E-voting in Brazil - the risks to democracy

Literature has shown that countries with strong democratic traditions, such as the United States and Canada, are not yet using electronic voting systems intensively, due to the concern for and emphasis on security. It has revealed that there is no such thing as an error-free computer system, let alone an electronic voting system, and that existing technology does not offer the conditions necessary for a reliable, accurate and secure electronic voting system. In this context, then, what are the risks of e-voting to democracy? In what ways, if at all, can more fragile, less mature democracies be buttressed with e-voting systems? As a key component of e-democracy, it seems that e-voting technologies are to become more secure and increasingly reliable in the near future and will indeed be adopted in many countries. In what ways, if at all, will the introduction of such systems increase voter confidence in the political system, promote citizen engagement in political life, and nurture the evolution of democracy? If both e-voting and edemocracy are emerging based on popular demand - that is, as a demand-driven alternative to current processes, then there is no doubt that they are likely to enhance and improve the efficiency of traditional democracy. However, if e-voting technology is being introduced based on a supply-driven fashion - the technology exists therefore it should and must be implemented - then the implications for democracy should be considered. Brazil's introduction of e-voting offers a cautionary tale of supply-driven technological implication. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the introduction of e-voting in Brazil is highly risky to democracy due to the lack of emphasis on security and the lack of a sociallyinformed and socially driven approach to technological innovation. The Brazilian example illustrates the democratic implications of a market-driven approach. The lack of a technology strategy designed to promote and extend democratic principles is not surprising given the closed door, market-based negotiations that led to the adoption of e-voting in Brazil. The promise, and indeed, the imperative of a democratic, voter-centered approach as an alternative for the development of an electronic voting system, is explored in the paper

Recovery operators, paraconsistency and duality

There are two foundational, but not fully developed, ideas in paraconsistency, namely, the duality between paraconsistent and intuitionistic paradigms, and the introduction of logical operators that express meta-logical notions in the object language. The aim of this paper is to show how these two ideas can be adequately accomplished by the Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFIs) and by the Logics of Formal Undeterminedness (LFUs). LFIs recover the validity of the principle of explosion in a paraconsistent scenario, while LFUs recover the validity of the principle of excluded middle in a paracomplete scenario. We introduce definitions of duality between inference rules and connectives that allow comparing rules and connectives that belong to different logics. Two formal systems are studied, the logics mbC and mbD, that display the duality between paraconsistency and paracompleteness as a duality between inference rules added to a common core– in the case studied here, this common core is classical positive propositional logic (CPL + ). The logics mbC and mbD are equipped with recovery operators that restore classical logic for, respectively, consistent and determined propositions. These two logics are then combined obtaining a pair of logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness (LFIUs), namely, mbCD and mbCDE. The logic mbCDE exhibits some nice duality properties. Besides, it is simultaneously paraconsistent and paracomplete, and able to recover the principles of excluded middle and explosion at once. The last sections offer an algebraic account for such logics by adapting the swap-structures semantics framework of the LFIs the LFUs. This semantics highlights some subtle aspects of these logics, and allows us to prove decidability by means of finite non-deterministic matrices

Scalar and higher even spin glueball masses from an anomalous modified holographic model

In this work, within an anomalous modified holographic softwall model, we calculate analytically the masses of the scalar glueball with its radial excitations and higher even glueball spin states, with $P=C=+1$, from a single mass equation. Using this approach we achieved an unified treatment for both scalar and high even spin glueballs masses. Furthermore, we also obtain the Regge trajectory associated with the pomeron compatible with other approaches.Comment: V4: 14 pages, 3 tables, 1 figure. Text improved. New references included. Typos corrected. Results slightly modified due to the improvement of the statistical analysis. This version matches the published one in EP

Towards a low carbon economy in the Amazon: the role of land-use policies

Climate change, rising oil prices and the global financial crisis has put sustainability and ‘green growth’ of the economy on the political agenda. While the transition towards a “low carbon” economy in developed countries like in the European Union should mainly be found in renewable energy production, developing countries like Brazil face with high land use emissions which will further rise in the coming decades without proper policy instruments. Deforestation and cattle production are the main sources of land use emissions in Brazil and we expect that these emissions will further rise with liberalisation of agricultural trade. A transition towards a “low carbon” economy in Brazil thus calls for appropriate, and effective land-use policies. Agricultural intensification on one hand can meet the world demand for soy and beef. For example we calculate that increasing the meat content of cattle can reduce emissions from deforestation up to 30%, but intensification may also accelerate further deforestation of Cerrado and Amazon forests. In order to avoid such additional deforestation, large areas of degraded lands have to be taken back into production, which requires large agricultural investments. In addition, (new) economic instruments, monitoring, law enforcement and appropriate conservation policies are also needed to halt further deforestation and biodiversity loss. The recently amended change of the Forest Code policy, for example, is expected to accelerate deforestation further, thus making more difficult to reach mitigation targets for the Brazilian State

Holographic Description of Chiral Symmetry Breaking in a Magnetic Field in 2+1 Dimensions with an Improved Dilaton

We consider a holographic description of the chiral symmetry breaking in an external magnetic field in $(2+1)$-dimensional gauge theories from the softwall model using an improved dilaton field profile given by $\Phi(z) = - kz^2 + (k+k_1)z^2\tanh (k_{2}z^2)$. We find inverse magnetic catalysis for $BB_c$, where $B_c$ is the pseudocritical magnetic field. The transition between these two regimes is a crossover and occurs at $B=B_c$, which depends on the fermion mass and temperature. We also find spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking (the chiral condensate $\sigma \not=0$) at $T=0$ in the chiral limit ($m_q\to 0$) and chiral symmetry restoration for finite temperatures. We observe that changing the $k$ parameter of the dilaton profile only affects the overall scales of the system such as $B_c$ and $\sigma$. For instance, by increasing $k$ one sees an increase of $B_c$ and $\sigma$. This suggests that increasing the parameters $k_1$ and $k_2$ will decrease the values of $B_c$ and $\sigma$.Comment: V2: 13 pages, 10 figures. New figure added. Text improved. Typos corrected. New references added. Results unchanged. This version matches the published one in EP

Has core inflation been doing a good job in Brazil?

This paper assesses the performance of the core inflation measures calculated by the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB). The evidence shows that they do not meet some key statistical criteria that a good core inflation should have: unbiasedness and the ability to forecast inflation. That performance stems, to a large extent, from the lack of a well-grounded statistical and economical basis behind them. Three new measures are built and assessed using the same criteria. The evidence shows that their behaviour is more in accordance to what the theory claims. However, they still lack the ability to help forecasting inflation. Hence both the BCB and the market should use core inflation cautiously.Core inflation; inflation; supply shocks; relative prices; volatility