The paleoecological evolution of a peat bog in the Campos region, Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil, was determined based on an integrated study of stratigraphy, palynology, and geochronology. The peat bog is constituted of silty-clay material, with high levels of ash (residue on ignition) and organic matter content that was deposited on a sandy substrate. Palynological analysis show that grassland taxa dominated from the base of the core at the early deglacial (∼17.4 cal kyr B.P.) to the Present. Four pollen zones were identified: CCQ I Zone (3.20 m to 2.50 m), covering the deglaciation (Upper Pleistocene), corresponding to dry climate conditions; CCQ II Zone (2.50 m to 1.60 m, latest deglaciation and Early Holocene), associated with a slightly humid climate; CCQ III Zone (1.60 m to 0.50 m, mid to late Holocene), established under very humid climatic conditions; and CCQ IV Zone (0.50 m to 0.00 m, last ∼500 years), representative of a low-humidity period. The floristic composition of grassland communities observed throughout the drill core is very similar to that found in the region where the municipality of Cacequi is located, in which Poaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Rubiaceae were identified as the most abundant families. Consequently, although in the last ∼17.4 cal kyr B.P. the humidity oscillated, the grassland vegetation remained predominant, although not being represented by the same families, as indicated by changes in the floristic composition among the four pollen zones. Palynological and geochronological data, when compared with other sectors of the Río de la Plata Grasslands, show a predominance of dry conditions over the studied interval. From the early deglacial until the Present, climatic fluctuations shaped the diversity of plant communities and affected the particularities of each sector of the Río de la Plata Grasslands, including the Campos region. High ash content was detected along the core, similar to what occurs with other peatlands already studied in Brazil. In the peat bog analyzed, Poaceae is the predominant family, being known as a major producer of biomineralized structures, which would explain the high ash content recorded.

This study aimed to quantify marine litter before and during the COVID pandemic found on urban touristic beaches closed to beachgoer access in northeastern Brazil. Litter identification and quantification was conducted during April, June, and August 2019, when 3583 items were sampled, and replicated during the same months in 2020, when access to the beaches studied was prohibited and a significant reduction in the amount of litter was found, 1812 items (49% decrease). Transects were used to monitor and classify litter according to its source, namely: autochthonous (litter that was locally discarded) and allochthonous (litter from other sites and sources). All beaches were classified as “very clean” and presented a smaller amount of litter during the beach closure period. The highest total marine litter reduction between the periods studied was 83%, while autochthonous litter in particular showed the most significant reduction, 88%. The comparison between the quantity and type of litter found in both periods showed greater specific anthropic pressure from beach users.

The southern skies and tall mountains of Latin America have cultivated a long history of astronomy on the continent. Today, the continent hosts over 80 observatories that are collaborative research centres for the region and the world. But what about other areas of physics? These have benefited from a culture of collaboration, but there are still challenges in fully developing the potential of research on the continent, such as insufficient researchers or resources. In this Viewpoint, seven physicists discuss the varying research landscapes of different areas of physics across the continent.

Fjords are considered biodiversity hotspots and aquatic critical zones, being extremely sensitive to climate change due to close oceanic, terrestrial, and glacial interactions. These ecosystems have received a great deal of attention in research on current and future anthropic impacts. Despite this, there is no analog in the geological record that presents icehouse-greenhouse biological and climatic changes. Here we present an analog, through a detailed taphonomic survey of the Lontras Shale Lagerstätte (Itararé Group, Paraná Basin, Brazil), related to a climatic optimum of the end of the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (Late Pennsylvanian), in which a temperate outer paleofjord with a rich well-preserved biota was installed. In the monotone layers of black shale, we find subtle variations of the dominant skeletal type, rates of fragmentation and disarticulation, and other taphonomic aspects that define distinct taphofacies. Each of them is the result of distinct time-averaging related to mass mortality events, turbidity, and depositional hiatus periods at different scales and intensities, mixing the ecologic census with short-term and long-term within-habitat assemblages. In addition, the rich paleobiota was reconstructed with autochthonous and allochthonous benthic fauna, many marine nektonic organisms, and intense continental contribution of terrestrial bioclasts, that proliferated and were exceptionally preserved by the establishment of an anoxic temperate outer fjord. The taphofacies show an evolution in a high-frequency sequence within a highstand systems tract, linked to climatic improvement. Furthermore, taphonomic detailing can be used as a comparison of deep marine and deep lacustrine taphofacies, in addition to serving as an analog for the short-time scale biological, biogeochemical, climatic, and stratigraphic changes associated with the icehouse–greenhouse transition in the past, present, and future.

Abstract Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions pave the way for studying a wide range of social spaces, such as the academia. Through using Bourdieusian fields, our objective was to investigate whether the teaching area of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) can be considered a relatively autonomous scientific field. Therefore, this study is motivated by two research questions: 1) what is the distribution of scientific capital in the teaching area; and 2) what are the implications of this distribution on its constitution as a scientific field. By crossing data on professors of programs in the field of education with the evaluation grade assigned by Capes to each of these programs, our analysis revealed that this area does not constitute a scientific field. Differently from what happens in well-established fields, most teaching advisors come from many different scientific backgrounds and do not recognize this field’s specific intellectual production as scientific capital. Assuming that the existing disputes between professors with less and more scientific capital can generate new conformations in the area, a possible structure could be a stabilization of the subgroup of professors with greater scientific capital and its constitution as a scientific field, whose agents become increasingly aware that their cognitive structure and ideals of education/research are different from what Capes intended to homogenize with the creation of a teaching area. We believe that our results can be a reference for critical reflection on the structure of the field of teaching, which is still driven by its agents.

The fossil record of bioerosion on rudists is commonly restricted to brief mentions that mainly use general terms and do not constitute detailed ichnological studies. This contribution comprises a detailed study of the bioerosion structures present on the shells of different species of rudists from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of Cuba. In addition, paleobiological, paleoecological and taphonomic implications of these boring are inferred. Among the studied material, seventeen rudist shells exhibits bioerosion structures. Based on their morphological features the borings have been ascribed to Gastrochaenolites isp. and Entobia isp. Gastrochaenid bivalves and clionaid sponges, respectively, have been proposed as their more likely producers. The modes of occurrence, density, and position of such bioerosion structures rule out a syn-vivo relationship between rudists and boring bivalves and sponges, demonstrating that colonization mainly was postmortem. Furthermore, the combination of these data together with previous paleoecological interpretations and the fact that the most parts of the rudist shells are filled by sediment, provides enough evidence to propose a subsequent process of reworking and reburial of these shells in shallow marine settings.

Anomalocardia flexuosa is a bivalve that inhabits shallow, low hydrodynamics coastal environments of normal to brackish salinity, currently distributed from the Caribbean up to the state of Santa Catarina (∼28°S) in southern Brazil, but its fossil record extends along the southwestern Atlantic up to ∼40°S, in Argentina. Its absence in southern coasts today is attributed to ocean water cooling as a result of Middle-Late Holocene changes in relative influence of the warm waters of the Brazil Current and the cold waters of the Malvinas/Falklands Current, but geomorphologic and stratigraphic data suggest that coastal evolution controlled mainly by glacioeustatic-driven oscillations may have also played a role on the shifts of its distribution. Here we review the past and present distribution of A. flexuosa along southern Brazil, establishing a correlation with the Holocene geological history of this area. The Holocene post glacial marine transgression (PMT) produced a large complex of interconnected coastal lagoons landward of sandy barriers stretching from southern Brazil (state of Rio Grande do Sul) to Argentina, creating a corridor that allowed for the southward dispersion of A. flexuosa. The few available numerical ages indicate that A. flexuosa was established in the northern coastal plain of Rio Grande do Sul around ∼7.1 ka BP, and by ∼5.8 ka BP it had reached the southern plain, facilitated by warmer ocean waters than today and the sea-level highstand of 6–5 ka BP. The combination of cooling, sea-level fall that reduced marine influence, and fluvial inputs of freshwater and sediments, converted most of the lagoon complex into smaller isolated freshwater lakes after ∼4 ka BP, leading to the regional extinction of that species. The fossils of A. flexuosa and other tropical mollusks in middle and late Pleistocene interglacial barrier-lagoon coastal deposits along the southwestern Atlantic suggest that their latitudinal distribution shifted cyclically, driven by glacial-interglacial oscillations of sea-level and temperatures. The understanding of the coastal processes that affected the distribution of A. flexuosa may help assessing how mollusks and other marine species respond to environmental forcings related to sea-level oscillations and climate, thus contributing from a paleobiological perspective for conservation and management efforts under present and future scenarios of changes in coastal ecosystems.

Nos cursos de licenciatura, usualmente, as discussões sobre Epistemologia são feitas de forma desconectada das discussões técnicas, muitas vezes realizadas apenas em disciplinas específicas. Buscando romper com esse abismo entre os conteúdos técnicos e pedagógicos das licenciaturas em Física, apresentamos uma análise de um curso de extensão sobre Astrofísica e Epistemologia, oferecido para professores de ciências e licenciandos de Física. Nesse curso, diferentes episódios da Astronomia e Astrofísica foram discutidos à luz de diferentes concepções epistemológicas. Nosso objetivo era permitir que os alunos refletissem sobre suas próprias concepções, confrontando-as com as diferentes possibilidades apresentadas. Para avaliar a intervenção, foi realizado um pré-teste e pós-teste, em que os participantes expressavam sua concordância com 10 enunciados sobre natureza da ciência. As respostas foram analisadas usando o método estatístico de Escalonamento Multidimensional. Nossos resultados mostram que, inicialmente, as respostas não apresentavam consistência interna e os participantes exibiam o mesmo grau de concordância em relação a visões concorrentes sobre a natureza da ciência. Após o curso, os participantes passaram a se posicionar de forma mais coerente, concordando com características de uma mesma visão epistemológica e se afastando de visões concorrentes.

The few passages in Spinoza’s work in which he focuses on the concept of human law have not received as much scholarly attention as passages focused on other themes, but they have still been very well examined, as evidenced by, for example, the collection edited by André Campos in 2015, which brought together 21 articles written between 1948 and 2010.It is true that most of these studies do not directly aim to determine whether Spinoza adopts a normative conception of human law in the political-legal field or, if he does adopt such a conception, what the conditions under which he could do so could be, given the logical-causal necessitarianism and naturalism of his metaphysics, explicitly reaffirmed in paragraph 3 of Chapter IV of the TTP. However, this problem is unavoidable, and it is precisely to this matter that I would like to contribute, in a rather modest way, by examining the answer that Spinoza himself offers in the passage just cited.

Neste texto, discuto a interpretação defendida por Moyal-Sharrock, segundo a qual as proposições eixo são maneiras de agir com o objetivo de oferecer uma proposta sobre como compreendê-las. Sustento que a posição de Moyal-Sharrock deixa algumas lacunas, porque não explica a origem das nossas certezas fundamentais. A sua leitura também carece de recursos para responder ao problema da demarcação, uma vez que não é claro como distinguir maneiras de agir que podem legitimamente cumprir o papel de fundamento não fundamentado das que não podem. Sem uma resposta para esse problema, a ameaça relativista é séria. Proponho, então, que as proposições eixo são maneiras de agir constitutivas de habilidades. Desenvolvo também uma abordagem ecológica das habilidades, a qual me possibilita explicar por que habilidades são embebidas-de-realidade e, por conseguinte, por que as maneiras de agir que as constituem são fundamentos não fundamentados legítimos. Com base nessa abordagem, ofereço uma resposta para o problema da demarcação que afasta a ameaça relativista.

In this paper, I explore and examine different ways in which affectivity is related to perception within ecological psychology. I assess whether some of those ways compromise the realist and direct aspects of traditional ecological perception. I sustain that they don’t. Affectivity, at least in some cases, turns the perception of fine-grained affordances possible. For an engaged perceiver, affectivity is not optional.

Este trabalho apresenta o projeto de extensão Agricultura Urbana e Periurbana, Alimentação, Educação e Saúde, iniciado em 2018 pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, no Campus Litoral Norte. O diálogo entre a universidade, gestores públicos, escolas, organizações não-governamentais e moradores da região fomentou o debate sobre agricultura, agroecologia, alimentação e saúde. Percebeu-se que havia demanda por cursos teórico-práticos que pudessem consolidar a formação técnica em torno dessas temáticas. O projeto iniciou realizando um mapeamento das hortas comunitárias urbanas e periurbanas na região e ofereceu cursos fomentando a inclusão de populações vulneráveis, articulando o direito humano à alimentação e o direito à cidade, propondo o aumento da produção de alimentos no espaço urbano.