This paper aims to contribute to the goal of finding influential legal precedents by quantitative methods. A lot of work has been made in this direction worldwide, especially in the context of common law jurisdictions. However, this type of work is extremely scarce in the Brazilian literature. In addition, our work also contributes to the research of network analysis and the law by applying these methods to unprecedented amount of data and narrowing our inquiry to a single law area, corporate law. Furthermore, whereas most of the literature applying network analysis to judicial decisions had access to readily available data on the citations to precedent within each ruling, our raw data was nothing but the full text of decisions. We focus on data produced by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ), the highest court in Brazil for matters of federal law, including statutory interpretation of civil, criminal and corporate law. The Court issued an astonishing 282040 opinions tagged as related to corporate law between 2008 and 2018. This amount of cases is unparalleled internationally for superior courts and for studies in network analysis and law. In our results, we rank precedents quantitatively based on the citations they receive and make. We also qualitatively analyze some of the results, especially related to groups identified in the network with the Modularity algorithm. Our findings also reveal that corporate law jurisprudence in the STJ is quantitatively dominated by a few legal issues around one single theme that is only tangentially related to corporate law. That is, a type of contract used for the expansion of telephone landlines, which also allowed the consumer to become a shareholder of the telecommunication company. This comparison is especially pertinent because the utter lack of data on the quantitative weight of STJ precedents means the national literature has been operating in a void of objective measurements, one which has been filled with cherry-picked rulings and subjective ranking criteria.
Genetic variation constitutes an important variable impacting the susceptibility to inhalable toxic substances and air pollutants, as reflected by epidemiological studies in humans and differences among animal strains. While multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are capable of causing lung fibrosis in rodents, it is unclear to what extent the genetic variation in different mouse strains influence the outcome. Four inbred mouse strains, including C57Bl/6, Balb/c, NOD/ShiLtJ, and A/J, to test the pro‐fibrogenic effects of a library of MWCNTs in vitro and in vivo are chosen. Ex vivo analysis of IL‐1β production in bone marrow‐derived macrophages (BMDMs) as molecular initiating event (MIE) is performed. The order of cytokine production (Balb/c > A/J > C57Bl/6 > NOD/ShiLtJ) in BMDMs is also duplicated during assessment of IL‐1β production in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of the same mouse strains 40 h after oropharyngeal instillation of a representative MWCNT. Animal test after 21 d also confirms a similar hierarchy in TGF‐β1 production and collagen deposition in the lung. Statistical analysis confirms a correlation between IL‐1β production in BMDM and the lung fibrosis. All considered, these data demonstrate that genetic background indeed plays a major role in determining the pro‐fibrogenic response to MWCNTs in the lung. 相似文献
The combination of complementary techniques to characterize materials at the nanoscale is crucial to gain a more complete picture of their structure, a key step to design and fabricate new materials with improved properties and diverse functions. Here it is shown that correlative atomic force microscopy (AFM) and localization‐based super‐resolution microscopy is a useful tool that provides insight into the structure and emissive properties of fluorescent β‐lactoglobulin (βLG) amyloid‐like fibrils. These hybrid materials are made by functionalization of βLG with organic fluorophores and quantum dots, the latter being relevant for the production of 1D inorganic nanostructures templated by self‐assembling peptides. Simultaneous functionalization of βLG fibers by QD655 and QD525 allows for correlative AFM and two‐color super‐resolution fluorescence imaging of these hybrid materials. These experiments allow the combination of information about the topography and number of filaments that compose a fibril, as well as the emissive properties and nanoscale spatial distribution of the attached fluorophores. This study represents an important step forward in the characterization of multifunctionalized hybrid materials, a key challenge in nanoscience. 相似文献
Heavy metal removal from industrial wastewaters has been intensively studied, since it is well known that they can cause severe problems to human health and aquatic life, even at very low concentrations. In this work, it was demonstrated that electrodeposition in fluidized bed electrode (FBE) can be efficiently employed to remove metal ions from solution, avoid contamination, and recover the metal. Copper electrodeposition from diluted solutions was efficiently performed using a membraneless FBE. The average current efficiency (ACE), average energy consumption (AEC), and space–time yield (AY) was optimized taking into account the operational and process variables. It was noted that for all response variables studied, the raise of supporting electrolyte concentration (Cs) contributed to improvements in the process. The operational conditions current (I) and bed expansion (E) determined the values of CE, Y, and EC under activated control, but the initial copper concentration (C0) determined how long the electrodeposition process will work under activated or mass transfer control, thus affecting the average values of CE, Y, and EC. Considering C0 of 500 mg L?1, copper can be optimally recovered with ACE >60 %, AY >38 kg h?1 m?3, and AEC <4.0 kWh kg?1 by applying the lowest I and the highest levels of E and Cs. It was concluded that the electrochemical technology using a membraneless FBE reactor is economically competitive and be applied for the treatment of wastewaters contaminated with copper or other metals. 相似文献
The aqueous-core enclosed in lipid nanoballoons integrating multiple emulsions of the type water-in-oil-in-water mimic, at least in theory, the environment within viable cells, thus being suitable for housing hydrophilic protein entities such as bioactive proteins, peptides and bacteriophage particles. This study reports a complete physicochemical characterization of optimized biomimetic aqueous-core lipid nanoballoons housing hydrophilic (BSA) protein entities, evolved from a statistical 23×31 factorial design study (three variables at two levels and one variable at three levels) that was the subject of the first paper of a series of three, aiming at complete stabilization of the three-dimensional structure of protein entities attempted via housing the said molecular entities within biomimetic aqueous-core lipid nanoballoons integrating a multiple (W/O/W) emulsion. The statistical factorial design followed led to the production of an optimum W/O/W multiple emulsion possessing quite homogeneous particles with an average hydrodynamic size of (186.2?±?2.6) nm and average Zeta potential of (?36.5?±?0.9) mV, and exhibiting a polydispersity index of 0.206?±?0.014. Additionally, the results obtained for the diffusion coefficient of the lipid nanoballoons integrating the optimized W/O/W multiple emulsion were comparable and of the same order of magnitude (10?12 m2 s?1) as those published by other authors since, typically, diffusion coefficients for molecules range from 10?10 to 10?7 m2 s?1, but diffusion coefficients for nanoparticles are typically of the order of magnitude of 10?12 m2 s?1. 相似文献