Quasiequilibrium problem in H-spaces

In the present paper, we study the quasiequilibrium problem and generalized quasiequilibrium problem of generalized quasi-variational inequality in H-spaces by a new method. Some new equilibrium existence theorems are given. Our results are different from corresponding given results or contain some recent results as their special cases. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Reforming the law of medical negligence: Solutions in search of a problem

The Commonwealth Government's Principles Based Review of the Law of Negligence recently recommended reforms aimed at limiting liability and damages arising from personal injury and death, in response to the growing perception that the current system of compensating personal injury had become financially unsustainable. Recent increases in medical liability and damages have eroded the confidence of doctors and their professional bodies, with fears of unprecedented desertion from and reduced recruitment into high risk areas, and one of the primary foci of the review concerned medical negligence. The article analyses proposals to redefine the principles necessary for the finding of negligence, against the terms of reference of the review. The article assumes that for the foreseeable future, Australia will persist with tort-based compensation for personal injury rather than developing a no-fault scheme. If the suggested changes to the fundamental principles of negligence are unlikely to reduce medical liability, greater attention might be given to the processes which come into play after the finding of negligence, where reform is more likely to benefit both plaintiffs and defendants.

A global health problem caused by arsenic from natural sources

Arsenic is a carcinogen to both humans and animals. Arsenicals have been associated with cancers of the skin, lung, and bladder. Clinical manifestations of chronic arsenic poisoning include non-cancer end point of hyper- and hypo-pigmentation, keratosis, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Epidemiological evidence indicates that arsenic concentration exceeding 50 mug l(-1) in the drinking water is not public health protective. The current WHO recommended guideline value for arsenic in drinking water is 10 mug l(-1), whereas many developing countries are still having a value of 50 mug 1(-1). It has been estimated that tens of millions of people are. at risk exposing to excessive levels of arsenic from both contaminated water and arsenic-bearing coal from natural sources. The global health implication and possible intervention strategies were also discussed in this review article. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Unraveling the barriers to reconceptualization of the problem in chronic pain: The actual and perceived ability of patients and health professionals to understand the neurophysiology

To identify why reconceptualization of the problem is difficult in chronic pain, this study aimed to evaluate whether (1) health professionals and patients can understand currently accurate information about the neurophysiology of pain and (2) health professionals accurately estimate the ability of patients to understand the neurophysiology of pain. Knowledge tests were completed by 276 patients with chronic pain and 288 professionals either before (untrained) or after (trained) education about the neurophysiology of pain. Professionals estimated typical patient performance on the test. Untrained participants performed poorly (mean +/- standard deviation, 55% +/- 19% and 29% +/- 12% for professionals and patients, respectively), compared to their trained counterparts (78% +/- 21% and 61% +/- 19%, respectively). The estimated patient score (46% +/- 18%) was less than the actual patient score (P < .005). The results suggest that professionals and patients can understand the neurophysiology of pain but professionals underestimate patients' ability to understand. The implications are that (1) a poor knowledge of currently accurate information about pain and (2) the underestimation of patients' ability to understand currently accurate information about pain represent barriers to reconceptualization of the problem in chronic pain within the clinical and lay arenas. (C) 2003 by the American Pain Society.

Gravitational waves : a 100-year tool applied to the dark energy problem

Recent observations from type Ia Supernovae and from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies have revealed that most of the matter of the Universe interacts in a repulsive manner, composing the so-called dark energy constituent of the Universe. Determining the properties of dark energy is one of the most important tasks of modern cosmology and this is the main motivation for this work. The analysis of cosmic gravitational waves (GW) represents, besides the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies, an additional approach in the determination of parameters that may constrain the dark energy models and their consistence. In recent work, a generalized Chaplygin gas model was considered in a flat universe and the corresponding spectrum of gravitational waves was obtained. In the present work we have added a massless gas component to that model and the new spectrum has been compared to the previous one. The Chaplygin gas is also used to simulate a L-CDM model by means of a particular combination of parameters so that the Chaplygin gas and the L-CDM models can be easily distinguished in the theoretical scenarios here established. We find that the models are strongly degenerated in the range of frequencies studied. This degeneracy is in part expected since the models must converge to each other when some particular combinations of parameters are considered.

Brazil: an emerging military power? The problem of the use of force in Brazilian international relations in the 21st century

The central goal of this paper is thinking about the Brazilian military power and its linking to the international ambitions of the country in the 21st century. After a comparative analysis to other BRICs and with a historical one about Brazil's strategic irrelevance, we aim to establish what the minimum military capacity Brazil would need in order to meet the country's latest international interests. Similarly, it will be discussed if the National Strategy of Defense, approved in 2008, and the recent strategic agreements signed with France represent one more step toward this minimum military capacity.

O planejamento econômico no Brasil: considerações críticas

In the past thirty years, a series of plans have been developed by successive Brazilian governments in a continuing effort to maximize the nation's resources for economic and social growth. This planning history has been quantitatively rich but qualitatively poor. The disjunction has stimulated Professor Mello e Souza to address himself to the problem of national planning and to offer some criticisms of Brazilian planning experience. Though political instability has obviously been a factor promoting discontinuity, his criticisms are aimed at the attitudes and strategic concepts which have sought to link planning to national goals and administration. He criticizes the fascination with techniques and plans to the exclusion of proper diagnosis of the socio-political reality, developing instruments to coordinate and carry out objectives, and creating an administrative structure centralized enough to make national decisions and decentralized enough to perform on the basis of those decisions. Thus, fixed, quantified objectives abound while the problem of functioning mechanisms for the coordinated, rational use of resources has been left unattended. Although his interest and criticism are focused on the process and experience of national planning, he recognized variation in the level and results of Brazilian planning. National plans have failed due to faulty conception of the function of planning. Sectorial plans, save in the sector of the petroleum industry under government responsibility, ha e not succeeded in overcoming the problems of formulation and execution thereby repeating old technical errors. Planning for the private sector has a somewhat brighter history due to the use of Grupos Executivos which has enabled the planning process to transcend the formalism and tradition-bound attitudes of the regular bureaucracy. Regional planning offers two relatively successful experiences, Sudene and the strategy of the regionally oriented autarchy. Thus, planning history in Brazil is not entirely black but a certain shade of grey. The major part of the article, however, is devoted to a descriptive analysis of the national planning experience. The plans included in this analysis are: The Works and Equipment Plan (POE); The Health, Food, Transportation and Energy Plan (Salte); The Program of Goals; The Trienal Plan of Economic and Social Development; and the Plan of Governmental Economic Action (Paeg). Using these five plans for his historical experience the author sets out a series of errors of formulation and execution by which he analyzes that experience. With respect to formulation, he speaks of a lack of elaboration of programs and projects, of coordination among diverse goals, and of provision of qualified staff and techniques. He mentions the absence of the definition of resources necessary to the financing of the plan and the inadequate quantification of sectorial and national goals due to the lack of reliable statistical information. Finally, he notes the failure to coordinate the annual budget with the multi-year plans. He sees the problems of execution as beginning in the absence of coordination between the various sectors of the public administration, the failure to develop an operative system of decentralization, the absence of any system of financial and fiscal control over execution, the difficulties imposed by the system of public accounting, and the absence of an adequate program of allocation for the liberation of resources. He ends by pointing to the failure to develop and use an integrated system of political economic tools in a mode compatible with the objective of the plans. The body of the article analyzes national planning experience in Brazil using these lists of errors as rough model of criticism. Several conclusions emerge from this analysis with regard to planning in Brazil and in developing countries, in general. Plans have generally been of little avail in Brazil because of the lack of a continuous, bureaucratized (in the Weberian sense) planning organization set in an instrumentally suitable administrative structure and based on thorough diagnoses of socio-economic conditions and problems. Plans have become the justification for planning. Planning has come to be conceived as a rational method of orienting the process of decisions through the establishment of a precise and quantified relation between means and ends. But this conception has led to a planning history rimmed with frustration, and failure, because of its rigidity in the face of flexible and changing reality. Rather, he suggests a conception of planning which understands it "as a rational process of formulating decisions about the policy, economy, and society whose only demand is that of managing the instrumentarium in a harmonious and integrated form in order to reach explicit, but not quantified ends". He calls this "planning without plans": the establishment of broad-scale tendencies through diagnosis whose implementation is carried out through an adjustable, coherent instrumentarium of political-economic tools. Administration according to a plan of multiple, integrated goals is a sound procedure if the nation's administrative machinery contains the technical development needed to control the multiple variables linked to any situation of socio-economic change. Brazil does not possess this level of refinement and any strategy of planning relevant to its problems must recognize this. The reforms which have been attempted fail to make this recognition as is true of the conception of planning informing the Brazilian experience. Therefore, unworkable plans, ill-diagnosed with little or no supportive instrumentarium or flexibility have been Brazil's legacy. This legacy seems likely to continue until the conception of planning comes to live in the reality of Brazil.

On the Problem of Balancing the DC Capacitor Voltage Divider in Back-to-Back Multilevel Converters

This paper presents a new generalized solution for DC bus capacitors voltage balancing in back-to-back m level diode-clamped multilevel converters connecting AC networks. The solution is based on the DC bus average power flow and exploits the switching configuration redundancies. The proposed balancing solution is particularized for the back-to-back multilevel structure with m=5 levels. This back-to-back converter is studied working with bidirectional power flow, connecting an induction machine to the power grid.

Formaldehyde in indoor air: a public health problem?

Formaldehyde was the first air pollutant, which already in the 1970s emerged as a specifically non-industrial indoor air quality problem. Yet formaldehyde remained an indoor air quality issue and the formaldehyde level in residential indoor air is among the highest of any indoor air contaminant. Formaldehyde concentrations in 4 different indoor settings (schools, office buildings, new dwellings and occupied dwellings) in Portugal were measured using Photo Ionization Detection (PID) equipment (11,7 eV lamps). All the settings presented results higher than the reference value proposed by Portuguese legislation. Furthermore, occupied dwellings showed 3 units with results above the reference. We could conclude that formaldehyde presence is a reality in monitored indoor settings. Concentration levels are higher than the Portuguese reference value for indoor settings and these can indicate health problems for occupants.

The problem of estimating the volatility of zero coupon bond interest rate

Financial literature and financial industry use often zero coupon yield curves as input for testing hypotheses, pricing assets or managing risk. They assume this provided data as accurate. We analyse implications of the methodology and of the sample selection criteria used to estimate the zero coupon bond yield term structure on the resulting volatility of spot rates with different maturities. We obtain the volatility term structure using historical volatilities and Egarch volatilities. As input for these volatilities we consider our own spot rates estimation from GovPX bond data and three popular interest rates data sets: from the Federal Reserve Board, from the US Department of the Treasury (H15), and from Bloomberg. We find strong evidence that the resulting zero coupon bond yield volatility estimates as well as the correlation coefficients among spot and forward rates depend significantly on the data set. We observe relevant differences in economic terms when volatilities are used to price derivatives.

Fungal contamination of poultries litter: a public health problem

Exposure to certain fungi can cause human illness. Fungi cause adverse human health effects through three specific mechanisms: generation of a harmful immune response (e.g., allergy or hypersensitivity pneumonitis); direct infection by the fungal organism; by toxic-irritant effects from mold byproducts, such as mycotoxins. In Portugal there is an increasingly industry of large facilities that produce whole chickens for domestic consumption and only few investigations have reported on fungal contamination of the poultry litter. The material used for poultry litter is varied but normally can be constitute by: pine shavings; sawdust of eucalyptus; other types of wood; peanut; coffee; sugar cane; straw; hay; grass; paper processed. Litter is one of the most contributive factors to fungal contamination in poultries. Spreading litter is one of the tasks that normally involve higher exposure of the poultry workers to dust, fungi and their metabolites, such as VOC’s and mycotoxins. After being used and removed from poultries, litter is ploughed into agricultural soils, being this practice potentially dangerous for the soil environment, as well for both humans and animals. The goal of this study was to characterize litter’s fungal contamination and also to report the incidence of keratinophilic and toxigenic fungi.

Positive Solutions of the Dirichlet Problem for the One-dimensional Minkowski-Curvature Equation

We discuss existence and multiplicity of positive solutions of the Dirichlet problem for the quasilinear ordinary differential equation-(u' / root 1 - u'(2))' = f(t, u). Depending on the behaviour of f = f(t, s) near s = 0, we prove the existence of either one, or two, or three, or infinitely many positive solutions. In general, the positivity of f is not required. All results are obtained by reduction to an equivalent non-singular problem to which variational or topological methods apply in a classical fashion.

Fungal contamination of poultry litter: a public health problem

Although numerous studies have been conducted on microbial contaminants associated with various stages related to poultry and meat products processing, only a few reported on fungal contamination of poultry litter. The goals of this study were to (1) characterize litter fungal contamination and (2) report the incidence of keratinophilic and toxigenic fungi presence. Seven fresh and 14 aged litter samples were collected from 7 poultry farms. In addition, 27 air samples of 25 litters were also collected through impaction method, and after laboratory processing and incubation of collected samples, quantitative colony-forming units (CFU/m3) and qualitative results were obtained. Twelve different fungal species were detected in fresh litter and Penicillium was the most frequent genus found (59.9%), followed by Alternaria (17.8%), Cladosporium (7.1%), and Aspergillus (5.7%). With respect to aged litter, 19 different fungal species were detected, with Penicillium sp. the most frequently isolated (42.3%), followed by Scopulariopsis sp. (38.3%), Trichosporon sp. (8.8%), and Aspergillus sp. (5.5%). A significant positive correlation was found between litter fungal contamination (CFU/g) and air fungal contamination (CFU/m3). Litter fungal quantification and species identification have important implications in the evaluation of potential adverse health risks to exposed workers and animals. Spreading of poultry litter in agricultural fields is a potential public health concern, since keratinophilic (Scopulariopsis and Fusarium genus) as well as toxigenic fungi (Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Penicillium genus) were isolated.