A general-equilibrium closed-form solution to the welfare costs of inflation (Forthcoming, Revista Brasileira de Economia)

This work presents closed-form solutions to Lucasís (2000) generalequilibrium expression for the welfare costs of ináation, as well as to the di§erence between the general-equlibrium measure and Baileyís (1956) partial-equilibrium measure. In Lucasís original work only numerical solutions are provided.

A simple demonstration of the existence of the jordan canonical form for any square matrix

All the demonstrations known to this author of the existence of the Jordan Canonical Form are somewhat complex - usually invoking the use of new spaces, and what not. These demonstrations are usually too difficult for an average Mathematics student to understand how he or she can obtain the Jordan Canonical Form for any square matrix. The method here proposed not only demonstrates the existence of such forms but, additionally, shows how to find them in a step by step manner. I do not claim that the following demonstration is in any way “elegant” (by the standards of elegance in fashion nowadays among mathematicians) but merely simple (undergraduate students taking a fist course in Matrix Algebra would understand how it works).

"Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" : romantic imagery in Mary Shelley's Frankstein

Romantic English literature – written at a time when prose fiction was predominantly a medium for sheer entertainment – is rooted in poetry. One or two novelists may exceptionally be granted the adjective “Romantic”, but Mary Shelley is not ranked among them. For centuries, her work has been restricted to that section in handbooks reserved for exotic Gothic literature. This thesis argues that literary criticism has failed to recognize Frankenstein’s obvious relation with the movement. The argument will be fostered by a brief look at such handbooks, and developed through the analysis of the imagery of the novel, so as to trace the Romantic elements there contained. The analysis relies mainly on the frame developed by Northrop Frye concerning the nature and function of imagery in literature. The concept of intertextuality will also be useful as a tool to account for the insertion of images in the novel, and for the novel’s insertion within the Romantic context. The work is divided into three parts. The first contextualizes the main issues set forth by Frankenstein, establishing connections with the life of the author and with the Romantic movement. The second exposes the theoretical basis on which the thesis is grounded. The last presents my reading of the novel’s web of images. In the end, I hope to validate the thesis proposed, that Frankenstein embodies the aesthetic and philosophical assessments of the English Romantic agenda, and therefore deserves to be situated in its due place in the English Literary canon as the legitimate representative of Romanticism in prose form.

Quebrando as regras: o poder discricionário na linha de frente do programa esportivo-social RIO 2016 um estudo sobre a situação do integrador de núcleo, um verdadeiro "sociological citizen"

Este estudo analisa o indivíduo que atua na linha de frente do RIO 2016, um programa social do Governo do Estado do Rio de Janeiro que opera 800 unidades de atendimento no Estado, com gestão da Secretaria de Estado de Esporte e Lazer. O indivíduo analisado nesta pesquisa é denominado Integrador de Núcleo Esportivo e é o responsável pela gestão de uma dessas unidades — Núcleo Esportivo — que atende em média 50 alunos de uma comunidade carente no Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Essa pesquisa analisa o Integrador de Núcleo Esportivo sob uma perspectiva inédita, entendendo-o como um agente que atua além do seu escopo burocrático de trabalho. Para esse estudo foram consideradas teorias sobre burocracia organizacional, lançando mão da literatura de Michel Crozier ―The Bureaucratic Phenomenon‖ (1964), que analisa as relações entre pessoas, grupos e poder para entender a influência da organização burocrática no indivíduo. O termo ―sociological citizen‖,desenvolvido por Silbey (2009), também foi considerado para classificar esse indivíduo que se mostra mais aplicado que outros nos serviço de seu mandato organizacional e legal. Silbey aplica também o termo ―relational regulation‖ para denominar esta forma particular de prática da ―cidadania sociológica‖ (tradução do autor), por meio da qual os agentes ―governam a lacuna existente entre as expectativas regulatórias e o desempenho requerido‖.

KittyCat: a cognitive model of structure-form discovery

Cognition is a core subject to understand how humans think and behave. In that sense, it is clear that Cognition is a great ally to Management, as the later deals with people and is very interested in how they behave, think, and make decisions. However, even though Cognition shows great promise as a field, there are still many topics to be explored and learned in this fairly new area. Kemp & Tenembaum (2008) tried to a model graph-structure problem in which, given a dataset, the best underlying structure and form would emerge from said dataset by using bayesian probabilistic inferences. This work is very interesting because it addresses a key cognition problem: learning. According to the authors, analogous insights and discoveries, understanding the relationships of elements and how they are organized, play a very important part in cognitive development. That is, this are very basic phenomena that allow learning. Human beings minds do not function as computer that uses bayesian probabilistic inferences. People seem to think differently. Thus, we present a cognitively inspired method, KittyCat, based on FARG computer models (like Copycat and Numbo), to solve the proposed problem of discovery the underlying structural-form of a dataset.

Alasdair Gray`s 1982 Janine (1984): a postmodernist scottish novel

Alasdair Gray is now an established figure in the Scottish literary scene and has numerous claims to be considered an important voice writing in English. First Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) and then 1982 Janine (1984) contributed to the recognition of Gray as one of the founding fathers of the new Scottish writing and as a figure of importance in international contemporary fiction due to his innovative, experimental and postmodernist novels. As the title of this dissertation - “Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine (1984): A Postmodernist Scottish Novel” - suggests, it aims at analysing the author’s second novel, 1982 Janine (1984), in a thematic and formal perspective, in order to justify the choice of the terms - Postmodernist and Scottish - to classify this novel. 1982 Janine projects a world through Jock McLeish’s mind and is a powerful stream-of-consciousness narrative. Jock is an alcoholic who lives a personal crisis and, therefore, tries to escape from his depressing reality through sexual fantasies and political diatribes. During a single night in a Scottish hotel room, he drinks and dreams, and spends the whole night alone with his fantasies and fears, his memories and hopes. In Chapter 11, the most daring experimental section of the novel, Jock attempts to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tablets with alcohol but fails. Following this, he decides to review his life and make for a new beginning; the novel thus closing with an optimistic note. Also, the narrative is based on a constant interweaving of sex fantasy with political satire, that is, it is through his protagonist that Gray manages to convey the state of Scotland as well as the concerns and aspirations of the Scottish people and then, proceed to a political and social critique. This dissertation appears structured in three chapters. In Chapter I - “Alasdair Gray: A Postmodernist Scottish Writer” - I present Gray as a powerful postmodernist writer who also sees himself as a Scottish author, and more particularly as a Glaswegian, who concentrates on Scottish subject matter in his literary work. In a first section, I offer a brief survey of the Scottish literary scene from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, in order to understand Gray’s choice of setting and themes and to check his influence or indebtedness to previous Scottish authors. As 1982 Janine is also a good example of selfconscious experimental writing, in a second section, I present various seminal fictional works that introduced and developed experimentalism in British fiction, in order to evaluate the influence of modernist developments in form and technique on recent experimental writing. The third section consists of an introduction to Gray’s work for he is not only a novelist, but also an artist, a playwright, a poet, an activist and a scholar. Chapter II - “Postmodernist Features in 1982 Janine” - aims at listing and examining the postmodernist devices that the novel includes, in what content and form are concerned. On the one hand, the use of a developed type of the modernist stream of consciousness, the presence of a protagonist who feels entrapped in a specific system, the quest for freedom, the incoherence and fragmentation of time, the nonchronological order of the narrative, the blending of fantasy and “reality”, as well as the importance of the Scottish material are definitely current aspects within postmodernist literature that can be found in Gray’s novel. On the other hand, the handling of literary self-conscious devices, such as typographical experimentation, presence of metafiction and intertextuality, and inclusion of an Epilogue, are likewise among recurrent postmodernist features. As the title - “A Narratological Analysis of 1982 Janine” - evidences, Chapter III offers a description of the mechanics of the narrative and its functioning in order to better understand the narrative technique of postmodernist fiction. This study is based primarily on Gérard Genette’s theoretical framework and terminology, presented in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, an analytical tool that allows me to provide a more objective and scientific analysis. Hence, I follow the Genettian division of narrative discourse in Time, Mood and Voice while examining the novel. Finally, I proceed to a description of the intertextual relationships 1982 Janine establishes with other texts.

Narrativas do Brasil nas memórias de Pedro Nava

This thesis is a translation of work of the Brazilian doctor, Pedro da Silva Nava (1903-1984), in particular, his memoirs and chronicles, articulated with the writings of medicine history, aiming to defend that the autobiographical narratives are sources of research capable of promoting discussions on the expansion of the present at the confluence of complex and unequal society in constant changing process as the Brazilian. The theoretical and methodological support circulates around studies, proposals and thesis by Boaventura Santos about empowering past, destabilizing subjectivity, sociology of absences, cosmopolitan reason and translation work. The empirical support drawn from the literature produced by Nava were analyzed with reference this reasoning and studies that have facilitated the flow of translation among others, the studies of Antonio Candido, Arrigucci Jr., Boris Cyrulnik, Beatriz Sarlo, Ecléa Bosi, Ítalo Calvino, José Willington Germano, José Maria Cançado, Lev Vygotsky, Marilena Chauí, Paul Ricöeur and Walter Benjamim, without neglecting what we consider indispensable to scientific research, the production of relevant knowledge and prudent, in view of a decent life. The initial inflections reflect the subject of the Memoirs and its education/training, to then place the Memoir subject in the literary context, scientific, historical and Brazilian poetic (1972-2010), bringing great interpreters and discussing the rationale used by the Narrator that we defend stand closer to the cosmopolitan, showing the formation of narratives whose presence insert itself beforehand to modernist verve, linked to the discursive array against the literature as domination space, disseminated in Brazil in the early twentieth century. So, it articulate with those in which the concerns adjust the construction of the social formation of Brazil as a national heritage through literary narrative that focuses on a historical principle that becomes the past empowering, allowing his rereading, whose converge to memory, the lifestyles, the plurality of language and Brazilian culture, formed by several people, converging into a design not of culture but multiculturalism in Brazil. The memory issue was addressed in the space-time of experiences of being that narrates, shaped by a destabilizing subjectivity that sought to order the testimony of a time, a history and society, retelling them by creative imagination, almost fictional, to make circulate his knowledge about Brazil attached to his medical knowledge, as well as other subjects in his living group and other groups with whom they maintained contact. Thus, he portrayed both tangible and intangible cultural assets of the country as a form of preservation, giving them meanings and sense. It approaches, therefore, from the perspective of sociology of absences, the expansion of the present and by the logic inherent in his narratives of self and Brazil

O direito social fundamental de acesso à energia elétrica e a atuação estatal

Electrical energy today is an essential element in the life of any human being. Through the access to electrical energy it is possible to enjoy dignified conditions of life, having in mind the possibility of making use of minimal material conditions of life. The lack of access to electricity is directly linked to poverty and degrading conditions of life, in which are some communities in Brazil, especially the more isolated from urban centers. Access to the electric service is a determining factor for the preservation of human dignity, constitutional principle inscribe in the art.1 of the Federal Constitution, and the promotion of development, being a right of everyone and a duty of the State to promote universal access. For that reason, focuses mainly on the analysis of their setting as a fundamental social right and its importance for national development. For this, the theoretical and descriptive method was used, with normative and literary analysis, in particular the Constitution of 1988. This study also discusses the form of action of the State in the energy sector, to give effect to the fundamental social right of access to electricity, the characteristics of public service and the principles that guide it, in addition to the role of public policies in universalization of access, in particular the analysis of the Program Luz para Todos, and the function of regulation in the implementation of these policies and the provision of adequate public services.

A prática docente de Myriam Coeli na década de 1960

The present work has as objective to reconstitute the biographical profile and pedagogical practices of the teacher Myriam Coeli de Araújo Dantas da Silveira, in the Professionalizing scholl of the Federal Net of the Rio Grande do Norte, in the 60 s years. The choice of the period is justified by being this the time of important changes in the Education, as an example we have the implementation of the Law of Lines of direction and Bases of the National Education, the 4.024/1961. This teacher contributed for the formation of the potiguar s society scholar, acting in the press, the journalism and the teaching, activity that I analyzed in this study. How the pedagogical practices of her had happened in the 60 s years? This question guided the research and, in the search to answer it I used as source the Public Archive of the Rio grande do Norte, the Historical and Geographic Institute of the Rio grande do Norte, the periodicals of the time, photographs, sketch books of Myriam Coeli and interviews with familiar, former-pupils and contemporaries of this master. I verified that her performance always was based in the educational changes lived deeply for her, carrying through a series of activities in the school as: elaboration of the annual program of Portuguese Language, organization of literary competitions and an practice based on the effective norms without leaving to unite respect and the understanding for the pupils. Of this form, the analysis is not summarized only to the practices of a teacher, but the configuration, in part, of the Rio Grande do Norte educational history in a determined period, the 60 s years

Uma visita ao universo matemático de Lewis Carrol e o (re)encontro com sua lógica do nonsense

Notable mathematics teacher, Lewis Carroll, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), made the mixture of mathematics with literature a ludic environment for learning that discipline. Author of Alice s Adventures In Wonderland and its sequel Alice Through The Looking Glass, he eventually created a real and complex universe which uses what we call the logic of the nonsense as an element to motivate the development of mathematical thinking of the reader, taking it as well, learn by establishing a link between the concrete (mathematics) and the imaginary (their universe). In order to investigate and discuss the educational potential of their works and state some elements that can contribute to a decentralized math education from the traditional method of following the models and decorate formulas, we visited his works based on the studies of archeology of knowledge (FOUCAULT, 2007), the rational thought and symbolic thinking (VERGANI, 2003) and about the importance of stories and narratives to the development of human cognition (FARIAS, 2006). Through a descriptive, analytical study, we used the literary construction and presented part of our study in form of a mathematical novel, to give the mathematical school a particular charm, without depriving it of its basics properties as discipline and content. Our study showed how the works of Carroll have a strong didactic element that can deploy in various activities of study and teaching for mathematics classes

Effects of corn particle size and physical form of the diet on the gastrointestinal structures of broiler chickens

The objective of this experiment was to investigate the effects of different particle sizes, expressed as Geometric Mean Diameter (GMD) of corn (0.336mm, 0.585mm, 0.856mm and 1.12mm) of mash and pelleted broiler chicken diets on the weight of the gizzard, duodenum and jejunum+ileum; on the pH of the gizzard and small intestine and on the characteristics of the duodenal mucous layer (number and height of villi and crypt depth) in 42-day-old broilers. The physical form and the particle size of the diet had no significant effect on gizzard and intestine pH (p > 0.05). A greater gizzard weight was seen in the birds receiving pelleted diet and particle size of 0.336mm (p < 0.008). However, for the particle sizes of 0.856 and 1.12 mm, a greater weight was found in birds that received mash diet (p < 0.039 and p < 0.006, respectively). Also, gizzard weight was greater with increasing corn GMD independent of the physical form of the diet. In the mash diet, the increase in particle size promoted a quadratic response in the weight of duodenum and jejunum + ileum. The pelleted diet promoted a greater number of villi per transverse duodenum cut (p < 0.007) and greater crypt depth (p < 0.05). As the particle size increased, there was a linear increase of villus height and crypt depth in the duodenum, irrespective of the physical form of the diet.

Um olho torto na literatura de Graciliano Ramos

This dissertation analyses, within a psychoanalytical e literary perspective, the enigma of blindness in Graciliano Ramos s work. The approach takes into account, mainly, the narratives of Histórias de Alexandre (Alexandre s tales) and Infância (Childhood memories) as both books speak of the same theme: the injured eye. The writer s work is scourged so that a broaden symbolism regarding the hurt eye can be found. The subject is discussed from three significant elements: fragmentation, helplessness and melancholy; all these form the creative aesthetic of Graciliano, merging into a single object. Fragmentation representing the internal shattered world of his characters, which is reflected in the environment; helplessness, directly related to feelings of rejection; and melancholy, characterized by a strong feeling of emptiness. The theme of isolation and loss is discussed based on Mourning and melancholy, by Freud, and other theorizers. There is also a brief dialogue with the Romantic and philosophical theories, which tries to explain the melancholic condition in the individual before moments of distress. Such theories are the support for the understanding of the helplessness of the hero in Graciliano Ramos´s literature and for the assumption that the blindness in the mistreated boy of the book Infância could be the language of the traumatic aspect that colors the entire text of the writer. As matter of fact, it constitutes in the lost object represented in the anguish of the author s characters