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The potential economic and environmental benefits brought by bromeliads production are significant. It is noteworthy that the high degree of degradation of some ecosystems as the Atlantic forest involve reduction of these species. This factor has been worsened by the elevated degree of endemism of these plants, e.g. Aechmea costantinii (Mez) L. B. Sm., which is a high ornamental potential bromeliad but understudied. Thus, the present research aimed to characterize physical and morphological features of A. costantinii fruit and seeds, describing the different stages of post-seminal development, as well as evaluating seed germination behavior with respect to temperature and light. For this purpose, we used fruit and seeds freshly harvested from an Atlantic Forest fragment, located in the city of Maceió, Alagoas State, Brazil. Tests were carried out under a completely randomized design, in a 6x4 factorial scheme (temperature x light) with four replications of 25 seeds. The polyspermic fruit are of tricarpellate/triloculate type and originated from inferior ovary, containing an average of 73 elliptical and mucilaginous seeds with basal embryo. The germination is epigeal-type and occurs in a great intensity and high speed at 35 °C, regardless light presence or quality. RESUMO: O potencial econômico e os benefícios ambientais que as bromélias podem proporcionar por meio de sua produção são significantes. Salienta-se que em virtude do alto grau de degradação da Mata Atlântica, essas espécies têm sido reduzidas, fator agravado pelo elevado grau de endemismo destas, a exemplo da Aechmea costantinii (Mez) L. B. Sm., que é uma bromélia de alto potencial ornamental, porém pouco estudada. Dessa forma, o trabalho teve como objetivo a caracterização física e morfológica dos frutos e sementes, descrição das diferentes fases do desenvolvimento pós-seminal, bem como a avaliação do comportamento germinativo das sementes em função da temperatura e da luz. Para a condução do trabalho, utilizaram-se frutos e sementes recém colhidos de um fragmento de Mata Atlântica, no município de Maceió, Alagoas, Brasil. Os ensaios foram conduzidos sob delineamento inteiramente casualizado, em esquema fatorial 6x4 (temperatura x luz) com quatro repetições de 25 sementes. Os frutos polispérmicos do tipo tricarpelar/trilocular, indeiscentes, são originados de ovário ínfero, contendo em média 73 sementes elípticas, mucilaginosas, com embrião basal. A germinação é do tipo epígea, ocorrendo em maior intensidade e velocidade a 35 oC, independente da presença e qualidade de luz.

Glutathione (GSH), a tripeptide synthesized intracellularly, serves as a pivotal antioxidant, neutralizing reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) while maintaining redox homeostasis and detoxifying xenobiotics. Its potent antioxidant properties, particularly attributed to the sulfhydryl group (-SH) in cysteine, are crucial for cellular health across various organelles. The glutathione-glutathione disulfide (GSH-GSSG) cycle is facilitated by enzymes like glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione reductase (GR), thus aiding in detoxification processes and mitigating oxidative damage and inflammation. Mitochondria, being primary sources of reactive oxygen species, benefit significantly from GSH, which regulates metal homeostasis and supports autophagy, apoptosis, and ferroptosis, playing a fundamental role in neuroprotection. The vulnerability of the brain to oxidative stress underscores the importance of GSH in neurological disorders and regenerative medicine. Nebulization of glutathione presents a novel and promising approach to delivering this antioxidant directly to the central nervous system (CNS), potentially enhancing its bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy. This method may offer significant advantages in mitigating neurodegeneration by enhancing nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) pathway signaling and mitochondrial function, thereby providing direct neuroprotection. By addressing oxidative stress and its detrimental effects on neuronal health, nebulized GSH could play a crucial role in managing and potentially ameliorating conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Further clinical research is warranted to elucidate the therapeutic potential of nebulized GSH in preserving mitochondrial health, enhancing CNS function, and combating neurodegenerative conditions, aiming to improve outcomes for individuals affected by brain diseases characterized by oxidative stress and neuroinflammation.

In the semiarid interior of the Iberian Peninsula, the topographic insulation from the surrounding seas promotes the role of internal sources of moisture and water recycling in the rainfall regime. In inland Iberia, the annual cycle of precipitation often has a distinctive peak in the springtime, when evapotranspiration (ET) is the highest, in contrast to the coastal areas, where it is more closely related to the external moisture availability and synoptic forcing, with a maximum in winter-autumn and a pronounced minimum in the summer. In this work we investigate the role of land surface water fluxes in the intensification of the hydrological cycle in the Iberian spring. We used data from 5 km resolution WRF-ARW model simulations over the Iberian Peninsula for eleven months of May (2000–2010). To bring out the effect of ET fluxes, we conducted experiments where ET water over land was removed from the system. Our findings indicate that the impact of ET on precipitation is on average very large (37 % increase). The impact is particularly strong in the interior north and northeast areas where the observed annual rainfall cycle has a peak in May, suggesting that the role of surface water fluxes is very important there. To investigate whether this role is as a water source or to amplify precipitation dynamics, we computed the recycling ratio analytically from the model data. In addition, we developed a procedure to quantify the amplification impact by comparing the recycling ratio and the relative change in precipitation between control and experiments with ET removed. Results show that the role of surface water fluxes on precipitation depends on large-scale forcing and moisture advection. When the synoptic forcing and moisture advection are strong, such as in fronts associated to Atlantic storms, the impact of ET fluxes is small. When there is potential for convection, as is commonly the case of late spring in the Iberian Peninsula, ET fluxes have a significant impact. Surface moisture fluxes moisten the boundary layer and increase moist static energy, strengthening convective processes, and their role goes from being a primary water source for precipitation (recycling) to have mostly an amplification effect as external moisture availability increases. Our findings show that for the eleven simulated May cases over the Iberian Peninsula, the role of ET fluxes in activating recycling is important and explains 27–58 % of their total impact on precipitation, depending on the method used to calculate the recycling ratio. This indicates that the complementary effect of ET on amplifying rainfall from external sources of moisture is comparable in magnitude to the recycling mechanism and important as well.

L’article se propose, à partir d’un cas historique, de déployer sur quel arrangement à la fois intellectuel, institutionnel et pratique a pu reposer l’émergence, puis la première perpétuation d’une forme a priori hautement problématique de curiosité étatique : la surveillance politique opérée par les administrations clandestines de l’État. Le cas des services de renseignement militaire étatsuniens montre que cette entreprise de surveillance n’est jamais allée de soi ; qu’elle est prise dès l’origine dans une contradiction fondamentale qui enserre son dispositif. Elle est, d’une part, institutionnellement légitime, portée par un raisonnement sur la menace formulé au sortir du premier conflit mondial qui fait du suivi de la situation intérieure un impératif guerrier. Dans le même temps, cette vigilance se révèle être politiquement illégitime, au nom du double stigmate de son association à une possible répression politique et de l’intolérable ingérence des militaires qu’elle suppose. Première transaction : elle ne se poursuit donc que sous conditions d’ambiguïté instituée, y compris au sein des forces armées et jusqu’au sein même des services. Cette situation d’incertitude s’y décline en une série de tensions logique, éthique et pratique que les premiers spécialistes de la surveillance ne surmontent qu’en engageant un intense travail normatif sur les finalités spécifiques de leurs organisations, en esquissant les contours d’une déontologie singulière et en développant une culture de la transgression dont la limite est toujours – seconde transaction – le caractère passif de leur vigilance. This article describes the kind of intellectual, institutional, and practical arrangement that proved historically necessary for a purportedly highly problematic form of surveillance to emerge and to perpetuate in modern societies, that is political surveillance by clandestine governmental agencies. The case of the American military intelligence services shows that such surveillance never seemed evident. From the outset, it was characterized by a fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, internal vigilance was institutionally deemed legitimate within the framework of a new conception of war put forward within the armed forces at the end of World War I that made domestic vigilance a military imperative; on the other hand, it was regarded as publicly illegitimate, both because it was linked to potential political repression and because it meant an intolerable military interference in civilian affairs. Transaction n° 1: this type of surveillance could therefore only endure in a state of institutionalized ambiguity, even within the armed forces and the intelligence services themselves. This uncertain status engendered a series of logical, ethical, and practical tensions, which could only be overcome by these early professionals through intense normative work on the specific purpose of their organizations, the development of a peculiar professional code of ethics, and the development of a culture of transgression always limited – transaction n° 2 – by the fundamentally passive character of their vigilance.

Cet article propose de s’interroger, à partir d’un cas historique, sur la figure du complot dans la production des bureaucraties sécuritaires contemporaines. L’objectif est de se dégager des interprétations pathologiques dominantes – qui voient d’abord dans leur complotisme tendanciel le stigmate de dérèglements idéologique, psychologique ou bureaucratique – pour montrer, à partir d’une description très précise des opérations intellectuelles et matérielles de production de ces savoirs singuliers, que l’explication par le complot est une proposition ordinaire que l’ensemble du dispositif sollicite, encourage, nourrit, conforte même, et éprouve aussi, en fonction des conceptions transitoires de la menace. Il s’agit ainsi de montrer que l’hypothèse conspiratoire s’inscrit ainsi, en quelque sorte dès l’origine, au plus profond du dispositif du renseignement de sécurité, au cœur de l’espace ouvert par la contradiction fondamentale entre dire le vrai et penser les possibles. Through a historical case study, this article is addressing the question of the widespread presence of the conspiracy scheme in the production of contemporary security bureaucracies. The existing scholarship primarily sees conspiratorial tendencies as the stigmas of ideological, psychological or bureaucratic malfunction. A precise description of the intellectual and material operations involved in producing this peculiar form of knowledge reveals another story: that such speculations are actually requested, encouraged, nurtured, and even confirmed to a certain extent by the entire system, while constantly being put to the test by current conceptions of threat. We therefore argue that the ‘conspiracy hypothesis’ has been deeply embedded into the discourses and practices of counterintelligence from the outset. Conspiracies are therefore at the heart of the fundamental contradiction between telling the accurate and anticipating the possible.

‪Through a historical case study, this article is addressing the question of the widespread presence of the conspiracy scheme in the production of contemporary security bureaucracies. The existing scholarship primarily sees conspiratorial tendencies as the stigmas of ideological, psychological or bureaucratic malfunction. A precise description of the intellectual and material operations involved in producing this peculiar form of knowledge reveals another story: that such speculations are actually requested, encouraged, nurtured, and even confirmed to a certain extent by the entire system, while constantly being put to the test by current conceptions of threat. We therefore argue that the ‘conspiracy hypothesis’ has been deeply embedded into the discourses and practices of counterintelligence from the outset. Conspiracies are therefore at the heart of the fundamental contradiction between telling the ‪ ‪accurate‪ ‪ and anticipating the ‪ ‪possible‪ ‪.‪

L’article se propose, à partir d’un cas historique, de déployer sur quel arrangement à la fois intellectuel, institutionnel et pratique a pu reposer l’émergence, puis la première perpétuation d’une forme a priori hautement problématique de curiosité étatique : la surveillance politique opérée par les administrations clandestines de l’État. Le cas des services de renseignement militaire étatsuniens montre que cette entreprise de surveillance n’est jamais allée de soi ; qu’elle est prise dès l’origine dans une contradiction fondamentale qui enserre son dispositif. Elle est, d’une part, institutionnellement légitime, portée par un raisonnement sur la menace formulé au sortir du premier conflit mondial qui fait du suivi de la situation intérieure un impératif guerrier. Dans le même temps, cette vigilance se révèle être politiquement illégitime, au nom du double stigmate de son association à une possible répression politique et de l’intolérable ingérence des militaires qu’elle suppose. Première transaction : elle ne se poursuit donc que sous conditions d’ambiguïté instituée, y compris au sein des forces armées et jusqu’au sein même des services. Cette situation d’incertitude s’y décline en une série de tensions logique, éthique et pratique que les premiers spécialistes de la surveillance ne surmontent qu’en engageant un intense travail normatif sur les finalités spécifiques de leurs organisations, en esquissant les contours d’une déontologie singulière et en développant une culture de la transgression dont la limite est toujours – seconde transaction – le caractère passif de leur vigilance.

Cet article propose de s’interroger, à partir d’un cas historique, sur la figure du complot dans la production des bureaucraties sécuritaires contemporaines. L’objectif est de se dégager des interprétations pathologiques dominantes – qui voient d’abord dans leur complotisme tendanciel le stigmate de dérèglements idéologique, psychologique ou bureaucratique – pour montrer, à partir d’une description très précise des opérations intellectuelles et matérielles de production de ces savoirs singuliers, que l’explication par le complot est une proposition ordinaire que l’ensemble du dispositif sollicite, encourage, nourrit, conforte même, et éprouve aussi, en fonction des conceptions transitoires de la menace. Il s’agit ainsi de montrer que l’hypothèse conspiratoire s’inscrit ainsi, en quelque sorte dès l’origine, au plus profond du dispositif du renseignement de sécurité, au cœur de l’espace ouvert par la contradiction fondamentale entre dire le vrai et penser les possibles.

The emergence of the modern state implies a metamorphosis of state secrets which are no longer kept -- or defined -- by a handful of initiates, but by -- & for -- an anonymous executing apparatus. Bureaucratic confidentiality is guaranteed by rules, systems & punishment of disclosure. The stir caused by the publication of a first-hand account by a former US military intelligence officer in the early 1930s reveals a moment in the construction of this authority shielded from the requirement of transparency. Adapted from the source document.