Unwrapping the long-term impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilian academic mothers: the urgency of short, medium, and long-term measures.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, publications have highlighted the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic mothers, mostly focusing on the impact of social distancing and quarantine. A few months later, despite the lack of effective vaccines or therapeutics in sight, many economic activities are being resumed. Nurseries and schools are expected to be among the latest to reopen, which will amplify the impacts of the pandemic on academic mothers. In this letter, we unwrap the pandemic impacts on academic mothers and describe a set of specific short-, medium- and long-term policies that, if implemented, could reduce setbacks for gender equality during the pandemic and can help to level the playing field for academic mothers.

Ventilation and gas exchange in two turtles: Podocnemis unifilis and Phrynops geoffroanus (Testudines: Pleurodira).

Turtles (Testudines) have two major taxa, Pleurodira and Cryptodira. To date, only limited data are available regarding the respiratory physiology of pleurodirans. To begin to address this, we studied ventilation and gas exchange in Podocnemis unifilis and Phrynops geoffroanus. Breathing pattern in both species could be described as episodic with breathing episodes separated by large non-ventilatory periods. We measured duration of inspiration and expiration, breathing frequency, duration of the non-ventilatory period (time between episodes), tidal volume, and oxygen consumption when breathing normoxia, hypoxia and hypercarbia at 25°C. In both species hypercarbia caused a greater increase in ventilation compared to hypoxia, increasing both breathing frequency and tidal volume. Minute ventilation and oxygen consumption in P. geoffroanus were the lowest described so far in testudines, indicating either extra-pulmonary gas exchange or a significantly lower metabolism. Oxidative costs of breathing, estimated using the regression method, was the highest described so far for any reptile. Further studies are necessary to better understand respiratory physiology in Phrynops and Podocnemis species.