Affirmative Action in Higher Education: Impacts of the National Exam in Brazil

In recent years, educational issues have been of greater importance in economic analysis. Many papers suggest that education is essential for economic growth as well as an important tool to achieve better equality. These effects have been discussed and confirmed by several researchers, whose papers delineate evidence that education promotes growth, adoption of technologies, increased wages, and additional positive externalities (LANGE and TOPEL; ACEMOGLU and ANGRIST, 2000). As a result, education is primarily considered by governments as a social policy tool. Some of these social policy tools are associated with affirmative action, because their goal is to promote equality by affording better conditions to groups that are initially experiencing worse conditions. The Brazilian case consists of the designation of some proportion of vacancies in university to blacks, native Indians and low-income people. We can number two main reasons commonly used in Brazil to justify affirmative action policy in higher education: a form of historical reparation for blacks, given that Brazil was the largest slave country in the world; and the small share of blacks, Indians and low-income individuals in higher education. This paper intends to contribute to the debate regarding the impact of quotas (social and racial) in the Brazilian higher education system, estimating their impacts on student grades as measured by a specific test ? ENADE ? or the National Survey of Student Performance. We use ENADE 2008 as the main source of data, which comprised 59 courses and surveyed more than 74,000 students. Within the theoretical discussion, we present Su?s Job Reservation Model (2005) and Bishop?s Effort Decision Model (2006); these models include factors such as degree, coursework selection, future wages, and quality of peers, as factors that affect the degree of effort and the human capital accumulation. We use a difference-in-differences (DD) method combined with the propensity score matching (PSM), where the main goal is to control unobservable characteristics that are related to the performance and some selection biases related to the treated group. The results demonstrate that the implementation of quotas negatively and significantly affected majors such as Pedagogy, History and Physics, and positively and significantly affected only Agronomy course

Blockchain to improve security, knowledge and collaboration inter-agent communication over restrict domains of the internet infrastructure, with human interaction / Blockchain para melhorar a segurança, o conhecimento e a colaboração entre os agentes de comunicação sobre domínios restritos da infraestrutura da Internet, com interação humana

This paper describes the development and implementation of a  blockchain to improve security,  knowledge and intel ligence during the communication and col laboration processes between agents under restricted Internet Infrastructure domains. It is a work that proposes the application of a blockchain, independent of platform, in a particular model of agents, but that can be used  in similar proposals, since the results in the specific model were satisfactory. Additional ly, the model al lows interaction and, also, col laboration between humans and agents

SISTEMA DE METAS DE INFLAÇÃO NO BRASIL: UMA ANÁLISE DA ESTRUTURA

Há quatorze anos, em junho de 1999, o Brasil adotou o Sistema de Metas para Inflação (SMI) como regime monetário. A essência desse regime monetário é a aceitação, por parte dos agentes econômicos, do comprometimento e eficácia do Banco Central em perseguir um nível estipulado de variação dos preços. Neste período, a autoridade monetária enfrentou um ambiente externo difícil (1999 – 2002), benigno (2003 – 2008) e novamente adverso mais recentemente. Certamente o Sistema de Metas de Inflação não conquistou a unanimidade, mas os fatos são incontroversos em apontar que o país conquistou e tem mantido um ambiente econômico de inflação moderada (conseqüência das metas) com equilíbrio externo (devido ao câmbio flutuante). O presente artigo pretende estudar o SMI brasileiro com objetivo de analisar as características fundamentais do sistema, no que diz respeito a sua adequação com o provimento de um guia eficiente para as expectativas dos agente

Orbit determination of Transneptunian objects and Centaurs for the prediction of stellar occultations

The prediction of stellar occultations by Transneptunian objects and Centaurs is a difficult challenge that requires accuracy both in the occulted star position as for the object ephemeris. Until now, the most used method of prediction involving tens of TNOs/Centaurs was to consider a constant offset for the right ascension and for the declination with respect to a reference ephemeris. This offset is determined as the difference between the most recent observations of the TNO and the reference ephemeris. This method can be successfully applied when the offset remains constant with time. This paper presents an alternative method of prediction based on a new accurate orbit determination procedure, which uses all the available positions of the TNO from the Minor Planet Center database plus sets of new astrometric positions from unpublished observations. The orbit determination is performed through a numerical integration procedure (NIMA), in which we develop a specific weighting scheme. The NIMA method was applied for 51 selected TNOs/Centaurs. For this purpose, we have performed about 2900 new observations during 2007-2014. Using NIMA, we succeed in predicting the stellar occultations of 10 TNOs and 3 Centaurs between 2013 and 2015. By comparing the NIMA and JPL ephemerides, we highlighted the variation of the offset between them with time. Giving examples, we show that the constant offset method could not accurately predict 6 out of the 13 observed positive occultations successfully predicted by NIMA. The results indicate that NIMA is capable of efficiently refine the orbits of these bodies. Finally, we show that the astrometric positions given by positive occultations can help to further refine the orbit of the TNO and consequently the future predictions. We also provide the unpublished observations of the 51 selected TNOs and their ephemeris in a usable format by the SPICE library.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted in A&

Astrometry of the main satellites of Uranus: 18 years of observations

We determine accurate positions of the main satellites of Uranus: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. Positions of Uranus, as derived from those of these satellites, are also determined. The observational period spans from 1992 to 2011. All runs were made at the Pico dos Dias Observatory, Brazil. We used the software called Platform for Reduction of Astronomical Images Automatically (PRAIA) to minimise (digital coronography) the influence of the scattered light of Uranus on the astrometric measurements and to determine accurate positions of the main satellites. The positions of Uranus were then indirectly determined by computing the mean differences between the observed and ephemeris positions of these satellites. A series of numerical filters was applied to filter out spurious data. These filters are mostly based on the comparison between the positions of Oberon with those of the other satellites and on the offsets as given by the differences between the observed and ephemeris positions of all satellites. We have, for the overall offsets of the five satellites, -29 (+/-63) mas in right ascension and -27 (+/-46) mas in declination. For the overall difference between the offsets of Oberon and those of the other satellites, we have +3 (+/-30) mas in right ascension and -2 (+/-28) mas in declination. Ephemeris positions for the satellites were determined from DE432+ura111. Comparisons using other modern ephemerides for the solar system -INPOP13c- and for the motion of the satellites -NOE-7-2013- were also made. They confirm that the largest contribution to the offsets we find comes from the motion of the barycenter of the Uranus system around the barycenter of the solar system, as given by the planetary ephemerides. Catalogues with the observed positions are provided.Comment: 13 pages, 21 figure

Analysis of polymorphism at site -174 G/C of interleukin-6 promoter region in multiple myeloma

It is well established that interleukin-6 (IL-6) is an essential growth factor for multiple myeloma (MM) and patients with increased IL-6 levels have a poor prognosis. In healthy subjects, the presence of the C allele at a polymorphic site (-174 G/C) of the IL-6 gene is related to low IL-6 levels. In view of the potential association of this particular polymorphism with IL-6 concentration, and the relevance of IL-6 in MM pathogenesis, the objective of the present study was to investigate the prevalence of IL-6 (-174 G/C) promoter polymorphism and its association with development of MM in Brazilian individuals. We investigated the prevalence of these alleles in 52 patients and 60 healthy subjects (matched by age, sex, and race) of a Brazilian population. Thirty patients were male (42.4%), 24 (46.2%) were white and the median age at diagnosis was 58.5 years (range: 28 to 84 years). To determine the IL-6 (-174 G/C) polymorphism, molecular analysis was performed by polymerase chain reaction followed by endonuclease restriction digestion. The genotype distributions observed in the group of patients were 4% CC, 42% GC and 54% GG. The C allele frequency was 0.25. These results were similar to the control group, suggesting no impact of this polymorphism on the susceptibility to MM.Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Escola Paulista de MedicinaUNIFESP, EPMSciEL

Estudos sobre a implementação da política nacional de educação especial na perspectiva da educação inclusiva – PNEEPEI em municípios brasileiros

This article aims to make a survey of the studies regarding the implementation of the National Policy of Special Education in the Inclusive Education Perspective - PNEEPEI, produced from 2008 to 2017, in order to discover actions that enable the construction of a truly education. inclusive and how municipalities are organizing to make them effective. This is a bibliographical research, with qualitative approach, which had as methodological path: survey of productions; selection of those closest to the theme, systematization of information and organization of results. The search for the productions was carried out in the CAPES Thesis and Dissertation Bank (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) and for the data analysis, thematic categories were elaborated. The results showed positive experiences in the implementation of the policy, although in a smaller number that indicate difficulties and reveal the contribution of the dissemination of these actions to the implementation of PNEEPEI throughout the country.Este artículo pretende realizar una encuesta de los estudios sobre la implementación de la Política Nacional de Educación Especial en la Perspectiva de Educación Inclusiva - PNEEPEI, realizada entre 2008 y 2017, para descubrir acciones que permitan la construcción de una verdadera educación. Inclusivo y cómo se organizan los municipios para hacerlos efectivos. Se trata de una investigación bibliográfica, con enfoque cualitativo, que tuvo como vía metodológica: encuesta de producciones; Selección de los más cercanos al tema, sistematización de la información y organización de los resultados. La búsqueda de las producciones se realizó en el Banco de Tesis y Disertaciones de CAPES (Coordinación para la Mejora del Personal de Educación Superior) y para el análisis de datos, se elaboraron categorías temáticas. Los resultados mostraron experiencias positivas en la implementación de la política, aunque en un número menor que indican dificultades y revelan la contribución de la difusión de estas acciones a la implementación de PNEEPEI en todo el paísEste artigo tem como objetivo fazer um levantamento dos estudos referentes à implementação da Política Nacional de Educação Especial na Perspectiva da Educação Inclusiva - PNEEPEI, produzidos no período de 2008 a 2017, a fim de descobrir ações que possibilitam a construção de uma educação verdadeiramente inclusiva e como os municípios estão se organizando para efetivá-las. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, de abordagem qualitativa, que teve como percurso metodológico: levantamento das produções; seleção daquelas que mais se aproximavam do tema; sistematização das informações e organização dos resultados. A busca das produções foi realizada no Banco de Teses e Dissertações da CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) e para a análise dos dados foram elaboradas categorias temáticas. Os resultados evidenciaram experiências positivas na implementação da política ainda que em número inferior as que sinalizam dificuldades e revelam a contribuição da divulgação dessas ações para a implementação da PNEEPEI em todo país