Aboutness in Fiction: Methodological Perspectives for Knowledge Organization

The subject analysis of narrative texts of fiction is complex; the methodological model of identification of concepts as elaborated for scientific texts is not applicable to fiction. It is proposed here that theoretical and methodological use of the Generative Trajectory of Meaning postulated by Greimas may contribute to the identification of aboutness in narrative texts of fiction.

The current financial and economic crisis: empirical and methodological issues

In this paper we describe the main causes of the recent financial crisis as a result of many theoretical, methodological, and practical shortcomings mostly according to heterodox, but also including some important orthodox economists. At theoretical level, there are problems concerning teaching and using economic models with overly unrealistic assumptions. In the methodological front, we find the unsuspected shadow of Milton Friedman’s ‘unrealisticism of assumptions’ thesis lurking behind the construction of this kind of models and the widespread neglect of methodological issues. Of course, the most evident shortcomings are at the practical level: (i) huge interests of the participants in the financial markets (banks, central bankers, regulators, rating agencies mortgage brokers, politicians, governments, executives, economists, etc. mainly in the US, Canada and Europe, but also in Japan and the rest of the world), (ii) in an almost completely free financial and economic market, that is, one (almost) without any regulation or supervision, (iii) decision-taking upon some not well regarded qualities, like irresponsibility, ignorance, and inertia; and (iv) difficulties to understand the current crisis as well as some biases directing economic rescues by governments. Following many others, we propose that we take this episode as an opportunity to reflect on, and hopefully redirect, economic theory and practice.

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP): methodological aspects and clinical applications

The clinical use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is based on the increase in the concentration of growth factors and in the secretion of proteins which are able to maximize the healing process at the cellular level. Since PRP is an autologous biologic material, it involves a minimum risk of immune reactions and transmission of infectious and contagious diseases, and it has been widely used for the recovery of musculoskeletal lesions. Despite the great potential for applicability, the implementation of the therapeutic employment of PRP as a clinical alternative has become difficult, due to the lack of studies related to the standardization of the techniques and/or insufficient description of the adopted procedures. Therefore, it is required establish standard criteria to be followed for obtaining a PRP of high quality, as well as a larger number of studies which should establish the proper concentration of platelets for the different clinical conditions. In this context, the purpose of this review is to discuss some methodological aspects used for achieving the PRP, as well as to discuss the bioactive properties of PRP, and to point out its therapeutic use in different fields of regenerative medicine.

Unfaithful narratives: methodological and affective notes about experiences of masculinity in a dating website for married people

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Immunocytochemistry associated with oral exfoliative cytology methodological analysis

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Association between risk behaviors and adiposity indicators in adolescents from Southern Brazil: A methodological approach

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between risk behaviors and adiposity indicators in adolescents and to discuss some methodological aspects related to this relationship. We evaluated 1,321 adolescents (55.2% female) aged 10-16 years. Relative body fat (%fat) by measurement of triceps and subscapular skinfold thickness and waist circumference (WC) were used as total and central adiposity indicators, respectively. Physical inactivity, time spent in front of the TV, the consumption of soda and/or chocolate, alcohol, and tobacco smoking were analyzed as risk behaviors. Information about the socioeconomic status (categorized into three levels) and nutritional status of the mother (overweight or normal weight) were used as adjustment factors in the analyses of prevalence ratio (PR) of the outcomes and their associated 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). The chi-square test and Poisson regression were used for statistical analyses. Low associations were found between risk behaviors and adiposity indicators. Tobacco smoking was the most positively correlated behavior with adiposity in girls (%fat: PR = 1.61; 95% CI = 1.04-2.47; WC: PR = 1.90; 95% CI = 1.17-3.08) and in adolescents whose mothers were normal weight (%fat: PR = 2.31; 95% CI = 1.33-4.03; WC: PR: 2.31; CI: 1.19-4.46). Additionally, as an important methodological issue, we highlighted the assessment of risk behaviors in adolescents as crucial to producing more robust evidence on the subject. Of the investigated behaviors, we concluded that tobacco smoking is the behavior most associated with adiposity indicators.

Metacontingencies, Experimentation and Nonhumans: Searching for Conceptual and Methodological Advances

Metacontingency has been described as the functional relation between interlocking behavioral contingencies, plus their direct and immediate effect, called aggregated product, and a selecting event dependent of such effect, called cultural consequence. The metacontingencies analysis enables the discussion of human behavior complexity in social systems. In the present study, we aimed to review and discuss: (a) the importance of basic behavioral processes analysis for the comprehension of social human phenomena; (b) the necessity of constructing and improving metacontingencies experimental models; (c) the current state of metacontingencies experimental investigations in humans; (d) the use of animal models as a way to control the effects of verbal behavior, among other variables, over cultural selection; (e) a concrete and illustrative proposal of an animal model of metacontingencies.

Methodological contributions towards the study of health care production: lessons from a research study on barriers and access in mental health

This article presents methodological contributions and a conceptual innovation for thinking about the production of health care, stemming from a study on access and barriers in mental health carried out in the municipality of Campinas (Sao Paulo, Brazil). The study used a cartographic approach and, after an initial identification of the most complex cases (on the part of the teams of workers), adopted the users as guides to explore the different levels of production of their lives and to evaluate the possibility of forming a network of existential connections that produce life as a fundamental analyzer of access or barriers to care.

Relevant methodological issues from the SBBrasil 2010 Project for national health surveys

The SBBrasil 2010 Project (SBB10) was designed as a nationwide oral health epidemiological survey within a health surveillance strategy. This article discusses methodological aspects of the SBB10 Project that can potentially help expand and develop knowledge in the health field. This was a nationwide survey with stratified multi-stage cluster sampling. The sample domains were 27 State capitals and 150 rural municipalities (counties) from the country's five major geographic regions. The sampling units were census tracts and households for the State capitals and municipalities, census tracts, and households for the rural areas. Thirty census tracts were selected in the State capitals and 30 municipalities in the countryside. The precision considered the demographic domains grouped by density of the overall population and the internal variability of oral health indices. The study evaluated dental caries, periodontal disease, malocclusion, fluorosis, tooth loss, and dental trauma in five age groups (5, 12, 15-19, 35-44, and 65-74 years).

The Everyday Life in Public Health Research: a theoretical and methodological framework

The aim of this paper is to present some reflections on possibilities to investigate everyday life by examining ways of life, so as to broaden perspectives to the field of research in public health, in light of the fact that the study of daily ways of life involves the analysis of trajectories that contextualize routines, interactions and meanings of life. This allows the social researcher in the health field to have, based on a theoretical framework, a flexible methodology that offers mobility in the choice of the technique that best favors the understanding of the issue to be investigated. We have here, as a conceptual reference, the idea of everyday life investigated from interactive processes and contexts, as opposed to a categorial objectification between subject and object. In this context, from the theoretical reflection, we take, as the research's empirical reference, the waiting room of the outpatient clinic of the Osteoarticular Metabolism Department of a Health Care Unit in the city of Fortaleza/, Northeastern Brazil, in order to foster an interpretive understanding of the daily routine that involves the life and health situations of women with osteoporosis.

cDNA-AFLP analysis of Psidium guajava L. cultivars under water stress and mechanical injury: methodological implications

Studies involving amplified fragment length polymorphism (cDNA-AFLP) have often used polyacrylamide gels with radiolabeled primers in order to establish best primer combinations, to analyze, and to recover transcript-derived fragments. Use of automatic sequencer to establish best primer combinations is convenient, because it saves time, reduces costs and risks of contamination with radioactive material and acrylamide, and allows objective band-matching and more precise evaluation of transcript-derived fragments intensities. This study aimed at examining the gene expression of commercial cultivars of P. guajava subjected to water and mechanical injury stresses, combining analyses by automatic sequencer and fluorescent kits for polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Firstly, 64 combinations of EcoRI and MseI primers were tested. Ten combinations with higher number of polymorphic fragments were then selected for transcript-derived fragments recovering and cluster analysis, involving 45 saplings of P. guajava. Two groups were obtained, one composed by the control samplings, and another formed by samplings undergoing stress, with no clear distinction between stress treatments. The results revealed the convenience of using a combination of automatic sequencer and fluorescent kits for polyacrylamide gel electrophoreses to examine gene expression profiles. The Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic Mean analysis using Euclidean distances points out a similar induced response mechanism of P. guajava undergoing water stress and mechanical injury.

A methodological research on software engineering applied to design of smart grids using a complex system approach

[ES] El reto de conseguir una red eléctrica más eficiente pasa por la introducción masiva de energías renovables en la red eléctrica, disminuyendo así las emisiones de CO2. Por ello, se propone no sólo controlar la producción, como se ha hecho hasta ahora, sino que también se propone controlar la demanda. Por ello, en esta investigación se evalúa el uso de la Ingeniería Dirigida por Modelos para gestionar la complejidad en el modelado de redes eléctricas, la Inteligencia de Negocio para analizar la gran cantidad de datos de simulaciones y la Inteligencia Colectiva para optimizar el reparto de energía entre los millones de dispositivos que se encuentran en el lado de la demanda.

Methodological proposal for elaboration of learning materials in sing language in university teaching

[EN] Hearing impairment may constitute a barrier for accessing to information and communication in public places. Since the oral communication forms the basis of the learning process, this problem becomes of particular relevance at schools and universities. To cope with this situation is not enough to provide a textual translation for people with hearing disabilities, society via educational authorities must facilitate alternatives that improve access to information and education to this collective. According to this reality, the possibility of having an alternative tool of communication based in the Spanish Sign Language (SSL) emerges as a contribution to help overcoming the communication obstacles that the students with this difficulty usually find.

Methodological study of the cryoconservation processes in miocroalgae

[EN]Two cryopreservation methods, controlled cooling and encapsulation/vitrification, were studied in order to find an appropriate protocol to maintain microalgae cultures by exposing them to ultra-low temperatures (cryogenics). This study has shown that the most efficient cryopreserving method is the use of cryoprotectants, being Glycerol and DMSO the best options for this procedure, and dismissing the encapsulation/vitrification method due to the low effectiveness, which results in a low post-thaw viability rate and a higher demanding of labour and consumables.

Natural patterns and anthropogenic disturbance in north Adriatic marine benthic assemblages: descriptive and methodological studies

Marine soft bottom systems show a high variability across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Both natural and anthropogenic sources of disturbance act together in affecting benthic sedimentary characteristics and species distribution. The description of such spatial variability is required to understand the ecological processes behind them. However, in order to have a better estimate of spatial patterns, methods that take into account the complexity of the sedimentary system are required. This PhD thesis aims to give a significant contribution both in improving the methodological approaches to the study of biological variability in soft bottom habitats and in increasing the knowledge of the effect that different process (both natural and anthropogenic) could have on the benthic communities of a large area in the North Adriatic Sea. Beta diversity is a measure of the variability in species composition, and Whittaker’s index has become the most widely used measure of beta-diversity. However, application of the Whittaker index to soft bottom assemblages of the Adriatic Sea highlighted its sensitivity to rare species (species recorded in a single sample). This over-weighting of rare species induces biased estimates of the heterogeneity, thus it becomes difficult to compare assemblages containing a high proportion of rare species. In benthic communities, the unusual large number of rare species is frequently attributed to a combination of sampling errors and insufficient sampling effort. In order to reduce the influence of rare species on the measure of beta diversity, I have developed an alternative index based on simple probabilistic considerations. It turns out that this probability index is an ordinary Michaelis-Menten transformation of Whittaker's index but behaves more favourably when species heterogeneity increases. The suggested index therefore seems appropriate when comparing patterns of complexity in marine benthic assemblages. Although the new index makes an important contribution to the study of biodiversity in sedimentary environment, it remains to be seen which processes, and at what scales, influence benthic patterns. The ability to predict the effects of ecological phenomena on benthic fauna highly depends on both spatial and temporal scales of variation. Once defined, implicitly or explicitly, these scales influence the questions asked, the methodological approaches and the interpretation of results. Problem often arise when representative samples are not taken and results are over-generalized, as can happen when results from small-scale experiments are used for resource planning and management. Such issues, although globally recognized, are far from been resolved in the North Adriatic Sea. This area is potentially affected by both natural (e.g. river inflow, eutrophication) and anthropogenic (e.g. gas extraction, fish-trawling) sources of disturbance. Although few studies in this area aimed at understanding which of these processes mainly affect macrobenthos, these have been conducted at a small spatial scale, as they were designated to examine local changes in benthic communities or particular species. However, in order to better describe all the putative processes occurring in the entire area, a high sampling effort performed at a large spatial scale is required. The sedimentary environment of the western part of the Adriatic Sea was extensively studied in this thesis. I have described, in detail, spatial patterns both in terms of sedimentary characteristics and macrobenthic organisms and have suggested putative processes (natural or of human origin) that might affect the benthic environment of the entire area. In particular I have examined the effect of off shore gas platforms on benthic diversity and tested their effect over a background of natural spatial variability. The results obtained suggest that natural processes in the North Adriatic such as river outflow and euthrophication show an inter-annual variability that might have important consequences on benthic assemblages, affecting for example their spatial pattern moving away from the coast and along a North to South gradient. Depth-related factors, such as food supply, light, temperature and salinity play an important role in explaining large scale benthic spatial variability (i.e., affecting both the abundance patterns and beta diversity). Nonetheless, more locally, effects probably related to an organic enrichment or pollution from Po river input has been observed. All these processes, together with few human-induced sources of variability (e.g. fishing disturbance), have a higher effect on macrofauna distribution than any effect related to the presence of gas platforms. The main effect of gas platforms is restricted mainly to small spatial scales and related to a change in habitat complexity due to a natural dislodgement or structure cleaning of mussels that colonize their legs. The accumulation of mussels on the sediment reasonably affects benthic infauna composition. All the components of the study presented in this thesis highlight the need to carefully consider methodological aspects related to the study of sedimentary habitats. With particular regards to the North Adriatic Sea, a multi-scale analysis along natural and anthopogenic gradients was useful for detecting the influence of all the processes affecting the sedimentary environment. In the future, applying a similar approach may lead to an unambiguous assessment of the state of the benthic community in the North Adriatic Sea. Such assessment may be useful in understanding if any anthropogenic source of disturbance has a negative effect on the marine environment, and if so, planning sustainable strategies for a proper management of the affected area.