Sun protection cosmetics – good for you, bad for the aquatic environment?

By Sabine Schultes

Most people who like the sea and the shore also enjoy a sunny day at the beach, playing in the water when the weather is warm. Luckily, the education campaigns for skin cancer protection have made us all aware of the importance of protecting ourselves from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation which is a part of natural sunlight. UV light is at the lower end of the light spectrum and is divided into UVA, UVB and UVC. The highly energetic UVC is absorbed by our atmosphere, but UVA and UVB reach the surface.

Wavelength spectrum of natural sunlight.

So, we all adopted the habit to regularly apply cosmetic sunscreens before sunbathing, but we are typically not as attentive when it is time to take a dip in the lake or ocean. Probably, you are just like me and are so anxious to cool off, that you rush over the hot sand and to take a wonderfully refreshing dive head first into the waves.

© worldartsme.com/

UV radiation is not only a problem for us, but for all living beings, especially if they are without protective pigmentation, feathers, fur, or scales. Single-celled organisms have it even harder, so much so that one way to kill bacteria to make a sterile environment is to expose the lab bench to a couple of minutes of UV radiation. Sunburn for a single cell is lethal!

Plankton are, in most cases, single celled or transparent, so they are very sensitive to UV light. Luckily, ocean and lake water progressively absorbs the incident sunlight. Depending on how clear the water is, UV light only reaches a few meters below the surface. Planktonic organisms have nevertheless evolved repair mechanisms to cope with the constantly occurring DNA damage.

Alternatively, plankton can avoid UV radiation by migrating to water depths with no or little UV radiation. This strategy has been adopted by the zooplankton such as some copepods . Other copepods that live in very clear alpine lakes or in the surface layer of the tropical ocean are pigmented, often orange or even blue! Instead of getting a suntan - when our skin cells produce melanin - the zooplankton simply accumulates the pigments from their algal food. One example are the beautiful blue copepods from the genus Anomalocera, in the family of the Pontellidae.

Now, what happens if you and I take our dive into the waves and the sunscreen we have applied to our skin is washed off, into the sea? Yes, large parts are washed off, even if you use waterproof lotion. Looking through the scientific literature makes it clear: sunscreen cosmetics are a source of pollution with growing concern. Waters of popular beaches all show high concentrations of the organic molecules used as chemical UV filters in sun protection creams. Very low concentrations (10µg/L) are sufficient to promote coral bleaching. The chemicals persist in the aquatic environment and accumulate in mussels, fish and dolphins. Lakes and rivers are also subject to this type of contamination.

This is why I have decided to do at least two things:

1. Before taking a swim I will try to get rid of most of the cream on my skin. Many modern beach facilities have showers connected to a wastewater system. So why not have a quick wash before you dive? If showering is not an option, I bring baby wipes and rub off the excess.
2. I started to do my own research into the question. I am interested in learning how plankton growth and diversity is affected by sublethal concentrations of sunscreen. Is the pelagic food web disturbed? Are there alternative cosmetics available with potentially less harmful effects for the aquatic environment?

Sunscreen cosmetics are complex mixtures of organic UV-filters (e.g. oxybenzone, octocrylene, …), oils, perfumes, stabilizers and often nanoparticles. Our experiments also try to find out, which of the components are particularly harmful, and if sunscreen cosmetics that are solely based on natural oils may be a better option for the aquatic environment. I will tell more about this in my next post - so wait and see!

Preliminary results show that plankton growth can either be enhanced or reduced when the water is polluted with conventional sunscreen, depending on the concentration we add and whether the water comes from an oligotrophic or eutrophic environment. The community composition of the phytoplankton is modified because some algal groups are more sensitive to sunscreen pollution than others. The use of sunscreen may even be one of the causes of cyanobacterial blooms in recreational lakes leading to skin irritation in summer swimmers.

We need recreation, and we need to protect ourselves from UV radiation to prevent skin cancer. How can we fulfill the needs of human society without totally spoiling our environment?  This question is exemplary for many issues in nature conservation!  So, I am passing this question on to others and will make an opinion poll at the beach...

Beach life in Ubatuba, Brazil (left). Beach life in Munich, Germany (right).

    

Further reading:

Balmer, M., Buser, H.R., Müller, M.D., Poigner, T. 2005. Occurrence of some organic UV

filters in wastewater, in surface waters, and in fish from Swiss lakes. Environ. Sci. Technol. 39: 953-962

Cunha, C.,  Fernandes, J.O.,  Vallecillos., L.,  Cano-Sancho, G., Domingo, J.L., et al. 2015. Co-occurrence of musk fragrances and UV-filters in seafood and macroalgae collected in European hotspots. Environ. Res.143: 65–71

Danovaro, R., Bongiorni, L., Corinaldesi, C., Giovannelli, D., Damiani, E., et al. 2008. Sunscreens cause coral bleaching by promoting viral infections. Environ. Health Perspect. 116:441–447

Gago-Ferrero, P., Alonso, M. B., Bertozzi, C. P., Marigo, J., Barbosa, L., et al. 2013. First determination of UV filters in marine mammals. Octocrylene levels in Franciscana Dolphins. Environ. Sci. Technol. 47: 5619−5625

Sánchez Rodríguez, A., Rodrigo Sanz, M., Betancort Rodríguez, J.R. 2015. Occurrence of eight UV filters in beaches of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). An approach to environmental risk assessment. Chemosphere 131: 85–90

Tovar-Sánchez, A., Sánchez-Quiles, D., Basterretxea, G., Benedé, J.L., Chisvert, A., et al. 2013 Sunscreen products as emerging pollutants to coastal waters. PLoS ONE 8(6): e65451.

About Sabine:


With the goal to become a marine biologist, I studied biology and hydrobiology at Hamburg University and then earned a Master’s degree in oceanography from Université du Québec à Rimouski, in Canada. My doctoral studies in biological oceanography at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven were followed by various post-doc projects in Brest, France and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Since 2012, I teach ecology and zoology at LMU Munich. Growing up, my parents gave me the incentive to search new ways and to relate with people and cultures around the world. I am convinced that today, more than ever, we need to take good care of our Oceans.

A new home for Nemo

By Cathrine Boerseth

People don't like having their homes destroyed and neither do animals; bears don’t like it, birds don't like it, fish certainly don't like it and neither do the tiniest planktonic animals that people often forget even exists. Some of these tiny animals are meroplanktonic, which means they only float around in the early stages of their lives, to grow up as adults they need somewhere to settle down, a nice home with a good foundation; for many organisms that means a hard surface like rocks or a coral reef. 

Sadly, in the waters of northern Paraná state, many of these nice hard (and already rare) surfaces were destroyed by destructive fishing methods like trawling. The meroplanktonic larvae were still floating around in the water, but there were few places for them to settle down. In the biological world one thing always affects another and so did the lack of appropriate habitat in our case; fish eat the organisms living on and around rocky reefs and so the lack of hard bottom substrates meant a lack of food for the fish, and so the populations declined.

But what if we made new homes for these animals and what if those homes were so sturdy and strong that trawlers wouldn't be able to break them? Well, that’s exactly what researchers did between 1997 and 2013 when they deployed a number of artificial reefs along the Paraná coast. But what exactly is an artificial reef? An artificial reef can be made out of rocks, concrete blocks or even sunken ships. They are man-made structures, preferably with different holes and crevasses, placed under water to provide shelter for marine organisms. Bacteria and algae are usually the first organisms to arrive, meroplanktonic larvae settle and grow up to be anything from anemones to crabs; all of these animals attract fish looking for food and they in turn attract larger fish and other predators.  After a while, the ecosystem on the artificial reef grows to become a place with both food and shelter for all kinds of marine organisms.

However, even after the artificial reefs were in place, many questions were still unanswered: would meroplanktonic organisms come to settle? Would they attract fish? Would those fishes reproduce? Would the ecosystem of the artificial reefs be anything like a natural rocky reef? The answer to the two first questions was discovered to be a big YES, but what about the other questions? That's what I wanted to find out! Exiting stuff, now what?

To answer those questions, we decided to look at fish larvae and fish eggs. To capture them we used a net attached to an underwater scooter (so cool, I know), and a light-trap. With the scooter and light-trap we were able to capture larvae very close to the artificial reef; the net captured eggs and the smallest fish larvae while the trap attracted larger larvae. We also sampled at a distance from the artificial reef (would the abundance of larvae and eggs be different there?) and at a natural rocky reef habitat nearby (the beautiful archipelago of Currais). We collected as many samples as the weather and waves allowed between the July of 2014 and April of 2016.

The samples were collected using a light-trap (left) and a net attached to an underwater scooter (right).

Currais archipelago on the Paraná coast.

So what did the data show?  

The number of fish larvae and fish eggs was in fact higher on the artificial reef compared to samples taken at a distance from the reef. Furthermore, the fact that the samples contained eggs and very small newly hatched larval fish means that fish are either reproducing on the reefs or close by. Additionally, many of the fish larvae collected on the artificial reefs belonged to species that are known to live on rocky reef habitats; most of the other species found were pelagic, which means they live in the open water. What does it all mean? Well, it means that the artificial reef is beginning to act like a natural reef (great!), but it still has a way to go. Fish are still more abundant on the natural reef and many of the fishes on the artificial reef are more like visitors, like the pelagic species. They are all welcome of course! The artificial reef provides food and shelter; many of the visitors attracted by delicious food become food themselves, but that's ok, it's all part of the food network. 

It may sound like artificial reefs are the solution to all of our problems and you may want to stand up with your hands in the air shouting: let's put artificial reefs in all the seas in all the world! Then everything will be great again, right? That would be amazing, but unfortunately, as with most things in life, it's just not that simple. There are many factors to consider because deploying an artificial reef is in itself a human intervention in nature and could cause more harm than good, careful research in each individual case is essential!

What can we learn from all this? Nature finds a way. Humans are destructive; in order to get our way and build our houses, we destroy houses of so many other animals. Fortunately, given time, many ecosystems are resilient enough to come back to life. Artificial reefs may not be the answer to all our problems, but on the coast of Paraná it appears that a tiny piece of a suffering ecosystem may actually be getting back on its feet. 

About Cathrine:

Biologist and currently preparing to defend my masters’ dissertation in the field of biological oceanography at the University São Paulo. As a true Norwegian I fell in love with the ocean scuba diving in the freezing waters of the north. I have been living in Brazil for four years now and I can't wait to discover where life will take me in the future. What I know with certainty is that I want to work and live close to nature, that being in the beautiful tropics of Brazil or in the wonderful Arctic of Norway (or somewhere in between).   

How do tiny animals in the ocean influence atmospheric carbon dioxide?

By Emma Cavan 

The important role  small (< 5 mm) plants and animals play in the ocean is widely unknown to the public, as the media prefers to broadcast ‘cuddly,’ charismatic  animals such as dolphins and whales. However, the plankton are very important. Plankton are defined as organisms (both plants and animals) that cannot swim against the currents and range from microscopic algae to huge jellyfish. 

My research is on the biological carbon pump, described by Yonara Garcia in a previous post ‘Ocean fertilization and climate change’ (May, 2016).  The biological carbon pump describes how phytoplankton (plants) and zooplankton (animals) drawdown carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the deep oceans.  I am most interested in how this biology transports organic carbon (as particles) through the upper ocean (top 500 m).

Image of crustaceous zooplankton 
about 0.5 mm in length. Photo by Emma Cavan.

Zooplankton range from tiny crustaceans (shrimp-like animals) to much larger salps and jellyfish. Here I am just going to concentrate on the crustaceans. One commonly known crustaceous zooplankton is krill, which are large (2-5 mm) for their group and are often found in abundance in the Southern Ocean. They are the food prey for large baleen whales such as humpback whales. Zooplankton change how much organic carbon (originally photosynthesised by phytoplankton in the surface ocean) reaches the deep sea as they:
1. Respire inorganic carbon; 
2. Ingest the carbon and release some as packaged faecal pellets;
3. Break particles into smaller pieces.

To further complicate the process zooplankton can migrate 100s of metres per day vertically, so they may eat at the surface at night, then at dawn sink deeper in the ocean and release faecal pellets there, increasing the amount of carbon reaching the deep ocean and away from the atmosphere. Hence zooplankton are particularly hard to accurately represent in biogeochemical models! I have been to sea in the Southern Ocean and the Equatorial Pacific to find out how zooplankton affect the transfer of organic carbon to the deep ocean.

Southern Ocean

At sea in the Southern Ocean, Elephant Island where
Ernest Shackleton landed is in the background.

Working in the Southern Ocean is an amazing experience. It has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We were surrounded by so many penguins every day! Back to the science though… As I said, the Southern Ocean has a high number of crustaceous zooplankton such as krill and copepods. They can thrive in the cool waters around Antarctica but are very patchy (not evenly spread throughout).

Faecal pellet, 0.3 mm in length.
Photo by Emma Cavan.

Here I collected sinking organic particles (full of carbon) and they turned out to be mostly zooplankton faecal pellets (as opposed to detrital phytoplankton). This suggests that most of the organic carbon reached the seafloor from zooplankton grazing on the phytoplankton and releasing faecal pellets. The number of zooplankton present was shown to actually affect how many particles sunk out of the surface ocean. Further, whether zooplankton were feeding on fresh phytoplankton (brown faecal pellets) or detritus or their own faeces (white faecal pellets – and yes, they eat their own poo!) affected how efficiently organic carbon reached the deep ocean! So these little critters were playing an important role in transferring organic carbon from the surface to the deep ocean here.

Equatorial Pacific
Working here was very different from the Southern Ocean; it was extremely hot, and I saw barely any clouds the entire cruise. We were working off the Pacific coast of Guatemala, and while there was a lot less sea life here, I did see a lot of turtles and even a Thresher shark! 

                  RRS James Cook at port in Panama before the cruise. Photo by Emma Cavan.

Compared to the Southern Ocean, the Equatorial Pacific is very stable with little change in seasons. Between 100-1000 m in this area of the ocean, oxygen concentrations plummet, so organisms are extremely oxygen starved at these depths. Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) are common around the globe, particularly near coasts such as off of Peru and the west coast of Africa. Many studies have shown that in OMZs, a much higher proportion of organic carbon reaches the deep ocean compared to rest of the world. But the reason for this is still unknown and so I went to sea to find out.

There are two main reasons why organic carbon doesn’t reach the deep ocean:
    1. It is consumed and respired by zooplankton;
    2. Or it is hydrolysed by bacteria.

Micro-respiration system used to measure
bacterial respiration on particles. An oxygen sensor
(blue) is inserted into the small vials which
contain particles to measure oxygen concentrations
over a few hours. Photo by Emma Cavan.

So I wanted to test if bacterial ‘remineralisation’ (process of converting organic carbon back to inorganic carbon, like carbon dioxide) is reduced in OMZs because bacterial metabolism is limited by the low oxygen concentrations. To do this, I measured the respiration of microbes on particles.What this showed was that actually microbes are very well adapted to live in the low oxygen conditions and were responsible for most of the organic carbon degradation! 


This meant that likely a reduction in zooplankton respiration and processing of particles in the OMZ must be why such a high proportion of the organic carbon reaches the deep ocean. This seems like a reasonable hypothesis as studies have shown zooplankton abundance is low in OMZs and their metabolism is greatly reduced. The life cycle of bacteria is much shorter than zooplankton so they can adapt much faster to challenging conditions.  So in the Equatorial Pacific, the absence of zooplankton means more carbon reaches the deep ocean and cannot be exchanged with the atmosphere.

To summarise, zooplankton have a complicated relationship with carbon in the ocean. Both their presence and absence can increase the amount of carbon in the deep ocean, it just depends on the oceanic ecosystem they are part of. This is why it is complicated to model their effect on the carbon cycle and more work is needed to constrain it better. But we should remember tiny animals do indeed influence how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. Who would have thought it?!

About Emma: 
Emma is a marine biologist turned biological oceanographer (which basically means marine biologist of small organisms!). She grew up on the south coast of England and attended the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, for both her undergraduate and PhD degrees. She has just finished her PhD and is hoping to stay in academia and continue researching. Emma is also very interested in connecting science and policy and spent 3 months working at the Royal Society in London in their science policy centre. Aside from science Emma likes to travel as much as possible and has been able to do so both for pleasure and with work. She also loves kayaking, camping, reading, napping and socialising.
Follow Emma on twitter @emma_cavan or visit http://emmacavan.wix.com/emmacavan

A tour through the ocean: understanding the comings and goings of humpback whales

By Daniela Abras

It is immensely challenging to try to understand the mechanisms that move a 15 meter-long and 40 ton organism 9,000 km yearly.

Humpback whales migrate every year from the feeding grounds of Antarctica to the mating grounds of Brazil. The route, which is about 4,500 km each way, is made twice a year and typically takes about 2 months going, and 2 months coming back. By including their 4 month stay in Brazil mating, these whales spend 8 months of the year without food. That’s a long fast! To accomplish this feat, they need to eat a lot during the 4 months in Antarctica, and they need to stock up on energy reserves, in the form of body fat.

Map that shows the migratory corridor of the humpback whales between the feeding
area in Antarctica, and the main reproductive area on Abrolhos Bank.

But what do these whales eat? As the adorable Dory, from Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo would say, whales don't eat fish, they eat krill. Krill are small crustaceans, similar to shrimp, that are about 5cm long and live in giant clusters (swarms). Krill are the base of the vertebrate food chain in Antarctica, where most species depend on it, directly or not. Many species of fish, seals, penguins, and whales prey almost exclusively on it. Some species, like Orca whales and Leopard seals, prey on fish or penguins. This is why the food chain in Antarctica has been called by scientists “krill-dependent.”

Krill (Euphausia superba), the main food of Humpback whales
in Antarctica, live in large swarms.

Every year, whales arrive at the Brazilian coast in July and stay there until November. There are times when the population arrives slightly earlier in the year and stay longer, but they can also come later in the season and leave more quickly. In some years, there are more whales than in others. This started to raise some questions: When they stay in Abrolhos longer, is it because they fed better? When they leave the bank earlier than average, is it because of high water temperatures? Or do these things not influence their behavior at all, and they rely mostly on genetic programming? What initiates the migration process?

My Master's research focused on these questions to try to understand the diverse environmental mechanisms influencing the migratory dynamics of humpback whales. I primarily focused on the availability of their main source of energy. To do that, I analyzed parameters such as photoperiod, water temperature in both Abrolhos and in Scotia Sea (where they stay in Antarctica), and the availability of krill during summer. I compared this to 7 years of sighting data collected at a fixed location around the Abrolhos Archipelago. To observe the whales, a piece of topography equipment with 30X zoom, called a theodolite, was used. For the 5 months the whales were in Abrolhos, we observed the whales daily, and found that the population's abundance fluctuates throughout the reproductive season with a gradual increase in July, followed by the peak in August/September, and then a gradual decrease, until no more whales were present by the end of November.

Watching whales with the theodolite, 

from Abrolhos Archipelago.

The results were more than expected. In years when there were more krill available, the whales fed more and had greater energy stores. This allowed them to invest a longer period of time on reproduction and more whales were seen in Abrolhos. The opposite was also true. In years with less krill, fewer whales were seen in Abrolhos and their time at Abrolhos was shortened. The water temperature didn't seem to have significant influence on their migration, however it assisted in indicating the starting moment for the migration – the migratory timing.

The most surprising result was related to the photoperiod (length of daylight in a day). No other research had related the migratory dynamics with photoperiod, perhaps because scientists thought it was too obvious. But, sometimes, it's important to understand the obvious! The photoperiod in Antarctica has a huge difference between summer (18 hours of light) and winter (6 hours), while in Abrolhos, the difference from summer (13 h) and winter (11h) is far smaller.

Therefore, as my dissertation's conclusion, I discovered that the humpback whale's migration starts and is influenced by the sharp lowering of photoperiod when they are in Antarctica. When in Abrolhos, migration is impacted by the sum of 3 factors: the photoperiod (which is more steady than in Antarctica), the sea surface temperature (this slightly increases gradually during the reproductive season) and krill availability while in Antarctica.

It was difficult to analyze such a high volume of data, linking different environmental parameters in order to answer all of my research questions. With these results, we have started to understand complex migratory dynamics and the importance of krill in the maintenance of the humpback's population.

If you want to know more about my Master's dissertation, contact me via email at daniabras@gmail.com

The humpback whale population was almost driven to extinction in the early 20^th century from intensive commercial hunting. Before commercial whaling, the estimated population was around 25,000 individuals, but it dropped to about 800 individuals while at the peak of whaling. After the whale-hunting moratorium in 1986, the population recovered and is now around 15,000 individuals today! In 2015, humpback whales were officially removed from the endangered species list in Brazil. This is a victory for the whales as well as for those of us that have the privilege of watching them arrive annually, in bigger numbers every time, performing their aquatic ballet. Go meet them! Between July and November, they are concentrated on the Abrolhos region, but they can also be seen from the states of Rio Grande do Norte state to Rio de Janeiro.

Want to know more about humpback whales? Visit the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute website: www.baleiajubarte.org.br

Humpback whale jumping in Abrolhos region.

-----------------

Daniela Abras is from Belo Horizonte, has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology from UFRJ, and has a Masters degree in Oceanography from USP. She has loved cetaceans since she was 8 years old, when she did a school project about them. When she was a teenager, she would say that she wanted to work with whales, but was never taken seriously. In the early 90s, she heard the famous National Geographic “Whale Songs” vinyl record and discovered the “Save the whales” project. From all of this obstinacy, her dream to study and protect whales came to life. She is now a researcher for the Brazilian Humpback Whale Institute, dedicating herself daily to studying these magnificent animals.

When to add children to the academic timeline?

By Jana M. del Favero

When starting a research project, it is necessary to establish a project timeline in which all of the activities to be carried out are mapped out to keep on schedule. My question, one I know other women ask as well, is where and how to fit a pregnancy in the academic timeline?

During undergrad, we're too young and have the whole world ahead of us; during a masters', time is short, we have approximately two years in which it is impossible to think of things other than classes and the thesis. Then comes the doctorate. We're more mature, some are already married, but we still only think of research and publications – we know that after the four years of the doctorate we'll face the competition for jobs or need to be able to engage in a postdoctoral position. Therefore, the best option would be to wait for all of that to end, and decide to get pregnant after getting hired, with some professional, financial, and personal stability guaranteed. That stability generally occurs when a woman is around 37 years old, though, long after her fertility peak (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The age at which a scientist builds her career occurs at the same time of peak fertility

(measured by the number of ovarian follicles). Source: Willians & Ceci (2012).

Although it is not difficult to name successful female researchers/professors with kids, the “graduate students that gave up their academic career after getting pregnant” scenario is far more common. As Figure 2 shows, the dropout percentage amongst post-doctorate researchers with no kids or plans to have kids is practically the same for both men and women. However, having a child after starting a post-doc doubles the dropout rate among women, but has no effect for men.

Figure 2. Influence of children and plans to have children in the postdoctoral

careers of men and women. Source: Williams & Ceci (2012).

Of course a child can alter a woman's life path, and also her academic productivity. Leslie (2007) shows that the more children a woman has, the less time she spends on professional activities (Figure 3). Shockingly (although the research dialog doesn't discuss reasons), the same study shows that the effect is reversed in men: more kids equals more working hours! I won't dare to go further in discussing causes for this difference, but I see two possibilities: a man sees it as more responsibility and, seeing himself as the family provider, works more (this is not necessarily his fault, the systemic tradition imposes and teaches women to take care of their home and men to provide for it); or they run from the domestic responsibilities for whatever reasons. A friend told me that when his child was a baby and required all mom's all attention and care, he would prefer to work late to avoid getting home before the baby was asleep, justifying himself by saying he was jealous of all the care his spouse had for the baby and felt he didn’t fit in his own home.

Figure 3. The number of hours worked weekly for men and women compared to the number of dependent children. Source: Leslie (2007).

One way to enhance female representation in universities and to reduce the academic dropouts is to focus on the problems mothers face to take care of a family while studying and researching. Williams and Ceci (2012) made a list of strategies that could be adopted to minimize problems and help families. As an example: universities could offer quality childcare, offer maternity leave for the primary care giver, regardless of sex; they could also instruct selection committees how to ignore curriculum gaps that happened while one was using more time to take care of the family (as an example, the committee would understand why someone didn't publish for some time if that time was used to take care of a newborn), and so on. What is not on the study's list, and what I consider extremely important, is a structural change in people's minds. I heard once that, to be accepted in a certain lab in Spain, the professor in charge would ask women to sign a form, agreeing not to get pregnant during the doctoral program. It's painfully hard to believe many minds still work like that!

And back to Brazil, where are we? USP, one of the largest universities in Brazil, has a childcare center that is praised by the parents, but just got at least 117 spots suspended for lack of funds invested in them (read more here). Not all funding agencies provide paid maternity leave for those with grants. Some progress can be seen, but many setbacks are still noticed. Even though some universities have adopted measures to help families' lives, a lot still need to be done.

I'll not be able to give an answer to the question I posed in the text's title here, mostly because I believe it's a personal decision and not just a cake recipe. Personally, I've been married for 3 years and will finish my PhD in the middle of 2016, with no intentions of expanding the family by then.

Nonetheless, I will not end the post with this matter. The blog will have testimonials of “women who are warriors,” that managed to study and have children; “altruistic women,” that gave up their academic career to dedicate themselves fully to their family and feel good about it; “scrappy women,” that stepped out of the university for a while to take care of kids and suffered many obstacles to get back in. My testimonial of an “indecisive woman” you already have.

What about you, have something to share? We welcome you to comment or contact us.

References

Goulden, M.; Frasch, K.; Mason, M. 2009. Staying competitive: Patching America’s leaky pipeline in the sciences. Center for American Progress,

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/technology/report/2009/11/10/6979/staying-competitive/

Leslie, D.W. 2007. The reshaping of America’s academic workforce. Research Dialogue 87. https://www.tiaa-crefinstitute.org/public/pdf/institute/research/dialogue/87.pdf

Willians, W.M.; Ceci, S.J. 2012. When Scientists Choose Motherhood. American Scientist, Volume 100. http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/when-scientists-choose-motherhood