Brazilian Literature Research Articles

Invisible informality and the contribution of information modeling to data-based urban regulation

Recent studies have established the role of urban planning policies in feeding the growth of informal settlements in Brazilian cities, through the socio-spatial exclusion of low-income residents. The difficulties of reversing this exclusionary logic are due to several complex factors. A factor less discussed in Brazilian literature, which has began to draw the attention of scholars, is the invisibility of the informal city. This research assumes that it is necessary to regulate the urban form of precarious informal settlements, in order to prevent the deterioration of urban environmental quality. We highlight the importance of compiling data about their urban form and their built environment, in order to contribute to a reality-based regulatory policy for these settlements. After discussing the phenomenon of urban informality in Fortaleza, we applied a methodology that combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and City Information Modeling (CIM), to support the redefinition of urban rules for precarious settlements of informal origin. This procedure will reveal not only the extent of the inadequacies of the (past and current) land use and occupation codes, but will also present some potentialities of GIS and CIM to inform its redefinition.

TRANSLATING MACHADO DE ASSIS: AN INTERVIEW WITH FLORA THOMSON-DEVEAUX ON THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS AND OTHER DISCOVERIES

Brazilian literature celebrated a milestone in 2020 with two new translations of the novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. One of the translators behind this feat is literary scholar and Brazilianist Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, who granted us this interview with insights on her motivation, translation process, the publishing market, and reception of the translation – the latter exceeding both DeVeaux’s and the publisher’s expectations. Thomson-DeVeaux also shared some of her current and burgeoning projects in Brazil, and how she sees translation and research as forms of "discovery".
 Keywords: Interview. Translation studies. The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Machado de Assis. Brazilian literature.

Gender-Related Trends in Publication Authorship: A 10-Year Analysis of a Brazilian Surgical Journal.

There is a gender gap in the representation of women in the authorship of surgical literature worldwide. In Brazil, data on the gender distribution of the authorship of articles are scarce; and hence, there is a lack of awareness about the contemporary situation of women surgeons within the academic surgery in the country. In light of this, we conducted this study with an aim to describe and evaluate the authorship trends in a Brazilian surgical journal over a period of 10 years (2010-2019). We included 4,301 authors from 792 articles extracted from 60 editions of this journal. We analyzed the female representation as authors in general, first and last authors, and the female surgeons' representation as first and last authors for 568 original articles. We found that, in general, women represented 27.8% of all authors. Regarding original articles, women surgeons represented 8.4% and 6.1% of first and last authors, respectively. The linear regression analysis demonstrated that there was an increase over the years in women authorship. However, despite this increase over the years, a gender gap still persists in terms of women's representation as authors in the Brazilian surgical literature.

Four decades of Brazilian and international research on street children

The last 40 years has yielded a vast body of literature on street children. In this article, we reflect on the knowledge accumulated by several generations of scholars and across two bodies of research. The article’s aim is twofold: 1) To conduct a meta-narrative review, mapping out the contours of Brazilian and Anglophone literature on street children since the 1980s until today. 2) To bridge these two bodies of literature through reflections on similarities and differences. In so doing, we identify some overall tendencies in which street children have been described, debated, and theorized and bridge the two bodies of literature that often remain separated.

Socio-demographic and clinical characterization of intestinal ostomized people: an integrative literature review

This study aims to identify and analyze the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of people with intestinal ostomy in the Brazilian literature. This is an Integrative Review of Scientific Literature, whose search for studies occurred in the following databases: Lilacs, CINAHL, PubMed/MedLine, BDENF, Scopus, SciELO Virtual Library and reverse search of selected articles. Of the 14 articles compiled, 78.57% have a descriptive design; the Lilacs database had the highest number of articles (64.28%); the Revista Brasileira de Coloproctologia was the one that published the most (42.85%), with a predominance of publications equally in the years 2017 and 2018 (21.42%); the Northeast region predominated in the number of articles published (49.98%). The predominant age ranged from 60 to 100 years (47.86%); married (26.64%); male (53.83%), of mixed ethnicity (20.97%), Catholic (6.51%), retired (23.11%), with elementary education (33.95%) and salary income ≤ 1 minimum wage (24.60%). There was a predominance of colostomy (83.95%), urgent (11.83%), without preoperative demarcation (4.22%), temporary permanence (42.69%), having the neoplasm as the cause main (51.14%), with complication of dermatitis (3.88%), diameter 20-40mm (1.69%), of 1 piece (16.15%), with pasty effluent (3.03%). The scarcity of Brazilian research on the subject is highlighted. However, it was possible to expand knowledge about the studied population.

The role of individual values in the behavior of using discount coupons

Purpose – The research analyzed the determinants (Performance Expectation, Expectation of Effort, Social Influence, Facilitating Conditions, Hedonic Motivation, Value and Habit) of the intention and the behavior of using online discount coupons, through UTAUT2 in the Brazilian context. Design/methodology/approach – The survey was adopted with an instrument adapted from Yang (2010) and Christino et al. (2019) validated by experts. Made available online, the instrument collected 309 responses for analysis using the structural equation modeling technique. Findings – The results validated the positive relationships for Facilitating Conditions, Hedonic Motivation, Perceived Value, Habit and Performance Expectation - the highest’s coefficients. The influence of Expectation on Effort and Social Influence has not been validated. Research limitations/implications – The results cannot be generalized to all Brazilian individuals, in addition to considering recognized determinants of international literature. For this reason, suggestions are made for continuing and deepening the research. Practical implications – The results contribute by indicating the main perceptions that lead to the intention and use of discount coupons, which are the performance expectation and the habit. Thus, managers can develop their sales strategies considering such factors while society can establish strategies to more sustainable purchases. Originality/value – The research discusses the determinants of UTAUT2 in the Brazilian context to explain the intention and behavior of using online discount coupons, which are grouped together are unprecedented in Brazilian literature.

Management systems by performance indicators of higher education institutions: proposal of a model

Purpose – This research aims to recognize the performance indicators relating to the management of species reported in the literature.Design/methodology/approach – It is an exploratory and descriptive research. It assumes the qualitative characteristics. We presented a theoretical proposal of indicators and sufficient dimensions to manage an IES. The board was selected by convenience. The expert group was composed of people who have expertise in managing performance. Findings – We found indicators that were added according to the suggestion of the respondents, resulting in 65 indicators, divided into 9 dimensions. The model contemplates the dimensions: Economic; Internationalization and research; Student/Client; Market; Academia; Operational; Human Resources; Society/extension and Sustainability.Research limitations/implications – As limitations of the research, there is the possibility of some work on indicators that have not been identified at this stage of research, and also the choice of specialists.Practical implications – This study presents the determinants of business performance. The indicators that should be used for each type of organization are of utmost importance and were highlighted as one of the challenges of future research in the management of organizational performance.Social implications – In the Brazilian literature, 75% of the surveys do not address performance management holistically, thus reinforcing this study's importance and originality.Originality/value – Previous literature were identified 57 performance indicators, distributed in six 6 dimensions based on the concepts of multidimensionality. The work found indicators were added according to the suggestion of the interviewees, resulting in 65 indicators divided into 9 dimensions.

Energy-dispersive spectroscopy for the quantitative determination of the major chemical elements in milk

The present preliminary study aims at the rapid quantitative determination of the major chemical elements in the ashes of raw milk samples, using energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The precision of the method was satisfactory (variation coefficient ≤ 5%). The mean values (in mmol·kg-1) obtained from the analysis of 32 raw milk samples showed good agreement with data from the Brazilian and international literature: K (26.1 ± 4.6), Ca (33.8 ± 3.7), P (28.4 ± 2.7), Na (21 ± 3.3) and Mg (4.7 ± 0.5). Residual Cl concentration (19.0 ± 3.3 mmol·kg-1) was lower than expected due to incineration losses. The results suggest a good application potential of the method for other dairy products.

Carbon pricing research in Brazil: advances and challenges / Pesquisa de preços de carbono no Brasil: avanços e desafios

Carbon pricing policies are currently considered to be implemented in Brazil, so understanding the present state of carbon pricing research focusing on the national perspective can support energy and environmental policy discussions and guide future research directions. Using the bibliometric method, we analysed 160 publications aiming at assessing the carbon pricing literature in Brazil by 2020. We found out a low and recent production of articles on carbon pricing in Brazil, concentrated from 2015 onwards. Climate Policy is the leading journal and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) leads the ranking of the top three authors. Most publications are related to land use change and deforestation, and few publications connect Brazil to carbon pricing policies instruments, like emission trading schemes (ETS) and carbon taxes. However, there is an increase in the number of articles relating Brazil to the energy and environmental policies considering the policy and governance approaches.

Brazilian Literature as World Literature

Brazilian Literature as World Literature

Violence in the affective-sexual trajectories of young gay men: "new" settings and "old" challenges.

This paper discusses the phenomenon of violence in the affective-sexual trajectories of young, cisgender gay men, from popular strata, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Brazilian literature on violence against gay men generally focuses on the discrimination suffered by this population. However, the violence they are submitted to among family relationships due to their sexual orientation, or even their relationships known as "dating" or "hookup", is hardly discussed. This qualitative study used in-depth interviews based on a semi-structured guide to discuss violence during the young gay men's affective-sexual trajectory. The results evidenced multiple faces of violence during childhood and adolescence in family relationships, spanning their affective-sexual relationships in adolescence and youth, including sexual, physical, psychological, and institutional violence. Support networks are limited, for example, to a few friends and access to blogs on the Internet. No health professional was cited as a helping source. There is a need to discuss the prevention of violence and discuss health promotion of this social group, expanding the perspective on the various contemporary ways of relating intimately.

Pricing Research: State of the Art and Future Opportunities

The most commonly used pricing approaches adopted by companies worldwide are based on costs, customer value, and competition. The purpose of the present study is to review the current status of publications on pricing globally with the addition of Brazilian literature, identify the most cited authors and highest publishing institutions, and outline further research opportunities. To this end, we use the bibliometric method to analyze relevant publications from the following four databases: Web of Science, Emerald, Elsevier, and Spell. A total of 286 papers from 195 periodicals and 31 journals (primarily from marketing, accounting, economics, and production engineering) are reviewed. The findings show that pricing is a complex and multifaceted topic involving far more than merely establishing selling prices, and that pricing managers face substantial challenges. The results also reveal that the cost-based pricing approach is superior to the perceived customer-value-based and the competition-based approaches. Finally, the findings show that pricing remains an underresearched topic, and is thus a fertile ground for further investigation.

Cultura literária do direito no Brasil: tributo a Calvo González

This article approaches the importance of José Calvo González’s contribution to the formation of a Literary Culture of the Law in Brazil. Internationally recognized as one of the main exponents of studies in Law and Literature, with extensive and consistent academic production since the 1990s, Calvo González regularly visited Brazilian institutions, between 2010 and 2019, a period in which he developed several activities and kept very close relationship with some researchers, especially from Rede Brasileira de Direito e Literatura. This article analyzes eight of his lectures, all presented at the International Colloquium on Law and Literature, as well as other relevant scientific activities carried out by him. The relationship between Calvo González and Brazil was quite intense and could be interpreted as a two-way street: on the one hand, his presence and interaction enabled constant dialogue, opening paths that led us to important and innovative projects in terrae brasilis; on the other hand, the expansion and diversity of investigations in Law and Literature in Brazil also were inspirational and encouraging for Calvo González’s own thinking. In conclusion, it is possible to state that Calvo González was certainly one of the greatest characters in the history of Law and Literature in Brazil, like Warat was in the 1980s and 1990s.

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis: a case series analysis in a pediatric hospital

IntroductionHemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH) is a rare clinical laboratory condition with high mortality rates, resulting from ineffective overactivation of the immune system. Data in the Brazilian literature is scarce, contributing to the challenge in standardizing conducts and performing an early diagnosis of HLH. ObjectiveTo describe the clinical, laboratory, and evolutionary findings on HLH patients treated at a pediatric hospital. MethodsThis is an observational, cross-sectional and retrospective study on children diagnosed with HLH, hospitalized between 2009 and 2019. The diagnostic criteria were those described in the Histiocyte Society protocol. The authors evaluated HLH patient laboratory tests, myelograms and bone marrow biopsies, clinical characteristics and therapy. ResultsTwenty-three patients were included, 52.2% of whom were males. The age at diagnosis ranged from one to one hundred and eighty months. Four cases were classified as Primary HLH and nineteen, as Secondary HLH. The main triggers were infections and rheumatological diseases. All children had bicytopenia, and 95.4% had hyperferritinemia. Nineteen patients had liver dysfunction, sixteen had neurological disorders and fourteen had kidney injury. Pulmonary involvement was seen in 61.9%, acting as a worse prognosis for death (p = 0.01). Nine patients underwent the immuno-chemotherapy protocol proposed in the HLH 2004. The time to confirm the diagnosis varied from five to eighty days. The lethality found was 56.3%. ConclusionsThe present study is the most extensive retrospective exclusively pediatric study published in Brazil to date. Despite the limitations, it was possible to demonstrate the importance of discussing HLH as a pediatric emergency.

'Moo', by Marília Floôr Kosby | 'Mugido', de Marília Floôr Kosby

In Mugido, a book of poems published in 2017, Marília Floôr Kosby adds a new chapter in this long and complicated history of the relationships between humans and oxen in Brazilian literature. Drawing from her personal and professional experience as an anthropologist and the daughter of a veterinarian that took care of farm animals in Rio Grande do Sul, Kosby reconstructs the existential space of small towns in the south of Brazil, where the food consumed in the big city is produced. Embedded in this reality are the gender and class distinctions familiar elsewhere, but also a diversity of boundaries between species. With the poems of Mugido, together with the narrative that is scattered in small sections throughout the book, it is possible to reconstruct the systems of exploitation that can be seen from the perspective of those small towns: how the practices of manhood are molded by their relation with women, horses and cows; how practices of womanhood constitute themselves in relation with figures of masculinity, femininity and care towards animals; how this bundle of gender and species relations are connected to the food industry, that in its turn links small towns to the big city, in a large territorial distribution of positions and effects.

Some New Ideas on the Role of Legal Analysis applied to the Regulation of Telecommunications Services in Brazil

The paper aims to present new ideas and analytical approaches developed in recent years by Brazilian legal scholars regarding regulation and economic development. Regulatory law of telecommunications services is taken as an example of application of such new ideas and analytical approaches Two main approaches to the relationship between law and economic issues are described: the New Law and Development (NLD) approach and the Legal Analysis of Economic Policy (LAEP) perspective. The paper highlights prominent ideas of each perspective. The paper shows that there are structured ideas available in recent Brazilian legal literature which have a non-negligible potential of being explored in legal discussions and analyses of economic policy and regulatory issues of many sectors of emerging economies, including the telecommunications industry. The paper offers valuable contributions that may help in efforts to enhance and innovate the role of legal expertise in the regulatory process of several economic sectors, including the telecommunications sector.

A quantitative approach to ranking corporate law precedents in the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice

This paper aims to contribute to the goal of finding influential legal precedents by quantitative methods. A lot of work has been made in this direction worldwide, especially in the context of common law jurisdictions. However, this type of work is extremely scarce in the Brazilian literature. In addition, our work also contributes to the research of network analysis and the law by applying these methods to unprecedented amount of data and narrowing our inquiry to a single law area, corporate law. Furthermore, whereas most of the literature applying network analysis to judicial decisions had access to readily available data on the citations to precedent within each ruling, our raw data was nothing but the full text of decisions. We focus on data produced by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), the highest court in Brazil for matters of federal law, including statutory interpretation of civil, criminal and corporate law. The Court issued an astonishing 282040 opinions tagged as related to corporate law between 2008 and 2018. This amount of cases is unparalleled internationally for superior courts and for studies in network analysis and law. In our results, we rank precedents quantitatively based on the citations they receive and make. We also qualitatively analyze some of the results, especially related to groups identified in the network with the Modularity algorithm. Our findings also reveal that corporate law jurisprudence in the STJ is quantitatively dominated by a few legal issues around one single theme that is only tangentially related to corporate law. That is, a type of contract used for the expansion of telephone landlines, which also allowed the consumer to become a shareholder of the telecommunication company. This comparison is especially pertinent because the utter lack of data on the quantitative weight of STJ precedents means the national literature has been operating in a void of objective measurements, one which has been filled with cherry-picked rulings and subjective ranking criteria.

Religião e política: a participação pentecostal na esfera pública brasileira

This article is an attempt to briefly describe the current participation of Pentecostals in the Brazilian public sphere. I use the term tentative because it is not easy to discuss the Brazilian Religious Field and its power relations, controversies and tensions. In fact, in recent years, Pentecostal groups have shown themselves to be more visible, mainly due to social networks and communication networks on TV, radio and internet. This article is an effort to present this context based on the problem: How could Christians, especially evangelicals, support a Federal Government that defends destructive and non-social policies? How could Pentecostal believers reaffirm social inequality, through ethnic-racial hatred, the denial of gender diversity and the subjection of women to the authority of men? To answer these questions, I describe part of the debate proposed by Brazilian literature on Pentecostalism and present some of the main evangelical leaders aligned with the conservative agenda of the current federal government. Finally, I declare that the literalist hermeneutics that goes back to the texts of the Hebrew Bible do legitimate and authorizes policies of social inequality and violence against communities in situations of social and economic vulnerability.

Hospitalizations for conditions sensitive to primary care: an integrative review of the Brazilian literature

Hospitalizations for Conditions Sensitive to Primary Care have been used as an indicator of the quality of the first level of health care. The objective of this work is to analyze the national scientific production, aiming to identify notes referring to: types of data; health financing; social determinants of health and the articulation of Health Care Networks. This is an integrative literature review carried out in Medline, Lilacs and Scielo databases. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 39 works were selected for analysis. Results demonstrate the need for caution in the evaluation of secondary data of the indicator and the need to expand the use of complementary strategies that help in the identification of factors associated with hospitalization. Being the indicator of hospitalizations sensitive to primary care, strategic for the planning of actions and the correct use of health resources. A great association of avoidable hospitalizations with social determinants and conditions of health was identified, however, being this theme and the articulation, communication of the Health Care Network, with the smallest number of works developed. Thus, we can conclude that it is necessary to expand studies focused on these themes, aiming at pointing out actions and policies that contribute to the development and formation of participatory teams and to change the hegemonic paradigm of health work processes.

Selection of stock funds using information that is not observable or measurable

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the flows and the future returns of stock funds are related to investors’ unobservable information. This article extends the knowledge about investment decisions regarding stock funds and considers a representation of unobservable information that until now has not been contemplated by the Brazilian literature. Understanding decisions to invest in stocks has become more important since the fall in interest rates and migration toward equity investments. The use of unobservable information for making investment decisions is important when choosing stock funds and the return gap could be added to the list of information offered to investors. The return gap measures the value added by managers in relation to the most recently disclosed complete lagged portfolio and was calculated every month for every asset in the portfolios of every fund in the sample disclosed with a three-month lag. A parsimonious sample was used of 22 actively managed funds in the period from January of 2010 to December of 2018, containing one from every one of the 22 biggest independent Brazilian managers, because it is laborious to calculate this metric. The return gap represents unobservable information about a fund. Investors that direct their capital toward stock funds with a higher historical return gap tend to obtain higher returns in out-of-sample tests, suggesting persistence of the returns of these funds and supporting the importance of unobservable information. Investors that directed their capital toward funds with lower historical return gaps could also obtain positive alphas in some cases, indicating that some managers were neglected. The fund flow results were inconclusive.