" Estimating Life Loss for Dam Safety Risk Assessment" explores the need for a new life-loss model in dam safety risk assessment, historical foundations on which that model can be built, and issues that are critical for a successful life-loss model to address. After critiquing existing life-loss models, the work presents a summary of historical insights that were derived by characterizing flood events on the level of subpopulations at risk, using nearly l 00 carefully defined variables. Building upon both conceptual and historical insights, the work culminates by presenting the conceptual basis for a new life-loss model that remains under development. Chapter I introduces the topic of dam safety risk assessment and the central role that life-loss estimation plays in that field. Chapter II discusses important preliminary considerations in model development. Chapter Ill provides a detailed review of previous life-loss models that pertained to floods, including a critique of each. Chapter IV explores the DeKay-McClelland model in detail and raises serious concerns regarding its future use. Chapter V defines nearly l 00 variables and their respective categories for use in characterizing flood events. Chapter VI provides a detailed outline of historical insights that relate to flood events in one of 18 logical categories. Chapter VII proposes the framework for a new conceptual life-loss model-a model that is still under development and has yet to be refined or offered for testing-with sufficient details to indicate how it was developed and how it might be used. Chapter VIII provides a summary, conclusions, and recommendations for future research. Appendices A through D provide material related to over 900 pages of unpublished working documents developed while characterizing 38 flood events and nearly 200 subpopulations at risk. Appendix E offers a summary of existing software that, given additional development, might prove useful to life-loss estimation in dam safety risk assessment.

no / The title The Demons of Science may at first appear like a contradiction in terms. Demons are associated with the forces of darkness; science represents the power of light. One could assume, therefore, that science has no time for demons. This book aims to destroy this assumption. Science opens its gates to demons as long as they play a rational rather than an evil part. They are put to work. Demons are figures of thought: they belong to the category of thought experiments, which are routinely employed in science and philosophy. As they are cast as agents with superhuman abilities, we may expect that demons provide us with valuable—albeit non-empirical—clues about the constitution of the physical world. But I am interested in exploring not only what the demons tell us but also what they do not tell us about our world. They are cast as superhuman actors but even demons have their limitations. The following chapters contain, I believe, the first systematic study of the role of demons in scientific and philosophical reasoning about the external world.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:24:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rodrigo Marchioli Borges Minas.pdf: 1216213 bytes, checksum: a290bed66d12e0694a5c27f4628f7aab (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study aims to verify the effectiveness of human rights, here understood in its varied and interconnected dimensions, before one of the phenomena that most affected them: economic globalization. To understand the way this impact occurs, it is necessary to comprehend human rights from their historical foundations and, subsequently, in its scope and breadth. Therefore, it is made a chronological analysis of historical developments of human rights and, hence, philosophical and normative, from the bourgeois revolutions of 1787 and 1789, to the current period. Delimited its scope and breadth, takes place a foray into economic globalization to, at first, define the range of the phenomenon; and then, to see against what economic globalization is putting itself and how it affected the effectiveness of human rights, from three main effects: benefits from comparative advantages, substitution of traditional centres of power and markets financialization. From this perspective, markedly, above all, of ineffectiveness of human rights, it seeks to establish certain ethical and politically fair boundaries for human rights on which economic globalization cannot overcome, from the perspective of the theory of existential minimum / O presente trabalho tem o objetivo de verificar a efetividade dos direitos humanos, aqui entendidos nas suas variadas e interconectadas dimensões, frente a um dos fenômenos que mais os impactou: a globalização econômica. Para se bem compreender omodo pelo qual se dá esse impacto, é preciso se entender os direitos humanos nos seusfundamentos e, em seguida, no seu escopo e abrangência. Por isso, faz-se uma análise cronológica dos desdobramentos históricos dos direitos humanos e, consequentemente, filosóficos e normativos, a partir das Revoluções Burguesas, de 1787 e 1789, até o atual período. Delimitado tal escopo e abrangência, realiza-se incursão na chamada globalização econômica para, num primeiro momento, também delimitar-se sua abrangência; e, em seguida, ver contra o que está se colocando e de que forma impactou na efetividade dos direitos humanos, a partir de três efeitos: aproveitamento das vantagens comparativas, substituição dos centros tradicionais de poder e financeirização dos mercados. A partir dessa perspectiva, marcada, sobretudo, pela inefetividade dos direitos humanos, procura-se estabelecer determinados limites éticos e politicamente justos que a globalização econômica não pode ultrapassar, sob a ótica da teoria do mínimo existencial