Crises Cambiais e Ataques Especulativos no Brasil

The main goal of this paper is to investigate the hypothesis that currency crisis models based on macroeconomic fundamentals explain, to some extent, the occurrence of speculative attacks and currency crisis in Brazil between January 1982 and January 1999. For this purpose, the external sector of the Brazilian economy was analyzed to identify speculative attacks and currency crises. An adaptation of one of the main first generation models of currency crisis was used as theoretical background, producing an equation of the probability of occurrence of speculative attacks as function of macroeconomic variables. As an empirical application for the case of Brazil, an econometric model was utilized to estimate the parameters of this equation. The results were compatible with the hypothesis of the model. The probability of occurrence of speculative attacks grows with the monetary suply, the real effective exchange rate, the international interest rate, and the liberalization of capital controls and diminishes with the international reserves, the real gross domestic product, the exchange rate fixed by the government, the square of the international interest rate, the external price level, and the international trade in goods. The estimated equations for the probability of occurrence of currency crises and speculative attacks showed its usefulness to predict the imminence of these events.

Decontamination and deodorization of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole on cork

The presence of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (2,4,6-TCA) in cork was identified as a problem for the cork industry in the early 80’s and also considered as a potent compound towards the origin of organoleptic defects in wines. These defects are easily detected by the consumers and it only takes as little as about 5 ng/L to be detected. However, there is a certain difficulty when trying to detect such low concentration levels with mass spectrometry. Heavily contaminating the cork substrates with TCA could be a solution for this detection limitation. By artificially contaminating the samples and by using quadrupole mass spectrometry (QMS) coupled with temperature-programmed desorption (TPD), we verified the presence of a TCA desorption peak in a cork substrate. We also verified that heating above a temperature of 160ºC in a high vacuum atmosphere allows the removal of this contaminant from cork substrates. A TCA quantification method that was developed with this work confirmed that the majority of the TCA was removed with the TPD experiment when heating above the TPD peak. The main outcome of this experiment is the proposed process to remove TCA from cork stoppers by heating at temperatures close or above the TPD peak. Such process would have the goal of making cork and its derivative products free of TCA, or at least below the human detection threshold. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to understand how the TCA adsorption occurs, and that will be the objective and the contribution of this thesis work - to confirm the nature of the TCA adsorption and, most importantly, an attempt to determine which group of its molecule is effectively adsorbing onto the cork substrates. For this purpose, other substrates and compounds were chosen to be experimented due to their similarities with the constitution of cork constitution and the chemical structure of TCA, respectively. This experiment showed that cellulose does not have a relevant role in the adsorption process

Toyota Mirai: powertrain model and assessment of the energy management

© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Toyota Mirai is a widely known fuel cell hybrid vehicle and its powertrain represents a benchmark for engineers and researchers. This work presents a lumped-parameter low-order model of Toyota Mirai powertrain and an assessment of the energy management focused on fuel economy and battery and fuel cell degradation. In addition, a rule-based strategy is proposed to reproduce the behavior of Toyota Mirai energy management strategy. The powertrain model and the proposed strategy are validated against experimental data. The assessment of the energy management is performed by comparing the Toyota Mirai strategy with optimal strategies obtained offline via dynamic programming. Different optimal strategies are computed by including the demand of the fuel cell and the battery in the cost function. Simulation results show a high correlation between the proposed model and strategy compared to the experimental data. Comparison of Toyota Mirai strategy with the optimal strategies reveals a small margin for improvement in fuel economy and higher margins in terms of demand of the fuel cell and battery.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Organic Livestock Production- A Bibliometric Review

Due to the increasing interest in organic farming, an overview of this research area is provided through a bibliometric analysis conducted between April and May 2019. A total of 320 documents were published up until 2018 on organic livestock farming, with an annual growth rate of 9.33% and a clear increase since 2005; 268 documents have been published in 111 journals. Germany is the country with the largest number of published papers (56 documents). Authors\u2019 top keywords (excluding keywords used for running the search) included: animal welfare (29 times), animal health (22 times), cattle (15 times), grazing (10 times), and sheep (10 times). This could indicate that more research has been done on cattle because of the importance of this species in Germany. Moreover, the prevalence of the terms \u2018animal welfare\u2019 and \u2018animal health\u2019 may indicate that the research on organic livestock production has been focused on these two areas. The bibliometric analysis indicates that: i) countries focused the organic livestock production research on their main production, and ii) more research in species other than cattle and sheep is needed

Computer simulations of dynamical properties of fluids: atomistic-continuum hybrid methods

Computational methods for the calculation of dynamical properties of fluids might consider the system as a continuum or as an assembly of molecules. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation includes molecular resolution, whereas computational fluid dynamics (CFD) considers the fluid as a continuum. This work provides a review of hybrid methods MD/CFD recently proposed in the literature. Theoretical foundations, basic approaches of computational methods, and dynamical properties typically calculated by MD and CFD are first presented in order to appreciate the similarities and differences between these two methods. Then, methods for coupling MD and CFD, and applications of hybrid simulations MD/CFD, are presented.FAPESPCNP

Molecular dynamics study on the Apo- and Holo-forms of 5-lipoxygenase

Lipoxygenases (LOXs) are nonheme iron-containing enzymes catalyzing the dioxygenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. LOX catalytic activity depends on the presence of iron in the active site and the iron removal is also able to affect the membrane binding properties of the enzyme. Leukotrienes biosynthesis is initiated by the action of 5-LOX at the level of nuclear membrane and the mechanism of enzyme-membrane interaction is thought to involve structural flexibility and conformational changes at the level of the protein tertiary structure. In this study, we have analyzed by molecular dynamics simulations the conformational changes induced by iron removal in 5-LOX. The data indicate that the degree of enzyme flexibility is related to the presence of iron into the active site that is able to stabilize the protein increasing its rigidity. These findings provide further evidence that the conformation and the functional activity of LOXs is tuned by the presence of iron at the active site, suggesting new approaches for the design of enzyme inhibitors.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

MEREC - Guarda: An Energy and Resource Efficiency Process undermined by the early stages of a democratic setting.

This article focuses on the historical background which lead to the implementation of an EUA programme in a European country; a programme designed for developing countries. To that end, we seek to discern, how 1980's Managing Energy and Resource Efficient Cities (MEREC) methodology has perpetuated in urban planning and architecture practice as well as in the discourses of its stakeholders. Guarda is a medieval border town (1050m) in the hinterland of Portugal, far away from the impact of metropolitan areas, such as Lisbon or Porto. Guarda kept a balanced urban growth over the years, but demography and key sectors of the economy changed profoundly after the Portuguese democratic revolution (1974). Serving as an early experience towards city resilience and sustained development, MEREC was a programme developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Inspired by the work of Richard Meier (1974), MEREC answered to the growing concerns triggered by the 1970s energy crisis and its consequences. Amid a rapid urbanisation and population growth, increased energy costs and pressure on natural resources, MEREC targeted cities in developing countries which could adopt preventive approaches towards resource efficiency. However, instead of concentrating its efforts on metropolitan areas, MEREC aimed at the development of secondary cities, where most of the growth had yet to come.From 1983 to 1985, MEREC established a comprehensive planning process, involving Guarda Municipality, central and regional agencies and the know-how of Portuguese universities and private consultants. MEREC identified the city's problems in water supply, urban waste, urban management, changes in local building materials used and scattered urbanisation. Several of these problems had been overcome with the project's completion, the development of Guarda's master plan, research technology, and awareness campaigns.USAID-MEREC advisors considered the results achieved in Guarda as rewarding. Architect Maria Castro (1989) points out the clarity achieved in the decision-making processes for urban planning and management during the MEREC programme. However, as she notes, discourses and institutional support changed after MEREC. MEREC’s methodology was somehow thrown away, suggesting a lack of planning culture among local political powers, unwilling to redirect resources. MEREC happened ten years after Portugal's dictatorship had ended, when the country was committed to the world as a democratic country, facing political and economical instability until its accession to the European Economic Union (EEC), as well as, undergoing deep socio-cultural transformations and striving for development. From 1986 onwards, MEREC programme was hampered by a democratic setting that aimed for development in more immediate ways, regardless of the resource-efficiency strategy proposed

Effects of the marine biotoxins Okadaic acid and Dinophysistoxins on fish

Natural high proliferations of toxin-producing microorganisms in marine and freshwater environments result in dreadful consequences at the socioeconomically and environmental level due to water and seafood contamination. Monitoring programs and scientific evidence point to harmful algal blooms (HABs) increasing in frequency and intensity as a result of global climate alterations. Among marine toxins, the okadaic acid (OA) and the related dinophysistoxins (DTX) are the most frequently reported in EU waters, mainly in shellfish species. These toxins are responsible for human syndrome diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP). Fish, like other marine species, are also exposed to HABs and their toxins. However, reduced attention has been given to exposure, accumulation, and effects on fish of DSP toxins, such as OA. The present review intends to summarize the current knowledge of the impact of DSP toxins and to identify the main issues needing further research. From data reviewed in this work, it is clear that exposure of fish to DSP toxins causes a range of negative effects, from behavioral and morphological alterations to death. However, there is still much to be investigated about the ecological and food safety risks related to contamination of fish with DSP toxins.Project Cigua PTDC/CTA-AMB/30557/2017; FCT: UID/Multi/04326/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio