Evaluating Brazilian mutual funds with stochastic frontiers

We evaluate the performance of 307 Brazilian stock mutual funds employing stochastic frontiers. We list the top ten actively managed funds and the bottom ten for the period April 2001-July 2003, and show that a fund's efficiency increases with management skill to beat the market. We also find that portfolios with low volatility tend to be more efficient. Yet we find no relationship between fund size and performance, though this might be blurred by a survivorship bias.

Agent-oriented approach to develop context-aware applications : a case study on communities of practice

This paper presents and discusses the use of an agent-oriented context-aware platform to support the interactions of the participating actors of communities of practice in the health care domain. Our work is based on a scenario where communities of practice are applied in a hospital to enhance the knowledge sharing among the hospital staff members who share interests and goals. An agent-oriented modeling language (AORML) is used to support the analysis of contextual information and interaction between participating actors in the context-aware services platform. The chosen supporting platform is a context-aware services platform that uses semantic web services and runs on top of 3G networks

Efeito de um protocolo de fadiga no tempo de reação, tempo de resposta e impacto do chute semicircular de atletas de Taekwondo

TCC (Graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Desportos. Curso de Graduação em Educação Física.Nas artes marciais, como no Taekwondo, o chute semicircular é uma das técnicas mais utilizadas em combates. Avaliar o tempo de reação (TR), tempo de resposta (TRESP) e o impacto do chute é muito importante. Sendo assim, o presente estudo investigou o efeito de um protocolo específico de fadiga no TR, TRESP e no impacto do chute em atletas de Taekwondo. Seis atletas do sexo masculino (24,50 ± 3,94 anos; 8,82 ± 6,09 anos de experiência, altura 176,4 ± 3,39 cm; massa corporal 73,67 ± 5,99 kg e gordura corporal 11,66 ± 1,44%) foram avaliados. O tempo de exaustão máximo (TLIM) correspondente a intensidade da frequência de chute máximo (FCHMAX) foi de 227,5 ± 24,5 s e houve uma redução significativa (p<0,01) sobre o impacto do chute do pré para o pós protocolo de fadiga. Também foi observada uma correlação significativa (p<0,01; r=0,628) entre as medidas de TRESP e os valores de impacto dos 18 chutes avaliados. Com isso, conclui-se que o protocolo específico TLIM induzido os atletas de Taekwondo a uma situação de fadiga, refletindo um menor impacto do chute semicircular no ritmo correspondente a FCHMAX. Além disso, a relação entre o impacto e TRESP parece indicar que quanto maior a força aplicada pelo atleta maior será o tempo para atingir o alvo

Quantum Confinement in Hydrogen Bond of DNA and RNA

The hydrogen bond is a fundamental ingredient to stabilize the DNA and RNA macromolecules. The main contribution of this work is to describe quantitatively this interaction as a consequence of the quantum confinement of the hydrogen. The results for the free and confined system are compared with experimental data. The formalism to compute the energy gap of the vibration motion used to identify the spectrum lines is the Variational Method allied to Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. To appear in The Proceedings of the 30th International Colloquium on Group Theoretical Methods in Physics (Group30), Ghent, Belgiu

Produção de curtas-metragens em contextos de sala de aula: leitura e fruição da linguagem cinematográfica

Brazilian education has been facing a lot of challenges: one of them is the necessity of fostering the use of digital tools at schools on a daily basis, to help emerging or expanding the students’ reading competences from a culture of images in which students live in. From this perspective, this paper focus on describing the elements of cinematographic language that students involved on a project have appropriated after their participation in activities in which the main purpose was the production of short films, from the assumption that this appropriation has allowed them to be proficient in reading the film culture that is within in our society. To accomplish the objective, students answered a survey about three short films produced by them throughout their high school years. Data were analyzed in light of the theories of Habitus and symbolic Capital proposed by Bourdieu (2003 and 2005) and Neves (2007). The results have shown that students understood the cinematographic language that was taught as they have built references about it in the survey. A educação brasileira tem muitos desafios. Um deles é a necessidade de trazer para o cotidiano da escola o uso de ferramentas digitais que possibilitem o surgimento ou ampliação de competências de leitura da cultura imagética na qual os alunos vivem imersos. Nessa conjuntura, o presente trabalho pretende descrever os elementos da linguagem cinematográfica de que os alunos envolvidos no projeto se apropriaram após participarem de um conjunto de atividades cujo fim era a produção de curtas-metragens, partindo do pressuposto de que essa apropriação lhes permitirá a leitura e fruição proficientes da cultura fílmica que circula em nossa sociedade. Para levar a efeito esse objetivo, pedimos aos alunos que respondessem um questionário de pesquisa que versava sobre três curtas-metragens produzidos por eles mesmos durante os anos em que cursaram o Ensino Médio. Os dados foram analisados a partir dos conceitos teóricos de Habitus e Capital simbólico, propostos por Bourdieu (2003 e 2005) e Neves (2007). Os resultados mostraram que os alunos compreenderam a linguagem do cinema que lhes foi ensinada, uma vez que passaram a construir referentes sobre ela no questionário de pesquisa que responderam

How can forecasting and analysing competition and tourism indicators be applied into setting a dynamic pricing range. An organizational challenge of Indie campers

Indie Campers is a fast growing Start Up – one of the biggest in the Portuguese tourism sector – and, whenever new decisions are on deck to be taken, historical experience, metadata and business environment need to be assessed and analysed firstly to mitigate the risk of new decisions and secondly to adjust expectations and target the right measures. While settling position and expanding, the Start Up’s activity carries many new decisions oftentimes and, as Indie Campers, from year to year has grown, changed and evolved remarkably, some decision analysis deterrents need to be faced and diverted as accurately as possible. Being dynamic pricing one main strategic decision for 2018, internal metadata and external analysis are crucial to assert a well-defined quantitative price strategy and a well-informed qualitative value proposition. The deterrents that are challenged and recommended upon are the lack of adequate internal metadata – adequate in a sense that expansion and growth have increased in such a way that raw data from homologous periods is fairly incomparable – that makes it hard for the company to compare data and apply it to yearly forecast; the lack of resources – being time one of the most valuable, due to scalability and fast-moving growth – that makes it hard for the company to assess macro and micro indicators to understand the environment in which Indie Campers will be competing in and, ultimately, the lack of tools and models to apply in the future that, combined, make setting dynamic pricing a comprehensive and mark-up decision