Culture and Politics: The Relationship between the Modernist Intellectuals and the Brazilian State (1920–1950)

This paper attempts to comprehend the existent connections between culture and politics in the development of modern nation-states. My reflection is based on a long-term analysis of the relations between intellectuals and political elites during the period of state building and nation building in Brazil (1822–1970). In this article, I intend to analyze specifically the period from 1920 to 1950, trying to understand the significance of the Brazilian intellectual movement designated as modernism and its influences over the cultural and political scenario. My hypothesis is that the cultural ideals of the modernist intellectuals were directly linked to political issues of state-building. I also examine the case of the Brazilian modernist architecture and its relations with the Brazilian state, uncovering how the artistic utopia of this architecture was part of a political and social agenda

Benchmarking some Portuguese S&T system research units: 2nd Edition

The increasing use of productivity and impact metrics for evaluation and comparison, not only of individual researchers but also of institutions, universities and even countries, has prompted the development of bibliometrics. Currently, metrics are becoming widely accepted as an easy and balanced way to assist the peer review and evaluation of scientists and/or research units, provided they have adequate precision and recall. This paper presents a benchmarking study of a selected list of representative Portuguese research units, based on a fairly complete set of parameters: bibliometric parameters, number of competitive projects and number of PhDs produced. The study aimed at collecting productivity and impact data from the selected research units in comparable conditions i.e., using objective metrics based on public information, retrievable on-line and/or from official sources and thus verifiable and repeatable. The study has thus focused on the activity of the 2003-06 period, where such data was available from the latest official evaluation. The main advantage of our study was the application of automatic tools, achieving relevant results at a reduced cost. Moreover, the results over the selected units suggest that this kind of analyses will be very useful to benchmark scientific productivity and impact, and assist peer review.Comment: 26 pages, 20 figures F. Couto, D. Faria, B. Tavares, P. Gon\c{c}alves, and P. Verissimo, Benchmarking some portuguese S\&T system research units: 2nd edition, DI/FCUL TR 13-03, Department of Informatics, University of Lisbon, February 201

Expected time to invest in a new location

In this paper we study the expected time to invest in a new location. In particular we derive expected values of the optimal timing regarding the decision of relocation of a company. We address two classes of scenarios. In the first one we assume that new (and potentially more efficient) spots become available according to a non-homogeneous Poisson process, whereas in the second we assume a conditional Poisson process. For both scenarios we derive mathematical expressions for the expected value of the firm in specific situations, where the intensity function is some particular function. We end up the paper presenting numerical illustrations of the derived results.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A influência do Mosquete na Arte Militar

Este trabalho de investigação aplicada reflecte a evolução do armamento, nomeadamente o mosquete e procura analisar as influências deste na arte militar no que diz respeito à táctica de infantaria durante os séculos XVIII e XIX. Para tal realizaram-se estudos sobre a evolução do mosquete ao longo destes séculos bem como acerca de três batalhas importantes relativas a esses séculos, sendo elas a Batalha de Concord e Lexington, a Batalha do Buçaco e por último a Batalha de Gettysburg. A realização deste trabalho seguiu como metodologia de estudo a investigação documental, concluindo a existência de influências do armamento sobre a táctica e relatando nomeadamente quais.Abstract This investigation work reflects the evolution of gunnery, namely the musket and analyses the influences of this in the military art, concerning the infantry tactics during the XVIII and XIX centuries. Therefore there were made studies about the musket’s evolution across these centuries as so about three important battles in all this centuries. It was the Concord and Lexington battle, the Buçaco battle, and for last the Gettysburg battle. The creation of this work followed as study methodology, the documental investigation, concluding the existence of influences of gunnery above tactics, saying where

Application of MCT Methodology to Determine Soil Erodibility in Road Cutting Slopes in Quadrilátero Ferrífero Region

Erodibility is defined as soil susceptibility to erosive processes. Although several studies have been developed in agronomic area, there are still gaps regarding road slopes, mainly due to the different soil structure conditions. This present work addresses the erodibility in road cut slopes located in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero – MG, with presence of horizons of antagonistic behavior in relation to erosion. The erodibility evaluation was made by geotechnical characterization, Compacted Miniature for Tropical Soils methodology (MCT), infiltrability and modified immersion mass loss tests. The results of MCT methodology demonstrate distinctly behavior between resistant and erodible soils, confirming that lateritic conditions increase soil resistance against water erosion. The MCT erodibility criterion checked that erodible soils are more unstable when in contact with water, showing better performance when compared to conventional MCT test. Therefore, more weathered or lateritic soils are more resistant to erosive processes, while less evolved soils, such as C horizons, are prone to erosion, requiring control measures to prevent their direct exposure to weathering

Método baseado em aprendizado de máquina para seleção de características para distinção entre RNAs não-codificadores longos e RNAs codificadores de proteínas

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Ciência da Computação, 2017.RNAs não-codificadores longos (long non-coding RNA - lncRNAs) constitui uma classe heterogênea de RNAs que agrega transcritos com pouca capacidade de codificar proteínas e que possuem mais de 200 nucleotídeos em sua composição. Estudos recentes apontam que essas moléculas possuem funções de regulação de processos biológicos importantes dentro das células. Sabe-se também que o nível de expressão dos lncRNAs está correlacionado com diversas doenças genéticas, tais como câncer e doenças neuro-degenerativas. Este trabalho apresenta um método para seleção das características mais relevantes para modelos de aprendizado de máquina aplicados ao problema de distinguir lncRNAs de transcritos codificadores de proteínas. O método proposto, denominadoSingle Score Feature Selection (S2FS), utilizou como características as frequências de 2-mers, 3-mers e 4-mers dos transcritos, para detectar aquelas mais relevantes para distinguir lncRNAs de transcritos codificadores de proteínas. As características identificadas pelo S2FS foram avaliadas nos datasets obtidos de repositórios públicos de transcritos RNAs codicadores de proteínas e de lncRNAs de Homo sapiens, Mus musculus e Danio rerio. Para o dataset de H. sapiens, também foi utilizada a característica da ORF mais longa de cada transcrito. Os resultados obtidos indicam que o S2FS identificou boas características para os modelos de predição de lncRNAs baseados em Random Forest. Nos modelos de classificação testados, as características selecionadas pelo S2FS possibilitaram resultados melhores do que as características selecionadas por um método de seleção univariada de características baseado no escore da função χ2.Long non-coding RNA(lncRNAs) constitutes a heterogeneous class of RNAs that includes RNAs with more than 200 nucleotides and poor capacity for coding proteins. Recent studies have indicated that these molecules act on critical biological processes inside the cells. However, their expression levels are also correlated with a number of complex human diseases, such as cancer, neuro-degenerative diseases and others. This work proposes a method for feature selection for machine learning methods applied to the task of distinguishing lncRNAs from protein coding transcripts. The proposed method, called Single Score Feature Selection (S2FS), used as features the 2-mer, 3-mer and 4-mer frequencies of the transcripts, in order to detect those more relevant to distinguish lncRNAs from protein coding transcripts. The features identified by S2FS were evaluated on datasets obtained from public repositories of protein coding transcripts and lncRNAs of Homo Sapiens, Mus musculus and Danio rerio. For the H. sapiens dataset, the longest ORF of each transcript was also used as a feature. The obtained results show that the S2FS identified good features for the lncRNA prediction models based on Random Forest. In the tested classification models, the selected features from S2FS enabled better performance results than the features selected by an univariate selection method based on the scores of a χ2 function

Effect of the thermal modification and nano-ZnO impregnation on the deterioration of Caribbean pine wood

This study aimed to investigate the effect of thermal modification and nano-zinc oxide (nano-ZnO) particle impregnation on the deterioration of Caribbean pine wood under field conditions. Samples were thermally-modified at various temperature levels (control, 180 °C, 200 °C, and 220 °C). Nano-ZnO impregnation was done with an aqueous solution at 1,5 % in an autoclave under two-steps of pressure and vacuum. Unmodified and thermally-modified, non-impregnated and nano-ZnO-impregnated samples were exposed to deterioration for five months in field tests. A deterioration index was used to evaluate the health condition of the samples. The mass loss and occurrence of termite tunnels in percentage were also determined. The nano-ZnO impregnation improved the resistance of unmodified wood to field-deterioration. The thermal modification at 180oC and 200ºC increased the wood deterioration and nano-ZnO impregnation did not improve their resistance. Unmodified and 220 ºC-modified samples had lower mass loss by xylophages than other thermal treatments regardless of the nanoparticle impregnation. The nano-ZnO impregnation decreases the occurrence of termite tunnels in unmodified, 200 ºC and 220 ºC-modified samples

Heterogeneidade nas taxas de mortalidade : um estudo comparado

Mestrado em Actuarial ScienceNo domínio do atuariado, como em muitos outros, o aperfeiçoamento dos modelos utilizados é de extrema importância, para que a sua aderência à realidade seja cada vez mais efetiva. É desta preocupação que surge a necessidade de estudar a heterogeneidade que por vezes existe na mortalidade das populações, e de qual o seu comportamento nas diferentes idades. Com o propósito de estudar a heterogeneidade Su e Sherris (2012) aplicam, entre outros, o modelo Markov Aging à população australiana, recorrendo ao conceito de idade fisiológica. Tendo como base este trabalho, o objetivo da presente dissertação consiste no estudo e aplicação do modelo Markov Aging à análise e projeção da heterogeneidade existente nas taxas de mortalidade de cinco populações, escolhendo uma coorte específica. Austrália, Canadá, Japão, Portugal e Suécia são os países selecionados, relativamente aos quais se calculam as idades fisiológicas associadas a determinadas idades reais. Adicionalmente, estuda-se de forma um pouco mais detalhada o caso português, comparando duas coortes distintas, separadas por dez anos. Com isto procura-se inferir se (e como) o comportamento da mortalidade e da heterogeneidade evoluiu ao longo da década em consideração no nosso país. As conclusões a que se chegou, embora alinhadas com as dos trabalhos de referência, não deixam de ser significativas.In the Actuarial Science field, as in other fields, the improvement of the models used is of extreme importance, so that its adherence to reality is increasingly effective. It is from this concern that comes the need to study the heterogeneity existing in the mortality rates of the different populations, and how it actuates at different ages. In order to study heterogeneity Su and Sherris (2012) apply, among others, the Markov Aging model to the Australian population, using the concept of physiological age. Based on this work, the objective of this dissertation is to study and apply the Markov Aging model to the analysis and projection of heterogeneity in mortality rates of five populations, choosing a specific cohort. Australia, Canada, Japan, Portugal and Sweden are the selected countries for which the physiological ages associated with certain real ages are calculated. Additionally, the Portuguese case is studied in a somewhat more detailed way, comparing two distinct cohorts, separated by ten years. With this, we try to infer if (and how) the behavior of mortality and heterogeneity has changed in our country over the decade under consideration. The conclusions of the study, although in line with those of the reference papers, are significant and enlightening.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio