Optimization of Dengue Epidemics: a test case with different discretization schemes

The incidence of Dengue epidemiologic disease has grown in recent decades. In this paper an application of optimal control in Dengue epidemics is presented. The mathematical model includes the dynamic of Dengue mosquito, the affected persons, the people's motivation to combat the mosquito and the inherent social cost of the disease, such as cost with ill individuals, educations and sanitary campaigns. The dynamic model presents a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The problem was discretized through Euler and Runge Kutta schemes, and solved using nonlinear optimization packages. The computational results as well as the main conclusions are shown.Comment: Presented at the invited session "Numerical Optimization" of the 7th International Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics (ICNAAM 2009), Rethymno, Crete, Greece, 18-22 September 2009; RepositoriUM, id: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/1083

Dimensionless Fluctuation Balance Principle: New Statistical Perspectives Applied to Boltzmann, Planck, Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein and Schr\"odinger Distributions

In this work we propose a completely new way to obtain statistics distributions from fluctuations balance. By dimensionless fluctuation analysis we obtain Boltzmann, Planck, Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein and Schr\"odinger Distributions using the same fundamental principle. Our result point to a general foundation that was successful verified to principal Physics Distributions. We name it as Dimensionless Fluctuation Balance Principle. This is a great achievement which enable us to discuss exchange between different physical quantities, like we do when treat energy conservation when some type of energy is converted to another, but with more generality, because we can exchange one physical quantity to any other. All physics model which needs distribution can take advantage of methodology presented in this paper including: Statistical Physics, Schr\"odinger's Quantum Mechanics, Nanomaterials, Thin Films and New Materials Modeling. Keywords: Fluctuations, PDEs, Boltzmann, Planck, Entropy, Fermi-Dirac, Bose-Einstein, Schr\"odinger, Distributions

The Potential Clinical and Economic Value of Primary Tumour Identification in Metastatic Cancer of Unknown Primary Tumour: A Population-Based Retrospective Matched Cohort Study.

PurposeSeveral genomic tests have recently been developed to identify the primary tumour in cancer of unknown primary tumour (CUP). However, the value of identifying the primary tumour in clinical practice for CUP patients remains questionable and difficult to prove in randomized trials.ObjectiveWe aimed to assess the clinical and economic value of primary tumour identification in CUP using a retrospective matched cohort study.MethodsWe used the Manitoba Cancer Registry to identify all patients initially diagnosed with metastatic cancer between 2002 and 2011. We defined patients as having CUP if their primary tumour was found 6 months or more after initial diagnosis or never found during the course of disease. Otherwise, we considered patients to have metastatic cancer from a known primary tumour (CKP). We linked all patients with Manitoba Health databases to estimate their direct healthcare costs using a phase-of-care approach. We used the propensity score matching technique to match each CUP patient with a CKP patient on clinicopathologic characteristics. We compared treatment patterns, overall survival (OS) and phase-specific healthcare costs between the two patient groups and assessed association with OS using Cox regression adjustment.ResultsOf 5839 patients diagnosed with metastatic cancer, 395 had CUP (6.8%); 1:1 matching created a matched group of 395 CKP patients. CUP patients were less likely to receive surgery, radiation, hormonal and targeted therapy and more likely to receive cytotoxic empiric chemotherapeutic agents. Having CUP was associated with reduced OS (hazard ratio [HR] 1.31; 95% confidence interval 1.1-1.58), but this lost statistical significance with adjustment for treatment differences. CUP patients had a significant increase in the mean net cost of initial diagnostic workup before diagnosis and a significant reduction in the mean net cost of continuing cancer care.ConclusionIdentifying the primary tumour in CUP patients might enable the use of more effective therapies, improve OS and allow more efficient allocation of healthcare resources

Bibliometric trend analysis of non-conventional (alternative) therapies in veterinary research

Background: There is an increased interest in Non-Conventional Therapies (NCTs), often referred to as complementary and alternative medicines, in veterinary clinical practice. Aim: To map the bibliometric outputs of NCTs in veterinary medicine, and identify which are most prevalent, and the extent to which their publishing has increased. Methods: Text mining algorithms were applied to detect 17 NCTs-related terms (acupuncture, ayurveda/ayurvedic, traditional Chinese medicine, traditional medicine, chiropractic, electroacupuncture, essential oil, plant extract, ethnopharmacology, herbal medicine, homeopathy, low-level laser therapy, medicinal plant, natural product, osteopathy, phytotherapy, and massage) in the title, abstract or keywords of all retrievable literature until 2020 under the PubMed MeSH term ‘veterinary’ (N = 377 556). Point prevalence, incidence by decade and cumulative incidence were calculated. Results: Bibliometric trend analysis revealed an overall increase in NCTs-related terms over the last 20 years, with a substantial growth of studies mentioning plant extracts, essential oils and medicinal plants. Traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine and natural product have also increased in the same period, although their numbers remain low. Conversely, reference to acupuncture has decreased in the last decade when compared with the previous decade, whereas references to homeopathy, electroacupuncture, osteopathy and chiropractic remained scarce, suggesting that their use in veterinary clinical practice may not be based on published evidence. Conclusion: Further reviews to explore this issue are warranted, differentiating secondary from primary literature, and assessing relevance and methodological quality of individual studies, following the principles of evidence-based veterinary medicine

RISO-GCT – Determinação do contexto temporal de conceitos em textos.

Devido ao crescimento constante da quantidade de textos disponíveis na Web, existe uma necessidade de catalogar estas informações que surgem a cada instante. No entanto, trata-se de uma tarefa árdua e na qual seres humanos são incapazes de realizar esta tarefa de maneira manual, tendo em vista a quantidade incontável de dados que são disponibilizados a cada segundo. Inúmeras pesquisas têm sido realizadas no intuito de automatizar este processo de catalogação. Uma vertente de grande utilidade para as várias áreas do conhecimento humano é a indexação de documentos com base nos contextos temporais presentes nestes documentos. Esta não é uma tarefa trivial, pois envolve a análise de informações não estruturadas presentes em linguagem natural, disponíveis nos mais diversos idiomas, dentre outras dificuldades. O objetivo principal deste trabalho é criar uma abordagem capaz de permitir a indexação de documentos, determinando mapas de tópicos enriquecidos com conceitos e as respectivas informações temporais relacionadas. Tal abordagem deu origem ao RISO-GCT (Geração de Contextos Temporais), componente do Projeto RISO (Recuperação da Informação Semântica de Objetos Textuais), que tem como objetivo criar um ambiente de indexação e recuperação semântica de documentos possibilitando uma recuperação mais acurada. O RISO-GCT utilizou os resultados de um módulo preliminar, o RISO-TT (Temporal Tagger), responsável por etiquetar informações temporais presentes em documentos e realizar o processo de normalização das expressões temporais encontradas. Deste processo foi aperfeiçoada a abordagem responsável pela normalização de expressões temporais, para que estas possam ser manipuladas mais facilmente na determinação dos contextos temporais. . Foram realizados experimentos para avaliar a eficácia da abordagem proposta nesta pesquisa. O primeiro, com o intuito de verificar se o Topic Map previamente criado pelo RISO-IC (Indexação Conceitual), foi enriquecido com as informações temporais relacionadas aos conceitos de maneira correta e o segundo, para analisar a eficácia da abordagem de normalização das expressões temporais extraídas de documentos. Os experimentos concluíram que tanto o RISO-GCT, quanto o RISO-TT incrementado obtiveram resultados superiores aos concorrentes.Due to the constant growth of the number of texts available on the Web, there is a need to catalog that information which appear at every moment. However, it is an arduous task in which humans are unable to perform this task manually, given the increased amount of data available at every second. Numerous studies have been conducted in order to automate the cataloging process. A research line with utility for various areas of human knowledge is the indexing of documents based on temporal contexts present in these documents. This is not a trivial task, as it involves the analysis of unstructured information present in natural language, available in several languages, among other difficulties. The main objective of this work is to create a model to allow indexing of documents, creating topic maps enriched with the concepts in text and their related temporal information. This approach led to the RISO-GCT (Temporal Contexts Generation), a part of RISO Project (Semantic Information Retrieval on Text Objects), which aims to create a semantic indexing environment and retrieval of documents, enabling a more accurate recovery. RISO-GCT uses the results of a preliminary module, the RISO-TT (Temporal Tagger) responsible the labeling temporal information contained in documents and carrying out the process of normalization of temporal expressions. Found. In this module the normalization of temporal expressions has been improved, in order allow a richer temporal context determination. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach proposed a in this research. The first, in order to verify that the topic map previously created by RISO-IC has been correctly enriched with temporal information related to the concepts correctly, and the second, to analyze the effectiveness of the normalization of expressions extracted from documents. The experiments concluded that both the RISO-GCT, as the RISO-TT, which was evolved during this work, obtained better results than similar tools

Garantias do crédito à exportação: normas internacionais

O comércio internacional não tem, por hipótese, fronteiras nem barreiras e está regulado por um conjunto de normas chamado a nova lex mercatória, que se apresenta sob quatro pilares fundamentais: os usos profissionais; os contratos tipo; as regulações ditadas pelo assento de cada profissão ou suas associações representativas; e a jurisprudência arbitral.Número padronizado: v. 40, n. 3 (1983)Revista do Serviço Público, ano 40 v.111, n. 3, p. 41Política ExternaPolíticas EconômicasNúmero padronizado: v. 40, n. 3 (1983)Revista do Serviço Público, ano 40 v.111, n. 3, p. 4

O nexo causal na responsabilidade civil

Este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar os aspectos e a problemática que envolve o nexo de causalidade dentro da responsabilidade civil, levando-se em conta as mudanças no ordenamento jurídico e a nova forma de pensar dos juristas, sobre o tema. Essas mudanças ocorreram tendo em vista, principalmente o advento da nova constituição de 1988 e do novo código civil de 2002. Neste sentido, abordo a forma como o nexo de causalidade interfere na aferição de responsabilidade civil, trazendo a baila algumas discussões, bem como as teorias e a forma de abordagem destas pelo judiciário e pela doutrina brasileira, com o intuito de demonstrar a importância do tema, bem como motivar uma discussão acerca de soluções plausíveis para o tema de grande relevância e de dificuldade teórica. Assim, tratar-se-á das teorias do nexo de causalidade, das causas de exclusão de nexo causal, bem como sobre o nexo causal e a jurisprudência. As excludente de responsabilidade possuem especial relevância, pois, são essas que tem a capacidade de eximir o autor da responsabilidade, sendo praticamente o único meio de defesa que o autor possui para elidir o nexo causal entre sua conduta e o dano causado. As teorias sobre o nexo causal clareiam o tema, sem, contudo, resolver o problema, são várias as teorias, sendo as mais relevantes a teoria da equivalência das condições, teoria da causalidade adequada e teoria do dano direto e imediato, a qual dizem ser esta a adotada pelo Brasil. A jurisprudência pátria não enfrenta de forma eficiente o tema, aferindo o nexo causal de forma intuitiva e adequando as várias teorias ao caso concreto, carecendo de segurança jurídica. Dessa forma, é possível, neste trabalho, identificar essa importância, devido ao arcabouço teórico que reproduz, bem como pela arcabouço jurisprudencial, dando veracidade aos apontamentos realizados ao longo do trabalho. Ademais, o tema é cercado por incertezas e dúvidas, as quais são questionadas, dando o estudo um direcionamento para se iniciar uma conclusão da problemática do nexo causal na responsabilidade civil