Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:34:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gabriela Fonseca Prada Cassiolato.pdf: 1337668 bytes, checksum: c2cadc3574b2ab1fa37da3bdc52be96c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-08 / This Master s thesis has the scope to deepen the knowledge on state tax incentives regarding ICMS and its misuse as an instrument to accomplish the constitutional objectives considering the Brazilian federalism characteristics. It aims to identify the peculiarities that forged a distorted model in the federative balance that allowed (and even reinforced) the birth and encouragement of what is known as tax harmful competition ; pointing out the various critiques that refute the theoretical notion that ICMS tax incentives represent unquestionably useful instruments in order to foster economic / social development and reduce the regional inequality that subsists in Brazil. / A presente dissertação tem por objetivo aprofundar o entendimento sobre os incentivos fiscais estaduais e a inadequação de seu manejo como instrumento de concretização dos objetivos constitucionais tendo em vista as características do federalismo brasileiro. Busca-se identificar as particularidades que forjaram um modelo com distorções no equilíbrio federativo que permitiram (e mesmo motivaram) a instalação e fortalecimento da guerra fiscal, com apontamento das críticas - sob diversas vertentes que refutam a concepção teórica de que os incentivos fiscais de ICMS consistem em mecanismos inegavelmente úteis para a promoção do desenvolvimento nacional e diminuição das desigualdades regionais.

Submitted by Roberto Codorniz Leite Pereira (roberto.leite@gvmail.br) on 2012-10-23T03:02:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação de Mestrado_Versão Protocolo Final.pdf: 2294195 bytes, checksum: 98015b777bb51eeb39cc03871fc8faf4 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2012-10-23T11:38:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação de Mestrado_Versão Protocolo Final.pdf: 2294195 bytes, checksum: 98015b777bb51eeb39cc03871fc8faf4 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-23T12:01:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação de Mestrado_Versão Protocolo Final.pdf: 2294195 bytes, checksum: 98015b777bb51eeb39cc03871fc8faf4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-21 / O presente trabalho é o resultado de uma pesquisa empírica que buscou reconstruir toda a trajetória percorrida pela política pública que orienta o atual regime de tributação de lucros auferidos no exterior por controladas e coligadas de empresas brasileiras com o objetivo de compreender as razões que levaram o Brasil a adotar uma norma de antidiferimento demasiadamente ampla, quando comparada às normas de natureza similar adotadas na experiência internacional. Além disso, buscamos identificar a real extensão dos efeitos econômicos ensejados pelo regime brasileiro, em especial, frente ao processo de internacionalização produtiva que vem se fazendo cada vez mais presente na realidade de diversas empresas de capital nacional. Partimos da hipótese de que o regime vigente afeta negativamente às empresas que buscam internacionalizar parte da sua atividade produtiva. Os resultados da pesquisa são de grande importância e nos ajudaram a compreender melhor as causas de muitas das questões jurídicas que atualmente ocupam grande parte do debate acadêmico no direito tributário brasileiro. Defendemos a ideia de que, se os efeitos do regime brasileiro afetam negativamente a internacionalização produtiva, o regime poderá afrontar a Ordem Econômica Constitucional. / This thesis presents the conclusions of an empirical legal research that remade the path followed by the public policy adopted by Brazilian government to tax corporate foreign income in order to understand precisely the reasons that led Brazil to adopt an antideferral rule that is broader that the Controlled Foreign Company (CFC) rules adopted world wide. Besides, our objective was also to identify the economic effects on Brazilian transnational companies arising from Brazilian CFC rules, regarding the increasing internationalization process that Brazilian firms are making through in the past decade. We adopted the hypothesis that Brazilian tax regime affects negatively transnational companies that aim to internationalize part of their production. The outcomes of the present research are of a great value to achieve a better understanding about the causes of many legal questions that are currently being discussed among legal practitioners and scholars and faced by courts. Our opinion is that, if the economic effects arising from Brazilian tax regime affects the internationalization process of Brazilian firms, that may go against, in certain cases, the economic order settled by our Constitution.

Some climate models predict that, within the next 30-50 years, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) will frequently exceed the current thermal tolerance of corals (Fitt et al. 2001; Hughes et al. 2003; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007). A potential consequence is that mass coral bleaching may take place (i) during warm El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events which are predicted to occur in some regions more frequently than the current 3-7 year periodicity (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999; Sheppard 2003) or (ii) perhaps as often as annually or biannually if corals and their symbionts are unable to acclimate to the higher SSTs (Donner et al. 2005, 2007). Global data also indicate an upward trend toward increasing frequencies, intensities, and durations of tropical hurricanes and cyclones (Emanual 2005; Webster et al. 2005). As coral communities have been shown to require at least 10-30 years to recover after a major disturbance (e.g. Connell 1997; Ninio et al. 2000; Bruno & Selig 2007; Burt et al. 2008), it is possible that future coral communities may be in a constant state of recovery, with regeneration times exceeding the periods between disturbances. Life history traits (e.g. reproduction, recruitment, growth and mortality) vary among species of hard corals; thus, gradients in community structures may have a strong influence on susceptibilities to disturbance and rates of recovery (Connell 1997; Ninio & Meekan 2002). Taxa which are more susceptible to bleaching and mechanical disturbance (e.g. tabular and branching acroporids and pocilloporids) may experience continual changes in population structure due to persistent cycles of regeneration or local extirpation, while the more resistant taxa (e.g. massive poritids and faviids) may display relatively stable population structures (Woodley et al. 1981; Hughes & Connell 1999; Baird & Hughes 2000; Marshall & Baird 2000; Loya et al. 2001; McClanahan & Maina 2003). Determining whether resistant coral taxa have predictable responses to disturbances, with consistent patterns over wide spatial scales, may improve predictions for the future affects of climate change and the composition of reefs (Done 1999; Hoegh-Guldberg 1999; McClanahan et al. 2004). The work presented in this dissertation describes the spatial and temporal patterns in community structures for high latitude coral assemblages that have experienced the types of natural disturbances which are predicted to occur in tropical reef systems with increasing frequency as a result of climate change. The primary area of focus is the southeastern Arabian Gulf, where the coral communities are exposed to natural conditions that exceed threshold limits of corals elsewhere in the world, with annual temperature ranges between 14-36°C (Kinzie 1973; Shinn 1976) and salinities above 40 ppt. Two additional regions are included in this study for comparisons of high latitude coral community structures. The northwestern Gulf of Oman is adjacent to the southeastern Arabian Gulf (i.e. the two bodies of water are connected by the Strait of Hormuz); however, the environmental conditions are milder in the Gulf of Oman such that the number of coral taxa therein is threefold that found in the southeastern Arabian Gulf (i.e. 107 coral species in the Gulf of Oman compared to 34 species in this region of the Arabian Gulf (Riegl 1999; Coles 2003; Rezai et al. 2004)). Broward County, Florida is geographically remote from the Gulfs and, therefore, serves as a benchmark for testing whether consistent patterns in community structures exist despite different climatic and anthropogenic influences. The coral communities within the southeastern Arabian Gulf, the northwestern Gulf of Oman, and Broward County, Florida have been exposed to recurrent elevated sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, sequential cyclone and red tide disturbances, and frequent hurricanes and tropical storms, respectively. These disturbances and other impacts (e.g. bleaching episodes, disease outbreaks, anthropogenic stresses) have affected the more susceptible acroporids and pocilloporids, resulting in significant losses of coral cover by these families and shifts towards massive corals as the dominant taxa. During the post-disturbance scarcity or absence of branching and tabular corals, the resistant massive taxa have become the crux of the essential hard coral habitat for fish, invertebrates and other marine organisms. Because recovery to pre-disturbance community structures may take decades or may not occur at all, it is vital that scientists and resource managers have a better understanding of the spatial and temporal ecology patterns of the corals that survive and fill in the functional gaps that are created by such disturbances. To aid in this understanding, this dissertation presents spatial and temporal patterns for the coral assemblages which have developed after the respective disturbances. Spatial ecology patterns are analyzed using graphical descriptions (e.g. taxa inventories, area cover, densities, size frequency distributions), univariate techniques (e.g. diversity indices), distributional techniques (e.g. k-dominance curves) and multivariate techniques (e.g. hierarchical clustering, multidimensional scaling). Temporal comparisons at monitoring sites within the southeastern Arabian Gulf and northwestern Gulf of Oman describe the coral population dynamics and are used to create size class transition models that project future population structures of massive corals in the recovering habitats.

La prise de conscience des problèmes d'environnement et des effets directs et indirects des activités humaines a conduit à renforcer la surveillance haute fréquence des écosystèmes marins par l'installation de stations de mesures multicapteurs autonomes. Les capteurs, installés dans des milieux hostiles, sont sujets à des périodes de calibration, d'entretien voire des pannes et sont donc susceptibles de générer des données bruitées, manquantes voire aberrantes qu'il est nécessaire de filtrer et compléter avant toute exploitation ultérieure. Dans ce contexte, l'objectif du travail est de concevoir un système numérique automatisé robuste capable de traiter de tel volume de données afin d’améliorer les connaissances sur la qualité des systèmes aquatiques, et plus particulièrement en considérant le déterminisme et la dynamique des efflorescences du phytoplancton. L'étape cruciale est le développement méthodologique de modèles de prédiction des efflorescences du phytoplancton permettant aux utilisateurs de disposer de protocoles adéquats. Nous proposons pour cela l'emploi du modèle de Markov caché hybridé pour la détection et la prédiction des états de l'environnement (caractérisation des phases clefs de la dynamique et des caractéristiques hydrologiques associées). L'originalité du travail est l'hybridation du modèle de Markov par un algorithme de classification spectrale permettant un apprentissage non supervisé conjoint de la structure, sa caractérisation et la dynamique associée. Cette approche a été appliquée sur trois bases de données réelles : la première issue de la station marine instrumentée MAREL Carnot (Ifremer) (2005-2009), la seconde d’un système de type Ferry Box mis en œuvre en Manche orientale en 2012 et la troisième d’une station de mesures fixe, installée le long de la rivière Deûle en 2009 (Agence de l’Eau Artois Picardie - AEAP). Le travail s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une collaboration étroite entre l'IFREMER, le LISIC/ULCO et l'AEAP afin de développer des systèmes optimisés pour l’étude de l’effet des activités anthropiques sur le fonctionnement des écosystèmes aquatiques et plus particulièrement dans le contexte des efflorescences de l’algue nuisible, Phaeocystis globosa. / Because of the growing interest for environmental issues and to identify direct and indirect effects of anthropogenic activities on ecosystems, environmental monitoring programs have recourse more and more frequently to high resolution, autonomous and multi-sensor instrumented stations. These systems are implemented in harsh environment and there is a need to stop measurements for calibration, service purposes or just because of sensors failure. Consequently, data could be noisy, missing or out of range and required some pre-processing or filtering steps to complete and validate raw data before any further investigations. In this context, the objective of this work is to design an automatic numeric system able to manage such amount of data in order to further knowledge on water quality and more precisely with consideration about phytoplankton determinism and dynamics. Main phase is the methodological development of phytoplankton bloom forecasting models giving the opportunity to end-user to handle well-adapted protocols. We propose to use hybrid Hidden Markov Model to detect and forecast environment states (identification of the main phytoplankton bloom steps and associated hydrological conditions). The added-value of our approach is to hybrid our model with a spectral clustering algorithm. Thus all HMM parameters (states, characterisation and dynamics of these states) are built by unsupervised learning. This approach was applied on three data bases: first one from the marine instrumented station MAREL Carnot (Ifremer) (2005-2009), second one from a Ferry Box system implemented in the eastern English Channel en 2012 and third one from a freshwater fixed station in the river Deûle in 2009 (Artois Picardie Water Agency). These works fall within the scope of a collaboration between IFREMER, LISIC/ULCO and Artois Picardie Water Agency in order to develop optimised systems to study effects of anthropogenic activities on aquatic systems functioning in a regional context of massive blooms of the harmful algae, Phaeocystis globosa.

Addressing complex global health challenges, including the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), will require change in sectors outside of traditional public health. Contemporary regional trade and investment agreements (RTAs) like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) continue to move further ‘behind-the-border’ into domestic policy space introducing new challenges in the regulation of health risk factors. This dissertation aimed to clarify the pathways through which RTAs influence NCDs, and to explore points along those pathways with the intent of improving the existing evidence base and supporting policy development. This work develops a critical theoretical framework exploring the ideas, institutions, and interests behind trade and investment policy; it also develops a conceptual framework specifying how trade and investment treaty provisions influence NCD rates through the effects of trade and investment on tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and beverage products, as well as access to medicines and the social determinants of health. Using health impact assessment methodology, three analytical components were designed to examine pathways of influence from RTAs to health outcomes as mediated by the interests of transnational corporations (TNCs). The first component explored the influence of industry during the TPP negotiations and how its health-related interests were reflected in the final TPP text. The second component examined the role of trade and investment liberalisation in health-harmful commodity markets, finding a rise in TNC sales after a period of liberalisation. The third component demonstrated how investor rights and investor-state dispute can challenge the state’s right to regulate if it damages the profits of TNCs, which may threaten effective health regulation, and provides opportunities to strengthen the right to regulate. The work in this dissertation provides support for the thesis that trade and investment policies are a fundamental structural determinant of health and well-being, which are highly influenced by TNCs that guide such policies in the interest of maximising their profits and protections, often to the detriment of public policy and population health. This work identifies the need for more robust health impact assessments of RTAs before future agreements are ratified, as well as an imperative to challenge vested interests that entrench neoliberal policy preferences that have hindered sustainable and equitable development.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are found worldwide, particularly in places where warm, well-lit, and stagnant waters are common. HABs can have negative effects on aquatic plants and wildlife due to the reduction in light availability associated with turbidity, decrease in O2 availability, and the production of secondary metabolites that can harm or even prove lethal. Aquatic ecosystems are regularly being affected by elevated salinity because of recent water management strategies, episodes of drought, and salt water intrusion. This research focused on how salinity levels ranging from 0-10ppt affected physiological attributes such as cellular growth and abundance, cell mortality, toxin release, and oxidative stress in the toxigenic cyanobacterium, Microcystis aeruginosa. It was determined that salinity treatments of 7ppt and above caused a decrease in both cellular growth and abundance, as well as an increase in toxin release due to cell mortality. M. aeruginosa was able to survive in salinities up to 7ppt. A pattern of caspase activity in response to elevated salinity was shown, but whether cellular mortality was due solely to programmed cell death (PCD) was not definitive. A strong antioxidant response, measured through catalase activity, was noted when salinity was enhanced to 7ppt. Above this value, the damaging effects of salinity caused elevated levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and cell death. It was determined that the maximum amount of hydrogen peroxide that M. aeruginosa could withstand without significant impact to growth and abundance was below 250µM. Salinities of 7ppt and above had a negative impact on the physiology of M. aeruginosa, leading to cell death and an increase in microcystin release into the environment. These two factors can lead to fish kills, poor drinking water, and other recreational and commercial problems for an aquatic ecosystem. By determining the precise salinity that HAB cellular mortality is imminent, predictive models can be employed to predict the impacts of salt intrusion and groundwater management.

No description available.

MESC / Department of Hydrology and Water Resources / Wetlands are known of their pollution reduction characteristics due to their flat topography and dense vegetation which capture pollutants on the settling sediments. Three processes take place on the captured pollutants in the sediments, the physical, chemical and biological processes, which facilitate the removal of pollutants from the wetlands. This research was carried out in order to assess the Water Quality of wetland downstream of Makhado oxidation ponds and its potential effects on Irrigation Waters by determining the Physical-chemical parameters (pH, Dissolved Oxygen, temperature, electrical conductivity and turbidity); the nutrient levels (Nitrates, phosphates, nitrites, bromide) and heavy metals. The water samples were collected from the effluent discharge of Makhado oxidation ponds (upstream), the middle section of the wetland (midstream) and downstream of the wetland. The climate data for the study was also used assess the contribution to variation in the physical-chemical parameters during their passage through the wetland. The use of waters in the wetland by subsistence farmer’s was also assessed to determine their farmer’s perception on wastewater reuse, sustainability, water quality, health hazards and crop yield. At the discharge and midstream point, the physical parameters tested were found to be mostly outside the target water quality range of irrigation water set out by DWAF but are within the DWAF guidelines for discharge of wastewater. The exceptions were with total dissolved solids which were higher than 25 mg/l guideline value of the said standards. The anions were analysed by Ion chromatography and showed spatial variation in content and seasonality. The nutrients (nitrates, nitrites and phosphates) and chloride were higher than the DWAF guidelines for discharge of wastewater. The heavy metal content in the wetland was analysed by ICP-OES and varied throughout the wetland. The following metals were reduced during their passage in wetland and were within DWAF guidelines: zinc, lead, cadmium and total chromium. Iron and manganese were reduced during the drier season but were above the DWAF guideline values during the wet season. Also the metal contents in the wetland are out of the target water quality range of the same standards bringing forth the risks of toxicity in the wetland. The anion analysis also suggests that the wetland is becoming a nutrient rich environment bringing forth risks of eutrophication. Nitrite concentrations did not conform to the South African viii Water Guidelines on target water quality ranges for irrigation water. Farmers have expressed a positive opinion on wastewater use for irrigation since there are loads of nutrients. The presence of nutrients in wetland may contribute to development of harmful algal blooms.

No description available.

No description available.