China and Brazil: Eye to Eye on Political Issues and Economic Cooperation

正SINCE the establishment of full diplomatic relations between China and Brazil 40 years ago,the two countries have tightened their bilateral ties to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership.Recently Brazilian Ambassador to China Valdemar Carneiro Leao sat down with China Today for an exclusive interview.He said that the two countries share similar stances on issues of bilateral and multilateral relations and have maintained close economic cooperation.     

XCMG： Globalizing China＇s Manufacturing Industry

正SUCCESS in the manufacturing industry demands as much hard work as farmers need to grow rice–they sow the seeds one by one and reap the harvest one by one.Despite its cautionary tone,this well-known metaphor in industry circles has never shaken the resolve of the managers of Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group(XCMG),a respected pioneer of China’s manufacturing industry.Wang Min,chairman of XCMG,said that China’s equipment manufacturing industry would not be as successful as it is today without the people at its helm who stick to     

A Case Study of a Sport‐for‐Development Programme in Brazil

This article examines the ‘Sport Works’ narrative of sport‐for‐development practitioners of an inter‐organisational sport‐for‐development (SfD) programme utilising rugby to foster positive social transformation in Brazil. In doing so, we address an under‐representation of practitioners who are often seen as subjugated voices in SfD programmes. The paper also addresses an under‐representation of Brazil as a research site in SfD literature. Following several site visits and interviews with practitioners, our data concludes that despite a novel context of Brazil and the alternative values to football offered through the sport of rugby, practitioners and programme managers maintain dominant narratives of social transformation through sport without clear monitoring and evaluation.     

Brazilian History as Global History

The article discusses the relationship between global history and Brazilian history and suggests an agenda for future research. It argues that global history scholars could profit from Brazil's great scholarly tradition, which conceptualises key topics of global history such as global encounters and cultural identities, power asymmetries and spatial orders. Scholars interested in Brazilian history, on the other hand, will find a set of approaches and questions from a global history perspective helpful for research on central fields of Brazil historiography such as the coffee economy, scientific racism, the Cold War and the Amazon.     

Mais Médicos: Cuba's Medical Internationalism Programme in Brazil

In 2014, at the request of the Brazilian government and under the sponsorship of PAHO, the Cuban government sent 11,400 doctors to work in underserved areas. This article examines the origins and development of this programme, Mais Médicos. The significance of this programme is explored, as well as what it illustrates about south‐south cooperation as a whole.     

Brazilian Regional Leadership Revisited: Testing the Long-Term Determinants of South American Followership (1995–2015)

Over the last twenty years, Brazil has staked successive claims to regional leadership, with varying explicitness and unclear success. What factors explain the acceptance or rejection of such claims by South American countries? This article summarises the literature on regional powers and frames regional powerhood as arising from geographical belonging, resources, and will to lead; and leadership/followership as stemming from exclusivity, hierarchy/influence, consensus, and provision. By analysing panel data on Brazil and South America from 1995 to 2015, the study concludes that Brasilia enjoyed higher followership in situations characterised by high exclusivity and consensus, and low hierarchy and provision. These conditions were present in South America in the 1990s, thus rendering that decade more receptive to Brazilian leadership.     

Is compulsory voting habit-forming? Regression discontinuity evidence from Brazil

Voting in one election increases one's propensity to vote in the future. It remains unclear, however, whether this pattern holds when voting is compulsory – as is the case in a quarter of all democracies. Is compulsory voting habit-forming? I address this question using a regression discontinuity design and administrative turnout data from Brazil, where voting is voluntary at age 16 and compulsory at age 18. I find no evidence that compulsory voting instils voting habits. Instead, the evidence points to a first-time compulsory voting boost, which gradually dissipates as voters grow older. I show that targeted mobilisation of first-time compulsory voters is a plausible mechanism behind the turnout boost. Alternative explanations find less support in the data. The results clarify the scope conditions of prior research on voting habits, and have important implications for the debate over the second-order effects of compulsory voting.     

Diel Activity and Effect of Carcass Decomposition on the Attractiveness to the Forensically Important Species Oxelytrum Discicolle (Coleoptera: Silphidae)†

Oxelytrum discicolle is a carrion beetle commonly found in the Neotropical region, mainly associated with cadavers and carcasses. Information on behavior related to the likelihood of cadaver colonization is scarce. We performed two field experiments in peri‐urban forest in Brazil in order to strengthen our knowledge on O. discicolle behavior. In the first experiment, we assessed the preference for piglet carcasses at different stages of decomposition offered simultaneously in two seasons, dry and rainy, while in the second experiment we investigated the diel activity of adults. A total of 493 adults were collected in the experiments. A significantly higher abundance was detected in the rainy season. There was a marked preference for carcasses at advanced stages. Adults exhibited a typical nocturnal behavior, the number trapped at night was 17 times greater than those collected during the day. Oxelytrum discicolle is nocturnal species that prefers carcasses in advanced stage of decomposition.     

In silico toxicity as a tool for harm reduction: A study of new psychoactive amphetamines and cathinones in the context of criminal science

The emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has raised many issues in the context of law enforcement and public drug policies. In this scenario, interdisciplinary studies are crucial to the decision-making process in the field of criminal science. Unfortunately, information about how NPS affect people's health is lacking even though knowledge about the toxic potential of these substances is essential: the more information about these drugs, the greater the possibility of avoiding damage within the scope of a harm reduction policy. Traditional analytical methods may be inaccessible in the field of forensic science because they are relatively expensive and time-consuming. In this sense, less costly and faster in silico methodologies can be useful strategies. In this work, we submitted computer-calculated toxicity values of various amphetamines and cathinones to an unsupervised multivariate analysis, namely Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and to the supervised techniques Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy and Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (SIMCA and PLS-DA) to evaluate how these two NPS groups behave. We studied how theoretical and experimental values are correlated by PLS regression. Although experimental data was available for a small amount of molecules, correlation values reproduced literature values. The in silico method efficiently provided information about the drugs. On the basis of our findings, the technical information presented here can be used in decision-making regarding harm reduction policies and help to fulfill the objectives of criminal science.     

Accuracy of four dental age estimation methodologies in Brazilian and Croatian children

ObjectiveTo compare and analyse the accuracy of four age estimation methods using the mineralisation stages of the permanent teeth (Cameriere et al. [16] [CAM], Liliequist and Lundberg [LLH] and Nolla without third molars [NOL7] or with them [NOL8]) in a mixed population of Brazilians and a homogeneous population of Croatians.MethodsOrthopantomograms of 930 Brazilians (366 males and 564 females) and 924 Croatians (365 males and 556 females) aged between 8 and 14.99 years were analysed using the CAM, LLH, NOL7 and NOL8 age estimation methodologies.ResultsLLH presented the best absolute differences (ADs) among both populations without sex stratification, while CAM presented the worst results. In addition, the mean differences revealed underestimations, except when the LLH and NOL7 methods were used for the Brazilians. When the sample was stratified by sex, the best AD values were found with NOL7 (0.80) for the Brazilians and with LLH (0.98) for the Croatians. When the sample was stratified by sex and age, CAM presented high accuracy at the early ages, and LLH presented high accuracy at the older ages. The results obtained with the Nolla methods (NOL7 and NOL8) were mostly similar, but NOL7 yielded slightly better results.ConclusionsThe values for the Brazilians and the Croatians were relatively similar, and the techniques were properly applied in both population samples. The best method for evaluating both countries was LLH, followed by NOL7, NOL8 and CAM.