Tarifação social no consumo residencial de água

Este artigo examina as limitações e os efeitos da adoção de uma estrutura tarifaria por uma empresa prestadora de serviços de utilidade pública que utiliza um sistema de subsídios cruzados para financiar uma tarifa mais baixa cobrada aos usuários pobres. Os exercicios de simulação tarifária são feitos usando-se tarifas diferenciadas segundo a classificação social dos consumidores, sendo medidos os efeitos que o subsídio provoca em termos da quantidade demandada e do seu impacto sobre o nível de bem-estar dos usuários. Na parte final do artigo, mostra-se como este tipo de estrutura tarifária pode ser convertido naquele no qual as tarifas são estabelecidas para blocos de quantidades consumidas do serviço, a maneira tradicional de cobrar os serviços de utilidade pública.This article examines the restrictions and effects of the implementation of a rate structure with lower tariffs charged to the poor by a public utility using a cross-subsidy system to finance it. The simulations made allow the quantification of its effect upon the quantities demanded and its social welfare impacts. In the last section, it is shown how to translate a rate structure based upon the social classification of the users of the service into a traditional one of charging different tariffs according to blocks of quantity consumed

Política fiscal e desequilíbrios regionais

O fenômeno da existência de regiões, dentro de um mesmo país, que se encontram em estágios diferentes de desenvolvimento econômico, é bastante conhecido em todo o mundo. O Brasil é um dos países que frequentemente são mencionados nos estudos de desigualdades regionais, como um caso de dualismo extremamente grave, onde as diferenças econômicas e sociais entre Norte, Nordeste e Centro-Sul são bem amplas, seja em termos absolutos, seja em termos relativos, por comparação com a situação em outros países

Federalismo no Brasil: análise da descentralização financeira da perspectiva das cidades médias

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impacts upon the intermediate size cities of the administrative and fiscal decentralization policy put under way by the Federal Constitution of 1988. By intermediate size cities is meant those ones with urban population in the range 100,000 - 500,000 inhabitants. Our interest in this set of cities lies in the fact that they are the ones with the highest population growth rates in the 1970/96 period. This demographic expansion puts pression on the demand for public social services available in these cities, with no assurance thatthese municipalities will be financially able to expand them. This article adresses to this question using agregated and regional data on financial revenues/expenditures for these cities and their social infraestructure indicators as well. One of the major results is that the metropolitan medium size cities, besides showing high demographic growth rates, are the ones with the smallest social indices and in which, due to thenhigh poverty levels, are consequently the municipalities for which the fiscal extraction is harder

Telomere Length Shows No Association with BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutation Status

This study aimed to determine whether telomere length (TL) is a marker of cancer risk or genetic status amongst two cohorts of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers and controls. The first group was a prospective set of 665 male BRCA1/2 mutation carriers and controls (mean age 53 years), all healthy at time of enrolment and blood donation, 21 of whom have developed prostate cancer whilst on study. The second group consisted of 283 female BRCA1/2 mutation carriers and controls (mean age 48 years), half of whom had been diagnosed with breast cancer prior to enrolment. TL was quantified by qPCR from DNA extracted from peripheral blood lymphocytes. Weighted and unweighted Cox regressions and linear regression analyses were used to assess whether TL was associated with BRCA1/2 mutation status or cancer risk. We found no evidence for association between developing cancer or being a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carrier and telomere length. It is the first study investigating TL in a cohort of genetically predisposed males and although TL and BRCA status was previously studied in females our results don't support the previous finding of association between hereditary breast cancer and shorter TL

Abscisic acid acts essentially on stomata, not on xylem, to improve drought resistance in tomato

Drought resistance is essential for plant production under water-limiting environments. Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a critical role in stomata but its impact on hydraulic function beyond the stomata is far less studied. We selected genotypes differing in their ability to accumulate ABA to investigate its role in drought-induced dysfunction. All genotypes exhibited similar leaf and stem embolism resistance regardless of differences in ABA levels. Their leaf hydraulic resistance was also similar. Differences were only observed between the two extreme genotypes: sitiens (sit; a strong ABA-deficient mutant) and sp12 (a transgenic line that constitutively overaccumulates ABA), where the water potential inducing 50% embolism was 0.25 MPa lower in sp12 than in sit. Maximum stomatal and minimum leaf conductances were considerably lower in plants with higher ABA (wild type [WT] and sp12) than in ABA-deficient mutants. Variations in gas exchange across genotypes were associated with ABA levels and differences in stomatal density and size. The lower water loss in plants with higher ABA meant that lethal water potentials associated with embolism occurred later during drought in sp12 plants, followed by WT, and then by the ABA-deficient mutants. Therefore, the primary pathway by which ABA enhances drought resistance is via declines in water loss, which delays dehydration and hydraulic dysfunction

Structuring of Bacterioplankton Diversity in a Large Tropical Bay

Structuring of bacterioplanktonic populations and factors that determine the structuring of specific niche partitions have been demonstrated only for a limited number of colder water environments. In order to better understand the physical chemical and biological parameters that may influence bacterioplankton diversity and abundance, we examined their productivity, abundance and diversity in the second largest Brazilian tropical bay (Guanabara Bay, GB), as well as seawater physical chemical and biological parameters of GB. The inner bay location with higher nutrient input favored higher microbial (including vibrio) growth. Metagenomic analysis revealed a predominance of Gammaproteobacteria in this location, while GB locations with lower nutrient concentration favored Alphaproteobacteria and Flavobacteria. According to the subsystems (SEED) functional analysis, GB has a distinctive metabolic signature, comprising a higher number of sequences in the metabolism of phosphorus and aromatic compounds and a lower number of sequences in the photosynthesis subsystem. The apparent phosphorus limitation appears to influence the GB metagenomic signature of the three locations. Phosphorus is also one of the main factors determining changes in the abundance of planktonic vibrios, suggesting that nutrient limitation can be observed at community (metagenomic) and population levels (total prokaryote and vibrio counts)

A comprehensive 1000 Genomes-based genome-wide association meta-analysis of coronary artery disease

Existing knowledge of genetic variants affecting risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) is largely based on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) analysis of common SNPs. Leveraging phased haplotypes from the 1000 Genomes Project, we report a GWAS meta-analysis of 185 thousand CAD cases and controls, interrogating 6.7 million common (MAF>0.05) as well as 2.7 million low frequency (0.005<MAF<0.05) variants. In addition to confirmation of most known CAD loci, we identified 10 novel loci, eight additive and two recessive, that contain candidate genes that newly implicate biological processes in vessel walls. We observed intra-locus allelic heterogeneity but little evidence of low frequency variants with larger effects and no evidence of synthetic association. Our analysis provides a comprehensive survey of the fine genetic architecture of CAD showing that genetic susceptibility to this common disease is largely determined by common SNPs of small effect siz

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30