Brazilian community health agents and qualitative primary healthcare information

The aim of this study was to explore female community health agents’ views about the value of recording qualitative information on contextual health issues they observe during home visits, data that are not officially required to be documented for the Brazilian System of Primary Healthcare Information. Background: The study was conducted in community primary healthcare centres located in the cities of Araçatuba and Coroados (state of São Paulo) and Rio de Janeiro (state of Rio de Janeiro), Brazil. Methods: The design was a qualitative, exploratory study. The purposeful sampling criteria were being female, with a minimum of three years of continuous service in the same location. Data collection with 62 participants was conducted via 11 focus groups (in 2007 and 2008). Audio files were transcribed and submitted to the method of thematic analysis. Four themes guided the analysis: working with qualitative information and undocumented observation; reflecting on qualitative information; integrating/analysing quantitative and qualitative information; and information-sharing with agents and family health teams. In 2010, 25 community health agents verified the final interpretation of the findings. Findings: Participants valued the recording of qualitative, contextual information to expand understanding of primary healthcare issues and as an indicator of clients’ improved health behaviour and health literacy. While participants initiated the recording of additional health information, they generally did not inform the family health team about these findings. They perceived that team members devalued this type of information by considering it a reflection of the clientele’s social conditions or problems beyond the scope of medical concerns. Documentation of qualitative evidence can account for the effectiveness of health education in two ways: by improving preventative care, and by amplifying the voices of underprivileged clients who live in poverty to ensure the most appropriate and best quality primary healthcare for them.

Social networks on the Internet: a practical investigation about file sharing on Facebook

The social networks on the internet have experienced rapid growth and joined millions of users in Brazil and throughout the world. Such networks allow groups of people to communicate and exchange information. Sharing information in files is also a growing activity on the internet and is done in various ways. However, applications are not yet available to enable file sharing on Facebook, the premier social network today. This study aims to investigate how users use Facebook, and their practices for file sharing. Due to the experimental nature of this research, we opted for a data collection survey, applied over the web. From the data analysis, we have found a frequent use of file sharing, but no interest in paid services. As for Facebook, there was an extensive use of applications. The set of results shows a favourable scenario for applications that allow file sharing on Facebook.

Use of a semantically grained database system for distribution and control within design environments

This paper presents a technique to share the data stored in an object-oriented database aimed at designing environments. This technique shares data between two related databases, called the Original and Product databases, and is composed of three processes: data separation, evolution and integration. Whenever a block of data needs to be shared, it is spread into both databases, resulting in a block on the original database, and another into the Product database, with special links between them controlled by the Object Manager. These blocks do not need to be maintained identical during the evolution phase of the sharing process. Six types of links were defined, and by choosing one, the designer control the evolution and reintegration of the block in both databases. This process uses the composite object concept as the unit of control. The presented concepts can be applied to any data model with support to composite objects.

Measuring supply chain management practices

Purpose: This paper aims to perform an empirical investigation about the constructs and indicators of the supply chain management practices framework. Design/methodology/approach: The measuring framework proposed is based on a survey that was carried out on 107 Brazilian companies. Statistical techniques were employed to verify, validate, and test the reliability of the constructs and their indicators. To validate this framework principal component analysis and structural equation modeling techniques were used. Findings: In general, previous studies suggest six constructs for measuring the supply chain management practices framework. However, in this study a framework was achieved with four constructs of supply chain management practices, namely, supply chain (SC) integration for production planning and control (PPC) support, information sharing about products and targeting strategies, strategic relationship with customer and supplier, and support customer order. This framework has adequate levels of validity and reliability. Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study was that only a small sample of companies in a single sector and country were surveyed, and therefore there needs to be further research considering the special conditions in other countries. Originality/value: This study investigated statistically set indicators to discuss the topic supply chain management practices. The framework obtained has good quality of validity and reliability indicators. Thus, an alternative framework has been added to measure supply chain management practices, which is currently a popular topic in the supply chain mainstream literature. Both defined constructs and the validated indicators can be used in other studies on supply chain management. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Internet e direito autoral: o ciberespaço e as mudanças na distribuição da cultura

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Pangea - Arquitetura semântica para a integração de dados e modelos geoespaciais na Web

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Roteamento de consultas em banco de dados peer-to-peer utilizando colônias de formigas e ontologias

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Caracterização das trilhas de forrageamento em formigas cortadeiras de gramíneas (Formicidae, Attini): transferência de informações durante o recrutamento em Atta bisphaerica

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Cultura da Wikipédia como Política de capacitação compartilhada em meio digital de socialização do conhecimento

Presents a developing laboratory within History of Culture, subject taught in the Library and Archive Studies at UNESP (Marilia). The project is based upon the foundations of research line Information and Technology: students from the second under graduation year participate in the improving of 27 entries in Portuguese language Wikipedia. The aim is to capacitate for scientific reading and writing in digital media, habilitate for the information identification and recuperation and for the interpretation and understanding of formal and contents aspects and its reorganization. It includes activities of search, selection, remix and republishing of texts, images, audio and videos in the convergence of diverse hypertext information sources, supported by tutors with strategic abilities in digital environments. In this sense it was adhered to the international Wikipedia Foundation University Campus Ambassadors project. It’s also aimed to induce sharing and collaboration behaviors with the purpose of creating necessary habits for the informational empowerment in Brazil. As methodology is to optimize the work of individuals already trained in wiki culture and to create in within the subject information sharing programs with a more specialized bias, giving greater credibility to the digital environment. The environment syntaxes helps in the learning of the complementary skills of reading and writing and offers itself as an open repository from which information can be reused. It is, thus, an empowerment strategy in the search of autonomy and self reliance considering intersemiotic knowledge in the edition, visualization and understanding of information in the social web. A second step of a verifying research on the environment’s credibility after the consolidation and dissemination of the entries improvement work is proposed.

O citar no Twitter: o caso de Clarice Lispector

The phenomenon of the World Wide Web, the Internet, has revolutionized the way we live in a contemporary relevance. The relationships among people have changed since the media also changed: the cyberspace has been established as an important vehicle of communication in which different languages, cultures and peoples coexist. Within the virtual space there are several fica possibilities for communication, interaction, fun, knowledge etc. Everything happens extremely quickly. An interesting example of that are blogs that, to survive virtuality, require constant updating. It has become interesting to notice the factor of personal expressiveness taking a new shape in the context of network, before being seen in elements such as diaries, poetry, artistic production or debate. The chances and, thus, the need to find people to interact and to share interests has taken a gigantic proportion, and, in this way, sources of audiovisual and reading activities are always in vogue, being shared every second. Blogging can be about different subjects, but what is perceived on all blogs is the strong trace of written text is always presented. Twitter has established itself as a microblogging network for the expression of dynamism, information sharing and interaction. Thus, it was interesting to approach the manner language is expressed in these microblogs thinking about the way that literary discourse is constructed when is seen, on quotations, in the context of this social network: Twitter. Being able to attest the great increase on the occurrences of quotes from different literary genres, it was useful to pay attention to this fact. In Brazil, Twitter has thousands of users, fans and readers, that rewrite and quote authors. The number of quotations is so abundant that it has popularized several Brazilian writers, such as: Clarice Lispector and Caio Fernando Abreu; authors that are frequetenly quoted. So, we made usage of semiotic studies of the French line. In...

Fuzzy rule-based system for evaluation of uncertainty transaction in cassava chain

A fuzzy ruled-based system was developed in this study and resulted in an index indicating the level of uncertainty related to commercial transactions between cassava growers and their dealers. The fuzzy system was developed based on Transaction Cost Economics approach. The fuzzy system was developed from input variables regarding information sharing between grower and dealer on “Demand/purchase Forecasting”, “Production Forecasting” and “Production Innovation”. The output variable is the level of uncertainty regarding the transaction between seller and buyer agent, which may serve as a system for detecting inefficiencies. Evidences from 27 cassava growers registered in the Regional Development Offices of Tupa and Assis, São Paulo, Brazil, and 48 of their dealers supported the development of the system. The mathematical model indicated that 55% of the growers present a Very High level of uncertainty, 33% present Medium or High. The others present Low or Very Low level of uncertainty. From the model, simulations of external interferences can be implemented in order to improve the degree of uncertainty and, thus, lower transaction costs.

Gestão do conhecimento e comunidades de prática um enfoque à partir das TICS

As technology is more and more present within the organizations, the management of knowledge has become essential to an effective management. This article deals with the inseparable relation that exists in between knowledge management, practice communities and the social networks. The analysis over this relation allows us to observe how the Information and Communication Technologies facilitated the access, the information sharing and distribution within the organizations. By this, we highlighted the applicability in the social networks of three applications of Facebook, which can be used as tools in practice communities. This way, these tools are also developed for different technological platforms, which will allow a major interaction between the organizations and their workers, partners and even their clients. Therefore the responsible usage of these technologies and of the data generated by these tools can provide a better quality on the organizational knowledge management.

Library in virtual reality: An innovative way for accessing, disseminating, and sharing information

This paper focuses on Virtual Reality (VR) as a very powerful technology that can be applied to the libraries, aiming at contributing to the activities of accessing, disseminating, and sharing information. The paper presents the VR concept and describes some libraries in virtual reality under utilization in different countries. In the final considerations, it is pointed out the use of virtual reality to develop libraries as collaborative virtual environments.

Towards Interoperability in P2P World: an Indexing Middleware for Multi-Protocol Peer-to-Peer Data Sharing

Despite the abundant availability,of protocols and application for peer-to-peer file sharing, several drawbacks are still present in the field. Among most notable drawbacks is the lack of a simple and interoperable way to share information among independent peer-to-peer networks. Another drawback is the requirement that the shared content can be accessed only by a limited number of compatible applications, making impossible their access to others applications and system. In this work we present a new approach for peer-to-peer data indexing, focused on organization and retrieval of metadata which describes the shared content. This approach results in a common and interoperable infrastructure, which provides a transparent access to data shared on multiple data sharing networks via a simple API. The proposed approach is evaluated using a case study, implemented as a cross-platform extension to Mozilla Fir fox browser; and demonstrates the advantages of such interoperability over conventional distributed data access strategies.

Towards interoperability in P2Pworld: An indexing middleware for multi-protocol peer-to-peer data sharing

Despite the abundant availability of protocols and application for peer-to-peer file sharing, several drawbacks are still present in the field. Among most notable drawbacks is the lack of a simple and interoperable way to share information among independent peer-to-peer networks. Another drawback is the requirement that the shared content can be accessed only by a limited number of compatible applications, making impossible their access to others applications and system. In this work we present a new approach for peer-to-peer data indexing, focused on organization and retrieval of metadata which describes the shared content. This approach results in a common and interoperable infrastructure, which provides a transparent access to data shared on multiple data sharing networks via a simple API. The proposed approach is evaluated using a case study, implemented as a cross-platform extension to Mozilla Firefox browser, and demonstrates the advantages of such interoperability over conventional distributed data access strategies. © 2009 IEEE.