Search results for "amazon"
showing 10 items of 97 documents
An Integrative Approach to Assess the Environmental Impacts of Gold Mining Contamination in the Amazon
2021
As the number of legal and illegal gold mining sites increases in the Andes–Amazonia region, integrative methods to evaluate the effects of mining pollution on freshwater ecosystems are of paramount importance. Here, we sampled water and sediments in 11 sites potentially affected by gold mining activities in the Napo province (Ecuador). The environmental impacts were evaluated using the following lines of evidence (LOEs): water physicochemical parameters, metal exposure concentrations, macroinvertebrate community response (AAMBI), and toxicity by conducting bioassays with Lactuca sativa and Daphnia magna. Dissolved oxygen and total suspended solids were under (130 mg/Ls) quality standards 6…
Bioaerosols in the Amazon rain forest: temporal variations and vertical profiles of Eukarya, Bacteria, and Archaea
2021
The Amazon rain forest plays a major role in global hydrological cycling, and biogenic aerosols are likely to influence the formation of clouds and precipitation. Information about the sources and altitude profiles of primary biological aerosol particles, however, is sparse. We used fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), a molecular biological staining technique largely unexplored in aerosol research, to investigate the sources and spatiotemporal distribution of Amazonian bioaerosols on the domain level. We found wet season bioaerosol number concentrations in the range of 1–5 × 105 m−3 accounting for > 70 % of the coarse mode aerosol. Eukaryotic and bacterial particles predominated, …
Co-Evolutionary Coupling via a Digital-bio Ecosystem : A Suggestion for a New R&D Model in the Digital Economy
2019
A solution to the critical problem of a dilemma between R&D expansion and productivity decline that a majority of information and communication technology (ICT) leaders have been confronting in the digital economy is expected. It can be expected by a spinoff from economic functionality-seeking GDP-based coevolution cycle to supra-functionality beyond an economic value-seeking uncaptured GDP-driven coevolution cycle. However, the transformation dynamism remains a black box. By means of numerical simulations based on empirical analyses of the development trajectories of global ICT leaders, focusing on Amazon and Finland, together with an intensive review of preceding analyses, this paper atte…
Editorial : Tropical Climate Variability and Change: Impacts in the Amazon
2019
Vast amounts of data from satellites and ground-based systems, and improvements on modeling techniques, allows a better understanding of Earth processes and advances on climate science. The tropics play a key role on global climate processes, and the tropical forest is a sensitive biome in the global hydrological and carbon cycles. In particular, the Amazon region includes about one half of the world’s tropical forest, and relatively small change in Amazon forest dynamics have the potential to substantially affect the rate of climate change. This Research Topics focus on recent finding on the impacts of tropical climate variability and change over the Amazon ecosystem using satellite data, …
The role of sustainable agroforestry practices and food consumption to prevent tropical deforestation and increase ecosystem services
2022
Tropical forests harbor most of global terrestrial biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services, although they have been largely replaced by agricultural activities. Amazon is the largest tropical forest remaining, and cattle ranching and soybean cultivation are by far the greater drivers of deforestation, that together with other few commodities constitutes the main products responsible for the imported deforestation caused by European countries. Agroforestry systems and sustainable intensification are pointed out as solutions to conciliate food production with environmental conservation, thus reviewing the results of studies comparing these practices against conventional ones are…
Could cattle ranching and soybean cultivation be sustainable? A systematic review and a meta-analysis for the Amazon
2021
Abstract: Tropical forests are being destroyed to make space for agricultural activities with the assumption that they are required to feed the growing global population. Consequently, more sustainable practices are needed to guarantee food security and environmental protection of highly threatened natural biodiversity hotspots like the Amazon rainforest. Cattle ranching and soybean cultivation are by far the greater drivers of land use change and deforestation in the Amazon region. We performed a systematic review of papers related to these two main drivers and a meta-analysis on the effects of sustainable practices on different ecosystem services. The results of the review highlight a lar…
Il centro commerciale come palinsesto aumentato. Innovazioni nell’edificio pubblico
2018
L’articolo discute alcuni caratteri architettonici del centro commerciale inteso come impianto su cui la riflessione disciplinare può operare nuovi indirizzi di intervento, attraverso una lettura genealogica con particolare riferimento alla pianta. L’ideale dell’open space, ipotesi di totale libertà della pianta senza tramezzi divisori, viene acquisito negli ultimi trent’anni del Novecento dagli architetti radicali. Le supersuperfici neutre che fanno riferimento al supermercato, lo promuovono a sintesi di ogni spazialità perché ciò sia un monito, espresso attraverso l’evocazione di un universo distopico in cui ogni significato sociale si esprimerà attraverso la produzione e la vendita delle…
“Pensare con” i popoli indigeni dell’Amazzonia i rapporti tra uomo e cosmo
2020
Despite the devastation produced by centuries of European colonization, Amerindian societies have maintained worldviews and conceptions of humanity which present a great richness, originality and variety. As shown both by Lévi-Strauss (1992) and, in a study perspective closer to Eliade's approach, by Sullivan (1988), they share some common characteristics which it is useful to compare, by difference and analogy, with those of Euro-Western cosmologies. As Viveiros de Castro argued with specific reference to the indigenous cosmologies of the Amazon, the importance of the aspects of relationality of reality, its eminently transformative dynamic nature, the ontological multiplicity of its compo…
Imagining Africa and blackness in the Russian empire: from extra-textualarapkaand distant cannibals to Dahomey amazon shows – live in Moscow and Riga
2013
In the nineteenth century, Dahomey amazon shows, traveling circuses with menageries and ‘African villages,’ emerged as part of the transnational entertainment industry. This article extends the geography of this global model and generic system and its role in the visual politics of whiteness and blackness in a context outside the imperial colonization of Africa. The first sections examine a rise of visuality in the Russian imperial imagination of race, Africa and blackness through a ‘symptomatic’ reading of Aleksandr Griboedov's play Woe from Wit and Arkadii Averchenko's Death of an African Hunter. These are followed by a discussion of the Dahomey amazon shows in Moscow and their significan…
A new perspective of innovation toward a non-contact society - Amazon's initiative in pioneering growing seamless switching
2022
This paper elucidates the inside of the black box of Amazon's unique research and development (R&D) dynamism that made it the world's top R&D leader by transforming “routine or periodic alterations” into “significant improvement” during the R&D process. This dynamism also succeeded in transforming the COVID-19 pandemic period into a springboard for new innovation, leading to Amazon's notable growth notwithstanding the pandemic. An empirical analysis using a techno-economic approach focusing on Amazon's endeavor to develop a series of advanced digital fashions (ADFs) and online-based luxury brands (neo-luxury) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted. Amazon became a global appa…