Bitcoin as a Digital Commodity

The paper demonstrates that Bitcoin is not money but rather a digital commodity that has value but no value-added. We show that both the production of and the speculation with Bitcoin draw from the existing global pool of value-added. By extending the Classical Political Economy approach and the New Interpretation of the labour theory of value to the domain of digital commodities, the paper argues that Bitcoin mining is an automated reproduction process that requires no direct (living) labour and thus creates no new value. Bitcoin, in this regard, is not ‘digital gold’. Between sectors, Bitcoin mining redistributes wealth and value-added already in existence, while Bitcoin miners with more computational power compete to appropriate the mining profits within the blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain then creates rivalry in both the ownership and the use of the digital commodity through non-legal means. Our approach can be further expanded to the larger domain of automated digital commodities that are reproducible without the expenditure of direct, living labour

Projeto HAPRONT – Módulos de Matemática Vol. 2

Esta foi localizada pelo professor Dr. Reginaldo Rodrigues da Costa.Esta fonte foi inserida por alunos da Iniciação Científica da PUC-PR coordenado pelo professor Dr. Reginaldo Rodrigues da Costa.Este volume contém vários módulos de matemática. Normalmente, em cada módulo é apresentado o título, assunto, matéria, pré-requisitos, objetivos, pré-teste, procedimentos e atividades, pós-teste, gabarito, bibliografia e glossário. Neste volume estão presentes os seguintes módulos: operando com conjuntos (módulo 10); produtos cartesiano (módulo 26); operando com números naturais (módulo 27); noções de geometria I (módulo 39); noções de geometria II (módulo 40); grandezas mensuráveis II (módulo 59); grandezas mensuráveis I (módulo 58); operando com números (módulo 60) de autoria de Clélia Tavares Martins

MODELLING OF A PACKED BED REACTOR FOR DRY REFORM OF METHANE

In the present article, the mathematical modeling of a fixed bed reactor to produce synthesis gas (mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) through the dry reforming reaction of natural gas was performed. This product is an important intermediary of the petrochemical industry, being used as reagent in the production of a vast amount of chemicals, fuels and solvents. Reforming with carbon dioxide (dry reforming) has a significant environmental bias, as it uses two of the largest greenhouse-enhancing agents to produce products of interest to the chemical industry. Thus, an adiabatic bed-type reactor (with Ni/Al2O3 as catalyst) was modeled in order to trace the conversion, temperature and pressure profiles in the equipment and to size it. The three ordinary differential equations of the mass, temperature and pressure balances were simultaneously solved by the numerical method of Euler (in Microsoft Excel), resulting in an equipment with 3 ton of catalyst and a minimum length of 3.15 m

PRINCIPLES OF A POS-ANTHROPOCENTRIC DESIGN: REFLECTIONS ON A CASE STUDY

This paper reports the preliminary results of an ongoing investigation at the Design & Sustainability Research Center of Paraná Federal University into a more effective contribution of Design regarding climate change. It focuses on the new paradigm of a post-anthropocentric design. Its content is the result of a literature review and a reflection on action design research developed during the preparation for a remote workshop carried out in São Paulo, Brazil. The challenge was developing pos-anthropocentric solutions for Buenos Aires Park, where nine of the ten clients were non-humans. The paper presents a set of five pos-anthropocentric design principles, illustrated with human and non-human requirements and preliminary design propositions

Powders and Plasma Technology Laboratory (LTPP) at UFPR: Twenty Years Working with Green Pulsed DC Plasma

In the last 20 years, since the LTPP foundation at UFPR, DC Plasma attained from Glow Discharge Processes has been increasingly used for Heat Treatment and Surface Thermochemical Treatment applications. Such practices agree very well with the predicted the Target 4 of Goal 12 ("Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns") of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development from the United Nations, which indicates by 2020, achieving environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle and significantly reduce their release to air (and also water and soil) to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment 1. In this context, significant care has been mainly given to the R&D of Plasma Carburizing (Carburization) applied for different Stainless Steel classes and metals like Niobium, keeping in mind that the carburizing industrial processes extensively used in the past Century and even used nowadays in some places (namely the conventional gaseous, and/or liquid carburizing), are characteristically non-green technologies, since they usually release in the air, the processed endogas, and in fluvial systems, residues from cyanide and carbonate based salt baths, respectively. In this way, the present work emphasizes the good practice of using DC Plasma for Carburizing purposes, which is extensively used for different Mechanical and Metallurgical Engineering field applications

Adorno, Habermas, Honneth:: uma genealogia da contradição capital-trabalho nas três gerações da Teoria Crítica

O trabalho apresenta uma breve revisão do desenvolvimento da tradição de pensamento da Teoria Crítica ao longo de suas três gerações (aqui representadas, respectivamente, por Theodor Adorno e Max Horkheimer, Jurgen Habermas e Axel Honneth) em relação ao modo de como tratam, aproximando ou afastando-se deste eixo, a contradição capital-trabalho na explicação da dominação na modernidade capitalista. Ao situá-lo a partir dessa categoria, objetiva traçar o referido panorama da trajetória intelectual dessa linhagem na perspectiva de seu projeto fundacional de crítica radical da realidade social ancorada nas formulações de Karl Marx, como núcleo teórico-conceitual. Feito esse apanhado, argumenta que as distintas formas de negação do imperativo de ruptura sistêmica pela via revolucionária frente ao modo produção capitalista, verificadas nas propostas de tais autores, estão diretamente relacionadas à secundarização teórica da contradição capital-trabalho que estes empreendem na construção de suas formulações

Basic Sanitation and Dental Caries: the association between them

Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases in humans. It is the result of an interaction between fermentable carbohydrates and bacteria, which adhere to teeth and produce corrosive acids. This disease is an important public health problem, as it generates negative health impacts, such as pain, discomfort, in addition to social limitations that affect people's quality of life. It is already known that access to fluoride and a balanced diet are ways to fight caries, but not everyone has access to these ways. Besides the oral hygiene, one way to combat caries in the most vulnerable population is through fluoridation of the public water supply. However, for this population to have access to fluoridated water, they must have access to basic sanitation. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 2 billion people still do not have basic sanitation facilities in the world, only 65% of the population has access to safely managed water services in Latin America and about 15 million Brazilians do not receive running water daily. Thus, fluoridated water does not reach the population that should benefit from it, causing caries to remain a global public health problem. Therefore, for caries to be combatted globally, there must first be investments in basic sanitation, with the objective that people have access to fluoridated water or minimum conditions to perform oral hygiene

The impact of oral health on the populations well-being

According to Bendo et al. (2014), Dentistry used to only address the association between oral alterations and their risk factors. However, in Modern Dentistry, there has been a concern in investigating the impact of oral problems on people's quality of life. It is already a fact that oral diseases can affect diet, communication, sleep, but also have a strong impact on the emotional and social well-being of individuals. Social interaction and self-esteem problems are common in people with oral problems, resulting in damage to the quality of life of those affected. In today's society, managed, in many cases, by marketing the personal image on social networks, always taking into account good physical appearance, oral problems can have severe impacts on a person's socialization. According to Petersen (2003), all individuals must have dignified oral health conditions, allowing them to chew, speak, smile, live without pain, as well as have social relationships without any embarrassment due to their oral condition. However, the world is still far from the idea that all individuals have this dignity of oral health. According to the World Health Organization, there is still a very consistent association between socioeconomic power and oral health quality, causing oral problems to affect mainly the most vulnerable population. Thus, the poorest population ends up being even more excluded from society and losing even more well-being and quality of life due to their oral condition. Therefore, it can be concluded that oral health has great impacts on the well-being of individuals