Involvement of the midbrain periaqueductal gray 5-HT1A receptors in social conflict induced analgesia in mice

Recent results from our laboratory have shown that 30-bites social conflict in mice produces a high-intensity, short-term analgesia which is attenuated by systemically injected 5-HT1A receptor agonists, such as BAY R 1531 (6-methoxy-4-(di-n-propylamino)-1,3,4,5-tetrahydrobenz(c,d)indole hydrochloride) and gepirone. The present study investigated the effects of these drugs, as well as the 5-HT1A receptor antagonist WAY 100135 (N-tert-butyl-3-(4-(2-methoxyphenyl)piperazine-1-yl)-2-phenylpropanamide) injected into the midbrain periaqueductal gray matter of mice on 30-bites analgesia. Four to five days after guide-cannula implantation, each mouse received microinjection of gepirone (30 nmol/0.2 mu l), BAY R 1531 (10 nmol/0.2 mu l), WAY 100135 (10 nmol/0.2 mu l), saline (0.9% NaCl) or vehicle (saline + 4% Tween 80) 5 min before either an aggressive (30 bites) or a non-aggressive interaction. Nociception was assessed by the tail-flick test made before as well as 1, 5, 10 and 20 min after social interaction. The full 5-HT1A receptor agonist BAY R 1531 blocked, whereas, WAY 100135 and gepirone intensified 30-bites analgesia, Neither non-aggressive interaction, per se, nor the three compounds given after this type of social interaction significantly changed nociception. These results indicate that 5-HT1A receptors in the periaqueductal gray inhibit analgesia induced by social conflict in mice. (C) 1998 Elsevier B.V. B.V.

Unavoidable conflict between massive gravity models and massive topological terms

Massive gravity models in (2 + 1) dimensions, such as those obtained by adding to Einstein's gravity the usual Fierz-Pauli, or the more complicated Ricci scalar squared (R-2), terms, are tree level unitary. Interesting enough these seemingly harmless systems have their unitarity spoiled when they are augmented by a Chern-Simons term. Furthermore, if the massive topological term is added to R + R-munu(2) gravity, or to R + R-munu(2), + R-2 gravity (higher-derivative gravity), which are nonunitary at the tree level, the resulting models remain nonunitary. Therefore, unlike the common belief, as well as the claims in the literature, the coexistence between three-dimensional massive gravity models and massive topological terms is conflicting.

High intensity social conflict in the Swiss albino mouse induces analgesia modulated by 5-HT1A receptors

Social conflict between mice produces analgesia in the attacked mouse. Both the magnitude and type (opioid or nonopioid) of this analgesia have been related to attack intensity and strain of mouse. In the present study low intensity social conflict (7 bites) did not produce analgesia, whereas high intensity - 30 and 60 bites interactions produced, respectively, short-lasting (5 min) and very short-lasting (1 min) analgesia in Swiss albino mice, when compared with nonaggressive interaction (0 bite). The 30 bites aggressive interaction induced analgesia (AIIA) was not affected by IP injection of either naloxone (5.0 and 7.5 mg/kg) or diazepam (0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 mg/kg). However, this attack-induced analgesia was reduced after IP administration of the 5-HT1A agonists, gepirone (0.3 and 3.0 mg/kg) and BAY R 1531 (0.01 mg/kg). These results indicate that the analgesia induced by 30 bites social conflict in Swiss albino mice does not involve opioid and GABA-benzodiazepine (GABA-BZD) mechanisms. In addition, they suggest that high-intensity social conflict activates serotonergic pain modulatory systems that act through 5-HT1A receptors. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier B.V.

The distribution of agricultural land and the question of agrarian reform in Brazil

Agrarian reform has long been an acute issue in Brazil, where the distribution of cultivable land is extremely unequal. The Land Statute adopted by the military in 1964 constituted a genuine reform programme, which, however, was never implemented as the government chose to modernize agriculture and expand cultivated areas. This has prevented the poorest from having access to the land.-from English summary

Global citizens or faraway viewers? São Paulo residents talk about the 2006 Lebanon conflict

As the emergence of a global public sphere becomes a possibility, growing out of denser economic, political and communicative networks as well as demanded by increasingly complex international problems, questions arise about the capacity and willingness of various national publics to engage in the global debate. This paper shows the results of a news reception analysis with the public of the city of São Paulo, Brazil during the months of July-November 2006, when the Lebanon conflict was broadly covered by the Brazilian media. The paper identifies the modes of engagement with the news about the international conflict, the types of reasoning used by these publics in interpreting the news, and the types of debates and conversations they have or don't have about the conflict. Special attention is given to the personal experience of learning about conflicts abroad and to the relationship between this experience and the construction of a new civic identity where participation in global affairs is an important element. The research shows that São Paulo residents are informed and care about international events, but to a large extent lack the resources and the spaces where they could reflect upon them. It also shows that young people tend to experience global events more intensely as part of their world than the general population. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Conflict between the classical equivalence principle and quantum mechanics

As far as external gravitational fields described by Newton's theory are concerned, theory shows that there is an unavoidable conflict between the universality of free fall (Galileo's equivalence principle) and quantum mechanics - a result confirmed by experiment. Is this conflict due perhaps to the use of Newton's gravity, instead of general relativity, in the analysis of the external gravitational field? The response is negative. To show this we compute the low corrections to the cross-section for the scattering of different quantum particles by an external gravitational field, treated as an external field, in the framework of Einstein's linearized gravity. To first order the cross-sections are spin-dependent; if the calculations are pushed to the next order they become dependent upon energy as well. Therefore, the Galileo's equivalence and, consequently, the classical equivalence principle, is violated in both cases. We address these issues here.

Transaction scheduling using dynamic conflict avoidance

Software transaction memory (STM) systems have been used as an approach to improve performance, by allowing the concurrent execution of atomic blocks. However, under high-contention workloads, STM-based systems can considerably degrade performance, as transaction conflict rate increases. Contention management policies have been used as a way to select which transaction to abort when a conflict occurs. In general, contention managers are not capable of avoiding conflicts, as they can only select which transaction to abort and the moment it should restart. Since contention managers act only after a conflict is detected, it becomes harder to effectively increase transaction throughput. More proactive approaches have emerged, aiming at predicting when a transaction is likely to abort, postponing its execution. Nevertheless, most of the proposed proactive techniques are limited, as they do not replace the doomed transaction by another or, when they do, they rely on the operating system for that, having little or no control on which transaction to run. This article proposes LUTS, a lightweight user-level transaction scheduler. Unlike other techniques, LUTS provides the means for selecting another transaction to run in parallel, thus improving system throughput. We discuss LUTS design and propose a dynamic conflict-avoidance heuristic built around its scheduling capabilities. Experimental results, conducted with the STAMP and STMBench7 benchmark suites, running on TinySTM and SwissTM, show how our conflict-avoidance heuristic can effectively improve STM performance on high contention applications. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

A representação social e a territorialização da reforma agrária no espaço urbano a partir do Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos

Pós-graduação em Geografia - IGCE

Os processos de territorialização e desterritorialização da educação do campo no sudoeste do Paraná

Pós-graduação em Geografia - FCT

Outcome of the agrarian reform in Brazil during the last two decades

The agrarian reform allows for land redistribution and gives rural workers the opportunity to develop their life projects, rescuing the dignity of a historically excluded population. The conquest of the land carries significances that span from the rescue of citizenship to the improvement of living conditions due to the acquisition of goods, products and services. It is pointed out that in Brazil there still exists a marked concentration of large-landed estates. In this sense, this work had the objective of analyzing the Brazilian agrarian reform process during the last two decades. In this period the country had three Presidents, two of them elected with the support of the Rural Landless Workers Movement, increasing the expectations in relation to the fulfillment of the agrarian reform. The advances in the policies of rural settlements are notable; however, the structure of large-land estates remains unaltered. In the last two years (2011 and 2012) the number of settled families, as well as the number of settlements accomplished, were the worst since 2006. The priority of the current government is the eradication of extreme poverty and, in this sense, the agrarian reform becomes an essential policy to contribute to such goal, since with the distribution of the property of the land also diminishes the concentration of wealth.

Reforma Agrária em questão: a propriedade privada como fator de desterritorialização camponesa no Assentamento Fazenda Primavera (Andradina-SP)

Pós-graduação em Geografia - FCT

Campesinato e agrohidronegócio canavieiro no Pontal do Paranapanema: os desafios para a transição agroecológica

This paper appears in order to promote a discussion on the use and ways of working with the land. For this, we present a scenario of conflict initiated in Pontal do Parananema, São Paulo, Brazil, between the peasantry and the agrohidronegócio. The Pontal is a territory marked by agrarian and land conflicts, originated by the illegal occupation of land by the squatters, the decimation / expropriation of indigenous, and deforestation and environmental devastation. This conflict is represented today by the sugarcane agro-industrial capital companies on one side, and the other peasants. The expansion occurs agrohidronegócio strongly from 2005, due mainly to the change in the energy matrix of the country and state incentives with strong momentum in the production of flex-fuel vehicles. Rural agrarian reform settlements, made possible by the state under pressure from social movements, are spatialized in 16 municipalities with a total of 112 settlements, occupying an area of 139. 682 hectares, seating 5. 892 families. These families have seen their possibilities of social reproduction increasingly suppressed by the advance of sugarcane agrohidronegócio in the region, which suffocates the living spaces and work of these peasants. Front of it, agroecology is an alternative for these workers to ensure their reproductive possibilities. Agroecology also arises as a means of confronting agribusiness model, adding elements to the environment, such as the eradication of the use of pesticides and considering the dynamics of nature to promote agriculture, and social order, contributing food sovereignty and the production of healthy food and diversity to the population...

Aspectos da cultura rural tradicional na Reforma Agrária: estudo nos assentamentos de Presidente Venceslau, SP

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Evaluation of the relationship between education and sustainability in peasant movements: The experience of the National Education Program in Agrarian Reform

Brazil is one of the largest agricultural producers in the world. However, its agrarian composition is based on two markedly different production models, particularly in relation to sustainability: a peasant family agriculture, which plays an important role in food production for domestic consumption and advocates agro-ecological practises; and agribusiness, the politically and economically hegemonic model that produces commodities for export based on monoculture and intensive use of pesticides. Therefore, in order to create the means to develop peasant lands, social movements and peasants have engaged themselves politically and defended an education model grounded in sustainable practises of production and social organisation. Taking this into account, the main purpose of this paper is to analyse and assess the Brazilian experience of integration between education and sustainability, in the National Education Program in Agrarian Reform (PRONERA). To accomplish this aim, a survey with a semi-structured questionnaire was carried out among teachers, students, monitors, and coordinators of the course offered by PRONERA. The surveys showed that the courses are promoting the concepts of sustainability among peasants. However, many adjustments need to be taken into consideration during the planning process for the next courses offered by PRONERA.

Reforma agrária e estrutura fundiária no Brasil: uma análise a partir do I Plano Nacional de Reforma Agrária

Pós-graduação em Economia - FCLAR