Punching behavior of BubbleDeck type reinforced concrete slabs

The BubbleDeck type slab (BD) is a reinforced concrete (RC) flat slab that includes recycled plastic hollow spheres (RPHS) in its core for decreasing its dead weight. However, punching capacity of BD slabs can be a critical aspect, thereby this work is devoted to assess experimentally its punching behavior. An experimental program composed of four real scale prototypes, representative of RC flat slabs in punching loading conditions, was carried out. Two of these slabs are of BD type, while the other two do not include the RPHS system, herein denominated as RC solid slab (SS). The test results show that all the tested slabs failed in punching after the occurrence of yield initiation of the flexural reinforcement. The punching capacity and the deflection at failure of BD type slab has decreased up to 14% and up to 44%, respectively, when compared to the corresponding SS type slab. A relatively small ductility index was obtained (between 1.51 and 2.65). In BD type slabs, the punching failure surface had tendency to propagate through the RPHS, at an inclination angle of about 45CAPES, Grant/Award Number: PDSE program/Process number 88881.134825/2016-01; FCT, Grant/Award Number: project ICoSyTec POCI01-0145-FEDER-02799

Applying a new version of the Brazilian-Portuguese UPSIT smell test in Brazil

Standardized olfactory tests are now available to quantitatively assess disorders of olfaction. A Brazilian-Portuguese version of the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) is currently being developed specifically for the Brazilian population. The most recent Brazilian-Portuguese version of the UPSIT (UPSIT-Br2) was administered to 88 Brazilian subjects who had no history of neurological or otorhinolaryngological disease. UPSIT-Br2 scores decreased with age, were lower in men than in women, and were lower in subjects with lower income. The degree to which the poorer performance of subjects with lower socio-economic status reflects lack of familiarity with test items is not known. Although this version of the UPSIT provides a sensitive and useful test of smell function for the Brazilian population, a revision of some test items is needed to achieve comparable norms to those found using the North American UPSIT in the United States

Testing for rational speculative bubbles in the Brazilian residential real-estate market

Speculative bubbles have been occurring periodically in local or global real estate markets and are considered a potential cause of economic crises. In this context, the detection of explosive behaviors in the financial market and the implementation of early warning diagnosis tests are of critical importance. The recent increase in Brazilian housing prices has risen concerns that the Brazilian economy may have a speculative housing bubble. In the present paper, we employ a recently proposed recursive unit root test in order to identify possible speculative bubbles in data from the Brazilian residential real-estate market. The empirical results show evidence for speculative price bubbles both in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, the two main Brazilian cities

Between redeemer and work of the devil: The transnational Brazilian biofuel discourse

Biofuels have been the subject of heated political discussions, but also of a growing literature on discourses and environmental policies. Previous studies on the issue have, however, neglected the fact that the different discourses about on biofuels are increasingly crossing national boundaries, i.e., that there is a tendency toward transnationalization. In the light of this development the present article analyzes the transnational Brazilian biofuel discourse in the period 2005–2011 with a special emphasis on actors from Brazil, the EU and the USA. By conducting a discourse analysis along the lines of Hajer, five discourse coalitions can be distinguished, each providing a different view on the opportunities, problems and perspectives of biofuel production in Brazil. It is observed that the long-established hegemony of the discourse coalition of biofuel supporters was successfully challenged by a more critical position during the food crisis of 2007/2008. As a result, the discourse coalition of critical supporters—which was committed to sustainable biofuel production via political regulation—prevailed in the transnational Brazilian biofuel discourse and its position was translated into policy measures

Creativity in the Brazilian Culture

Research has pointed out creativity as a sociocultural and contextually embedded phenomenon. As a consequence, the effect of cultural factors on the manifestation of creativity has been discussed worldwide. The purpose of this chapter is, therefore, to analyze the development of creativity in the Brazilian culture. A brief description of the Brazilian culture is provided. Models of creativity developed by Brazilian researchers, as well as a review of creativity studies conducted in the educational environment, are presented. Guidelines for future cross-cultural studies on creativity are also suggested

Fear for manufacturing? China and the future of industry in Brazil and Latin America

There has been considerable concern in Latin America over the implications of increased competition from China for local industry. These concerns include the possibility of "deindustrialization," the increased "primarization" of the region's exports and the difficulties of upgrading manufactured exports into higher technology products. This article examines the impact of Chinese competition both in the domestic market and in export markets on Brazilian industry. It documents the increased penetration of Chinese manufactures in the Brazilian market and the way in which Brazilian exports have lost market share to China in the US, European Union and four Latin American countries. Brazil, because of its more developed and locally integrated industrial sector, is not typical of other Latin American countries and the article also discusses the relevance of the Brazilian experience for the region as a whole

Regional Importance of the Agribusiness in the Brazilian Economy

Following Furtuoso and Guilhoto (2003) the GDP of the Brazilian Agribusiness is estimated to be around 27% of the Brazilian GDP in 2000, and the latest numbers show that it could be reaching 30% of the Brazilian GDP in 2003. Despite its importance for the Brazilian economy as a whole, the size of the Brazilian territory and the regional differences draws attention for the fact that the importance of the agribusiness is not uniform over the Brazilian regions, and if the agribusiness is also divided into its four components, i.e., a) inputs to agriculture; b) agriculture; c) agriculture based industry; and d) final distribution, the differences are even bigger. In this paper it is made a study of the importance of the agribusiness for the 27 states of the Brazilian economy, taking into consideration its four components. The analysis is conduct for the year of 1999 using an interregional input-output system constructed for the Brazilian economy by Guilhoto et al. (2004).

Brazilian Congress structural balance analysis

In this work, we study the behavior of Brazilian politicians and political parties with the help of clustering algorithms for signed social networks. For this purpose, we extract and analyze a collection of signed networks representing voting sessions of the lower house of Brazilian National Congress. We process all available voting data for the period between 2011 and 2016, by considering voting similarities between members of the Congress to define weighted signed links. The solutions obtained by solving Correlation Clustering (CC) problems are the basis for investigating deputies voting networks as well as questions about loyalty, leadership, coalitions, political crisis, and social phenomena such as mediation and polarization.Comment: 27 pages, 15 tables, 6 figures; entire article was revised, new references added (including international press); correcting typing error