Da negatividade a positividade: possível trânsito de saberes, práticas e representações sociais sobre o estigma da hanseníase

Leprosy is a chronic infectious-contagious disease, caused by Mycobacterium leprae, manifested by dermatological and neurological signs and symptoms and has great disabling power. It was marked by a strong stigma throughout its history, since its bearers represented a threat, target of fear and social contempt. Currently, leprosy has treatment and cure, and the need to separate the diseased from family and social environment is no more necessary. However, patients still suffer prejudice and discrimination. This study aimed to understand the social representations of leprosy that interfere modifying mental health of the patient with leprosy in relation to stigma and prejudice. This is a descriptive and exploratory study, with qualitative approach, which involved 22 users of the Special Care Clinic in Infectious Diseases at the Hospital Giselda Trigueiro, located in Natal / RN. They were in use of multidrug therapy in the period of data collection, were of both sexes, aged between 16 and 80 years of age and classified as paucibacillary or multibacillary. The study was approved by the UFRN Ethics in Research Committee. Data collection was performed by filling the questionnaire identification and then for conducting the semi-structured interview, which was recorded. After the end of data collection, there was the construction of tables and graphs, using the Microsoft Excel Start 2010 for proper characterization of the research subjects; and for the treatment of the data obtained from the interviews, was used the Content Analysis and based on the Theory of Social Representations. The subjects studied were mostly male (64%), married or in a stable relationship (68%), concentrated in the age group 50-60 years (36%) and 28-38 years (23%), had at most elementary education (65%) and were low-income (59%). Of the total respondents, 64% were classified as multibacillary, with predominantly dimorfous form, and 50% had disability grade I or II, with different periods of diagnosis. The reports originate two categories: 1. The negative meanings of illness and leprosy; and 2. The positive meanings of illness in leprosy, which were subsequently subdivided into subcategories. Thus, it was found that in the group studied, the social representation of leprosy experiences a moment of transition, as regards the understanding of the disease and its way of experiencing the disease process. Such representation is anchored in the quality of information on the disease of its bearers and aimed at an attempt to face the illness of leprosy as a "normal process". It was found in this study that the transition is due to the work of combating stigma and consequences of leprosy, which is able to gradually transform reality, both regarding the team work of reference, and in relation to a broader character, of actions of health education, which favors overcoming of psychosocial disabilities

Probabilidades imprecisas: intervalar, fuzzy e fuzzy intuicionista

The idea of considering imprecision in probabilities is old, beginning with the Booles George work, who in 1854 wanted to reconcile the classical logic, which allows the modeling of complete ignorance, with probabilities. In 1921, John Maynard Keynes in his book made explicit use of intervals to represent the imprecision in probabilities. But only from the work ofWalley in 1991 that were established principles that should be respected by a probability theory that deals with inaccuracies. With the emergence of the theory of fuzzy sets by Lotfi Zadeh in 1965, there is another way of dealing with uncertainty and imprecision of concepts. Quickly, they began to propose several ways to consider the ideas of Zadeh in probabilities, to deal with inaccuracies, either in the events associated with the probabilities or in the values of probabilities. In particular, James Buckley, from 2003 begins to develop a probability theory in which the fuzzy values of the probabilities are fuzzy numbers. This fuzzy probability, follows analogous principles to Walley imprecise probabilities. On the other hand, the uses of real numbers between 0 and 1 as truth degrees, as originally proposed by Zadeh, has the drawback to use very precise values for dealing with uncertainties (as one can distinguish a fairly element satisfies a property with a 0.423 level of something that meets with grade 0.424?). This motivated the development of several extensions of fuzzy set theory which includes some kind of inaccuracy. This work consider the Krassimir Atanassov extension proposed in 1983, which add an extra degree of uncertainty to model the moment of hesitation to assign the membership degree, and therefore a value indicate the degree to which the object belongs to the set while the other, the degree to which it not belongs to the set. In the Zadeh fuzzy set theory, this non membership degree is, by default, the complement of the membership degree. Thus, in this approach the non-membership degree is somehow independent of the membership degree, and this difference between the non-membership degree and the complement of the membership degree reveals the hesitation at the moment to assign a membership degree. This new extension today is called of Atanassov s intuitionistic fuzzy sets theory. It is worth noting that the term intuitionistic here has no relation to the term intuitionistic as known in the context of intuitionistic logic. In this work, will be developed two proposals for interval probability: the restricted interval probability and the unrestricted interval probability, are also introduced two notions of fuzzy probability: the constrained fuzzy probability and the unconstrained fuzzy probability and will eventually be introduced two notions of intuitionistic fuzzy probability: the restricted intuitionistic fuzzy probability and the unrestricted intuitionistic fuzzy probability

Slogans políticos em campanhas eleitorais no Rio Grande do Norte: a mídia na disputa ideológica.

To the observe the periods of electoral campaigns, we can realize sharply the abundance of political propaganda that announces the candidates, their campaign record, their proposed and everything that can carry them to the victory in the urns. The propaganda is today an essential tool in the votes dispute, in consequence of this, there is, in Brazil, the increasing participation of the Politics Parties in seminars of electoral marketing. They are varied strategies of the media used in the divulging of the candidacies, among them the slogan. Instigated by the explicit relation media/political, this work intends to investigate the ideologies (values) announced by the slogans of political propaganda that circulated in electoral periods. Thus, we base on the theory of the Circle of Bakhtin, who considers the statement as unit of the verbal communication, and that conceives the language as phenomenon dialogical, and, too, in the conceptions of alien words, social voices and dialogical relations formulated by the referred theory. We use, for better to comprehend, the slogan as strategy mediatic, of the classical study done by Olivier Reboul concerning the slogan; and, like starting point of a conception about ideology, studied John Thompson to comprehends the ideological phenomenon. Our corpus it constitutes of 14 political slogans announced in the campaigns for mayor of the cities in Natal and Mossoró, both located in Rio Grande do Norte s state, Brazil, in 1996, 2000 and 2004. For the analysis of these slogans, we consider the social-historical context in which were announced, being contemplated the linguistic and discursive aspect, according to the following methodological order: the identification of alien words (interdiscours); the social voices and the kinds dialogical relations established; and, finally, the ideology announced by the statement. This way, we can arrive to the conclusion that in the electoral context occurs a true ideologies war , in other words, in the political game of an electoral campaign, the slogans announces different values, which vary in several factors function, for example, the historicity, the subject that enunciates, the discursive positionings.

Desenvolvimento de um protótipo de um atlas escolar interativo: projeto e produção

This paper aims at presenting an Interactive School Atlas prototype which was developed for cartography and environmental education. The methodology was based on the theoretical study about child mental development of Piaget theory, in order to elaborate strategies that allow the student a better comprehension about the spatial information understanding. It was defined as study case of sixth grade students, because they belong to the Formal Operation stage, in which the children reach the needed mental operations for understanding cartographic key concepts. This Atlas was developed in two stages: cartographic design and Atlas production. The Atlas implementation was developed seeking the use of Multimedia Cartography and animation resources that may attract students and teachers, instigating them to explore the tools and strategies to lead users to a correct interpretation of map contents. The Atlas was implemented by using the Macromedia Flash and Visual Basic softwares and the MapObjects library. Though the map has bot been evaluated yet, one should point out that it was designed according to the theoretical and methodological knowledge of the cognitive development and its relationship to cartographic conceptions, aiming at adapting the product to children cognitive skills.

Ave! Mossoró! : os mecanismos discursivos sobre o episódio da resistência ao bando de Lampião

This thesis has as objective the interdiscursive relations in the process of language construction in use in the poetic and in the journalistic spheres, with the purpose of perceiving how the genre news is constituted in different fields of social activity, as well as to analyze the argumentative processes that structure the written discourses about the resistance episode to the group of Lampião in Mossoró in the year of 1927. The corpus of the research is constituted by the news of the period informed in the printed newspapers: Correio do povo and O Nordeste, both from Mossoró/RN, and the narratives presented in the cordéis de acontecido : Mossoró in the resistance to the group of Lampião; Lampião in Mossoró in 1927, and Mossoró attacking to the group of Lampião, all potiguar poets. The analysis of the texts had as theoretical background the studies of: The texts analysis had as theoretical background The Discourse Analysis; The Argumentation Theory and the studies about Discourse Genres. We focused our discussion in the emphasis given to the news in the discursive perspective of the social-historic memory constructed in the cordéis, from ideological values (political, economical, religious etc.) that pass to be a fundamental element in the constitution of the image of the resistance. Methodologically, this is a documental research, since it makes use essentially of the written document. Regarding to the nature of the data, the research is characterized as a qualitative one. In the analysis, we considered the argumentative techniques adopted in the defense of the thesis, the meaning effects suggested, and the genres mentioned, that revealed to us the manner in which the episode was informed by the newspapers and the cordéis. That way, we affirm, based on the positions assumed by the announcers of the genres analyzed who defended clearly positions in favor of the defense of Mossoró, that the relation between both is captured interdiscursively, since they are asked by the same ideology, and converge to the same discursive formation, defending identical positions, and structuring their discussions with resembling argumentative techniques, reason by which take us to believe that the discourse presented in that social activity demonstrates and develops traces of a manipulation of the subject. In this case, the discursive construction of the text points towards determining standard of repetition, since the linguistic context is characterized in the journalistic field, and in the poetic field assuming, in the first instance, a local expression

A escrita do texto acadêmico na graduação: modos de utilização de conceitos teóricos de uma área de conhecimento

In this study we have developed a discussion about academic text production in the undergraduate course of Literature and Languages. Specifically, we are going to analyze the monographic text writing in order to verify the meaning effects created from the ways of showing other s discourses that constitute a written production. As a means to do that, we are going to answer the following question: How does a young researcher make use of a theory in order to be part of a particular scientific community? We aim to: 1) analyze the linguistic resources, like quotations and signs of cohesion that demonstrate the other s voice presence in academic writing; 2) observe the meaning effects produced through the ways that the one who writes shows the other s voice in the written text. Firstly, we have selected 23 (twentythree) monographs produced in the last five years by students from a Literature and Languages undergraduate course in a determined public university. However, in this study, we have analyzed just 02 (two) different monographic texts. To develop such an investigation, we have inquired Kuhn s concept of science, which shows the existence of different meanings of science production in the course of the centuries. It allows us to define academic writing as science production that develops and contributes to knowledge production. With the purpose of restricting the meaning of writing conception, we have relied on Coracini, who assumes that all writing production is the registration of the self, in other words, writing comes from the subject s intervention, it is to say that only an imposition of the self guarantees the subject as author of what he writes. We have as theoretical basis the following concepts: 1-) Authier-Revus s enunciative heterogeneity, that allowed us to analyze the written marks of the other in the monographic writing; 2-) Pêcheux s reformulation-paraphrase and Orlandi s polysemy and paraphrase, concepts that present notions of productivity and creativity as ways of meaning production, and allows us to observe how the process of language production in academic writing is established; 3-) Rossi-Landi s concept of exchange-value and use-value, which consider language as a linguistic work, allowing us to verify the differences between use and social functionality in a determined theory; and 4-) Possenti s notion of authorship indicia, with which we have identified attitudes that make the one who writes author of his own text. We have verified that writing characterized for repetition and reproduction may develop a meaning effect that constructs the idea that writing production promotes an author, a concept or a theory. We have also realized that a written text that restricts itself to reproduce other authors discourses and does not articulate a theory with data analysis or with work methodology, when evaluated is approved and legitimates itself as scientific production. That demonstrates the existence of academic productions that do not develop any functionality of the employed theory. The text works as a means to promote its theoretical concepts, and theory. It is to say that the theoretical foundantion, which usually is a way to argue and sustain scientific production, does not have any function. Thus, we consider that the way someone shows the other s discourse in academic writing may work as a way to underline what the other asserts to the detriment of the researcher s words. This fact allows us to comprehend that a way of writing may evidence a meaning effect of the author s, theory s or theoretical concepts promotion

As construções adverbiais em mente: análise funcionalista e implicações para o ensino de língua materna

This research aims at investigating the constructions with adverbials in ly, based on the view of contemporaneous linguistic functionalism, such as proposed by Givón, Hopper, Thompson, Traugott, Furtado da Cunha, as well as the cognitivist notion of language, through construction grammar support upon the patterns of Goldberg and the prototypes theory. The cognitive functional approach adopted here considers the change as a proper and inherent phenomenon of language and understands the linguistic phenomenon as resulting from effective use of language. Another aspect to be considered to the realization of this study is the fact that the formation adjective + ly is a word construction mechanism really productive, which generates interests on linguistic description. In a particular way, our leading objective is to exam the constructions with adverbials in ly in the context of language in use, in its oral and written forms, looking for to apprehend the meaning multiple manifestations forged in the use. Bearing this in mind, we worked with data from the Corpus Discurso & Gramática (Natal). There are, in the data, adverbs ended in ly that take the signification of mode, as foreseen in traditional models, but there are also other significations, for instance, the modalizador in its different manifestations. The results show that this adverb is a linguistic mark that carries in its constitution the multissêmico and multifunctional character, which interferes extremely in the ordination of this category, assuming a position sometimes pre-verbal, sometimes post-verbal. Other aspect observed refers to the relationship between the adverb and the verb, with emphasis on the compatibility or restriction between them, option which is related to the semantic aspect. The data in analysis legitimate the use in different constructions with adverb ended in ly in various genres, as follows: personal experience narrative, retold narrative, local description, proceeding account, opinion account, both in oral as in written language

AI, LA, ALI e AQUI: gramaticalização de um paradigma emergente no domínio funcional da especificação nominal

In the light of the Functional Linguistic Theory, in its North-American version (HOPPER, 1987, 1991, 1998, 2008, 2010; GIVÓN, 2001; LEHMANN, 2002; HOPPER; TRAUGOTT, 2003; FURTADO DA CUNHA; OLIVEIRA; MARTELOTTA, 2003, among others), the general objective of this research is to demonstrate, based on morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic properties, that AQUI (HERE), AÍ, ALI and LÁ (THERE) are part of an emerging paradigm in Brazilian Portuguese recently constituted and still developing of forms indicating specificity in indefinite noun phrases (NP). The data that make up the corpus of this research were collected in the following large Brazilian oral corpora: the Corpus Discurso & Gramática: a língua falada e escrita na cidade de Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 1998), the Banco Conversacional de Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA, 2010), the Projeto Variação Linguística no Estado da Paraíba VALPB (HORA, 2005) and the Projeto Variação Linguística Urbana na Região Sul do Brasil VARSUL (VANDRESEN, 2002). Firstly, the behavior of the specificity markings AQUI, AÍ, ALI and LÁ is described with respect to many factors of morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic nature: type of construction in which the markers appeared; existence or not of intervening material between the specificity marker item and the NP s nuclear noun; type of noun to which AQUI, AÍ, ALI and LÁ are linked; syntactic function of the specified SN; informational status of the NP to which the specificity markers AQUI, AÍ, ALI and LÁ are attached; occurrence of conversational implicatures (GRICE, 1982) in the context of use of these specificity markers. Next, a possible grammaticalization trajectory is outlined, according to which AQUI, AÍ, ALI and LÁ would had gone from an early spatial deictic indication to the specificity indication. The results point to the existence of forms with varying degree of emergence in this new paradigm of nominal specification, with AÍ being, probably, the item most grammaticalized, followed by LÁ, then ALI and AQUI, which permanence in the paradigm do not yet appear to be consolidated

A fully adaptive multiresolution scheme for shock computations

The scheme is based on Ami Harten's ideas (Harten, 1994), the main tools coming from wavelet theory, in the framework of multiresolution analysis for cell averages. But instead of evolving cell averages on the finest uniform level, we propose to evolve just the cell averages on the grid determined by the significant wavelet coefficients. Typically, there are few cells in each time step, big cells on smooth regions, and smaller ones close to irregularities of the solution. For the numerical flux, we use a simple uniform central finite difference scheme, adapted to the size of each cell. If any of the required neighboring cell averages is not present, it is interpolated from coarser scales. But we switch to ENO scheme in the finest part of the grids. To show the feasibility and efficiency of the method, it is applied to a system arising in polymer-flooding of an oil reservoir. In terms of CPU time and memory requirements, it outperforms Harten's multiresolution algorithm.The proposed method applies to systems of conservation laws in 1Dpartial derivative(t)u(x, t) + partial derivative(x)f(u(x, t)) = 0, u(x, t) is an element of R-m. (1)In the spirit of finite volume methods, we shall consider the explicit schemeupsilon(mu)(n+1) = upsilon(mu)(n) - Deltat/hmu ((f) over bar (mu) - (f) over bar (mu)-) = [Dupsilon(n)](mu), (2)where mu is a point of an irregular grid Gamma, mu(-) is the left neighbor of A in Gamma, upsilon(mu)(n) approximate to 1/mu-mu(-) integral(mu-)(mu) u(x, t(n))dx are approximated cell averages of the solution, (f) over bar (mu) = (f) over bar (mu)(upsilon(n)) are the numerical fluxes, and D is the numerical evolution operator of the scheme.According to the definition of (f) over bar (mu), several schemes of this type have been proposed and successfully applied (LeVeque, 1990). Godunov, Lax-Wendroff, and ENO are some of the popular names. Godunov scheme resolves well the shocks, but accuracy (of first order) is poor in smooth regions. Lax-Wendroff is of second order, but produces dangerous oscillations close to shocks. ENO schemes are good alternatives, with high order and without serious oscillations. But the price is high computational cost.Ami Harten proposed in (Harten, 1994) a simple strategy to save expensive ENO flux calculations. The basic tools come from multiresolution analysis for cell averages on uniform grids, and the principle is that wavelet coefficients can be used for the characterization of local smoothness.. Typically, only few wavelet coefficients are significant. At the finest level, they indicate discontinuity points, where ENO numerical fluxes are computed exactly. Elsewhere, cheaper fluxes can be safely used, or just interpolated from coarser scales. Different applications of this principle have been explored by several authors, see for example (G-Muller and Muller, 1998).Our scheme also uses Ami Harten's ideas. But instead of evolving the cell averages on the finest uniform level, we propose to evolve the cell averages on sparse grids associated with the significant wavelet coefficients. This means that the total number of cells is small, with big cells in smooth regions and smaller ones close to irregularities. This task requires improved new tools, which are described next.

LIMIT CYCLES of DISCONTINUOUS PIECEWISE LINEAR DIFFERENTIAL SYSTEMS

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

Ecological efficiency in thermoelectric power plants

This work evaluates the environmental impact resulting from the natural gas and diesel combustion in thermoelectric power plants that utilize the combined cycle technology (CC), as regarding to Brazilian conditions according to Thermopower Priority Plan JPP). In the regions where there are not natural gas the option has been the utilization of diesel and consequentily there are more emission of pollutants. The ecological efficiency concept, which evaluates by and large the environmental impact, caused by CO2, SO2, NOx and particulate matter (PM) emissions. The combustion gases of the thermoelectric power plants working with natural gas (less pollutant) and diesel (more pollutant) cause problems to the environment, for their components harm the human being life, animals and directly the plants. The resulting pollution from natural gas and diesel combustion is analyzed, considering separately the CO2, SO2, NO2 and particulate matter gas emission and comparing them with the in use international standards regarding the air quality. It can be concluded that it is possible to calculate thermoelectric power plant quantitative and qualitative environment factor, and on the ecological standpoint, for plant with total power of 41441 kW, being 27 170 kW for the gas turbine and 14271 kW for the steam turbine. The natural gas used as fuel is better than the diesel, presenting ecological efficiency of 0.944 versus 0.914 for the latter, considering a thermal efficiency of 54% for the combined cycle. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Duality of parity doublets of helicity +/- 2 in D=2+1 dimensions

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Spin-1 duality in D dimensions

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Artificial neural networks and clustering techniques applied in the reconfiguration of distribution systems

One objective of the feeder reconfiguration problem in distribution systems is to minimize the power losses for a specific load. For this problem, mathematical modeling is a nonlinear mixed integer problem that is generally hard to solve. This paper proposes an algorithm based on artificial neural network theory. In this context, clustering techniques to determine the best training set for a single neural network with generalization ability are also presented. The proposed methodology was employed for solving two electrical systems and presented good results. Moreover, the methodology can be employed for large-scale systems in real-time environment.

Alternative Model of Three-Phase Transmission Line Theory-Based Modal Decomposition

In this paper is shown the development of a transmission line, based on discrete circuit elements that provide responses directly in the time domain and phase. This model is valid for ideally transposed rows represent the phases of each of the small line segments are separated in their modes of propagation and the voltage and current are calculated at the modal field. However, the conversion phase-mode-phase is inserted in the state equations which describe the currents and voltages along the line of which there is no need to know the user of the model representation of the theory in the field lines modal.