Evaluation of thermal overload in boiler operators

The Brazilians educational institutions need a large energy demand for the operation of laundries, restaurants and accommodation of students. Much of that energy comes from steam generated in boilers with wood fuel. The laboral activity in boiler may present problems for the operator's health due to exposure to excessive heat, and its operation has a high degree of risk. This paper describes an analysis made the conditions of thermal environment in the operation of a B category boiler, located at a Higher Education Institution, located in the Zona da Mata Mineira The equipments used to collect data were Meter WBGT of the Heat Index; Meter of Wet Bulb Index and Globe Thermometer (WBGT); Politeste Instruments, an anemometer and an Infrared Thermometer. By the application of questionnaires, the second phase consisted of collecting data on environmental factors (temperature natural environment, globe temperature, relative humidity and air velocity). The study concluded that during the period evaluated, the activity had thermal overload.     

Distributional Impacts of Pension Policy in Argentina: Winners and Losers within and Across Generations

The paper deals with the life‐cycle intra‐ and intergenerational income transfers operated by the pension system in Argentina by estimating the internal rates of return obtained by different generations and types of workers from their participation in the system. The empirical analysis confirms that earlier generations of workers benefited from higher social security returns than later generations, which retired under a matured system with large deficits. The worst‐affected cohorts were those born after 1920, particularly suffering from a social security crisis and falling real wages. For future generations retiring fully under the new mixed pension system, returns will more closely depend on financial market performance and the evolution of administration costs. Intragenerational transfers were also observed for all cohorts under study, as a result of the original system design as well as adjustments adopted during the implementation process. The real distributional impact of progressive benefit formulas could, however, be offset by state transfers to cover pension deficits and forward tax shifting in a context of unequal pension coverage.     

The impacts of rapid demographic transition on family structure and income inequality in Brazil, 1981–2011

This study analysed the impact of changing family structure on income distribution. Specifically, it analysed how changes in the proportions of different categories of family in the population contributed to increases in the income of the richest and poorest social strata in Brazil, and the consequent impacts on income inequality. Rural and urban families were compared in order to understand how these dynamics had different impacts on more developed (urban) and less developed (rural) areas. The results emphasize how changes observed in family structure are more pronounced among the richest families, contributing to an increase in (i) the income of the richest families and (ii) income inequality between the richest and poorest families, as well as between urban and rural areas.     

Extending coverage under the Argentinian pension system: Distribution of access and prospects for universal coverage

One of the main challenges facing social policy in Latin American is to guarantee social security coverage for the entire population in the presence of a large informal sector. In Argentina, a regional pioneer in terms of the development of its pension system, more than one third of those of retirement age were without benefits in 2005. Since then, considerable progress has been made in extending coverage thanks to the introduction of a programme that has reduced contribution requirements and allocated benefits to a large number of seniors previously excluded from the system. This article analyzes the impact of this process in Argentina on the level and distribution of coverage, identifies changes in socio‐demographic factors which affect inclusion/exclusion in the social security system, and discusses remaining obstacles to the provision of universal coverage in the medium and long term.     

On diagnostics in multivariate measurement error models under asymmetric heavy-tailed distributions

In this paper, we discuss the extension of some diagnostic procedures to multivariate measurement error models with scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions (Lachos et?al., Statistics 44:541?C556, 2010c). This class provides a useful generalization of normal (and skew-normal) measurement error models since the random term distributions cover symmetric, asymmetric and heavy-tailed distributions, such as skew-t, skew-slash and skew-contaminated normal, among others. Inspired by the EM algorithm proposed by Lachos et?al. (Statistics 44:541?C556, 2010c), we develop a local influence analysis for measurement error models, following Zhu and Lee??s (J R Stat Soc B 63:111?C126, 2001) approach. This is because the observed data log-likelihood function associated with the proposed model is somewhat complex and Cook??s well-known approach can be very difficult to apply to achieve local influence measures. Some useful perturbation schemes are also discussed. In addition, a score test for assessing the homogeneity of the skewness parameter vector is presented. Finally, the methodology is exemplified through a real data set, illustrating the usefulness of the proposed methodology.     

The effects of children’s proximity‐seeking to maternal attachment figures during mild stress exposure on mood and physiological responses: An experimental study

In this study we investigated the effects of seeking versus avoiding proximity to mother on children’s emotional recovery from a stressor. Sixty children 9–12 years underwent a moodinduction procedure and were randomly assigned to seek proximity from or avoid an image of their mothers. The effect of this manipulation on children’s self‐reported negative emotions, skin conductance and heart rate variability (respiratory sinus arhythmia) was assessed. Higher levels of attachment anxiety were linked to more self‐reported sadness when children had to avoid mother, but no evidence for such an effect was found on a physiological level. For avoidant attachment, a similar pattern of results emerged, but both for self‐reported sadness and skin conductance.     

The duality of poverty: a replication of Mani et al. (2013) in Colombia

Theory and Decision - Scarcity acts as a mental burden that disrupts how people process information and make decisions (Mullainathan and Shafir in Scarcity: Why having too little means so much....     

Instruments for research on transition: Applied methods and approaches for exploring the transition of young care leavers to adulthood

Young people who have been in care show relatively poor outcomes in comparison to young people who have not been in care, and run a high risk of social exclusion. Therefore, the transition to adulthood of young people leaving care is an important topic for research. However, there is still little knowledge about the different research approaches and research instruments that are being used in studying this topic. The aim of the present study is to review the approaches and instruments that are used in empirical studies that focus on young care leavers' transitions to adulthood. The results show that the studies apply a diversity of topics and instruments, but that there is also considerable overlap. To make better comparisons on the transition from out-of-home care to adulthood between different countries, a common research framework and one or more research instruments should be developed that can assess this transition and the situation of young care leavers in diverse social contexts.     

Influence diagnostics for Grubbs’s model with asymmetric heavy-tailed distributions

Grubbs’s model (Grubbs, Encycl Stat Sci 3:42–549, 1983) is used for comparing several measuring devices, and it is common to assume that the random terms have a normal (or symmetric) distribution. In this paper, we discuss the extension of this model to the class of scale mixtures of skew-normal distributions. Our results provide a useful generalization of the symmetric Grubbs’s model (Osorio et al., Comput Stat Data Anal, 53:1249–1263, 2009) and the asymmetric skew-normal model (Montenegro et al., Stat Pap 51:701–715, 2010). We discuss the EM algorithm for parameter estimation and the local influence method (Cook, J Royal Stat Soc Ser B, 48:133–169, 1986) for assessing the robustness of these parameter estimates under some usual perturbation schemes. The results and methods developed in this paper are illustrated with a numerical example.