The signing of the framework agreement includes housing and educational infrastructure works held a meeting with the governor of Río Negro during which a framework agreement was signed for the transfer and cooperation in public works the national government committed to executing another set of strategic projects that are in an advanced stage which took place in the Salón de los Escudos of Casa Rosada was attended by the Deputy Chief of the Interior Cabinet Lisandro Catalán; the Secretary of Provinces and Municipalities Javier Milano; the Secretary of Public Works Luis Giovine; the Secretary of Territorial Development Also present were the Undersecretary of Habitat and Housing and the Undersecretary of Administrative Management of Education there are now 18 provinces that have subscribed to this type of agreements The decision is intertwined with a tense internal political controversy: the project was "stolen" from the province of Buenos Aires is one of the main political rivals of the president The mega plant intended to process and export natural gas from the Vaca Muerta field in Argentina will be built in the province of Rio Negro This was established by the companies that own the project the Argentine YPF and the Malaysian Petronas taking a decisive step for the project presented by the media as fundamental for the economic future of the country The decision is intertwined with a tense internal political controversy: the project was in fact "stolen" from the province of Buenos Aires is one of the president's main political rivals The liquid natural gas plant will be built in the Punta Colorada area a location approximately one thousand kilometers south of the capital Preliminary estimates say that the work could involve investments of between 30 and 50 billion dollars aiming to be one of the most ambitious infrastructures ever for the South American country the plant should start guaranteeing exports worth 2031 billion dollars a year from 30 considering the sale of both gas and crude oil The plant draws on the resources of Vaca Muerta one of the most promising unconventional hydrocarbon deposits on the continent and a strategic asset for the Argentine economy The bulk of the activity will be liquefaction for storage in containers destined for overseas markets targeting traditional access points such as ports in the Netherlands and Spanish Galicia has a first strategic advantage linked to the geographical location: compared to the alternative offered by Buenos Aires the location is closer to the Vaca Muerta deposit the deposit located in the Andean province of Neuquen It must also be considered that the province of Rio Negro has joined the benefits offered by the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (Rigi) the tool that Milei wanted to include in the "Ley Bases" to attract foreign capital en masse The government of the province of Buenos Aires accused the parties of having made a hasty "political" decision ignoring the technical and feasibility studies launched in 2016 to create the project in the "Ingeniero White" port provincial government sources report to the "Infobae" newspaper "it has been realized after years that it seems more convenient to start building a port from scratch rather than working with the most important active petrochemical port in the country" Between a "functioning port and a rendering they chose a rendering" speaking of a decision that is "technically quite difficult to explain" Kiciloff has announced a press conference for today Wednesday in which he will formalize his decision presumably attacking the central government but he has to deal with the opposition which insists on the need to bring the Rigi to the province too under penalty of losing others investments The Rigi is a tool with which the government aims to grant tax benefits and streamlined bureaucratic procedures to companies ready to invest over 200 million dollars in the country A measure that some governors considered not only excessive in terms of advantages for those who invest but also discriminatory compared to the industrial plans put in place by non-foreign entrepreneurs The latest version provides that this package can only be spent on industrial projects in the agro-forestry the commitment to contract local suppliers is established with amounts that are not less than 20 percent of the total promised investment Read also other news on Nova News Click here and receive updates on WhatsApp Follow us on the social channels of Nova News on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram The data was presented by Governor Alberto Weretilneck who yesterday led the opening of the XXVI Mercosur Onion Seminar in Viedma Río Negro has established itself as the main onion producer in southern Argentina The province has 8,000 hectares under cultivation and an estimated gross domestic product of $95 billion who yesterday led the opening of the 26th Mercosur Onion Seminar in Viedma and authorities from different countries to analyze the present and future of the onion sector organized jointly with the Province of Buenos Aires and INTA focuses on improving competitiveness and exploring new international markets “Our history is centrally tied to agriculture and livestock; it’s part of our identity,” said Weretilneck who added that “Patagonia has invested for many years so that our health status allows us to access the most demanding markets worldwide.” the Governor emphasized that "it is very important to work in coordination between the provincial and municipal governments and the productive sector to see what can be improved and thus act in favor of sustained growth in the activity." Río Negro has experienced exponential growth in onion production consolidating its position as the leading producer in southern Argentina the province has 8,000 hectares under cultivation This has generated a significant economic impact with more than 400 producers involved and an estimated gross geographic product of $95 billion stated that "Río Negro’s hydroelectric infrastructure is driving yields to increasingly higher production levels reaching 100 and 120 tons per hectare in drip rivers which is beginning to generate a very significant supply in the province." Río Negro exports more than 80,000 tons of onions per year in the face of economic challenges and market volatility the seminar’s central objective is commercial diversification and the search for new opportunities to strengthen the sector The Minister of Economic and Productive Development of Río Negro highlighting the productive growth of Río Negro and the need to strengthen global marketing "The role of public policies in the development of the sector along with sustained financial support and provincial stability in a challenging economic context and the availability of water to expand the area under irrigation industry experts and leaders will discuss strategies to improve competitiveness Foreign trade trends and the potential of Rio Negro onions in emerging markets will also be analyzed The Minister of Agrarian Development of Buenos Aires praised the seminar and the collaborative work among the various stakeholders seeking to boost local and regional development,” he emphasized Recibe todas las novedades en tu correo electrónico ArgentinaTeléfono (54-2266) 4-20703argenpapa@gmail.com The Federal Court of Amazonas sentenced to eight years in prison the pilot who flew the Greenpeace plane that crashed in Rio Negro near the city of Novo Airão in 2017 overturned and sank into the river after attempting a water landing with the landing gear down The accident would not have occurred if the pilot had carried out the basic safety checklists which are mandatory and must be done with the aircraft still on the ground and before the landing procedure The conviction information was released by the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) which alleged an attack against air security with the so-called "eventual malice" The accident occurred in the region of the Anavilhanas Archipelago the aircraft overturned and sank in the river after trying to land in the water Anac reported that according to data from the Brazilian Aeronautical Registry (RAB) the Annual Maintenance Inspection (IAM) and the Certificate of Airworthiness (CA) of the aircraft were valid Three people were injured and one died – Sweden's Carolina Steiser The court concluded that the pilot failed to perform a series of mandatory checklists when the aircraft – a Cessna Caravan 208 amphibious model – was still on the ground the pilot "was fully aware of the insecurity generated by the failure to carry out the checklists but chose to proceed with the operation." they can only be carried out safely when the legally established procedures are respected Not respecting them is creating a danger of harm to oneself and to third parties," the MPF said in the complaint The pilot of the aircraft was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment The decision can be appealed by the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the defense The MPF clarifies that the defendant is considered innocent until the final and unappealable criminal decision that definitively recognizes his guilt when there are no more appeals to be presented Failure to comply with the checklist during the pre-flight inspection and the flight itself favored the landing with inadequate configuration This attitude may have been triggered by the pilot's confidence in his operational capability because of his long experience in aviation Failure to comply with the checklist indicated in addition to the low level of situational awareness a low level of concern for the safe conduction of the flight by failing to follow basic procedures set forth in the manufacturer's manuals and current regulations The pilot's choice not to use the checklist during the flight phases revealed an inadequate evaluation of parameters related to the operation of the aircraft Improper compliance with the items in the Pre-Flight Inspection Sheet prevented the AMPHIB PUMP 1 and 2 circuit breakers from being rearmed After performing the test of landing gear extension and retraction by the emergency system the AMPHIB PUMP 1 and 2 circuit breakers were not rearmed being the aircraft delivered to fly in this condition The setting recorded on the AIRSPEED switch of the landing gear position warning system computer demonstrated that the scheduled speed of 74kt was not in accordancewith the recommended in the 9600-1A installation manual of Wipaire Inc The AMPHIB PUMP 1 and 2 circuit breakers were found disarmed after the occurrence after the completion of the maintenance service the executor of the tasks probably forgot to comply with the procedures for reconfiguring the aircraft it is possible that the pilot's automatism in relation to his way of carrying out the air operations has prevented the correct perception of the circuit breakers condition and the erroneous positioning of the landing gear The accomplishment of the landing on the water with the aircraft in inadequate configuration for the situation denotes a decrease in the level of situational awareness of the pilot considering that the necessary factors and conditions for the safety of the operation were not observed FL360aero | All right Reserved 2025 Elizângela Baré: The strength of indigenous women in healing the Earth telegram Join our Telegram channel! telegram In one of the most preserved regions of the country, a young indigenous woman shared porridge with her grandmother. Loaded with interest, Elizângela da Silva listened attentively to the myths of Baré people.  The myths have an important meaning for the indigenous population of Rio Negro These are narratives that tell about the sun woven by the wisdom and experience of the elderly “When your grandmother tells you the myth of Cassava we learn what nature can do to us if we don't respect it” With the arrival of schools in Cué-Cué Marabitanas Indigenous Land Bathing in the river and spending time with grandmother shared space in the routine with the literacy process Learning the Portuguese language - until then unknown to the Nheengatu-speaking girl - was her grandfather's request Elizângela paddled up the river in a canoe every day to get to school Unable to advance in his studies due to the precariousness of rural schools at the time he moved to the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in 1993 she had to take care of the children of family friends to continue her studies.  At the doctors' house at Associação Saúde Sem Limites - which developed medical assistance projects for indigenous peoples and traditional communities - Elizângela Baré learned about the health and rights of indigenous peoples combined with participation in a Youth Ministry group allowed him to join the indigenous movement.  Participating in the events of the Department of Indigenous Youth of Rio Negro (DAJIRN) Elizângela followed behind the scenes of the creation of the Department of Indigenous Women of Rio Negro (DMIRN) of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) caring for her family did not allow her to continue her studies and this time in the community where her husband's family lived she received the invitation to work as a teacher at a time when the municipal school system stopped being "rural" to be "indigenous" and nucleated with the participation of the school community in decisions regarding pedagogical management and the calendar of activities respecting the ways of life and the dynamics of the collective activities of the communities she received a letter of recommendation from the community with students from the first to the fifth grade this time to take over the management of the Baré Napirikuri cluster school (which brought together schools from 08 communities) The regulations for holding the position required academic training but trusting in the work carried out as a teacher She was elected in a vote by the students' families in 2010 With the support of her family and community she faced criticism from male indigenous teachers who accused her of not being qualified for the role she performed “At the time I didn’t understand what bullying was I didn't know what this patriarchy stuff was but I took the microphone and said 'we have to respect Despite resistance from teachers and some men in the community she worked for gender equality and an end to violence against indigenous women.  families were encouraged to share food between men and women at the same time which led to a change in the dynamics where men served themselves before women she shared with students what she witnessed in the indigenous women's movement in São Gabriel da Cachoeira she held craft workshops and cooking seminars where she wisely and discreetly brought up issues such as empowerment women's rights and how to differentiate tradition from violence she took over as coordinator of the Department of Indigenous Women of Rio Negro of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Dmirn/Foirn) Elizângela had completed a degree in sociology and was specializing in Indigenous Education She says that the option to continue her studies while working generated distrust among some leaders.  the leaders said 'you have to choose: do you want to be a university student or do you want to be a leader?' I'm fighting for collective rights and mine'” During the Covid-19 pandemic, Elizângela, together with Janete Alves, coordinated the "Rio Negro, We Care" campaign which aimed to guarantee the promotion of health food security and the right to information in more than 800 communities where 23 ethnic groups from Rio Negro live together The initiative aimed to raise emergency resources for the purchase of cleaning products in addition to expanding fundamental communication services via radio In addition to working to raise awareness about the disease in communities, Elizângela was a spokesperson for video campaign published by Foirn in April 2020.  Elizângela was a finalist for the Inspiradoras Award for the survey and mobilization carried out to make data on violence against women in São Gabriel da Cachoeira public.  she won the Mulher Imprensa Trophy for collaborations with the Wayuri Network of Indigenous Communicators and the Sumaúma portal – where she presented the podcast Rádio Sumaúma Four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic the first indigenous person to obtain a master's degree in Public Health at the University of São Paulo (USP) divides her routine between the Indigenous Land and the city of São Paulo their struggle so that the well-known knowledge of indigenous peoples those taught by family members long before learning Portuguese can be introduced into the Unified Health System (SUS) “We adhere very well to the Western system is also time to embrace our notorious knowledge” At an event at ISA's Floresta no Centro store, she recalled the actions adopted by indigenous communities to combat the health crisis during the launch of the Special “Memorables: resistance, strategies and indigenous knowledge in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic in Rio Negro” which has been a partner of Foirn since 2010 that women's knowledge baskets have been rekindled because even that indigenous woman who lived in the city during Covid-19 she stopped and took care of his home [...] She looked for a cure in the backyard she looked for a cure on the path to the farm she looked for a cure on the riverbank,” she said In the fifth episode of Casa Floresta podcast Elizângela explains how the creation of so-called “knowledge baskets” passed on orally by family members and stored in the subconscious "Each of the women has a basket of knowledge I learned the traditional life system of my people Our mother passed on this invisible basket." have been promoting health for five centuries with our way of being When cultivating fields for food or managing plants with medicinal properties it is in contact with the land that indigenous peoples reaffirm their humanity In the worldview of many peoples of Rio Negro which means that the elements of nature are endowed with consciousness and agency so the pineapple is supposed to be the water canopy and take care of the cassava plants But without blessings and care we can get sick." In an interview with ISA, carried out in September 2023, after the 3rd March of Indigenous Women Elizângela Baré made the worldview of the original peoples the arrow that guides change in society What pain would she speak of when she is knocked down The mobilization took place in Brasília (DF) on the eve of the trial of the “Time Frame” at the Federal Supreme Court (STF) This legal and anti-indigenous thesis seeks to establish a temporal criterion for the demarcation of Indigenous Lands linked to the date of promulgation of the Federal Constitution In the interview, the leadership also defended the demarcation of its birth territory, the Indigenous Land of Cué-Cué Marabitanas (AM) which only had its Declaration process completed How is the Law going to say that that land is not mine? If our mother lost blood on that land to give birth to us “The 'Temporal Framework' makes us feel unsafe within our territory it is a law that aims to destroy indigenous peoples” The most relevant news for you to form your opinion on the socio-environmental agenda LAST ISSUE UEA researchers Adriano Nobre Arco and Jose Clodoaldo de Oliveira are seen alongside Harvard researchers Evan Routhier and Faiz Haque during water collection at dawn on the Rio Negro in the Parana do Jacare region Amazonas.  (Credit: Bruno Kelly/Ambiental Media.) On a hot, humid day in September, Evan Routhier stood along the banks of the Rio Negro in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, chatting with a local fishmonger. Through a translator, Routhier, a graduate student in environmental science and engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) asked the man how concerned he was about mercury contamination in fish.  The man replied that he was worried about fish taken from areas where illegal gold mining took place but other than that illegal gold mining along the Amazon and its tributaries has exploded in which miners pull up sediment along the river and mix it with liquid mercury to separate the gold The mercury is burned off and turned into vapor which can end up in the river,  soils and on the leaf canopy above has been found throughout the Amazon.  “Mercury is very mobile in the environment This means that some of it travels to non-gold mining areas and we want to understand if it enters food webs in these regions as well,” Routhier said back in the lab in Cambridge on a crisp October day “The populations along the river eat fish most meals a day so making sure the fish are healthy to eat is important for local communities.” “Multiple past studies have shown high mercury concentrations in the hair of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon basin, illustrating the strong adverse effects of gold mining activities in what is seemingly a relatively pristine part of the planet, at least from a far away viewpoint like an overhead passing passenger aircraft,” said Scot Martin Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Routhier and his teammate Faiz Haque, a research fellow at SEAS, are part of a project led by Martin and Elsie Sunderland Fred Kavli Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences to understand how mercury enters the food web and bioaccumulates in food webs residing in the rivers of the Amazon rainforest The Harvard team is working closely with the teams of Sergio Duvoisin Junior and Rodrigo Souza professors at Amazonas State University (UEA) in Brazil Evan Routhier during sediment collection in the bed of the Negro River in Novo Airão Evan Routhier (left) and Faiz Haque during soil collection on the bank of the Negro River in Novo Airão The project is funded by the Amazonas State Research Support Foundation the Amazonas Environmental Protection Institute and the State Secretariat for the Environment.  “All of this work was enabled by the terrific collaboration with the UEA team, and it would have been impossible without them,” said Martin, who has also collaborated with UEA on research measuring volatile organic compounds in the Amazon “Working with the UEA team was synergistic both for focusing the research activities and for sampling in the Amazonian context not to mention the essential logistical contributions of the UEA research boat.” Routheir and Haque joined UEA researchers on their research vessel for a two-week voyage up and down the Rio Negro to collect water While the Harvard team was focused on mercury and methylmercury the UEA researchers also collected samples to test the general water quality of the area The mission was named the OXIOUUWI Campaign which means black in the Indigenous Yanomami language.  The boat moved slowly to navigate through a shallower river carefully skirting sandbars and beached boats.  Routhier and Haque would head out in a dinghy to collect water and sediment samples from the river dipping their instruments into the dark waters of the Rio Negro.  The team hiked into the jungle to collect soil samples and every couple of days stopped at a town or village — some as large as 15,000 people others only about 1,000 — to buy fish from local markets.  Routhier and Haque set up a simple lab space to process and preserve the samples for their long flight back to Cambridge the team will analyze the samples for total mercury and methylmercury concentration which can influence mercury methylation in the water Detail of fish purchased by researchers in the city of Barcelos Evan Routhier (right) and Faiz Haque are seen in the laboratory inside the UEA research boat during analysis and filtration of water collected at the mouth of the Rio Branco and Rio Negro “We want to understand how and why mercury is getting transformed into methylmercury and where that mercury is coming from,” said Routhier “If you start with a source from local gold mining it’s going to have a very distinct isotopic signature from mercury that came from the global pool was deposited on the forest canopy through the atmosphere transported into the water through soils and then finally into the water where it gets methylated figuring out where the mercury is coming from and what processes it's undergone in the environment.” The research could lead to a better understanding of the mercury cycle in the southern hemisphere Much of what is known about methylmercury accumulation in the northern hemisphere comes from research done in lakes and streams which have different chemistries than large southern hemisphere tropical rivers like the Rio Negro.  Haque or the rest of the team study the river they’ll never know it quite as well as the people who have lived on it for generations “I was amazed by how much knowledge these people had about the river and the surrounding forest from observation,” said Routhier from observations of water levels and how the forest has been changing which rely on the forest and the river for their food and livelihood are really tuned into what’s happening from climate change in a very real way.” The team is planning another research trip  in Spring 2024 on the Madeira River which has different water chemistry than the Rio Negro and is further impacted by anthropogenic development There are also hopes to return to the Rio Negro in the wet season to travel further up the river and collect more samples.  cost-effective greenhouse gas removal technologies Even healthy people cannot survive the extreme heat beginning to afflict large regions of the world explaining his new research into uncompensable heat stress The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission ChemosphereCitation Excerpt :Whatever the potential advantages be it becomes equally important to equally address the increase in aquatic toxicity or at the least the modifications imposed on aquatic toxic profile imposed by the presence of these predative species Marine rotifers and copepods get significant consideration as predators to HABs in the marine ecosystem (Alcántara et al. the potential use of predators in laboratory-controlled settings remain a question of concern owing to the logistic difficulties and the potential uncertainties involved LimnologicaCitation Excerpt :These characteristics may be linked to the predominance of heterotrophic over autotrophic processes driven by the allochthonous contributions of organic matter from riparian vegetation leading to natural processes of lake eutrophication With regards to the potential drivers of eutrophication in Uruguayan rivers and lakes (Alcántara et al. the Queguay Rivers provide a reference watershed comprised almost entirely of natural prairie (80%) the dominant natural land-cover class in this Pampean landscape All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. Indigenous people from Alto Rio Negro (AM) report feeling of 'boiling water' and impassable streams The impacts of the drought in Amazonas are felt in São Gabriel da Cachoeira in one of the most protected areas in the Amazon Residents live with a lack of some basic items in urban areas making access to the fields difficult.  “The sensation is that the water is boiling” Wayuri Network communicator and resident of Açaí-Paraná the City of São Gabriel da Cachoeira declared an emergency situation for a period of 90 days in the areas affected by drought The white sand beaches are increasingly spreading bringing uncertainty and fear to those in urban areas and those living in communities in indigenous territories as the dry period is just beginning.  is based on the Western Amazon Hydrometeorological Monitoring Bulletin from the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM) which informs that “the levels recorded in these stations are below the minimum range already recorded for the period”.  the lowest level of the river was recorded in February 1992 the city hall declares that it needs additional support from the State and the Union material and financial resources to face the drought It also informs that the situation causes social and economic adversities that exceed the municipality's budgetary capacity to carry out the necessary actions to restore normality The Municipal Protection and Civil Defense Coordination will mobilize agencies to respond to the problem residents of São Gabriel da Cachoeira who looked for mineral water to buy could no longer find it People are stocking up on groceries such as rice one of the city's most traditional restaurants did not open on Sunday due to a lack of ingredients to prepare the dishes.   This situation happens because the city's water supply is mainly done via ferries and The vessels known as recreation – which are the network boats that transport passengers – are no longer traveling up the river Ferries carrying goods are still making trips In one of the main ports of São Gabriel da Cachoeira as reported by Wayuri Network communicators Juliana Albuquerque action is being taken to clean up the stretch.  A similar situation can be seen in Barcelos follows the work of the Indigenous Environmental Management Agents (AIMAs) he reported extreme flooding in the Ayari River region the region is preparing for extreme drought.  we have encountered navigation difficulties There are residents who use some streams to access their fields And during this period it is difficult to navigate the stream making people walk further to access their fields The streams are unnavigable and require more time and effort to reach the fields,” he says.  This situation is happening on the Ayari River He is also concerned about the impact of high temperatures on the health of indigenous people The other issue is in relation to dry soil it will impact the life of the plantations Dzoodzo says that the oldest people report that there was an extreme drought in the Ayari which made navigation even in small canoes difficult “We haven't yet experienced these moments from the past It’s good that we stay alert for extreme situations” reports very high temperatures and an unhealthy situation And more dirt is coming down from the streams We went to try to dig a well on the riverbank to find white water to drink and be healthy for our children and the elderly.”  And it is through the boats that we exchange food to have the basics And the condition becomes more precarious,” he says it goes down very quickly from one day to the next We had the great drought in 2017 and there is still a little more to do to reach that mark hot water temperatures and the river falling (drying) with each passing day” According to the Geological Survey of Brazil (CPRM) the Amazon region is going through a severe drought with chances of its effects and impacts being reflected in 2024 which will probably reach its peak at the end of 2023 impacting the rainy season in the region and possibly resulting in negative precipitation anomalies Scenes of dead fish and completely dry rivers in other regions of the Amazon have drawn worldwide attention due to the social drama and impacts caused by the climate emergency.  the sandbanks are out and we have an environmental impact with climate change 2018."> World Subscribers only Rapper Diddy's trial for sex trafficking begins World Subscribers only Far right clinches overwhelming victory in first round of Romanian presidential election World Subscribers only Kenneth Roth: 'Human rights can be defended without the US' World Subscribers only Founder of Sant'Egidio community fears next pope could undo Francis's legacy Opinion Subscribers only 'Russian gas and Europe is an old story that ended badly Economy Subscribers only Europe's steel industry flattened by crisis World Subscribers only How European countries plan to fund defense efforts France French rail strikes: Traffic will be 'strongly disrupted' in Paris region commuter trains on Monday France Subscribers only Macron announces citizens' convention on school schedules France Subscribers only 21 charged over French prison attacks as investigation narrows in on drug traffickers France Subscribers only French mosque stabber was driven by 'morbid fascination,' prosecutor says Videos World expos: From Paris 1855 to Osaka 2025 Videos How the Trump administration is attacking scientific research in the US Videos Tesla cars set on fire in Las Vegas as calls to boycott Musk's company grow worldwide Videos Can France's nuclear deterrent protect Europe Opinion Subscribers only 'It is pointless to imagine a significant wave of American academics leaving' Opinion Subscribers only 'The American dream is dying' Opinion Subscribers only 'The trade war creates new opportunities for Europeans and France' Opinion Subscribers only 'Faced with Trump is global finance a stabilizing force or an enormous bubble on the verge of bursting?' Magazine Subscribers only Tracking down the pianos taken from French Jews during the Nazi Occupation Magazine Subscribers only Eve Rodsky the American helping couples balance the mental load Magazine Subscribers only Desecration or more glory Joan Didion's private diaries are revealed Magazine Subscribers only For Jewish cartoonist Joann Sfar 2025."> Pixels Subscribers only Golden Owl solution is revealed but leaves players of 31-year hunt disappointed Pixels Subscribers only Secrets of decades-long Golden Owl treasure hunt to be revealed Lifestyle Inside Chanel's French leather workshops Culture Subscribers only The marvelous bronzes of Angkor on display at the Musée Guimet in Paris one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River It's creating a punishing predicament in the daily lives of the people living along its banks the ships that usually serve the state's various cities appear to have vanished They're only visible when standing near the yellow barrier that runs beside the grey asphalt quay ships and small tourist boats have been moored to metal piers 200 meters away The drop in water level along the Rio Negro has created a long beach of yellow sand where garbage deposited by the receding waters has accumulated fruit and vegetable vendors then have to cross the strip of sand their heavy loads in white canvas bags on their backs before they can sell the goods at the Manaus market The trek has deterred some of the fishermen who have instead improvised a small makeshift market on the "new" bank covering their stalls in blue plastic tarps to protect themselves from the blazing sun "We're at a standstill because of the drought," said Dhion Clyve which carried some 200 passengers each week to the town of Novo Aripuana "A lot of ships run aground on rocks or in the mud," said the dark-eyed employee sporting a sparse beard as he lay swinging on a hammock suspended between two columns You have 86.99% of this article left to read Lecture du Monde en cours sur un autre appareil Vous pouvez lire Le Monde sur un seul appareil à la fois Ce message s’affichera sur l’autre appareil Parce qu’une autre personne (ou vous) est en train de lire Le Monde avec ce compte sur un autre appareil Vous ne pouvez lire Le Monde que sur un seul appareil à la fois (ordinateur En cliquant sur « Continuer à lire ici » et en vous assurant que vous êtes la seule personne à consulter Le Monde avec ce compte Que se passera-t-il si vous continuez à lire ici Ce dernier restera connecté avec ce compte Vous pouvez vous connecter avec votre compte sur autant d’appareils que vous le souhaitez mais en les utilisant à des moments différents Nous vous conseillons de modifier votre mot de passe Votre abonnement n’autorise pas la lecture de cet article merci de contacter notre service commercial ShareSaveBusinessEnergyProvincial Elections In Río Negro: A 'Glass Half Full' Evening For Argentine President Mauricio MacriByBaker Institute Argentina's President Mauricio Macri waves as he arrives to deliver his State of the Nation speech.. [+] that marks the opening 2019 session of Congress credit: Natacha Pisarenko/ASSOCIATED PRESS any result where Fernández de Kirchner loses is a good result Weretilneck is expected to exercise a considerable amount of influence on politics and policy in the province when Carreras takes office in December Carreras defeated the candidate of the Peronist Front for Victory (FPV) a very strong ally of Fernández de Kirchner was the candidate of Macri's Let's Change alliance who belongs to the alliance's junior partner such as Río Negro national deputy Sergio Wisky of Macri's Republican Proposal (PRO) party (the senior partner of the alliance) had openly recommended that Let's Change alliance supporters cast a ballot for Carreras in order to prevent a Soria victory The remainder of the vote was spread among four minor party candidates three representing far left parties or alliances and one representing a Peronist splinter group 24 representatives were elected from eight three-member districts while 22 were elected from a single province-wide district in both cases using proportional representation legislators in Río Negro are elected every four years for a four-year term Weretilneck and Carreras' JSRN had won 28 of the 46 seats followed by the FPV with 17 seats and Let's Change with only 1 seat The JSRN will thus begin the next four-year period at the end of this year once again with an absolute majority of the seats in the provincial legislature (after all votes are counted the very worse the JSRN could do would be 27 seats) aided in large part by the collapse of support for Let’s Change whose legislative delegation beginning in December will consist of a solitary deputy (Juan Carlos Martín) Note: This is the fifth entry of the Baker Institute's Center for Energy Studies series on the 2019 Argentine elections The next entry will appear later this week and explain what the April 7 primary election results in the province of Chubut tell us about the campaign and potential outcomes of the June 9 gubernatorial election in the province The 2019 Presidential and Petro-Province Elections in Argentina The Battle for the Future of the Vaca Muerta: Neuquén's 2019 Gubernatorial Election Jamail Chair of Latin American Studies and the Director of the Center for Energy Studies’ Argentina Program at Rice University’s James A To see sponsored ads, please enable JavaScript. RIONEGRO, Colombia – The U.S. team has received its first round draws for the 2024 23 Pan American Championships, which will be held at the Coliseo Iván Ramiro Córdoba, June 21-22. This is the first time that there has been a U23 Pan American Championships event, and the USA is sending a full team of athletes in the three Olympic disciplines, men's freestyle, women's freestyle and Greco-Roman. On Friday, June 21, the Greco-Roman competition will be held, and half of the women’s freestyle competition. On Saturday, June 22, the men’s freestyle competition will be held, as well as the remaining half of the women’s freestyle weight classes. The events which determined the athletes for this team in men’s freestyle and Greco-Roman was the the U23 Nationals in Geneva, Ohio, while the women's freestyle team was determined at the Women's Nationals in Spokane, Washington in the U23 Nationals event. The U.S. Greco-Roman team, which competes on Friday, is led by past Senior National Team member Justus Scott at 72 kg. Scott was a 2023 Senior Pan American champion. Past age-group World Team members on the Greco-Roman team are Billy Sullivan (55 kg), Jonathan Gurule (63 kg), Hunter Lewis (67 kg), Beka Melelashvili (82 kg) and Michael Altomer (97 kg). The U.S. women’s freestyle team is very experience, led by past age-group World medalists Heather Crull (50 kg),   Sofia Macaluso (57 kg), Adaugo Nwachukwu (62 kg), Jasmine Robinson (72 kg) and Tristan Kelly (76 kg).  A past age-group World Team member is Elena Ivaldi (53 kg). The entire men’s freestyle team has no international experience at either the World or Pan American levels. This young group will be competing to make their name and win medals on their first foreign trip with Team USA. Results from the U23 Pan American Championships can be found on UWW Arena. https://arena.uww.org/sport-event/show/1ef2e3a4-5b16-6798-bdad-37882c128838 55 kg: Billy Sullivan (Las Vegas, Nev./U.S. Army WCAP) 60 kg: Joseph Couch (Pasadena, Md., West Point WC) Vs. Abel Hidalgo Berrios (Panama) – 5th 2022 U20 Pan Ams 63 kg: Jonathan Gurule (Peralta, N.M./NMU-National Training Center) Jeremy Peralta Gonzalez (Ecuador) – 3rd 2023 Pan American Games, 2023 U20 Pan Am champion Hector Sanchez Zapata (Mexico) – 3rd 2021 Junior Pan American Games, 2nd 2018 U17 Pan Ams 67 kg: Hunter Lewis (Clayton, N.C./Wolfpack WC) 72 kg: Justus Scott (Colorado Springs, Colo./U.S. Army WCAP) 77 kg: Brendon Abdon (Lakeland, Fla./Arkansas RTC) Lautaro Seghesso (Argentina) – 3rd 2022 U20 Pan Ams, 2nd 2019 U17 Pan Ams Raul Unzueta Torres (Mexico) – 3rd 2023 U20 Pan Ams 82 kg: Beka Melelashvili (Philadelphia, Pa./New York AC) Daniel Bello Vegas (Venezuela) – 3rd 2021 Junior Pan American Games, 2021 U20 Pan Am champion Jose Sanchez (Puerto Rico) – 2023 Puerto Rico U23 World team, both styles 87 kg: Tyson Beauperthuy (Colorado Springs, Colo.) Carlos Salazar Gomez (Mexico) – 3rd 2023 Senior Pan Ams, 3rd 2021 U20 Pan Ams Brian Ruiz Marin (Venezuela) – 2nd 2023 U20 Pan Ams, 2022 U17 Pan Am champion Eduardo Vega Garcia (Panama) – 3rd 2019 U15 Pan Ams Brandon Calle Perez (Colombia) – 2nd 2021 U20 Pan Ams, 5th 2018 Youth Olympic Games 97 kg: Michael Altomer (Stuyvesant, N.Y./New York AC/Curby 3 Style WC) Juan Diaz Blanco (Venezuela) – 8th 2023 U20 Worlds, 2023 U20 Pan Am champion Max Madrid De Leon (Panama) – 7th 2023 Pan American Games, 3rd 2021 Junior Pan American Games Ricardo Gomez (Argentina) – 5th 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 3rd 2023 U20 Pan Ams 130 kg: Keith Miley (Little Rock, Ark./Arkansas RTC) Juan Cantillo Torres (Panama) – 5th 2021 Junior Pan American Games, 3rd 2021 U20 Pan Ams 50 kg: Heather Crull (Richmond, Ind./Northeastern WC) Linda Castaneda Gaona (Mexico) - 12th 2024 Senior Pan Ams Mariana Rojas Diaz (Venezuela) – 2nd 2021 Senior Pan Ams, 3rd 2023 Pan Am Games Serena Di Benedetto (Canada) – 7th 2023 U23 Worlds, 3rd 2022 and 2023 U20 Pan Ams Yusneiry Agrazal West (Panama) – 3rd 2022 South American Youth Games, 2nd 2021 U17 Pan Ams Alexa Alvarez Valenzuela (Venezuela) – 3rd 2022 U17 Pan Ams 55 kg: Montana Delawder (Gettysburg, Pa./Team Pennsylvania) Zeltzin Hernandez Guerra (Mexico) – 2nd 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 2nd 2021 Junior Pan American Games Victoria Seal (Canada) – 2nd 2019 Canada Cup, 3rd 2018 U17 Pan Ams 57 kg: Sofia Macaluso (Otisville, N.Y./West Point WC) 59 kg: Skye Realin (Mililani, Hawaii/Grapplers HI) Vs. Maria Fuentes Salinas (Venezuela) – 8th 2016 U15 Pan Ams 62 kg: Adaugo Nwachukwu (Fountain, Colo./U.S. Army WCAP) Eliana Fuentes Palacios (Colombia) – 3rd 2022 U20 Pan Ams Ameyali Jessel Rojas (Mexico) – 2nd 2022 Senior Pan Ams Astrid Montero Chirinos (Venezuela) – 3rd 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 2nd 2023 U20 Pan Ams, 2021 Junior Pan American Games champion Andrea Lopez Martinez (Mexico) – 2nd 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 3rd 2018 U17 Pan Ams Jaell Llontop Vasquez (Chile) – 5th 2023 U20 Pan Ams Anays Meza Valencia (Colombia) – 5th 2021 Junior Pan American Games Glenmaris Beria Diaz (Venezuela) – 2nd 2023 U20 Pan Ams, 2022 U17 Pan Am champion Nicoll Parrado Osorio (Colombia) – 3rd 2023 Pan American Games, 2022 and 2023 U20 Pan Am champion 72 kg: Jasmine Robinson (Allen, Texas/U.S. Army WCAP) Melanie Sanchez Morales (Chile) – 4th 2022 and 2023 U20 Pan Ams Maria Ceballos Cuenu (Colombia) – 8th 2022 U23 Worlds, 3rd 2021 Junior Pan American Games 76 kg: Tristan Kelly (Erie, Colo./U.S. Army WCAP) Vs, Aomi Riques Morales (Peru) – 4th 2023 U20 Pan Ams, 4th 2021 U17 Pan Ams 57 kg: Charlie Farmer (Coal Valley, Ill./West Point WC) Vs. winner of Esteban Morales Mayancha (Ecuador) and Jaminton Leon Lattore (Colombia) Morales – 3rd in 2023 U23 Pan Ams, 5th in 2021 Pan American Games 61 kg: Kurtis Phipps (Irwin, Pa./Buffalo Valley RTC) Vs. Kevin Carrasco Arteaga (Panama) – 3rd in 2021 U20 Pan Ams, 4th in 2018 U17 Pan Ams 65 kg: Wyatt Henson (Lock Haven, Pa./Sunkist Kids WC) Vs Shannon Hanna II (Bahamas) – 3rd in 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 2024 Pat Shaw Memorial champion 70 kg: Daniel Cardenas (Westminster, Colo./Bear Cave WC) Vs. Gregor McNeil (Canada) – 3rd 2022 U20 Pan Ams, 2nd 2017 U17 Pan Ams 74 kg: Hunter Garvin (North Liberty, Iowa) Vs. Manuel Brown (Panama), 5th in 2022 U20 Pan Ams 79 kg: Clayton Whiting (Oconto, Wis./Gopher WC-RTC) 86 kg: John Gunderson (Baraboo, Wis./Panther WC RTC) 92 kg: Levi Hopkins (Palmer, Ala./ Buies Creek WC) Vs. Ricardo Gomez (Argentina) – 5th 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 5th 2023 Pan American Games, 3rd 2023 U20 Pan Ams 97 kg: Massoma Endene (Waverly, Iowa/Burg Training Center) 125 kg: Lucas Stoddard (Chardon, Ohio/West Point WC) Jorawar Singh Dhinsa (Canada) – 5th 2024 Senior Pan Ams, 5th 2024 Pan Am Olympic Qualifier Diego Nole Azabache (Peru) – 3rd 2019 U17 Pan Ams, 3rd 2018 U15 Pan Ams *All times are local to Rionegro, Colombia, one hour behind US Eastern time. 10 a.m. – Qualification Rounds and Repechage (Greco-Roman 55 kg, 60 kg, 63 kg, 67 kg, 72 kg, 77 kg, 82 kg, 87 kg, 97 kg, 130 kg, Women’s freestyle 53 kg, 57 kg, 62 kg, 68 kg, 76 kg) 5 p.m. – Finals (Greco-Roman 55 kg, 60 kg, 63 kg, 67 kg, 72 kg, 77 kg, 82 kg, 87 kg, 97 kg, 130 kg, Women’s freestyle 53 kg, 57 kg, 62 kg, 68 kg, 76 kg) 10 a.m. – Qualification Rounds and Repechage (Men’s freestyle 57 kg, 61 kg, 65 kg, 70 kg, 74 kg, 79 kg, 86 kg, 92 kg, 97 kg, 125 kg, Women’s freestyle 50 kg, 55 kg, 59 kg, 65 kg, 72 kg) 5 p.m. – Finals (Men’s freestyle 57 kg, 61 kg, 65 kg, 70 kg, 74 kg, 79 kg, 86 kg, 92 kg, 97 kg, 125 kg, Women’s freestyle 50 kg, 55 kg, 59 kg, 65 kg, 72 kg) [data-focus]){outline-width:var(--focus-ring-width 2px);outline-offset:var(--focus-ring-offset solid);outline-color:var(--focus-ring-color);outline:none;}.css-puhhl:is(:focus-visible [data-focus-visible]){box-shadow:none;outline-width:3px;outline-style:solid;outline-color:var(--semantics-focus-light);outline-offset:3px;}.css-puhhl:visited{color:var(--components-rte-light-link-color);}.css-puhhl:visited.css-puhhl:visited:is(:active [data-state=open]){color:var(--components-rte-light-link-color-active);}@media (hover: hover){.css-puhhl:visited:is(:hover [data-disabled]){color:var(--components-rte-light-link-color-hover);}}.css-puhhl.css-puhhl:is(:active [data-state=open]){color:var(--components-rte-light-link-color-active);}@media (hover: hover){.css-puhhl:is(:hover Metrics details The so-called “blackwaters” of the Amazonian Rio Negro are rich in highly coloured dissolved organic carbon (DOC) conditions that would cause fatal ionoregulatory failure in most fish However these blackwaters support 8% of the world’s ichthyofauna We tested the hypothesis that native DOC provides protection against ionoregulatory dysfunction in this extreme environment DOCs were isolated by reverse-osmosis from two Rio Negro sites Physico-chemical characterization clearly indicated a terrigenous origin with a high proportion of hydroxyl and phenolic sites high chemical reactivity to protons and unusual proteinaceous fluorescence When tested using zebrafish (a model organism) Rio Negro DOC provided almost perfect protection against ionoregulatory disturbances associated with acute exposure to pH 4.0 in ion-poor water DOC reduced diffusive losses of Na+ and Cl− and promoted a remarkable stimulation of Na+ uptake that otherwise would have been completely inhibited prior acclimation to DOC at neutral pH reduced rates of branchial Na+ turnover and provided similar protection against acid-induced ionoregulatory disturbances These results reinforce the important roles that DOC molecules can play in the regulation of gill functions in freshwater fish as captured by a Proton Binding Index (PBI) which in turn was strongly correlated to colour originating from aromatic groups showing remarkable protective actions of upper Rio Negro DOC against ionoregulatory dysfunction in zebrafish at low pH in ion-poor water effects which may be explained by the unusual physico-chemical characteristics of this DOC Based on the more pronounced physico-chemical properties we selected SGC DOC for all experimental tests with zebrafish Unidirectional sodium influx (JNain, upward positive solid bar), unidirectional sodium efflux (JNaout, downward negative solid bars) and net sodium flux rates (JNanet, cross-hatched bars) of adult zebrafish in ion-poor water (IPW). Net chloride flux rates (JClnet) of adult zebrafish in ion-poor water (IPW) the present study is the first to demonstrate that it is the specific DOC native to the Rio Negro (or some component thereof) that is the protective agent against disturbances in both the active influx and diffusive efflux components effects which are seen even in a non-native fish species suggesting a hydrophobic bonding or a hydrogen-bonding sorption mechanism the negatively charged sites on DOC are titrated by the increased H+ concentration making it easier for these amphiphilic DOC molecules to bind to key sites such as tight junctions The high proportion of hydroxyl and phenolic sites high chemical reactivity to protons (indicated by PBI) and unusual proteinaceous content of SGC DOC may all contribute to this property DOC-binding may stabilize the junctions in the same way as Ca2+ ions (now displaced by low pH) thereby reducing passive paracellular Na+ and Cl− effluxes or even altering the transcellular permeability (see below) thereby changing fluidity and transporter characteristics in the transcellular pathway However the prior acclimation experiments of Series 2 (see below) suggest that these acute physicochemical interactions affecting permeability Net ammonia flux rates (JAmmnet) of adult zebrafish in ion-poor water (IPW) The relationship between net ammonia flux rates (JAmmnet) and unidirectional Na+ uptake rates (JNain) of adult zebrafish in different exposure conditions in ion-poor water (IPW) Gray circles represents flux rates of both JAmmnet and JNain of zebrafish under the acclimation conditions (i.e IPW – pH 7.0 or IPW + DOC – pH7.0; 0–3 h) and then acutely exposed to either IPW + DOC – pH 7.0 or IPW – pH 4.0 or IPW + DOC – pH 4.0 (3–6 h) followed by a recovery period in which they were again exposed to their acclimation condition (IPW – pH 7.0 or IPW + DOC – pH 7.0) Note that the two black circles (not used in the regression) represent data from fish acutely exposed to IPW – pH 4.0 (no DOC) and these same fish during the recovery period at IPW – pH 7.0 where JAmmnet was entirely uncoupled from JNain Nonlinear regression analysis was performed using Sigma Plot v 11.0 This protection includes both controlling the “tightness” of the gills so as to reduce diffusive losses of Na+ and Cl− during acid stress and promoting a remarkable stimulation of Na+ uptake that otherwise would have been completely inhibited The latter seems to involve maintenance of a functional coupling whereby increased ammonia excretion can drive elevated Na+ uptake during low pH exposure prior acclimation to SGC DOC at neutral pH reduces rates of branchial Na+ turnover and provides similar protection against acid-induced ionoregulatory disturbances The latter occurs even if the DOC is no longer present suggesting that acclimation to DOC induces persistent changes in gill physiology which provide greater tolerance to low pH These results reinforce the important roles that DOC molecules can play in the regulation of gill functions in freshwater fish and their critical importance for life in ion-poor it will be of interest to evaluate if the pattern of ionoregulatory responses seen in zebrafish to DOC is widespread in other teleost fish species particularly in those fish inhabiting acidic ion-poor waters and also its correlation to specific structural properties of DOC from distinct aquatic environments Fish were allowed to acclimate for at least 1 week to this IPW condition All the experimental procedures and protocols using zebrafish were previously approved by the McMaster University Animal Research Ethics Board (AUP 12-12-45) and were performed in accordance with the guidelines on “The care and use of fish in research teaching and testing” of the Canadian Council for Animal Care (2005) Concentrates were then 0.45-μm filtered (AcrodiscTM stored at 4 °C and characterized for physico-chemical properties and/or used in live fish experiments Binding site densities within a specific pKa range were determined by integration of the area under the curve in the pKa spectrum DOC and water ions in experimental solutions) fish (N = 10 per treatment) were transferred from the holding aquaria to individual 40-ml aerated chambers filled with reconstituted ion-poor water representing the control condition (see below for details) for a 1-h settling period a 3-h flux measurement was started with 6-ml samples taken at 0 h and 3 h water in each chamber was removed with a 60-ml syringe taking care not to air-expose the fish and replaced with a fresh reconstituted ion-poor water solution representing one of the experimental conditions 0.01 μCi ml−1 of 22NaCl was added and following 5 min of mixing another 3-h flux measurement was carried out back to fresh ion-poor water at pH 7.0 and after addition of radioisotope a 3-h recovery flux measurement was performed Water samples were kept at 4 °C prior to measurements of 22Na radioactivity and total Na+ fish were weighed and monitored; no mortalities occurred under any of the experimental conditions tested The goal of Series 1 was to test whether DOC would protect fish against ionoregulatory disturbances during acute exposure to pH 4.0 all three groups were exposed to the same water quality the three treatments were ion-poor water plus DOC at pH 7.0 (IPW + DOC – pH 7.0) ion-poor water with no DOC at pH 4.0 (IPW – pH 4.0) and ion-poor water plus DOC at pH 4.0 (IPW + DOC – pH 4.0) so as to assess the separate and combined effects of acid exposure and DOC exposure all three groups were exposed to soft water at pH 7.0 with no DOC The goal of Series 2 was to test whether prior acclimation to DOC would protect zebrafish against acute exposure to pH 4.0 animals were acclimated for 2 weeks to IPW + DOC - pH 7.0 (8 mg C L−1 of SGC DOC) All experimental procedures were conducted as described above both groups were exposed to the acclimation condition The 3-h experimental treatment was either IPW – pH 4.0 (i.e followed by a final 3-h recovery period for both groups in IPW + DOC – pH 7.0 The two experimental conditions served to differentiate effects dependent on the continued presence of DOC from those acquired entirely from the prior acclimation to DOC Unidirectional and net Na+ flux rates (in nmol g−1 h−1) were measured according to Wood (1992)58 22Na radioactivities in all water samples were determined using a Wizard 1480 Auto Gamma Counter (Perkin Elmer USA) and total Na+ concentrations using atomic absorption spectrophotometry (Varian SpectrAA 220FS mean specific activity (SA) of the radioisotope (cpm nmol−1) in water samples was determined as the mean ratio between the concentration of 22Na radioactivity (cpm ml−1) and the concentration of total Na+ in the water (nmol ml−1) during the flux period Unidirectional influx rates (JNain) of fish during each period were calculated as: where cpmi = radioisotope cpm ml−1 at the beginning of flux period cpmf = radioisotope cpm ml−1 at the end of flux period V = volume of water in the experimental chamber (ml) T = flux period (h) and W = wet mass of fish (g) Cl− or total ammonia concentrations (nmol ml−1) in the water during the flux period Unidirectional efflux rates (Jout) were calculated as: Statistical significance was accepted at p < 0.05 Significant differences in Na+ influx (Jin) efflux (Jout) and net flux rates (Jnet) and also in both Cl− and ammonia Jnet values followed by the a posteriori Dunnett’s multiple comparison test a non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was performed All statistical analyses and graphics employed Sigma Stat and Sigma Plot software (Jandel Scientific Dissolved organic carbon from the upper Rio Negro protects zebrafish (Danio rerio) against ionoregulatory disturbances caused by low pH exposure Dissolved humic substances - ecological driving forces from the individual to the ecosystem level The significance of trace metal speciation for water sediment and soil quality criteria and standards Environmental risk assessment of metals: tools for incorporating bioavailability Multi-method study on aquatic humic substances from the ‘Rio Negro’ - Amazonas State / Brazil Emphasis on molecular-size classification of their metal contents Evaluating the ameliorative effect of natural dissolved organic matter (DOM) quality on copper toxicity to Daphnia magna: improving the BLM Characterization of freshwater natural dissolved organic matter (DOM): Mechanistic explanations for protective effects against metal toxicity and direct effects on organisms Copper and cadmium binding to fish gills: modification by dissolved organic carbon and synthetic ligands Accumulation of natural organic matter on the surfaces of living cells: implications for the interaction of toxic solutes with aquatic biota Hydrologic control of dissolved organic matter in low-order Precambrian Shield lakes Spectrofluorometric characterization of dissolved organic matter for indication of precursor organic material and aromaticity Effects of UV-A irradiation on dissolved organic matter in humic surface waters Characterizing dissolved organic matter fluorescence with parallel factor analysis: a tutorial Effects of natural organic matter source on reducing metal toxicity to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and on metal binding to their gills Physicochemical and spectroscopic properties of natural organic matter (NOM) from various sources and implications for ameliorative effects on metal toxicity to aquatic biota Influence of natural organic matter source on acute copper lead and cadmium toxicity to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) Influence of natural organic matter source on copper toxicity to larval fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas): implications for the biotic ligand model Reverse osmosis sampling does not affect the protective effect of dissolved organic matter on copper and zinc toxicity to freshwater organisms Heterogeneity of natural organic matter amelioration of silver toxicity to Daphnia magna: effect of source and equilibration time Heterogeneity in physicochemical properties explains differences in silver toxicity amelioration by natural organic matter to Daphnia magna Physiological action of dissolved organic matter in rainbow trout in the presence and absence of copper: sodium uptake kinetics and unidirectional flux rates in hard and softwater The disruption of Daphnia magna sodium metabolism by humic substances: mechanism of action and effect of humic substance source A matter of potential concern: natural organic matter alters the electrical properties of fish gills Humic substances influence sodium metabolism in the freshwater crustacean Daphnia magna ) 167–193 (Academia Brasileira de Ciências In The Amazon: Limnology and Landscape Ecology of a Mighty Tropical River and its Basin 127–166 (Dr In Acid Toxicity and Aquatic Animals (eds Morris The physiology of fish at low pH: the zebrafish as a model system Fishes of the Amazon and Their Environment Effects of water pH and calcium concentration on ion balance of fish of the Rio Negro Diverse strategies for ion regulation in fish collected from the ion-poor in The Physiology of Tropical Fishes (eds Val Mechanisms of ion transport in Potamotrygon a stenohaline freshwater elasmobranch native to the ion-poor blackwaters of the Rio Negro Zebrafish as an animal model to study ion homeostasis Ammonia excretion via Rhcg1 facilitates Na+ uptake in larval zebrafish Strategies for maintaining Na+ balance in zebrafish (Danio rerio) during prolonged exposure to acidic water Evidence for a role of tight junctions in regulating sodium permeability in zebrafish (Danio rerio) acclimated to ion-poor water Branchial and renal acid and ion fluxes in the rainbow trout Physiological correlates of interspecific variation in acid tolerance in fish Patterns of ion regulation in acidophilic fish native to the ion-poor Protection by natural blackwater against disturbances in ion fluxes caused by low pH exposure in freshwater stingrays endemic to the Rio Negro Claudins and epithelial paracellular transport Permeability changes in model and phytoplankton membranes in the presence of aquatic humic substances The role of dissolved organic carbon in moderating the bioavailability and toxicity of Cu to rainbow trout during chronic waterborne exposure Cortisol regulates epithelial permeability and sodium losses in zebrafish exposed to acidic water A new paradigm for ammonia excretion in aquatic animals: role of Rhesus (Rh) glycoproteins Rhcg1 and NHE3b are involved in ammonium-dependent sodium uptake by zebrafish larvae acclimated to low-sodium water Close association of carbonic anhydrase (CA2a and CA15a) Na+/H+ exchanger (NHE3b) and ammonia transporter Rhcg1 in zebrafish ionocytes responsible for Na+ uptake ammonia excretion and their potential linkage in native Rio Negro tetras (Paracheirodon axelrodi Hemigrammus rhodostomus and Moenkhausia diktyota) Ammonia excretion and urea handling by fish gills: present understanding and future research challenges Seven things fish know about ammonia and we don’t Using reverse osmosis to obtain organic matter from surface and ground waters Isolation of dissolved organic matter from the Suwannee River using reverse osmosis Proton binding by hydrous ferric oxide and aluminum oxide surfaces interpreted using fully optimized continuous pka spectra Behaviour of reoccuring PARAFAC components in fluorescent dissolved organic matter in natural and engineered systems: a critical review Flux measurements as indices of H+ and metal effects on freshwater fish Photometric determination of chlorides in water Ammonia determination based on indophenol formation with sodium salicylate Download references We thank ICMBio for the license to collect Rio Negro DOC in Anavilhanas National Park (Novo Airão/AM) the VII COMAR of Brazilian Army for the logistic support to the travel to upper Rio Negro (São Gabriel da Cachoeira/AM) and Professors Elias Barreto and Paulo Henrique da Rocha Aride (Federal Institute of Amazonas IFAM) for support in São Gabriel da Cachoeria/AM Linda Diao and Tania Ng for laboratory assistance and to Dr James McGeer for generously providing Amberlite resin Supported in Brazil by FAPEAM and CNPq through the INCT-ADAPTA grant to ALV and a Science Without Borders Program grant to ALV and CMW (CNPq process number: 401303/2014-4) and in Canada by Discovery grants to CMW and DSS from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) CMW was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program and a visiting fellowship from the Science Without Borders Program (CNPq-Brazil) while RMD received a postdoctoral fellowship from the same program (CNPq process number: 151083/2013-4) ALV received a research fellowship from CNPq Laboratory of Ecophysiology and Molecular Evolution carried out the collection and isolation of Rio Negro DOCs and conducted the experiments and analytical analyses carried out the titrations and the parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) on MatlabTM helped draft the manuscript and gave final approval for publication The authors declare no competing financial interests Download citation Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022) Journal of Comparative Physiology B (2018) Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science Every 11th October is celebrated the National Day of Patagonia which commemorates the creation of the Governorate of the Territory of Patagonia in 1878 ‘From the ocean in the East to the Cordillera in the West and from the rivers Negro and Neuquén in the North to Cape Horn in the South’ President Nicolás Avellaneda sanctioned Law 954 creating this jurisdiction and establishing the seat of the authorities in the locality of Mercedes de Patagones Its first governor was Colonel Álvaro Barros General Julio Argentino Roca promoted policies to foster the development of the population in this territory the southernmost and largest of all the regions that make up the country the Government decreed the National Territories Act (No which legislatively determined that the Patagonian territory would be divided into the governorates of Río Negro The Governorate of Patagonia was thus dissolved From the Andes Mountains to the vast Patagonian steppe this region offers a myriad of wonders for nature lovers and adventurers and a diverse fauna that includes iconic species such as the guanaco One of the most emblematic destinations is Los Glaciares National Park one of the few ice masses in the world that continues to advance Another dream location is the Nahuel Huapi National Park in Río Negro and Neuquén snow-capped mountains and the picturesque town of San Carlos de Bariloche and is a privileged place for marine wildlife watching National Patagonia Day invites us to reflect on the importance of preserving this vast and extraordinary ecosystem but also a natural heritage that we must protect for future generations The contents of Casa Rosada are licensed under the Creative Commons Reconocimiento 2.5. Argentina License If you're unhappy with your product in any way Simply email us at shop@goodbeerhunting.com SHIPPINGAll orders will be processed and shipped in about a week's to ten days time This isn't always perfect (we're not Amazon) so if you have a rush please email us ahead at shop@goodbeerhunting.com to make sure we can pull it off in time Your email or personal information will never be shared or sold to anyone Longreads and photographic journeys documenting our ongoing worldwide adventures in beer For most of a decade, Sidra Pülku ranked as Argentina’s leading maker of craft cider. Then came the wildfire of 2017, which burned its orchard to the ground. A short while later, its founder died. Despite these obstacles, the small Patagonian producer has risen from actual ashes to reclaim its title. So how has this female-led, family-run venture become the cider and perry of choice at award-winning restaurants and bars across Buenos Aires? While Caparros had worked at the Argentina National Atomic Energy Commission, her husband had set up agritourism trails across Argentina, like the yerba mate tea route in the province of Misiones.  “He knew this country back to front, as well as a large part of the rest of Latin America,” she says. “When we first thought about creating a project—cultivating Tokai grapes to make wine—we looked at Mar del Plata on the Atlantic coast, as that’s where I was born. But after traveling to Europe to research that original idea and unable to locate land with adequate access to water there, we changed tack and decided to make cider in Patagonia.”  Born in Chubut province, Ernesto was a true Patagonian with farmers for parents. “He always loved this valley, while I called it my promised land,” María Inés says. “So we decided to try our luck here in 2010.” An agronomist buddy living in Villa Regina helped them find an operational 62-acre farm, with one part that was ready for replanting, the other with 50-year-old trees needing love and attention. Starting over with new Red Delicious and Granny Smith plantations at Chacra Don Simón, the couple was in for the long haul, patient enough to wait up to 10 years for their first fruits to be picked. In the meantime, they built a small adobe brick plant with a capacity of 5,300 gallons and, in December 2011, released Pülku’s first batch—1,000 bottles—of sweet and dry ciders. Those were followed up in 2013 by Argentina’s first perry, made with Williams and Packham pears. By injecting fresh ideas into the century-old industry, they got the ball rolling. The couple spent the first few years positioning Pülku as Argentina’s first craft cider brand, learning on the job while studying agriculture and production techniques online.  “Some of the challenges we faced were the lack of resources as well as the inability to obtain loans,” Caparros says. “We invested all of our personal savings into the project and developing the farm. Then, in 2016, Ernesto was diagnosed with prostate cancer.”  Williams pears from the Alto Valle were dropped off early that morning, and slim-framed Barrera is now wrestling with the lid of the stainless steel press, determined not to be beaten by machinery. “Ernesto was the brains behind all this,” says Caparros, waving her arms around the small plant. “Now we have Ernesto the Second,” pointing at Mariana Barrera, who is still fighting with the pesky lid.  Coordinating ambitious infrastructure projects as national director at the Urban Planning Ministry in conjunction with the International Development Bank and the World Bank, Barrera managed the purse strings of a billion-dollar budget, signing off on projects to improve shanty towns on a seven-year plan, as well as approving budgets for ports and railways stations. Her plan was to complete this role in government before returning to the U.S. as a university fellow. Then her dad died.  By 2019 she had left her day job to work at Pülku, supporting herself as a consultant for the World Bank and teaching a master’s program at Di Tella university in Buenos Aires, as well as at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. In the aftermath of her father’s death and the mounting bills, the obvious decision was to sell, she recalls.  One key turning point was being invited as a guest speaker in Mendoza at the Festival Atlántico, a sustainable cocktail and bars conference organized by the owners of Florería Atlántico bar in Buenos Aires, where she and I met in 2019. “It’s a family business, full of heart and soul but one that receives little support in general,” he says. “Pülku is the kind of brand that makes us feel good. Mariana and María Inés make great cider, and we need to push and support them—plus it’s reciprocal, because they do the same for our business.” Part of Barrera’s journey has been creating a sustainable and healthy business, as well as a solid team based in this small agricultural town in remote Patagonia. Sure, it’s a very different scale from Barrera’s public works career, but it’s important to her own transformation from politics to finding satisfaction in the orchards.  “Although my office supported my decision to start dividing my time equally between Buenos Aires and Villa Regina, I’d started to realize it was a world with crossed incentives,” she says. “And when that administration came to a conclusion, it affected me a lot—because I was let down by what I had wanted in life, and everything I had thought about was in fact a lie. I realized I wasn’t cut out for politics. “Even though there’s a lot of talk about well-being, few people talk about mental health. Today I feel good, and I’m moving forward little by little. I’ve recently just started to enjoy myself again.” Mother and daughter have also worked with the Río Negro Alto Valle branch of the national agricultural institute, cultivating cider-specific apple and pear varieties like Williams Favorite at Chacra Don Simón. It’s another way of contributing to and developing Argentina’s small craft industry. Barrera says that she’s counting down the months until she and her mom pick their own fruit, and then get to try the cider they make from it.  “Of course, I know that the first harvest won’t be the best with regards to fruit for cider production—older trees are better producers—and I’m worried that the final product will be a letdown,” she says. “It makes me extremely happy but at the same time, it scares me. You never know what nature will give you.” Beer gear, Artwork, and Publications that’ll drive you to drink Volume 8 - 2020 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2020.567257 The growth of the randomized controlled trial (RCT) as the “gold standard” for evaluation has justly been praised as an advance in the professionalization of social programs and projects an “adoption of science” - in the words of the Lancet the emphasis on the RCT biases funding for projects that distribute private goods and which focus on “low hanging fruit” in health simply because those areas lend themselves to the sort of measurement that works with RCTs many project developers in the government and NGO sectors lament that a hegemonic focus on RCTs impedes creativity or new models that challenge traditional paradigms a community video coaching project for indigenous parents of young children in the Rio Negro region of the Amazon Basin offers techniques to measure for innovation Instead of developing a new RCT for an extremely diverse population (27 ethnic groups) where traditional childcare methods are in historical flux because of urbanization CanalCanoa measured variables shown by previous RCTs to be causally connected with positive development results By researching the impact of the intervention on nutrition thus mixing scientific rigor with an opportunity for innovation and providing important insight and reform of a theory of change Innovation in service delivery is essential to addressing the diversity and complexity of needs of 27 ethnic groups speaking 22 different languages. However, small sample sizes, extraordinary difficulty of access, and the lack of accepted, standardized metrics for impact results challenge the capacity to prove any concept intervention though a randomized, controlled trial. With CanalCanoa1 and childrearing practices on digital media and then a team of indigenous educators showed the resulting films to dozens of small groups In order to evaluate the impact of this initiative we decided to “look upstream,” both physically and metaphorically using the way local people think about the flow of water to develop and evaluate project results CanalCanoa looked upstream toward the traditional villages above the town of São Gabriel in Brazil to help indigenous people to document their songs and childrearing practices in some 53 movies; a team of indigenous educators then showed the resulting films to more than 30 groups of 10–25 parents as a way to stimulate discussion The evaluation system also “looks upstream”: instead of directly measuring impact on children CanalCanoa measured variables – intermediate outcomes in parlance of RCTs – shown by previous RCTs to be causally connected with positive development results the evidence collected through the process of the project could become part of a feedback loop to address specific issues; project adaptations could be informed by evidence in dialogue with previous research By researching the impact of the intervention on nutrition practices thus mixing scientific rigor with an opportunity to test real innovation Over the last decades, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) has come to occupy a central role in the development and funding of interventions in many areas of health and social services. Comparing before and after the year 2000, we see a 30-fold increase in the production of RCTs (3) “The World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group reports that over 80% of the [evaluations] starting in 2007–10 used randomization as compared to 57% in 2005–06 and only 19% in prior years” which led to the awarding of the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics to the “randomistas” Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty solidified this model as the “gold standard” in development economics this movement has added important scientific rigor and improved effectiveness of many social projects critics have pointed to several important negative impacts of the hierarchy of evaluation that puts RCTs at the top RCT evaluations can fine tune and perfect the model in useful ways; they can also measure the effects of different well-established models when the goal is a radical transformation of a model or adaptation to a completely new context The context of the Upper Rio Negro plays against the ways that RCTs work best: first People in the region speak 22 different languages Though many riverine communities share similar ideas of childhood and health and child development in a radically different way from their indigenous peers Families may live a hunter-gather lifestyle one based on fishing and subsistence farming The needs of children and families in all of these groups demand a complex and flexible intervention exactly the kind that RCTs find it difficult to measure just as the small rivers that support remote villages flow into the huge Rio Negro the close-knit social networks that define indigenous life mean that project benefits will spill over into any control group within the same ethnic group: families share ideas This spillover makes randomization impossible and a control group non-existent In the heterogeneous context of the upper Rio Negro an intervention must be flexible to respond to many different needs and demands—and the system of evaluation must also have that flexibility At various conferences in which we have participated over the last several years conversations between academics and program designers have turned to the topic of innovation Though respecting the need for rigorous evaluations—and grateful for the insights that RCTs provide in this field—we have heard complaints that this model can be a straight-jacket Program designers simply foreclose certain options before they even could come to light because they understand that such a model would be difficult or impossible to evaluate with an RCT Though we have been unable to find published articles analyzing this problem the universality of the complaint among practitioners and even academic experts suggests that the concern is wide-spread part of the motivation for this article came from an American academic who asked “How did they even convince a funder to look at something as radically different as CanalCanoa?” Though local leaders and intellectuals may not understand the details of randomization they strongly critique the interventions used by the Brazilian government “A 4 year old here can climb a 15 m tall açaí palm And some bureaucrat from Brasília thinks he can tell me how to define a healthy kid?” Who has the right to establish the metrics and milestones for childhood development Perhaps even more significant, indigenous philosophy on the Amazon believes it deeply unethical to see anything else as an object. For them, every other (even trees and rocks and animals) has its own perspective, its wants and desires. Indigenous epistemology does not try to objectively understand the other, but to see through the eyes of the other (6) revealing a world of knowledge that would have been foreclosed by a rigid CanalCanoa attempted to integrate this epistemology open to the unexpected and to the productive force of errors and mistakes in addition to the scientific rigor of contemporary evaluations in which larger communities and ethnic groups can look at themselves in the mirror of the camera and movie screen to evaluate and adapt their own child-rearing they watched a series of shorts made by indigenous children with CanalCanoa — cartoons based on local legends and stories how to prepare açaí or tapioca and then spent more than an hour discussing the ideas and images and relating it to their own lives Though the word “intervention” is more commonly used in the literature the project really created a space for interactions re-closing feedback loops (between parent and child between parents and extended family/community) that had been short circuited by urbanization and modernization The ajuris were also themselves part of the research and evaluation protocol because participants suggested new themes to include in the films and evaluated the changes in their own lives as they occurred The project quickly adapted to these new inputs intending to evoke the knowledge of the participants and not to impose new learning small children accompany their parents everywhere and these interactions served as a resource for the discussions community leaders — also participated in each workshop with an enthusiasm beyond what planners has expected Their presence not only offered depth to the discussion it also served as a seed for extending these ideas and practices in even larger social networks we spoke with individuals who had participated but other times the whole community requested to be part of the evaluation Because of the community orientation of the culture of the Upper Rio Negro Though CanalCanoa proposed to promote early childhood development in the communities of the upper Rio Negro, it did not have access to the advanced brain scanning devices that could show direct changes in cerebral development. In addition, there is little previous research to provide a baseline for “normal” childhood development in the region, other studies have shown the regular falsification of official data (2) and the tightly interconnected social networks make spillover from the intervention inevitable Taking these challenges into consideration CanalCanoa focused its evaluation efforts on identifying and measuring locally meaningful upstream indicators known to be associated with better results in early childhood development: 1) Intellectual stimulation through language and contact with diverse natural and cultural environments diverse nutrition and access to health care 3) Supportive relationships with adults and older children that reduce toxic stress. [(11) Programs working with small children generally test cognition through written, drawn, or oral assessments, but many observers have criticized these methods as biased toward children from western, industrialized cultures, with high levels of formal education [(12, 13) During the research to develop the CanalCanoa model parents and local experts along the Rio Negro commented many times that school psychologists or social workers would evaluate their children using tools developed for urban “They showed a traffic light and asked my boy which color meant stop How is he possibly supposed to know that?” one mother commented The upper Rio Negro enjoys extraordinary linguistic wealth, with 27 ethnic groups speaking 22 different languages (14) divided into several different language families: Tukano, Aruwak, Nadehup (Maku), Yanomami5 Kinship rules of the riverine groups [Tukano and some Baré (who are ethnically Arawak but who speak Nheengatu a form of Tupi-Guarani)] demand intermarriage with groups that speak a language different from one's own mother tongue children traditionally would grow up with mothers and fathers who spoke different languages This linguistic context is immensely important for neurological development: Growing evidence shows that early bilingualism can provide children with benefits that go beyond knowing more than one language. Research has shown for some time that bilingual children typically develop certain types of cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic awareness earlier and better than their monolingual peers (15–18)6 Baniwa and Tukano parents are particularly proud of their children's capacity to control impulses and to govern themselves; interestingly, studies have also shown than bilingualism improves executive function in early childhood development (19, 20) as families move from villages into the city — and as village children integrate into the school system — Portuguese has become the dominant (and sometimes only) language Among children and teenagers who grew up in the urban and semi-rural areas of São Gabriel da Cachoeira today few speak native languages — though many continue to understand them Participants in the ajuris de conhecimento report a large impact on language acquisition and linguistic development Ninety one percent of interviewed participants report that they changed the way they interacted linguistically with their children or grandchildren after the ajuris the whole village) began to speak more with their small children in native languages participants began to tell more stories to their children after the ajuris parents and grandparents sang more to their children It is also notable that after many of the ajuris older children began to sing and tell stories to babies and request that parents tell stories to them and their younger siblings Without developing new cognitive tests or using brain-scanning equipment inaccessible in the region measurement of multi-lingual education and of the use of songs and stories serves as useful stand-in for intellectual development among indigenous children The upstream indicator supplied scientific rigor while at the same time allowing for innovation in project development Instead of developing new standards and norms to measure physical development in each indigenous group CanalCanoa decided to evaluate results based on several local metrics on the way that parents learned to create a therapeutic itinerary in an urban context and at how parents of young children feed their children In this paper we look particularly at nutrition because both local and national intellectuals agree on definitions of healthy food Indigenous people living in the town of São Gabriel da Cachoeira have moved very quickly from a subsistence to a cash economy they lived in widely distributed villages along the river where there were plenty of fish for the regional population and where fields for manioc were available — if difficult to cut from the jungle they have access to cash from work and from the bolsa família welfare benefit but the river near São Gabriel simply cannot provide fish for the whole population of the town and land for farming is bought and sold at a price far above that what a recent migrant from the jungle can pay many families in São Gabriel make the same economic calculations as poor people the world over: how can they get the most calories per dollar all shipped up the river from Belém or Manaus some families are left to choose the local version of chips Both during the ajuris and in interviews that preceded and followed them mothers and fathers explained that they would prefer a healthier The evaluation discovered that the ajuris served not so much to raise awareness of the need for healthy food but as brainstorming sessions to find new food sources participants were inspired to plant food at home using the small yards of urban houses as they had used the roças (manioc fields) in the countryside participants in the ajuris used the discussion sessions as opportunities for learning from and collaborating with other families: in one group a mother with extra land in her roça outside the city offered it to other mothers; in another group fathers decided to buy fertile eggs to raise their own chickens In perhaps the most interesting case — an urban Baré community on the edge of the river — three fathers decided to return to fishing a practice they had abandoned since coming to the city We saw these changes in more than 50% of urban ajuris One story illustrates how this change functions: in the neighborhood of Fortaleza one participant had an extensive urban garden During the conversations after the film on nutrition This experience motivated other women to do the same thing: almost all of the other participants in the group planted their own gardens after the ajuris This anecdote allows us to see that it is not so much the film that inspired changes but the platform that the ajuris provide for successful mothers and grandmothers to share their techniques with others The agent of social change in the process is not the educator By looking at upstream indicators of nutrition CanalCanoa not only discovered that the intervention model improved the fundamental input for healthy physical development (diet) it also explained how the structure of the project encouraged urban indigenous women to teach and support each other The model of evaluation validated and adapted the model while at the same time elaborating the theory of change An extensive literature on early childhood development has shown two elements to be essential for healthy physical and mental growth: an extended social network to support babies and their mothers during the challenging first months of a baby's life [(11), p.10; (20–22)], and lowered levels of toxic stress in a baby's immediate environment (23–25) the transition from village to town makes both of these issues difficult for indigenous parents of young children in São Gabriel Migration breaks up social and kinship networks and unsafe environment of the slums of São Gabriel creates high levels of toxic stress for babies and young parents who do not have the tools to deal with it The development or strengthening of social networks for early childhood in urban and semi-rural spaces was one of the most interesting results of CanalCanoa The strengthening of the social fabric that supports babies and their mothers illustrates several important issues around measurement for change or measurement for innovation Original research plans did not include social network analysis but at the end of conversations after the conclusions of the ajuris both researchers and indigenous educators asked if there was anything else that the respondents wanted to mention interviewed participants spontaneously mentioned some form of social network strengthening as one of the most important results of the ajuris especially the intergenerational issues mentioned above but also increased trust for other ethnic groups and improved relations with neighbors in urban contexts Why were the films and ajuris so successful in strengthening social networks In almost all of the traditional villages of the Rio Negro communities begin the day with a community breakfast in the great-house (maloca) everyone who lives in the villages brings xibé (manioc porridge) and peppers to the great house for a collective problem-solving session The community plans collective work (cleaning discusses and votes on how to relate to actors outside the village (government and mediates any conflicts in the community (land use When families move from the villages to towns like São Gabriel they lose this tradition of the daily community meeting Most move onto streets where they know few other people; cities have few traditions of collective labor; there are few or no malocas to host the meetings; and relations to government actors are now mediated through individuals or nuclear families we could see that the ajuris de conhecimento stood in as un urban substitute for the community morning meeting and that the tradition of this meeting imbued the ajuris with sense and purpose people from the community came together to solve problems collectively and the participants in the intervention framed the ajuris in the same way Families faced problems in the city; in their conversations over quinhampira and açaí Instead of placing the ajuris in the frame of education the indigenous participants saw them as a productive child- and woman- centered adaptation of the morning village meeting This reflection also points to the importance of local participation in project design Indigenous intellectuals helped to structure and script the content of the films that catalyzed the ajuris but they also collaborated to create the form of the intervention During long discussions about how to implement the project a Tukano intellectual and a Baniwa indigenous leader working with the CanalCanoa team repeated insisted on the social and community aspect of the work and suggested the name ajuri de conhecimento as the frame for CanalCanoa instead of the more education-based nomenclature that others had suggested As André Hipattairi Baniwa told us not simply reflection.” The indigenous leaders knew much better than an outsider what form of structure would match with the local world-view; what took us months of research and reflection to understand The strengthening of social networks also shows the importance of plowing evaluation results back into the intervention quickly The community aspects of CanalCanoa were expensive and challenging for both logistical and accounting reasons Supply and demand make both fish and açaí very expensive in São Gabriel a constant complaint of immigrants from the villages Urban kitchens are seldom prepared to serve the 30–50 people who would often come for an ajuri and cooks were not able to produce the formal government-stamped receipts demanded by Brazilian accounting standards project directors felt pressure to redirect resources the results of the evaluation not only justified the investment but also encouraged directors to budget even more resources for the community aspect of the intervention This result emerged spontaneously from open conversations with participants in the ajuris because of the open-ended and qualitative elements of the evaluation and because of the trust that participants felt in the indigenous group leaders and in the research team because we did not even know the right questions to ask This reflection clarifies that the success of CanalCanoa depends on the fit between the intervention model and the local culture: for this reason we should have serious doubts about scaling and replicability in cultures where community problem-solving meetings do not play such a central role just as we saw that the form of the community problem-solving ajuri was as important as the content of the films that catalyzed the meetings we can say that the practice of project design in collaboration with the local community is as important as the model that emerges from it If there is a lesson from CanalCanoa for other projects wishing to innovate but to develop unique local models together with local intellectuals harkening to their knowledge and intuition Organizers hypothesized that participation in the ajuris de conhecimento would increase knowledge of traditional indigenous practices and awareness of the importance of these practices for the development of their children The impact extended far beyond this hypothesis including not only better attitude and awareness but also concrete changes in practice for almost every group that participated Research found that even before the beginning of the first session of the ajuri parents and grandparents understood the importance of traditional nutrition and health care and knew that intergenerational care networks were important for children but the capacity to do what they thought right in the new context of the city By looking at upstream indicators instead of administering a rigid RCT the evaluation not only showed that CanalCanoa had been successful The feedback loop quickly plowed measurement and evaluation back into the intervention model emphasizing the areas that participants and local leaders found most effective and editing out less useful elements This measurement for internal change directed attention to the social agency of the community and emphasized the films' role as a catalyst for local encounters where young parents could collaborate with other community members to solve problems and think through the challenges oof modernity This evaluation teaches that future scaling or adaptation of CanalCanoa would have to use this catalyst function as the center of the intervention Ludwig Wittgenstein (27) insisted that philosophers made a mistake by looking for monocausal explanations for complex phenomena Experience and education then teach us which tool is appropriate for which task Instead of conceiving of the randomized controlled trial as the “gold standard” of program development and evaluation perhaps it is best to see it as one powerful tool among others Thomas Kuhn's analysis of scientific change (28) offers an interesting insight into this process Kuhn famously argued that most of the time scientific discovery advances in small steps refining and perfecting the data inside a certain theory or paradigm scientists must develop more and more exceptions to the theory until finally some observers see the previous paradigm as contradictory or inviable a new theory emerges and the data slide into the framework of that theory more easily than they did the previous Kuhn famously defined this revolution as a paradigm shift We would argue that the RCT serves brilliantly to refine and perfect knowledge within a paradigm—in this case a paradigm of service provision instead of scientific knowledge It also can provide the details that will someday serve to shift that paradigm toward something else this model of evaluation is not conducive to paradigm shifts; it is complementary and necessary Though many project developers feel constrained by the RCT model see it as foreclosing possibilities for interesting innovations before they can even be fully thought through CanalCanoa shows that the scientific rigor of the RCT can open space for radical innovation Because other scientific studies have shown a clear connection between bilingualism and cognitive development in many different contexts because we know the relationship between nutrition and development and because we understand how social networks combat toxic stress not every project evaluation must prove exactly those hypotheses again and again Indigenous people on the Rio Negro explain that for some things toward the knowledge and technology that comes from São Paulo or Europe; in other moments they have to look (or travel) upstream to the more traditional villages where their ancestors lived for generations We suggest a similar reflection for evaluations: in some moments we need the rigor of an RCT to re-think and challenge our programs The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by CONEP (Conselho nacional de ética em pesquisa) The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study All authors listed have made a substantial direct and intellectual contribution to the work Saving Brains (a collaboration between Grand Challenges Canada and the Fundação Maria Cecília Souto Vidigal.) Grant number SB 1707-09646 The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest 1. ^CanalCanoa and this research paper were financed by Saving Brains an international funding consortium for early childhood with funds from Grand Challenges Canada and the Fundação Maria Cecília Souto Vidigal 2. ^Hammer's self-criticism details how this happens: “There seems to be an unholy alliance between self-serving politicians and us researchers They want to give out private goods since the recipient knows to whom to be grateful We want to give them out since we can more easily separate treatment from control Neither is helping the economy work better for everyone.” 3. ^Ajuri is a Nheengatu word meaning “collective effort.” 4. ^In only one ajuri were participants were not interviewed: a group of Hup'dah schoolteachers who live two weeks upriver but were in town for a training session and requested an ajuri from CanalCanoa; interviewing participants after their return upriver was not logistically feasible The research also excludes data from Ajuris done in indigenous land in collaboration with the Pastoral da Criança 5. ^The Nadehup and Yanomami forms of childrearing differ dramatically from the other ethnic groups in the region and were as such not included in the films Work with each group would require a new set of reference films 6. ^see also (17) 7. ^During the course of the project CanalCanoa staff worked to elaborate development milestones based on local values and skills; though this work opened space for a critique of other evaluation systems it would demand much more work to be a rigorous system of evaluation or to serve as metrics for a randomized CanalCanoa originally planned to work with every ethnic group in the region; however the coordinators soon discovered that the riverine peoples had dramatically different childrearing techniques from the jungle people (Yanomami and Nadehup); no single series of films could encompass that diversity one would need to establish development milestones for radically diverse groups 8. ^See particularly the interview with the vice-secretary of health for the city of São Gabriel, Juarez Silva, in the film “Primeira Infância Indígena: Políticas Pública,” developed as a part of CanalCanoa. https://vimeo.com/357015971 1. Silva RCO, Shaw K. Cuidado de Crianças Ribeirinhas: A saúde de crianças rurais no Estado de Amazonas. Relatório de pesquisa linha de base. Manaus (2013). Available online at: http://www.adrmarketplace.com/Cidade/criancasamazonas.pdf (accessed November 7 Data and detours: research on child health in the archives of the state of Amazonas The growth of impact evaluation for international development: how much have we learned CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Making the RCT more useful for innovation with evidence-based evolutionary testing Accelerating adaptive processes: product innovation in the global computer industry CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Promoting healthy child development via a two-generation translational neuroscience framework: the filming interactions to nurture development video coaching program Google Scholar narrativas e produção fílmica de e sobre crianças ameríndias nas cidades (Relatório de Estágio Pós Doutoral) 11. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts: A Science-Based Approach to Building a More Promising Future for Young Children and Families. (2016). Available online at: www.developingchild.harvard.edu (accessed on April 24 A critique of early childhood development research and practice in Africa CrossRef Full Text Lost in translation: methodological considerations in cross-cultural research PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar De volta ao Lago de Leite: gênero e transformação no Alto Rio Negro São Paulo: UNESP/ISA; Rio de Janeiro: NUTI (2005) Enhancing Learning of Children From Diverse Language Backgrounds: Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual or Multilingual Education in the Early Years UNESCO Programme and Meeting Document ED-2011/WS/21 (2010) Google Scholar Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2001) Google Scholar Google Scholar and How to Teach Your Child a Second Language Google Scholar The Hague: Bernard Van Leer Foundation (2017) Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: role of language The executive functions and self-regulation: an evolutionary neuropsychological perspective PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Social enrichment during post-natal development induces transgenerational effects on emotional and reproductive behavior in mice CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar Experience-dependent epigenetic modifications in the central nervous system PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar The early life environment and the epigenome PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1970) Google Scholar Keywords: indigenous children and families Citation: Shaw K and da Silva RdCO (2021) Look Upstream: Measurement for Innovation on the Upper Rio Negro of the Amazon Basin Received: 29 May 2020; Accepted: 23 December 2020; Published: 27 January 2021 Copyright © 2021 Shaw and da Silva. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited in accordance with accepted academic practice distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms *Correspondence: Kurt Shaw, a2dpbGx1bXNoYXdAZ21haWwuY29t Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher 94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or goodLearn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish Rio Negro calls for help The Rio Negro is the largest black water river in the world and the seventh largest in volume of water Called the river of milk by the native peoples of the Northwest Amazon giving rise to native peoples in the Amazon which starts in Colombia and arrives in Brazil in which we must be careful and respectful if we want to maintain the balance of life in the world the country's third largest and vital for the Maori people given by the New Zealand Parliament for recognizing the river's relationship with the Maori “The new legislation is an acknowledgment of the deeply spiritual connection between the iwi (tribe) and their ancestral river Whanganui with all the corresponding rights and duties” celebrated the then New Zealand Minister of Justice "the river is a unique living being that goes from the mountains to the sea incorporating its tributaries and all their physical and metaphysical components" in which the Indian justice declared: “it is a living entity with the status of a legal person.” Indians expect having more strength to rid the Ganges of the pollution that has been degrading and threatening its course we live with this living miracle that is the Rio Negro In the capital we have the meeting of the waters one of the greatest symbols of the Amazon and Brazil with the two giants meeting and forming the largest river in the world: the Amazon we are witnessing the advance of illegality and the profound disrespect and disregard for the life of the Rio Negro and so many other Amazonian rivers A true show of horrors and ignorance in the face of so much life in abundance One of the greatest threats to the Negro that has grown the most in recent years is illegal mining With the dismantling of inspection and control bodies the Negro and some of its tributaries have been increasingly invaded by mining rafts which do not even respect demarcated indigenous lands and the communities that live in their margins they throw mercury into the waters of the Negro and endangering the survival of thousands of indigenous and riverine people who depend directly on its waters for a living all of us who live in the Amazon and are lucky enough to bathe in the waters of the Negro are threatened by the contamination of its waters by heavy metals from illegal predatory activities State authorities would allow such aggression to a natural heritage of this size responsible for generating immense income for its tourist potential as well as for its sacredness as a living body whose history is related to the native peoples The Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) which works in defense of the 750 communities and 23 indigenous peoples of Rio Negro has repeatedly denounced and sent to the Federal Public Ministry (MPF-AM) a series of photos most of them occurred in the Middle Rio Negro region The Rio Negro is recognized as the planet's largest wetland of international interest named Ramsar site by the Convention for the Protection of World Wetlands Its basin is one of the richest regions in biodiversity on the planet and in the region of Cabeça do Cachorro (Alto Rio Negro) the great flying rivers are formed clouds that bring rain to other regions of the country promoting climate balance and collaborating with production Brazilian agriculture Whether from the perspective of the peoples of the Amazon or the Maori in New Zealand the indigenous values ​​of connection with nature - in an ethical relationship of reciprocity and the dimension of the sacred before creation - are essential for us to solve the great environmental problems we face Our Rio Negro asks for help and all of us who have bathed in its black waters must commit to protecting it It is at least an ethical duty to our children * Juliana Radler is a journalist specializing in the environment and socio-environmental policy analyst for the Rio Negro Program of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA). Article originally published in the newspaper A Crística Up in the pure water streams of the tropical Andes dwells a fantastic little creature painted with patches of color the Rio Negro stream tree frog (Hyloscirtus tolkieni) is new to science and named in honor of J.R.R author of famous works of fantasy literature including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings “The new species of frog has amazing colors and it would seem that it inhabits a universe of fantasies director of the Museum of Zoology at San Francisco de Quito University and co-author of a study describing the species “The truth is that the tropical Andes are true magical ecosystems where some of the most wonderful species of flora fungi and fauna in the world are present,” Cisneros-Heredia said the researchers explored different areas of Río Negro-Sopladora National Park in southern Ecuador from the forests at an elevation of 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) to the páramo grasslands at 3,100 m (10,200 ft) They found just one of these unfamiliar frogs “We found a single individual of this new species of frog, which we found impressive due to its coloration and large size,” said Juan Carlos Sánchez Nivicela, associate researcher at the Museum of Zoology of the San Francisco de Quito University and co-author of the study, which was published in the international journal ZooKeys The Rio Negro stream tree frog is rather large for a tree frog measuring 65 millimeters (2.5 inches) in length meaning it would fit snugly on top of a soda can Because only one individual frog has been found in one location scientists don’t have enough information to determine the conservation status or risk of extinction for the species But the authors of the study say “urgent research and monitoring actions should be established to study its life history and ecology survey new sites where additional populations may exist and evaluate if threats are impacting its long-term conservation The good news is that the frog’s habitat is already protected Río Negro-Sopladora National Park was declared a protected area in 2018 and covers 30,616 hectares (75,654 acres) of healthy páramo and cloud forest ecosystems This new park also serves as a critical link in the highly diverse Sangay-Podocarpus Corridor This 160-kilometer (100-mile) stretch of protected ecosystems in the Andes is home to at least 450 bird species and 100 mammal species including the endangered Andean tapir (Tapirus pinchaque) and Andean condor (Vultur gryphus) as well as many other plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth Several other new-to-science species have been described from Río Negro-Sopladora National Park A single-day survey yielded three new species of amphibians: a frog a salamander and a caecilian (a limbless amphibian resembling a snake) only scratches the surface of what they may find in the hills of Río Negro-Sopladora Sánchez-Nivicela, J. C., Falcón-Reibán, J. M., & Cisneros-Heredia, D. F. (2023). A new stream treefrog of the genus Hyloscirtus (Amphibia, Hylidae) from the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park, Ecuador. ZooKeys, 1141, 75-92. doi:10.3897/zookeys.1141.90290 Banner image of Rio Negro stream tree frog (Hyloscirtus tolkieni) by Juan Carlos Sánchez-Nivicela Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough In Ecuador, communities protecting a ‘terrestrial coral reef’ face a mining giant FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page. The “fortress conservation” model is under pressure in East Africa, as protected areas become battlegrounds over history, human rights, and global efforts to halt biodiversity loss. Mongabay’s Special Issue goes beyond the region’s world-renowned safaris to examine how rural communities and governments are reckoning with conservation’s colonial origins, and trying to forge a path forward […] Sorry, the page you were looking for could not be found. The page might have been removed, had its name changed, or become temporarily unavailable. The latest engineering, electronics and technology advances The most comprehensive sci-tech news coverage on the web The Amazon is soul-quaking in all its forms, but to see true, pure, untouched rainforest with maximum wildlife – and minimum crowds – it has to be an eco-conscious tour to the Rio Negro, writes Alex Robinson I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Saro grabbed my arm and pointed into the flooded forest where the creek spread mirror-calm through endless trunks into darkness I noticed that the forest was alive with sound – the whirr of cicadas A pair of metre-long blue-and-yellow macaws flew over us But I still couldn’t see what he was pointing at I shielded my eyes from the sun and squinted into the gloom of the flooded forest electric-blue morpho butterflies floated between the trees regal moorhen – waded over a bed of water hyacinth on spindly yellow legs Then I saw a flicker; an undulation of something man-sized illuminated in a shaft of light that pierced the canopy Something broke the creek’s surface a few metres in front of our prow: inquisitive dark eyes; a sleek brow; and a face that came clear of the river with a dab of white under a big whiskered mouth filled with sharp teeth then three smaller faces bobbed behind her as cute as puppies – though each was as long as an adult labrador played with her cubs and then suddenly remembered herself and barked sharply “but danger!” Just as quickly as the family had appeared There were a handful of us on the boat tour through the Rio Negro Environmental Protection Area – Brits drawn by a yearning for nature after a long stint in Covid-struck cities I wouldn’t have found this astonishing Eden if it weren’t for those long dull days searching the internet for dream journeys a new boat tour company run by an indigenous Amazonian He promised to take visitors to the Amazon of his childhood water was still pure and landscapes magnificent Careful wildlife tourism was vital to keeping the rainforests he loved preserved Aracá is the only indigenous-run operator in the Amazon region Money from my trip would go towards a reserve that Saro has purchased to reforest an area of degraded jungle around Novo Airão and to collecting rubbish from the local waters He strongly believes that tourism is essential to drawing attention to this pristine and beautiful area and to showing that tourism can be a sustainable source of income for riverine people Born into a family of fishermen in an Amerindian village in the 1960s he had taught himself to read and write and to speak English and Spanish He’d worked for 20 years as a guide in the many jungle lodges near the city and as a fixer for wildlife documentary crews “Tourists who fly in for a couple of days in a lodge or on a boat near the city have no more seen the Amazon than visitors to Miami have seen the Everglades,” he told me before my trip “I take people to table-top mountains and giant waterfalls and floating forests where you can pick wild fruit right off the trees as you canoe.” He was the one who suggested a river trip through the Rio Negro Environmental Protection Area, the largest, wildest protected swathe of rainforest in South America. We would visit the most remote mountain in the tropical world – the peak that gave Saro’s company its name: Aracá. Visits were important, he told me. They would help local politicians value and preserve the upper Rio Negro as an ecotourism draw just as politicians in Costa Rica had learnt to protect its forested interior in the 1990s “The Rio Negro and Aracá mountain are as far away from the dangerous parts of the Amazon as London is from Cairo,” Saro told me miners or cattle ranchers where we are going I hadn’t felt so much as a nibble since we joined the boat in Novo Airão that balmy June arriving when the rains were at their lowest and the rivers high enough to reach the mountain This little port village sits 200km (124 miles) north of Manaus city the boat was luxurious: a beautiful river cruiser with air-conditioned cabins decked out in lush who welcomed us on board with icy caipirinhas Soon we were puttering away from the jetty in warm late afternoon sunlight to cruise up the coffee-black Negro What I thought was the opposite bank when we boarded was in fact a large forest-covered island – one of hundreds in the world’s biggest river archipelago a World Heritage site at the southern end of Earth’s largest area of protected tropical forest the view of the Anavilhanas opened up: thousands of islands scattered the Negro The scale and beauty of the landscape was overwhelming “don’t see the Amazon as a river – it is a vast and environmental scientist Raphael – were transfixed where thousands of swifts and swallows flicked past on their way to their evening roost For half an hour we watched in silence as the sun set golden The mackerel sky above us pinked and tens of kilometres away lightning flickered under an anvil of cloud For two days we cruised through Anavilhanas We passed tiny villages with huts clustered around blue-and-white painted Catholic churches Bubblegum-pink river dolphins played around our prow Hawks as big as turkeys sat in the crowns of giant waterside trees on which we took trips off the main river up spindly creeks and oxbow lakes covered in lilies spying troops of gibbon-like black spider monkeys swinging in the branches vast flocks of cackling parakeets and our family of giant otters we left the Negro for the Danube-sized Demini on our way to Aracá mountain flat-topped tepui or meseta (plateau) that is over 1.5 billion years old whose sheer walls rise right out of the forest The next day we stopped at the confluence of the Demini and the Aracá river A tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Amazon it was still twice as wide as the UK’s Thames river “We’re going to collect camu camu,” he said We sped away in the launch to a patch of floating trees I saw that they were covered in dark berries as big and juicy as autumn grapes Dona Zi presented us with glasses of dark purple “There is more vitamin C in this,” she told us “than in one of those fizzy tablets you buy in the pharmacy.” the Araca River looked half the size it had the day before We moored in a natural harbour under giant trees cutting into a creek fringed with beautiful There were birds everywhere: tanagers flitting across the water Saro pointed out a huge black-and-white king vulture drying its wings on a high branch forcing us to pull the boat out over the beaches and back into the water we finally saw Aracá – a wall of rock capped with wispy cloud pointing to a fissure in the face of the mountain it’s easy.” We tied the launch to the riverside slipped on our packs and hiked for several sweaty hours along a path Saro pointed out fresh jaguar footprints in the mud We crossed a tiny stream on a wooden log bridge and stopped at a rushing clear-water stream for a cooling bathe in the mountain’s mineral waters We reached the base of the mountain and our camp for the night with aching muscles and fell asleep in hammocks to the lullaby of tree frogs and crickets I slept lightly – nervous about the path up the mountain scared of steep drop-offs and precarious ridges But Saro was right: when we reached the trail after breakfast We scrambled over moss-covered boulders and heaved ourselves up short sections using a rope – for psychological more than physical support The forest around the path was splashed with colour from dozens of blue before I spotted a leaf-lounging beetle as bright as a club dancer caught in UV light After three hours we were on the top of Aracá itself And we shared a view that only a handful of people see every year; a view that will never leave me which filled me with energy and life after the long pandemic It was as if we’d stepped back into a world as old as Eden At our feet forest spread as far as we could see to every horizon – a green lawn of ancient life cut by sinuous rivers There was no hint nor sound of humanity; not even a jet plane high in the sky Only falcons soared over the trees far below us and the air was thick with oxygen and the smell of streams The sheer walls of Aracá stretched either side of the fissure we had climbed paused in a pool and fell wispy white into a canyon a quarter of a mile high British Airways offers direct flights from London to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo is a six-hour domestic flight northwest of Rio and a four-hour domestic flight northwest of São Paulo Aracá Expeditions can arrange a 14-night cruise to Aracá mountain from £3,950pp including all transfers and two nights in Manaus Journey Latin America has an 11-night holiday to Brazil with a week-long lower Rio Negro cruise leaving from Manaus, plus time in Rio de Janeiro and Iguazú Falls, from £3,760pp B&B, including flights. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies {"adUnitPath":"71347885/_main_independent/in_travel/in_sustainable-travel/image/gallery_mpu_sb","autoGallery":true,"disableAds":false,"gallery":[{"data":{"title":"The Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon","description":"The Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon","caption":"The Rio Negro tributary of the Amazon untouched rainforest with maximum wildlife – and minimum crowds – it has to be an eco-conscious tour to the Rio Negro Ecological InformaticsCitation Excerpt :The total suspended solids (TSS) is a applicable water quality indicator for rivers subject to siltation and conveying substantial amounts of toxic substances These rivers are also highly polluted and need some strong technology support to reduce and avoid the further damages by reducing the toxicity (Beretta-Blanco and Carrasco-Letelier When designing and developing pollution prevention and management strategies data collected from water quality monitoring efforts are hugely helpful which can emit electrical discharges of up to 860 volts depending on the species (photo: Phelipe Janning/Agência FAPESP) scientists from the University of São Paulo collected specimens of poraquês and other fish of the order Gymnotiformes aboard the vessel Comandante Gomes The Agência FAPESP report followed the work in the field By André Julião  |  Agência FAPESP – Poraquês (Electrophorus spp.) are the best-known electric fish partly because of their size (up to 2.5 meters long) but mainly because of their ability to emit electrical discharges of up to 860 volts The shock is capable of paralyzing prey and even affecting humans for a few seconds most of the 250 or so species in their order are elongated little fish with small eyes that live in rivers lakes and streams and emit weak electrical signals which was collected only once in 1968 and has never been found again a group of scientists scoured the bottom of the Negro River – in the state of Amazonas Brazil – streams and other environments in the region in search of little-known Gymnotiformes as well as specimens that could support ongoing studies and even lead to the description of new species researchers and a team from Agência FAPESP passing through conservation units and other municipalities in the state The description of the details of the fieldwork is part of a new edition of the Field Diary series the team followed a path similar to that of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) in 1850 when the naturalist – coauthor of the theory of evolution – documented some of the Amazon’s fauna and flora The expedition is part of the project “Diversity and Evolution of Gymnotiformes”, supported by FAPESP and coordinated by Naercio Menezes professor at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo (MZ-USP) “In the almost seven years that the project has been underway we’ve made a number of discoveries and collected a large number of specimens for our collection as a result of ongoing and future research will continue to produce innovative results for some years to come After the great drought that recently affected the Amazon region we hope to find the fish concentrated in smaller aquatic environments which should make collecting and studying them easier,” Menezes explained on the eve of the expedition One of the best-known results of the project was the discovery and description in 2019 of two new species of poraquê, previously thought to be one. The discovery had international repercussions, as the largest electrical discharge ever recorded in an animal, 860 volts, was found (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/31386/) The researchers also revealed the feeding habits of one species in the genus (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/36946/) and the social predatory behavior of another, which is very rare in fish and other vertebrates (read more in the research article published in the journal Ecology and Evolution) During the project, a technique was also used to identify the fish present in a given aquatic environment using only samples of body fragments (scales, skin, feces, etc.) present in the water, called environmental DNA sequencing. MZ-USP became the first Brazilian institution to have this type of sample deposited in its collection (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/37382/) More than knowing and cataloging the orders today’s zoological studies are delving into the genetic differences within the various populations that make up the same species “Therefore, conservation doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to the species, because if there’s a genetic wealth distributed among different populations of one of them, it should also be recognized and protected,” explains Murilo Nogueira de Lima Pastana curator of the fish collection and professor at MZ-USP one of the goals of the trip was to collect small muscle or fin samples whose genomes could be sequenced even from species already in zoological collections Once the specimens are preserved in formaldehyde their DNA is degraded and difficult to reconstruct in its entirety using today’s techniques However, even this challenge could soon be overcome, thanks to the acquisition by MZ-USP, with support from FAPESP of a set of equipment that will allow so-called historical DNA to be sequenced The expedition was imbued with the great expectation of collecting new specimens and genetic material of Iracema caiana, the mysterious electric fish collected by the researcher Tyson Roberts in 1968 and described by Mauro Luís Triques in 1996 the only four known specimens of the species are deposited at MZ-USP Not even large expeditionary projects in the Amazon which collected more than 20,000 specimens of 510 species in the 1990s have managed to find new specimens of Iracema caiana “There was little precision in the geographical determination of the collection site at the time the specimens were collected due to the lack of precise georeferencing devices commonly used in modern scientific expeditions we estimated an area where Tyson Roberts probably collected Iracema caiana based on his description of the sampling site in what is now the Baixo Rio Branco-Jauaperi Extractive Reserve,” explains Raimundo Nonato Mendes Gomes Júnior an environmental analyst at the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change The expedition will also be an opportunity for master’s and doctoral students to be trained in fish collection and storage techniques and to be exposed to the Amazon a region with the greatest diversity of fish in the world many of which have yet to be named and formally described The work also strengthens ties with project partners such as the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) and the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Brazil and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in the United States Intercultural research journal from the Rio Negro Basin reaches its 5th edition with narratives about the pandemic From the shamanic arrangement of the world to the arrival of the vaccine against Covid-19 the fight against the pandemic in the region of the Middle and Upper Rio Negro With texts by indigenous and non-indigenous people the 5th edition of Aru – Journal of Intercultural Research of the Rio Negro Basin published in partnership by the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) portrays this scenario and the memorable indigenous strategy of resistance and protection in the face of the health crisis in one of the most preserved regions of the Amazon where the municipalities São Gabriel da Cachoeira Santa Isabel do Rio Negro and Barcelos and around 750 communities (some of them remote) where people from 23 ethnicities live together This edition is launched in 2024 – four years after the start of the pandemic – with the perspective that it is impossible not to remember the health crisis especially in the face of the climate emergency and a development model that increasingly places us in front of the risk of new epidemics.  Faced with the lack of response from non-indigenous science the almost absence of actions from official bodies and a denialist and anti-indigenous Federal Government the people of Rio Negro strengthened partnerships Protection also came from a sophisticated understanding of health The mobilization for a minimum of structure and oxygen occurred in an interinstitutional effort by public bodies - especially frontline health professionals - and civil society organizations including the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) and ISA The moment was marked by a tribute to anthropologist Dagoberto Azevedo Part of his work was dedicated to the possibility of encounters – of cultures unveiled the plaque with the name of the indigenous anthropologist: the Telecentro at the headquarters of the ISA in São Gabriel da Cachoeira now bears the name of Sala Dagoberto Azevedo - Suegʉ which makes up the culture of the people of this ethnic group the Aru – Intercultural research journal of the Rio Negro Basin is a project led by Aloisio Cabalzar based on the work of the Network of Indigenous Environmental Management Agents (AIMAS) Its proposal is to stimulate collaboration initiatives and exchanges between indigenous and non-indigenous experts and researchers who work in different spaces of knowledge production about the Rio Negro Basin its life cycles and transformation processes *Conversation with sociologist and leader Elizângela Costa *Conversation with anthropologist and leader Francy Baniwa and sociologist and leader Elizângela Costa Caretakers of memory and the future indigenous women from the Rio Negro tell their story in film and book Ohpenkõ di´a kahnã numia is how indigenous women from the Rio Negro or rionegrinas are written one of the languages ​​spoken in this region of the Amazon The phrase is in the song prepared by Odimara Ferraz Matos sung during the III March of Indigenous Women organized by the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestrality (Anmiga) they publicized their struggle during the march on the Esplanada dos Ministérios along with approximately 8 other women from across the country they made noise and sought space in official offices articulating for public policies that benefit women in their territories Learn more: Indigenous women march in Brasília for more political representation and the end of gender-based violence “This song shows that women have always been in the indigenous movement but their history has not always appeared” Alongside her were leaders such as Elizângela Baré Almerinda Ramos (Tariano people) and Janete Alves (Desana people) The president of the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (FUNAI) was also alongside the women of Rio Negro during the march it is a special moment to talk about this history: the meeting celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Department of Indigenous Women of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (DMIRN-FOIRN) The documentary “Rionegrinas” and the book “As Mães do DMIRN – Achievements and Challenges” were released, which bring narratives from the department’s leaders and rescue memories to inspire the future. The department's website was also launched, a communication and strengthening tool. Find out at https://dmirn.foirn.org.br Cleocimara Reis talks about the appreciation of this history “This story is inspiring not only for the Rio Negro Indigenous women from other regions are offering us exchanges to learn about DMIRN and to structure their own departments,” she said in São Gabriel da Cachoeira The delegation that went to Brasília was made up of around 40 women from peoples such as Baré People considered to have been in recent contact the Hudp´däh and Nadeb also had representatives at the march Among the members were three communicators from the Wayuri Network: Cláudia Ferraz “It was very special to participate in this moment and show the history of DMIRN This journey is inspiring and it is necessary to have a different look at the history of these women See coverage on Wayuri Network’s Instagram: A post shared by Rede Wayuri (@rede.wayuri) Listen to the special program about the III Marcha das Mulheres on the Wayuri podcast Produced by ISA in partnership with DMIRN and FOIRN the documentary “Rionegrinas” was released on the 12th at the Centro de Convivência dos Povos Indígenas da UnB (Maloca) participated in the session and brought indigenous tradition to talk about women in the narrative of the emergence of the world The direction and script are by documentary filmmaker Fernanda Ligabue and ISA's socio-environmental policy coordinator from the home-territory to public positions DMIRN has a coordinator and five regional coordinators who enable dialogue with the indigenous territory of the Rio Negro.  people of 23 ethnicities live in around 750 sites and communities in the municipalities of São Gabriel da Cachoeira Santa Isabel do Rio Negro and Barcelos (AM) Coordination is the responsibility of Cleocimara Reis and the coordinators are: Belmira Melgueiro Among DMIRN's priority agendas are gender equity support for indigenous women's associations indigenous medicine and the traditional agricultural system tackling the impacts of the climate emergency and women's rights She recalls that the president of FOIRN at the time indicated that they needed to organize themselves on paper And so they worked until they created DMIRN today the home of the artisan and indigenous artisan of the Rio Negro the Covid-19 pandemic hit the Rio Negro region hard articulated support and partnerships for protection and health actions which brought humanitarian aid into indigenous territory the documentary features the coordinator of the Wayuri Network highlighting the importance of communication for and by indigenous people who is now in charge of the Rio Negro Regional Coordination of the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai – CR Rio Negro) talks in the film about strengthening the presence of indigenous women in the political space Anthropologist Francy Baniwa reflects on the conquest of spaces in universities and the challenges that remain points to the future and talks about the importance of recording the memory of DMIRN for the next generations The film will also be released in Manaus and São Gabriel da Cachoeira The book “As Mães do DMIRN – Achievements and Challenges” also contains testimonies from indigenous women The writing was conducted by Elizângela da Silva “When I started writing it was as if I were a woman giving birth The women said: back then we were treated like that and our strategies were like that We were looking for more dialogue and partnerships to show our importance men were sexist and said that our participation was out of context or status But we created other strategies and that’s how they were built” She reveals that one of the women's strategies was to strengthen income generation through crafts conquering other areas of struggle for health The publication has the support of the Observatory of Gender Violence in Amazonas and the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (USP) Archeology and indigenous narratives meet in the history of Rio Negro Archaeological excavation in public space and visits by indigenous and non-indigenous researchers to landscapes that are part of the narratives of origin of the peoples of Rio Negro These activities were carried out in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM) during the first face-to-face workshop of the Intercultural Archaeological Program of the Northwest Amazon (Parinã) held at the headquarters of the Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) between the 10th and 20 of May.  ceramics and artifacts were found that indicate indigenous occupations of up to 2.000 years and research carried out in 2019 shows that the settlement may be older “This area has the history of our existence We can see in the concrete the stories we tell orally” He was one of the participants in the Parinã workshop which was attended by non-indigenous and indigenous researchers from different ethnic groups which brings exchanges of various ethnic groups There's a lot to be passed on for the future It increases the hope of preserving the identity and culture of the people” Even with the different languages ​​and approaches it is possible to find a point of convergence pointed out by the members of Parinã: São Gabriel da Cachoeira – known as the most indigenous municipality in Brazil – is a place that connects narratives of indigenous peoples to the colonial history of past centuries and contemporary experiences the indigenous peoples who live today in the Upper Rio Negro may be the descendants of the people who left the archaeological remains These characteristics are present in urban areas and in indigenous communities being a reason for special attention for public policies that recognize protect and preserve the territory and the narratives in their different forms One of the points of the program is to propose an intercultural reconstruction of the meaning of cultural heritage beyond what is defined in the legislation.  anthropologist and researcher at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG) is part of the Parinã team and reinforces the importance of an interdisciplinary approach “We did not come to teach the indigenous people about history Indigenous connoisseurs have knowledge that needs to be valued mixing indigenous and non-indigenous knowledge and perspectives” An archaeological and heritage exhibition is scheduled to take place in São Gabriel da Cachoeira at the end of the first stage of the Parinã Program The organization will be in charge of the Museu da Amazônia (Musa) with collaborative curation involving program participants and partners.  narratives and documents gathered within the scope of the project can be seen in the exhibition The filmmaker and communicator of the Wayuri Network filmed narratives by indigenous connoisseurs so that these stories are also part of the show.   The Parinã program started in 2018 and involves several partners the Institute of Archeology at University College London (UCL) and the Federal University of São Paulo researcher and anthropologist Geraldo Andrello The Federation of Indigenous Organizations of Rio Negro (Foirn) also supports the initiative The archaeological excavations carried out within the Parinã Program took place in an area of ​​16m2 in the square in front of the Diocese and the Cathedral of São Gabriel ceramic fragments of objects such as plates and stoves were found as well as axes and lithic instruments that indicate settlements up to 2.000 years old Also found was the so-called "terra preta de Índio" a type of soil enriched by human activity and present in other parts of the Amazon “It is a legacy of ancient peoples for the composition of the forest” says archeologist and professor Helena Pinto Lima a researcher at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi who is participating in the excavations in São Gabriel She explains that the excavation site has strategic characteristics for locating an indigenous settlement such as being in an area of ​​natural elevation Also participating in the excavations were the coordinator of Parinã from the Institute of Archeology at University College London (UCL); Musa's deputy scientific director archaeologist Filippo Stampanoni Bassi; the coordinator of the Archeology and Ethnography nucleus at Musa and the coordinator of the Archeology Laboratory at Musa The excavation work at the archaeological site was accompanied by students of the archeology course at the State University of Amazonas (UEA) – Campus São Gabriel One of the students is Junildo Rezende Costa who observed similarities between objects taken from the archaeological excavation and narratives he hears at home Hatchets and ceramics are similar to the ones my grandparents say were used around here,” the student recalled Filippo informs that in the area of ​​São Gabriel there is an extensive archaeological site with parts occupied by constructions of public agencies and others He participated in the excavations in front of the Diocese of São Gabriel and excavated the area of ​​the local office of the Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade (ICMBio) where terra preta and artifacts dating back 2.700 years were found in an archaeological site that is still little known It may be that the occupations are older.” Manuel explains that studies indicate that in São Gabriel there was once an indigenous settlement and the city has the important characteristic of possibly having among its residents the descendants of the people who lived here in a remote past “We have a justified hope that today's indigenous peoples are descendants of the people who were responsible for creating the archaeological remains In the municipality there are about 750 communities and places where indigenous people from 23 ethnic groups live there are four co-official indigenous languages ​​besides Portuguese: Nheengatu Manuel Arroyo considers that the Rio Negro Basin ethnographic and archaeological crossroads “This leaves us with several questions about what the past of this region was like since when there was human occupation here if the people who lived here were related to people from other regions of the Amazon The discoveries made so far in the region are in line with other studies that indicate that there were ancient settlements – from up to 9.000 years ago – with intense exchanges between peoples Some of these studies were conducted by the archaeologist Eduardo Neves who has already carried out research in the region of Iauareté Another proposal by Parinã is the development and updating of a georeferenced digital database gathering research material already produced in the Rio Negro region by ISA and collaborators for at least 20 years This work is in progress and is being led by ecologist and geoprocessing analyst Renata Alves “We are working on a digital platform that shows the various layers of indigenous historical theories from the pre-colonial and post-colonial period Some of the indigenous stories do not happen in this plan but is part of their history and they need to be recorded as much as the other knowledge” An example of what can be found on this platform is the Ipanoré Waterfall where the first ancestors emerged into this world after a long underwater journey aboard the snake-canoe narratives and other information about the waterfall will be available on the platform.  Another proposal discussed during the Parinã workshop was the creation of a virtual museum with the Goeldi Museum's collection of pieces collected in the Northwest Amazon during Theodor Koch-Grünberg's voyage in the early years of the XNUMXth century Images with some of these pieces were shown to indigenous researchers during the workshop by anthropologist and researcher at Goeldi groups of indigenous and non-indigenous researchers visited some points of the landscape of São Gabriel da Cachoeira One of these hikes was proposed by Márcio Meira who led the group to Pedra da Fortaleza – today a tourist spot in the city with a view of the sunset and the Cabari mountains and where a fort installed by Portuguese colonists was once located The setting of colonial history is recorded in a watercolor from 1785 that was reproduced on a banner to be taken to the site by the group the indigenous people found important points of their historical narratives is part of a snake that was killed there during a battle.   Meira explains that the dialogue between different types of knowledge is essential for understanding the region “This possibility of dialogue between history archeology and traditional knowledge is the way we have for us to better understand this social reality in the region There is no way to understand if there is not this dialogue between knowledge” the colonial history in the region was marked by violence against the indigenous people who were often used as slave labor for the extraction of forest products but it was not strong enough to erase the way of life of the people who live in the Rio Negro” The Parinã team also includes indigenous scholarship researchers who work in different ways such as activities in the archeology and translation laboratory The objective is for the research to also be carried out in indigenous communities an activity that has been limited due to the pandemic.   One of the fellows is the Social Sciences student at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) who has been rescuing the traditional narratives told by his father the traditional connoisseur Durvalino Moura Fernandes They are Desana of the Wari Dihpotiro Porã clan The narratives can vary according to the people and even the clan Durvalino Moura pondered that some objects and documents will appear during the researchers' work as they only exist in sacred narratives that reach other spheres “This is a meeting to rescue some knowledge But there is knowledge that we do not reveal that are only passed on between family members” Get our news on your inbox! Suscribe x MercoPress, en Español Montevideo, May 5th 2025 - 14:07 UTC Argentina's state-run oil company YPF announced a mega port will be built in Río Negro to export oil from the Atlantic shore The project foresees a pipeline from Vaca Muerta to Sierra Grande and 20 reserve tanks together with a mega maritime terminal to sell crude abroad and substitute imports YPF is planning a pipeline between Vaca Muerta and the port Punta Colorada de Sierra Grande where it will deploy a mega maritime terminal that will become the largest oil exporting port in the country with a total investment of US$ 1.260 billion YPF CEO Pablo González announced after meeting with provincial lawmakers who fine-tuned local legislation with this project in sight last week The project will connect the existing oil exploitation in the Neuquén formation of Vaca Muerta with the port of Punta Colorada for the shipment of the production using offshore monobuoys located 6.7 kilometers from the coast The pipeline is expected to carry 60,000 cubic meters (372,000 barrels of crude oil) per day through a 700-kilometer line The new line should exceed the capacity currently available through the Oleoductos del Valle (Oldelval) system which links Vaca Muerta to Puerto Rosales in Bahía Blanca (36,000 cubic meters/day) The plan is also expected to create some 1,000 direct jobs and another 3,000 indirect ones The project also contemplates the construction of 20 reserve tanks on an area of 250 coastal hectares with a storage capacity of 1 million cubic meters “The maritime station will be the largest crude oil exporting port in Argentina” and stressed that the project “does not interfere in any way with the green hydrogen project,” González explained Río Negro law had banned oil and gas prospecting and extraction in the San Matías Gulf since 1995 It also restricted the installation of oil and other pipelines for the transportation of hydrocarbons and their derivatives and the construction of terminals for the loading and unloading of vessels transporting these products González insisted that “the current transportation capacity both to the port of Rosales in Bahía Blanca and to the domestic market is at the limit of its possibilities.” He added that “it is essential to look for new alternatives for exports of the trans-Andean pipeline after two decades of paralysis.” “it was determined that Punta Colorada offers the best conditions for this purpose due to the depth of the coastal waters that allow the operation of deep draft vessels as well as the availability of land for the installation of complementary plants.” Commenting for this story is now closed.If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page Metrics details cytochemical staining reactions and ultrastructure of blood cells from three freshwater stingray species Potamotrygon motoro and Paratrygon aiereba living in the waters of the middle Rio Negro basin (Barcelos thrombocytes and four types of leukocytes (basophils lymphocytes and monocytes) in the blood of these stingray species In all the freshwater stingray species studied the shapes and dimensions of these cells were similar to those of marine elasmobranchs Positive PAS staining occurred in heterophils and thrombocytes and weak staining occurred in lymphocytes and monocytes while metachromasia only occurred in basophils Positive Sudan Black B staining was observed in thrombocytes and lymphocytes Basophils and heterophils were the only cells with positive bromophenol blue staining while no peroxidase staining was observed in any of the four leukocyte types This is the first study to establish the dimensions and cytochemical staining profiles of blood cells in Amazonian stingray species Because these elasmobranch species are exported as ornamental fish to countries worldwide this study can contribute to establishing standards for blood constituents that may be helpful in assessing the health and welfare of these fish in artificial systems these authors did not investigate the cytochemical features of these cell types to confirm their identities by examining traditional morphology from cytochemical markings but cell-based classifications of stingray leukocyte cells are not always reliable using classical staining methods because the staining procedures vary which can lead to errors in the identification of a cell type cytochemical staining of leukocytes in blood may be particularly useful for identifying cell lineages and may indicate cell function This study aimed to investigate the morphology cytochemical staining reactivity and ultrastructure of blood cells from three freshwater stingray species living in the black waters of the middle Rio Negro basin (Barcelos Because Brazil and other Amazonian countries export these species as ornamental fish to consumers around the world these results will contribute to establishing standards for blood constituents that may be helpful in assessing the health and welfare of these fish in artificial systems especially in relation to the ornamental fish trade All the stingrays sampled recovered from the anesthetic and were safely returned to their respective capture sites the biometric parameters were determined (TL We stained these blood smears with a combination of May-Grünwald-Giemsa-Wright stains to identify cells and make morphometric measurements (µm) of 100 samples of each cell type found (erythrocytes with the aid of an optical microscope and a millimeter ruler for determination of the largest and smallest cells We collected fresh blood samples from 10 specimens of each stingray species The presence and intensity of glycogen deposits inside blood cells was confirmed by using the periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) method Controls for this reaction were obtained through smears exposed to salivary amylase digestion for 60 min The results from the cytochemical staining were expressed qualitatively according to the intensity of staining observed for each blood cell type weakly positive staining (+) and positive staining (++) We immediately fixed these pellets in 0.1 M sodium cacodylate solution (pH 7.4) containing 2.5% glutaraldehyde and 2.0% paraformaldehyde at 4 °C for 2.5 h We then immersed these samples in a 0.2 M sodium cacodylate solution (pH 7.4) containing 1% osmium tetroxide at 4 °C for one hour the samples were dehydrated and embedded in Araldite resin (Sigma-Aldrich and sections were cut using a Reichert OM-U3 ultratome mounted on copper grids (200 mesh) and stained with 0.2% uranyl acetate solution and lead citrate solution for 15 min The sections were analyzed using a transmission electron microscope at the Microscopy Center of the Institute of Biosciences at São Paulo State University (Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho A total of 140 rays were captured in the natural environment and 10 were processed and registered in the collection The mean values for total length, disc width and body mass of P. wallacei, P. aiereba and P. motoro specimens are shown in Table 1 heterophils and basophils of similar sizes among the species (I–V) Morphology of blood cells of three freshwater stingray species stained with May Grunwald-Giemsa-Wright stains (I) (E) Erythrocytes and (Er) erythroblasts of P wallacei; (III) (T) thrombocytes and (M) monocytes of P wallacei; (IV) (H) heterophils and (T) thrombocytes of P Leukocyte and thrombocyte cell counts showed that lymphocytes and monocytes were the predominant blood cells, while heterophils and basophils were the least abundant blood cells in the three freshwater stingray species investigated (Table 3) (I–IV) PAS staining for detection of glycogen in blood cells of freshwater stingrays in central Amazonia (I–III) Cytochemical staining of lipids with Sudan Black B was performed in blood cells of freshwater stingrays in central Amazonia. (I) Heterophils of P. wallacei; (II) Lymphocytes of P. aiereba; (III) Thrombocytes of P. aiereba. Bar = 8 µm. (I–III) Cytochemical staining of total protein and metachromasia in blood cells of freshwater stingrays in central Amazonia (I) Total protein staining in heterophils of P motoro; (II) Total protein staining in basophils of P wallacei; (III) Metachromasia in basophils of P (I,II) Ultrastructural analysis of blood cells from freshwater stingrays in central Amazonia no eosinophils were observed in blood from Amazon stingrays thus suggesting that heterophils have some importance in the immune defense of these potamotrygonids there is a lack of standardization in the staining procedures adopted and in the classification of blood cell types quantification of the number of circulating reticulocytes can provide information about erythropoietic activity and therefore about the animal health status Ginglymostoma cirratum (Bonnaterre 1788) and Carcharhinus limbatus sharks (Müller & Henle 1839) and this characteristic was also observed in the three potamotrygonid stingray species but this was not detected in the Amazonian stingrays herein Phagocytic leukocytes can use lipids as an energy source thereby degrading these constituents through the action of cytoplasmic enzymes these results indicate that these proteins play an important role in the innate defense of animals which is possibly performed by heterophil and basophil granulocytes The morphology and sizes of the different cell types were similar to those of marine rays and sharks It is very important to characterize the types of stingray leukocytes to provide basic information about these cells and make correlations with health conditions leukocytes can be quantified in these stingrays which are extremely important for the aquarium industry The cytochemical characteristics of heterophils indicates that these major granulocytes are important in the immune defense of Amazonian potamotrygonids The blood cell features of wild native stingrays may be useful for making diagnoses and comparisons among these same species under controlled conditions Data supporting the findings of this manuscript are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request Neotropical stingrays: family Potamotrygonidae The exploitation and conservation of freshwater elasmobrachs: Status of taxa and prospects for the future In Check List of the Freshwater Fishes of South and Central América (eds Reis Morphology and phylogenetic relationships of a remarkable new genus and two new species of Neotropical freshwater stingrays from the Amazon basin (Chondrichthyes: Potamotrygonidae) Biology of the South American potamotrygonid stingrays In Sharks and their Relatives II: Biodiversity Conservation and Management of Ornamental Fish Resources of the Rio Negro Basin Oliveira, A. T. et al. Conhecimento tradicional de pescadores de arraias de água doce da região Amazônica. Revista Ibero-americana de Ciências Ambientais. 11, 128–135. https://doi.org/10.6008/CBPC2179-6858.2020.002.0015 (2020) Biologia e história natural de Potamotrygon wallacei (Carvalho Rosa and Araújo 2016) na bacia do Rio Negro In Rayas de agua dulce (Potamotrygonidae) de Suramérica et al.) 289–302 (Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt Arnold, J. E. Hematology of the sandbar shark, Carcharhinus plumbeus: Standardization of complete blood count techniques for elasmobranchs. Vet. Clin. Pathol. 34, 115–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-165x.2005.tb00023.x (2005) Valenzuela, A., Oyarzún, C. & Silva, V. Células sanguíneas de Schroederichthys chilensis (Guichenot 1848) (Elasmobranchii, Scyliorhinidae): la série blanca. Gayana 67, 130–136. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-65382003000100018 (2003) In Biology of Sharks and their Relatives (eds Carrier Cain, D. K., Harms, C. A. & Segars, A. Plasma biochemistry reference values of wild caught southern stingrays (Dasyatis americana). J. Zoo Wildl. Med. 35, 471–476. https://doi.org/10.1638/03-107 (2004) Dove, A. D. M., Arnold, J. & Clauss, T. M. Blood cells and serum chemistry in the world’s largest fish: The whale shark Rhincodon typus. Aquat. Biol. 9, 177–183. https://doi.org/10.3354/ab00252 (2010) Elasmobranch hematology: identification of cell types and practical applications In The Elasmobranch Husbandry Manual: Captive Care of Sharks Serum composition of freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygonidae) adapted to fresh and diluted sea water Oliveira, A. T. et al. Procedimentos de manuseio e de colheita de sangue em arraias de água doce. Documentos Embrapa. 77, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.19792.25605 (2012) Fisiologia de arraias de água doce: subsidios para aplicabilidade na aquicultura In Aquicultura no Brasil: novas perspectivas 1st edn Oliveira, A. T. et al. Hematological parameters of three freshwater stingray species (Chondrichthyes: Potamotrygonidae) in the middle Rio Negro, Amazonas state. Biochem. Syst. Ecol. 69, 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bse.2016.07.002 (2016) Oliveira, A. T. et al. Cyrilia sp. (Apicomplexa: Haemogregarinidae) in the Amazonian freshwater stingray Potamotrygon wallacei (cururu stingray) in different hydrological phases of the Rio Negro. Braz. J. Biol. 77, 413–416. https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.00416 (2017) Anselmo, N. P. et al. Hematological parameters of captive big-headed Amazon river turtles, Peltocephalus dumerilianus (Testudines: Podocnemididae). Acta Biológica Colombiana. 26, 207–213. https://doi.org/10.15446/abc.v26n2.80616 (2021) Polese, M. F. et al. Zootechnical parameters of Corn feed particle size in performance, digestibility and rate of passage in juvenile tambaqui Colossoma macropomum. Braz. J. Biol. 82, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.232612 (2022) Morphological and cytochemical characterization of thrombocytes and leukocytes in hatchings of three species of Amazonian freshwater turtles Aride, P. H. R. et al. Growth and hematological responses of tambaqui, Colossoma macropomum fed different levels of rice, Oryza spp. Braz. J. Biol. 81, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.232560 (2020) Aride, P. H. R. et al. Changes on physiological parameters of tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) fed with diets supplemented with Amazonian fruit Camu camu (Myrciaria dubia). Braz. J. Biol. 78, 360–367. https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.169442 (2018) Aride, P. H. R. et al. Growth and hematological responses of tambaqui fed different amounts of cassava (Manihot esculenta). Arquivo Brasileiro de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia 68, 1697–1704. https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-4162-8704 (2016) Castro, P. D. S. et al. Ecophysiological interactions in species of peacock bass Cichla spp. from the Amazon. Revista Ibero-americana de Ciências Ambientais. 11, 594–599. https://doi.org/10.6008/CBPC2179-6858.2020.005.0053 (2020) Castro, P. D. S. et al. Hematological parameters of three species of tucunarés (Cichla spp.) from Lake Balbina, Presidente Figueiredo, Amazonas. Braz. J. Biol. 80, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1590/1519-6984.219409 (2020) Nascimento, G. B. et al. Parâmetros hematológicos do matrinxã Brycon amazonicus (Characidae: Bryconinae) criados em cativeiro na região Amazônica. Braz. J. Dev. 6, 3303–3315. https://doi.org/10.34117/bjdv6n1-238 (2020) Nascimento, M. S. et al. Supplementation of citric acid in plant protein-based diets for juvenile tambaqui. J. World Aquac. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1111/jwas.12735 (2020) Pavlidis, M., Futter, W. C., Kathario, P. & Divanach, P. Blood cells of six Mediterranean mariculture fish species. J. Appl. Ichthyol. 23, 70–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0426.2006.00771.x (2007) Tavares-Dias, M. A morphological and cytochemical study of erythrocytes, thrombocytes and leukocytes in four freshwater teleosts. J. Fish Biol. 68, 1822–1833. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8649.2006.01089.x (2006) and ultrastructural study of thrombocytes and leukocytes in neotropical fish Percie du Sert, N. et al. The ARRIVE guidelines 2.0: Updated guidelines for reporting animal research. PLoS Biol. 18(7), e3000410. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000410 (2020) Canfield, P. J. Comparative cell morphology in the peripheral blood film from exotic and native animals. Aust. Vet. J. 76, 793–800. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1998.tb12328.x (1998) Características hematológicas da Tilapia rendalli Boulenger 1896 (Osteichthyes: Cichlidae) capturada em “Pesque-Pague” de Franca Davis, A. K., Maney, D. L. & Maerz, J. C. The use of leukocyte profiles to measure stress in vertebrates: A review for ecologists. Funct. Ecol. 22, 760–772. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2008.01467.x (2008) Color Atlas of Comparative Veterinary Hematology (Iowa State University Press Aragort, W., Alvarez, M. F., Leiro, J. L. & Sanmartín, M. L. Blood protozoans in elasmobranchs of the family Rajidae from Galicia (NW Spain). Dis. Aquat. Org. 65, 63–68. https://doi.org/10.3354/dao065063 (2005) Clewley, A., Kocan, R. M. & Kocan, A. A. An intraerythrocytic parasite from the spiny dogfish, Squalus acanthias L., from the Pacific Northwest. J. Fish Dis. 25, 693–696. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2761.2002.00417.x (2002) and blood cell measurements of a Portuguese shark Identification of peripheral blood leukocytes of the dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula L.) by electron microscopy Caracterização morfológica e funcional de leucócitos de peixes In Manejo e sanidade de peixes em cultivo (ed Old, J. M. & Huveneers, C. Morphology of the blood cells from three species of wobbegong sharks (Orectolobus species) on the east coast of New South Wales. Zoo Biol. 25, 73–82. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.20079 (2006) Vázquez, G. R. & Guerrero, G. A. Characterization of blood cells and hematological parameters in Cichlasona dimerus (Teleostei, Perciformes). Tissue Cell 39, 151–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tice.2007.02.004 (2007) Brito, F. M. M. et al. Hematology, biochemical profile and thyroid hormones of four species of freshwater stingrays of the genus Potamotrygon. Braz. J. Vet. Res. Anim. Sci. 52, 249–256. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1678-4456.v52i3p249-256 (2015) The enzyme cytochemistry of leucocytes in blood and haematopoietic tissues of holocephalans (Chondrichthyes: Chimaeriformes) Haematological Cytochemistry (Churchill Livingstone Schütt, D. A., Lehmann, J., Goerlich, R. & Hamers, R. Haematology of swordtail, Xiphophorus helleri. I: Blood parameters and light microscopy of blood cells. J. Appl. Ichthyol. 14, 83–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1439-0426.1997.tb00106.x (1997) Hyder, S. L., Cayer, M. L. & Pettey, C. L. Cell types in peripheral blood of the nurse shark: An approach to structure and function. Tissue Cell 15(3), 437–4553. https://doi.org/10.1016/0040-8166(83)90075-7 (1983) Download references Elizabeth Gusmão Affonso for allowing physical space for the maintenance of freshwater stingrays and Professor Dr Irani Quagio-Grassiotto for helping with the analysis of electronic microscopy The Research Support Foundation of the State of Amazonas (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico 40872/2006-4 and 408795/2006-9) funded this study The main author is grateful for the doctoral degree scholarship granted by the Coordination Office for Improvement of University-level Personnel (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Oliveira (process number 315713/2020-8) and M Tavares-Dias are research fellowship recipients from CNPq/Brazil Adriano Teixeira de Oliveira & Paulo Henrique Rocha Aride Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Pesqueiras nos Trópicos (PPG-CIPET) Avenida General Rodrigo Octávio Jordão Ramos Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisas Agropecuárias (EMBRAPA) drafted the paper with contributions from all other authors The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95183-4 Eos If the Amazonian climate becomes drier and fires become more frequent floodplain forests in the Amazon basin may change to new ecosystems Scientists studied 40 years of wildfire history in the seasonally flooded forests of the middle course of the Rio Negro an area of about 4,100 square kilometers in the central Amazon Get the most fascinating science news stories of the week in your inbox every Friday a staff researcher at the National Institute for Amazon Research the single biggest reason floodplain forests burn so easily is the fact that during dry periods root mats become “a fine fuel that dries quickly and burns easily.” Nelson was not involved in the new research “Studies have suggested that these [regrown] forests hold 25% less carbon than primary forests which have never been affected by fires,” said Liana O. Anderson a researcher at the National Centre for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters in Brazil not involved in the new study This degraded capacity to store carbon persists for a long time This weather phenomenon brought extreme droughts to the region and is associated with the burning of around 700 square kilometers In addition to being a greater carbon sink than grasslands forests also control soil erosion and maintain water quality Analysis of the Landsat data revealed the growing presence of white-sand savannas a naturally occurring grassland ecosystem in the region White-sand savannas are like “islands surrounded by forest across the Amazon,” Flores said He added that these ecosystems have expanded over forests in the past and the new study shows that “wildfires are a mechanism that can facilitate these expansions.” “Long-term, progressive conversion to nonforest has already occurred in the fertile floodplain of the more densely occupied parts of the Amazon main stem,” Nelson said. Now, he added, “Bernardo has shown that even the remote floodplains of nutrient-poor blackwater rivers The conversion of forest to savanna has atmospheric and biological implications: In addition to being greater carbon sinks than grasslands These ecosystem services “increase the abundance of fish and other resources for local communities,” Flores said By bringing warmer temperatures and more severe weather climate emergency “is changing fire regimes across the world forests are shrinking because of deforestation and wildfires,” Flores said stressed the need to incorporate climate data when modeling the future of the rain forest “We need to think about climate change projections because with higher temperatures and lower rainfall there is greater stress on both these [burned] forests and primary forests,” she explained —Rishika Pardikar (@rishpardikar) Pardikar, R. (2021), Amazon forests are turning into savannas, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO158373