Praying for Drought: Persistent Vulnerability and the Politics of Patronage in Ceará, Northeast Brazil

ABSTRACT   The phrase persistent vulnerability reflects the enduring relationship of the rural population in Ceará with a highly variable climate. Persistence underscores the historical and unyielding nature of this vulnerability. Yet contrary to once-catastrophic rates of mortality etched in a public consciousness, no one dies from severe droughts and few people flee them as in the past. Government relief and social transfers have become the institutionalized form of adaptation, giving way to the counterintuitive reality that drought stabilizes the food and income supply for poor people. We analyze how maladaptive risk reduction, which is embedded in clientilistic social relations, undermines resilience, and we examine pathways toward a more sustainable adaptive relationship.     

Interacting Effects of Discharge and Channel Morphology on Transport of Semibuoyant Fish Eggs in Large,Altered River Systems

Habitat fragmentation and flow regulation are significant factors related to the decline and extinction of freshwater biota. Pelagic-broadcast spawning cyprinids require moving water and some length of unfragmented stream to complete their life cycle. However, it is unknown how discharge and habitat features interact at multiple spatial scales to alter the transport of semi-buoyant fish eggs. Our objective was to assess the relationship between downstream drift of semi-buoyant egg surrogates (gellan beads) and discharge and habitat complexity. We quantified transport time of a known quantity of beads using 2–3 sampling devices at each of seven locations on the North Canadian and Canadian rivers. Transport time was assessed based on median capture time (time at which 50% of beads were captured) and sampling period (time period when 2.5% and 97.5% of beads were captured). Habitat complexity was assessed by calculating width∶depth ratios at each site, and several habitat metrics determined using analyses of aerial photographs. Median time of egg capture was negatively correlated to site discharge. The temporal extent of the sampling period at each site was negatively correlated to both site discharge and habitat-patch dispersion. Our results highlight the role of discharge in driving transport times, but also indicate that higher dispersion of habitat patches relates to increased retention of beads within the river. These results could be used to target restoration activities or prioritize water use to create and maintain habitat complexity within large, fragmented river systems.     

Increase of sialyltransferase activity in the serum and liver of inflamed rates

Induction of inflammation by turpentine injection caused 1.5–2-fold increase of both sialy- and galactosyltransferase activity in liver homogenates. The effect was apparent after 12 h turpentine treatment. Serum sialytransferase activity started to increase in the inflamed rats after 18 h, reaching a maximum of 4-fold at 48 h. In contrast, galactosyltransferase activity in serum showed no significant increase. The coordinated and temporal increase of sialytransferase activity in liver and serum suggest involvement of a specific mechanism for the preferential release of this enzyme into serum.     

Mass Collaboration in Earthquake Risk Management

The mechanism of mass collaboration in risk management was studied during the Sichuan earthquake under a Web-based “PeopleFinder” project, where information is contributed and shared among mass contributors. The case study is provided by a great earthquake that happened in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, of southwestern China at 2:28 p.m. on May 12, 2008. We witnessed and experienced the rescue and relief efforts for the great earthquake. In this article, two fundamental frameworks are developed to study the mechanism of mass collaboration. Mass collaboration is proven to be effective in a big public crisis such as the Sichuan earthquake.