Utilização do instrumento "Mini-mental state examination" em crianças escolares de 6 a 11 anos da rede de ensino particular de Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil

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A BDI-based approach for the assessment of driver's decision-making in commuter scenarios

The rapid growth of urban areas has a significant impact on traffic and transportation systems. New management policies and planning strategies are clearly necessary to cope with the more than ever limited capacity of existing road networks. The concept of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) arises in this scenario; rather than attempting to increase road capacity by means of physical modifications to the infrastructure, the premise of ITS relies on the use of advanced communication and computer technologies to handle today’s traffic and transportation facilities. Influencing users’ behaviour patterns is a challenge that has stimulated much research in the ITS field, where human factors start gaining great importance to modelling, simulating, and assessing such an innovative approach. This work is aimed at using Multi-agent Systems (MAS) to represent the traffic and transportation systems in the light of the new performance measures brought about by ITS technologies. Agent features have good potentialities to represent those components of a system that are geographically and functionally distributed, such as most components in traffic and transportation. A BDI (beliefs, desires, and intentions) architecture is presented as an alternative to traditional models used to represent the driver behaviour within microscopic simulation allowing for an explicit representation of users’ mental states. Basic concepts of ITS and MAS are presented, as well as some application examples related to the subject. This has motivated the extension of an existing microscopic simulation framework to incorporate MAS features to enhance the representation of drivers. This way demand is generated from a population of agents as the result of their decisions on route and departure time, on a daily basis. The extended simulation model that now supports the interaction of BDI driver agents was effectively implemented, and different experiments were performed to test this approach in commuter scenarios. MAS provides a process-driven approach that fosters the easy construction of modular, robust, and scalable models, characteristics that lack in former result-driven approaches. Its abstraction premises allow for a closer association between the model and its practical implementation. Uncertainty and variability are addressed in a straightforward manner, as an easier representation of humanlike behaviours within the driver structure is provided by cognitive architectures, such as the BDI approach used in this work. This way MAS extends microscopic simulation of traffic to better address the complexity inherent in ITS technologies.

European business schools and global leadership: an examination of the admission criteria of the european master in management programs ranked by the Financial Times 2010

O aumento de empresas que operam internacionalmente requer o desenvolvimento de líderes mundiais para colocar as estratégias em prática. Embora este processo de desenvolvimento é importante para o mundo corporativo, muitos futuros executivos são graduados de escolas de administração de empresas que estão intimamente ligados ao mundo de negócios e, portanto, desempenhão um papel importante no processo. Esta pesquisa examina se os programas europeus “Master in Management” classificado pelo Financial Times em 2010 selecionam aqueles candidatos que são mais adequados para o desenvolvimento de liderança global. Portanto, três anteriores meta-estudos são sintetizados para produzir um perfil de competências classificadas de um líder global. Então, informações sobre os critérios de admissão dos programas de mestrado são coletadas e comparadas com este perfil. Os resultados mostram que seis competências são medidas por mais da metade dos programas: proficiência em Inglês, capacidade analítica (racionamento lógico e quantitativo), capacidade de comunicação, conhecimento do negócio global, determinação para alcançar, motivação e capacidade interpessoal. Além disso, as habilidades operacionais requerentes pelos líderes globais não são significativas no processo de admissão e o foco é sobre as habilidades analíticas. Comparação dos resultados com o perfil anteriormente desenvolvido abrangente indica que uma quantidade significativa de programas pode subestimar o significado de habilidades pessoais e características para o desenvolvimento de líderes globais.

Sports administration: an examination of the competitive balance concept through european and brazilian domestic soccer leagues comparison

A questão do Equilíbrio Competitivo é um tema importante da economia dos esportes profissionais nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Muitas pesquisas foram feitas para estabelecer os critérios mais relevantes para avaliar a competitividade das ligas profissionais de futebol. Esta pesquisa analisou a relevância do Equilíbrio Competitivo como determinante da competitividade comparando o Brasileirão Série A com as nove principais ligas na Europa (Bélgica, Inglaterra, Alemanha, Holanda, França, Itália, Portugal, Escócia e Espanha). A competitividade é a capacidade de uma empresa (um clube) ou de uma indústria de enfrentar a concorrência efetiva ou potencial. A medida da competitividade deve levar em consideração uma série de fatores importantes como a qualidade e a relação qualidade/preço, a gestão de recursos humanos e a organização empresarial. Esse trabalho visa demonstrar que, apesar da incerteza do resultado ter sido considerado por muito tempo como um fator positivo de atratividade/interesse dos fãs nos esportes, um campeonato equilibrado poderia ter um efeito insignificante, para não dizer desprezível sobre a competitividade das ligas de futebol a longo prazo. Os resultados mostraram que o aumento do Equilíbrio Competitivo pode ser relevante para os campeonatos mais fracos (Bélgica, Holanda, Portugal, Escócia), mas nao dos cincos melhores (Alemanha, Espanha, França, Inglaterra, Itália). Consequentemente, o Equilíbrio Competitivo deve ser contemplado como uma variável desprezível quanto à competitividade das ligas de futebol, apesar do interesse crescente pelo conceito na literatura. Baseado principalmente em pesquisas de Dell'Osso e Symanski (1991) e de Oughton e Michie (2004), o índice HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman) tem sido utilizado para determinar o nível de concentração de 11 ligas de futebol estudadas. Uma revisão da literatura sobre administração de futebol e esportes foi realizada.

Application and analysis of the affinities diagram on the examination of usability problems among older adults

Older adults have been facing usability problems every day, and with the increasing of life expectation those issues will be more and more frequent. The study of this group capacities and limitations could help designers to project systems more usable to everyone

Development of phantom for radiographic image optimization of standard patient in the lateral view of chest and skull examination

We present the construction of a homogeneous phantom to be used in simulating the scattering and absorption of X-rays by a standard patient chest and skull when irradiated laterally. This phantom consisted of Incite and aluminium plates with their thickness determined by a tomographic exploratory method applied to the anthropomorphic phantom. Using this phantom, an optimized radiographic technique was established for chest and skull of standard sized patient in lateral view. Images generated with this optimized technique demonstrated improved image quality and reduced radiation doses. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Phantom development for radiographic image optimization of chest, skull and pelvis examination for nonstandard patient

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

Motile sperm organelle morphology examination is stricter than Tygerberg criteria

The present study aimed to evaluate the correlation between the motile sperm organelle morphology examination (MSOME) and a well-known sperm morphology classification (Tygerberg criteria). For MSOME, spermatozoa were analysed at x8400 magnification by inverted microscope equipped with Nomarski differential interference contrast optics, Uplan Apo x 100 oil/1.35 objective lens and variable zoom lens. By Tygerberg criteria, the semen underwent morphological evaluation as described in the literature. Regression analysis demonstrated significant positive correlation between percentage of normal sperm forms by Tygerberg criteria and by MSOME (r = 0.83, P < 0.0001). However, the incidence of normal spermatozoa by Tygerberg criteria (9.4%) was significantly higher (P < 0.0001) than under MSOME (3.3%). Despite the highly positive correlation, MSOME is a much stricter criterion of sperm morphology classification, since it identifies vacuoles and chromatin abnormalities that are not evaluated with the same precision by the analysis of Tygerberg criteria. MSOME should be included among the routine criteria for semen analysis. In addition, MSOME should be used for selection of spermatozoa for intracytoplasmic sperm injection based on the already published literature, as this is a good selection tool.

Correlation between semen analysis by motile sperm organelle morphology examination and sperm DNA damage

Regression analysis of 538 semen samples demonstrated that percentages of normal nuclear sperm and all spermatozoa with abnormalities of nuclear form at high magnification had significant negative correlation with percentages of DNA fragmentation. on the other hand, there was a positive correlation between percentages of spermatozoa with nuclear vacuoles and those with DNA fragmentation. (Fertil Steril (R) 2010;94:1937-40. (C) 2010 by American Society for Reproductive Medicine.)