Mine land rehabilitation in Brazil: Goals and techniques in the context of legal requirements.

Environmental legislation in many countries demands the rehabilitation of degraded areas to minimize environmental impacts. Brazilian laws require the restitution of self-sustaining ecosystems to historical conditions but ignore the emergence of novel ecosystems due to large-scale changes, such as species invasions, extinctions, and land-use or climate changes, although these novel ecosystems might fulfill ecosystem services in similar ways as historic ecosystems. Thorough discussions of rehabilitation goals, target ecosystems, applied methods, and approaches to achieving mine land rehabilitation, as well as dialogues about the advantages and risks of chemical inputs or non-native, non-invasive species that include all political, economic, social, and academic stakeholders are necessary to achieve biological feasibility, sociocultural acceptance, economic viability, and institutional tractability during environmental rehabilitation.

Muc-1 expression may help characterize thyroid nodules but does not predict patients' outcome.

Our purpose was to evaluate MUC1 clinical utility in the diagnosis and prognosis of thyroid cancer patients. We studied the protein expression of MUC1 in 289 thyroid carcinomas and 121 noncancerous thyroid nodules. There were 41 follicular carcinomas (FC) and 248 papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTC) including 149 classic (CPTC), 20 tall cell (TCPTC) and 79 follicular variants (FVPTC).

Impact of long-term administration of amiodarone on the thyroid function of patients with Chagas' disease.

The effect of long-term treatment with amiodarone on patients with Chagas' disease has seldom been reported. This nonrandomized observational study attempted to analyze the follow-up of patients with Chagas' disease regarding their clinical evolution, thyroid dysfunction, and goiter. We compared 72 patients with long-term use (11 +/- 5 years) of amiodarone, including 22 patients who developed goiter, to 33 patients who did not use amiodarone, followed-up for 2 to 20 years (7 +/- 11 years).