Brazilian Congress Research Articles

MAIP: model to identify actors’ influence and its effects on the complex environmental policy decision-making process

Whether a new policy is adapted to a new social-ecological reality depends on the complex interactions that play out from the policy process itself. The established theories of the policy process do not directly or explicitly address the actors' ability to influence. This study attempts to fill this gap by developing a model of actors' capacity to influence (an actor-centered perspective) which allows us to analyze the casual relationship between actors' influencing capacity and its effects on policy decision-making. This paper provides an in-depth study of the 2010 Brazilian Solid Waste Policy, a policy process characterized by high conflict that took almost 20 years to be approved by Brazilian Congress. It maps the actors' capacity of influence over the course of ten years to understand how this influence is related to policy dynamics (change and stability) and policy contents (policy instruments adopted). The study involves document analyses and interviews with relevant stakeholders. The findings identify the important role of influential actors in causing moments of paralysis and in fostering instrumental design. The insights on actors' capacity of influence and its effects contribute to our understanding of the complex dynamics of the environmental policy process.

Estado Laico: Constituição, Sociedade e Educação

Este artigo se propõe a fazer algumas considerações sobre a temática do Estado Laico no contexto Brasileiro e sua relação com a sociedade e a educação. Aborda os principais pontos de tensão nas práticas legislativas do Congresso brasileiro, com enfoque especial nos Deputados da bancada evangélica3 e a votação do último Plano Nacional de Educação – PNE – 2014.

Brazilian pediatricians' adherence to food allergy guidelines-A cross-sectional study.

Food allergy is an emerging clinical condition in pediatrics, so recommendations on its management have been widely published. Studying pediatricians’ adherence to these clinical practice guidelines (CPG) and understanding the reasons for their non-compliance can help to promote better management of this condition. A cross-sectional study was conducted by a survey among Brazilian pediatricians, randomly selected during the 38th Brazilian Congress of Pediatrics, which took place in October, 2017. A validated questionnaire with 16 questions addressing knowledge and practice on food allergy, as well as self-reported adherence to international guidelines was applied. Of the total of 415 pediatricians from all regions of the country who were surveyed, only 69 (16.7%) had a satisfactory adherence rate (≥80%). Adequate adherence to the guidelines was associated with the variables: ‘evaluating more than 10 children with suspected cow’s milk allergy (CMA) per month'; 'having read the Brazilian consensus'; or 'being aware of any international food allergy guideline'. In 8 of the 10 questions that assessed conscious adherence, a minority of those surveyed (20.3–42.3% variation) stated that they knew that their response was in line with the guidelines. This finding was statistically significant (p<0.05) in 7 of these 8 questions. The self-reported adherence of Brazilian pediatricians to international food allergy guidelines was low. Pediatricians who evaluated a higher number of children with suspected CMA or who were aware of the recommendations, had a higher rate of adherence. The results of the survey found that lack of resource was the major reported barrier to guideline adherence but lack of awareness must be a relevant non perceived barrier. This study shows the pediatricians´ self-reported adherence to food allergy guidelines in a widely overview for the first time in Brazil. More studies are necessary to investigate adherence to guidelines by pediatricians in other countries and to develop strategies to improve adherence.

How Brazilian congressmen connect: homophily and cohesion in voting and donation networks

Abstract Two fundamental activities in the career of a congressman are raising campaign funds and voting on bills. Characterizing the interplay between these two activities is crucial for democracy as it provides explicit feedback to voters on potential conflicts of interest. In this work, we investigate the Brazilian Congress to shed light on the relationships between the donations received by congressmen elected in 2014 and their voting behaviours during 2015 and 2016. By consolidating publicly available data from the House of Representatives and the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), we construct a dataset containing elected congressmen, campaign donors and donations, and legal bills and votes. This leads to the donation network (edges represent co-donation) and voting network (edges represent co-voting) in which nodes are congressmen. We examine homophily and cohesion of congressmen in these two networks with respect to their political parties and electoral regions. Our results indicate that regions exhibit stronger homophily than political parties in the donation network, while this trend is opposite for the voting network. In this sense, we find that partisan cohesion is strong and diverse in the voting network, while regional cohesion is consistently negligible. These findings are an indication of Brazil’s fragmented and weak federalist system where partisan interests override regional interests.

Evasão nos cursos de engenharia: um olhar para os trabalhos do COBENGE de 2000 a 2014

Este artigo tem como objetivo estudar a evasão no curso superior de Engenharia a partir dos trabalhados apresentados no Congresso Brasileiro de Educação em Engenharia (COBENGE), no período compreendido entre os anos de 2000 a 2014. O período escolhido para analisar os trabalhos do COBENGE coincide com o início da expansão do ensino superior no país em virtude de investimentos políticos e econômicos que contribuíram para a democratização da educação nacional. Teoricamente fundamenta-se em estudos que tratam sobre a evasão no Ensino Superior. Metodologicamente insere-se numa abordagem mista, pois a modalidade de pesquisa foi o estado da arte e a análise dos dados seguiu a abordagem estatística. A análise indicou que se faz necessário acolher os alunos, oportunizando ambientes em que eles possam preencher as lacunas conceituais advindas de uma possível formação educacional básica deficiente.

Analysis of Brazilian scientific production in Orofacial Motricity

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the Brazilian scientific production in Orofacial Motricity from the annals of Brazilian congresses and journals in the field of Speech Therapy in the last six years. Methods: for this bibliometric review, data related to the year of production, type of study, Brazilian region/State, modality of higher education institution, event/magazine and presentation format were considered and tabulated. The data were discussed from the perspective of quantitative and representative values. Results: 1,299 studies have been published in the past six years. The highest production was achieved in 2014 and there was a predominance of original studies. Public higher education institutions produced more studies when compared to private ones. The event with the largest number of publications was the Brazilian Congress on Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and the journal with the largest number of publications was CEFAC Journal. The Southeast region was predominant in publications, followed by the Northeast region. Conclusion: the characterization of scientific production in orofacial motricity allowed us to verify that this is a consolidated area of activity, although it still requires advances.

Maintenance, occupational health and safety: a systematic review of the literature

Abstract: The objective of this article is to use a systematic review of the literature to answer how the maintenance sector considers the occupational safety and health (OSH) criteria, what impacts safety has on maintenance activities, which are the most significant branches of activities in this relationship, and which phases and types of maintenance are more prone to be influenced by OSH. The articles for these studies were selected through the Capes Portal, limited to the period between 2010 to 2015. Articles selected from the Brazilian Congresses on Asset Management and Maintenance in the period from 2013 to 2015 were also used. 38 articles were selected in total for the systematic review of the literature. The results were summarized through conceptual maps and revealed that there are fundamental relationships between OSH, Maintenance and Asset Management and that maintenance has a central role to play in these relationships. It is also concluded that the impacts of safety on the maintenance activities involve all stages of the process and that the maintenance sector considers the OSH criteria as a function of the safety of the persons performing the maintenance and operating the equipment. The contributions include a discussion on the importance of maintenance and safety according to different organizational cultures, the elements considered in management practices, maintenance strategies and safety criteria.

Publication rate of abstracts on breast cancer presented at different scientific events in Brazil

Introduction: Medical congresses allow scientific production to be appropriately disseminated and discussed. However, most of the scientific papers presented at medical congresses do not go on to be published in indexed journals. The present study aimed to characterize the abstracts presented at three different congresses on breast cancer held in Brazil, and to determine the publication rate of these three events. Methods: Observational, retrospective study, where the observation unit consisted of the scientific papers presented at the Brazilian Congress of Mastology (CBM), Jornada Paulista de Mastologia (JPM) and Brazilian Breast Cancer Symposium (BBCS) in 2017. Initially, we recorded all the abstracts of works presented at the event. Subsequently, the works were searched in digital databases (BIREME/LILACS and MEDLINE/PubMed) and in the respective resumes of the authors on the Lattes platform. Results: The study included 266 abstracts of scientific papers presented in the three selected events, of which 21 (7.9%) were published in an indexed journal. Most of these studies were conducted predominantly in public institutions (71.1%), located in the State of São Paulo (30.5%) and were presented in the form of a poster (77.8%). The publication rate from the BBCS, CBM and JPM was 13.4, 5.4 and 3.4%, respectively (p = 0.03). Considering the published articles, there was no difference in journal impact factor between the congresses (p = 0.49). “Mastology” was the journal that received the largest number of publications (n = 8; 38.1%). Conclusion: In 2017, less than 10% of the abstracts on breast cancer presented at Brazilian congresses were published in an indexed journal. Among the main specialty events in the country, the Brazilian Breast Cancer Symposium has a significantly higher publication rate.

Trends in Brazilian Congress of Soil Science publications: An analysis of the 1947-2017 period.

The Brazilian Congress of Soil Science (Congresso Brasileiro de Ciência do Solo - CBCS) is the oldest soil science event in South America. The CBCS had 29,643 participants and 23,621 publications in 30 thematic areas between 1947 and 2017. There were only five editions of the CBCS (1947-1979) in which Soil Fertility did not produce the highest number of papers. Standardization of Soil Study Methods and Representation/Soil Teaching was the most prolific in one year, and Soil Genesis, Morphology, and Cartography produced the most papers in the other four years. Subsequently, the area renamed as Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition had the highest number of papers. By grouping papers into the scientific divisions of the Brazilian Society of Soil Science (Sociedade Brasileira de Ciência do Solo - SBCS), we verify that the division of Soil Use and Management had the most papers in most congresses. In 2017, the number of papers and the number of male researchers in the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development were associated for each thematic area. The trends in CBCS publications were influenced by the natural and historic-economic characteristics of the country, in addition to changes that occurred in SBCS, universities, research institutes, and legislation.

Problem-Based Learning in the Brazilian Congress of Engineering Education since 2010 up to 2019: A Systematic Literature Review

This article will present a Systematic Literature Review with the objective of showing “What were the articles that presented the active Problem-Based Learning methodology in the period 2010-2019 at the Brazilian Congress of Engineering Education—COBENGE”. COBENGE has been taking place since 1973 with the mission of producing changes in undergraduate and graduate education in Engineering. The period selected for analysis was from 2010 to 2019. In these 10 years of analysis, the years 2013 and 2015 were not counted, as the digital annals are under development as indicated by the website of the Brazilian Association of Education in Engineering—ABENGE. In this way, 4172 papers were presented, 517 articles are related to teaching methodology in engineering, of this total 114 papers are related to the active methodology based on Problem-Based Learning, which was the target of our study. The criteria for the selection of articles were works related to teaching/learning, related to the active Problem-Based Learning methodology of undergraduate courses in Engineering courses. The exclusion of papers was defined by the following criteria: papers destined for postgraduate studies, papers that involve disciplines working in the Distance Education modality, as well as proposals that involve researches with elementary or secondary school students, could not be selected.

FORMAÇÃO DOCENTE E A LÍNGUA BRASILEIRA DE SINAIS: PERSPECTIVAS ATUAIS

This article aims to investigate what is indicated in the studies about the practice of the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) in the initial teacher education courses. The research has a qualitative nature and it analyzes studies published from 2008 to 2018 in the national meetings of the National Association of Postgraduate and Research in Education, in the conferenceproceedingsof the Brazilian Congress of Special Education and in the CAPES Journal Portal. Data interpretation was conducted according to the content analysis criteria that consist of three stages: pre-reading, exploration and treatment, which corresponds to the categories comparison, aiming to obtain a unified concept. The results reveal that the number of scientific productions on the theme is still small and show a worrying scenario, since the way the subject is addressed in the initial education courses is superficial. Therefore, we conclude that the initial education and, specifically, the training of teachers to work with deaf students who use Libras in regular education -or even students with hearing impairment who do not use Libras as their mother tongue, but which also have significant differences -is still inadequate, fragile in many aspects and not enough investigated. The challenge to provide a bilingual quality education for the deaf in order to implement what is established in the legislation still remains, since the barrier communication between listeners and deaf people is yet to be broken.

11th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry

11th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry

A INTERVENÇÃO DO CONGRESSO NACIONAL NA AUTONOMIA DAS AGÊNCIAS REGULADORAS

Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar como o poder legislativo tem buscado, por meio de sua atividade legislativa, intervir na autonomia dos órgãos reguladores. Parte-se, neste artigo, da hipótese de que o poder legislativo, insatisfeito com o arranjo institucional vigente, age estrategicamente para afastar as agências reguladoras da ingerência do poder executivo. O artigo desenvolve um estudo qualitativo de leis e especialmente proposições legislativas de iniciativa parlamentar que buscam afetar diretamente a autonomia das agências reguladoras. As leis e proposições legislativas analisadas neste artigo foram divididas em categorias que representam diferentes formas de intervenção na autonomia das agências. Para responder ao problema proposto, o artigo subdivide-se em duas partes. Na primeira, apresenta-se uma breve revisão teórica sobre controle legislativo da administração pública. As estratégias de controle político que afetam diretamente aautonomia das agências reguladoras são analisadas em abstrato. Na segunda parte, analisa-se a produção legislativa do Congresso Nacional sobre autonomia regulatória. Pretende-se, com este estudo, qualificar o debate sobre autonomia das agências reguladoras no Brasil. Ver-se-á que a autonomia das agências reguladoras é um conceito em disputa, sensível às transformações nas relações entre poder legislativo, poder executivo e agências reguladoras.

Challenges of teaching food microbiology in Brazil.

Food Microbiology is included in majors such as Food Engineering, Food Science and Technology, Nutrition, Veterinary Medicine, Gastronomy, Pharmaceutical Sciences, among others. Food safety and hygiene are usually the focus, but the technological applications of microbes through fermentations are also covered. During an education symposium at the Brazilian Congress of Microbiology in 2017, a group of professors expressed their difficulties associated with teaching to new generations, the use of technology in the classroom, and the application of new learning tools. The objective of this study was to gather information about the educational practices among Brazilian professors who teach Food Microbiology throughout the country. The results indeed confirmed the diversity of careers in which food microbiology is taught. We verified that professors mixed traditional teaching strategies with modern active learning methods, even though some difficulties associated with lack of time, pedagogical training, and low adherence of students for adopting these modern methods were commonly highlighted. The preferred teaching approaches were dialogued or discussed lectures, seminars, homework, case studies, and field visits. It is noteworthy that most professors still use traditional teaching methods. It is crucial that awareness concerning the educational needs in different careers and the challenges and dilemmas facing education for the new generations shouldbe dealt with by using effective teaching approaches in food microbiology education. We suggest that a more permanent discussion forum among faculty members dealing with food microbiology in the country should be launched and this work is a step towards this goal.

Why Brazil needs its Legal Reserves

Brazil's environmental legislation obliges private properties to retain a fixed proportion of their total area with native vegetation, the so-called “Legal Reserves”. Those areas represent practically one third of the country's native vegetation and are well known for their role in biodiversity protection and in the provisioning of a wide range of ecosystem services for landowners and society. Despite their relevance, this instrument has been criticized by part of the agribusiness sector and its representatives in the Brazilian Congress. The Legal Reserve requirement is said to be too restrictive and to impede the full expansion of agricultural activities, and thus to be detrimental for the development of the country. Here, we critically analyze the arguments employed in the justification of a recently proposed bill that aims to completely extinguish Legal Reserves. We demonstrate that the arguments used are mostly unsupported by data, evidence or theory, besides being based on illogical reasoning. Further, we synthesize the principal benefits of Legal Reserves, including health and economic benefits, and emphasize the importance of these reserves for water, energy, food, and climate securities, in addition to their primary function of assisting in the maintenance of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. We also highlight that Legal Reserves are a key-component for effective and less expensive nature-based solutions, and thus should be considered as assets for the development of Brazil rather than liabilities. Based on available sound scientific evidence and agreement on their relevance, we strongly oppose any attempt to extinguish or weaken the maintenance of Brazil's Legal Reserves.

Very old saints, not so new urbanisms

In 2016, democratically elected president Dilma Rousseff suffered a civil coup d'etat orchestrated by the big unregulated corpored media, rignt-wing federal judges and the most conservative Brazilian congress since the 1964-85 military regime.

The Role of the Hand Surgeon in Microsurgery in Brazil.

Objective This study evaluates the conditions for microvascular procedures found by hand surgeons in Brazilian clinical practices. Methodology A prospective, observational, and analytical primary clinical research conducted during the 37 th Brazilian Congress of Hand Surgery, from March 30 th to April 1 st , 2017, in Belo Horizonte, in which physicians answered 12 closed, objective, multiple-choice questions regarding their geographic region, type of institution (public or private), microsurgical training, time of experience, technical conditions, the availability of a standby team for emergencies and compensation. Results The study analyzed 143 hand surgeons; among them, 65.7% participants were based at the Southeast region, 13.3% in the Northeast region, 11.9% in the South region, 6.3% in the Central-West region and 2.8% in the North region. Regarding the time of experience, 43.4% of the hand surgeons had less than 5 years, 16.8% had 5 to 10 years, 23.8% 10 to 20 years, and 23% had more than 20 years of practice in microvascular surgery. Seven percent of the surgeons had no training in microvascular surgery; for 63.6%, training occurred during medical residency, whereas 30.8% were trained in another institution, and 7.7% in another country. Among these surgeons, 76.9% worked at both private and public hospitals, 14.7% at private hospitals and 5.6% at public hospitals. Regarding compensation, 1.8% of the surgeons considered it adequate, and 98.2%, inadequate in public hospitals, whereas 5.0% considered it adequate, and 95.0%, inadequate in private hospitals. Conclusion This research shows that most surgeons were trained in microsurgery, had never performed reattachments, and considered that compensation is inadequate; moreover, standby teams were not available. There are few, unevenly distributed hand surgeons with microsurgical ability in emergency settings, and their compensation is low.

XIII Brazilian Congress of Pediatric Neurosurgery : June 05-08, 2019 - Fortaleza, Brazil.

XIII Brazilian Congress of Pediatric Neurosurgery : June 05-08, 2019 - Fortaleza, Brazil.

Fast determination of mazindol in hair sample using UPLC-MS/MS: An isotopic identification approach

Accidents on Brazilian highways kill more than 40 thousand people every year, not considering those who are injured and/or disabled by them. Since the implementation of federal law 13103/2015 to control the use of drugs by truck drivers, where the control is done by analysis of the substance in hair by a retroactive minimum period of 90 days, more than 100.000 people have been detected with a presence of one or more prohibited drugs in their hair samples. The Mazindol (cutoff of 0.5 ng/mg) is on of fourteen prohibited substances in the list and the second most stimulant in use. Mazindol is a sympathomimetic agonist causing central nervous system stimulation, acting together at peripheral alpha and beta-receptors. However, a serious side effect is the alteration of perception, which can be associated with accidents involving roads. In Brazil, the National Sanitary Agency (ANVISA) banned the production and marketing of this substance throughout the national territory in 2011, as the drug did not present proven effectiveness in its main indication: the treatment of obesity. After six years, in June of 2017 the federal law by the Brazilian congress (13.454/2017) authorizes once again the production and marketing of mazindol, amphetamine, sibutramine and femproporex. Nowadays, the majority of Brazilian laboratories use the mass spectrometry technique as a screening and confirmatory test on their routine analyses. The present study presents the use of isotopic separation by UPLC-MS/MS to confirm the presence of mazindol in a hair sample. Hair samples collected from real cases were obtained from authorized patients for the study. The method was validated and accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 standards for the specificity, sensitivity, linearity, accuracy, precision, recovery, and stability using 10 mg of hair. LOD and LOQ were 0.25 ng/mg. The chromatography run time was 2.2 min. The hair samples were washed and then extracted with organic solvent in the presence of deuterated analogues followed by an incubation under 60 °C for 8 h Reverse phase separation was performed with the Acquity BEH C18 chromatographic column (50 × 2.1 mm × 1.7 μm). Mazindol has chlorine atom in its chemical structure; it's possible to perform an isotopic separation and identification as the approach to confirm mazindol in hair. Considering the chlorine isotope has 35 Cl and 37 Cl in 1/3 proportion, the mass spectrometry was set to determine 285.1 and 287.1 m/z with transition 44 m/z. Instead of evaluating one parent ion and one product ion, we evaluated two parent ions (isotopic) and the same product ion. Due the mazindol presents interference in the most intense fragment in a fast-chromatographic analysis, the fragment 285.2 > 44 m/z has no interference in real samples. For mazindol quantitation, the transition 285.1 > 44 m/z can be used and for confirmation criteria an isotope transition of mazindol 287.1 > 44 m/z can be used, thus increasing the reliability of the generated data without interference. The method was applied in a two real sample and mazindol was determined and confirmed by the present method, 1.18 ng/mg and 2.18 ng/mg. The isotope separation and identification by tandem triple quads is a useful way to confirm chemical structure when there is no formation or there is a no abundant formation of ion for quality analysis and confirmation the presence of substance using a fat chromatographic separation.

Medication errors in anesthetic practice in Brazil - an observational study.

Introduction: There is increasing data collection in literature on errors in the drug administration chain. In anesthesiology, emergency and urgency situations favor errors in medications, however, it is not yet clear how some factors can impact the frequency of these errors. Objective: To evaluate the impact of knowledge of important concepts and fundamentals related to quality and safety in anesthesia in the practice of safe anesthesia as a factor to prevent errors with medications. Method: Observational study with participants of the 61st Brazilian Congress of Anesthesia. The volunteers responded to a semi-structured instrument with issues related to the whole process that could trigger medication errors. Results: A total of 337 volunteers (42.2% of Anesthesia Resident Physicians and 57.8% of Anesthesiologists) participated in the study. It was observed that 50.7% stated that eventually they had already injected wrong medications, with a significant difference (p <0.00) between the Anesthesia Resident Physicians (43.6%) and Anesthesiologists (56%). A greater number of working hours and greater number of hospitals in which they work caused higher percentages of professionals with medication errors. Among the professionals who reported they had eventually administered erroneous medications due to confusion with ampoules , 33.8% (n = 54) of those stated that they made a formal report of the adverse event with medications (ARP: 24.1% and MA: 39,2%). 96.9% (n = 155) found ampules of different medications (or concentrations thereof) in the same drug box (ARP) : 93.1%, MA: 99%) and 65.2% stated they have used the same syringe to prepare more than one anesthetic medication (ARP 75.9%, MA: 59%). Conclusions: The percentage of medication errors was significant and it is evident the need to implement policies that will guide the organization, distribution, allocation and use of medications in the surgical center.