Decolonial Epistemologies for Energy Planning in Brazil

This thesis opens up theoretical pathways for decolonial epistemologies for energy planning in Brazil. The critical analysis is verticalized from the 2015–2024 Brazilian Decennial Energy Expansion Plan (DEEP) to better highlight the epistemological problems in energy planning. Epistemological challenges demand a critical understanding of the ethical system we live in – the ethics of exhaustion – to enable a comprehensive radical transformation of the consideration of energy futures, since epistemology is part of the formalization of ethics. This thesis argues that energy planning in Brazil is based on the ethics of exhaustion to epistemically impose the colonial agenda of power. Energy futures are planned as necessary harm to achieve the fetishized good, normalized as the ethical intersubjective and human–environment relationships. Critically analysing the ethical system enables understanding the epistemologies for energy planning in Brazil as the formal moment of the ethics of exhaustion, which can only be challenged in an intersectional manner by framing the multilateral and collateral aspects of the violence consistent in planning energy futures regardless and to the detriment of the existence of life. Epistemic diversity is the first step towards decolonizing energy planning. It comprises: the inclusion of indigenous and communal perspectives when elaborating the energy plans; having persons directly affected by energy enterprises as the majority of the personnel involved in the activity of planning; setting the priority of energy planning as the production and reproduction of all lives in a non-hierarchized manner; recognizing the necessary balance in the human–environment relationship; privileging local needs in relation to transnational markets; and intentionally de-hierarchizing the benefits of energy exploitation by delinking energy studies, production, and distribution from financial capital. This work challenges colonial epistemologies, based on the ethics of exhaustion, from the standpoint of the colonial difference, proposing epistemic diversity as the impulse for decolonial energy planning in Brazil. It is an urgent academic task to perceive epistemic decolonization to transform the present in order to stop condemning the future to social and environmental catastrophes

Nonhuman findings from the laboratory of speculative sociology

This work of speculative fiction and commentary describes a laboratory focused on human sense and affect. The laboratory is alive with computational capacity, recursively elaborating and generating data. The very notion of recording data is radically reconceived through this speculative fiction, as it points toward a new materialist sens/ability and new forms of social science

Are Neutron-Rich Elements Produced in the Collapse of Strange Dwarfs ?

The structure of strange dwarfs and that of hybrid stars with same baryonic number is compared. There is a critical mass (M~0.24M_sun) in the strange dwarf branch, below which configurations with the same baryonic number in the hybrid star branch are more stable. If a transition occurs between both branches, the collapse releases an energy of about of 3x10^{50} erg, mostly under the form of neutrinos resulting from the conversion of hadronic matter onto strange quark matter. Only a fraction (~4%) is required to expel the outer neutron-rich layers. These events may contribute significantly to the chemical yield of nuclides with A>80 in the Galaxy, if their frequency is of about one per 1500 years.Comment: Accepted for publication in IJMP

Gravitational Waves from Wobbling Pulsars

The prospects for detection of gravitational waves from precessing pulsars have been considered by constructing fully relativistic rotating neutron star models and evaluating the expected wave amplitude $h$ from a galactic source. For a "typical" neutron matter equation of state and observed rotation rates, it is shown that moderate wobble angles may render an observable signal from a nearby source once the present generation of interferometric antennas becomes operative.Comment: PlainTex, 7 pp. , no figures, IAG/USP Rep. 6

Phase Transition and Monopoles Densities in a Nearest Neighbors Two-Dimensional Spin Ice Model

In this work, we show that, due to the alternating orientation of the spins in the ground state of the artificial square spin ice, the influence of a set of spins at a certain distance of a reference spin decreases faster than the expected result for the long range dipolar interaction, justifying the use of the nearest neighbor two dimensional square spin ice model as an effective model. Using an extension of the model presented in ref. [Scientific Reports 5, 15875 (2015)], considering the influence of the eight nearest neighbors of each spin on the lattice, we analyze the thermodynamics of the model and study the monopoles and string densities dependence as a function of the temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Does e-learning policy drive change in Higher Education?: A case study relating models of organisational change to e-learning implementation

Due to the heightened competition introduced by the potential global market and the need for structural changes within organisations delivering e-content, e-learning policy is beginning to take on a more significant role within the context of educational policy per se. For this reason, it is becoming increasingly important to establish what effect such policies have and how they are achieved. This paper addresses this question, illustrating five ways in which change is understood (Fordist, evolutionary, ecological, community of practice and discourse-oriented) and then using this range of perspectives to explore how e-learning policy drives change (both organisational and pedagogic) within a selected higher education institution. The implications of this case are then discussed, and both methodological and pragmatic conclusions are drawn, considering the relative insights offered by the models and ways in which change around e-learning might be supported or promoted

‘Minas Gerais' medicine and wild fauna in the XVIII century

O presente artigo delineia reflexão acerca da obra Erário Mineral de Luís Gomes Ferreira - cirurgião português que atuou em Minas Gerais durante vinte anos na primeira metade do século XVIII. A referida obra sintetiza sua preocupação em adequar os conhecimentos à nova realidade (clima, doenças e recursos disponíveis). A partir do levantamento dos animais pertencentes à "fauna silvestre mineira" empregados em seu receituário, busca-se compreender o sentido histórico do recurso a elementos da natureza na cura das enfermidades, bem como as conseqüências da ação antrópica sobre o meio ambiente ao longo do processo civilizador nesta capitania.The present article deliniate a reflection concerning Luís Gomes Ferreira's book, Erário Mineral. Luís Gomes Ferreira was a Portuguese surgeon that worked in Minas Gerais for twenty years in the first half of the century XVIII. Referred her work it synthesizes your concern in adapting the knowledge to the new reality (climate, diseases and available resources). Starting from the rising of the animals belonging to "the wild fauna of Minas Gerais" employed in your receituário, it is looked for to understand the sense report of the resource to elements of the nature in the cure of the illnesses, as well as the consequences of the human action on the environment along the civilization process in this captaincy

The ρ\rho parameter at three loops and elliptic integrals

We describe the analytic calculation of the master integrals required to compute the two-mass three-loop corrections to the $\rho$ parameter. In particular, we present the calculation of the master integrals for which the corresponding differential equations do not factorize to first order. The homogeneous solutions to these differential equations are obtained in terms of hypergeometric functions at rational argument. These hypergeometric functions can further be mapped to complete elliptic integrals, and the inhomogeneous solutions are expressed in terms of a new class of integrals of combined iterative non-iterative nature.Comment: 14 pages Latex, 7 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of "Loops and Legs in Quantum Field Theory - LL 2018", 29 April - 4 May 2018, Po