Potentials and limits to generate employment and income by the National Programme for Production and Use of Biodiesel

This study analyses the National Programme for Production and Use of Biodiesel launched by the Brazil Federal Government in 2005 as a public policy to generate sustainable employment and income within the context of development of new alternative sources of energy. It also verifies the impact of PNPB on occupation and income rate of farmers participating in the projects of production of biodiesel through field research carried out on 93 family farms participating in projects already implemented in the State of Goiás. The choice of producers was made at random from a list of all producers who had already gone through a complete cycle of production and stretched across 33 municipalities in the second half of 2007. The survey data was obtained through a closed-ended questionnaire which was designed to ascertain: 1) the increase of occupation and income regarding producers participating in the projects, 2) ways of including these farmers into the programme, 3) technical assistance offered to them (according to the guidelines of the programme) and 4) the evaluation of the programme by participating farmers. The SPSS software was used for processing and data analysis. The results show that most of the objectives of the programme, such as generation of occupation and income by family farming, are being achieved.biofuels, biodiesel, family farm, public policy, Agribusiness, Agricultural Finance, Industrial Organization,

The design features of environmental taxes

This dissertation aimed at assessing what environmental taxes are. It was argued clear policy guidelines for their design follow from understanding them as regulatory instruments aimed at environmental policy goals. Empirical evidence drawn from institutional practices in Denmark (waste tax), Portugal (energy tax) and Sweden (energy tax, CO2 tax, sulphur tax and the NOx charge) showed that compliance with such guidelines, which allow the distinction between environmental taxes and environmentally-related taxes, are paramount to the environmental effectiveness of these instruments. Both environmental taxes and pollution taxes or environmentally-related taxes are raised on polluting tax bases and highlight inefficiencies in abatement and opportunities for technological progress by putting a positive price on pollution, hence raising awareness and sharing responsibility. However, they are substantially different. Their underlying normative tax design is different following the different objectives they pursue. The more environmentally targeted tax design of environmental taxes makes them perform better than pollution taxes as instruments of environmental policy, producing stronger and quicker environmental effects than environmentally-related taxes raised on the same tax bases. Environmental taxes aim only or primarily at fulfilling precise environmental objectives via behavioural change and technological progress and must be ruled by environmental criteria. Their design induces behavioural change by promoting tax awareness and tax avoidance, as well as by adopting a ‘forward looking’ approach provided by its reference to the opportunity for improvement rather than mere pollution amounts. Therefore, they must be raised on specific polluting emissions or a proxy for them. Their tax rate needs to be referred to pollution abatement costs or relative polluting impacts taking into account a specific pollutant, and be set at the level required to induce the behavioural change necessary to attain the environmental objective pursued. And they must be charged to polluters who control the cause sine qua non of pollution and still did not explore all their opportunities for environmental improvement

As visões fotográficas das margens de Salvador, Bahia: experiências narrativas do fotógrafo-narrador

The memory and tradition (of the losers) are the foundations of contemporary History ś narrative. Supported by this argument, upheld by Walter Benjamin, we shall reflect upon the work of three photographers who applied an auteur’s, poetic and aesthetic narrative to Salvador in Bahia. The image of this Brazilian city was built with help from the peripheral vision of Pierre Verger, Mario Cravo Neto and Adenor Gondim; who being passionate about the urban look of the city during the last 70 years. Subverting the norms of discourse imposed by the Bahian elite those artists gave rise to a perspective of the city from the interventions of its inhabitants recording marks left by people living on the margins of society. The “screens”, which covered the deprivation and the city’s forgotten characters, were pulled back by the lenses of the photographers who began to tell stories permeated by daily struggles.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Relationship between the Spatial Configuration and the Fourth Sustainable Dimension Creativity in University Campuses:The Case Study of Zernike Campus, Groningen, The Netherlands

To date, little is known about the spatial aspects of the creativity of university campuses and their public spaces. This study recognises that creativity is the fourth sustainability, because the spatial configuration of campuses and city-university accessibilities are ‘creative solutions’ conceived for human needs. At the same time, creative ideas depend on interactions between individuals and the built environment. Therefore, based on the theoretical framework of the scholars who have explored the spatial aspects of creativity, this study empirically investigates Zernike Campus, Groningen, and its public spaces using a mixed-methods approach that involves (1) a space syntax analysis of the campus’s spatial configuration, (2) volunteered geographic information (VGI) of the users’ perceptions, and (3) non-participatory observations of the interactions between people and the built environment in public spaces with high and low ‘potential for creativity’. The results show that creativity cannot be explained simply by analysing spatial configurations, but that it also depends on the combination of the land-use mix, physical features, positive experiences, and perceptions of a sense of place which enable trust and interactions, and which facilitate creative encounters. Therefore, the mixed-methods approach applied here can help urban planners and designers to address public spaces more effectively, integrating conditions that support creativity

ISEE.U: Distributed online active target localization with unpredictable targets

This paper addresses target localization with an online active learning algorithm defined by distributed, simple and fast computations at each node, with no parameters to tune and where the estimate of the target position at each agent is asymptotically equal in expectation to the centralized maximum-likelihood estimator. ISEE.U takes noisy distances at each agent and finds a control that maximizes localization accuracy. We do not assume specific target dynamics and, thus, our method is robust when facing unpredictable targets. Each agent computes the control that maximizes overall target position accuracy via a local estimate of the Fisher Information Matrix. We compared the proposed method with a state of the art algorithm outperforming it when the target movements do not follow a prescribed trajectory, with x100 less computation time, even when our method is running in one central CPU

Evaluacion de las organizaciones productivas sustantivas - fase II - complementacion de levantamiento bibliografico

Anais do IV Encontro de Iniciação Científica da Unila - “UNILA 5 anos: Integração em Ciência, Tecnologia e Cultura na Tríplice Fronteira” - 05 e 06 de novembro de 2015 – Sessão EconomiaEl trabajo realizado en la Iniciación Científica fue un levantamiento bibliográfico sobre los conceptos de Economía Solidaria, Economía Social, Tercer sector y Comercio Justo como una manera de comprender mejor las definiciones de cada una. A su vez, fueron realizadas algunas entrevistas a asociaciones, cooperativas, ONG y comités con el fin de recabar datos primarios, así también, se enviaron varios cuestionarios por email a algunos emprendimientos, pero tuvimos varias dificultades causada por la huelga de los Técnicos y por la no devolución de algunos cuestionarios mandados por correo, lo cual, nos imposibilito el levantamiento de dichos datos, llevándonos a enfocarnos más en el Comercio Justo con datos secundarios que ya se tenían. Cabe destacar, que está en proceso la elaboración de un artículo referente a los datos secundarios sobre el Comercio Justo y de algunos cuestionarios que fueron respondidas satisfactoriamente