Education in Human Rights: Reflections on Power, Violence and Authority in the School

This article explores human rights and education based on an intervention experience conducted in three schools located in Sao Paulo City, which had as its main goal a substantial reduction in violence (2004-2005). The guideline was that education should be considered a basic human right, taking into consideration the power and authority relations that exist within this institution. What are the problems that we face, nowadays, to consider education as a human right, in the difficult Brazilian history? Is it possible to think about some kind of democratic authority within the school, when our vision of authority is linked to despotic leaders, or even when there is no space for any authority? How does this discussion associate with the violence in our daily life in school? These are some of the questions included in the debate proposed by this article.

On the threshold of forgetting: Amnesiac identities and the Brazilian capital

Centuries after Locke asserted the importance of memory to identity, Freudian psychology argued that what was forgotten was of equal importance as to what was remembered. The closing decades of the nineteenth century saw a rising interest in the nature of forgetting, resulting in a reassessment and newfound distrust of the long revered faculty of memory. The relationship between memory and identity was inverted, seeing forgetting also become a means for forging identity. This newfound distrust of memory manifested in the writings of Nietzsche who in 1874 called for society to learn to feel unhistorically and distance itself from the past - in what was essentially tantamount to a cultural forgetting. Following the Nietzschean call, the architecture of Modernism was also compelled by the need to 'overcome' the limits imposed by history. This paper examines notions of identity through the shifting boundaries of remembering and forgetting, with particular reference to the construction of Brazilian identity through the ‘repression’ of history and memory in the design of the Brazilian capital. Designed as a forward-looking modernist utopia, transcending the limits imposed by the country's colonial heritage, the design for Brasilia exploited the anti-historicist agenda of modernism to emancipate the country from cultural and political associations with the Portuguese Empire. This paper examines the relationship between place, memory and forgetting through a discussion of the design for Brasilia.

Nitrogen relations of natural and disturbed plant communities in tropical Australia

Nitrogen relations of natural and disturbed tropical plant communities in northern Australia (Kakadu National Park) were studied. Plant and soil N characteristics suggested that differences in N source utilisation occur at community and species level. Leaf and xylem sap N concentrations of plants in different communities were correlated with the availability of inorganic soil N (NH4+ and NO3-). In general, rates of leaf NO3- assimilation were low. Even in communities with a higher N status, including deciduous monsoon forest, disturbed wetland, and a revegetated mine waste rock dump, levels of leaf nitrate reductase, xylem and leaf NO3 levels were considerably lower than those that have been reported for eutrophic communities. Although NO3- assimilation in escarpment and eucalypt woodlands, and wetland, was generally low, within these communities there was a suite of species that exhibited a greater capacity for NO3- assimilation. These high-NO3- species were mainly annuals, resprouting herbs or deciduous trees that had leaves with high N contents. Ficus, a high-NO3- species, was associated with soil exhibiting higher rates of net mineralisation and net nitrification. Low-NO3- species were evergreen perennials with low leaf N concentrations. A third group of plants, which assimilated NO3- (albeit at lower rates than the high-NO3- species), and had high-N leaves, were leguminous species. Acacia species, common in woodlands, had the highest leaf N contents of all woody species. Acacia species appeared to have the greatest potential to utilise the entire spectrum of available N sources. This versatility in N source utilisation may be important in relation to their high tissue N status and comparatively short life cycle. Differences in N utilisation are discussed in the context of species life strategies and mycorrhizal associations.

Subgroup relations: A comparison of mutual intergroup differentiation and common ingroup identity models of prejudice reduction

Two studies examined relations between groups (humanities and math-science students) that implicitly or explicitly share a common superordinate category (university student). In Experiment 1, 178 participants performed a noninteractive decision-making task during which category salience was manipulated in a 2 (superordinate category salience) x 2 (subordinate category salience) between-groups design. Consistent with the mutual intergroup differentiation model, participants for whom both categories were salient exhibited the lowest levels of bias, whereas bias was strongest when the superordinate category alone was made salient. This pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 135). In addition, Experiment 2 demonstrated that members of subgroups that are nested within a superordinate category are more sensitive to how the superordinate category is represented than are members of subgroups that extend beyond the boundaries of the superordinate category.

Brazilian Adaptation of the Woodcock-Johnson III Cognitive Tests

An adaptation of the standard battery of Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (WJ-III) for Brazilian children and youth was investigated. The sample was composed of 1094 students (54 percent girls), ages 7-17, living in Sao Paulo state (91 percent). Items from Brazilian school books as well as from the WJ-III Spanish version (Bateria-R) were added to comprehension-knowledge tests. Brazilian words were adapted to the auditory tests according to syllabic division and stressed syllables. Items were examined through IRT and age differences through analysis of variance. Results indicated the need to remove items from all WJ-III subtests with the exception of the visual learning test. Analysis of Variance indicated significant age differences (p <= 0.001) for all tests. Thus, the importance of a Brazilian adaptation for the WJ-III was confirmed.

RFID adoption: framework and survey in large Brazilian companies

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for radio frequency identification (RFID) technology adoption considering company size and five dimensions of analysis: RFID applications, expected benefits business drivers or motivations barriers and inhibitors, and organizational factors. Design/methodology/approach - A framework for RFID adoption derived from literature and the practical experience on the subject is developed. This framework provides a conceptual basis for analyzing a survey conducted with 114 companies in Brazil. Findings - Many companies have been developing RFID initiatives in order to identify potential applications and map benefits associated with their implementation. The survey highlights the importance business drivers in the RFID implementation stage, and that companies implement RFID focusing on a few specific applications. However, there is a weak association between expected benefits and business challenges with the current level of RFID technology adoption in Brazil. Research limitations/implications - The paper is not exhaustive, since RFID adoption in Brazil is at early stages during the survey timeline. Originality/value - The main contribution of the paper is that it yields a framework for analyzing RFID technology adoption. The authors use this framework to analyze RFID adoption in Brazil, which proved to be a useful one for identifying key issues for technology adoption. The paper is useful to any researchers or practitioners who are focused on technology adoption, in particular, RFID technology.

Neighborhood and Efficiency in Manufacturing in Brazilian Regions: A Spatial Markov Chain Analysis

This paper analyzes the geography of regional competitiveness in manufacturing in Brazil. The authors estimate stochastic frontiers to calculate regional efficiency of representative firms in 137 regions in the period 2000-2006, in four sectors defined by technological intensity. The efficiency results are analyzed using Markov Spatial Transition Matrices to provide insights into the transition of regions between efficiency levels, considering their local spatial context. The results indicate that geography plays an important role in manufacturing competitiveness. In particular, regions with more competitive neighbors are more likely to improve their relative efficiency (pull effect) over time, and regions with less competitive neighbors are more likely to lose relative efficiency (drag effect). The authors find that the pull effect is stronger than the drag effect.

The economic determinants of the Brazilian nominal term structure of interest rates

The purpose of this study is to identify the effects of monetary policy and macroeconomic shocks on the dynamics of the Brazilian term structure of interest rates. We estimate a near-VAR model under the identification scheme proposed by Christiano et al. (1996, 1999). The results resemble those of the US economy: monetary policy shocks that flatten the term structure of interest rates. We find that monetary policy shocks in Brazil explain a significantly larger share of the dynamics of the term structure than in the USA. Finally, we analyse the importance of standard macroeconomic variables (e. g. GDP, inflation and measure of country risk) to the dynamics of the term structure in Brazil.