Brazilian Government Research Articles

Measuring the Attractiveness of Cities to Receive Investments in Regional Airport Infrastructure

The vast Brazilian territory and the accelerated economic growth of the cities of the country’s interior in recent years have created a favourable environment for the expansion of regional aviation. In 2015, the Brazilian Government launched a program of investments in regional airports equipping them to receive commercial flights. However, the economic crisis and the scarcity of resources drive the prioritisation of projects with a greater economic and social return. This article aims to present a multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) model to measure cities’ attractiveness to receive investments in regional airports. The MCDA approach can deal with multiple indicators and different points of view and provide systematised steps for supporting decision-makers. For this purpose, we selected 12 criteria among the evaluation parameters identified in the literature, which led to the construction of the evaluation model and elaborating the ranking of the localities participating in the investment program. This study can contribute scientifically by proposing the use of an MCDA approach to support decisions related to logistics and infrastructure. It can help managers and practitioners provide a structured and systematised model to address decisions related to airport investments.

Relationship between the Bolsa Família national cash transfer programme and suicide incidence in Brazil: A quasi-experimental study.

BackgroundSocioeconomic factors have been consistently associated with suicide, and economic recessions are linked to rising suicide rates. However, evidence on the impact of socioeconomic interventions to reduce suicide rates is limited. This study investigates the association of the world’s largest conditional cash transfer programme with suicide rates in a cohort of half of the Brazilian population.Methods and findingsWe used data from the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort, covering a 12-year period (2004 to 2015). It comprises socioeconomic and demographic information on 114,008,317 individuals, linked to the “Bolsa Família” programme (BFP) payroll database, and nationwide death registration data. BFP was implemented by the Brazilian government in 2004. We estimated the association of BFP using inverse probability of treatment weighting, estimating the weights for BFP beneficiaries (weight = 1) and nonbeneficiaries by the inverse probability of receiving treatment (weight = E(ps)/(1-E(ps))). We used an average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) estimator and fitted Poisson models to estimate the incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for suicide associated with BFP experience. At the cohort baseline, BFP beneficiaries were younger (median age 27.4 versus 35.4), had higher unemployment rates (56% versus 32%), a lower level of education, resided in rural areas, and experienced worse household conditions. There were 36,742 suicide cases among the 76,532,158 individuals aged 10 years, or older, followed for 489,500,000 person-years at risk. Suicide rates among beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries were 5.4 (95% CI = 5.32, 5.47, p < 0.001) and 10.7 (95% CI = 10.51, 10.87, p < 0.001) per 100,000 individuals, respectively. BFP beneficiaries had a lower suicide rate than nonbeneficiaries (IRR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.42, 0.45, p < 0.001). This association was stronger among women (IRR = 0.36, 95% CI = 0.33, 0.38, p < 0.001), and individuals aged between 25 and 59 (IRR = 0.41, 95% CI = 0.40, 0.43, p < 0.001). Study limitations include a lack of control for previous mental disorders and access to means of suicide, and the possible under-registration of suicide cases due to stigma.ConclusionsWe observed that BFP was associated with lower suicide rates, with similar results in all sensitivity analyses. These findings should help to inform policymakers and health authorities to better design suicide prevention strategies. Targeting social determinants using cash transfer programmes could be important in limiting suicide, which is predicted to rise with the economic recession, consequent to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Inequity in inequity: Disproportional mortality risk in patients with cancer with COVID-19 in Brazil - a call to action

Inequity in inequity: Disproportional mortality risk in patients with cancer with COVID-19 in Brazil - a call to action

An Approach to Evaluate the Region of Attraction of Satellites Controlled by SDRE

The control of a satellite can be designed with success by linear control theory if the satellite has slow angular motions. However, for fast maneuvers, the linearized models are not able to represent the effects of the nonlinear terms. One candidate technique for the design of the satellite’s control under fast maneuvers is the State- Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE). SDRE provides an effective algorithm for synthesizing nonlinear feedback control by allowing nonlinearities. Nonetheless, much criticism has been leveled against the SDRE because it does not provide assurance of global asymptotic stability. Additionally, there are situations in which global asymptotic stability cannot be achieved (e.g., systems with multiple equilibrium points). Therefore, especially in aerospace, estimating the region of attraction (ROA) is fundamental. The Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE, in Portuguese) was demanded by the Brazilian government to build remote-sensing satellites, such as the Amazonia-1 mission. In such missions, the satellite must be stabilized in three axes so that the optical payload can point to the desired target. In this paper, we share an approach to evaluate the ROAs of Amazonia-1 controlled by LQR (the linear counterpart of SDRE) and SDRE. The initial results showed SDRE has a larger ROA than LQR.

Comparative analysis of the state of conservation of social housing facades in Pelotas/RS

The housing projects is the way most used by the Brazilian federal government to attend the housing demand of the low-income population. The low quality in the production process leads to a greater need for maintenance, which becomes critical due to the limited availability of resources for residents, influencing user satisfaction. In this context, this study aimed to compare the survey of data obtained in 2010 in the INQUALHIS project on pathological manifestations in newly built housing projects with the surveys of pathological manifestations carried out in 2016 and 2019 of the same housing projects, analyzing the evolution of the state of conservation of the facades. The housing complexes presented problems related to use and lack of maintenance. This study, in addition to serving to detect the pathological manifestations of the objects of study, verified the post-occupancy evaluation - higher incidences of pathological manifestations, led to greater dissatisfaction of residents with the facades of buildings due to their bad appearance. In addition, observing the types of manifestations incident on the facades of both surveys, it was possible to perceive that the survey carried out in the newly built projects already revealed a predisposition of the most incident types in each set.

What Makes Cities Sustainable? Empirical Evidence From a Brazilian Context

About 70% of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2050, emphasizing the importance of assessment tools to guide decisions toward more sustainable cities. The “Mandala ODS” is an alternative tool promoted by the Brazilian government to quantify the sustainability of cities based on the UN SDGs. Although diagnoses are important steps for governance, the behavioral profile of decision makers also appears as a key aspect. This work aims to assess the potential association evidence among biophysical, socioeconomic and cultural variables with city sustainability as measured by the “Mandala ODS.” A sample of 130 Brazilian cities is considered as a sample, and the Pearson's chi-square indicator is calculated for association analysis. Results show that Brazilian cities located in the South/Southeast/Midwest regions, with HDI higher than 0.75, incidence of poverty lower than 40%, territorial area lower than 3,000 km2, and GDP/capita higher than 25,000 R$/person.yr, have significant statistical association that leads them to higher levels of sustainability than other cities without these characteristics. Population density, academic background of mayors, their political ideology and gender showed no association with city sustainability. These findings highlight the fundamental role of governance focused on local characteristics instead of standardized and larger scale based public policies that would hardly bring the same benefits for all cities with different socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. Although additional efforts are still needed to achieve a more comprehensive picture, this work contributes to the discussions about the reasons that lead some cities to achieve higher degrees of sustainability than others.

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul

O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul

The disease of corruption: Missing funds and health conditions in Brazilian municipalities

The article analyzes how local corruption affects health indicators. Using a random sample of audited Brazilian municipal governments, an objective indicator of corruption was constructed and utilized as an explanatory variable for health indicators involving different dimensions of performance. Using instrumental variables and a series of controls to assure robustness of the results, a causal relationship was found between corruption and the performance of public services, confirming a chain reaction. The study confirms that additional resources are necessary, but not sufficient, to guarantee improvements in the performance of local government services in Brazil.

Sustainability in management undergraduate courses: mapping the Brazilian higher education institutions

PurposeThis study aims to analyse the insertion of Sustainability in Management undergraduate courses in Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs).Design/methodology/approachThrough content analysis, the authors have mapped the curricular grids of the Management courses simultaneously best classified in an independent national ranking and with the highest scores in the Brazilian Government’s assessment instruments. Afterwards, the authors carried out both network and cluster analyses.FindingsAmong the main findings, the authors can highlight the exclusive presence of public universities in the sample, the absence of courses that offer sustainability themes in the Amazon region, the high incidence of Sustainability in elective courses, the prominence of themes related only to the environmental dimension of Sustainability and the considerable difference among the five regions of the country in terms of the content offers. Given these findings, the authors can state that Sustainability via curricular insertion in the studied undergraduate courses in Management is still in its initial stages. The study sheds light on how the Management curriculum can embed Sustainability and provides insights for dealing with this issue in educational policies, both at local and national levels.Practical implicationsThe study confirms that the insertion of Sustainability via curriculum in the undergraduate courses in Management is still in its initial stages and discusses how different Sustainability contents are related or not to their context.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the theme of Sustainability in HEIs by conveying structured and comprehensive data, besides contributing to studies on the topic in emerging countries, particularly in Latin America.

Serra do Divisor National Park: a protected area under threat in the south-western Brazilian Amazon

SummaryProtected areas have numerous roles (such as biodiversity preservation, the development of scientific research and the sustainable use of natural resources), but they are under threat from political and economic forces. The 837 000-ha Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) in the south-western Brazilian Amazon combines the conservation of natural resources and the maintenance of the productive activities ofc. 400 resident families. The Brazilian and Peruvian governments have proposed a road linking Acre (Brazil) to Ucayali (Peru) that would bisect the SDNP. Another threat to the SDNP is a bill proposing its downgrading to an ‘environmental protection area’. This study aims to map the land cover of the SDNP and its surroundings from 1988 to 2018 and to analyse the dynamics of land-use change. Analysis of Landsat satellite images with supervised classification using the MaxVer algorithm show that, during the 30-year period, pasture showed the highest absolute land-cover gain, with 1986 ha in the interior and 7661 ha along the periphery of the SDNP. Only 1% of the park’s primary forest was lost by 2018, but the proposed road and potential downgrading may result in accelerated deforestation and forest degradation in the near future.

Biopolitics and (in)security in Foucault: elements for a diagnosis of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Faced with the criticism of the biopolitical control exercised in the COVID-19 pandemic, we defend the importance of a re-examination of the foucauldian reflections so that the critical diagnoses of the present is accompanied by a careful analysis of the fields of force and knowledges in which such controls occur. Bearing in mind the correlation between security mechanisms and the management of insecurities, we argue that in the management of the pandemic by the brazilian executive government, the excesses of power took place more due to the lack of imposing restrictive health measures and obstacles to the control of contagion than through restrictive actions of classical individual freedoms.

Brasil e as origens do Mercado Comum Europeu

The main objective of this article is to discuss the process of recognition by the Brazilian government in 1958 of the European Common Market. When announced, with the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the establishment of the European Common Market prompted a harsh reaction from the Brazilian government, who led the opposition of Latin American governments, fearful of the consequences that the binding of the colonies and ex-European colonies had for their exports directed to the traditional European markets.

Practices and their Challenges in an English Teaching Project of a Brazilian State University during the Pandemic

The aim of this manuscript is to present, analyze and discuss the practices developed in a Teacher Education project called Residência Pedagógica (Pedagogical Residency) - a project that the Brazilian government offers to Brazilian universities - and their challenges during the pandemic. More specifically, it intends to focus on the practical phase of the first module of the project, which was when the project-participants observed classes in the school, designed lesson plans for the groups of whose classes they observed and implemented the lessons for these groups. Methodology. Qualitative research method was adopted in this study. The reports, lesson plans and video lessons of the project's participants were used as data in order to analyze their practices under the light of theoretical discussion held during the project. A reflexive diary kept by me was also used as data. Moreover, the participants’ practices were contrasted with situations that occurred in the pandemic context. Results. The project practical phases did not occur as foreseen; however, the participants were able to reflect upon their practices based on the theoretical discussion carried out previously in the project. They recognized the language learning and teaching perspectives in the lessons they observed and, in the lesson, plans they designed and implemented. The pandemic had a great interference in the project, which had to be adapted, so that the first module could be concluded. Conclusions. In spite of the pandemic, we managed to reach the project’s main objective, which was to provide space for college students, who shall graduate as English teachers, to have contact with the school environment.

Crafting constraints: Latin American support for humanitarian-intervention norms

This article explores why, by 2005, most Latin American countries supported the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a doctrine modifying limits on the use of force to address atrocity crimes. I group existing explanations of why Latin American countries apparently changed their long-standing defence of non-intervention following the main explanatory factor they focus on: power asymmetries, government preferences or coalition politics. I find that these accounts downplay a fundamental dimension informing the approaches of Latin American supporters: how to limit interveners. Drawing on Republican security theory (RST), I argue that Latin American supporters faced a dilemma in the R2P debates, especially after the intervention in Iraq in 2003. Latin American supporters favoured crafting solutions to humanitarian problems that simultaneously addressed crises and prevented arbitrary uses of force. I use the Brazilian and Chilean case studies to explore this argument. Brazilian and Chilean governments concluded that their conventional interpretations of limits on the use of force did not offer answers for both humanitarian emergencies and arbitrary uses of force. As a solution, they modified but did not abandon their diplomatic traditions. These governments calculated that humanitarian-intervention norms could be constraints, even if imperfect, on interveners arbitrarily using military force.

Lessons from Brazil: Opportunities of Bioethanol Biofuel in Indonesia

Brazil has a long tradition of bioethanol production from sugarcane. Following the Middle East crisis in the 1970s, the oil price increased twofold, doubling Brazil’s spending on oil imports. As a result, the country had to find an alternative type of fuel to reduce its expenditure on conventional petrol fuels. With its vast tropical land conditions, the Brazilian government then put massive effort to establish the infrastructure and research of bioethanol from 1975 and 1989. Research plays a pivotal role in the success of Brazil’s ethanol industry. The country was heavily criticised at the beginning of the programme, but today, Brazil is the second-largest ethanol producer after the USA. Brazil produces the cheapest ethanol in the world and does not depend on fossil fuel to supply its energy demand. Indonesia and Brazil share the same landscape and geographical advantages. This paper aims to discuss the success of the Brazilian bioethanol industry and draw important lessons from it. In a nutshell, Indonesia should increase bioethanol production from renewable sources. Also, the modernization of distilleries facilities, the establishment of new production plants, the introduction of subsidies and the reduction of taxes for ethanol producers are needed. In summary, apart from massive research and development, we concluded that effective and strong long-term government commitment play important role in shaping the future of the Indonesian bioethanol industry.

National Trends and Disparities in Severe Food Insecurity in Brazil between 2004 and 2018

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe Brazilian Household Food Insecurity Measurement Scale (EBIA) is the main tool for assessing household food insecurity (FI) in Brazil and facilitates the monitoring and improvement of national public policies to promote food security. Since 2004, the Brazilian government has conducted National Household Sample Surveys, and in 2018, the government carried out the last national evaluation of FI.ObjectivesTo describe trends in severe FI in Brazil from 2004 to 2018.MethodsData from 3 cross-sectional Brazilian National Household Sample Surveys (sample sizes: 2004 = 112,530; 2009 = 120,910; 2013 = 116,196) and from the last Household Budget Survey (sample size = 57,920) that assessed the status of FI using the EBIA were analyzed. Changes in severe FI during 2 periods (2004–2013; 2013–2018) were estimated while considering sociodemographic factors.ResultsThe period between 2004 and 2013 was marked by a significant decrease in severe FI (–53.6%), but this trend reversed in 2013–2018 (+43.8%). The greatest decrease in severe FI occurred in the Northeast (–57.6%) among households where the reference person was a man (–57.6%) and self-identified as white (–58.1%) (2004–2013). In 2013–2018, households with children aged ≤4 y (+6.3%) and members aged ≥65 y (+12.5%) experienced the lowest increases in severe FI.ConclusionsAfter a significant reduction from 2004 to 2013, severe FI increased sharply from 2013 to 2018, likely due to disruptions in public policies aimed at reducing hunger and unemployment rates.

The Text Mining Technique Applied to the Analysis of Health Interventions to Combat Congenital Syphilis in Brazil: The Case of the "Syphilis No!" Project.

Congenital syphilis (CS) remains a threat to public health worldwide, especially in developing countries. To mitigate the impacts of the CS epidemic, the Brazilian government has developed a national intervention project called “Syphilis No.” Thus, among its range of actions is the production of thousands of writings featuring the experiences of research and intervention supporters (RIS) of the project, called field researchers. In addition, this large volume of base data was subjected to analysis through data mining, which may contribute to better strategies for combating syphilis. Natural language processing is a form of knowledge extraction. First, the database extracted from the “LUES Platform” with 4,874 documents between 2018 and 2020 was employed. This was followed by text preprocessing, selecting texts referring to the field researchers' reports for analysis. Finally, for analyzing the documents, N-grams extraction (N = 2,3,4) was performed. The combination of the TF-IDF metric with the BoW algorithm was applied to assess terms' importance and frequency and text clustering. In total, 1019 field activity reports were mined. Word extraction from the text mining method set out the following guiding axioms from the bigrams: “confronting syphilis in primary health care;” “investigation committee for congenital syphilis in the territory;” “municipal plan for monitoring and investigating syphilis cases through health surveillance;” “women's healthcare networks for syphilis in pregnant;” “diagnosis and treatment with a focus on rapid testing.” Text mining may serve public health research subjects when used in parallel with the conventional content analysis method. The computational method extracted intervention activities from field researchers, also providing inferences on how the strategies of the “Syphilis No” Project influenced the decrease in congenital syphilis cases in the territory.

Comparison of machine learning models for coronavirus prediction

Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It is a family of viruses ranging from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The symptoms of such a virus are similar to those of a cold or seasonal allergies. Like other respiratory viruses, it is mainly transmitted through airborne droplets when coughing or sneezing. Therefore, the recognition of COVID-19 requires careful laboratory analysis, and the reduction of recognition resources is a major challenge. On 11 March, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, a pandemic, as there had been an exponential increase in cases worldwide, and demand for intensive beds and related structures had far exceeded existing capacity. The first examples of this are the regions of Italy. Brazil registered the first case of SARS-CoV-2 on 02/26/2020. Transmission of the virus in this country shifted very quickly from imported cases to local and, finally, community missions, with the Brazilian federal government announcing national community transmission on 03/20/2020. As of March 23, in the state of São Paulo with a population of about 12 million people, where the Israelita Albert Einstein Hospital is located, 477 cases of the disease and 30 related deaths were registered, and on March 27, there were already 1223 cases of COVID-19 with 68 concomitant deaths. To slow the spread of the virus in the state of São Paulo, quarantines and social distancing measures were introduced. One of the motivations for this challenge is the fact that, in the context of an extensive healthcare system with the possible limitation of SARS-CoV-2 testing, it is not practical to test every case, and test results can only be used in testing the target subpopulation. The study objective is to build a model based on machine learning that can predict the detection of SARS-CoV-2 from medical data. For this, various classification models of machine learning are compared, and the best one to predict coronaviruses is determined. The comparison is based on individuals in class 1, i.e., those with a positive test. Therefore, it is required to determine the machine learning model with the best response and F1 score for class 1.Materials and Methods. An open-source data set from the Israelita Albert Einstein Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, was taken as a basis. The following machine learning models were used for the study: RandomForests (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree (DT) and AdaBoost (AB), as well as the 10-time cross-validation technique. Some machine learning performance measures, such as accuracy, recall, and F1 score were evaluated.Results. Out of a total of 5,644 people tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, 5,086 people tested negative and 558 people tested positive. At the same time, support for machine vectors showed the best results in detecting coronavirus with a recall of 75 % and an F1 score of 60 % compared to models: Random drill, KNN, LR, AB, and DT.Discussion and Conclusions. It was found that when using AB algorithms, greater accuracy is achieved, but the stability of the LSVM algorithm is higher. Therefore, it can be recommended as a useful tool for detecting COVID-19.

Income transfer programme for children and adolescents with disabilities in Brazil.

In Brazil, there are 55 million people living in extreme poverty. People with disabilities are doubly impacted by low income and the presence of the disability. The Continuous Cash Benefit Program (BPC) is an aid granted by the Brazilian federal government to people who attest to the condition of disability as an impediment to a life on an equal basis with other individuals. Requests to BPC are made to the national competence body that carries out an expert medical and social assessment, by means of an instrument that determines the degree of the disability. Our objective was to analyse the standard of BPC concessions for children and young people with disabilities and to identify the prevalence of major diseases in the concessions. The exploratory, cross-sectional and retrospective research used primary data collected from 332 expert medical assessments of children under 16 years old. The standard and determinants of the concessions were established through Cluster Analysis by Ward's criterion and Euclidean distance, specifying the homogeneous groups of dysfunction classes. The prevalence of major diseases was performed by frequency analysis according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The socioeconomic profile of BPC requirements and the main causes of BPC rejection were analysed through descriptive analysis. There was a predominance of male, preschoolers and illiterate individuals in the requirements and concessions. In the granting standard for impaired function class, problems related to congenital changes received benefits even in the absence of impairment, with childhood autism being the most prevalent diagnosis. The concessions seemed more dependent on the diagnosis itself and on the age of the beneficiaries than on the degree of dysfunction suffered, without exclusions, by the individuals.

Consumption Trends of Antibiotics in Brazil During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: In 2019, a new type of coronavirus emerged and spread to the rest of the world. Numerous drugs were identified as possible treatments. Among the candidates for possible treatment was azithromycin alone or in combination with other drugs. As a result, many clinicians in Brazil have prescribed azithromycin in an attempt to combat or minimize the effects of COVID19. Aim: This study analyzed the sales data of the main antibiotics prescribed in Brazil to verify the change in consumption trends of these drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This is an interrupted time series that analyzed antimicrobial sales data between January 2014 and July 2021, publicly accessible information obtained from the Brazilian government’s website. Monthly means of “defined daily doses of DDDs” (DDDs per 1,000 inhabitants per day) of antibiotics were compared by analysis of variance, followed by the Dunnett Multiple Comparisons Test. Monthly trend changes in antibiotic use were verified using Joinpoint regression. Results: Amoxicillin (31.97%), azithromycin (18.33%), and cefalexin (16.61%) were the most sold antibiotics in Brazil during the evaluation period. Azithromycin consumption rose from 1.40 DDDs in February 2020 to 3.53 DDDs in July 2020. Azithromycin sales showed a significant increase in the pandemic period [Monthly Percent Change (MPC) 5.83%, 95% 1.80; 10.00], whereas there was a fall in amoxicillin sales (MPC −9.00%, 95% CI −14.70; −2.90) and cefalexin [MPC-2.70%, 95% (CI −6.30; −1.10)] in this same period. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic changed the pattern of antibiotic consumption in Brazil, with a decrease in the use of amoxicillin and cefalexin and an increase in the consumption of azithromycin.