Private Provision of Water Service in Brazil: Impacts on Access and Affordability

Brazil has been experimenting with Private Sector Participation (PSP) in the water and sanitation sector in various forms since the mid-nineties, one of the most common being concession contracts. Currently, 25% of the population is served by companies with private sector participation and this figure could grow to 36% within 10 years. This paper studies past and ongoing experiences with private provision of water services in Brazil and assesses their impact on access and affordability indicators. It also discusses the social policies in place to improve those indicators, especially those targeting the poor. It uses different estimation methods and datasets to determine whether or not there is any difference in access to water supply and ability to pay water bills between municipalities that opted to entrust the provision of water services with private operators and those that kept them public. Moreover, whenever possible, the analysis is broken down by income (GDP) deciles in an attempt to evaluate the impact of private provision on lower income families. The results obtained entail the conclusion that PSP in Brazil has delivered higher access to water services, benefiting mostly the poor. They are inconclusive regarding affordability of water services though.Water services, access, affordability, panel data, private sector participation

The Effect of Physical Application Parameters on Herbicide Efficacy and Droplet Size.

One of the largest challenges in agriculture is weed management. Improper or sub-optimal application techniques can cause decreased weed control and increased environmental contamination. Effective weed management is highly correlated with the product and the application method. Herbicide performance are affected by environmental conditions; they influence the physiology and growth of a plant and as well the herbicide performance. Among all environmental factors, rain shortly after herbicide application is one of the most harmful issues to the performance of the herbicide. Droplet size is a key factor in pesticide applications in regards to both drift and efficacy. Droplet size can be altered by several application parameters, such as the nozzle type, pressure, orifice size and spray solution. Droplet size is a key component in pesticide application with respect to overall application efficacy and off-target movement. As tank mix ingredients can significantly influence the resulting droplet size, agitation systems are critical to ensuring proper mixing of all components and overall performance. Sitting time, a period where the tank is held in a non-agitated state, potentially affects droplet size as well. The objectives of this research were: 1) understand the influence of nozzle spacing, boom height, nozzle type, on weed control, also expand the scientific knowledge on aforementioned parameters. 2) Evaluate the effect of rainfall after herbicide application on weed control, following certain intervals in order to understand the wash off effect. 3) Analyze the impact of nozzle type, application speed and pressure on weed control, in order to contribute to a more reliable recommendation of such parameters. This research highlights the impact of parameters regulated by the sprayer on weed control and allow a better understanding of how non-chemical parameters affect the efficacy on weed management, as well as a greater understanding on absorption and evaporation of herbicide plus losses of application efficacy. The results will clarify some of the most concerning question on one of the most complex process in agriculture. Adviser: Greg R. Kruge

Choros N. 10 by Heitor Villa-Lobos: Analyzing the Themes and Compositional Techniques of Brazilian Modernism

Heitor Villa-Lobos (b. March 5, 1887 - d. November 17, 1959) can be considered the most important composer in Brazilian music history. Although the composer is listed as one of the most influential composers in the history of the guitar, he reached his peak in his works for piano and symphonic groups. Works such as A Prole do Bebê (1 and 2), and the series of Chôros, came out during an extremely convoluted time, where Brazilian artists engaged in seeking an artistic representation of a unique Brazilian identity. Those works not only satisfied the hunger, but pushed the movement to a new level, which, some would argue, has never been surpassed by any other composer. Unlike his work for the guitar, on which hundreds of analyses and articles can easily be found, Chôros No 10 has had little to no attention from a theoretical viewpoint. Being considered perhaps Villa-Lobos’ masterpiece, this piece brought what is most Brazilian into classical music, with a calculated European influence among genuine Brazilian characteristics made into music. To date, there have been many writings about Chôros No 10 from a historical perspective. The theoretical writings about this piece are few, and in my research I was not able to find any such writings that were exhaustive or very in depth. This thesis analyzes the elements in Chôros No 10, such as themes and harmonic implications, linked to the historical background of the Brazilian Modernism in music

Capital Asset Pricing Model and Changes in Volatility

This article applies regime-switching models to assess the effects of different regimes of volatility in asset pricing. Different variance-covariance matrices for different regimes of volatility are introduced in the Capital Asset Pricing Model. They are scaled with respect to a conditional variance-covariance matrix that simply follows a GARCH process. The probabilities that U.S. financial markets were in a low, medium, or high regime of volatility from March 1958 to December 1995 are computed.Creation-Date : 1998-09

Metformin Treatment Modulates The Tumour-induced Wasting Effects In Muscle Protein Metabolism Minimising The Cachexia In Tumour-bearing Rats

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Cancer-cachexia state frequently induces both fat and protein wasting, leading to death. In this way, the knowledge of the mechanism of drugs and their side effects can be a new feature to treat and to have success, contributing to a better life quality for these patients. Metformin is an oral drug used in type 2 diabetes mellitus, showing inhibitory effect on proliferation in some neoplastic cells. For this reason, we evaluated its modulatory effect on Walker-256 tumour evolution and also on protein metabolism in gastrocnemius muscle and body composition. Methods: Wistar rats received or not tumour implant and metformin treatment and were distributed into four groups, as followed: control (C), Walker 256 tumour-bearing (W), metformin-treated (M) and tumour-bearing treated with metformin (WM). Animals were weighed three times a week, and after cachexia state has been detected, the rats were euthanised and muscle and tumour excised and analysed by biochemical and molecular assays. Results: Tumour growth promoted some deleterious effects on chemical body composition, increasing water and decreasing fat percentage, and reducing lean body mass. In muscle tissue, tumour led to a decreased protein synthesis and an increased proteolysis, showing the higher activity of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. On the other hand, the metformin treatment likely minimised the tumour-induced wasting state; in this way, this treatment ameliorated chemical body composition, reduced the higher activities of proteolytic enzymes and decreased the protein waste. Conclusion: Metformin treatment not only decreases the tumour growth but also improves the protein metabolism in gastrocnemius muscle in tumour-bearing rats.16Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo - FAPESP [2010/00209-9, 2013/16115-1, 2014/13334-7]Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico - CNPq [304604/2010-0, 302863/2013-3]Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo - FAPESP, Sao Paulo, Brazil [2008/07737-0]Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP

Vehicle Trajectory Prediction based on LSTM Recurrent Neural Networks

Funding Information: This work was funded by Fundac¸ão para a Ciência e Tecnologia, under the projects InfoCent-IoT (PTDC/EEI-TEL/30433/2017), CoSHARE (PTDC/EEI-TEL/30709/2017), and Grant UIDB/50008/2020.This work presents an effective tool to predict the future trajectories of vehicles when its current and previous locations are known. We propose a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) prediction scheme due to its adequacy to learn from sequential data. To fully learn the vehicles' mobility patterns, during the training process we use a dataset that contains real traces of 442 taxis running in the city of Porto, Portugal, during a full year. From experimental results, we observe that the prediction process is improved when more information about prior vehicle mobility is available. Moreover, the computation time is evaluated for a distinct number of prior locations considered in the prediction process. The results exhibit a prediction performance higher than 89%, showing the effectiveness of the proposed LSTM network.authorsversionpublishe

Learning Fast and Slow: PROPEDEUTICA for Real-time Malware Detection

In this paper, we introduce and evaluate PROPEDEUTICA, a novel methodology and framework for efficient and effective real-time malware detection, leveraging the best of conventional machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms. In PROPEDEUTICA, all software processes in the system start execution subjected to a conventional ML detector for fast classification. If a piece of software receives a borderline classification, it is subjected to further analysis via more performance expensive and more accurate DL methods, via our newly proposed DL algorithm DEEPMALWARE. Further, we introduce delays to the execution of software subjected to deep learning analysis as a way to "buy time" for DL analysis and to rate-limit the impact of possible malware in the system. We evaluated PROPEDEUTICA with a set of 9,115 malware samples and 877 commonly used benign software samples from various categories for the Windows OS. Our results show that the false positive rate for conventional ML methods can reach 20%, and for modern DL methods it is usually below 6%. However, the classification time for DL can be 100X longer than conventional ML methods. PROPEDEUTICA improved the detection F1-score from 77.54% (conventional ML method) to 90.25%, and reduced the detection time by 54.86%. Further, the percentage of software subjected to DL analysis was approximately 40% on average. Further, the application of delays in software subjected to ML reduced the detection time by approximately 10%. Finally, we found and discussed a discrepancy between the detection accuracy offline (analysis after all traces are collected) and on-the-fly (analysis in tandem with trace collection). Our insights show that conventional ML and modern DL-based malware detectors in isolation cannot meet the needs of efficient and effective malware detection: high accuracy, low false positive rate, and short classification time.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Failure to remove bluetongue serotype 8 virus (BTV-8) from in vitro produced and in vivo derived bovine embryos and subsequent transmission of BTV-8 to recipient cows after embryo transfer

The behavior of BTV-8 in cattle is different from most other serotypes not only with regards to clinical signs but certainly with respect to virus transmission (transplacental, contact). Therefore, the possibility of virus transmission by means of embryo transfer was examined by in vitro exposure of in vitro produced and in vivo derived bovine blastocysts to BTV-8 followed by different washing protocols, including longer exposure times (up to 120 s) to 0.25% trypsin at room temperature or at 37 degrees C. None of the washing protocols used was successful in removing the viral genome completely from the in vitro produced and in vivo derived embryos as was demonstrated by real-time PCR. Moreover, BTV-8 virus was transmitted to recipient cows after embryo transfer of in vivo derived BTV8-exposed embryos, which had been subjected to routine decontamination as recommended by IETS, consisting of 5 washes in PBS followed by a double treatment of 0.25% trypsin for 45s at 37 degrees C, and an additional 5 washes in PBS with 2% FCS. This study clearly demonstrates the necessity of vigorous application of the directives for screening of potential donors and the collected embryos, especially in regions with BTV-8, to prevent transmission of the disease

Multi-mobile robot and avoidance obstacle to spatial mapping in indoor environment

The advancement of technology and techniques applied to robotics contributes to increasing the quality of life and safety of humanity. One of the most widespread applications of mobile robotics is related to monitoring indoor environments. However, due to factors such as the size of the environment impacting the monitoring response, battery autonomy, and autonomous navigation in environments with unknown obstacles, they are still significant challenges in the diffusion of mobile robotics in these areas. Strategy adopting multiple robots can overcome these challenges. This work presents an approach to use multi-robots in hazardous environments with gas leakage to perform spatial mapping of the gas concentration. Obstacles arranged in the environment are unknown to robots, then a fuzzy control approach is used to avoid the collision. As a result of this paper, spatial mapping of an indoor environment was carried out with multi-robots that reactively react to unknown obstacles considering a point gas leak with Gaussian dispersion.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/05757/2020. Additionally, this work was supported in part by the National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development of Brazil (CNPq), in part by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level People (CAPES).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio