Heitor VillaLobos, sob o conceito de Real Maravilhoso de Alejo Carpentier

IX Congresso Brasileiro de Hispanistas realizado nos dias 22 a 25 agosto 2016Alejo Carpentier fala de seu conceito de “Real Maravilhoso”, pela primeira vez, em 1948, mas apenas no ano seguinte, no prólogo do livro O reino deste mundo. É que desenvolve mais claramente, na forma de ensaio. O escritor diz que o “real maravilhoso” é patrimônio de toda a América Latina e que faz parte da vida de todos os grandes nomes que deixaram marcas na história do continente. Entre esses, encontramos o compositor Heitor VillaLobos, de quem Carpentier se tornou amigo e promotor, descrevendoo como o maior representante da música latinoamericana. Em seus textos sobre o músico, muitas vezes carregados de neobarroquismos, o escritor e ensaísta reconta histórias e anedotas ouvidas em rodas de conversa, reforçando a ideia de que, nos exageros entusiásticos das falas de VillaLobos, podemos encontrar claramente elementos do “real maravilhoso” que contribuíram para o deslumbramento provocado nos europeus, a partir de 1920. Portanto, analisarei aqui alguns textos escritos por Carpentier, sobre VillaLobos, que se enquadram nesse conceito e que, de certa forma, também se inseriram na construção idealizada de sua importância como ícone maior da música representativa da américa latin, não só na Europa, mas além delaUNILA­-UNIOEST

Orbitally stable standing waves of a mixed dispersion nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation

We study the mixed dispersion fourth order nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation \begin{equation*} %\tag{\protect{4NLS}}\label{4nls} i \partial_t \psi -\gamma \Delta^2 \psi +\beta \Delta \psi +|\psi|^{2\sigma} \psi =0\ \text{in}\ \R \times\R^N, \end{equation*} where $\gamma,\sigma>0$ and $\beta \in \R$. We focus on standing wave solutions, namely solutions of the form $\psi (x,t)=e^{i\alpha t}u(x)$, for some $\alpha \in \R$. This ansatz yields the fourth-order elliptic equation \begin{equation*} %\tag{\protect{*}}\label{4nlsstar} \gamma \Delta^2 u -\beta \Delta u +\alpha u =|u|^{2\sigma} u. \end{equation*} We consider two associated constrained minimization problems: one with a constraint on the $L^2$-norm and the other on the $L^{2\sigma +2}$-norm. Under suitable conditions, we establish existence of minimizers and we investigate their qualitative properties, namely their sign, symmetry and decay at infinity as well as their uniqueness, nondegeneracy and orbital stability.Comment: 37 pages. To appear in SIAM J. Math. Ana

La mentira: el polvo del tiempo en Historia de Él de Maruxa Vilalta y La grieta de Sabina Berman

IX Congresso Brasileiro de Hispanistas realizado nos dias 22 a 25 agosto 2016Se reconoce a Rodolfo Usigli como uno de los fundadores del moderno teatro mexicano. El gesticulador (1937) echa las raíces de la dramaturgia en su país. Pero, raros son los estudios que lo articulan con las producciones posteriores a la de su generación. Cuando existen, tratan de destacar aspectos de la biografía, señalando que él fue maestro de otros autores. En 2005, Sabina Berman, invitada por El universal a visitar el archivo usigliano que está en la Universidad de Miami, reconoció en el artículo “Rodolfo Usigli y la incuria nuestra” el pequeño valor que se le atribuye al maestro. Como se percibe, las opiniones demuestran una contradicción: a la vez que se reconoce a Usigli como el padre del teatro moderno, se le rinde poco valor de hecho. Creemos que una investigación que procure apuntar la presencia de este autor en términos de ideas, estéticas y “teorías” en obras posteriores a las suyas puede contribuir para aclarar dimensiones importantes de la historiografía dramática en México. En este trabajo, pues, presentamos una lectura de dos obras: Historia de Él, de Maruxa Vilalta (1989), y La grieta, de Sabina Berman (2004), a la luz de los ensayos “El presidente y el ideal” y “Epílogo sobre la hipocresía del mexicano”, ambos publicados en Teatro Completo (1979) de Usigli. Intentamos mostrar que esas obras de autoras representativas de contemporánea dramaturgia ponen en escena, aunque inconscientemente, muchas de las ideas de Usigli. Entre ellas el tema de la mentira, el cual aparece en la historia del teatro mexicano desde la controvertida “mexicanidad” de Juan Ruiz de Alarcón en La verdad sospechosa, y se deja ver hasta en los umbrales de la posmodernidadUNILA­-UNIOEST

Essays on Policy Evaluation

This document is a collection of three articles developed during the course of my PhD, which I submit as requirement for the final exam. The three papers focus to some extent on policy evaluation, applying two main microeconometric techniques: regression discontinuity design and difference-in-differences. Each paper is briefly described as follows. Daylight Saving Lives - In this paper I investigate the effect of Daylight Saving Time (DST) on homicides. Educated Candidates and Efficient Bureaucrats - I test whether more educated candidates make into less corrupt public managers Accountability Shock and Market for Oversight - In this paper I tests whether a top-down shock in oversight and political accountability can strengthen the market for transparency in public management

Activity Recognition based on a Magnitude-Orientation Stream Network

The temporal component of videos provides an important clue for activity recognition, as a number of activities can be reliably recognized based on the motion information. In view of that, this work proposes a novel temporal stream for two-stream convolutional networks based on images computed from the optical flow magnitude and orientation, named Magnitude-Orientation Stream (MOS), to learn the motion in a better and richer manner. Our method applies simple nonlinear transformations on the vertical and horizontal components of the optical flow to generate input images for the temporal stream. Experimental results, carried on two well-known datasets (HMDB51 and UCF101), demonstrate that using our proposed temporal stream as input to existing neural network architectures can improve their performance for activity recognition. Results demonstrate that our temporal stream provides complementary information able to improve the classical two-stream methods, indicating the suitability of our approach to be used as a temporal video representation.Comment: 8 pages, SIBGRAPI 201

A very simple teaching device for studying the pressure-temperature relationship of a gas

The relationships between the properties of gases are not mere "curiosities" and have important implications in areas such as chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, meteorology, etc. In the present  work, we describe a practical device to study the pressure – air temperature relationship in constant volume that can be built and tested by students in the first years of science courses. The simplicity and reliability of the device make the proposal effectively capable of being used in experimental practices in several high school courses, or even in higher education and even in teacher training courses

Final evolutions of a class of May-Leonard Lotka-Volterra systems

We study a particular class of Lotka-Volterra 3-dimensional systems called May-Leonard systems, which depend on two real parameters a and b, when a + b = −1. For these values of the parameters we shall describe its global dynamics in the compactification of the non-negative octant of ℝ3 including its infinity. This can be done because this differential system possesses a Darboux invariant

The chemistry of propellants in the classroom

This paper presents a possible use of rocket chemistry (propellants) as a generating theme for teaching chemistry. The well-known “rocket candy” (sucrose-potassium nitrate propellant), KNSu is prepared and it is suggested as his combustion can be employed as a generating theme for teaching chemistry

The pressor effect of angiotensin-(1-7) in the rat rostral ventrolateral medulla involves multiple peripheral mechanisms

OBJECTIVE: In the present study, the peripheral mechanism that mediates the pressor effect of angiotensin-(1-7) in the rostral ventrolateral medulla was investigated. METHOD: Angiotensin-(1-7) (25 pmol) was bilaterally microinjected in the rostral ventrolateral medulla near the ventral surface in urethane-anesthetized male Wistar rats that were untreated or treated (intravenously) with effective doses of selective autonomic receptor antagonists (atenolol, prazosin, methyl-atropine, and hexamethonium) or a vasopressin V1 receptor antagonist [d(CH2)5 -Tyr(Me)-AVP] given alone or in combination. RESULTS: Unexpectedly, the pressor response produced by angiotensin-(1-7) (16 ± 2 mmHg, n = 12), which was not associated with significant changes in heart rate, was not significantly altered by peripheral treatment with prazosin, the vasopressin V1 receptor antagonist, hexamethonium or methyl-atropine. Similar results were obtained in experiments that tested the association of prazosin and atenolol; methyl-atropine and the vasopressin V1 antagonist or methyl-atropine and prazosin. Peripheral treatment with the combination of prazosin, atenolol and the vasopressin V1 antagonist abolished the pressor effect of glutamate; however, this treatment produced only a small decrease in the pressor effect of angiotensin-(1-7) at the rostral ventrolateral medulla. The combination of hexamethonium with the vasopressin V1 receptor antagonist or the combination of prazosin, atenolol, the vasopressin V1 receptor antagonist and methyl-atropine was effective in blocking the effect of angiotensin-(1-7) at the rostral ventrolateral medulla. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that angiotensin-(1-7) triggers a complex pressor response at the rostral ventrolateral medulla that involves an increase in sympathetic tonus, release of vasopressin and possibly the inhibition of a vasodilatory mechanism