CONSCIÊNCIA COMO ATRIBUTO CEREBRAL: UMA RÉPLICA A “O CONCEITO DE SENTIMENTO NO MONISMO DE TRIPLO ASPECTO”

A necessidade ou não da crença na sobrevivência do Eu após a morte inspira o dualismo ou monismo, respectivamente. A imortalidade do Eu não é passível de observação empírica e, portanto fica restrita ao campo das crenças. Nesse contexto, a imortalidade é plausível e suportada por uma coerência sintática de qualquer raciocínio lógico ou linguístico, mas não por uma coerência semântica

Evaluation in mechanical and civil engineering courses in students’ view of a public university in southern Brazil

O objetivo deste artigo foi verificar a relação entre o sistema de avaliação e os instrumentos utilizados pelos professores dos cursos de Engenharia Mecânica e Civil de uma universidade pública no sul do Brasil. O enquadramento teórico para o estudo teve como base as discussões na literatura sobre a relevância da avaliação formativa. A literatura sugere que um dos caminhos para promover a avaliação de qualidade é a adoção de um sistema avaliativo que envolva os alunos no processo e que tenha como objetivos melhorar o desenvolvimento de competências profissionais, os níveis de aprendizagem e o sucesso acadêmico dos alunos. A metodologia utilizada foi a pesquisa correlacional. O instrumento de coleta de dados foi um questionário contendo três escalas do tipo Likert para avaliar diferentes aspectos relacionados as estratégias de ensino, o sistema de avaliação e as competências. O estudo foi conduzido com alunos do 4º e 5º anos dos cursos de Engenharia Mecânica e Civil de uma Universidade pública no sul do Brasil. Participaram do estudo 230 alunos matriculados nos referidos cursos. Os principais resultados mostram que existe nos cursos pesquisados uma cultura de avaliação centrada no professor, na qual os professores privilegiam os instrumentos tradicionais como provas dissertativas e de múltipla escolha, trabalhos individuais e em grupos e apresentações orais (seminários). Como consequência não há o envolvimento do aluno no processo de avaliaçãoThe purpose of this article was to verify the relationship between the evaluation system and the tools used by teachers of Mechanical and Civil Engineering courses at a public university in southern Brazil. The theoretical framework for the study was based on the discussions in the literature on the importance of formative assessment. The literature suggests that one way to promote quality evaluation is the adoption of an evaluation system involving students in the process that has as objective to improve the development of professional skills, learning levels and academic success of students. The methodology used was a correlational research. The study was conducted with students from 4th and 5th years of Mechanical Engineering and Civil courses of a public university in south Brazil. The subjects of the study were 230 students enrolled in the 4th and 5th years of such courses. The main results showed that there is still a culture of evaluation centered on the teacher, in which teachers favor traditional instruments such as essay and multiple-choice tests, individual and in groups tasks and oral presentations (seminars). As a result there is no student involvement in the evaluation proces

Effects of microplastics on microalgae populations: a critical review

Microplastics are persistent contaminants accumulating in the environment. Aquatic ecosystems have been studied worldwide, revealing ubiquitous contamination with microplastics. Microalgae, one of the most important primary producers in aquatic ecosystems, could suffer from microplastic contamination, leading to larger impacts on aquatic food webs. Nonetheless, little is known about the toxic effects of microplastics on microalgae populations. Thus, the objective of this review was to identify these effects and the impacts of microplastics on microalgae populations based on currently available literature, also identifying knowledge gaps. Even though microplastics seem to have limited effects on parameters such as growth, chlorophyll content, photosynthesis activity and reactive oxygen species (ROS), current environmental concentrations are not expected to induce toxicity. Even so, microplastics could disrupt population regulation mechanisms, by reducing the availability or absorption of nutrients (bottom-up) or reducing the population of predator species (top-down). Microplastics' properties can also influence the effects on microalgae, with smaller sizes and positive surface charges having higher toxicity. Therefore, more research is needed to better understand the effects of microplastics on microalgae, such as adaptation strategies, effects on population dynamics and microplastics properties influencing toxicity.publishe

Political Effects on the Discontinuation of Participatory Budgeting in Municipalities

The article analyzes the factors associated with the discontinuation of participatory budgeting (PB) in Brazilian municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants between 2000 and 2016. We used econometric models to estimate PB’s discontinuation based on political explanatory variables and people’s local participation. The results indicate that discontinuation is associated: (i) positively with the election of a different local government, regardless of the winning party’s ideology; (ii) positively with the election of a local government with a left-wing ideology’; (iii) negatively with the election of a non-left-wing local government; (iv) positively with the election of a left-wing local government replacing another left-wing government. Changes in local government where other non-left-wing parties replace non-left-wing parties had no significant effect on discontinuation. The results contribute to our knowledge by showing the local and contextual factors that explain the discontinuation of participatory budgeting; this should help guide the design of participatory public policies and allow practitioners to reflect on the mechanisms that could be adopted locally to avoid discontinuation. The article also contributes to the literature by demonstrating the association between discontinuation and changes in left-wing local governments, which may prompt future research, given the unexpected result

Uniform polarization scattering with fiber-coil-based polarization controllers

A detailed study of fiber-coil-based polarization controllers (PCs) is performed. First, a method to deterministically calculate the PC configuration in order to transform between any two states of polarization is presented. In a second stage, the case in which the configuration angles are randomly changed is studied. The cases of a single PC and of the system obtained with the concatenation of several PCs are analyzed. For both cases, a general expression for the variance of the Stokes parameters is obtained. Using this expression, it is demonstrated that it is possible to achieve uniform polarization scattering using a concatenation of fiber-coil-based PCs. Finally, it is shown that fiber-coil-based PC's can be used to emulate both, first- and second-order polarization- mode dispersions

Environmental exposure to microplastics: an overview on possible human health effects

Microplastics are ubiquitous environmental contaminants leading to inevitable human exposure. Even so, little is known about the effects of microplastics in human health. Thus, in this work we review the evidence for potential negative effects of microplastics in the human body, focusing on pathways of exposure and toxicity. Exposure may occur by ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact due to the presence of microplastics in products, foodstuff and air. In all biological systems, microplastic exposure may cause particle toxicity, with oxidative stress, inflammatory lesions and increased uptake or translocation. The inability of the immune system to remove synthetic particles may lead to chronic inflammation and increase risk of neoplasia. Furthermore, microplastics may release their constituents, adsorbed contaminants and pathogenic organisms. Nonetheless, knowledge on microplastic toxicity is still limited and largely influenced by exposure concentration, particle properties, adsorbed contaminants, tissues involved and individual susceptibility, requiring further research.publishe

Combining Different Tools for EEG Analysis to Study the Distributed Character of Language Processing

Recent studies on language processing indicate that language cognition is better understood if assumed to be supported by a distributed intelligent processing system enrolling neurons located all over the cortex, in contrast to reductionism that proposes to localize cognitive functions to specific cortical structures. Here, brain activity was recorded using electroencephalogram while volunteers were listening or reading small texts and had to select pictures that translate meaning of these texts. Several techniques for EEG analysis were used to show this distributed character of neuronal enrollment associated with the comprehension of oral and written descriptive texts. Low Resolution Tomography identified the many different sets (si) of neurons activated in several distinct cortical areas by text understanding. Linear correlation was used to calculate the information H(ei) provided by each electrode of the 10/20 system about the identified si. H(ei) Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to study the temporal and spatial activation of these sources si. This analysis evidenced 4 different patterns of H(ei) covariation that are generated by neurons located at different cortical locations. These results clearly show that the distributed character of language processing is clearly evidenced by combining available EEG technologies