicar la ley de Zipf/Mandelbrot para caracterizar el grado de complejidad del período orbital, la velocidad orbital media planetaria y la distancia media al sol de los planetas del sistema solar. Para ello, se tomaron los valores del período orbital, la velocidad orbital media y la distancia media al sol de los planetas del sistema solar para evaluar su distribución hiperbólica. Posteriormente, se aplicó la ley de Zipf/Mandelbrot para calcular la dimensión fractal de ambas variables. Se comprobó que los valores del período orbital, la velocidad orbital y la distancia media planetaria se distribuyen jerárquicamente, lo cual permitió calcular los valores de dimensión fractal, que fueron 0.28, 0.88 y 0.42, con coeficientes R2 de 0.92, 0.87 y 0.92, respectivamente. Lo anterior sugiere que la aplicación de la ley de Zipf/Mandelbrot revela la existencia de órdenes matemáticos no descritos en la cinemática celeste al encontrar un mayor grado de complejidad de la velocidad media orbital con respecto a la distancia media planetaria al sol y el período orbital, de donde se puede inferir que los parámetros de análisis de los sistemas planetarios podrían complementarse con este enfoque

Flowchart.

<p>Flowchart of study selection process.</p

Basic details of included publications.

<p>Basic details of included publications.</p

Summary of selected publications.

<p>Summary of selected publications.</p