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In order to advance and to have new perspectives, science needs diversity. However, women are still underrepresented in various scientific areas, including ecology and conservation. A big gender gap still exists in academia, especially at the highest positions. Here, I investigated gender bias in Brazilian post-graduate programs in Ecology at different hierarchical levels, as well as in project funding and scholarship application success. I found evidence of a scissors effect, where women were the majority among students (56%), while men were among Professors (64%). Furthermore, prestigious scholarship applications submitted by women had higher rejection rates. Female ecologists were only awarded 29% of funded projects and, per grant, received almost half the amount of funding than their male peers. Brazil, like other countries, needs to pay more attention to gender disparities at the highest academic positions in science, and urgently apply measures to reduce them. Actions that support scientist mothers should be implemented, such as considering maternity leave during career evaluations. Increasing the visibility of women and celebrating publicly their achievements could stimulate young women to pursue a career in science and reduce the gender gap. Diversity improves our understanding of ecological phenomena and optimize the success of conservation practices.

The purpose of this study is to verify the contribution of the dynamic analysis of Fleuriet Model for management of the working capital of the Guararapes Confecções S/A. The applied methodology used was a descriptive research and as procedure, the documentary evidence for the case study of the Guararapes Confecções S/A, through the Balance Sheets of the 2011-2015 periods. Based on the balance sheet, the company preponderantly presented a situation of "solidity", common in companies in the industrial sector. This scenario is evidenced by the positive balances the necessity working capital, working capital and treasury. We concluded that the dynamic analysis contributes significantly in the effective and efficient management of working capital of the Guararapes Confecções S/A, allowing to visualize of which way the financial resources were raised and applied by the company in their operating activities that results in better liquidity indicators, profitability and ensure the continuity of its operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The glass transition temperature (Tg) is one of the most important properties of polymeric materials. In order to reveal whether the scissors effect, i.e., the Fox–Flory relationship between Tg and the average molecular weight between crosslinking points (Mc), reported only in one case for polymer conetworks so far, is more generally effective or valid only for a single case, a series of poly(methyl methacrylate)-l-polyisobutylene (PMMA-l-PIB) conetworks was prepared and investigated. Two Tgs were found for the conetworks by DSC. Fox–Flory type dependence between Tg and Mc of the PMMA component (Tg = Tg,∞ − K/Mc) was observed. The K constants for the PMMA homopolymer and for the PMMA in the conetworks were the same in the margin of error. AFM images indicated disordered bicontinuous, mutually nanoconfined morphology with average domain sizes of 5–20 nm, but the correlation between Tg and domain sizes was not found. These new results indicate that the macrocrosslinkers act like molecular scissors (scissors effect), and the Tg of PMMA depend exclusively on the Mc in the conetworks. Consequently, these findings mean that the scissors effect is presumably a general phenomenon in nanophase-separated polymer conetworks, and this finding could be utilized in designing, processing, and applications of these novel materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]