Essentials for sustainable urban transport in Brazil's large metropolitan areas

Before financing major urban transport projects, decisionmakers should attempt to put in place the basic elements for long-term sustainability of the sector. Specifically, the author contends that each large metropolitan area in Brazil should incorporate into its urban transport strategy, and pursue vigorously, the following four-point agenda: 1) create a regional transport coordination commission in charge of coordinating policies among federal, state, and municipal governments, giving highest priority to major urban transport investments in the metropolitan region and promoting modal integration - all to the end of improving the sector's economic efficiency and long-term sustainability; 2) adopt an integrated land use, urban transport, and air quality strategy that provides a framework in which the community and decisionmakers can evaluate future urban transport investments and policies; 3) enact into law formal financing mechanisms that would ensure that long-run variable costs of urban transport systems are covered by operating and non-operating revenues from the systems and by appropriate user charges; and 4) promote private sector participation in the operation, maintenance, and construction of urban transport systems - through concessions or management contracts - as a way to lessen the financial burden on the government.Roads&Highways,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Urban Transport,Banks&Banking Reform,Roads&Highways,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies

Reforming the urban transport sector in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region - a case study in concessions

The author describes a bold effort by the state government to increase private sector participation in Rio de Janeiro's urban transport sector, reduce heavy operating subsidies, and establish a foundation for making the sector sustainable. This effort was undertaken with the help of three World Bank-financed loans: * The Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Transport Loan, which provided assistance for the transfer of federally owned suburban railways to the state government. * The Rio de Janeiro State Reform and Privatization Loan, which helped the state privatize and grant concessions for a number of its enterprises. * The Rio de Janeiro Mass Transit Loan, which supported the reorganization of the sector and the concession of the Rio suburban railways (Flumitrens). Most of the reforms in the urban transport sector have been implemented. The lessons learned from implementation and the results obtained so far suggest that political decisiveness, transparency, and ingenuity in developing incentives are crucial to privatizing urban rail transport systems. But the state also learned that not having a credible staff redundancy program might seriously reduce the benefits expected from concessions.Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Roads&Highways,Decentralization,National Governance,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Urban Transport,Roads&Highways

Preparing multiyear railway investment plans : a market-oriented approach

With the emergence of a powerful trucking industry and the deregulation of transport, most of the once-powerful developing country railways are facing a struggle for survival. Traditional traffic is shifting to trucking and pipelines, governments are increasingly reluctant to write blank checks to cover deficits, and the falling morale of railroaders is harming productivity and reliability. Railway managements know they must introduce institutional and organizational changes that make railways market-oriented. Governments must support legislation that creates an enabling environment that supports the railway's autonomy and allows it to compete. Young planners and not-so-young railroaders struggling with multiyear investment plans tend to concentrate only on investing in infrastructure and acquiring equipment (bricks and mortar). They tend to ignore or underestimate essential institutional reform, without which the revival of the railways cannot be sustained. The author's practical and detailed paper will help railway planners prepare profit-oriented multiyear investment plans. He describes the steps of a plan, and within each step, lists basic issues and questions relevant to that step. He highlights the importance of marketing and sales in the modern railway, and shows how to screen proposed projects and package them into meaningful corridors, where the level of service can benefit substantially from the proposed investment. Long-term objectives for modernizing a railway, according to the author, would include achieving complete autonomy from the government, supporting ongoing economic rehabilitation programs, maximizing profits, signing contract plans for government-imposed services, and developing railway real estate. Medium-term objectives would include increasing the railway's commercial orientation, continuing the rehabilitation of plant and equipment, searching for and developing new markets, lobbying for approval of an enabling plan, and achieving an acceptable tonnage/staff ratio. Short-term objectives would include supporting an ongoing economic rehabilitation program; maximizing profits; removing bottlenecks when an investment is not necessary to do so; starting the rehabilitation of plant and equipment; preparing a plan for developing an enabling environment; strengthening marketing and sales, accounting, and railway costing; and starting a manpower development and retraining program.Railways Transport,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Roads&Highways,Public Sector Economics&Finance

Comparison of different numerical methods for the solution of the time-fractional reaction-diffusion equation with variable diffusion coefficient

In this work we perform a comparison of two different numerical schemes for the solution of the time-fractional diffusion equation with variable diffusion coefficient and a nonlinear source term. The two methods are the implicit numerical scheme presented in [M.L. Morgado, M. Rebelo, Numerical approximation of distributed order reaction- diffusion equations, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 275 (2015) 216-227] that is adapted to our type of equation, and a colocation method where Chebyshev polynomials are used to reduce the fractional differential equation to a system of ordinary differential equationsCOMPETE, FEDER and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)) through Strategic Projects - LA 25 – 2013-2014, PTDC/EME- MFE/113988/2009 and EXPL/CTM-POL/1299/2013. M. Rebelo acknowledge financial funding by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the project PEstOE/MAT/UI0297/2013 (Centro de Matemática e Aplicacões

Stable and convergent finite difference schemes on nonuniformtime meshes for distributed-order diffusion equations

In this work, stable and convergent numerical schemes on nonuniform time meshes are proposed, for the solution of distributed-order diffusion equations. The stability and convergence of the numerical methods are proven, and a set of numerical results illustrate that the use of particular nonuniform time meshes provides more accurate results than the use of a uniform mesh, in the case of nonsmooth solutions.The authors acknowledge the support of the Center for Mathematics and Applications (CMA)—FCT-NOVA, Center for Computational and Stochastic Mathematics, Instituto Superior Técnico, and CMAT—Centre of Mathematics—University of Minho. The first author acknowledges Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within Projects UIDB/04621/2020 and UIDP/04621/2020. The second author acknowledges the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia through Project UIDB/00297/2020 (Centro de Matemática e Aplicações). The third author acknowledges the funding by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia through Projects UIDB/00013/2020 and UIDP/00013/202

Students´ Representations of education Quality in Different School Levels: an Exploratory Study with Portuguese Students

Quality may be studied from different perspectives. Research shows that many variables may be envolved when the target is the educational system. One may analyse the motivation of students and teachers, the methodologies of teaching, the processes of evaluation, the resources available, the educational facilities, the course organization or the academic success. Recent research results show a strong positive correlation between students’ academic success and the quality of education available to them. However, the way students perceive the quality indicators has been a less explored area. We present the results of an academic longitudinal research project that aims to study the students’ representations of quality along the school system in order to contribute to an improvement of teaching and learning processes. The sampling of this exploratory study focused on compulsory education, secondary education and higher education. In this paper the authors analyse data collected in three institutions of higher education in Portugal, through a questionnaire survey

Fractional bioheat equation

In this work we develop a new mathematical model for the Pennes’ bioheat equation assuming a fractional time derivative of single order. A numerical method for the solu- tion of such equations is proposed, and, the suitability of the new model for modelling real physical problems is studied and discussedCOMPETE, FEDER and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)) through Projects UID/CTM/50025/2013, PTDC/EME- MFE/113988/2009 and EXPL/CTM-POL/1299/2013. M. Rebelo acknowledge financial funding by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the project PEstOE/MAT/UI0297/2013 (Centro de Matemática e Aplicacões

Semi-analytical solutions for the poiseuille-couette flow of a generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner fluid

This work presents new analytical and semi-analytical solutions for the pure Couette and Poiseuille-Couette flows, described by the recently proposed (Ferras et al., A Generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner Model, JNNFM 2019) viscoelastic model, known as the generalised Phan-Thien-Tanner constitutive equation. This generalised version considers the Mittag-Leffler function instead of the classical linear or exponential functions of the trace of the stress tensor, and provides one or two new fitting constants in order to achieve additional fitting flexibility. The analytical solutions derived in this work allow a better understanding of the model, and therefore contribute to improve the modelling of complex materials, and will provide an interesting challenge to computational rheologists, to benchmarking and to code verification.This research was funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020-Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizacao (POCI) and by national funds through FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I. P. through Projects PTDC/EMS-ENE/3362/2014, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016665, UID-MAT-00013/2013, and UID/MAT/00297/2013 as well as grant number SFRH/BPD/100353/2014. This work was partially supported by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through the project UID/MAT/00297/2019 (Centro de Matematica e Aplicacoes)

Moluscos terrestres das Flores e Corvo

XIII Expedição Científica do Departamento de Biologia - Flores e Corvo 2007.A malacofauna terrestre das ilhas Flores e Corvo é bastante diversificada e contém um importante número de endemismos, à semelhança das restantes ilhas dos Açores. Certos géneros (e.g. Oxychilus, Leptaxis), particularmente ricos em endemismos, apresentam evidências que apontam para a descrição de espécies novas para a ciência. Para além do valor intrínseco como biodiversidade regional e mundial, a malacofauna terrestre dos Açores pode fornecer informação relevante para a gestão ambiental do arquipélago, ou ainda fornecer espécies indicadoras para planos estratégicos de desenvolvimento sustentável

A tale of two species: the importance of native ecosystems for long-term conservation on Príncipe Island, Gulf of Guinea

Since it was first described in 1901, the Príncipe thrush Turdus xanthorhynchus has been rare and restricted to the native forest in the south of Príncipe Island. The Obô giant land snail Archachatina bicarinata, however, was widespread across the island and at least locally abundant until the 1990s. Since then its population has collapsed, and now, like the thrush, it is also restricted to the native forest in the south of the island. Using species distribution modelling, we show that both species are currently strongly associated with rugged and remote areas of native forest at high altitudes. We argue that their current distribution might be negatively affected by anthropogenic pressures, as both are harvested, and also because invasive alien species are expected to have deleterious effects on these species, although further studies are needed to clarify interactions between these native and introduced species. The diachronic stories of these species highlight an overlooked value of native ecosystems: their role in the conservation of widespread species that might be unable to use anthropogenic landscapes in the future. They also reinforce the need for protected areas that strive to exclude most human activities in the context of particularly sensitive biodiversity, as is often the case on oceanic islands.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio