Ventilation rates in schools

Research shows that poor indoor air quality (IAQ) in school buildings can cause a reduction in the students' performance assessed by short-term computer-based tests: whereas good air quality in classrooms can enhance children's concentration and also teachers' productivity. Investigation of air quality in classrooms helps us to characterise pollutant levels and implement corrective measures. Outdoor pollution, ventilation equipment, furnishings, and human activities affect IAQ. In school classrooms, the occupancy density is high (1.8-2.4m(2)/person) compared to offices (10 m(2)/person). Ventilation systems expend energy and there is a trend to save energy by reducing ventilation rates. We need to establish the minimum acceptable level of fresh air required for the health of the occupants. This paper describes a project, which will aim to investigate the effect of IAQ and ventilation rates on pupils' performance and health using psychological tests. The aim is to recommend suitable ventilation rates for classrooms and examine the suitability of the air quality guidelines for classrooms. The air quality, ventilation rates and pupils' performance in classrooms will be evaluated in parallel measurements. In addition, Visual Analogue Scales will be used to assess subjective perception of the classroom environment and SBS symptoms. Pupil performance will be measured with Computerised Assessment Tests (CAT), and Pen and Paper Performance Tasks while physical parameters of the classroom environment will be recorded using an advanced data logging system. A total number of 20 primary schools in the Reading area are expected to participate in the present investigation, and the pupils participating in this study will be within the age group of 9-11 years. On completion of the project, based oil the overall data recommendations for suitable ventilation rates for schools will be formulated. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cluster analysis for multivariable process control

This paper describes the novel use of cluster analysis in the field of industrial process control. The severe multivariable process problems encountered in manufacturing have often led to machine shutdowns, where the need for corrective actions arises in order to resume operation. Production faults which are caused by processes running in less efficient regions may be prevented or diagnosed using a reasoning based on cluster analysis. Indeed the intemal complexity of a production machinery may be depicted in clusters of multidimensional data points which characterise the manufacturing process. The application of a Mean-Tracking cluster algorithm (developed in Reading) to field data acquired from a high-speed machinery will be discussed. The objective of such an application is to illustrate how machine behaviour can be studied, in particular how regions of erroneous and stable running behaviour can be identified.

Decentralized PID self-tuning control of industrial robots

A three degrees of freedom industrial robot is controlled by applying PID self-tuning (PID/ST) controllers. This control is considered as a corrective term to a nominal value, centrally computed from an inaccurate and/ or simplified dynamic model. An identification scheme on an assumed linear plant describing the deviation from the desired trajectory is employed in order to tune the controller coefficients and thus accomplish a behaviour prescribed through a desired pole placement. A salient feature of our approach is the decentralized nature of the controllers producing the corrective term for each joint. This opens the way to practical implementation, as recent computing requirement calculations for similar set-ups have shown in the literature. Numerical results are presented.

Piety and sociability in early modern women's devotional writing

The letters of early modern women demonstrate that their experience of religion was essentially social, contrary to the impression created by much modern work on diaries or meditations. The stereotypical melancholic, pious lady is far from the ideal offered by spiritual advisors, women and men, in their correspondence. Letters demonstrate how women created networks of spiritual support within and beyond their families. Letters also testify to the agency exercised by early modern women in religious matters, particularly in their assumption of the role of religious advisor and in their engagement with ecclesiastical politics. While this is far from showing that religion empowered all early modern women, it does offer a corrective to the unduly gloomy view of the role of religion in such women's lives. Letters provide indispensable testimony to the social nature of women's responses to the changing religious culture and politics of the eighteenth century.

When consent doesn't work: a rights-based case for limits to consent’s capacity to legitimise

Consent's capacity to legitimise actions and claims is limited by conditions such as coercion, which render consent ineffective. A better understanding of the limits to consent's capacity to legitimise can shed light on a variety of applied debates, in political philosophy, bioethics, economics and law. I show that traditional paternalist explanations for limits to consent's capacity to legitimise cannot explain the central intuition that consent is often rendered ineffective when brought about by a rights violation or threatened rights violation. I argue that this intuition is an expression of the same principles of corrective justice that underlie norms of compensation and rectification. I show how these principles can explain and clarify core intuitions about conditions which render consent ineffective, including those concerned with the consenting agent's option set, his mental competence, and available information.

Intermittently-visual tracking experiments reveal the roles of error-correction and predictive mechanisms in the human visual-motor control system

Prediction mechanism is necessary for human visual motion to compensate a delay of sensory-motor system. In a previous study, “proactive control” was discussed as one example of predictive function of human beings, in which motion of hands preceded the virtual moving target in visual tracking experiments. To study the roles of the positional-error correction mechanism and the prediction mechanism, we carried out an intermittently-visual tracking experiment where a circular orbit is segmented into the target-visible regions and the target-invisible regions. Main results found in this research were following. A rhythmic component appeared in the tracer velocity when the target velocity was relatively high. The period of the rhythm in the brain obtained from environmental stimuli is shortened more than 10%. The shortening of the period of rhythm in the brain accelerates the hand motion as soon as the visual information is cut-off, and causes the precedence of hand motion to the target motion. Although the precedence of the hand in the blind region is reset by the environmental information when the target enters the visible region, the hand motion precedes the target in average when the predictive mechanism dominates the error-corrective mechanism.

Why the hand motion proceeds the target in tracking experiment?

In the present study, to shed light on a role of positional error correction mechanism and prediction mechanism in the proactive control discovered earlier, we carried out a visual tracking experiment, in which the region where target was shown, was regulated in a circular orbit. Main results found in this research were following. Recognition of a time step, obtained from the environmental stimuli, is required for the predictive function. The period of the rhythm in the brain obtained from environmental stimuli is shortened about 10%, when the visual information is cut-off. The shortening of the period of the rhythm in the brain accelerates the motion as soon as the visual information is cut-off, and lets the hand motion precedes the target motion. Although the precedence of the hand in the blind region is reset by the environmental information when the target enters the visible region, the hand precedes in average the target when the predictive mechanism dominates the error-corrective mechanism.

What you see is what you want to see: motivationally relevant stimuli can interrupt current resource allocation

Arousing stimuli, either threat-related or pleasant, may be selected for priority at different stages within the processing stream. Here we examine the pattern of processing for non-task-relevant threatening (spiders: arousing to some) and pleasant stimuli (babies or chocolate: arousing to all) by recording the gaze of a spider Fearful and Non-fearful group while they performed a simple “follow the cross” task. There was no difference in first saccade latencies. Saccade trajectories showed a general hypervigilance for all stimuli in the Fearful group. Saccade landing positions corresponded to what each group would find arousing, such that the Fearful group deviated towards both types of images whereas the Non-fearful group deviated towards pleasant images. Secondary corrective saccade latencies away from threat-related stimuli were longer for the Fearful group (difficulty in disengaging) compared with the Non-fearful group. These results suggest that attentional biases towards arousing stimuli may occur at different processing stages.

The pitfalls of ecological forecasting

Ecological forecasting is difficult but essential, because reactive management results in corrective actions that are often too late to avert significant environmental damage. Here, we appraise different forecasting methods with a particular focus on the modelling of species populations. We show how simple extrapolation of current trends in state is often inadequate because environmental drivers change in intensity over time and new drivers emerge. However, statistical models, incorporating relationships with drivers, simply offset the prediction problem, requiring us to forecast how the drivers will themselves change over time. Some authors approach this problem by focusing in detail on a single driver, whilst others use ‘storyline’ scenarios, which consider projected changes in a wide range of different drivers. We explain why both approaches are problematic and identify a compromise to model key drivers and interactions along with possible response options to help inform environmental management. We also highlight the crucial role of validation of forecasts using independent data. Although these issues are relevant for all types of ecological forecasting, we provide examples based on forecasts for populations of UK butterflies. We show how a high goodness-of-fit for models used to calibrate data is not sufficient for good forecasting. Long-term biological recording schemes rather than experiments will often provide data for ecological forecasting and validation because these schemes allow capture of landscape-scale land-use effects and their interactions with other drivers.

Opting out of oppositionality : toward an informed and engaged "third wave" feminism

I begin by citing a definition of "third wave" from the glossary in Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminisms at length because it communicates several key issues that I develop in this project. The definition introduces a tension within "third wave" feminism of building and differentiating itself from second wave feminism, the newness of the term "third wave," its association with "young" women, complexity of contemporary feminisms, and attention to multiple identities and oppressions. Uncovering explanations of "third wave" feminism that go beyond, like this one, generational associations, is not an easy task. Authors consistently group new feminist voices together by age under the label "third wave" feminists without questioning the accuracy of the designation. Most explorations of "third wave" feminism overlook the complexities and distinctions that abound among "young" feminists ; not all young feminists espouse similar ideas, tactics, and actions; and for various reasons, not all young feminists identify with a "third wave" of feminism. Less than a year after I began to learn about feminism I discovered Barbara Findlen's Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation. Although the collection nor its contributors declare association with "third wave" feminism, consequent reviews and citations in articles identify it, along with Rebecca Walker's To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Voice of Feminism, as a major text of "third wave" feminism. Re-reading Listen Up since beginning to research "third wave" feminism, I now understand its fundamental influence on my research questions as a starting point for assessing persistent exclusion in contemporary feminism, rather than as a revolutionary text (as it is claimed to be in many reviews). Findlen begins the introduction with the bold claim, "My feminism wasn't shaped by antiwar or civil rights activism ..." (xi). Framing the collection with a disavowal of the influence women of color's organizational efforts negates, for me, the project's proclaimed commitment to multivocality. Though several contributions examine persistent exclusion within contemporary feminist movement, the larger project seems to rely on these essays to reflect this commitment, suggesting that Listen Up does not go beyond the "add and stir" approach to "diversity." Interestingly, this statement does not appear in the new edition of Listen Up published in 2001. And the content has changed with this new edition, including several more Latina contributors and other "corrective" additions.

Assistência nutricional hospitalar : um estudo da satisfação dos clientes da Santa Casa de Porto Alegre

Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo que analisa o grau de satisfação de clientes, pacientes e acompanhantes, acerca da assistência nutricional hospitalar da ISCMPA, que utiliza o índice de satisfação de clientes como indicador de desempenho, demostrando a preocupação em elevar a qualidade do serviço a níveis de excelência. Foi aplicado um questionário, realizando entrevista pessoal com 215 clientes, resultando num estudo descritivo, de corte transversal, de perfil qualitativo e quantitativo. A análise de resultados foi apresentada em três blocos: características dos envolvidos na investigação, nível de satisfação e grau de importância por constructos. Aspectos como percepção dos clientes da imagem da Instituição, posição frente à comunidade, fatores que os levariam a trocar de Hospital e os sentimentos expressos pelos respondentes na ocasião da pesquisa, também foram abordados. O índice de 95 % de satisfação dos clientes, meta da Instituição, foi atingido em quatro dos seis contructos avaliados: Comportamento e Atuação de Funcionários, Comunicação com a Equipe por Telefone, Contato Inicial com a Equipe de Nutrição e Higiene de Material da Copa. Os constructos que não alcançaram a meta foram Refeições e Adequação de Material. O conhecimento do grau de satisfação dos clientes permitiu estabelecer um plano de intervenção, definindo ações corretivas e de melhorias para constructos que não alcançaram a meta e para pontos críticos identificados.

Padrão sazonal da produção industrial, exportações e importações: uma aplicação do X-12 ARIMA

Este trabalho tem por objetivo identificar os coeficientes sazonais de algumas variáveis econômicas (produção industrial, exportações e importações), isentos das mudanças estruturais registradas na economia. O estudo verifica se os planos de estabilização implementados pelo governo nos últimos quinze anos afetaram o padrão sazonal daquelas séries. Para tanto aplica-se o X-12-ARIMA, o novo método de dessazonalização de séries desenvolvido pelo U.S. Bureau of the Census. O uso desse método torna-se necessário, porque os demais métodos conhecidos impedem testar nossa hipótese, ao não permitirem o emprego de intervenções, não obtendo assim os melhores estimadores para os coeficientes sazonais. O estudo cobre o período que vai de 1980 a 1997 e os resultados confirmam a nossa hipótese de mudança no padrão sazonal no período. As nossas variáveis econômicas foram - de um ou de outro modo - atingidas pelos planos de estabilização implementados nos últimos quinze anos.

Os efeitos de sistema de registro de preço nas compras públicas: estudo de caso da Secretaria Municipal de Obras, Serviços Básicos e Habitação da cidade de Manaus

Public administration has been labeled as inefficient for decades, with society seen it as a great waste of public money with a low generation of results. Its services are notably classified as sluggish, bureaucratic, with a low productivity level and a high incidence of mistakes. In periods of crisis, public administration must be the first to give good examples of balance and parsimony in its expenditures, or it could lead to the failure of the government, in general, causing damages to the population. To reach this goal, some corrective measures must be done, in different directions, by selecting the expenditures and fostering the maximum economy for the exchequer. This is only possible through the application of correct planning techniques, a still far way reality from the culture of our public organisms. One way to this change is the adoption of the Price Registration System, that in the Federal scope was already adopted by the Decree nº 3.931/01, and in the scope of the municipality of Manaus was ordered by the Decree nº 8.270/06. The present study verifies the influence of the use of the Price Registration System in purchases and contracts undertaken by the Local Secretariat of Construction, Basic Services and Housing, in the city of Manaus concerning the economy obtained when compared to other methods of tenders.

Fatores da administração do sistema penitenciário do Rio de Janeiro que os impedem de cumprirem com sua missão de recuperação do detento?

Since some years ago, the penitentiany systen of Rio de Janeiro is going through the nuest sendus administrative crisis,leading more and more to chaotic situations, over imagined before by homan being. Nowadays all the factors and components of the existing models are still medievaIs, and even distant fron the human needs. The daily life ofthe condemned is a sway betuen lack of hygiene, disrespect to homan rigts, lack of modem corrective practices and also, lack of psychological support. How, then can me demand from the state ( Govemment) the rehabilitation of the imprisoned and their preparation to face society if they are treated manny times as victins of this same society? This society impose a life style enjoyed only by a privileged social class which forget about then when sent to the darkness. Many of then, join the penitentary systen because of minor crimes, and when they serve their tem, um for funately they go back to prison accused for move violent crimes. The penitentian models haven't developed the same way the society where they worked at has. There, the present brazilian penitentiary model has showed obsolete and inefficient alone its principal mission ofrehabilitation and re - education ofthe imprisoned. Our main objetive will be the construction and analysis of the penitential administrative model, as being able to fullfill the necesity of the penitentiary administrator (Manager). Analy zing on a specific reasoning which focus showld not be that of the theories and isolated projects of the topic, we will develop a progran far form religions, judiciary on political technics by building na administrtive penitentiary model strictly professional where we coul a have a deep analysis of the topic. We will try to approach the aspects of organization existing to day inorder to understand them and criate, a model wich will adjust betten to the necesitives of this thesis.

O orçamento do governo local sob condições de participação dos cidadãos: o caso da Prefeitura de Santos

Este trabalho trata de um estudo de caso sobre a participação direta dos cidadãos no orçamento público municipal. Discute-se a teoria democrática sustentando-se que a democracia representativa apresenta fàlhas que exigem mecanismos corretivos e que a participação direta dos cidadãos se apresenta como uma alternativa para corrigir esses desvios. A premissa básica que permeia toda a pesquisa é a da participação direta como meio eficiente de controle do cidadão sobre as ações do Estado - Governo Local. Por meio da análise do Programa de Governo do Partido e do Plano de Governo da Prefeitura de Santos~ procurou-se verificar quais os fundamentos teóricos da participação direta que orientam as ações do Governo Municipal Santista. A dimensão institucional da participação é explorada por meio da descrição e análise crítica das formas de participação direta~ previstas na legislação constitucional - Constituições Federal e Estadual de São Paulo e Lei Orgânica do Município de Santos. Busca-se identificar quais são os limites dos mecanismos de participação direta, previstos na legislação. quando aplicados ao orçamento municipal. A investigação sobre o processo decisório orçamentário visa a captar qual lógica subjaz no processo de alocação de recursos no orçamento público. Embora se tenha assinalados certos embaraços jurídicos e operacionais à participação direta dos cidadãos no orçamento~ esses entraves não invalidam a importância da experiência com orçamento participativo no Município de Santos. A proposta da Prefeitura Santista, por seu caráter inovador e educativo revela-se uma valiosa contribuição para a prática de uma gestão mais democrática e transparente no âmbito municipal.