The impact of structured teaching methods on the quality of education

This paper estimates the impact of the use of structured methods on the quality of education of the students in primary public school in Brazil. Structure methods encompass a range of pedagogical and managerial instruments applied to the education system. In recent years, several municipalities in the State of São Paulo have contracted out private educational providers to implement these structured methods in their schooling system. Their pedagogical proposal involves structuring curriculum contents, elaboration and use of teachers and students textbooks, and training and supervision of the teachers and instructors. Using a difference in differences estimation strategy, we find that the fourth and eighth grader students in the municipalities with structured methods performed better in Portuguese and Math than students in municipalities not exposed to the methods. We find no differences in approval rates. However, a robustness check is not able to discard the possibility that unobserved municipal characteristics may affect the results.

Entry strategies into biosimilars: assessment of entry modes into the field of biosimilars from the perspective of pharmaceuticals, generics and biologics companies

Indústria farmacêutica de hoje está em transição. Como grandes blockbuster drogas estão perdendo ou estão prestes a perder a proteção de patente, e as grandes empresas farmacêuticas não estão substituindo os produtos com novas drogas químicas inovadoras, a indústria busca novas áreas de crescimento. Uma dessas áreas é o mercado de biossimilares, que está sendo inseridos por produtos farmacêuticos, genéricos e empresas de produtos biológicos. Mesmo que o grande potencial de mercado será acordado por volta de 2020, quando importantes blockbusters biológicos perder a proteção de patente, as empresas precisam decidir logo se querem participar ou não devido a elevadas barreiras à entrada técnicos, bem como de desenvolvimento de longo prazos. Como todas as empresas vêm de diferentes origens, compreendem capacidades diferentes e têm diferentes incentivos de entrada, a questão que surge é se esses fatos estão relacionados com as suas estratégias de entrada correspondentes. A tese utiliza estudos de caso de cada segmento da indústria farmacêutica - produtos farmacêuticos, biológicos e genéricos - e examina através de entrevistas semi-estruturadas, por isso que os participantes do estudo de caso entrevistados explicitamente escolhido sua estratégia de entrada. Os dados de entrevistas será então ligada a quadros estratégicos da revisão da literatura e irá ser utilizado para uma comparação global e análise. O estudo revelou que o fundo do participante do mercado que influenciam a sua estratégia de entrada. Os principais pontos de influência derivam tanto as barreiras à entrada, bem como os incentivos de entrada. A tese não é possível determinar o sucesso futuro do modo de entrada analisados no novo mercado.

Accountability and yardstick competition in the public provision of education

This paper explores the institutional change introduced by the public disclosure of an education development index (IDEB, Basic Education Development Index) in 2007 to identify the e ect of education accountability on yardstick competition in education spending for Brazilian municipalities. Our results are threefold. First, political incentives are pervasive in setting the education expenditures. The spatial strategic behavior on education spending is estimated lower for lame-ducks and for those incumbents with majority support at the city council. This suggests a strong relation between commitment and accountability which reinforces yardstick competition theory. Second, we nd a minor reduction (20%) in spatial interaction for public education spending after IDEB's disclosure | compared to the spatial correlation before the disclosure of the index. This suggests that public release of information may decrease the importance of the neighbors` counterpart information on voter`s decision. Third, exploring the discontinuity of IDEB`s disclosure rule around the cut-o of 30 students enrolled in the grade under assessment, our estimates suggest that the spatial autocorrelation | and hence yardstick competition | is reduced in 54%. Finally, an unforeseen result suggests that the disclosure of IDEB increases expenditures, more than 100% according to our estimates.

International civil society actors in Genetically Modificied Organisms as a field of struggle: a neo-gramscian study in Brazil and the United Kingdom

Since the international financial and food crisis that started in 2008, strong emphasis has been made on the importance of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) (or “transgenics”) under the claim that they could contribute to increase food productivity at a global level, as the world population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in the year 2050 and food demand is predicted to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. GMOs are now at the forefront of the debates and struggles of different actors. Within civil society actors, it is possible to observe multiple, and sometime, conflicting roles. The role of international social movements and international NGOs in the GMO field of struggle is increasingly relevant. However, while many of these international civil society actors oppose this type of technological developments (alleging, for instance, environmental, health and even social harms), others have been reportedly cooperating with multinational corporations, retailers, and the biotechnology industry to promote GMOs. In this thesis research, I focus on analysing the role of “international civil society” in the GMO field of struggle by asking: “what are the organizing strategies of international civil society actors, such as NGOs and social movements, in GMO governance as a field of struggle?” To do so, I adopt a neo-Gramscian discourse approach based on the studies of Laclau and Mouffe. This theoretical approach affirms that in a particular hegemonic regime there are contingent alliances and forces that overpass the spheres of the state and the economy, while civil society actors can be seen as a “glue” to the way hegemony functions. Civil society is then the site where hegemony is consented, reproduced, sustained, channelled, but also where counter-hegemonic and emancipatory forces can emerge. Considering the importance of civil society actors in the construction of hegemony, I also discuss some important theories around them. The research combines, on the one hand, 36 in-depth interviews with a range of key civil society actors and scientists representing the GMO field of struggle in Brazil (19) and the UK (17), and, on the other hand, direct observations of two events: Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and the first March Against Monsanto in London in 2013. A brief overview of the GMO field of struggle, from its beginning and especially focusing in the 1990s when the process of hegemonic formation became clearer, serves as the basis to map who are the main actors in this field, how resource mobilization works, how political opportunities (“historical contingencies”) are discovered and exploited, which are the main discourses (“science” and “sustainability” - articulated by “biodiversity preservation”, “food security” and “ecological agriculture”) articulated among the actors to construct a collective identity in order to attract new potential allies around “GMOs” (“nodal point”), and which are the institutions and international regulations within these processes that enable hegemony to emerge in meaningful and durable hegemonic links. This mapping indicates that that the main strategies applied by the international civil society actors are influenced by two central historical contingencies in the GMO field of struggle: 1) First Multi-stakeholder Historical Contingency; and 2) “Supposed” Hegemony Stability. These two types of historical contingency in the GMO field of struggle encompass deeper hegemonic articulations and, because of that, they induce international civil society actors to rethink the way they articulate and position themselves within the field. Therefore, depending on one of those moments, they will apply one specific strategy of discourse articulation, such as: introducing a new discourse in hegemony articulation to capture the attention of the public and of institutions; endorsing new plural demands; increasing collective visibility; facilitating material articulations; sharing a common enemy identity; or spreading new ideological elements among the actors in the field of struggle.

Leadership of portuguese community schools in the East Coast of the United States and the public policies of education: a multiple case studies

The Portuguese community schools of the United States located in the areas of larger Portuguese population concentration are social organizations that come materializing throughout decades the designs of the educative policies of the Portuguese government in relation to the expansion and preservation of the language, the culture and the history of Portugal. These designs of the educative policies are enrolled in the Constitution of the Republic (1976), in the Basic Law of Educative System (1986) and, over all, in the successive legislative norms (Decree-laws and ordinances) of the successive governments. Portuguese community schools in the United States are structuralized in analogous way to schools of the Portuguese geographic space. For this qualitative study (multiple case), four directors of Portuguese schools of the East Coast of the United States were interviewed; two schools are in the state of Rhode Island and the other two are in the state of Massachusetts. Also, it was administered the questionnaire on practices of leadership “Leadership Practices Inventory” (LPI) of Kouzes and Posner (2002) to collect additional data about practices of leadership on the directors of the schools. The LPI evaluates practices of leadership classifying them in five domains: (a) Model the way; (b) Inspire a shared vision; (c) Challenge the process; (d) Enable others to act; and, (e) Encourage the heart. Results of this qualitative research indicate that the Portuguese Government has not had an educative policy stimulant, coherent and consistent of support, incentive, maintenance and diffusion of the Portuguese language and culture and the directors of the studied schools they have a proactive and serving leadership style in conducting the management of Portuguese community schools. The five practices of leadership are highly practiced by the directors of the studied schools above all the practices “Enable others to act” and “Encourage the heart”.

Uma avaliação política da política de avaliação da educação superior brasileira

We had as the problem of analysis in this research: what are the assumptions, principles and general content that based the Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Superior (SINAES). We started from the hypothesis that the general content of SINAES is essentially based on the assumptions and principles of a control/regulatory perspective of evaluation and a summative epistemology, objectivist and quantitativist, constituted by members who prioritize testing and classification of courses and institutions based on market values. The overall goal was to make a political evaluation of SINAES and the specific objectives were: a) apply the concepts of politics evaluation and meta-evaluation, b) identify the role of international organizations in education reform in the 1990s and its impact on superior education in Brazil c) redeem the concept of evaluation, especially in the field of studies in education; and d) investigate the evaluation policies of Brazilian superior education leading to SINAES. As for the technical procedures for collecting and analyzing data, the research was made with bibliography and documents, considering that it was developed by bibliographic sources and official publications. It was developed by crossing sources: texts or documents remitted to others; it was also concentrated: on the role of international organizations in educational and State reforms (in the 1990s); on the policies of evaluation of the Brazilian superior education (1980s and 1990s); on the proposal of the Comissão Especial de Avaliação (CEA); on the Law No. 10.861/2004; on the documents of CONAES; on the Decree No. 5.773/2006, and the MEC Regulatory Ordinances No. 4/2008 and No. 12/2008. It did not stop in the so called purely technical aspects, but in the ideological field itself. The research found that international organizations, notably the World Bank, played a political, intellectual and financial role determinant to the field of education, a fact that reflects in the legal framework. It was also found that the politics of evaluation of the superior education is historically marked by conflict, represented by two distinct perspectives of different natures and emphases. On one hand, the focus is on control / regulation, favoring efficiency, productivity and competitiveness benchmarking and prioritizing the punctual performance and measurement. On the other, it seeks to transform academic perspective in primarily formative / emancipatory, in order to support more institutional improvement. It was concluded that the CEA presented a conception evaluation predominantly formative and emancipatory, which emphasized the idea of system, centered around the institution and repudiated the rankings practices. In the post-formulation period, however, some of its principles were fragmenting and, gradually, the institution was giving way to the courses and the Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes (ENADE) grew in prominence. With the creation of the Conceito Preliminar de Cursos superiores (CPC) and of the Índice Geral de Cursos da Instituição de Educação Superior (IGC), it was redemeed the practice of evaluation as measurement and control, under the principles of efficiency and productivity. So, SINAES that seemed like a progressive evaluation method has assumed a setting that close resembles the Exame Nacional de Cursos (ENC-Provão). Nevertheless, the survival of institutional formative evaluation, in the superior education evaluation policies, still an issue in dispute

Theoretical Approximations Between Brazilian and Spanish Authors' Production in the Field of Knowledge Organization in the Production of Journals on Information Science in Brazil

This work identifies and analyzes literature about knowledge organization (KO), expressed in scientific journals communication of information science (IS). It performs an exploratory study on the Base de Dados Referencial de Artigos de Periodicos em Ciência da Informacio (BRAPCI, Reference Database of Journal Articles on Information Science) between the years 2000 and 2010. The descriptors relating to "knowledge organization" are used in order to recover and analyze the corresponding articles and to identify descriptors and concepts which integrate the semantic universe related to KO. Through the analysis of content, based on metrical studies, this article gathers and interprets data relating to documents and authors. Through this, it demonstrates the development of this field and its research fronts according to the observed characteristics, as well as noting the transformation indicative in the production of knowledge. The work describes the influences of the Spanish researchers on Brazilian literature in the fields of knowledge and information organization. As a result, it presents the most cited and productive authors, the theoretical currents which support them, and the most significant relationships of the Spanish-Brazilian authors network. Based on the constant key-words analysis in the cited articles, the co-existence of the French conception current and the incipient Spanish influence in Brazil is observed. Through this, it contributes to the comprehension of the thematic range relating to KO, stimulating both criticism and self-criticism, debate and knowledge creation, based on studies that have been developed and institutionalized in academic contexts in Spain and Brazil.

Dynamical properties for the problem of a particle in an electric field of wave packet: Low velocity and relativistic approach

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

Magnetic field of an in-plane vortex inside and outside a layered superconducting film

In the present work we study an anisotropic layered superconducting film of finite thickness. The film surfaces are considered parallel to the be face of the crystal. The vortex lines are oriented perpendicular to the film surfaces and parallel to the superconducting planes. We calculate the local field and the London free energy for this geometry. Our calculation is a generalization of previous works where the sample is taken as a semi-infinite superconductor. As an application of this theory we investigate the flux spreading at the super conducting surface.

Application of methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris in the field of food industry - A review

Since ancient times, the utilization of yeasts by the man has a great impact on the socio-economic development. After the advent of the technology of recombinant DNA, great advances have occurred due to the acquisition of strains of mutant yeasts in the field of applied research, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae has soon been outstanding as an interesting candidate for the expression of heterologous proteins of biotechnological interest. As the time goes by other alternative systems of expression have been shown because they have advantages over Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Among those new systems, Pichia pastoris is outstanding as methylotrophic yeast capable of growing in a culture medium containing methanol as the only source of carbon and energy. The induction of production of glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPD, NAD(+): oxido-redutase EC 1.1. 1.8) by Pichia pastoris was accomplished in the medium containing methanol. One of the most important key parameters in Pichia pastoris expression system is the methanol concentration. Bibliographic reviews on the Pichia pastoris production system have shown that the best culture conditions vary according to the strain used and/or kind of heterologous protein desired to be expressed. Therefore, we have sought to develop a system, involving expression of glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in the yeast Pichia pastoris, for generating sufficient quantities of the enzyme in order to asses its potential value for use in various food bioanalytical determination. Dehydrogenases have been widely used in the enzymatic assays of diverse composites of industrial interest, being enclosed among them glycerol and a number of important bioanalytical applications.

The magnetic field of a current carrying cosmic string

The magnetostatic field of an infinite rectilinear current placed in the stationary gravitational field of a rotating cosmic string is found. An interesting aspect of this problem is that although the metric is mathematically very simple, its physical meaning is not trivial. It depends only on topological parameters. So, the cosmic string vacuum space-time is locally equivalent to the Minkowski space-time, but not globally. The calculations are so simple that they can easily be shown in the classroom. © 1997 American Association of Physics Teachers.

The saturated magnetic field of the neutron stars

Considering the ferromagnetic screening for the decay of the X-ray neutron star magnetic field in the binary accretion phase, the phase transition of ferromagnetic materials in the crust of neutron star induces the ferromagnetic screening saturation of the accreted crust, which results in the minimum surface magnetic field of the accreting neutron star, about 108 G, if the accreted matter has completely replaced the crust mass of the neutron star. The magnetic field evolution versus accreted mass is given as Bs ∝ ΔM-0.9, and the obtained magnetic field versus spin period relation is consistent with the distribution of the binary X-ray sources and recycled pulsars. The further thermal effect on the magnetic evolution is also studied.

Design studies of the magnetic properties of structural materials affecting the magnetic field of high-homogeneity superconducting magnets

Austenitic stainless steel presents phase changes caused by heat treatment and welding processes. Because it represents a problem in the design of high-homogeneity magnets, we have been studying the magnetic properties of Ti alloys for their use instead of stainless steel as structural material for superconducting magnet construction. In this work, we present the comparative study of the influence of magnetic properties of steel and Ti alloys on the magnetic-field homogeneity of a superconducting coil through numerical calculation using the measured magnetic properties. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.