Indoor Air quality related to occupancy at an air-conditioned public building

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

Sair curado para a vida e para o bem: diagramas, linhas e dispersão de forças no complexus nosoespacial do Hospital de Caridade Juvino Barreto (1909-1927)

This work has as object of study the Hospital de Caridade Juvino Barreto, nosocomial institution located in the city of Natal (RN), between the Praia de Areia Preta and the Monte Petrópolis, focusing on the period from 1909, the year in which the new hospital building was constructed and opened, and 1927, the date of the transfer of administration of the public domain to the newly created Sociedade de Assistência Hospitalar (SAH). We study the conditions of possibility of the emergence of this hospital space in the urban environment of the capital of Rio Grande do Norte, seeking to understand the different tactics and strategies implemented by the historical subjects involved in the formation of this institution nosocomial. Starting from a corpus of documents consisting of medical memories (with Dr. Januário Cicco as privileged observer), information present in newspapers (the Republic and the Christmas Journa l), photo collection and extensive administrative and legal material (Speeches, Exhibitions, Reports, Laws and Resolutions), we analyzed in detail the medical geography of HCJB, relating the discourses of medicine and geography in choosing the spatial location of the hospital as we examine the architecture of the hospital, its inner spat iality, divisions, forms of space control, and, finally, we discuss the medical practices that took place within it, leading us in this regard, from the experiences of clinical hospital chief, Dr. Januário Cicco, especially the discussion on "ethics" in hospital work. The perception of HCJB as medical nosoespaciality always on the move, incorporated under taxonomic principles based on difference and dispersion forces, led us to articulate it theoretically from the conceptual-methodological arsenal of philosopher Michel Foucault, particularly his reflections of genealogical phase, focusing on the phenomenon of power, a position that allows us to enhance our space-hospital construction, invention, product of power relations, which give the unfinished aspect nosocômio, apparent, always at stake, perpetual non-modeling possibility has previously defined array, establishing it at the field of possible, of virtuality, of power: hospital that could have been and that it was not. Indeed, the investigation of various aspects/elements of hospital space Juvino Barreto revealed us new dimensions of hospital space, far more complex than the simple and the current idea of a place to shelter patients: plasticity and fluidity of space, which is not made to circumscribe the limits of empeiria, engraving up to strength relations fought between different subject; its Constitution as a transitional space, Heterotopic, doing live inside modern elements with premoderns (professional doctors working with religious thought, skeptical of positivist medicine living with the religious faith of the nuns of Santana); the impossibility of thinking hospital space of HCJB while homogeneous unit, static, transistoric, making the spatiality, without considering the profound differences, fractures and dislocations that animated his own existence, multiplying their expressions of identity

A Methodology for Building Service-Oriented Applications in the Presence of Non-Functional Properties

This thesis presents ⇡SOD-M (Policy-based Service Oriented Development Methodology), a methodology for modeling reliable service-based applications using policies. It proposes a model driven method with: (i) a set of meta-models for representing non-functional constraints associated to service-based applications, starting from an use case model until a service composition model; (ii) a platform providing guidelines for expressing the composition and the policies; (iii) model-to-model and model-to-text transformation rules for semi-automatizing the implementation of reliable service-based applications; and (iv) an environment that implements these meta-models and rules, and enables the application of ⇡SOD-M. This thesis also presents a classification and nomenclature for non-functional requirements for developing service-oriented applications. Our approach is intended to add value to the development of service-oriented applications that have quality requirements needs. This work uses concepts from the service-oriented development, non-functional requirements design and model-driven delevopment areas to propose a solution that minimizes the problem of reliable service modeling. Some examples are developed as proof of concepts

Ecological modeling and pest population management: a possible and necessary connection in a changing world

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

The U-isotopes modeling in aquifers from Pocos de Caldas plateau, Brazil

U-modeled groundwater residence times were estimated by changes in U-234/U-238 activity ratio (AR) and U content of groundwaters from Pocos de Caldas city situated at the Pocos de Caldas alkaline massif, Brazil. The estimated ages are more realistic than others generated by the use of hydraulic conductivity data and available information about the weathering rate of rocks in the plateau. The U-234/U-238 AR and reciprocal of the dissolved U-content data also defined a ternary plot that allowed the calculation of the relative volume of three source waters for the mixed water. Such U-isotopes modeling for mixing calculations indicated that the dominant phase (68%) in the mixture is thermal.

Parmodel: a web server for automated comparative modeling of proteins

Parmodel is a web server for automated comparative modeling and evaluation of protein structures. The aim of this tool is to help inexperienced users to perform modeling, assessment, visualization, and optimization of protein models as well as crystallographers to evaluate structures solved experimentally. It is subdivided in four modules: Parmodel Modeling, Parmodel Assessment, Parmodel Visualization, and Parmodel Optimization. The main module is the Parmodel Modeling that allows the building of several models ford a same protein in a reduced time, through the distribution of modeling processes on a Beowulf cluster. Parmodel automates and integrates the main softwares used in comparative modeling as MODELLER, Whatcheck, Procheck, Raster3D, Molscript, and Gromacs. This web server is freely accessible at http://www.biocristalografia.df.ibilce.unesp.br/tools/parmodel. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A STORM* environment for building multimedia presentations

This paper describes an environment for constructing multimedia applications which are used to present different multimedia database objects in accordance with spatiotemporal constraints and from different sources. The main contribution of this paper is to propose an environment which integrates both a modelling case tool and an object-oriented database system.

Modeling hourly diffuse solar-radiation in the city of São Paulo using a neural-network technique

dIn this work, a perceptron neural-network technique is applied to estimate hourly values of the diffuse solar-radiation at the surface in São Paulo City, Brazil, using as input the global solar-radiation and other meteorological parameters measured from 1998 to 2001. The neural-network verification was performed using the hourly measurements of diffuse solar-radiation obtained during the year 2002. The neural network was developed based on both feature determination and pattern selection techniques. It was found that the inclusion of the atmospheric long-wave radiation as input improves the neural-network performance. on the other hand traditional meteorological parameters, like air temperature and atmospheric pressure, are not as important as long-wave radiation which acts as a surrogate for cloud-cover information on the regional scale. An objective evaluation has shown that the diffuse solar-radiation is better reproduced by neural network synthetic series than by a correlation model. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analog Modeling of Human Cognitive Functions with Tripartite Synapses

Searching for an understanding of how the brain supports conscious processes, cognitive scientists have proposed two main classes of theory: Global Workspace and Information Integration theories. These theories seem to be complementary, but both still lack grounding in terms of brain mechanisms responsible for the production of coherent and unitary conscious states. Here we propose following James Robertson's "Astrocentric Hypothesis" - that conscious processing is based on analog computing in astrocytes. The "hardware" for these computations is calcium waves mediated by adenosine triphosphate signaling. Besides presenting our version of this hypothesis, we also review recent findings on astrocyte morphology that lend support to their functioning as Local Hubs (composed of protoplasmic astrocytes) that integrate synaptic activity, and as a Master Hub (composed, in the human brain, by a combination of interlaminar, fibrous, polarized and varicose projection astrocytes) that integrates whole-brain activity.

Molecular modeling databases: A new way in the search of protein targets for drug development

DBMODELING is a relational database of annotated comparative protein structure models and their metabolic, pathway characterization. It is focused on enzymes identified in the genomes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Xylella fastidiosa. The main goal of the present database is to provide structural models to be used in docking simulations and drug design. However, since the accuracy of structural models is highly dependent on sequence identity between template and target, it is necessary to make clear to the user that only models which show high structural quality should be used in such efforts. Molecular modeling of these genomes generated a database, in which all structural models were built using alignments presenting more than 30% of sequence identity, generating models with medium and high accuracy. All models in the database are publicly accessible at http://www.biocristalografia.df.ibilce.unesp.br/tools. DBMODELING user interface provides users friendly menus, so that all information can be printed in one stop from any web browser. Furthermore, DBMODELING also provides a docking interface, which allows the user to carry out geometric docking simulation, against the molecular models available in the database. There are three other important homology model databases: MODBASE, SWISSMODEL, and GTOP. The main applications of these databases are described in the present article. © 2007 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.

Orientation, building height and sky view factor as energy efficiency design parameters

The energy efficiency of buildings should be a goal at the pre-design phase, though the importance of the design variables is often neglected even during the design process. Highlighting the relevance of these design variables, this research studies the relationships of building location variables with the electrical energy consumption of residential units. The following building design parameters are considered: orientation, story height and sky view factor (SVF). The consideration of the SVF as a location variable contributes to the originality of this research. Data of electrical energy consumption and users' profiles were collected and several variables were considered for the development of an Artificial Neural Network model. This model allows the determination of the relative importance of each variable. The results show that the apartments' orientation is the most important design variable for the energy consumption, although the story height and the sky view factor play a fundamental role in that consumption too. We pointed out that building heights above twenty-four meters do not optimize the energy efficiency of the apartments and also that an increasing SVF can influence the energy consumption of an apartment according to their orientation.

Enterprise systems modeling: The ERP5 development process

The design and implementation of an ERP system involves capturing the information necessary for implementing the system's structure and behavior that support enterprise management. This process should start on the enterprise modeling level and finish at the coding level, going down through different abstraction layers. For the case of Free/Open Source ERP, the lack of proper modeling methods and tools jeopardizes the advantages of source code availability. Moreover, the distributed, decentralized decision-making, and source-code driven development culture of open source communities, generally doesn't rely on methods for modeling the higher abstraction levels necessary for an ERP solution. The aim of this paper is to present a model driven development process for the open source ERP ERP5. The proposed process covers the different abstraction levels involved, taking into account well established standards and common practices, as well as new approaches, by supplying Enterprise, Requirements, Analysis, Design, and Implementation workflows. Copyright 2008 ACM.

Towards an information society measurement instrument for Latin America and the Caribbean: getting started with census, household and business surveys

Includes bibliography

Brazil and India: two BRICs as a building bloc for South-South cooperation""

Includes Bibliography

Building sustainable values in organizations with the support of human resource management: Evidence from one firm considered as the 'best place to work' in Brazil

Researchers and other professionals unanimously agree that companies should become more sustainable, but this will not happen without the support of human resource management. Paradoxically, there is a lack of information on the support human resource management offers to organizational sustainability applied to real cases. Therefore, this research presents a case study on this topic that was carried out in a leading Brazilian company, which is considered as a model and has been selected as 'the best place to work in the country'. The results provide practical examples of how this family company has been working to guarantee an increasingly sustainable performance with the support of human resources, highlighting the achievements and challenges the company has faced. One of the main results indicates that companies seeking to achieve sustainability need the assistance of the human resource field in order to design a communication system which bridges the gap between practices and sustainable values. © 2012 Management Centre for Human Values.