THE ROLE OF AREA-YIELD CROP INSURANCE IN FARMERS' ADJUSTMENT AGAINST RISK IN A DRYLAND REGION OF PORTUGAL

This research develops a mathematical programming model to maximize the expected utility of the farmers' wealth-producing cereals in the Alentejo dryland region of Portugal, and it is used to determine the premium rate that crop farmers are willing to pay for reducing the variability of their incomes, and the Portuguese government subsidy of the premium rate in the case where the farmer is not willing to pay the totality of this.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty,

CUMULATIVE PROSPECT THEORY: A STUDY OF THE FARMERS' DECISION BEHAVIOR IN THE ALENTEJO DRYLAND REGION OF PORTUGAL

The mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy will change the way the European Union supports its farm sector. The new Common Agricultural Policy will be geared towards consumers, and taxpayers, while giving farmers the freedom to produce what the market wants. In the future, the majority of the subsidies will be paid independentlty from the volume of production. To avoid abandonment of production, Member States may choose to maintain a limited link between subsidy and production under well conditions and within clear limits. These new "single farm payment" will be linked to the respect of environmental, food safety and animal welfare standards. Severing the link between subsidies and production will make farmers more competitive and market oriented, while providing the necessary income stability. As the subsidy becomes a common component of all the alternatives of decision, the farmer will segregate that common component of the problem in the edition phase, starting to make decisions with base in negative results, what can determine the abandonment of the farming activity. This research work intends to know, to characterize and to identify the farmers' behavior in the Alentejo dryland region of Portugal, when they face to the emerging reality of the new Common Agricultural Policy. The Cumulative Prospect Theory allows to model the farmers' behavior, because besides defining that the results are appraised in agreement with variations in relation to the initial wealth, this theory treats in a differentiated way gains and losses. The value functions and the weighting probabilities are elicited by the Trade-off and Certainty Equivalent methods for a group of farmers in the Alentejo dryland region. These functions will constitute the objective function of a discrete sequential stochastic programming model, whose restrictions describe the crop and livestock farms in their productive, financial, commercial and taxes components. Model results show that the introduction of the total decoupling payments leads to the abandonment of the crop production in the Alentejo dryland region and an increase of the livestock production in the natural pastures. The crop farms stop producing, except the farms that have good soils continue to produce, although these farms do not produce durum wheat and they start to produce barley and oats. With respect to the beef cattle farms, these farms maintain the number of cattle heads, they increase the pasture and forage areas and they substitute durum wheat for oats and barley. The sheep farms reduce the number of cattle heads drastically and they substitute durum wheat for barley and oats.Farm Management,

The Role of area-yield crop insurance program face to the Mid-term Review of Common Agricultural Policy

The mid-term review of Common Agricultural Policy increases the complexity of the decision-making process of farmers. The subsidies are substituted for a single decoupled income payment. The farmers decide what crops and livestock will produce based on climate, soils conditions and agricultural market signals and not based on subsidies granted to each one of the crop and livestock activities. The area-yield crop insurance program might have an important role on increasing production and facing natural catastrophes. This paper studies the introduction of the area-yield crop insurance program to reduce the risk originating from the variability of farmers' income and to compare this alternative with other agricultural policy alternatives in the context of the mid-term review of Common Agricultural Policy. The comparison of the introduction of the area-yield crop insurance program with other agricultural policy alternatives is made through an approach using concepts of the Cumulative Prospect Theory, because besides defining that the results are appraised in agreement with changes in relation to the initial wealth, this theory treats in a differentiated way gains and losses. A discrete sequential stochastic programming model with five states of nature is developed to study agricultural policy alternatives. The objective function is constituted by a set of functions (the value function and the probability weighting function) differentiated for gains and losses, in that the total value of the game is given by the sum of the positive and negative components. The value functions and the weighting probabilities are elicited by the Trade-off and Certainty Equivalent methods for a group of farmers in the Alentejo dryland region of Portugal. The set of constraint restrictions describes the environment in which the Alentejo farmers develop their crop and livestock activities in all their components: production, financial, marketing and taxes. Model results show the introduction of the area-yield crop insurance program with full decoupling of income payments from agricultural production under the mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy has positive effects in the agricultural production. This new Agricultural Policy guarantees a minimum farm income, while the area-yield crop insurance program allows making face to the agricultural production variability and avoids the abandonment of the farming activity in the Alentejo dryland region.Cumulative Propospect Theory, Mid-Term Review of the Common Agricultural Policy, Discrete Sequential Stochastic Programming Model, Area-Yield Crop Insurance program, Risk and Uncertainty,

Age and growth of Zapteryx brevirostris (Elasmobranchii: Rhinobatidae) in southern Brazil

Age and growth studies are fundamental to successful fisheries management. Zapteryx brevirostris (Muller & Henle, 1841) is distributed off the Brazilian continental shelf and this species is assessed as "Vulnerable" in the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Thus, the objective of this study was to present previously unknown information about the age and growth of Z. brevirostris that can be used for its management, conservation, and fisheries. A total of 162 specimens were sampled, with total lengths (TL) varying between 35.7 cm and 56 cm. The vertebrae were embedded in resin, sectioned in cuts with 0.5 mm thickness and the growth bands of the vertebrae were read under a light microscope. In the studied area, Z. brevirostris ages were estimated from 4 to 10 years according to vertebrae patterns. The species reaches its maximum asymptotic size (Linf) around 56 cm (56 cm for females and 50.37 cm for males). This is the first estimate of age and growth for a species of the Zapteryx genus, and the results support the hypothesis that this ray requires future management conservation, particularly due to its slow growth rate and consequent susceptibility to overexploitation.Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES); Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia) [IF/00253/2014

LA PERICIA MÉDICO LEGAL COMO FORMA DE PRODUCIR LA VERDAD Y SUS ADVERSARIOS EN LOS TRIBUNALES BRASILEÑOS DE ENTREGUERRAS

The medico-legal examination ensured the existence and the social impact of the biological positivist approaches to criminology that gained influence in Brazil during the interwar period. This examination turned scientific knowledge into accepted and acceptable documents that were also intelligible and useful. Examinations were social currencies used to facilitate the relationship between the power and knowledge of legal medicine and criminology. They disciplined the relationship between law and medicine and made feasible the power of judging. However, along the way they had to assert themselves against other traditions and knowledge. Their main opponents were the information obtained by the police from an offense or crime suspect through coercion, especially by means of torture; the decisions made by the jury and the evidence obtained from witnesses; and the delinquent's knowledge. What all these forms of truth production had in common was their non-expert origin, which became the main argument of forensic medical examiners against them.The aim of this article is to discuss the dispute over the prerogatives to produce the truth in institutional spaces that dealt with combating antisocial acts, and to point out the medico-scientific strategies used to prevail over the lay forms present in that shared environment.Universidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Passive Fault-Tolerance Management in Component-based Embedded Systems

It is imperative to accept that failures can and will occur, even in meticulously designed distributed systems, and design proper measures to counter those failures. Passive replication minimises resource consumption by only activating redundant replicas in case of failures, as typically providing and applying state updates is less resource demanding than requesting execution. However, most existing solutions for passive fault tolerance are usually designed and configured at design time, explicitly and statically identifying the most critical components and their number of replicas, lacking the needed flexibility to handle the runtime dynamics of distributed component-based embedded systems. This paper proposes a cost-effective adaptive fault tolerance solution with a significant lower overhead compared to a strict active redundancy-based approach, achieving a high error coverage with the minimum amount of redundancy. The activation of passive replicas is coordinated through a feedback-based coordination model that reduces the complexity of the needed interactions among components until a new collective global service solution is determined, improving the overall maintainability and robustness of the system

INTRODUCCIÓN: SABER Y PODER EN LA PERIFERIA DE OCCIDENTE

Consejo Nacl Invest Cient & Tecn, RA-1033 Buenos Aires, DF, ArgentinaUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, UNIFESP, São Paulo, BrazilWeb of Scienc

Novas tecnologias associadas ao retratamento endodôntico não cirúrgico

Introdução: O trabalho elaborado desenvolve o tema seguinte: Novas tecnologias associadas ao retratamento endodôntico não cirúrgico. Desde o início da medicina dentária que somos deparados com o insucesso nos tratamentos realizados, na endodôntia sendo um acontecimento regular na prática diária. Quando o tratamento Endodontico não cirúrgico não é eficaz na resolução de patologias pulpares e ocorre recidiva da patologia, é necessário a realização do retratamento endodôntico não cirúrgico. Uma vez que o retratamento endodôntico, respeita os mesmos princípios do tratamento Endodontico, sendo estes a desinfeção do sistema de canais radiculares, a sua instrumentação e obturação. Esta prática está indicada por vários motivos, anatómicos, microbiológicos, erros de instrumentação, erros de obturação e as próprias limitações dos materiais. Objetivos: Esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar, e verificar as razões que levam a necessidade da realização de retratamentos endodônticos não cirúrgicos, aos métodos utilizados na realização de retratamentos comparando-os entre si. Tendo sido realizada uma revisão bibliográfica de modo a verificar: as causas de insucesso, limitações dos materiais, técnicas de obturação, agentes químicos e sistemas de instrumentação. Materiais e Métodos: Para a obtenção da informação necessária para a elaboração da presente dissertação, foi realizada uma pesquiza bibliográfica nas bases de dados da Pubmed, B-on, Scielo, Science Direct e no Google Académico. Através das seguintes palavras-chave: “Root canal treatment”, “Endodontic sucess”, “Endodontic retreatment”, “Endodontic Failure causes”, “Root canal retreatment materials”, “Endodontic retreatment metods”, “Chloroform”, “ProTaper, Reciproc”, “Haloten”, “Orange oil”, “Eucaliptol”, “Ultrassonic instrumentation”, “obturation material”, “root filling”. Conclusão: No trabalho realizado é possível concluir que o insucesso tem múltiplas causas, que hoje em dia existem novos métodos e técnicas que nos permitem a resolução das falhas nos tratamentos primários, sendo que estes novos métodos e técnicas se revelaram mais eficazes que os tradicionais, demonstrando uma maior probabilidade de eliminação dos fatores causais das reinfeções.Introduction: The elaborated work develops the following theme: new technologies associated to the non-surgical root canal retreatment. Since the beginning of dentistry, we almost every day came across with the possibility of failure. In endodontic’s it’s an event that regularly happens in a daily basis. When the endodontic treatment fails, it happens a new infection in the place where the pulp used to be, in the root canal system. This event requires the non-surgical endodontic retreatment in order to solve the problem. This respects the same principals applied in the classical non-surgical endodontic treatment, which are the disinfection, instrumentation and filling of the root canals. Being this practice suitable for several reasons, anatomic reasons, microbiological reasons and man made mistakes. Objective: This paper as the objective of explore and to verify the reasons that lead to the necessity of non-surgical root canal retreatment, as well verify the new methods and techniques used in this practice comparing them with the classical way. Being done a bibliography research in order to verify: the failure causes, materials limitations, filling techniques, chemical agents and instrumentation techniques. Material and Methods: To obtain the necessary information to the elaboration of the present work, with was done a bibliography research in several data bases as, Pubmed, B-on, Scielo, Science Direct and Google Académico. Through the following key words: “Root canal treatment”, “Endodontic sucess”, “Endodontic retreatment”, “Endodontic Failure causes”, “Root canal retreatment materials”, “Endodontic retreatment metods”, “Chloroform”, “ProTaper, Reciproc”, “Haloten”, “Orange oil”, “Eucaliptol”, “Ultrassonic instrumentation”, “obturation material”, “root filling”. Conclusion: In the accomplished work it’s possible to be conclude that the failure has multiple causes, and that nowadays exists new method and techniques that allow us to solve the flaws in the primary treatment, and that these new methods and techniques were revealed more effective than the traditional ones, demonstrating a larger possibility of causal factors in root canals reinfections

Estimação em Pequenos Domínios com modelos que combinam Informação Seccional e Cronológica

O objectivo principal deste artigo consiste na proposta de um novo estimador para parâmetros de interesse em pequenos domínios com dados de nível área