Abstract: The Brazilian Research Network on Global Climate Change (Rede CLIMA) is an interdisciplinary network composed of 16 research groups, which interact in different levels and programs. This work aims at building climate change cause-effect research from a Nexus+ perspective, considering the added value of flexibility and adaptability of the concept. The article draws on the Nexus literature alongside a case study in São Francisco River Basin, Northeast Brazil. An additional pillar to the Nexus approach is proposed here, the socio-ecological security, which can be defined as a political-territorial dimension of coupled social and ecological systems. A collaborative research-practice frame was applied to the study region, a hotspot of climate vulnerability in Brazil. Our results highlight the need for this fourth component to address socio-ecological sustainability into context.

Background: Simian malaria is still an open question concerning the species of Plasmodium parasites and species of New World monkeys susceptible to the parasites. In addition, the lingering question as to whether these animals are reservoirs for human malaria might become important especially in a scenario of eradication of the disease. To aid in the answers to these questions, monkeys were surveyed for malaria parasite natural infection in the Amazonian state of Rondônia, Brazil, a state with intense environmental alterations due to human activities, which facilitated sampling of the animals. Methods: Parasites were detected and identified in DNA from blood of monkeys, by PCR with primers for the 18S rRNA, CSP and MSP1 genes and sequencing of the amplified fragments. Multiplex PCR primers for the 18S rRNA genes were designed for the parasite species Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium malariae/Plasmodium brasilianum and Plasmodium simium. Results: An overall infection rate of 10.9% was observed or 20 out 184 monkey specimens surveyed, mostly by P. brasilianum. However, four specimens of monkeys were found infected with P. falciparum, two of them doubly infected with P. brasilianum and P. falciparum. In addition, a species of monkey of the family Aotidae, Aotus nigriceps, is firstly reported here naturally infected with P. brasilianum. None of the monkeys surveyed was found infected with P. simium/P. vivax. Conclusion: The rate of natural Plasmodium infection in monkeys in the Brazilian state of Rondônia is in line with previous surveys of simian malaria in the Amazon region. The fact that a monkey species was found that had not previously been described to harbour malaria parasites indicates that the list of monkey species susceptible to Plasmodium infection is yet to be completed. Furthermore, finding monkeys in the region infected with P. falciparum clearly indicates parasite transfer from humans to the animals. Whether this parasite can be transferred back to humans and how persistent the parasite is in monkeys in the wild so to be efficient reservoirs of the disease, is yet to be evaluated. Finding different species of monkeys infected with this parasite species suggests indeed that these animals can act as reservoirs of human malaria.

The influence of the toroidal geometry, and the plasma column displacement, over the usual tokamak poloidal magnetic field configuration was investigated for circular plasmas through a series of simulations. The results obtained clearly showed the existence of a change in phase modulation of the Mirnov signals, which are not usually considered when the magnetic signals are Fourier analyzed in the frame of cylindrical approximation, that is, by neglecting any possible toroidal effect. Furthermore, if the occasional displacements of the plasma column in tokamaks are considered, some differences on the mode composition are also observed. These discrepancies, however, do not seem to affect the analysis of the magnetic signals as strongly as in the former case, when toroidal effects are neglected.

O racismo – fenómeno existente antes e depois da invenção do conceito de raça – tem marcado os debates sobre cidadania desde meados do século XX, circulando de forma marcante em todas as esferas da vida quotidiana devido às representações sociais e históricas que persistem na sociedade portuguesa, sobretudo devido ao seu passado colonial (Araújo, 2007).