Reflexiones acerca de la efectividad de la ley de tortura en Brasil: la importancia de la fase pre procesal

El presente artículo pretende reflexionar sobre algunos tópicos del delito de tortura en el Estado brasilero; y en este sentido, evidenciar la importancia de la fase pre procesal en los procesos y procedimientos que tengan por finalidad sancionar jurídicamente dicho comportamiento

Edge effects and vertical stratification of aerial insectivorous bats across the interface of primary-secondary Amazonian rainforest

Research ArticleEdge effects, abiotic and biotic changes associated with habitat boundaries, are key drivers of community change in fragmented landscapes. Their influence is heavily modulated by matrix composition. With over half of the world’s tropical forests predicted to become forest edge by the end of the century, it is paramount that conservationists gain a better understanding of how tropical biota is impacted by edge gradients. Bats comprise a large fraction of tropical mammalian fauna and are demonstrably sensitive to habitat modification. Yet, knowledge about how bat assemblages are affected by edge effects remains scarce. Capitalizing on a whole-ecosystem manipulation in the Central Amazon, the aims of this study were to i) assess the consequences of edge effects for twelve aerial insectivorous bat species across the interface of primary and secondary forest, and ii) investigate if the activity levels of these species differed between the understory and canopy and if they were modulated by distance from the edge. Acoustic surveys were conducted along four 2-km transects, each traversing equal parts of primary and ca. 30-year-old secondary forest. Five models were used to assess the changes in the relative activity of forest specialists (three species), flexible forest foragers (three species), and edge foragers (six species). Modelling results revealed limited evidence of edge effects, except for forest specialists in the understory. No significant differences in activity were found between the secondary or primary forest but almost all species exhibited pronounced vertical stratification. Previously defined bat guilds appear to hold here as our study highlights that forest bats are more edge-sensitive than edge foraging bats. The absence of pronounced edge effects and the comparable activity levels between primary and old secondary forests indicates that old secondary forest can help ameliorate the consequences of fragmentation on tropical aerial insectivorous batsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Edge effects and vertical stratification of aerial insectivorous bats across the interface of primary-secondary Amazonian rainforest

Edge effects, abiotic and biotic changes associated with habitat boundaries, are key drivers of community change in fragmented landscapes. Their influence is heavily modulated by matrix composition. With over half of the world’s tropical forests predicted to become forest edge by the end of the century, it is paramount that conservationists gain a better understanding of how tropical biota is impacted by edge gradients. Bats comprise a large fraction of tropical mammalian fauna and are demonstrably sensitive to habitat modification. Yet, knowledge about how bat assemblages are affected by edge effects remains scarce. Capitalizing on a whole-ecosystem manipulation in the Central Amazon, the aims of this study were to i) assess the consequences of edge effects for twelve aerial insectivorous bat species across the interface of primary and secondary forest, and ii) investigate if the activity levels of these species differed between the understory and canopy and if they were modulated by distance from the edge. Acoustic surveys were conducted along four 2-km transects, each traversing equal parts of primary and ca. 30-year-old secondary forest. Five models were used to assess the changes in the relative activity of forest specialists (three species), flexible forest foragers (three species), and edge foragers (six species). Modelling results revealed limited evidence of edge effects, except for forest specialists in the understory. No significant differences in activity were found between the secondary or primary forest but almost all species exhibited pronounced vertical stratification. Previously defined bat guilds appear to hold here as our study highlights that forest bats are more edge-sensitive than edge foraging bats. The absence of pronounced edge effects and the comparable activity levels between primary and old secondary forests indicates that old secondary forest can help ameliorate the consequences of fragmentation on tropical aerial insectivorous bats

Satisfaction survey with DNA cards method to collect genetic samples for pharmacogenetics studies

BACKGROUND: Pharmacogenetic studies are essential in understanding the interindividual variability of drug responses. DNA sample collection for genotyping is a critical step in genetic studies. A method using dried blood samples from finger-puncture, collected on DNA-cards, has been described as an alternative to the usual venepuncture technique. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation of the DNA cards method in a multicentre clinical trial, and to assess the degree of investigators' satisfaction and the acceptance of the patients perceived by the investigators. METHODS: Blood samples were collected on DNA-cards. The quality and quantity of DNA recovered were analyzed. Investigators were questioned regarding their general interest, previous experience, safety issues, preferences and perceived patient satisfaction. RESULTS: 151 patients' blood samples were collected. Genotyping of GST polymorphisms was achieved in all samples (100%). 28 investigators completed the survey. Investigators perceived patient satisfaction as very good (60.7%) or good (39.3%), without reluctance to finger puncture. Investigators preferred this method, which was considered safer and better than the usual methods. All investigators would recommend using it in future genetic studies. CONCLUSION: Within the clinical trial setting, the DNA-cards method was very well accepted by investigators and patients (in perception of investigators), and was preferred to conventional methods due to its ease of use and safety

Boulder deposition during major tsunami events

A remarkable accumulation of marine boulders located above the present spring tide level has occurred in two coastal lowlands of the Algarve (Portugal). The size-interval of the particles studied here is seldom reported in the literature in association with extreme events of coastal inundation, thus making this study of relevance to many other coasts worldwide. The spreads of boulders extend several hundred meters inland and well beyond the present landward limit of storm activity. The marine origin of the boulders is demonstrated by well-developed macro-bioerosion sculpturing and in situ skeletal remains of endolithic shallow marine bivalves. The good state preservation of the fossils within the boulders indicates that abrasion duringtransport and redeposition was not significant. We envisage boulder deposition as having taken place during the Lisbon tsunami of ad 1755 through the simultaneous landward entrainment of coarse particles from nearshore followed by rapid shoreward suspended-dominated transport and non-graded redeposition that excluded significant sorting by weight or boulder dimensions. We use numerical hydrodynamic modeling of tsunami (and storm) waves to test the observational data on boulder dimensions (density, size, distribution) on the most likely processes of sediment deposition. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of the study of boulder deposits in tsunami reconstruction. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Geographical, seasonal, and depth variation in sinking particle speeds in the North Atlantic

Particle sinking velocity is considered to be a controlling factor for carbon transport to the deep sea and thus carbon sequestration in the oceans. The velocities of the material exported to depth are considered to be high in high-latitude productive systems and low in oligotrophic distributions. We use a recently developed method based on the measurement of the radioactive pair 210Po-210Pb to calculate particle sinking velocities in the temperate and oligotrophic North Atlantic during different bloom stages. Our estimates of average sinking velocities (ASVs) show that slowly sinking particles (<100?m?d?1) contribute significantly to carbon flux at all the locations except in the temperate regions during the bloom. ASVs appear to vary strongly with season, which we propose is caused by changes in the epipelagic community structure. Our results are the first field data to confirm the long-standing theory that particle sinking velocities increase with depth, with increases of up to 90% between 50 and 150?m depth

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Multiplicity dependence of jet-like two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between unidentified charged trigger and associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The transverse-momentum range 0.7 $< p_{\rm{T}, assoc} < p_{\rm{T}, trig} <$ 5.0 GeV/$c$ is examined, to include correlations induced by jets originating from low momen\-tum-transfer scatterings (minijets). The correlations expressed as associated yield per trigger particle are obtained in the pseudorapidity range $|\eta|<0.9$. The near-side long-range pseudorapidity correlations observed in high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions are subtracted from both near-side short-range and away-side correlations in order to remove the non-jet-like components. The yields in the jet-like peaks are found to be invariant with event multiplicity with the exception of events with low multiplicity. This invariance is consistent with the particles being produced via the incoherent fragmentation of multiple parton--parton scatterings, while the yield related to the previously observed ridge structures is not jet-related. The number of uncorrelated sources of particle production is found to increase linearly with multiplicity, suggesting no saturation of the number of multi-parton interactions even in the highest multiplicity p-Pb collisions. Further, the number scales in the intermediate multiplicity region with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions estimated with a Glauber Monte-Carlo simulation.Comment: 23 pages, 6 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 17, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/161