Fisheries Safety Management

Fisheries is one of the most dangerous professions in the world. Fatal accidents and injuries in the fisheries are characterized as well as particular circumstances that may cause or aggravate the risk of accidents. Aspects of safety management of fishing vessels are covered in this paper: areas of concern when doing a risk assessment in fishing vessels, fundamental elements on a safety management system for the fisheries and the need for international and national level instruments as well as legal and compulsory measures

Management Structure and Work Team Processes; Responsibilities and Responsiveness

This paper explores the management structure of the team-based organization. First it provides a theoretical model of structures and processes of work teams. The structure determines the team’s responsibilities in terms of authority and expertise about specific regulation tasks. The responsiveness of teams to these responsibilities are the processes of teamwork, in terms of three dimensions, indicating to what extent teams indeed use the space provided to them. The research question that this paper addresses is to what extent the position of responsibilities in the team-based organization affect team responsiveness. This is done by two hypotheses. First, the effect of the so-called proximity of regulation tasks is tested. It is expected that the responsibility for tasks positioned higher in the organization (i.e. further from the team) generally has a negative effect on team responsiveness, whereas tasks positioned lower in the organization (i.e. closer to the team) will have a positive effect on the way in which teams respond. Second, the relationship between the number of tasks for which the team is responsible with team responsiveness is tested. Theory suggests that teams being responsible for a larger number of tasks perform better, i.e. show higher responsiveness. These hypotheses are tested by a study of 109 production teams in the automotive industry. The results show that, as the theory predicts, increasing numbers of responsibilities have positive effects on team responsiveness. However, the delegation of expertise to teams seems to be the most important predictor of responsiveness. Also, not all regulation tasks show to have effects on team responsiveness. Most tasks do not show to have any significant effect at all. A number of tasks affects team responsiveness positively, when their responsibility is positioned lower in the organization, but also a number of tasks affects team responsiveness positively when located higher in the organization, i.e. further from the teams in the production. The results indicate that more attention can be paid to the distribution of responsibilities, in particular expertise, to teams. Indeed delegating more expertise improve team responsiveness, however some tasks might be located better at higher organizational levels, indicating that there are limitations to what responsibilities teams can handle.

Concept of Customer Relationship Management as an example of innovation in banking sector

Banks that has introduced CRM system, had to make some difficult changes in their organization in order to become more customer oriented. Beside the pure CRM banks try to adopt other innovative tools related with the core CRM. Some of these solutions are constructed in such a way so that ensured could be also access to the information beside to bank’s organization.

Occupational co-exposure to several mycotoxins in the waste management setting

Contrary to fungi, exposure to mycotoxins is not usually identified as a risk factor present in occupational settings. This is probably due to the inexistence of limits regarding concentration of airborne mycotoxins, and also due to the fact that these compounds are rarely monitored in occupational environments. Despite the optimal conditions for fungal growth and, consequently, for mycotoxins production in all the waste management chain, only a few articles were dedicated to study occupational exposure to mycotoxins in this occupational setting. Aim of study: A study was developed in Portugal aiming to assess occupational co-exposure to mycotoxins in the waste management setting.

Noise management at work

Every single day millions of European workers are exposed to noise at work. One in five of European’s workers have to raise his voice to be heard for at least half of the time that there are at work and 7% suffer from work-related hearing impairment. In Europe noise-induced hearing loss is the most common reported occupational disease. This paper deals with issues related with noise management at work, especially regarding the compliance with the new noise European Directive, (2003/10/EC).

Environmental mycology in public health: fungi and mycotoxins risk assessment and management

Fungi are essential to the survival of our global ecology, but they might pose a significant threat to the health of occupants when they grow in our buildings. The exposure to fungi in homes is a significant risk factor for a number of respiratory symptoms. Well-known illnesses caused by fungi include allergy and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Environmental monitoring for fungi and their disease agents are important aspects of exposure assessment, but few guidelines exist for interpreting their health impacts. This book answers the questions: How does one detect and measure the presence of indoor fungi? What is an acceptable level of indoor fungi? How do we relate this information to human health problems?

ECG signals for biometric applications: are we there yet?

The potential of the electrocardiographic (ECG) signal as a biometric trait has been ascertained in the literature over the past decade. The inherent characteristics of the ECG make it an interesting biometric modality, given its universality, intrinsic aliveness detection, continuous availability, and inbuilt hidden nature. These properties enable the development of novel applications, where non-intrusive and continuous authentication are critical factors. Examples include, among others, electronic trading platforms, the gaming industry, and the auto industry, in particular for car sharing programs and fleet management solutions. However, there are still some challenges to overcome in order to make the ECG a widely accepted biometric. In particular, the questions of uniqueness (inter-subject variability) and permanence over time (intra-subject variability) are still largely unanswered. In this paper we focus on the uniqueness question, presenting a preliminary study of our biometric recognition system, testing it on a database encompassing 618 subjects. We also performed tests with subsets of this population. The results reinforce that the ECG is a viable trait for biometrics, having obtained an Equal Error Rate of 9.01% and an Error of Identification of 15.64% for the entire test population.

Regional governance: strategies and disputes in health region management

OBJECTIVE To analyze the regional governance of the health systemin relation to management strategies and disputes.METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES A qualitative study with health managers from 19 municipalities in the health region of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil. Data were drawn from 17 semi-structured interviews of state, regional, and municipal health policymakers and managers; a focus group; observations of the regional interagency committee; and documents in 2012. The political-institutional and the organizational components were analyzed in the light of dialectical hermeneutics.RESULTS The regional interagency committee is the chief regional governance strategy/component and functions as a strategic tool for strengthening governance. It brings together a diversity of members responsible for decision making in the healthcare territories, who need to negotiate the allocation of funding and the distribution of facilities for common use in the region. The high turnover of health secretaries, their lack of autonomy from the local executive decisions, inadequate technical training to exercise their function, and the influence of party politics on decision making stand as obstacles to the regional interagency committee’s permeability to social demands. Funding is insufficient to enable the fulfillment of the officially integrated agreed-upon program or to boost public supply by the system, requiring that public managers procure services from the private market at values higher than the national health service price schedule (Brazilian Unified Health System Table). The study determined that “facilitators” under contract to health departments accelerated access to specialized (diagnostic, therapeutic and/or surgical) services in other municipalities by direct payment to physicians for procedure costs already covered by the Brazilian Unified Health System.CONCLUSIONS The characteristics identified a regionalized system with a conflictive pattern of governance and intermediate institutionalism. The regional interagency committee’s managerial routine needs to incorporate more democratic devices for connecting with educational institutions, devices that are more permeable to social demands relating to regional policy making.

Efficient middleware for database replication

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Informática

Intervenção da fisioterapia na esclerose múltipla: uma revisão da literatura

Mestrado em Fisioterapia

Oysters return to the Tagus estuary through an ecological model

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of New University of Lisbon for obtaining the degree of Master in Environmental Management Systems

Performance management in primary healthcare services: evidence from a field study

Health services

Multi-agent simulation of bilateral contracting in competitive electricity markets

Traditional vertically integrated power utilities around the world have evolved from monopoly structures to open markets that promote competition among suppliers and provide consumers with a choice of services. Market forces drive the price of electricity and reduce the net cost through increased competition. Electricity can be traded in both organized markets or using forward bilateral contracts. This article focuses on bilateral contracts and describes some important features of an agent-based system for bilateral trading in competitive markets. Special attention is devoted to the negotiation process, demand response in bilateral contracting, and risk management. The article also presents a case study on forward bilateral contracting: a retailer agent and a customer agent negotiate a 24h-rate tariff. © 2014 IEEE.

Scheduling a cutting and treatment stainless steel sheet line with self-management capabilities

With advancement in computer science and information technology, computing systems are becoming increasingly more complex with an increasing number of heterogeneous components. They are thus becoming more difficult to monitor, manage, and maintain. This process has been well known as labor intensive and error prone. In addition, traditional approaches for system management are difficult to keep up with the rapidly changing environments. There is a need for automatic and efficient approaches to monitor and manage complex computing systems. In this paper, we propose an innovative framework for scheduling system management by combining Autonomic Computing (AC) paradigm, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and Nature Inspired Optimization Techniques (NIT). Additionally, we consider the resolution of realistic problems. The scheduling of a Cutting and Treatment Stainless Steel Sheet Line will be evaluated. Results show that proposed approach has advantages when compared with other scheduling systems

A Web-Based geographical information system prototype on Portuguese traditional food products

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