Microcrédito emancipatório no nordeste do Brasil? : estudo de caso do Crediamigo Comunidade nos municípios de Caucaia-Ce e Maranguape-Ce

This piece of work consists in a study case of Crediamigo Comunidade, a product from the portfolio of Crediamigo Program of Banco do Nordeste, that uses the methodology of the Comunitary Banks in the concession of low amount loan to poor communities. The main question consists to understand how the Crediamigo Comunidade is characterized faced to the conflict of emancipatory versus liberal paradigms, that exists in the microcredit area. The main objective will analyze how the mechanisms: social capital, empowerment, formation to credit education and better conditions for economic and social issues promoted in the specific objectives of this product, before the dipute between these paradigms. The method adopted analyzed, in a longitudinal perspective, the three years of the product s existence (jun/2005 to jul 2008). Primary and secondary data made possible to identify qualitatively, emancipatory and non emancipatory attributes in the actions and results of Crediamigo Comunidade. It is concluded that the Crediamigo Comunidade works in a liberal logic of the Crediamigo Program, consequently, his focus is not in the emancipation of the poorest clients. The empowerment is individual and not communitary or Freiriano ; the social capital relations enlarges itself in its bounding and bridging ties, but not in its linkage ties, to have access to politic actors and consequently communitary strengthen. All the formation in the Crediamigo is strictly commercial. These characteristics happen by the liberal paradigm in the Crediamigo management and of all of its products, including the Crediamigo Comunidade

Fatores de risco individuais e familiares no desenvolvimento da pré-eclâmpia

Preeclampsia is a spectral disease, with different clinical forms which can evolve with severe multisystemic complications. This present study aimed to determine the risk factors associated with preeclampsia (PE); to validate the existence of aggregation of hypertensive disease in families of women with preeclampsia and verify the existence of association between polymorphisms in the VEGF gene and level of VEGF and its soluble receptor (sFlt1). A case-control study was performed (n = 851). Genotyping of VEGF was performed and serum levels of VEGF and sFlt1 were measured by ELISA. It was observed that 38% of mothers (173, 455) of a case of preeclampsia and 30.8% (78 of 361) of controls had history of hypertension (p <0.0001). Similarly, when examining the history of maternal preeclampsia, we observed that 14.6% (48 of 328) of mothers of women with preeclampsia and 9.6% (12 of 294) of mothers of controls had a history of preeclampsia (p = 0.0001). As for maternal history of preeclampsia, we found that 5.1% (15 of 295) of cases and 3.6% (7 of 314) of controls had a history of preeclampsia (p = 0.0568). Sisters of women with preeclampsia also had a history of hypertensive disease in 9% (41 of 455) versus 6.6% (13 of 361), p = 0.002. Similarly when examining the history of preeclampsia in sisters, it was observed that 22.7% (57 of 251) of a sister of case versus 11.4% (26 of 228) of controls had a history of preeclampsia (P = 0.0011). We observed a decrease in free VEGF in the serum of patients (P <0.05) and increased soluble VEGF receptor. There was no association between polymorphisms in the VEGF gene and preeclampsia. The data obtained in this work validate that hypertensive disease in mothers and sisters with preeclampsia are risk factors for preeclampsia. The risk of illness in the family is higher according to disease severity. High incidence of preeclampsia can be assumed by the high incidence of this disease among the controls. Significant differences between the frequency of preeclampsia in mothers of cases and controls indicate familial factors. Work is being conducted with the to eventually perform genome wide association studies to identify susceptibility loci

Otimização do sistema de supervisão e controle de uma planta de tratamento de resíduos utilizando plasma

A major and growing problems faced by modern society is the high production of waste and related effects they produce, such as environmental degradation and pollution of various ecosystems, with direct effects on quality of life. The thermal treatment technologies have been widely used in the treatment of these wastes and thermal plasma is gaining importance in processing blanketing. This work is focused on developing an optimized system of supervision and control applied to a processing plant and petrochemical waste effluents using thermal plasma. The system is basically composed of a inductive plasma torch reactors washing system / exhaust gases and RF power used to generate plasma. The process of supervision and control of the plant is of paramount importance in the development of the ultimate goal. For this reason, various subsidies were created in the search for greater efficiency in the process, generating events, graphics / distribution and storage of data for each subsystem of the plant, process execution, control and 3D visualization of each subsystem of the plant between others. A communication platform between the virtual 3D plant architecture and a real control structure (hardware) was created. The goal is to use the concepts of mixed reality and develop strategies for different types of controls that allow manipulating 3D plant without restrictions and schedules, optimize the actual process. Studies have shown that one of the best ways to implement the control of generation inductively coupled plasma techniques is to use intelligent control, both for their efficiency in the results is low for its implementation, without requiring a specific model. The control strategy using Fuzzy Logic (Fuzzy-PI) was developed and implemented, and the results showed satisfactory condition on response time and viability

Microcrédito emancipatório no nordeste do Brasil? : estudo de caso do Crediamigo Comunidade nos municípios de Caucaia-Ce e Maranguape-Ce

This piece of work consists in a study case of Crediamigo Comunidade, a product from the portfolio of Crediamigo Program of Banco do Nordeste, that uses the methodology of the Comunitary Banks in the concession of low amount loan to poor communities. The main question consists to understand how the Crediamigo Comunidade is characterized faced to the conflict of emancipatory versus liberal paradigms, that exists in the microcredit area. The main objective will analyze how the mechanisms: social capital, empowerment, formation to credit education and better conditions for economic and social issues promoted in the specific objectives of this product, before the dipute between these paradigms. The method adopted analyzed, in a longitudinal perspective, the three years of the product s existence (jun/2005 to jul 2008). Primary and secondary data made possible to identify qualitatively, emancipatory and non emancipatory attributes in the actions and results of Crediamigo Comunidade. It is concluded that the Crediamigo Comunidade works in a liberal logic of the Crediamigo Program, consequently, his focus is not in the emancipation of the poorest clients. The empowerment is individual and not communitary or Freiriano ; the social capital relations enlarges itself in its bounding and bridging ties, but not in its linkage ties, to have access to politic actors and consequently communitary strengthen. All the formation in the Crediamigo is strictly commercial. These characteristics happen by the liberal paradigm in the Crediamigo management and of all of its products, including the Crediamigo Comunidade

Graph analysis of verbal fluency test discriminate between patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment and normal elderly controls

Verbal fluency is the ability to produce a satisfying sequence of spoken words during a given time interval. The core of verbal fluency lies in the capacity to manage the executive aspects of language. The standard scores of the semantic verbal fluency test are broadly used in the neuropsychological assessment of the elderly, and different analytical methods are likely to extract even more information from the data generated in this test. Graph theory, a mathematical approach to analyze relations between items, represents a promising tool to understand a variety of neuropsychological states. This study reports a graph analysis of data generated by the semantic verbal fluency test by cognitively healthy elderly (NC), patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment – subtypes amnestic(aMCI) and amnestic multiple domain (a+mdMCI) - and patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Sequences of words were represented as a speech graph in which every word corresponded to a node and temporal links between words were represented by directed edges. To characterize the structure of the data we calculated 13 speech graph attributes (SGAs). The individuals were compared when divided in three (NC – MCI – AD) and four (NC – aMCI – a+mdMCI – AD) groups. When the three groups were compared, significant differences were found in the standard measure of correct words produced, and three SGA: diameter, average shortest path, and network density. SGA sorted the elderly groups with good specificity and sensitivity. When the four groups were compared, the groups differed significantly in network density, except between the two MCI subtypes and NC and aMCI. The diameter of the network and the average shortest path were significantly different between the NC and AD, and between aMCI and AD. SGA sorted the elderly in their groups with good specificity and sensitivity, performing better than the standard score of the task. These findings provide support for a new methodological frame to assess the strength of semantic memory through the verbal fluency task, with potential to amplify the predictive power of this test. Graph analysis is likely to become clinically relevant in neurology and psychiatry, and may be particularly useful for the differential diagnosis of the elderly.

Graph analysis of verbal fluency test discriminate between patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment and normal elderly controls

Verbal fluency is the ability to produce a satisfying sequence of spoken words during a given time interval. The core of verbal fluency lies in the capacity to manage the executive aspects of language. The standard scores of the semantic verbal fluency test are broadly used in the neuropsychological assessment of the elderly, and different analytical methods are likely to extract even more information from the data generated in this test. Graph theory, a mathematical approach to analyze relations between items, represents a promising tool to understand a variety of neuropsychological states. This study reports a graph analysis of data generated by the semantic verbal fluency test by cognitively healthy elderly (NC), patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment – subtypes amnestic(aMCI) and amnestic multiple domain (a+mdMCI) - and patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Sequences of words were represented as a speech graph in which every word corresponded to a node and temporal links between words were represented by directed edges. To characterize the structure of the data we calculated 13 speech graph attributes (SGAs). The individuals were compared when divided in three (NC – MCI – AD) and four (NC – aMCI – a+mdMCI – AD) groups. When the three groups were compared, significant differences were found in the standard measure of correct words produced, and three SGA: diameter, average shortest path, and network density. SGA sorted the elderly groups with good specificity and sensitivity. When the four groups were compared, the groups differed significantly in network density, except between the two MCI subtypes and NC and aMCI. The diameter of the network and the average shortest path were significantly different between the NC and AD, and between aMCI and AD. SGA sorted the elderly in their groups with good specificity and sensitivity, performing better than the standard score of the task. These findings provide support for a new methodological frame to assess the strength of semantic memory through the verbal fluency task, with potential to amplify the predictive power of this test. Graph analysis is likely to become clinically relevant in neurology and psychiatry, and may be particularly useful for the differential diagnosis of the elderly.