Community Content
Do protected areas conserve freshwater biodiversity?
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has an ambitious vision: “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. To achieve this vision, the CBD set out 20 so-called Aichi Targets to be met by 2020. Yet, in 2020 biodiversity is still significantly declining […]
Learn from collaboration with fishers in marine research
Researchers from Wageningen University & Research and VisNed analysed 15 research collaboration projects, and looked at how fishers’ knowledge was used. These projects were carried out by Wageningen Marine Research together with the Dutch demersal North Sea fishery in the period 2002 to 2019. The research collaboration started in 2002, following a deep crisis in the relationship between the […]
Long Way Home: The Organisation Promoting Sustainable Building, Learning and Living in Rural Guatemala
San Juan Comalapa is a municipality in the indigenous west-central highlands of Guatemala. Comalapa exists in a state of relative poverty, with no formal recycling or waste-management system. Refuse material is often dumped in lakes or ravines – contaminating the water supply – or used to fuel stoves for cooking – contributing to the significant respiratory problems suffered by […]
Promoting Material Properties of Magnesium Alloys using Equal Channel Angular Press
The Problem with Magnesium alloys The fact that Mg alloys have lower mechanical strength and corrosion resistance due to a low number of slip systems and a higher corrosion tendency respectively are some of the technical challenges. The key to improving the performance of magnesium alloys is refining the grain size and distributing secondary phases by using thermo-mechanical processing. […]
Ice nucleation on particles in atmosphere and soil
In the works of Fukuta and Schaller (1982) and Wex et al. (2014) the study of ice nucleation on aerosol particles is presented. According to Fukuta and Schaller (1982) there “are presently three mechanisms of heterogeneous ice nucleation known by aerosol particles – deposition, condensation-freezing including immersion freezing, and contact freezing”. There is an attempt in Fukuta and Schaller […]
Calculating ancient temperatures using oxygen
What are isotopes? The term isotope was coined by English radiochemist Fredrick Soddy (1913) to distinguish chemical elements with different atomical mass, different numbers of neutrons, but which occupy the same position of the periodic table, i.e. have the same numbers of protons and electrons. The term isotope is derived from iso meaning equal and the Greek topos meaning […]
Right pelvic kidney during intersphincteric resection for locally advanced rectal cancer: a case report
Case presentation This case report describes the case of a 40-year-old Asian man with complaints of bleeding and a feeling of discomfort in his anus. A colonoscopy revealed a raised large multilobulated mass in his rectum. Multiple biopsies of the lesion were done after detecting a tumour in his rectum 4 cm above the dentate line; a diagnosis of rectal […]
The Porta Nigra in Trier – Bauforschung, Archaeology, and Art History
Comments about the building and its ancient, medieval and early modern history and use have been made over centuries. There is also a considerable number of historical documents that allow various hypotheses about the building or construction. It was an ancient city gate, which was extended in the Middle Ages by the construction of a collegiate church. However, on […]
What can ecstasy (the common party drug) tell us about hydration physiology and metabolic health?
The role of drinking water and keeping well hydrated to improve our health is a hotly cited media favourite. However, while we have ample knowledge on the extreme effects of hyperhydration (‘over-hydration’) and hypohydration (the state of lower total body water, commonly called ‘dehydration’), we know surprisingly little about how daily fluctuations in body water balance impact our health […]
Contributions of Blumenberguian Philosophy to the Debate on Current Society
The anthropogenic understanding of boredom from Blumenberg’s philosophy (Ros Velasco 2017a; 2018; 2019) leads us to think about conflicts as natural phenomena that have characterised and shaped human beings since ancient times (Ros Velasco 2013). According to his view, boredom was an emotion selected in our ancestors because of its capacity to promote motion, creating a positive and beneficial conflict […]