This article describes the steps token in the building of a helping relational competencies scale... more This article describes the steps token in the building of a helping relational competencies scale (HRCS); the items were selected after a bibliographic research among the most important authors involved in this matter; we analysed and verified its metric properties, which originated a helping relational competencies scale with four factors. The study took place with a sample of Nursing students from the middle part of the country. The scale’s internal consistency revealed to be very good.
Background: Stricto sensu post-graduation in Brazil was implemented in 1965 to increase universit... more Background: Stricto sensu post-graduation in Brazil was implemented in 1965 to increase university professors' teaching quality and to prepare full, independent researchers. The brazilian share in ISI publications has increased significantly since then, but little information is available on postgraduate quality. Objective: To review 29 years of the postgraduate programs in cardiology at the Federal University of São Paulo and to analyze master and doctorate graduates' characteristics regarding their origin, publications and subsequent career. Methods: We developed a questionnaire to evaluate 168 postgraduates who produced 196 theses (116 master's and 80 doctorate) over the period 1975-2004 and contacted 95.9% of them. Information on publications were obtained through the usual science databases. Results: 30% of graduates came from the North-Northeast-Central West regions and only 50% returned to their original area. Mean age at admission was 32.5 and 34.9 years old for master and doctorate students, respectively; average program duration was, respectively, 39.0 and 43.2 months and approximately 50% went through it without any grants. Thesis publications throughout these 29 years averaged 36.5% for master's and 61.9% for doctorate, but any publishing afterwards occurred in 70.2 and 90.6% of the cases. The average impact factor of the published theses was 1.3 for master's degree and 3.1 for doctorate programs with 65.5% and 87.5% of Qualis A, respectively. Currently, there are graduates in 17 states of the country and 12 have became full professors. Conclusion: Although the stricto sensu program, especially the master's degree program, has many areas that need improvement, they seem to be contributing to improve professional quality and the number of brazilian indexed publications. (Arq Bras Cardiol 2010; 94(4):471-476) Key words: Health postgraduate programs; cardiology; academic dissertations; quality; scientific and technical publications. of Superior Level Personnel) supervises the program and developed a tri-annual evaluation of all its courses, currently with a scoring system from 1 to 7, with levels 6 and 7 being comparable to good international courses 2,5,6. There is still controversy on its publishing rules and journal classification system 6-8 , but the fact is that Brazil went from a 0.88% participation in the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) database in 1996 to 1.73% in 2004 and the international brazilian publications in cardiology-related areas accordingly increased from 0.9% in 1998 to 1.9% in 2006 (Krieger, E-oral presentation in the I Forum of Quality in Medical Assistance-Brazilian Society of Cardiology-2008). During the fifties, superior level personnel was 0.67% of the economically active population and 60% of high school students did not graduate 9. The number of professors with a doctorate (PhD-equivalent) was 38.2% in public and 12% in private schools in 1998 10 and there is still a great disparity among regions, with 8.801 Doctors in the North, Northeast and Central West regions against 29.006 in the Southeast 11. In 1997, an international commission evaluating CAPES suggested that the agency should get information on its
... These variables were collected from the Eurostat database, except the EATR, which was kindly ... more ... These variables were collected from the Eurostat database, except the EATR, which was kindly provided by Michael Overesch (see Overesch and Rincke, 2009). ... Buch, Claudia M., Jorn Kleinert, Alexander Lipponer and Farid Toubal, 2005. ...
Fiscal Union Consensus Design under the Risk of Autarky* Inspired by the current debate over the ... more Fiscal Union Consensus Design under the Risk of Autarky* Inspired by the current debate over the future of the monetary union in Europe, this paper provides a simple model for the determination of the conditions of survival of the common good, which requires the creation of an effective fiscal union. We highlight the importance of institutional design and varying decision weights for the enlargement of the space for consensus. Our model deepens the discussion of economic risk and political risk in fiscal federalism, and highlights the related roles of country heterogeneity and institutional design in enlarging the scope for cross country fiscal agreements.
Several authors claim that voters in new democracies reward deficits at the polls and this fact i... more Several authors claim that voters in new democracies reward deficits at the polls and this fact is due to a lack of 'voter sophistication'. We test this claim for gubernatorial elections in Brazil, an important case study since it is the fourth most populous democracy in the world, displays a high variance in economic and social characteristics across states, and
State elections in Brazil are an excellent laboratory to test the fiscal preferences of voters in... more State elections in Brazil are an excellent laboratory to test the fiscal preferences of voters in new democracies. Brazil is a developing economy with a history of large budget deficits at the federal and state level, with a established democracy since the late 1980´s, mandatory vote and considerable social and economic diversity. In addition, in 1998 Brazil has undertaken substantial
The secular rise in female labor force participation, highlighted in the recent macroeconomics li... more The secular rise in female labor force participation, highlighted in the recent macroeconomics literature on growth and structural change, has been associated with the declining price and wider availability of home appliances. This paper uses a new and unique country data set on the price of home appliances to test its impact on female labor supply. We assess the role of the price of appliances in raising participation by comparing it to other structural determinants such as average male income. A decrease in the relative price of appliances-the ratio of the price of appliances to the consumer price index-leads to a substantial and statistically significant increase in female labor force participation. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the decline in the relative price of home appliances alone accounts for about 10% to 15% of the increase in female labor force participation from 1975 to 1999. This result is robust to the inclusion of additional controls, such as country dummies, time trend, government spending, and the growth rate of real GDP. To assess causality, we test for exogeneity and use the manufactured price index and the terms of trade adjustment as instrumental variables confirming that lower appliance prices lead to increased female participation.
The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in t... more The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in the structure of the economy: an increase in the share of government spending in GDP and an increase in female labor force participation. This paper suggests that these two changes are not just overlapping in time, they are causally related. This paper develops a growth model with endogenous fertility, labor force participation and government size that illustrates this causal link. Economic development is accompanied by an increase in the female market wage, thus increasing the opportunity cost of staying at home. If government spending decreases the time cost of performing household chores -including, but not limited to child rearing and child care -it makes sense for women to enter the labor market and demand higher government spending, financed by increased taxation. As women make the decision to work outside the home, they increase their demand for services typically provided by the government, such as education and health care, which, in turn, decrease the cost of home and family activities that are overwhelmingly performed by women. Using a wide cross-section of data for developed and developing countries, we show that higher rates of female participation in the labor market are indeed positively associated with larger governments. Furthermore, we investigate the causal link between the two variables using as instrumental variables for female labor force participation newly collected data on the relative price of home appliances as well as the fertility rate. We find evidence of a causal link between female labor force participation and government size. A 10 percent rise in female participation in the labor market leads to a 7 to 8 percent rise in government size. This effect is robust to the country sample, time period, and a set of controls in the spirit of Rodrik (1998).
We carried out extensive canonical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the dipolar hard-sphere (DHS) ... more We carried out extensive canonical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the dipolar hard-sphere (DHS) fluid, with N=1024 particles at fixed reduced density ρ * =0.05, in order to investigate the chainlike structure that occurs at low densities, for sufficiently large reduced dipole ...
Santa-Clara for useful conversations. José Tavares acknowledges research support from INOVA and F... more Santa-Clara for useful conversations. José Tavares acknowledges research support from INOVA and FLAD.
The Output Cost of Gender Discrimination: A Model-Based Macroeconomic Estimate* Gender-based disc... more The Output Cost of Gender Discrimination: A Model-Based Macroeconomic Estimate* Gender-based discrimination is a pervasive and costly phenomenon. To a greater or lesser extent, all economies present a gender wage gap, associated with lower female labour force participation rates and higher fertility. This paper presents a growth model where saving, fertility and labour market participation are endogenously determined, and there is wage discrimination. The model is calibrated to mimic the performance of the U.S. economy, including the gender wage gap and relative female labour force participation. We then compute the output cost of an increase in discrimination, to find that a 50 percent increase in the gender wage gap leads to a decrease in income per capita of a quarter of the original output. We then compile independent estimates of the female to male earnings ratio for a wide cross-section of countries to construct a new economy, in line with the benchmark U.S. economy, except for the degree of discrimination. We compare the level of output per capita predicted by this model economy with the actual output per capita for each country. Higher discrimination leads to lower output per capita for two reasons: a direct decrease in female labour market participation and an indirect effect through an increase in fertility. We find that for several countries a large fraction of the actual difference in output per capita between the U.S. and the different economies is due to gender inequality. For countries such as Ireland and Saudi Arabia, wage discrimination actually explains all of the output difference with the U.S. Moreover, we find that the increase in fertility due to discrimination is responsible for almost half of the decrease in output per capita, and equivalent to the direct decrease in output due to lower female participation. Our basic model suggests the costs of gender discrimination are indeed quite substantial and should be a central concern in any macroeconomic policy aimed at increasing output per capita in the long-run. JEL Classification: E0, J1 and O1
With the help of a unique combination of density functional theory and computer simulations, we d... more With the help of a unique combination of density functional theory and computer simulations, we discover two possible scenarios, depending on concentration, for the hierarchical self-assembly of magnetic nanoparticles on cooling. We show that typically considered low temperature clusters, i.e. defect-free chains and rings, merge into more complex branched structures through only three types of defects: four-way X junctions, three-way Y junctions and two-way Z junctions. Our accurate calculations reveal the predominance of weakly magnetically responsive rings cross-linked by X defects at the lowest temperatures. We thus provide a strategy to fine-tune magnetic and thermodynamic responses of magnetic nanocolloids to be used in medical and microfluidics applications.
34th Annual Frontiers in Education, 2004. FIE 2004., 2004
The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic & Telecommunications at t... more The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic & Telecommunications at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) have been working together with the Department of Computer & Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde (UK), with the aim of improving the teaching quality of introductory programming courses and, indirectly, the academic success of their students. Over the past two years, data has been collected through interviews and questionnaires, to better understand the organization of the different courses and approaches to teaching. The present paper discusses how the organization of introductory programming courses in each institution reflects the teaching philosophy of the members of staff and also how course organization and teaching strategy relate to the students' attitudes to learning and their motivation for course involvement.
We generalize Wertheim's first order perturbation theory to account for the effect in the... more We generalize Wertheim's first order perturbation theory to account for the effect in the thermodynamics of the self-assembly of rings characterized by two energy scales. The theory is applied to a lattice model of patchy particles and tested against Monte Carlo simulations on a fcc lattice. These particles have 2 patches of type A and 10 patches of type B, which may form bonds AA or AB that decrease the energy by εAA and by εAB ≡ rεAA, respectively. The angle θ between the 2 A-patches on each particle is fixed at 60°, 90° or 120°. For values of r below 1/2 and above a threshold rth(θ) the models exhibit a phase diagram with two critical points. Both theory and simulation predict that rth increases when θ decreases. We show that the mechanism that prevents phase separation for models with decreasing values of θ is related to the formation of loops containing AB bonds. Moreover, we show that by including the free energy of B-rings (loops containing one AB bond), the theory describes the trends observed in the simulation results, but that for the lowest values of θ, the theoretical description deteriorates due to the increasing number of loops containing more than one AB bond.
We investigate the structural chain-to-ring transition at low temperature in a gas of dipolar har... more We investigate the structural chain-to-ring transition at low temperature in a gas of dipolar hard spheres (DHS). Due to the weakening of entropic contribution, ring formation becomes noticeable when the effective dipole-dipole magnetic interaction increases. It results in the redistribution of particles from usually observed flexible chains into flexible rings. The concentration (ρ) of DHS plays a crucial part in this transition: at a very low ρ only chains and rings are observed, whereas even a slight increase of the volume fraction leads to the formation of branched or defect structures. As a result, the fraction of DHS aggregated in defect-free rings turns out to be a non-monotonic function of ρ. The average ring size is found to be a slower increasing function of ρ when compared to that of chains. Both theory and computer simulations confirm the dramatic influence of the ring formation on the ρ-dependence of the initial magnetic susceptibility (χ) when the temperature decreases. The rings due to their zero total dipole moment are irresponsive to a weak magnetic field and drive to the strong decrease of the initial magnetic susceptibility.
This article describes the steps token in the building of a helping relational competencies scale... more This article describes the steps token in the building of a helping relational competencies scale (HRCS); the items were selected after a bibliographic research among the most important authors involved in this matter; we analysed and verified its metric properties, which originated a helping relational competencies scale with four factors. The study took place with a sample of Nursing students from the middle part of the country. The scale’s internal consistency revealed to be very good.
Background: Stricto sensu post-graduation in Brazil was implemented in 1965 to increase universit... more Background: Stricto sensu post-graduation in Brazil was implemented in 1965 to increase university professors' teaching quality and to prepare full, independent researchers. The brazilian share in ISI publications has increased significantly since then, but little information is available on postgraduate quality. Objective: To review 29 years of the postgraduate programs in cardiology at the Federal University of São Paulo and to analyze master and doctorate graduates' characteristics regarding their origin, publications and subsequent career. Methods: We developed a questionnaire to evaluate 168 postgraduates who produced 196 theses (116 master's and 80 doctorate) over the period 1975-2004 and contacted 95.9% of them. Information on publications were obtained through the usual science databases. Results: 30% of graduates came from the North-Northeast-Central West regions and only 50% returned to their original area. Mean age at admission was 32.5 and 34.9 years old for master and doctorate students, respectively; average program duration was, respectively, 39.0 and 43.2 months and approximately 50% went through it without any grants. Thesis publications throughout these 29 years averaged 36.5% for master's and 61.9% for doctorate, but any publishing afterwards occurred in 70.2 and 90.6% of the cases. The average impact factor of the published theses was 1.3 for master's degree and 3.1 for doctorate programs with 65.5% and 87.5% of Qualis A, respectively. Currently, there are graduates in 17 states of the country and 12 have became full professors. Conclusion: Although the stricto sensu program, especially the master's degree program, has many areas that need improvement, they seem to be contributing to improve professional quality and the number of brazilian indexed publications. (Arq Bras Cardiol 2010; 94(4):471-476) Key words: Health postgraduate programs; cardiology; academic dissertations; quality; scientific and technical publications. of Superior Level Personnel) supervises the program and developed a tri-annual evaluation of all its courses, currently with a scoring system from 1 to 7, with levels 6 and 7 being comparable to good international courses 2,5,6. There is still controversy on its publishing rules and journal classification system 6-8 , but the fact is that Brazil went from a 0.88% participation in the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) database in 1996 to 1.73% in 2004 and the international brazilian publications in cardiology-related areas accordingly increased from 0.9% in 1998 to 1.9% in 2006 (Krieger, E-oral presentation in the I Forum of Quality in Medical Assistance-Brazilian Society of Cardiology-2008). During the fifties, superior level personnel was 0.67% of the economically active population and 60% of high school students did not graduate 9. The number of professors with a doctorate (PhD-equivalent) was 38.2% in public and 12% in private schools in 1998 10 and there is still a great disparity among regions, with 8.801 Doctors in the North, Northeast and Central West regions against 29.006 in the Southeast 11. In 1997, an international commission evaluating CAPES suggested that the agency should get information on its
... These variables were collected from the Eurostat database, except the EATR, which was kindly ... more ... These variables were collected from the Eurostat database, except the EATR, which was kindly provided by Michael Overesch (see Overesch and Rincke, 2009). ... Buch, Claudia M., Jorn Kleinert, Alexander Lipponer and Farid Toubal, 2005. ...
Fiscal Union Consensus Design under the Risk of Autarky* Inspired by the current debate over the ... more Fiscal Union Consensus Design under the Risk of Autarky* Inspired by the current debate over the future of the monetary union in Europe, this paper provides a simple model for the determination of the conditions of survival of the common good, which requires the creation of an effective fiscal union. We highlight the importance of institutional design and varying decision weights for the enlargement of the space for consensus. Our model deepens the discussion of economic risk and political risk in fiscal federalism, and highlights the related roles of country heterogeneity and institutional design in enlarging the scope for cross country fiscal agreements.
Several authors claim that voters in new democracies reward deficits at the polls and this fact i... more Several authors claim that voters in new democracies reward deficits at the polls and this fact is due to a lack of 'voter sophistication'. We test this claim for gubernatorial elections in Brazil, an important case study since it is the fourth most populous democracy in the world, displays a high variance in economic and social characteristics across states, and
State elections in Brazil are an excellent laboratory to test the fiscal preferences of voters in... more State elections in Brazil are an excellent laboratory to test the fiscal preferences of voters in new democracies. Brazil is a developing economy with a history of large budget deficits at the federal and state level, with a established democracy since the late 1980´s, mandatory vote and considerable social and economic diversity. In addition, in 1998 Brazil has undertaken substantial
The secular rise in female labor force participation, highlighted in the recent macroeconomics li... more The secular rise in female labor force participation, highlighted in the recent macroeconomics literature on growth and structural change, has been associated with the declining price and wider availability of home appliances. This paper uses a new and unique country data set on the price of home appliances to test its impact on female labor supply. We assess the role of the price of appliances in raising participation by comparing it to other structural determinants such as average male income. A decrease in the relative price of appliances-the ratio of the price of appliances to the consumer price index-leads to a substantial and statistically significant increase in female labor force participation. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the decline in the relative price of home appliances alone accounts for about 10% to 15% of the increase in female labor force participation from 1975 to 1999. This result is robust to the inclusion of additional controls, such as country dummies, time trend, government spending, and the growth rate of real GDP. To assess causality, we test for exogeneity and use the manufactured price index and the terms of trade adjustment as instrumental variables confirming that lower appliance prices lead to increased female participation.
The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in t... more The increase in income per capita is accompanied, in virtually all countries, by two changes in the structure of the economy: an increase in the share of government spending in GDP and an increase in female labor force participation. This paper suggests that these two changes are not just overlapping in time, they are causally related. This paper develops a growth model with endogenous fertility, labor force participation and government size that illustrates this causal link. Economic development is accompanied by an increase in the female market wage, thus increasing the opportunity cost of staying at home. If government spending decreases the time cost of performing household chores -including, but not limited to child rearing and child care -it makes sense for women to enter the labor market and demand higher government spending, financed by increased taxation. As women make the decision to work outside the home, they increase their demand for services typically provided by the government, such as education and health care, which, in turn, decrease the cost of home and family activities that are overwhelmingly performed by women. Using a wide cross-section of data for developed and developing countries, we show that higher rates of female participation in the labor market are indeed positively associated with larger governments. Furthermore, we investigate the causal link between the two variables using as instrumental variables for female labor force participation newly collected data on the relative price of home appliances as well as the fertility rate. We find evidence of a causal link between female labor force participation and government size. A 10 percent rise in female participation in the labor market leads to a 7 to 8 percent rise in government size. This effect is robust to the country sample, time period, and a set of controls in the spirit of Rodrik (1998).
We carried out extensive canonical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the dipolar hard-sphere (DHS) ... more We carried out extensive canonical Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the dipolar hard-sphere (DHS) fluid, with N=1024 particles at fixed reduced density ρ * =0.05, in order to investigate the chainlike structure that occurs at low densities, for sufficiently large reduced dipole ...
Santa-Clara for useful conversations. José Tavares acknowledges research support from INOVA and F... more Santa-Clara for useful conversations. José Tavares acknowledges research support from INOVA and FLAD.
The Output Cost of Gender Discrimination: A Model-Based Macroeconomic Estimate* Gender-based disc... more The Output Cost of Gender Discrimination: A Model-Based Macroeconomic Estimate* Gender-based discrimination is a pervasive and costly phenomenon. To a greater or lesser extent, all economies present a gender wage gap, associated with lower female labour force participation rates and higher fertility. This paper presents a growth model where saving, fertility and labour market participation are endogenously determined, and there is wage discrimination. The model is calibrated to mimic the performance of the U.S. economy, including the gender wage gap and relative female labour force participation. We then compute the output cost of an increase in discrimination, to find that a 50 percent increase in the gender wage gap leads to a decrease in income per capita of a quarter of the original output. We then compile independent estimates of the female to male earnings ratio for a wide cross-section of countries to construct a new economy, in line with the benchmark U.S. economy, except for the degree of discrimination. We compare the level of output per capita predicted by this model economy with the actual output per capita for each country. Higher discrimination leads to lower output per capita for two reasons: a direct decrease in female labour market participation and an indirect effect through an increase in fertility. We find that for several countries a large fraction of the actual difference in output per capita between the U.S. and the different economies is due to gender inequality. For countries such as Ireland and Saudi Arabia, wage discrimination actually explains all of the output difference with the U.S. Moreover, we find that the increase in fertility due to discrimination is responsible for almost half of the decrease in output per capita, and equivalent to the direct decrease in output due to lower female participation. Our basic model suggests the costs of gender discrimination are indeed quite substantial and should be a central concern in any macroeconomic policy aimed at increasing output per capita in the long-run. JEL Classification: E0, J1 and O1
With the help of a unique combination of density functional theory and computer simulations, we d... more With the help of a unique combination of density functional theory and computer simulations, we discover two possible scenarios, depending on concentration, for the hierarchical self-assembly of magnetic nanoparticles on cooling. We show that typically considered low temperature clusters, i.e. defect-free chains and rings, merge into more complex branched structures through only three types of defects: four-way X junctions, three-way Y junctions and two-way Z junctions. Our accurate calculations reveal the predominance of weakly magnetically responsive rings cross-linked by X defects at the lowest temperatures. We thus provide a strategy to fine-tune magnetic and thermodynamic responses of magnetic nanocolloids to be used in medical and microfluidics applications.
34th Annual Frontiers in Education, 2004. FIE 2004., 2004
The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic & Telecommunications at t... more The Department of Educational Sciences and the Department of Electronic & Telecommunications at the University of Aveiro (Portugal) have been working together with the Department of Computer & Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde (UK), with the aim of improving the teaching quality of introductory programming courses and, indirectly, the academic success of their students. Over the past two years, data has been collected through interviews and questionnaires, to better understand the organization of the different courses and approaches to teaching. The present paper discusses how the organization of introductory programming courses in each institution reflects the teaching philosophy of the members of staff and also how course organization and teaching strategy relate to the students' attitudes to learning and their motivation for course involvement.
We generalize Wertheim's first order perturbation theory to account for the effect in the... more We generalize Wertheim's first order perturbation theory to account for the effect in the thermodynamics of the self-assembly of rings characterized by two energy scales. The theory is applied to a lattice model of patchy particles and tested against Monte Carlo simulations on a fcc lattice. These particles have 2 patches of type A and 10 patches of type B, which may form bonds AA or AB that decrease the energy by εAA and by εAB ≡ rεAA, respectively. The angle θ between the 2 A-patches on each particle is fixed at 60°, 90° or 120°. For values of r below 1/2 and above a threshold rth(θ) the models exhibit a phase diagram with two critical points. Both theory and simulation predict that rth increases when θ decreases. We show that the mechanism that prevents phase separation for models with decreasing values of θ is related to the formation of loops containing AB bonds. Moreover, we show that by including the free energy of B-rings (loops containing one AB bond), the theory describes the trends observed in the simulation results, but that for the lowest values of θ, the theoretical description deteriorates due to the increasing number of loops containing more than one AB bond.
We investigate the structural chain-to-ring transition at low temperature in a gas of dipolar har... more We investigate the structural chain-to-ring transition at low temperature in a gas of dipolar hard spheres (DHS). Due to the weakening of entropic contribution, ring formation becomes noticeable when the effective dipole-dipole magnetic interaction increases. It results in the redistribution of particles from usually observed flexible chains into flexible rings. The concentration (ρ) of DHS plays a crucial part in this transition: at a very low ρ only chains and rings are observed, whereas even a slight increase of the volume fraction leads to the formation of branched or defect structures. As a result, the fraction of DHS aggregated in defect-free rings turns out to be a non-monotonic function of ρ. The average ring size is found to be a slower increasing function of ρ when compared to that of chains. Both theory and computer simulations confirm the dramatic influence of the ring formation on the ρ-dependence of the initial magnetic susceptibility (χ) when the temperature decreases. The rings due to their zero total dipole moment are irresponsive to a weak magnetic field and drive to the strong decrease of the initial magnetic susceptibility.
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Papers by José Tavares