Avaliação multidimensional da qualidade de vida em idosos: um estudo no Curimataú ocidental paraibano

The fast growth of the elderly population is a reality throughout the world and has become one of the greatest challenges for contemporary public health. When considering the increased life expectancy and the aging as a multidimensional phenomenon, one should highlight the need to investigate if the increase of longevity is associated with satisfactory levels of Quality of Life (QOL). This study has the objective of assessing the QOL of elderly people from the Paraíba’s Western Curimataú microregion, explained by its health and living conditions. This is a cross-sectional and observational study with quantitative design held with 444 elderly people from five cities: Barra de Santa Rosa, Cuité, Nova Floresta, Remígio e Sossego. In order to obtain information, the following instruments were used: I) Questionnaire for collection data related to the elderly population, for sociodemographic, clinical and behavioral characteristics; and II) WHOQOL-Old questionnaire, with a view to measuring and assessing QOL. Data were processed on the IBM-SPSS Statistics 20.0 software by means of the ANOVA (one-way), Student’s t, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Pearson’s correlation tests, with p-values<0,05 accepted as being statistically significant. The results indicate a good global QOL (ETT=65,69%), with better assessment by elderly men, aged between 60 and 74 years, married, living with partner and children, without caregiver, physical activity practitioners, with up to one health problem before an aspect of multimorbidity and with very good and/or good assessment of basic needs. The self-reported stress showed a negative significant correlation before the global QOL, where the greater the perception of stress, the worse the assessment of QOL. In the faceted assessment of QOL, the Sensory Operation showed the best performance (ETF= 68,86%) and the Social Participation (SP) the worst (ETF=60,37%). In the multiple linear regression model, SP is singly responsible for 51,8% (R2=0,518) of explanation of the global QOL. In the intercorrelation among the WHOQOL-Old facets, only Death and Dying did not reveal significance. The harmony highlighted among the facets raises the need to ensure a comprehensive health care for the elderly population, especially in understanding the social participation as an intrinsic part of the QOL and that it requires the re-discussion and reconstruction of individual and collective, family and community, political and government actions. Hence, guaranteeing an active, healthy and participatory aging, with QOL, is the major challenge.

Avaliação multidimensional da qualidade de vida em idosos: um estudo no Curimataú ocidental paraibano

The fast growth of the elderly population is a reality throughout the world and has become one of the greatest challenges for contemporary public health. When considering the increased life expectancy and the aging as a multidimensional phenomenon, one should highlight the need to investigate if the increase of longevity is associated with satisfactory levels of Quality of Life (QOL). This study has the objective of assessing the QOL of elderly people from the Paraíba’s Western Curimataú microregion, explained by its health and living conditions. This is a cross-sectional and observational study with quantitative design held with 444 elderly people from five cities: Barra de Santa Rosa, Cuité, Nova Floresta, Remígio e Sossego. In order to obtain information, the following instruments were used: I) Questionnaire for collection data related to the elderly population, for sociodemographic, clinical and behavioral characteristics; and II) WHOQOL-Old questionnaire, with a view to measuring and assessing QOL. Data were processed on the IBM-SPSS Statistics 20.0 software by means of the ANOVA (one-way), Student’s t, Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Pearson’s correlation tests, with p-values<0,05 accepted as being statistically significant. The results indicate a good global QOL (ETT=65,69%), with better assessment by elderly men, aged between 60 and 74 years, married, living with partner and children, without caregiver, physical activity practitioners, with up to one health problem before an aspect of multimorbidity and with very good and/or good assessment of basic needs. The self-reported stress showed a negative significant correlation before the global QOL, where the greater the perception of stress, the worse the assessment of QOL. In the faceted assessment of QOL, the Sensory Operation showed the best performance (ETF= 68,86%) and the Social Participation (SP) the worst (ETF=60,37%). In the multiple linear regression model, SP is singly responsible for 51,8% (R2=0,518) of explanation of the global QOL. In the intercorrelation among the WHOQOL-Old facets, only Death and Dying did not reveal significance. The harmony highlighted among the facets raises the need to ensure a comprehensive health care for the elderly population, especially in understanding the social participation as an intrinsic part of the QOL and that it requires the re-discussion and reconstruction of individual and collective, family and community, political and government actions. Hence, guaranteeing an active, healthy and participatory aging, with QOL, is the major challenge.

Estudo da injeção de água e gás em um reservatório com características do pré-sal brasileiro

The pre-salt province is composed by large amounts of light oil and with good quality, a reality that puts Brazil in a strategic position facing the great demand for energy worldwide. In this province are the largest discoveries in the world in the last ten years; areas as Libra, Franco and Lula field, everyone containing volumes greater than 8 billion recoverable oil barrels. To develop and optimize the production of these fields, a study was done for choosing the improved oil recovery methods. The main motivations were the presence of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a contaminant and the strategic decision of do not discard it, combined with high GOR (gas-oil ratio) of the reservoir fluid. The method should take advantage of the unique abundant resources: seawater and produced gas. This way, the process of matching these resources in the water alterning gas injection (WAG) became a good option. In this master’s dissertation, it was developed a reservoir model with average characteristics of the Brazilian pre-salt, where was applied the improved oil recovery method of water alternating gas. The production of this reservoir was analyzed by parameters as: the first fluid injected in the injection process, position of the injection wells completion, injection water and gas rate and cycle time. The results showed a good performance of the method, with up to 26% of gains in the recovery factor regarding the primary recovery, since the application of water injection and gas, individually, was not able to overcome 10 % of gain. The most influential parameter found in the results was the cycle time, with higher recovery factor values obtained with the use of shorter times.

Cultura organizacional e qualidade dos serviços turísticos :um estudo no setor de restaurantes

The present study seeks to describe the features and peculiarities of the relationship between organizational culture and the quality of tourism services, specifically in the restaurant sector, attempting to contribute toward maintaining the tourism sector of the city of Natal/RN. Thus, a descriptive and correlational study, with qualitative and quantitative approaches, of thirty-seven restaurants that are located in areas that compose the tourism corridor of Natal was undertaken. To collect the quantitative dada, the Organizational Culture Evaluation instrument of Cameron and Quinn (2006) was applied and the SERVPERF instrument of Cronin and Taylor (1992) was used to measure the quality of the services. The results suggest that the Clan and Innovation Cultures are associated with better levels of quality of services than those of the Market and Hierarchy Cultures. The relationships that were identified in this study are consistent with results found in other studies and the information reported here can serve as a basis for managers of the restaurant sector to reach excellence in their services, satisfying their customers and contributing to maintaining the tourism sector

Qualidade de vida no trabalho da Emater-RN: validação de um instrumento síntese de pesquisa e diagnóstico

The theoretical recital of the present study it is initiated of the evidence that the work occupies an important space in the man s life in way that the majority of the people works and passes great part of its time inside organizati ons. However, it is verified that the relation between man and work is becoming increasingly disagreement a time that the employees had started to complain work s routines, stress, not use all their potential and inadequate work s conditions. It can be observed by the way of Dejours (1994) studies. Thus, as contribution for the quality of work life s (QWL) studies the research developed here objectified to characterize the public employees quality of work life at EMATER -RN taking as reference an instrumen t of research synthesized from the typical academic literature of the subject. The synthesis of an ampler instrument is a necessity not taken care to the literature that treats on the subject but already perceived by some studies like Moraes et al (1990); Rodrigues (1989); Siqueira & Coleta (1989); Moraes et al (1992); Carvalho & Souza (2003); El -Aouar & Souza (2003) and Mourão, Kilimnick & Fernandes (2005); Adorno, Marques & Borges (2005) amongst others. These studies point out weak points of the existing models in the QWL s literature, as well as they recommend the elaboration of a model more flexible, that contemplates Brazilian cultural characteristics, and that contemplates the entire variable studied in the main existing models. For reach this objectiv e the adopted methodology was characterized as a case study with collected data in qualitative and quantitative way. Questionnaires and comments had been used as sources of evidences. These evidences had been tabulated through of statistical package SPSS ( Statistical Package for Social Science), in which the main technique of multivariate analysis used were the factorial analysis. As for the gotten results, it was verified the grouping of the quality of work life s indicators in 11 factors which are: Work s execution, Individual accomplishment, Work s equity, Relation individual and organization, Work s organization, Adequacy of the remuneration, Relation between head and subordinate, Effectiveness of the communication and the learning, Relation between work and personal life, Participation and Effectiveness of the work processes. Whatever to the characterization of the EMATER -RN s quality of work life it was clearly that to the measure that the satisfaction s evaluation with the QWL in the organization walks to intrinsic factors for extrinsic factors this level of satisfaction goes diminishing what points to the importance to improve these extrinsic factors in the institution. In summary it is possible to conclude that the organization studied has offered a significant set of referring variable to the quality of work life of the individual

Qualificação de edifícios residenciais verticais em Natal/RN à luz do regulamento técnico da qualidade para o nível de eficiência energética de edificações residenciais (RTQ-R)

The goal of the research was to investigate the energy performance of residential vertical buildings envelope in the hot and humid climate of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, based in the Technical Regulation of Quality for Energy Efficiency Level in Residential Buildings (RTQ -R), launched in 2010. The study pretends to contribute to the development of design strategies appropriate to the specific local climate and the increasing of energy efficiency level of the envelope. The methodological procedures included the survey in 22 (twenty two) residential buildings, the formulation of representative prototypes based on typological and constructives characters researched and the classification of the level of energy efficiency in the envelopment of these prototypes, using as a tool the prescriptive method of the RTQ-R and the parametric analyzes from assigning different values of the following variables: shape of the pavement type; distribution of housing compartments; orientation of the building; area and shading of openings; thermal transmittance, and solar absorptance of opaque materials of the frontage in order to evaluate the influence of these on the envelopment performance. The main results accomplished with this work includes the qualification of vertical residential buildings in Natal/RN; the verification of the adequacy of these buildings to local climate based from the diagnosis of the thermal energy of the envelopment performance, the identification of variables with more significant influence on the prescriptive methodology of RTQ-R and design solutions more favorable to obtain higher levels energy efficiency by this method. Finally, it was verified, that some of these solutions proved contradictory in relation to the recommendations contained in the theoretical approaches regarding environmental comfort in hot and humid weather, which indicates the need for improvement of the prescriptive method RTQ-R and further research on efficient design solutions

Avaliação da qualidade da água do Rio Piranhas-Açu/RN utilizando a comunidade de macroinvertebrados bentônicos

The biomonitoring technique for water quality in water bodies has been incorporated increasingly in management of the natural resources, using mainly indices of its aquatic community characteristics. In Brazil the first efforts to use this technique was restricted to the South and the Midwest region of this country. Located in the northeast region, this study was conducted at Rio Grande do Norte state and had as main objective the assessment of water quality in the Piranhas-Açu river using benthic macroinvertebrates community as biological indicators. Thus, were applied two biotic indices, the BMWP (Biological Monitoring Working Party score system) and the IBF (Family Biotic Index). According the requirements of these indices, two periods of sampling were determined as basic methodology, in dry seasons of 2006 and 2007. The sampling sites were around the municipalities of Açu, Ipanguaçu, Alto do Rodrigues and Pendências. Physical-chemical measurements; a protocol of rapid assessment of diversity of habitats, and determination of the degree of tolerance of each taxon to organic pollution were also performed. The most abundant organisms found in the river were tolerant with the prevalence of Chironomidae (Diptera) and Melanoides tuberculata. This results, together with those ones got in indices application, showed a considerable organic pollution in the four sample places and the reaches were classified as modified to impacted. According to the used indices, this study suggest that this river have significant alteration in the biotic community and water quality on the organic pollution, and this fact, occurs in the reach of the river further downstream, where were expected a good water quality. Considering these results, measures aiming the conservation of this water body are needed regarding as it is inserted into a fragile ecosystem with dry season phenomenon, and the water of this river has extremely importance for the local economy

Características limnológicas e estrutura trófica das comunidades de peixes de alguns lagos naturais e artificiais do Rio Grande do Norte

Artificial lakes must differ from natural lakes in important structural and functional aspects that need to be understood so that these ecosystems can be properly managed. The aim of this work was to test the hypothesis that the artificial lakes (impoundments) in the semi-arid region of the Rio Grande do Norte State are more eutrophic and turbid and have different trophic structure when compared to the natural coastal lakes that occur in the humid eastern coast of the State. To test this hypothesis, 10 natural lakes and 8 artificial lakes with about 100 ha were sampled between September and November 2005 for the determination of some limnological variables and the abundance of the main fish species, which were grouped in three trophic guilds: facultative piscivores, facultative planktivores and omnivores. The results show that the artificial lakes had significantly higher concentrations of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, chlorophyll a , total and volatile suspended solids than the natural lakes. Results also show that the values of pH, total alkalinity, electric conductivity, turbidity as well as the coefficient of vertical attenuation of light were significantly higher in the artificial lakes than in the natural lakes. In the artificial lakes, the abundance of facultative planktivores was significantly higher, while the abundance of facultative piscivores significantly lower than in the natural lakes. There was no significant difference in the abundance of omnivorous fish between the two types of lakes. These results suggest that the increase in turbidity together with the other changes in the water quality of the artificial lakes, modifies the trophic structure of the fish communities reducing the importance of piscivores and the length of the food chains