The burden of dengue: Jundiaí, Brazil -January 2010

Objective: To study the antibody prevalence against dengue in the municipality of Jundiaí, São Paulo, Brazil, due to the low number of official confirmed autochthonous cases. Methods: A serological study on dengue infection was conducted during January 2010 and previous reports on dengue and entomological surveillance during that period were reviewed. Results: A prevalence of 7.8% IgG positive (68:876) was found. Furthermore, based on the detection of IgM antibodies in five samples, it was observed that the incidence of dengue in the city at the time of the survey contrasts with the absence of notifications by local health authorities over the same period of time. Conclusion: These results highlight the discrepancies between the actual and the detected number of dengue infections, possibly due to significant numbers of asymptomatic infections aggravated by difficulties with dengue clinical diagnosis. Keyword

DESCRIPTORS: Mental Health Services. Health Manpower. Health Management. Organizational Case Studies

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: To analyze work organization in psychosocial healthcare services from the logic of the service management fi eld. METHODS: Organizational analysis was performed, using a case study in a psychosocial healthcare service located in the city of São Paulo, Southeastern Brazil, between 2006 and 2007. A total of fi ve sources of information were analyzed: Ministry of Health documents, research reports made in the service studied, service records, interviews with healthcare workers and managers and simple observation. Interviews dealt with objectives, results and assessment of work process. Each source was treated differently, according to its purpose. A subsequent dialogue about the results obtained aimed to make a set of observations on which the case study was founded. RESULTS: The service proposes to deliver a very intangible result, which views the user in their social context. The intended change in the user's conditions was described as "the person living better". Such condition is diffi cult to be defi ned and understood in terms of the details and limits of this change, thus hindering measurement of results. In addition, the work process involves activities which are not routinary, not predictable and sometimes simultaneous, so that the team fi nds it diffi cult to recognize and legitimize efforts made to perform work, a fact described as "work invisibility" by workers. CONCLUSIONS: The assessment process was found to be a complex aspect of this intangibility, associated with inadequacy and insuffi ciency of the municipal health system's management structure to include a service of this nature. Results enabled better understanding of a fi eld of work where workers' and users' subjectivity is inherent in the service management process

On The Topologies Of Spaces Of Linear Dynamical Systems Commonly Employed As Models For Adaptive And Robust Control Design

Robustness and performance of a closed-loop adaptive system may profit from the use of switching logic, whether or not that is required for stability. This logic may take the form of a supervisory switching scheme responsible for choosing, at each instant of time, one among several candidate control signals to close the feedback loop. Perhaps the most promising way to make this choice is with basis on observations of suitably defined error signals, corresponding to each candidate control. While that in itself does not preclude the use of a compact subset of a finite dimensional linear space as parameter set, we believe that the use of parallel hardware and software may make it advantageous to take as parameter space a finite set. However it is not clear that with a finite parameter set it is possible to stabilize as large classes of admissible process models as in conventional adaptive control. This note uses elementary topological concepts to show how this can in principle be done, by..

Organizational Culture and the Organizational Culture and the Organizational Culture and the Organizational Culture and the R R R Renewal of enewal of enewal of enewal of C C C Competences ompetences ompetences ompetences A A A ABSTRACT BSTRACT BSTRACT BS

Culture and competence are fairly well-known topics; both are part of the academic agenda and are widely discussed in day-to-day debates within organizations. However, the interactions between these two concepts and their interdependence are yet to be analyzed. Those are areas of organizational phenomena that might be complementary or even be contradictory. The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between these two subjects. Does organizational culture enhance or jeopardize the development of new competences? Is it possible for an organization to develop new competences while keeping its core values? This paper proposes an initial incursion into this debate, revisiting the concept of culture and cross checking it with the concept of competence; two case studies of Brazilian firms are presented in order to illustrate this debate