Estimating the impacts of climate change on Brazilian regions

An integrated approach projects the economic impacts from climate change and adaptation and mitigation policies, explicitly considering the various territorial scales in Brazil (macro-regions, states, micro-regions, and networks of cities). A computable general equilibrium (GCE) model was used to simulate two climate change-free scenarios regarding the future of Brazil’s economy that are consistent with the global economic development trends under IPCC’s scenarios A2 and B2. Climate shocks, captured by the model through impacts on the agricultural/ livestock and energy sectors, were applied to these scenarios. The socio-economic trends of the scenarios with and without global climate change were reviewed in terms of benefits and costs for Brazil and its regions. The models interact with the agricultural/livestock and energy sector studies through variables such as energy generation and consumption for different sectors and regions, replacement of sources of energy in the production process and consumption by the residential sector, agricultural yields and land use, etc. These, in turn, are dependent on climate variables, future water supply and other economic factors.

Measuring the Contribution of Social Policies to Regional Inequality Dynamic in Brazil

We decompose the recent changes in regional inequality in Brazil into its components, highlighting the role of spatially blind social programs. We aggregate personal income micro data to the state level, differentiating 9 income sources, and assess the role of these components in the observed changes in regional inequality indicators. The main results indicate that the largest part of the recent reduction in regional inequality in Brazil is related to the dynamics in the market-related labor income, with manufacturing and services favoring inequality reduction. Labor income in agriculture, retirement and pensions, and property rents and other sources favored concentration. The social programs Bolsa Família and Benefícios de Prestação Continuada are responsible for more than 24% of the reduction in inequality, although they account for less than 1.7% of the disposable household income. Such positive impact on regional concentration is impressive, since the goals of the programs are clearly non-spatial.

Regional Differences in the Determinants of Investment Decisions of Private Firms in Brazil

This study takes on an important part or regional growth, that is, the investment decisions of private firms. The question asked is: do corporations decide on investments in the same way in different parts of the territory? The paper analyses investments of 482 large Brazilian firms in the period 1996-2004. The role of sales, cash-flow, external financing, and working capital is investigated through regression analysis, following the literature on firm investment decisions. Regional dummies used to capture differences in the role of those determinants indicate that there are significant differences across regions. This is important information for regional development policy, for different mechanisms should be used in different regions in order to foster private investments.

Regional and demographic determinants of poverty in Brazil

The paper identifies the role of regional and demographic determinants of poverty in Brazil. We first estimate the probability of a household being classified as poor or indigent. We then apply decomposition techniques to identify the role of demographic variables (family size, parent’s education, etc.) and of regional variables in explaining those probabilities. We found out that parent’s education is the most important determinant, but regional aspects also play a role in determining poverty across states in Brazil.

Opening the Convergence Black Box: Measurement Problems and Demographic Aspects

Brazil, regional convergence, regional growth, birth cohorts, micro data

Tertiary activities and informality: quantitative importance and interconnections within the economy in Brazil

This paper studies the importance of the Tertiary sector and the informal sector for the Brazilian economy, making an interconnection between them and with them and the rest of the economy and the formal sector. To do so, this work makes use of the data presented in the System of National Accounts and the National Survey of Households (PNAD), both from IBGE, and the Leontief model. The results show: a) the importance of the Tertiary sector for the Brazilian economy in terms of employment (around 61% of the occupied persons), and income generation (around 67% of the economy Value Added); b) the high share of the informal sector in the Brazilian economy (around 58% of the occupied persons and 34% of the income); c) the combination of these factors results in an economy with low wages and salaries and with an high concentration of income; and d) that the present productive structure of the Brazilian economy contributes to the concentration of income in the country.Tertiary Activities; Informality; Input-Output; Employment

The early universe from CMB B-modes: observational challenges

The extreme conditions of density and temperature make the Universe around the initial moment of the Big-Bang, an extraordinary laboratory for probing poorly understood physics, mixing quantum and general relativity phenomena. The physics of the early Universe can be studied through the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest observable “light'” in the Universe. The CMB temperature has been mapped recently with unprecedented precision by the Planck satellite. However, its full potential in testing fundamental physics lies in measurements of its polarization at high resolution and sensitivity. This will be unlocked for the first time with current and future ground-based and space-based observatories. The main goal is to discover the imprint of inflation, when the Universe expanded by an incredibly large factor during a fraction of a second around the time of the Big Bang. Inflation models predict the production of stochastic gravitational waves which distorted spacetime while propagating through the Universe, and generated an observable parity-violating signature in the polarization of the CMB, the so-called B-mode polarization. This nano-Kelvin signal is quantified by the tensor-to-scalar ratio parameter r. Current limits are given by the BICEP/Keck ground experiments, and the goal of the community is to achieve an accuracy at the level of 10-3 within a few years. The potential of primordial B-modes to help identify what prompted inflation, whilst also investigating physics at grand unification energy scales, makes the search for this faint CMB polarization signal one of the most compelling goals of modern cosmology. However, with the capabilities of next-generation experiments, the large leap in detector count and experiment complexity introduce challenges to current methods. Some of these challenges are intrinsically computational: to explore the enormous datasets, we must develop sufficiently reliable and efficient data analysis pipelines to extract features from the observations. Other challenges are algorithmic, including the selection of optimal ways to disentangle the CMB signal of interest from foregrounds and to mitigate systematic errors. This in turn imposes stringent requirements on the instrument design and calibration. Tackling these challenges is the focus of my research. This thesis presents several methods for foreground cleaning and mitigation of instrument systematics, that allow for unbiased measurements of the CMB B-mode polarisation power spectrum, that can be used for cosmological parameter estimation. These methods have been devised for the Simons Observatory (SO) and LiteBIRD satellite and are adaptable to a variety of CMB experiments. I present two new methods for component separation in the presence of spatial variations in Galactic foreground spectral properties and their impact on parameter inference: a moment expansion method and a hybrid method, which is an extension of the former. Both these methods account for spatial variability while recovering unbiased constraints on r in the presence of complex foregrounds and noise. Through the development of these methods, I also contributed significantly to the SO cross-spectrum analysis pipeline, which became SO's main Small Aperture Telescope forecast likelihood pipeline. This work led to the discovery that the moments-based method is currently the most promising avenue for SO. I also present a study on the precision of angular position measurement of the half-wave plate (HWP) polarisation modulation unit for LiteBIRD, for which I developed a simulation pipeline to mitigate the propagation of HWP systematic effects to final constraints. This study is part of an instrument systematic mitigation campaign that is crucial for the success of the next-generation CMB experiments

The effectiveness of the two different devices in the management of developmental dysplasia of the hip

118 DDH was detected by US and classified following Graf\u2019s criteria. A blinded randomized study was effected using Teuffel-Mignon (59) and Coxa-Flex (59) devices, to evaluate effectiveness of both harnesses in management. Type C recovered in 60,09 days, D in 100, IIIA in 103,60, IIIB in 108,66 days. Statistical model shows associations between outcome and pathological type (P<0.001), age at diagnosis (P<0.001) and device (P<0.02). Model shows that on average for each day of delay in diagnosis needed more than half a day for the patient to recover. Model confirmed that patients with serious pathologies need more time to recover. The treatment of DDH is based on the device, on the correct diagnosis with Graf\u2019s method and on the early treatment, when the hip is more mouldable. Our opinion is that one device instead of another isn\u2019t what\u2019s important. What\u2019s fundamental is the choice of the device based on long experience

Suicidal Ideation Induced by Episodic Cannabis Use

The report describes a patient who presented suicidal ideation only in two different occasions, immediately after acute cannabis intoxication. He used cannabis only in these two circumstances. Although a definite association between cannabis use and suicidal ideation or behavior has been already reported in the literature, the described case presents two original clinical aspects that deserve consideration. First, episodic assumption of cannabis induced suicidal ideation abruptly. Second, suicidal ideation appeared independent of mood depression, stressors, or life events, suggesting that suicidality may be not a direct consequence of depression and appears to be a relatively independent psychopathological dimension. There seems to be no linear relation between the severity of depression and the risk of suicide