Análise de viabilidade da coleta seletiva na cidade de Valparaíso - SP

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Polyculture of Freshwater Angelfish Pterophyllum scalare and Pacific white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei in low-salinity water

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Análise econômica do plantio e condução do eucalipto de curta rotação para fins energéticos

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Analysis of the effect of wash water reduction on bleached pulp characteristics

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Balanço econômico da operação de semeadura da cultura da soja em diferentes arranjos espaciais

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Avaliações farmacoeconômicas em vigilância de medicamentos

The study aimed to identify pharmacoeconomic studies in pharmacovigilance and to observe the economic outcomes in post-marketing surveillance. Therefore, a bibliographic survey was performed in databases Lilacs, PubMed/ Bireme. The search strategy was done by using scientific health descriptors [ "adverse drug reaction reporting systems " OR " medication errors " OR "product surveillance, postmarketing" OR " sentinel surveillance" ] AND [ " cost-benefit analysis" OR "cost efficiency analysis " OR " costs and cost analysis " OR " hospital costs " OR " cost-effectiveness " OR " cost-effectiveness evaluation " OR " drug costs " ]. Manuscripts published in the last 10 years were selected. We chose 13 articles, of which 12 corresponded to cost-benefit analysis and only one to cost-effectiveness assessment. In only one study there was no economy, all the other ones generated savings, ranging from 13.7 to 30% in spending valued service. Surveillance actions were: continuing education; active search through tracking devices and / or implementation of round; teamwork and multidisciplinary deployment; computerized security services management, enabling traceability of information and alerts. The results of the proposed actions have led to the prevention of adverse drug reactions, to decline of risks to the patient, to the reduction of inappropriate prescriptions, as well as the length of hospital stay spending valued service. Surveillance actions were: continuing education; active search through tracking devices and / or implementation of round; teamwork and multidisciplinary deployment; computerized security services management, enabling traceability of information and alerts. The results of the proposed actions have led to the prevention of adverse drug reactions, to decline of risks to the patient, to the reduction of inappropriate prescriptions, as well as the length of hospital stay

Aircraft selection with DEA's triple index: an approach for sustainability

The objective of this paper is to present a benefit-cost ranking of 127 civil transport aircraft; this ranking was determined considering a new data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, called triple index, which combines three assessment methods: 1) standard frontier, 2) inverted index; 3) cross-multiplicative index. The analysis used the following inputs: a) market price; b) direct operating costs; and as outputs: a) payload, b) cruise speed; c) maximum rate of climb with a single engine. To ensure the homogeneity of the units, the aircrafts were divided according to the propulsion system (jet and turboprop) and size (regional, narrow-body and wide-body); they were also evaluated according to different ranges in order to identify the aircraft with the best cost-benefit relationship for each option.

A comparative analysis of outpatient costs in HIV treatment programs

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the costs of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) outpatient treatment for individuals with different CD4 cell counts in the Brazilian public health system, and to compare to costs in other national health systems. METHODS: A retrospective survey was conducted in five public outpatient clinics of the Brazilian national HIV program in the city of São Paulo. Data on healthcare services provided for a period of one year of HIV outpatient treatment were gathered from randomly selected medical records. Prices of inputs used were obtained through market research and public sector databases. Information on costs of HIV outpatient treatment in other national health systems were gathered from the literature. Annual costs of HIV outpatient treatment from each country were converted into 2010 U.S. dollars. RESULTS: Annual cost of HIV outpatient treatment for the Brazilian national public program was US$ 2,572.92 in 2006 in São Paulo, ranging from US$ 1,726.19 for patients with CD4 cell count > 500 to US$ 3,693.28 for patients with 51 < CD4 cell count < 200. Antiretrovirals (ARVs) represented approximately 62.0% of annual HIV outpatient costs. Comparing among different health systems during the same period, HIV outpatient treatment presented higher costs in countries where HIV treatment is provided by the private sector. CONCLUSION: The main cost drivers of HIV outpatient treatment in different health systems were: ARVs, other medications, health professional services, and diagnostic exams. Nevertheless, the magnitude of cost drivers varied among HIV outpatient treatment programs due to health system efficiency. The data presented may be a valuable tool for public policy evaluation of HIV treatment programs worldwide.

Economic evaluation of varicella vaccination in Swiss children and adolescents

This study explores the effects of three different 2-dose varicella zoster virus (VZV) vaccination strategies in Switzerland. The EVITA model was used to assess clinical benefits and costs of strategies (1) vaccination of 11-15 year old adolescents with a negative or uncertain history for chickenpox, (2) universal vaccination of toddlers at age 1 to 2 years, and (3) strategy 2 plus catch-up vaccination of 11-15 year old susceptible adolescents. The cost-effectiveness analysis compares strategies 2 and 3 versus strategy 1 (current vaccination policy in Switzerland). Probabilities for clinical outcomes and medical resource utilization were derived from a real-world survey among Swiss pediatricians and general practitioners including 236 individuals with VZV infection, published information on varicella complications, and expert opinion. Costs of medical resource utilization represent official Swiss medical tariffs. The model predicts both universal childhood vaccination strategies to be more effective in reducing varicella disease burden compared to strategy 1. Economically, both universal childhood vaccination strategies with or without catch-up result in net savings from the societal perspective reflected by a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of 1.22 or 1.29, respectively. In contrast, the model predicts net costs from the payer perspective (BCR of 0.27 and 0.30, respectively). These economic findings are comparable to those reported from other similar evaluations. However, due to the recent recommendation for using a 2-dose varicella vaccination schedule, our economic results for Switzerland are somewhat less favorable than those for other country analyses in which a less expensive 1-dose vaccination regimen for toddlers has been studied.

Cost-effectiveness of universal prophylaxis in pregnancy with prior group B streptococci colonization.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the costs and outcomes of rescreening for group B streptococci (GBS) compared to universal treatment of term women with history of GBS colonization in a previous pregnancy. STUDY DESIGN: A decision analysis model was used to compare costs and outcomes. Total cost included the costs of screening, intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP), treatment for maternal anaphylaxis and death, evaluation of well infants whose mothers received IAP, and total costs for treatment of term neonatal early onset GBS sepsis. RESULTS: When compared to screening and treating, universal treatment results in more women treated per GBS case prevented (155 versus 67) and prevents more cases of early onset GBS (1732 versus 1700) and neonatal deaths (52 versus 51) at a lower cost per case prevented ($8,805 versus $12,710). CONCLUSION: Universal treatment of term pregnancies with a history of previous GBS colonization is more cost-effective than the strategy of screening and treating based on positive culture results.

The Colic Clinic---a comprehensive program evaluation

Child abuse correlated with excessive infant crying affects millions of families each year, with consequences of the abuse lasting a lifetime. The University Of Texas School Of Medicine's Colic Clinic is currently in the early stages of testing Dr. Harvey Karp's combinatorial soothing technique for infants called "The Happiest Baby on the Block". In order to gauge the program's potential effectiveness, the Colic Clinic Protocol was examined in order to assess the applicability of the intervention to known causal factors of child abuse associated with excessive infant crying. ^ This evaluation also carried out an anticipated cost-benefit breakout analysis for the implementation of the intervention for 100 children and compared the cost of the program implementation to the cost associated with a single instance of child abuse. The analysis revealed that while accounting for materials, advertising, salaried personnel and other overhead expenses, the cost to implement the intervention was less than half the cost of the medical treatment associated with a single victim of whiplash-shaken infant syndrome. ^ Although the program is still in its early evaluative phase, the future implications of this work are extensive. If this intervention is revealed to be relevant and cost effective, it will precipitate sweeping changes in medical education and training, public health detection and prevention programs, and law enforcement.^

Lower bound cost estimation for logic programs

It is generally recognized that information about the runtime cost of computations can be useful for a variety of applications, including program transformation, granularity control during parallel execution, and query optimization in deductive databases. Most of the work to date on compile-time cost estimation of logic programs has focused on the estimation of upper bounds on costs. However, in many applications, such as parallel implementations on distributed-memory machines, one would prefer to work with lower bounds instead. The problem with estimating lower bounds is that in general, it is necessary to account for the possibility of failure of head unification, leading to a trivial lower bound of 0. In this paper, we show how, given type and mode information about procedures in a logic program, it is possible to (semi-automatically) derive nontrivial lower bounds on their computational costs. We also discuss the cost analysis for the special and frequent case of divide-and-conquer programs and show how —as a pragmatic short-term solution —it may be possible to obtain useful results simply by identifying and treating divide-and-conquer programs specially.

Estimating the computational cost of logic programs

Information about the computational cost of programs is potentially useful for a variety of purposes, including selecting among different algorithms, guiding program transformations, in granularity control and mapping decisions in parallelizing compilers, and query optimization in deductive databases. Cost analysis of logic programs is complicated by nondeterminism: on the one hand, procedures can return múltiple Solutions, making it necessary to estímate the number of solutions in order to give nontrivial upper bound cost estimates; on the other hand, the possibility of failure has to be taken into account while estimating lower bounds. Here we discuss techniques to address these problems to some extent.

User-definable resource usage bounds analysis for java bytecode

Automatic cost analysis of programs has been traditionally concentrated on a reduced number of resources such as execution steps, time, or memory. However, the increasing relevance of analysis applications such as static debugging and/or certiflcation of user-level properties (including for mobile code) makes it interesting to develop analyses for resource notions that are actually application-dependent. This may include, for example, bytes sent or received by an application, number of files left open, number of SMSs sent or received, number of accesses to a datábase, money spent, energy consumption, etc. We present a fully automated analysis for inferring upper bounds on the usage that a Java bytecode program makes of a set of application programmer-deflnable resources. In our context, a resource is defined by programmer-provided annotations which state the basic consumption that certain program elements make of that resource. From these deflnitions our analysis derives functions which return an upper bound on the usage that the whole program (and individual blocks) make of that resource for any given set of input data sizes. The analysis proposed is independent of the particular resource. We also present some experimental results from a prototype implementation of the approach covering a signiflcant set of interesting resources.

Abstract interpretation-based code certification for pervasive systems: Preliminary experiments

Proof carrying code is a general methodology for certifying that the execution of an untrusted mobile code is safe, according to a predefined safety policy. The basic idea is that the code supplier attaches a certifícate (or proof) to the mobile code which, then, the consumer checks in order to ensure that the code is indeed safe. The potential benefit is that the consumer's task is reduced from the level of proving to the level of checking, a much simpler task. Recently, the abstract interpretation techniques developed in logic programming have been proposed as a basis for proof carrying code [1]. To this end, the certifícate is generated from an abstract interpretation-based proof of safety. Intuitively, the verification condition is extracted from a set of assertions guaranteeing safety and the answer table generated during the analysis. Given this information, it is relatively simple and fast to verify that the code does meet this proof and so its execution is safe. This extended abstract reports on experiments which illustrate several issues involved in abstract interpretation-based code certification. First, we describe the implementation of our system in the context of CiaoPP: the preprocessor of the Ciao multi-paradigm (constraint) logic programming system. Then, by means of some experiments, we show how code certification is aided in the implementation of the framework. Finally, we discuss the application of our method within the área of pervasive systems which may lack the necessary computing resources to verify safety on their own. We herein illustrate the relevance of the information inferred by existing cost analysis to control resource usage in this context. Moreover, since the (rather complex) analysis phase is replaced by a simpler, efficient checking process at the code consumer side, we believe that our abstract interpretation-based approach to proof-carrying code becomes practically applicable to this kind of systems.