Design of a crushing and agglomeration process for manufacturing bagasse charcoal

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-34).In Haiti, wood and wood charcoal are common fuels for cooking. This practice has contributed to deforestation, leading to erosion and fatal floods. The availability of charcoal made from a different source other than wood, such as agricultural waste, might provide Haitians with an alternative, more sustainable fuel, which in turn may reduce fuel prices. MIT students have developed various methods for producing charcoal out of simple inexpensive devices. In a current manufacturing process, carbonized bagasse is crushed to a powder, then mixed and agglomerated with yucca binder into balls. A novel method may reduce operator exposure and inhalation of charcoal fines by keeping primary manufacturing phases in the oil drum and reducing the operational steps of transferring the material from one location to another. The goal of this thesis was to understand, test, and optimize the parameters of this novel crushing and agglomeration process. The final prototype was found to effectively crushing charcoal and mix charcoal with binder to some extent, while being an inexpensive alternative to reduce overall charcoal exposure. However, the mixing and agglomeration was not sufficiently uniform and further designs should be considered to increase uniformity of mixing of binder and charcoal.by Victoria Y. Fan.S.B

Human Resources for Health Observer Series No. 16

This study on the health workforce is based on data at district level from the Indian census of 2001. The census of India 2001 canvassed information on the occupation of main and marginal workers, which is coded using the National Classification of occupations (NCO) 2004 at four-digit level. There are 19 distinct occupations of health workers at the four-digit level in NCO, which have been aggregated into nine separate categories for the purposes of this study (Table 1). In addition, we have further aggregated some of these categories to form relevant groups, namely all health workers, all doctors and nurses, all doctors and AYUSH doctors. The data for this study were specifically extracted for each district in the country from the 2001 census by the Office of the Registrar General of India. These data on main plus marginal health workers consist of district tables that cross-classify the nine health worker categories by four education levels and by medical qualification; the data are also disaggregated by urban-rural stratum and gender of worker. This information is contained in four pages of tables for each of the country’s 593 districts

Performance-based fi nancing at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: an analysis of grant ratings and funding, 2003–12

Background Performance-based fi nancing can be used by global health funding agencies to improve programme performance and thus value for money. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was one of the fi rst global-health funders to deploy a performance-based fi nancing system. However, its complex, multistep system for calculating and paying on grant ratings has several components that are subjective and discretionary. We aimed to test the association between grant ratings and disbursements, an indication of the extent to which incentives for performance are transmitted to grant recipients. Methods We obtained publicly available data for 508 Global Fund grants from 2003 to 2012 with performance ratings and corresponding disbursements, merged with other datasets that contained data for relevant country characteristics. We used regression analysis to identify predictors of grant disbursements in phase 2 (typically the latter 3 of 5 years of a grant), using two dependent variables: whether a grant had any phase-2 disbursements, and the phase-2 disbursement amount. In a separate analysis, we also investigated the predictors of grant performance ratings. Findings Grant performance rating in phase 1 was positively associated with having any disbursements in phase 2, but no association was seen between phase-1 ratings and phase-2 disbursement amounts. Further more, performance ratings are not replicable by external observers, both because subjective and discretionary decisions are made in the generation of performance measures and because the underlying data are not available. Interpretation The Global Fund’s present performance-based funding system does not adequately convey incentives for performance to recipients, and the organisation should redesign this system to explicitly link a portion of the funds to a simple performance measure in health coverage or outcomes, measured independently and robustly

Emergence, convergence, and differentiation of organizational forms of health data governance: The U.S. All-payer Claims Databases (APCD) movement

In this research we are investigating how different organizational forms of data governance develop in response to the opportunities and challenges to aggregate, curate, and utilize digital health data for health systems improvement and market regulation. We are examining (i) how/when do governance arrangements coalesce around specific domains of health data resources as identifiable organizational forms; (ii) what influences how (or whether) these forms develop in a health care market, and (iii) what factors contribute to convergence or divergence in organizational forms across markets? To address these questions, we are conducting an in-depth, multi-level field study of the movement to establish all payer claims database (APCD) organizations in the U.S. healthcare sector. Among states with an APCD there is substantial variety in the data domains, stakeholders, governance goals and structures of the organization, indicating local variation and divergence, as well interstate and national initiatives to encourage convergence along some dimensions. This provides a rich opportunity to study institutional and market factors that contribute to (or inhibit) emergence, convergence, or divergence of health data governance forms and the implications for health care sector management and improvement that may result. In this paper we report preliminary findings and analysis of this study

La promoción de los nuevos medios de comunicación para el aprendizaje de idiomas. El caso del aprendizaje de la lengua española en China

Con el rápido desarrollo de la tecnología de la comunicación y de Internet, emergen nuevos medios de comunicación, el modo de transmisión y el sistema de la difusión de información se actualizan constantemente. En el campo educativo, la tecnología y los nuevos medios de comunicación también han provocado muchos cambios como la metodología, el diseño de la enseñanza, las actividades escolares, etc. En China, el idioma español fue considerado como una lengua minoritaria, ya que un pequeño número de universidades e instituciones ofrecieron cursos para aprender este idioma, su cultura y literatura. Mucha gente no tuvo acceso directo para aprender esta lengua. Gracias al desarrollo rápido de la tecnología de comunicación y de Internet, la forma tradicional de aprender idiomas ha cambiado y, al mismo tiempo, también enfrenta nuevos desafíos. Esta trabajo tiene como objetivo investigar cómo se podría mejorar el aprendizaje del español por medio del uso de las tecnologías de la información y comunicación. Los objetivos incluyen: analizar cómo los nuevos medios de comunicación cambian y promueven el aprendizaje de idiomas, cómo construir un modo más racional y eficiente para estudio, cómo utilizar diversos recursos y plataformas para el aprendizaje efectivo de español. Este estudio se desarrolló dentro de la metodología comparativa y cualitativa, considerando que todo este trabajo investiga cómo las tecnologías de la información y comunicación promueven el aprendizaje del idioma español en China, también ha tomado la metodología de investigación analítica para investigar los casos concretos.With the rapid development of communication and Internet technology, several new media emerged, the mode of transmission and the environment of information dissemination are constantly updated. In the field of education, new media have also brought many changes, for example educational thinking, the design of teaching and school activities have undergone varying degrees of change. In China, the Spanish language was once considered a minority language, only a small number of universities and institutions offered courses to learn this language and study the Hispanic culture and literature, most people had no direct route to know and learn this language. Thanks to the speed, interactivity and initiative of communication technology and the Internet, the traditional way of learning languages has changed, and at the same time, it also faces new challenges. This work aims to investigate how to serve better Spanish language learning through information and communication technologies. The objectives include: how the new media of communication promote language study and the educational changes they bring, how to construct a more rational and efficient learning of languages, how to use various terminals and various platforms for effective learning of Spanish. This study was developed within the comparative and qualitative methodology, considering that all this work investigates the technologies of the information and communication how they promote the learning of the Spanish language in China. It has also taken the analytical research method to investigate specific cases

Cómo funcionan los nuevos medios de comunicación en alfabetización mediática. Caso de habitantes en pueblos chinos

En el interior de China, había millones de pueblos pequeños que no tenían Internet, las noticias llegaron allí tarde, pero el móvil inteligente ha cambiado esta situación con una velocidad asombrosa. Solo con Wifi o Megas, ya pueden conectar a Internet. El bajo coste de móvil inteligente y megas de compañías chinas, hacen que el profundo abismo digital entre el interior y exterior de China haya disminuido y que no haya tanta dependencia de la computadora.In the interior of China, there were millions of small towns that did not have the Internet, the news always arrived late, but the smartphone has changed this situation with an astonished speed. With just Wifi or 3G/4G, they can easily connect with the Internet. The low cost of smart digital mobiles and 3G/4G of Chinese companies make that the huge difference of the interior and exterior of China diminished, and also jumped from the step of dependence of the computer

Global Budget Payment: Proposing the CAP Framework

To control ever-increasing costs, global budget payment has gained attention but has unclear impacts on health care systems. We propose the CAP framework that helps navigate 3 domains of difficult design choices in global budget payment: Constraints in resources (capitation vs facility-based budgeting; hard vs soft budget constraints), Agent-principal in resource allocation (individual vs group providers in resource allocation; single vs multiple pipes), and Price adjustment. We illustrate the framework with empirical examples and draw implications for policy makers

Going beyond GDP with a parsimonious indicator : inequality-adjusted healthy lifetime income

Per capita GDP has limited use as a well-being indicator because it does not capture many dimensions that imply a good life, such as health and equality of opportunity. However, per capita GDP has the virtues of easy interpretation and can be calculated with manageable data requirements. Against this backdrop, a need exists for a measure of well-being that preserves the advantages of per capita GDP, but also includes health and equality. We propose a new parsimonious indicator to fill this gap and calculate it for 149 countries