AÇÃO PASTORAL DA IGREJA CATÓLICA APOSTÓLICA ROMANA FACE AO DIREITO À INSERÇÃO SOCIAL DE PESSOAS EM SITUAÇÃO DE RUA

A proposta do presente estudo é verificar a ação pastoral da Igreja Católica junto ao povo de rua da cidade de São Paulo, tendo como objetivo formar um conceito teórico sobre a contribuição social da pastoral em um contexto urbano, a partir da ação de Entid ades de apoio ao povo de rua. A metodologia utilizada foi a bibliográfica. As implicações do estudo foram o direcionamento que a práxis pastoral está direcionada à priorização da superação e do reconhecimento da necessidade material e psicossocial de quem está morando na rua. A concretização da práxis se dá por meio de uma prática interventora sócio-politica, a qual visa a efetivação de medidas públicas para uma demanda de pessoas que usam a rua como moradia. A ação pastoral contribui ao mostrar a ausência de política pública que dificulta o reconhecimento deste grupo social como pessoas capacitadas a produzir e pertencer a sociedade em geral. E, ao mesmo tempo em que aponta a lacuna exposta pelo poder público, o agir pastoral sinaliza alternativa para o reconhecimento de pessoas que moram na rua com parcerias entre entidades não governamentais e movimentos sociais, como o MST, sendo assim uma via de reinserção social, além da promoção de Fóruns para a criação de medidas públicas com participação direta de pessoas que vivem na rua e albergues da cidade de São Paulo. Portanto, verifica-se uma práxis pastoral fundamentada por uma responsabilidade social dinamizada pela prática de parceria participativa que envolva as diversas esferas sociais para efetivação concreta dos direitos sociais da pessoa em situação de rua que vive em áreas urbana como a Cidade de São Paulo.

Sustaining cooperation on networks: an analytical study based on evolutionary game theory

We analytically study the role played by the network topology in sustaining cooperation in a society of myopic agents in an evolutionary setting. In our model, each agent plays the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) game with its neighbors, as specified by a network. Cooperation is the incumbent strategy, whereas defectors are the mutants. Starting with a population of cooperators, some agents are switched to defection. The agents then play the PD game with their neighbors and compute their fitness. After this, an evolutionary rule, or imitation dynamic is used to update the agent strategy. A defector switches back to cooperation if it has a cooperator neighbor with higher fitness. The network is said to sustain cooperation if almost all defectors switch to cooperation. Earlier work on the sustenance of cooperation has largely consisted of simulation studies, and we seek to complement this body of work by providing analytical insight for the same. We find that in order to sustain cooperation, a network should satisfy some properties such as small average diameter, densification, and irregularity. Real-world networks have been empirically shown to exhibit these properties, and are thus candidates for the sustenance of cooperation. We also analyze some specific graphs to determine whether or not they sustain cooperation. In particular, we find that scale-free graphs belonging to a certain family sustain cooperation, whereas Erdos-Renyi random graphs do not. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first analytical attempt to determine which networks sustain cooperation in a population of myopic agents in an evolutionary setting.

Human cooperation based on punishment reputation.

The threat of punishment usually promotes cooperation. However, punishing itself is costly, rare in nonhuman animals, and humans who punish often finish with low payoffs in economic experiments. The evolution of punishment has therefore been unclear. Recent theoretical developments suggest that punishment has evolved in the context of reputation games. We tested this idea in a simple helping game with observers and with punishment and punishment reputation (experimentally controlling for other possible reputational effects). We show that punishers fully compensate their costs as they receive help more often. The more likely defection is punished within a group, the higher the level of within-group cooperation. These beneficial effects perish if the punishment reputation is removed. We conclude that reputation is key to the evolution of punishment.

Cooperative Task Execution between Modular Robots Based on Tight-Loose Cooperation Strategies

The complexity in the execution of cooperative tasks is high due to the fact that a robot team requires movement coordination at the beginning of the mission and continuous coordination during the execution of the task. A variety of techniques have been proposed to give a solution to this problem assuming standard mobile robots. This work focuses on presenting the execution of a cooperative task by a modular robot team. The complexity of the task execution increases due to the fact that each robot is composed of modules which have to be coordinated in a proper way to successfully work. A combined tight and loose cooperation strategy is presented and a bar-pushing example is used as a cooperative task to show the performance of this type of system.

Patriotism’s impact on cooperation with the state: An experimental study on tax compliance

Although it seems reasonable to assume that activating patriotism might motivate citizens to cooperate with the state in reaching societal goals, the empirical evidence supporting this contention is based mostly on correlational rather than experimental studies. In addition, little is known on whether patriotism can be manipulated without simultaneously triggering nationalism and on the psychological processes which determine the patriotism-cooperation relation. This current article reports results of one survey and three experiments that manipulate patriotism by displaying either a national flag or national landscapes or by priming national achievements. The outcomes indicate that reported and manipulated patriotism indirectly increase tax compliance, although the national flag also increases nationalism. National achievements, on the other hand, seemingly increases trust in national public institutions and the voluntary motivation to cooperate, whereas national landscapes only increase the voluntary motivation to cooperate. Hence, it is possible to increase social capital in the form of trust and cooperation through patriotism without fostering nationalism as well.

Microscopic cooperative traffic flow: Calibration and simulation based on a next generation simulation dataset

The deployment of new emerging technologies, such as cooperative systems, allows the traffic community to foresee relevant improvements in terms of traffic safety and efficiency. Autonomous vehicles are able to share information about the local traffic state in real time, which could result in a better reaction to the mechanism of traffic jam formation. An upstream single-hop radio broadcast network can improve the perception of each cooperative driver within a specific radio range and hence the traffic stability. The impact of vehicle to vehicle cooperation on the onset of traffic congestion is investigated analytically and through simulation. A next generation simulation field dataset is used to calibrate the full velocity difference car-following model, and the MOBIL lane-changing model is implemented. The robustness of the calibration as well as the heterogeneity of the drivers is discussed. Assuming that congestion can be triggered either by the heterogeneity of drivers' behaviours or abnormal lane-changing behaviours, the calibrated car-following model is used to assess the impact of a microscopic cooperative law on egoistic lane-changing behaviours. The cooperative law can help reduce and delay traffic congestion and can have a positive effect on safety indicators.

Essays on cooperation and reciprocity

This dissertation comprises three essays that use theory-based experiments to gain understanding of how cooperation and efficiency is affected by certain variables and institutions in different types of strategic interactions prevalent in our society.

Chapter 2 analyzes indefinite horizon two-person dynamic favor exchange games with private information in the laboratory. Using a novel experimental design to implement a dynamic game with a stochastic jump signal process, this study provides insights into a relation where cooperation is without immediate reciprocity. The primary finding is that favor provision under these conditions is considerably less than under the most efficient equilibrium. Also, individuals do not engage in exact score-keeping of net favors, rather, the time since the last favor was provided affects decisions to stop or restart providing favors.

Evidence from experiments in Cournot duopolies is presented in Chapter 3 where players indulge in a form of pre-play communication, termed as revision phase, before playing the one-shot game. During this revision phase individuals announce their tentative quantities, which are publicly observed, and revisions are costless. The payoffs are determined only by the quantities selected at the end under real time revision, whereas in a Poisson revision game, opportunities to revise arrive according to a synchronous Poisson process and the tentative quantity corresponding to the last revision opportunity is implemented. Contrasting results emerge. While real time revision of quantities results in choices that are more competitive than the static Cournot-Nash, significantly lower quantities are implemented in the Poisson revision games. This shows that partial cooperation can be sustained even when individuals interact only once.

Chapter 4 investigates the effect of varying the message space in a public good game with pre-play communication where player endowments are private information. We find that neither binary communication nor a larger finite numerical message space results in any efficiency gain relative to the situation without any form of communication. Payoffs and public good provision are higher only when participants are provided with a discussion period through unrestricted text chat.

A high-speed image sensing technique with adjustable frame rate based on an ordinary CCD

In the sinusoidal phase modulating interferometer technique, the high-speed CCD is necessary to detect the interference signals. The reason of ordinary CCD's low frame rate was analyzed, and a novel high-speed image sensing technique with adjustable frame rate based on ail ordinary CCD was proposed. And the principle of the image sensor was analyzed. When the maximum frequency and channel bandwidth were constant, a custom high-speed sensor was designed by using the ordinary CCD under the control of the special driving circuit. The frame rate of the ordinary CCD has been enhanced by controlling the number of pixels of every frame; therefore, the ordinary of CCD can be used as the high frame rate image sensor with small amount of pixels. The multi-output high-speed image sensor has the deficiencies of low accuracy, and high cost, while the high-speed image senor with small number of pixels by using this technique can overcome theses faults. The light intensity varying with time was measured by using the image sensor. The frame rate was LIP to 1600 frame per second (f/s), and the size of every frame and the frame rate were adjustable. The correlation coefficient between the measurement result and the standard values were higher than 0.98026, and the relative error was lower than 0.53%. The experimental results show that this sensor is fit to the measurements of sinusoidal phase modulating interferometer technique. (c) 2007 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Multi-level planning for semi-autonomous vehicles in traffic scenarios based on separation maximization

The planning of semi-autonomous vehicles in traffic scenarios is a relatively new problem that contributes towards the goal of making road travel by vehicles free of human drivers. An algorithm needs to ensure optimal real time planning of multiple vehicles (moving in either direction along a road), in the presence of a complex obstacle network. Unlike other approaches, here we assume that speed lanes are not present and that different lanes do not need to be maintained for inbound and outbound traffic. Our basic hypothesis is to carry forward the planning task to ensure that a sufficient distance is maintained by each vehicle from all other vehicles, obstacles and road boundaries. We present here a 4-layer planning algorithm that consists of road selection (for selecting the individual roads of traversal to reach the goal), pathway selection (a strategy to avoid and/or overtake obstacles, road diversions and other blockages), pathway distribution (to select the position of a vehicle at every instance of time in a pathway), and trajectory generation (for generating a curve, smooth enough, to allow for the maximum possible speed). Cooperation between vehicles is handled separately at the different levels, the aim being to maximize the separation between vehicles. Simulated results exhibit behaviours of smooth, efficient and safe driving of vehicles in multiple scenarios; along with typical vehicle behaviours including following and overtaking.

Local politico-administrative perspectives on quality improvement based on national registry data in Sweden : a qualitative study using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research.

Background. Through a national policy agreement, over 167 million Euros will be invested in the Swedish National Quality Registries (NQRs) between 2012 and 2016. One of the policy agreement¿s intentions is to increase the use of NQR data for quality improvement (QI). However, the evidence is fragmented as to how the use of medical registries and the like lead to quality improvement, and little is known about non-clinical use. The aim was therefore to investigate the perspectives of Swedish politicians and administrators on quality improvement based on national registry data. Methods. Politicians and administrators from four county councils were interviewed. A qualitative content analysis guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was performed. Results. The politicians and administrators perspectives on the use of NQR data for quality improvement were mainly assigned to three of the five CFIR domains. In the domain of intervention characteristics, data reliability and access in reasonable time were not considered entirely satisfactory, making it difficult for the politico-administrative leaderships to initiate, monitor, and support timely QI efforts. Still, politicians and administrators trusted the idea of using the NQRs as a base for quality improvement. In the domain of inner setting, the organizational structures were not sufficiently developed to utilize the advantages of the NQRs, and readiness for implementation appeared to be inadequate for two reasons. Firstly, the resources for data analysis and quality improvement were not considered sufficient at politico-administrative or clinical level. Secondly, deficiencies in leadership engagement at multiple levels were described and there was a lack of consensus on the politicians¿ role and level of involvement. Regarding the domain of outer setting, there was a lack of communication and cooperation between the county councils and the national NQR organizations. Conclusions. The Swedish experiences show that a government-supported national system of well-funded, well-managed, and reputable national quality registries needs favorable local politico-administrative conditions to be used for quality improvement; such conditions are not yet in place according to local politicians and administrators.

The influence of the supply chain agents on the new product development's performance: an analysis based on the multi-group moderation

Este estudo buscou verificar a influencia dos agentes da cadeia de suprimentos no desempenho do desenvolvimento de novos produtos quando os agentes são analisados em conjunto. A motivação desta pesquisa veio de estudos que alertaram para a consideração da integração da cadeia de suprimentos como um constructo multidimensional, englobando o envolvimento da manufatura, fornecedores e clientes no desenvolvimento de novos produtos; e devido à falta de informação sobre as influencias individuais destes agentes no desenvolvimento de novos produtos. Sob essas considerações, buscou-se construir um modelo analítico baseado na Teoria do Capital Social e Capacidade Absortiva, construir hipóteses a partir da revisão da literatura e conectar constructos como cooperação, envolvimento do fornecedor no desenvolvimento de novos produtos (DNP), envolvimento do cliente no DNP, envolvimento da manufatura no DNP, antecipação de novas tecnologias, melhoria contínua, desempenho operacional do DNP, desempenho de mercado do NPD e desempenho de negócio do DNP. Para testar as hipóteses foram consideradas três variáveis moderadoras, tais como turbulência ambiental (baixa, média e alta), indústria (eletrônicos, maquinários e equipamentos de transporte) e localização (América, Europa e Ásia). Para testar o modelo foram usados dados do projeto High Performance Manufacturing que contém 339 empresas das indústrias de eletrônicos, maquinários e equipamentos de transporte, localizadas em onze países. As hipóteses foram testadas por meio da Análise Fatorial Confirmatória (AFC) incluindo a moderação muti-grupo para as três variáveis moderadoras mencionadas anteriormente. Os principais resultados apontaram que as hipóteses relacionadas com cooperação foram confirmadas em ambientes de média turbulência, enquanto as hipóteses relacionadas ao desempenho no DNP foram confirmadas em ambientes de baixa turbulência ambiental e em países asiáticos. Adicionalmente, sob as mesmas condições, fornecedores, clientes e manufatura influenciam diferentemente no desempenho de novos produtos. Assim, o envolvimento de fornecedores influencia diretamente no desempenho operacional e indiretamente no desempenho de mercado e de negócio em baixos níveis de turbulência ambiental, na indústria de equipamentos de transporte em países da Americanos e Europeus. De igual forma, o envolvimento do cliente influenciou diretamente no desempenho operacional e indiretamente no desempenho de mercado e do negócio em médio nível de turbulência ambiental, na indústria de maquinários e em países Asiáticos. Fornecedores e clientes não influenciam diretamente no desempenho de mercado e do negócio e não influenciam indiretamente no desempenho operacional. O envolvimento da manufatura não influenciou nenhum tipo de desempenho do desenvolvimento de novos produtos em todos os cenários testados.

New method for determination of (E)resveratrol in wine based on microextraction using packed sorbent and ultra-performance liquid chromatography

An ultra-fast and improved analytical methodology based on microextraction by packed sorbent (MEPS) combined with ultra-performance LC (UPLC) was developed and validated for determination of (E)-resveratrol in wines. Important factors affecting the performance of MEPS such as the type of sorbent material (C2, C8, C18, SIL, and M1), number of extraction cycles, and sample volume were studied. The optimal conditions of MEPS extraction were obtained using C8 sorbent and small sample volumes (50–250mL) in one extraction cycle (extract–discard) and in a short time period (about 3 min for the entire sample preparation step). (E)-Resveratrol was eluted by 1 250mL of the mixture containing 95% methanol and 5% water, and the separation was carried out on a highstrength silica HSS T3 analytical column (100 mm 2.1 mm, 1.8mm particle size) using a binary mobile phase composed of aqueous 0.1% formic acid (eluent A) and methanol (eluent B) in the gradient elution mode (10 min of total analysis). The method was fully validated in terms of linearity, detection (LOD) and quantification (LOQ) limits, extraction yield, accuracy, and inter/intra-day precision, using a Madeira wine sample (ET) spiked with (E)-resveratrol at concentration levels ranging from 5 to 60mg/mL. Validation experiments revealed very good recovery rate of 9575.8% RSD, good linearity with r2 values 40.999 within the established concentration range, excellent repeatability (0.52%), and reproducibility (1.67%) values (expressed as RSD), thus demonstrating the robustness and accuracy of the MEPSC8/UPLC-photodiode array (PDA) method. The LOD of the method was 0.21mg/mL, whereas the LOQ was 0.68mg/mL. The validated methodology was applied to 30 commercial wines (24 red wines and six white wines) from different grape varieties, vintages, and regions. On the basis of the analytical validation, the MEPSC8/UPLC-PDA methodology shows to be an improved, sensitive, and ultra-fast approach for determination of (E)-resveratrol in wines with high resolving power within 6 min.

Pension funds and the financing productive investment: an analysis based on Brazil's recent experience

Includes bibliography

Impacts of Trade in Non-timber Forest Products on Cooperation among Caboclo Households of the Brazilian Amazon

Trade in non-timber forest products (NTFPs) has been touted as promoting forest conservation and enhancing the well-being of local residents through increased cash income, which is considered a positive outcome. However, research on cooperation has demonstrated that increased market access and income may strengthen or weaken cooperation. Because cooperation is essential for community resilience in small-scale societies, negative effects on people's well-being can be expected if increased NTFP trade reduces cooperation. To evaluate whether NTFP trade affected cooperation, we used household data (survey and systematic observations) to compare the frequency of cooperation in two communities of Brazilian Amazon Caboclos, one of which engaged in NTFP trade, while the other did not. Cooperation was less frequent in the community trading NTFPs, but neither household cash income nor household participation in NTFP exploitation was associated with cooperative behavior. Decreased frequency most likely derived from indirect effects of NTFP trade, such as less time to fish or socialize, or other outcomes observable only at the community level, such as income inequality, the influx of new residents and consequent population growth. Our results indicate that conservation and development projects based on NTFP trade may negatively impact social and economic well-being of local communities.

Experimental analysis of a separation control device based on plasma technology

In this thesis effects of plasma actuators based on Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) technology over a NACA 0015 bidimensional airfoil have been analyzed in an experimental way, at low Reynolds number. Work developed on thesis has been carried on in partnership with the Department of Electrical Engineering of Università di Bologna, inside Wind Tunnel of the Applied Aerodynamic Laboratory of Aerospace Engineering faculty. In order to verify the effectiveness of these active control devices, the analysis has shown how actuators succeed in prevent boundary layer separation only in certain conditions af angle of attack and Reynolds numbers. Moreover, in this thesis actuators’ chordwise position effect has been also analyzed, together with the influence of steady and unsteady operations.