Processos produtivos e trabalho-educação: a incorporação do caboclo catarinense na indústria madeireira

The object theme of the present study is a population of caboclos that absorbed as manual workers in the saw-mills which were mounted in the highland region of Santa Catarina since 1950. The abundance of araucaria (native kind of pine) the opening of markets, and the corroboration of other industrial exploration conditions encouraged a great crowd of small en.- trepreneurs, coming basically from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, to migrate and settle down, building up a lot of saw-mills near rich forests and fields. The saw-mills started aprosperous production of timber sawn in planks. The process of industriali zation was so intensive, the destruction of pine woods soviolent that, in less than three decades, the forests ran out of tree reserves. The caboclos, absorbed as manual workers in production of timber, lived traditionally in an system of subsistense, either from the cultivation of pine the economic their land (planter caboclo) or as labourers in cattle-growing farms (farm hand caboclos). Nevertheless, the 'advantages' that were offered them by the new-comer entrepreneurs (a salary paid in money, a new house in a village, and other favours) helped the great majority of caboclos to abandon their traditional work and enlist as "workmen" in saw-mills. The new job, besides being a novelty, was an opportunity for a change in status. Subsequently, the running out of forests of araucaria and the resultant progressive shut-down of saw-mills caused the crowd of workmen to be out of imployment and to form to form a migratory flood toward the most important town of the region, Lages. The town of Lages, however, having made of the timber i ts main economic support wi thout the implantation of an alternative industry, was unable to offer the migrantssufficient 'work places'. In this way, the 'marginal crowd' began to settle down in the suburbs of the city. This study, in the context of the object theme, analyses two main questions related to the reality 'WOlLQ' and to the economic exploitation forms: ~) the relations of production in the economic regime of subsistence and in the capitalist regime of industrial production with the consequent 'positions' of the workman in the productive processj ~~) the deriving educative effects of the productive process, either in the economic regime of subsistence, or in the capitalist industrial regime. The two questions are theoretically debated andconfro~ ted with the proposed reality, giving origin to conclusions that, in a general formulation, can be summarized as follows: a) the caboclos of the highland region of Santa Catari na, when under an economic regime of subsistence, held in fee the productive processj there was a social division of the work and aclimate of freedom which made possible the development of knowledge from their life and work experience, the production of most of their tools, and the making of necessary manufactures adapted to their own surrounding ditionsi -- - --- other con- ------ b) however, these same caboclos, when absorbed by the capitalist industrial process of production - tipified by the work in saw-mills - lost the control of the productive processj this was caused by the technologic division of the work, since each man began to perform a dull and repeti tive action, directed by the speed of the 'major-saw' j man resigned form his skill and inventive power and surrendered to an executive authority which turned him into a 'collective worker'j the new productive process, besides rnaking each rnan a copy of a pattern, put the caboclos in a situation in which the daily work experiencedidn't add anything in terrns of autogenesis of knowledgei and even the environrnental educative rneans were reduced to new forrns of adaptation to the productive process, relegating rnan's inventive power to inertia.

Matemal separation affects cocaine-induced locomotion and response to novelty in adolescent, but not in adult rats

Maternal separation is known to exert long-term effects on both behavior and the neuroendocrine system. We investigated cocaine-induced locomotor activation as well as the locomotor and corticosterone response to forced novelty in maternally separated adolescent and adult rats. Maternal separation consisted of separating litters from their darns daily during 5 h from postnatal days 2 to 6. Control animals were subjected only to regular cage changes. Cocaine- (10 mg/kg, i.p.) and novelty-induced locomotion were recorded in an activity cage. After the animals were tested for behavioral response to novelty, trunk blood samples were collected and plasma corticosterone levels were determined by radioimmunoassay. Adolescent rats exposed to maternal separation exhibited an increased locomotor response to novelty and cocaine; corticosterone levels were lower in these adolescent animals, after exposure to the novel environment. These effects of materrial separation were not observed in rats that were tested as adults. Thus the maternal separation protocol produced enduring but transient changes in the behavioral response to cocaine and in the stress response to novelty. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The informational turn in Philosophy: any novelty in the study of Mind?

The concept of information is analyzed starting from Adams' hypothesis in The Informational Turn in Philosophy, according to which there has been a far-reaching turn in Philosophy following the publication of Turing's article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". Adams maintains that new guidelines are being indicated in philosophical research, having the concept of "information" as the basis for treatment of classical problems, such as the relationships between mind-body, perception-action, and the nature of knowledge, amongst others. Partially agreeing with Adams, we believe, however, that his hypothesis faces difficulties, the most fundamental of which concerns the different meanings given to the concept of information. We argue that even though the concept of information underlying the mechanicist proposal of Turing, according to which "to think is to compute", is indeed being employed in Philosophy, this is not because of its mechanistic nature, but mainly due to the representationist presupposition dominant in this area. From this point of view, the informational turn in philosophy would not provide any great novelty, given that since the earliest days philosophical approaches to the nature of mind have always been mainly representationist. The novelty would not lie specifically in the Turing thesis, but in reflections on the nature of information, especially ecological information, and its relation to action.

Novelty of the arena impairs the cortisol-related increase in the aggression of matrinxa (Brycon amazonicus)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

As patentes de genes humanos sob a perspectiva do biodireito e da bioética

Pós-graduação em Direito - FCHS

Competition Between Novelty and Cocaine Conditioned Reward Is Sensitive to Drug Dose and Retention Interval

The conditioned rewarding effects of novelty compete with those of cocaine for control over choice behavior using a place conditioning task. The purpose of the present study was to use multiple doses of cocaine to determine the extent of this competition and to determine whether novelty’s impact on cocaine reward was maintained over an abstinence period. In Experiment 1, rats were conditioned with cocaine (7.5, 20, or 30 mg/kg ip) to prefer one side of an unbiased place conditioning apparatus relative to the other. In a subsequent phase, all rats received alternating daily confinements to the previously cocaine paired and unpaired sides of the apparatus. During this phase, half the rats had access to a novel object on their initially unpaired side; the remaining rats did not receive objects. The ability of novelty to compete with cocaine in a drug free and cocaine challenge test was sensitive to cocaine dose. In Experiment 2, a place preference was established with 10 mg/kg cocaine and testing occurred after 1, 14, or 28 day retention intervals. Findings indicate that choice behaviors mediated by cocaine conditioning are reduced with the passing of time. Taken together, competition between cocaine and novelty conditioned rewards are sensitive to drug dose and retention interval.

Novelty, but Not Operant Aversive Learning, Enhances Fos and Egr-1 Expression in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampal Areas of Rats

Immediate early genes (IEG) are presumed to be activated in response to stress, novelty, and learning. Evidence supports the involvement of prefrontal and hippocampal areas in stress and learning, but also in the detection of novel events. This study examined whether a previous experience with shocks changes the pattern of Fos and Egr-1 expression in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the hippocampal cornus ammonis 1 (CA1), and dentate gyrus (DG) of adult male Wistar rats that learned to escape in an operant aversive test. Subjects previously exposed to inescapable footshocks that learned to escape from Shocks were assigned to the treated group (EXP). Subjects from Group Novelty (NOV) rested undisturbed during treatment and also learned to escape in the test. The nonshock group (NSH) rested undisturbed in both sessions. Standard immunohistochemistry procedures were used to detect the proteins in brain sections. The results show that a previous experience with shocks changed the pattern of IEG expression, then demonstrating c-fos and egr-1 induction as experience-dependent events. Compared with NSH and EXP an enhanced Fos expression was detected in the mPFC and CA1 subfield of Group NOV, which also exhibited increased Egr-1 expression in the mPFC and DG in comparison to NSH. No differences were found in the DG for Fos, or in the CA1 for Egr-1. Novelty, and not the operant aversive escape learning, seems to have generated IEG induction. The results suggest novel stimuli as a possible confounding factor in studies on Fos and/or Egr-1 expression in aversive conditions.

Fluoxetine exposure during pregnancy and lactation: effects on acute stress response and behavior in the novelty-suppressed feeding are age and gender-dependent in rats

Fluoxetine (FLX) is commonly used to treat anxiety and depressive disorders in pregnant women. Since FLX crosses the placenta and is excreted in milk, maternal treatment with this antidepressant may expose the fetus and neonate to increased levels of serotonin (5-HT). Long-term behavioral abnormalities have been reported in rodents exposed to higher levels of 5-HT during neurodevelopment. In this study we evaluated if maternal exposure to FLX during pregnancy and lactation would result in behavioral and/or stress response disruption in adolescent and adult rats. Our results indicate that exposure to FLX influenced restraint stress-induced Fos expression in the amygdala in a gender and age-specific manner. In male animals, a decreased expression was observed in the basolateral amygdala at adolescence and adulthood; whereas at adulthood, a decrease was also observed in the medial amygdala. A lack of FLX exposure effect was observed in females and also in the paraventricular nucleus of both genders. Regarding the behavioral evaluation, FLX exposure did not induce anhedonia in the sucrose preference test but decreased the latency to feed of both male and female adolescent rats evaluated in the novelty-suppressed feeding test. In conclusion, FLX exposure during pregnancy and lactation decreases acute amygdalar stress response to a psychological stressor in males (adolescents and adults) as well as influences the behavior of adolescents (males and females) in a model that evaluates anxiety and/or depressive-like behavior. Even though FLX seems to be a developmental neurotoxicant, the translation of these findings to human safe assessment remains to be determined since it is recognized that not treating a pregnant or lactating woman may also impact negatively the development of the descendants.

Stimulus-induced gamma activity in the electrocorticogram of freely moving telemetric implanted rats: the neuronal signature of novelty detection

During this thesis a new telemetric recording system has been developed allowing ECoG/EEG recordings in freely behaving rodents (Lapray et al., 2008; Lapray et al., in press). This unit has been shown to not generate any discomfort in the implanted animals and to allow recordings in a wide range of environments. In the second part of this work the developed technique has been used to investigate what cortical activity was related to the process of novelty detection in rats’ barrel cortex. We showed that the detection of a novel object is accompanied in the barrel cortex by a transient burst of activity in the γ frequency range (40-47 Hz) around 200 ms after the whiskers contact with the object (Lapray et al., accepted). This activity was associated to a decrease in the lower range of γ frequencies (30-37 Hz). This network activity may represent the optimal oscillatory pattern for the propagation and storage of new information in memory related structures. The frequency as well as the timing of appearance correspond well with other studies concerning novelty detection related burst of activity in other sensory systems (Barcelo et al., 2006; Haenschel et al., 2000; Ranganath & Rainer, 2003). Here, the burst of activity is well suited to induce plastic and long-lasting modifications in neuronal circuits (Harris et al., 2003). The debate is still open whether synchronised activity in the brain is a part of information processing or an epiphenomenon (Shadlen & Movshon, 1999; Singer, 1999). The present work provides further evidence that neuronal network activity in the γ frequency range plays an important role in the neocortical processing of sensory stimuli and in higher cognitive functions.

Beta-Endorphin Modulates the Effect of Stress on Novelty-Suppressed Feeding

Although stress is implicated in the pathophysiology of mood and anxiety disorders, not all individuals who suffer stressful life events develop psychopathology. Differential susceptibility to stress may be influenced by genetically mediated differences in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity and moderation of the stress response by the opioid peptide beta-endorphin (beta-E). The present study investigated genetic contributions to coping behavior by examining anxious behavior of transgenic mice with varying capacities to synthesize beta-E [B6.129S2-Pomc(tm1Low)/J; regulated by insertion of a premature stop codon into one or both copies of the proopiomelanocortin (POMC) gene], both under normal conditions and following 3 min of forced swim (FS). Ten minutes after this stress exposure or a control manipulation, acutely food-deprived female and male transgenic mice were subjected to a novelty-suppressed feeding (NSF) test, during which their interaction with an almond slice located in the center of an open field box was measured. There was an interaction between genotype and stress for latency to approach the almond and whether or not the almond was approached, such that mice with low or absent beta-E displayed a stronger aversion to novelty-feeding after stress exposure than did mice with normal levels. These data provide evidence for a moderating effect of beta-E on the behavioral response to stress. Genotypic differences in anxious behavior emerged when mice were stressed prior to behavioral assessment, suggesting that beta-E plays a role in coping behavior. These findings indicate that genetic variability in sensitivity of the beta-E system to stress may contribute, at least in part, to heritable differences in stress reactivity as well as vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology.

Phenotypic novelty in experimental hybrids is predicted by the genetic distance between species of cichlid fish

Background: Transgressive segregation describes the occurrence of novel phenotypes in hybrids with extreme trait values not observed in either parental species. A previously experimentally untested prediction is that the amount of transgression increases with the genetic distance between hybridizing species. This follows from QTL studies suggesting that transgression is most commonly due to complementary gene action or epistasis, which become more frequent at larger genetic distances. This is because the number of QTLs fixed for alleles with opposing signs in different species should increase with time since speciation provided that speciation is not driven by disruptive selection. We measured the amount of transgression occurring in hybrids of cichlid fish bred from species pairs with gradually increasing genetic distances and varying phenotypic similarity. Transgression in multi-trait shape phenotypes was quantified using landmark-based geometric morphometric methods. Results: We found that genetic distance explained 52% and 78% of the variation in transgression frequency in F1 and F2 hybrids, respectively. Confirming theoretical predictions, transgression when measured in F2 hybrids, increased linearly with genetic distance between hybridizing species. Phenotypic similarity of species on the other hand was not related to the amount of transgression. Conclusion: The commonness and ease with which novel phenotypes are produced in cichlid hybrids between unrelated species has important implications for the interaction of hybridization with adaptation and speciation. Hybridization may generate new genotypes with adaptive potential that did not reside as standing genetic variation in either parental population, potentially enhancing a population's responsiveness to selection. Our results make it conceivable that hybridization contributed to the rapid rates of phenotypic evolution in the large and rapid adaptive radiations of haplochromine cichlids.

Swiss Patent Jurisprudence 2012

The new Swiss Federal Patent Court, with nationwide first-instance jurisdiction over all civil patent matters, has been operating since 1 January 2012. This article reviews and contextualizes the most important patent cases the Swiss Federal Patent Court and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. It concludes that the revamped Swiss patent litigation system has the potential of turning Switzerland into a competitive venue for the adjudication of patent matters in Europe.

Long-term change in the organization of inventive activity

Relying on a quantitative analysis of the patenting and assignment behavior of inventors, we highlight the evolution of institutions that encouraged trade in technology and a growing division of labor between those who invented new technologies and those who exploited them commercially over the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. At the heart of this change in the organization of inventive activity was a set of familiar developments which had significant consequences for the supply and demand of inventions. On the supply side, the growing complexity and capital intensity of technology raised the amount of human and physical capital required for effective invention, making it increasingly desirable for individuals involved in this activity to specialize. On the demand side, the growing competitiveness of product markets induced firms to purchase or otherwise obtain the rights to technologies developed by others. These increasing incentives to differentiate the task of invention from that of commercializing new technologies depended for their realization upon the development of markets and other types of organizational supports for trade in technology. The evidence suggests that the necessary institutions evolved first in those regions of the country where early patenting activity had already been concentrated. A self-reinforcing process whereby high rates of inventive activity encouraged the evolution of a market for technology, which in turn encouraged greater specialization and productivity at invention as individuals found it increasingly feasible to sell and license their discoveries, appears to have been operating. This market trade in technological information was an important contributor to the achievement of a high level of specialization at invention well before the rise of large-scale research laboratories in the twentieth century.