Private Law and State Paternalism: Too Much Legal Regulation of Private Life?

This article analyses the adverse effect of paternalistic attitudes adopted by the State, especially the legal regulation of private life. Often, the State has adopted certain positions, especially through the issuance of rules and legal decisions in areas where Private Law and freedom of choice has prevailed, such as private contracts. Due to a protectionist position adopted by the State, legal regulation of private life has increased. The Judiciary resolves questions that arise daily in private orbit precisely because it is considered as the only social actor able to implement its own decisions. In such a way, this study seeks to analyze the possible consequences of this state altruistic posture. It is interesting to note that such a posture is authoritative at the same time, since individuals are considered eternally vulnerable and minimizes principles of Private Law. This, ultimately, could lead from a democratic system to an authoritarian one

Effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the universal thermal conductance

The effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the thermal conductance in mesoscopic systems at low temperatures is calculated using full elasticity theory. The low frequency behavior of the scattering shows novel power law dependences arising from the unusual properties of the elastic modes. This leads to new predictions for the low temperature depression of the thermal conductance below the ideal universal value. Comparison with the data of Schwab et al. [Nature 404, 974 (2000)] suggests that surface roughness on a scale of the width of the thermal pathway is important in the experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Plantas uliginosas e aquaticas do Pantanal arenoso.

Com o objetivo de apoiar projetos de pesquisa sobre plantas forrageiras e componentes bioticos de habitats (jacare, peixes), iniciou-se em 1984 o levantamento de plantas aquaticas e uliginosas de lugares umidos no leque aluvial arenoso do rio Taquari, que abrange Nhecolandia e Paiaguas no Pantanal. A Nhecolandia caracteriza-se pelas lagoas (= "baias"), e Paiaguas, pelas vazantes, ou drenagem abertas. Ambas as sub-regioes tem campos estacionalmente palustres com plantas uliginosas e aquaticas. Algumas comunidades como "pirizal", "caetezal", "taboal", "camalotal", etc, tem nomes populares em funcao das plantas dominantes. No total foram listadas 157 especies, de 108 generos e 54 familias. As familias mais numerosas sao gramineae (37 especies) e Cyperaceae (19), seguidas de Leguminosae (10), Scrophulariceae (7), Eriocaulaceae (6), Alismataceae (5), Lentibulariaceae (5), Onagraceae (5) e Polygalaceae (5).bitstream/item/41130/1/PA06.pd

The Effect of Surface Roughness on the Universal Thermal Conductance

We explain the reduction of the thermal conductance below the predicted universal value observed by Schwab et al. in terms of the scattering of thermal phonons off surface roughness using a scalar model for the elastic waves. Our analysis shows that the thermal conductance depends on two roughness parameters: the roughness amplitude $\delta$ and the correlation length $a$. At sufficiently low temperatures the conductance decrease from the universal value quadratically with temperature at a rate proportional to $\delta ^{2}a$. Values of $\delta$ equal to 0.22 and $a$ equal to about 0.75 of the width of the conduction pathway give a good fit to the data.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Ref. added, typo correcte

Age-Related Differences in Cortical Activity during a Visuo-Spatial Working Memory Task with Facial Stimuli

Emotion, importantly displayed by facial expressions, is one of the most significant memory modulators. The interaction between memory and the different emotional valences change across lifespan, while young adults (YA) are expected to better recall negative events (Negativity Bias Hypothesis), older adults (OA) tend to focus on positive stimuli (Positivity Effect Hypothesis). This research work aims at verifying whether cortical electrical activity of these two age groups would also be differently influenced by emotional valences in a visuo-spatial working memory task. 27 YA (13 males) and 25 OA (14 males), all healthy volunteers, underwent electroencephalographic recordings (21 scalp electrodes montage), while performing the Spatial Delayed Recognition Span Task using a touch screen with different stimuli categories: neutral, positive and negative faces and geometric pictures. YA obtained higher scores than OA, and showed higher activation of theta and alpha bands in the frontal and midline regions, besides a more evident right-hemispheric asymmetry on alpha band when compared to OA. For both age groups, performance in the task was worse for positive faces than to negative and to neutral faces. Facial stimuli induced a better performance and higher alpha activation on the pre-frontal region for YA, and on the midline, occipital and left temporal regions for OA when compared to geometric figures. The superior performance of YA was expected due to the natural cognitive deficits connected to ageing, as was a better performance with facial stimuli due to the evolutionary importance of faces. These results were related to cortical activity on areas of importance for action-planning, decision making and sustained attention. Taken together, they are in accordance with the Negativity Bias but do not support the Positivity Effect. The methodology used was able to identify age-related differences in cortical activity during emotional mnemonic processing and may be interesting to future investigations

Construction of coherent states for physical algebraic systems

We construct a general state which is an eigenvector of the annihilation operator of the Generalized Heisenberg Algebra. We show for several systems, which are characterized by different energy spectra, that this general state satisfies the minimal set of conditions required to obtain Klauder's minimal coherent states.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure