Automatic devices for monitoring environmentally induced auto-oxidative degradation of artistic materials in conservation sites

This paper describes an automatic device for in situ and continuous monitoring of the ageing process occurring in natural and synthetic resins widely used in art and in the conservation and restoration of cultural artefacts. The results of tests carried out under accelerated ageing conditions are also presented. This easy-to-assemble palm-top device, essentially consists of oscillators based on quartz crystal resonators coated with films of the organic materials whose response to environmental stress is to be addressed. The device contains a microcontroller which selects at pre-defined time intervals the oscillators and records and stores their oscillation frequency. The ageing of the coatings, caused by the environmental stress and resulting in a shift in the oscillation frequency of the modified crystals, can be straightforwardly monitored in this way. The kinetics of this process reflects the level of risk damage associated with a specific microenvironment. In this case, natural and artificial resins, broadly employed in art and restoration of artistic and archaeological artefacts (dammar and Paraloid B72), were applied onto the crystals. The environmental stress was represented by visible and UV radiation, since the chosen materials are known to be photochemically active, to different extents. In the case of dammar, the results obtained are consistent with previous data obtained using a bench-top equipment by impedance analysis through discrete measurements and confirm that the ageing of this material is reflected in the gravimetric response of the modified quartz crystals. As for Paraloid B72, the outcome of the assays indicates that the resin is resistant to visible light, but is very sensitive to UV irradiation. The use of a continuous monitoring system, apart from being obviously more practical, is essential to identify short-term (i.e. reversible) events, like water vapour adsorption/desorption processes, and to highlight ageing trends or sudden changes of such trends. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

MACHINE VISION FOR AUTOMATICVISUAL INSPECTION OF WOODENRAILWAY SLEEPERS USING UNSUPERVISED NEURAL NETWORKS

The motivation for this thesis work is the need for improving reliability of equipment and quality of service to railway passengers as well as a requirement for cost-effective and efficient condition maintenance management for rail transportation. This thesis work develops a fusion of various machine vision analysis methods to achieve high performance in automation of wooden rail track inspection.The condition monitoring in rail transport is done manually by a human operator where people rely on inference systems and assumptions to develop conclusions. The use of conditional monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to avoid the consequences of failure, before the failure occurs. Manual or automated condition monitoring of materials in fields of public transportation like railway, aerial navigation, traffic safety, etc, where safety is of prior importance needs non-destructive testing (NDT).In general, wooden railway sleeper inspection is done manually by a human operator, by moving along the rail sleeper and gathering information by visual and sound analysis for examining the presence of cracks. Human inspectors working on lines visually inspect wooden rails to judge the quality of rail sleeper. In this project work the machine vision system is developed based on the manual visual analysis system, which uses digital cameras and image processing software to perform similar manual inspections. As the manual inspection requires much effort and is expected to be error prone sometimes and also appears difficult to discriminate even for a human operator by the frequent changes in inspected material. The machine vision system developed classifies the condition of material by examining individual pixels of images, processing them and attempting to develop conclusions with the assistance of knowledge bases and features.A pattern recognition approach is developed based on the methodological knowledge from manual procedure. The pattern recognition approach for this thesis work was developed and achieved by a non destructive testing method to identify the flaws in manually done condition monitoring of sleepers.In this method, a test vehicle is designed to capture sleeper images similar to visual inspection by human operator and the raw data for pattern recognition approach is provided from the captured images of the wooden sleepers. The data from the NDT method were further processed and appropriate features were extracted.The collection of data by the NDT method is to achieve high accuracy in reliable classification results. A key idea is to use the non supervised classifier based on the features extracted from the method to discriminate the condition of wooden sleepers in to either good or bad. Self organising map is used as classifier for the wooden sleeper classification.In order to achieve greater integration, the data collected by the machine vision system was made to interface with one another by a strategy called fusion. Data fusion was looked in at two different levels namely sensor-level fusion, feature- level fusion. As the goal was to reduce the accuracy of the human error on the rail sleeper classification as good or bad the results obtained by the feature-level fusion compared to that of the results of actual classification were satisfactory.

Solar Energy assessment based on weather station data for direct site monitoring in Indonesia

This thesis evaluates different sites for a weather measurement system and a suitable PV- simulation for University of Surabaya (UBAYA) in Indonesia/Java. The weather station is able to monitor all common weather phenomena including solar insolation. It is planned to use the data for scientific and educational purposes in the renewable energy studies. During evaluation and installation it falls into place that official specifications from global meteorological organizations could not be meet for some sensors caused by the conditions of UBAYA campus. After arranging the hardware the weather at the site was monitored for period of time. A comparison with different official sources from ground based and satellite bases measurements showed differences in wind and solar radiation. In some cases the monthly average solar insolation was deviating 42 % for satellite-based measurements. For the ground based it was less than 10 %. The average wind speed has a difference of 33 % compared to a source, which evaluated the wind power in Surabaya. The wind direction shows instabilities towards east compared with data from local weather station at the airport. PSET has the chance to get some investments to investigate photovoltaic on there own roof. With several simulations a suitable roof direction and the yearly and monthly outputs are shown. With a 7.7 kWpeak PV installation with the latest crystalline technology on the market 8.82 MWh/year could be achieved with weather data from 2012. Thin film technology could increase the value up to 9.13 MWh/year. However, the roofs have enough area to install PV. Finally the low price of electricity in Indonesia makes it not worth to feed in the energy into the public grid.

Barriers and facilitators in the provision of post-abortion care at district level in central Uganda : a qualitative study focusing on task sharing between physicians and midwives

Background: Abortion is restricted in Uganda, and poor access to contraceptive methods result in unwanted pregnancies. This leaves women no other choice than unsafe abortion, thus placing a great burden on the Ugandan health system and making unsafe abortion one of the major contributors to maternal mortality and morbidity in Uganda. The existing sexual and reproductive health policy in Uganda supports the sharing of tasks in post-abortion care. This task sharing is taking place as a pragmatic response to the increased workload. This study aims to explore physicians' and midwives' perception of post-abortion care with regard to professional competences, methods, contraceptive counselling and task shifting/sharing in post-abortion care. Methods: In-depth interviews (n = 27) with health care providers of post-abortion care were conducted in seven health facilities in the Central Region of Uganda. The data were organized using thematic analysis with an inductive approach. Results: Post-abortion care was perceived as necessary, albeit controversial and sometimes difficult to provide. Together with poor conditions post-abortion care provoked frustration especially among midwives. Task sharing was generally taking place and midwives were identified as the main providers, although they would rarely have the proper training in post-abortion care. Additionally, midwives were sometimes forced to provide services outside their defined task area, due to the absence of doctors. Different uterine evacuation skills were recognized although few providers knew of misoprostol as a method for post-abortion care. An overall need for further training in post-abortion care was identified. Conclusions: Task sharing is taking place, but providers lack the relevant skills for the provision of quality care. For post-abortion care to improve, task sharing needs to be scaled up and in-service training for both doctors and midwives needs to be provided. Post-abortion care should further be included in the educational curricula of nurses and midwives. Scaled-up task sharing in post-abortion care, along with misoprostol use for uterine evacuation would provide a systematic approach to improving the quality of care and accessibility of services, with the aim of reducing abortion-related mortality and morbidity in Uganda.

The myGrid Notification Service

The notification service is the part of myGrid that enables asynchronous delivery of messages between distributed components. It includes features such as topic-based publish-subscribe messaging, push/pull models, asynchronous delivery, persistence, transient and durable subscriptions, durable topics, negotiation of QoS, hierarchical topic structure and federation of services. Some of these features are novel in the area of messaging middleware. A cost evaluation of some of these features indicate that the overhead incurred is justified in terms of compensating benefits gained.

Describing Web Service Architectures through Design-by-Contract

Architectural description languages (ADLs) are used to specify a high-level, compositional view of a software application, specifying how a system is to be composed from coarse-grain components. ADLs usually come equipped with a formal dynamic semantics, facilitating specification and analysis of distributed and event-based systems. In this paper, we describe the TrustME, an ADL framework that provides both a process and a structural view of web service-based systems. We use Petri-net descriptions to give a dynamic view of business workflow for web service collaboration. We adapt the approach of Schmidt to define a form of Meyer's design-by-contract for configuring workflow architectures. This serves as a configuration-level means of constructing safer, more robust systems.

On Real-Time Monitoring And Control For Efficient Management Of Drinking Water Networks: Barcelona Case Study

Drinking water utilities in urban areas are focused on finding smart solutions facing new challenges in their real-time operation because of limited water resources, intensive energy requirements, a growing population, a costly and ageing infrastructure, increasingly stringent regulations, and increased attention towards the environmental impact of water use. Such challenges force water managers to monitor and control not only water supply and distribution, but also consumer demand. This paper presents and discusses novel methodologies and procedures towards an integrated water resource management system based on advanced ICT technologies of automation and telecommunications for largely improving the efficiency of drinking water networks (DWN) in terms of water use, energy consumption, water loss minimization, and water quality guarantees. In particular, the paper addresses the first results of the European project EFFINET (FP7-ICT2011-8-318556) devoted to the monitoring and control of the DWN in Barcelona (Spain). Results are split in two levels according to different management objectives: (i) the monitoring level is concerned with all the aspects involved in the observation of the current state of a system and the detection/diagnosis of abnormal situations. It is achieved through sensors and communications technology, together with mathematical models; (ii) the control level is concerned with computing the best suitable and admissible control strategies for network actuators as to optimize a given set of operational goals related to the performance of the overall system. This level covers the network control (optimal management of water and energy) and the demand management (smart metering, efficient supply). The consideration of the Barcelona DWN as the case study will allow to prove the general applicability of the proposed integrated ICT solutions and their effectiveness in the management of DWN, with considerable savings of electricity costs and reduced water loss while ensuring the high European standards of water quality to citizens.

Um Middleware reflexivo para apoiar o desenvolvimento de aplicações com requisitos de segurança

Muitos aplicativos atuais, envolvendo diversos domínios de conhecimento, são estruturados como arquiteturas de software que incorporam, além dos requisitos funcionais, requisitos não funcionais, como segurança, por exemplo. Tais requisitos podem constituir um domínio próprio, e, portanto, serem comuns a várias outras arquiteturas de software. Tecnologias como Programação Orientada a Aspectos, Reflexão Computacional e Padrões de Projeto colaboram no desenvolvimento de arquiteturas que provêem a separação de requisitos não funcionais. Porém, sua experimentação e adoção no domínio da segurança computacional ainda é incipiente. O foco deste trabalho é a elaboração de um padrão de projeto voltado à segurança, utilizando como arquitetura conceitual programação orientada a aspectos, e como arquitetura de implementação, reflexão computacional. A composição destas tecnologias resulta em um middleware orientado à segurança, voltado a aplicações desenvolvidas em Java. Estuda-se as tecnologias, seus relacionamentos com a área de segurança, seguido da proposta de uma arquitetura de referência, a partir da qual é extraído um protótipo do middleware de segurança. Este, por sua vez, provê mecanismos de segurança tão transparentes quanto possível para as aplicações que suporta. Com o objetivo de realizar a implementação do middleware de segurança, também são estudadas os mecanismos de segurança da plataforma Java, porém limitado ao escopo deste trabalho. Segue-se o estudo da base conceitual das tecnologias de Reflexão Computacional, o modelo de implementação, seguido de Programação Orientada a Aspectos, o modelo conceitual, e, por fim, têm-se os Padrões de Projeto, a arquitetura de referência. Integrando as três tecnologias apresentadas, propõe-se um modelo, que estabelece a composição de um Padrão Proxy, estruturado de acordo com a arquitetura reflexiva. Este modelo de arquitetura objetiva implementar o aspecto de segurança de acesso a componentes Java, de forma não intrusiva,. Baseado no modelo, descreve-se a implementação dos diversos elementos do middleware, estruturados de forma a ilustrar os conceitos propostos. Ao final, apresenta-se resultados obtidos durante a elaboração deste trabalho, bem como críticas e sugestões de trabalhos futuros.

Implantação de tecnologia de monitoramento remoto para e-service: um estudo exploratório

The purpose of this study is to define measures to increase customer satisfaction and company competitiveness using a remote monitoring technology, in an exploratory study of Alpha Elevator Company (nick name chosen to the company by the actor of the dissertation). Regarding the competitive market, the service industry is striving to achieve productivity, following the example of the manufacturing industry. Nevertheless, these efforts are limited by the amount of hours worked per week, month or year, since the sector charges its services based on the hours spent working on the equipment of the client or based on the numbers of visits. This study is based in the overcoming of the traditional paradigm of selling number of hours by a system of selling results and performance. Employing a remote monitoring system, the elevators under the company service are monitored continually and defects are detected and transmitted to the customer care center, via phone line. The customers can access this data through the Internet and obtain information like availability rate of their elevators and call back response time rate, besides being able to buy products on the company¿s home page and to send feedback. The results were obtained by participating in conferences among experts of the company, in Japan and the United States. Through the analysis of the business environment and based on the bibliographic reference, a strategy was developed to implement e-service as a competitive differentiation.

Cooperação e multi-level governance: o caso do Grande Recife Consórcio de Transporte Metropolitano

As primeiras regiões metropolitanas brasileiras foram instituídas de maneira vertical e autoritária como parte da estratégia de desenvolvimento nacional promovida pelo governo militar. Percebidas como instituições não-democráticas e rejeitadas como possível quarto ente federativo, as regiões metropolitanas, desde a Constituição de 1988, foram gradualmente esvaziadas dos seus propósitos originais. Em sua orfandade, os problemas socioeconômicos proliferaram e foram acentuados, e passaram a predominar relações intergovernamentais competitivas em vez de cooperativas. Um dos principais desafios enfrentados pelo modelo federalista brasileiro, em especial quando se trata destas regiões, está relacionado à necessidade de estabelecer maior cooperação e coordenação, tidas como imprescindíveis para garantir um relacionamento mais equilibrado entre os entes federativos, assim como para a efetiva implementação de políticas de enfrentamento das desigualdades e exclusão social nas aglomerações urbanas. Este trabalho analisa o Grande Recife Consórcio Metropolitano de Transportes (CMT), empresa pública multifederativa estabelecida em 2008 entre os governos municipais e estadual da Região Metropolitana de Recife (RMR). Responsável pelo planejamento, gestão e implementação compartilhada da política de transporte público coletivo na RMR, o Grande Recife se tornou realidade com a aprovação e regulamentação da Lei Federal nº 11.107 de 2005, conhecida como a Lei de Consórcios Públicos. O Grande Recife é uma experiência pioneira e inovadora, demonstrando que é possível encontrar uma maneira de superar conflitos e desafios comuns e, ao mesmo tempo, garantir a preservação da autonomia de cada ente, bem como os direitos cidadãos. Neste trabalho consideramos essa experiência de cooperação intergovernamental como um exemplo de multi-level governance (MLG), uma vez que é ilustrativa de um novo arranjo institucional democrático entre distintas esferas governamentais para a gestão compartilhada de um serviço público.

Performance-based compensation vs. guaranteed compensation: contractual incentives and performance

Top management from retail banks must delegate authority to lower-level managers to operate branches and service centers. Doing so, they must navigate through conflicts of interest, asymmetric information and limited monitoring in designing compensation plans for such agents. Pursuant to this delegation, the banks adopt a system of performance targets and incentives to align the interests of senior management and unit managers. This paper evaluates the causal relationship between performance-based salaries and managers’ effective performance. We use a fixed effects estimator to analyze an unbalanced panel of data from one of the largest Brazilian retail banks during the period from January 2007 to June 2009. The results indicate that agents with guaranteed variable salary contracts demonstrate inferior performance compared with agents who have performance-based compensation packages. We conclude that there is a moral hazard that can be observed in the behavior of agents who are subject to guaranteed variable salary contracts.

Decision rules and information provision : monitoring vs manipulation

We analyze the contractual design problem of a principal who delegates decision-making and information provision. The principal faces two tasks: he has to decide the level of discretion to be granted to the decision-maker and to establish who is in charge of supplying the information. We show that these two choices are intrinsically related. When the decision-maker is granted high discretion, information provision is optimally delegated to the parties directly affected by the decision. Conversely, when the decision-maker enjoys little discretion, it is more desirable to rely on a third impartial agent. The paper helps rationalize some organizational arrangements that are commonly observed in the context of judicial and antitrust decision-making.

Avaliação da qualidade da assistência aos portadores de úlceras venosas atendidos no ambulatório de um hospital universitário em Natal/RN

Study descriptive that was designed to assess the quality of care for people with venous ulcers (VUs) tended at the ambulatory of a university hospital in Natal / RN. The target population of the study was composed by 40 users bearers of venous ulcers served in the ambulatory of angiology of a university hospital in the level of tertiary education. The study received assent of the Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (Protocol No. 169/06). The collect of data was performed using a form of interview and tour with collection of measures biophysiologic, for a team comprised by the researchers and an academic of nursing, in the period of three months. The data were analyzed in SPSS 14.0, using descriptive statistics and presented in the form of charts, tables and graphs. Identified a clientele of holders of VUs predominantly female, married, aged up to 59 years, low level of education and household income, from Natal, retirees or those exercising professions and occupations that require long periods standing or sitting. In relation to the characteristics of health, those surveyed had risk factors for venous disease and had UVs chronic, located in Zone 2, lost tissue in grade II and serous exudates on average quantity. The assistance to holders of UVs has been characterized by a lack of professional nurses and unavailability of products for the realization of the right curative in ambulatory and outside it; by the inadequacy of products used in VUs, for long periods of treatment without resolution, where the compressive therapy is not priority, by the lack of completeness in the levels of assistance; by monitoring the bearer of UVs only by doctors and the nurses, even with the other team of professionals in the health service; by the completion of guidelines by health professionals and the lack the standardization of conducting laboratory and specifics tests. The assistance was assessed as inadequate in aspects: reference and counter-reference (75.0%), number of consultations with angiologists last year (87.5%), documentation of the clinical findings (85.0%), use of compressive therapy in the past 30 days (77.5%), part of the team interdisciplinary (97.5%), completion of laboratory and specifics tests in the last year (100%), availability of products used in achieving the curative in ambulatory (80, 0%), and indication of products used in the conduct of dressing outside the clinic (70.0%) and appropriate in the guidelines made on the use of socks, lifting of the members and prescription of exercises regular (82.5%) and indication products used in achieving the curative in ambulatory (97.5%). We conclude that the assistance provided to holders of UV was inadequate in 80% of cases interviewed, becoming non-resolutive and assistematic

Desempenho dos serviços de atenção primária do município de Natal/RN para o diagnóstico e controle da tuberculose

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most important health problems being faced worldwide. In Brazil, the responsibility for the actions of to diagnosis and control of this disease was transferred to the municipalities within the Primary Health Care (PHC), aiming at improvement in epidemiological indicators, requiring reorientation of the practice of family health teams and requiring methodologies to analyze the extent to which components of the PHC are being achieved. Thus, this study aims to analyze the performance of primary care services in the city of Natal-RN for the diagnosis and control of TB, from the perspective of health professionals (doctors and nurses). The study is descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative. Data collection was conducted from March to July 2011 and involved 121 health professionals working in 52 health units (family health unit, basic health unit and mixed units). The instrument is structured based on the Primary Care Assessment Tool (PCAT), validated and adapted to assess attention to TB in Brazil, and includes questions regarding the Structure and Process components of health services. For quantitative analysis, it was constructed indicators, whose response patterns are followed according to the Likert scale between one and five, which meant the degree of preference relation (or agreement) of the claims. Values between 1 and 3 were considered unsatisfactory for the indicator, between 3 and less than 4, regular, and between 4 and 5, satisfactory. With regard to inputs and equipment, the units had satisfactory condition for form (  = 4.26), consultation (  = 4.02) and basic basket (  = 4.24); regular condition to pot (  = 3.56) and unsatisfactory conditions for transportation tickets (  = 1.50) and sputum smear microscopy (  = 2.42) and X-rays (  = 1.07). In relation to actions, there was satisfactory development for those focused on the individual patient. Actions aimed at the collective level, as the search for respiratory symptoms (RS), monitoring of contacts and guidelines for the community ranged from regular to unsatisfactory (  = 3.16 -  = 1.34). With regard to training, 94,2% received training to identify RS. As regards the time for diagnosis, the median time elapsed between the identification of RS and the beginning of treatment it was 22 days. In relation to the difficulties faced by professionals in the diagnosis of TB, 56,2% reported that they are related only to health services, especially for the failure in the rearguard laboratory and in the specialized services reference, the lack of human and material resources and low performing an active search. The professionals perceive the performance of diagnosis and control of TB, permeated with limitations and barriers to organizational and operational character of various sizes, emerging the need for effective coordination of various sectors and key stakeholders of TB care, to adoption of a new intersectoral strategies that aim to increase the responsiveness of the PHC, providing the best performance in service delivery to the user, family and community, and ensuring effective action and resolving the needs of this population group.

A pessoa idosa com doença crônica não transmissível atendida em serviços de média complexidade na cidade de Natal/RN

The demographic and epidemiological transition process caused by a declining in birth rates and in mortality, also changes occurred in morbidity and mortality is represented by the increasing of the aging population and the raising of chronic diseases. These diseases are characterized by multiple etiologies, risk factors, long latency period, a prolonged evolution, non-infectious origin and it has association with functional impairment and disability. Thus, elderly with chronic non-communicable disease has priority because they belong to a vulnerable group to get affection of comorbidities in aging, with increased demand and spending on health services. This study is aimed to analyse the understanding of elderly people with chronic non comunicable disease in the medium complexity service as a contribution to the improvement of health care in the city of Natal / RN. This is a descriptive and exploratory study with a quantitative approach, carried out at the Specialized Center for Elderly Health Care and at the Pescadores Hospital. The population was composed of 4,180 persons with a sample of 124 elderly aged above 60 years, attended in these medium complexity services. The instrument, a structured form, adapted from a questionnaire for monitoring risk and protective factors for chronic disease of the Ministry of Health. To collect data was was used the interview form containing demographic data, habits, health status and health care services. The results were processed using the Statistical Package for Social Science, version 18.0, analyzed by simple statistics. It was found that most seniors were female, predominantly between 70 and 74 years old, married, with a brown skin tone and Catholic religion, more than half had incomplete basic education, family income between one to two minimum wages and living with their families. Regarding the interviewers lifestyle, 94.4%, of them ate chicken and 97.6%, fruits, it was observed a reduction in smoking, alcoholism habits and physical activity according to the increasing age, 58.1 and 18.5% had insomnia18,5 % used sleeping pills. The elderly (51.6%) reported using services in times of sickness, seeking primary care at first (30.6%), 52% did not receive referral and was looking for free demand (38.7%). The most reported morbidity was hypertension, followed by musculoskeletal disorders. Regarding the difficulties in seeking health services, the delay in treatment and the waiting line were the most cited by the elderly. Almost all of them reported no activities to promote health in these services and those who received individual counseling on chronic diseases. Almost always, the health professionals who care of them, were mostly doctors followed by nurses. Based on the results presented, it is considered that the health services of medium complexity must undergone a more continuous dialogue with other attention level and focus on actions of health promotion and prevention. It is also recommended the necessity for qualified professionals to delivery health care to elderly and the implementation of protocols by a multidisciplinary health team, intending to provide better and continous care for the elderly with chronic diseases. The healthcare professionals who served them, were mostly physicians, followed by nurses. Through the results presented, it is considered that the medium complexity healthcare services need to perform a more continuous dialogue with the other levels of attention focusing attention to the health promotion and prevention actions. It is also recommended the necessity for qualified professionals to delivery healthcare for the elderly, in addition, a protocol implementation for the multidisciplinary health care team, to provide better care, and also the care continuity to elderly with chronic diseases