Determinants of using pacifier and bottle feeding

OBJECTIVE To analyze the factors associated with the use of pacifiers and/or bottle feeding in infants aged under one year.METHODS This is a cross-sectional study with 34,366 children and using data from the database of the 2nd Nationwide Survey of Breastfeeding Prevalence performed in the Brazilian capitals and Federal District in 2008. Cluster sampling was used. The questionnaire included questions about the use of artificial nipples in the last 24 hours. The analysis considered three outcomes: exclusive use of pacifier, exclusive use of bottle feeding, and use of artificial nipples (pacifier and bottle feeding). Prevalence ratios were obtained using Poisson regression with robust variance following a hierarchical model.RESULTS The following factors were associated with exclusive use of the pacifier: mother working outside the home, primiparity, child was not breastfed within the first hour, and child had consumed tea on the first day at home. The following factors were associated with exclusive use of bottle feeding: mother working outside the home, primiparity, low birth weight, child not breastfed within the first hour, and child had consumed milk formula and tea on the first day at home. The following factors were associated with use of artificial nipples (pacifier and bottle feeding): mother working outside the home, primiparity, cesarean delivery, the male gender, low birth weight, born in a hospital not accredited as “baby friendly”, required health baby monitoring in the Primary Health Care Unit (PR = 0.91), and child had consumed milk formula, water, or tea on the first day at home.CONCLUSIONS This study identified profiles of exclusive users of pacifiers, bottle feeding, and both. The provided information can guide preventive practices for child health.

Enabling Global Experiments With Interactive Reconfiguration And Steering By Multiple Users

In global scientific experiments with collaborative scenarios involving multinational teams there are big challenges related to data access, namely data movements are precluded to other regions or Clouds due to the constraints on latency costs, data privacy and data ownership. Furthermore, each site is processing local data sets using specialized algorithms and producing intermediate results that are helpful as inputs to applications running on remote sites. This paper shows how to model such collaborative scenarios as a scientific workflow implemented with AWARD (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic), a decentralized framework offering a feasible solution to run the workflow activities on distributed data centers in different regions without the need of large data movements. The AWARD workflow activities are independently monitored and dynamically reconfigured and steering by different users, namely by hot-swapping the algorithms to enhance the computation results or by changing the workflow structure to support feedback dependencies where an activity receives feedback output from a successor activity. A real implementation of one practical scenario and its execution on multiple data centers of the Amazon Cloud is presented including experimental results with steering by multiple users.

Application of robust fixed point transformations for technological operation of robots

A robot’s drive has to exert appropriate driving forces that can keep its arm and end effector at the proper position, velocity and acceleration, and simultaneously has to compensate for the effects of the contact forces arising between the tool and the workpiece depending on the needs of the actual technological operation. Balancing the effects of a priori unknown external disturbance forces and the inaccuracies of the available dynamic model of the robot is also important. Technological tasks requiring well prescribed end effector trajectories and contact forces simultaneously are challenging control problems that can be tackled in various manners.

Spatial data infrastructures model for developing countries: A case study of Nigeria

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Signalling in an international cournot model

We consider a trade policy model, where the costs of the home firm are private information but can be signaled through the output levels of the firm to a foreign competitor and a home policymaker. We study the influences of the non-homogeneity of the goods and of the uncertainty on the production costs of the home firm in the signalling strategies by the home firm. We show that some results obtained for homogeneous goods are not robust under non-homogeneity.

Framework for a business interoperability quotient measurement model

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova da Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (MEGI)

Location model for CCA-treated - wood waste remediation units

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciência e Sistemas de Informação Geográfica

EcoTerra Model - application of environmental fiscal reform in local government financing in Portugal

Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation: International and Comparative Perspectives: Volume VI, 699-715

Preserving the validity of the two-Higgs-doublet model up to the Planck scale

We examine the constraints on the two Higgs doublet model (2HDM) due to the stability of the scalar potential and absence of Landau poles at energy scales below the Planck scale. We employ the most general 2HDM that incorporates an approximately Standard Model (SM) Higgs boson with a flavor aligned Yukawa sector to eliminate potential tree-level Higgs-mediated flavor changing neutral currents. Using basis independent techniques, we exhibit robust regimes of the 2HDM parameter space with a 125 GeV SM-like Higgs boson that is stable and perturbative up to the Planck scale. Implications for the heavy scalar spectrum are exhibited.

SOLAP+: extending the interaction model

Thesis submitted to Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Computer Science

Probabilistic maintenance and optimization strategies for deteriorating civil infrastructures

In developed countries, civil infrastructures are one of the most significant investments of governments, corporations, and individuals. Among these, transportation infrastructures, including highways, bridges, airports, and ports, are of huge importance, both economical and social. Most developed countries have built a fairly complete network of highways to fit their needs. As a result, the required investment in building new highways has diminished during the last decade, and should be further reduced in the following years. On the other hand, significant structural deteriorations have been detected in transportation networks, and a huge investment is necessary to keep these infrastructures safe and serviceable. Due to the significant importance of bridges in the serviceability of highway networks, maintenance of these structures plays a major role. In this paper, recent progress in probabilistic maintenance and optimization strategies for deteriorating civil infrastructures with emphasis on bridges is summarized. A novel model including interaction between structural safety analysis,through the safety index, and visual inspections and non destructive tests, through the condition index, is presented. Single objective optimization techniques leading to maintenance strategies associated with minimum expected cumulative cost and acceptable levels of condition and safety are presented. Furthermore, multi-objective optimization is used to simultaneously consider several performance indicators such as safety, condition, and cumulative cost. Realistic examples of the application of some of these techniques and strategies are also presented.

Privatization and social welfare in an international mixed Stackelberg duopoly

Competition between public and private firms exists in a range of industries like telecommunications, electricity, natural gas, airlines industries, as weel as services including hospitals, banking and education. Some authors studied mixed oligopolies under Cournot competition (firms move simultaneously) and some others considered Stackelberg models (firms move sequentially). Tomaru [1] analyzed, in a Cournot model, how decision-making upon cost-reducing R&D investment by a domestic public firm is affected by privatization when competing in the domestic market with a foreign firm. He shows that privatization of the domestic public firm lowers productive efficiency and deteriorates domestic social welfare. In this paper, we examine the same question but in a Stackelberg formulation instead of Cournot. The model is a three-stage game. In the first stage, the domestic firm chooses the amount of cost-reducing R&D investment. Then, the firms compete à la Stackelberg. Two cases are considered: (i) The domestic firm is the leader; (ii) The foreign firm is the leader. We show that the results obtained in [1] for Cournot competition are robust in the sence that they are also true when firms move sequentially.

6D Visual Odometry with Dense Probabilistic Egomotion Estimation

Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications, 361-365, 2013, Barcelona, Spain

Access and information behaviour of European Documentation Centres users in Portugal and Spain: a comparative study

The aim of this study was to undertake a comparative analysis of the practices and information behaviour of European information users who visit information units specialising in European information in Portugal and Spain. The study used a quantitative methodology based on a questionnaire containing closed questions and one open question. The questions covered the general sociological profile of the respondents and their use of European Document Centres, in addition to analysing aspects associated with information behaviour relating to European themes. The study therefore examined data on the preferred means and sources for accessing European information, types of documents and the subjects investigated most. The use of European databases and the Internet to access material on Europe was also studied, together with the reasons which users considered made it easy or difficult to access European information, and the aspects they valued most in accessing this information. The questionnaire was administered in European Document Centres in 2008 and 2010.

A multi-objective model for scheduling of short-term incentive-based demand response programs offered by electricity retailers

In this paper, we formulate the electricity retailers’ short-term decision-making problem in a liberalized retail market as a multi-objective optimization model. Retailers with light physical assets, such as generation and storage units in the distribution network, are considered. Following advances in smart grid technologies, electricity retailers are becoming able to employ incentive-based demand response (DR) programs in addition to their physical assets to effectively manage the risks of market price and load variations. In this model, the DR scheduling is performed simultaneously with the dispatch of generation and storage units. The ultimate goal is to find the optimal values of the hourly financial incentives offered to the end-users. The proposed model considers the capacity obligations imposed on retailers by the grid operator. The profit seeking retailer also has the objective to minimize the peak demand to avoid the high capacity charges in form of grid tariffs or penalties. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is used to solve the multi-objective problem. It is a fast and elitist multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. A case study is solved to illustrate the efficient performance of the proposed methodology. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the model for designing the incentive-based DR programs and indicate the efficiency of NSGA-II in solving the retailers’ multi-objective problem.