MEASURING EFFICIENCY USING DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS: APPLICATION ON 12 POLICE PRECINCTS IN DAVAO CITY, PHILIPPINES

Public security plays a vital role in a developing country. It brings positive externalities. This means that it is the function of government to ensure the protection of citizens, persons in their territory, organization, and institutions against threats. The main purpose of this study is to determine the efficiency of 12 Police Precincts in Davao City, Philippines. The inputs and outputs for police performance measurement were first identified. Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple Regression Analysis were used to measure efficiency and changes to overall services between 2015-2017. We use window analysis and output-oriented DEA models to sharpen our efficiency estimates with both constant and variable returns to scale. The problem of the presence of non-discretionary input variables is explicitly treated in the models used. Potential improvements in the technical efficiency of police precincts are examined by readjusting the output/input indicators. The analysis indicates that some differences in operating environments, especially socioeconomic factors such as residents and young people's population, significantly influence the efficiency of police precincts. JEL: H11; H50; H76  Article visualizations

Phenotype of BTK‐lacking myeloid cells during prolonged COVID‐19 and upon convalescent plasma

© 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Haematology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.XLA patient with 7-month course of COVID-19 with persistent plasma SARS-CoV-2 load revealed a sustained non-inflammatory profile of myeloid cells in association with contained severity of disease, arguing in favor of the use of BTK inhibitors in SARS-COV-2 infection.This work was funded by the following grants from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, through “Apoio Especial Research4COVID-19,” project numbers 125 and 803. André M. C. Gomes and Guilherme B. Farias received Fellowships funded by FCT (Doctorates4COVID-19, 2020.10202.BD), and Janssen-Cilag Farmacêutica, respectively.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A consensus-based framework for conducting and reporting osteoarthritis phenotype research

Background The concept of osteoarthritis (OA) heterogeneity is evolving and gaining renewed interest. According to this concept, distinct subtypes of OA need to be defined that will likely require recognition in research design and different approaches to clinical management. Although seemingly plausible, a wide range of views exist on how best to operationalize this concept. The current project aimed to provide consensus-based definitions and recommendations that together create a framework for conducting and reporting OA phenotype research. Methods A panel of 25 members with expertise in OA phenotype research was composed. First, panel members participated in an online Delphi exercise to provide a number of basic definitions and statements relating to OA phenotypes and OA phenotype research. Second, panel members provided input on a set of recommendations for reporting on OA phenotype studies. Results Four Delphi rounds were required to achieve sufficient agreement on 11 definitions and statements. OA phenotypes were defined as subtypes of OA that share distinct underlying pathobiological and pain mechanisms and their structural and functional consequences. Reporting recommendations pertaining to the study characteristics, study population, data collection, statistical analysis, and appraisal of OA phenotype studies were provided. Conclusions This study provides a number of consensus-based definitions and recommendations relating to OA phenotypes. The resulting framework is intended to facilitate research on OA phenotypes and increase combined efforts to develop effective OA phenotype classification. Success in this endeavor will hopefully translate into more effective, differentiated OA management that will benefit a multitude of OA patients

Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis in Papua New Guinean Children: The Cost of Continuing Inadequate Measles Vaccine Coverage

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a disabling and usually fatal brain disorder that typically occurs 3–10 years after acute measles infection. Papua New Guinea (PNG) has particularly high rates of SSPE. We report 22 cases of PNG children presenting to the provincial referral hospital in Madang Province who probably contracted acute measles when <12 months of age during a national epidemic in 2002 and who developed SSPE 5–7 years later. Based on these cases, the estimated annual SSPE incidence in Madang province in 2007–2009 was 54/million population aged <20 years. Four sub-districts had an annual incidence >100/million population aged <20 years, the highest rates ever reported. Young PNG children do not respond well to measles vaccine. Because of this, efforts such as supplementary measles immunisation programs should continue in order to reduce the pool of non-immune older people surrounding the youngest and most vulnerable members of PNG communities

Alice in Accounting Land: The Adventure of Two Economic Historians in Accounting Records of the 19th Century

This article aims to share our experience of working with São Paulo's municipal budgets published during the 19th century and discuss the difficulties of using this kind of source to analyze the municipal public finance from a historical perspective. The budget laws published draw the researcher's attention because they are abundant and relatively easy to work with, providing a huge documentary set that may be used as a means for studies in the fields of economic history, political history, and cultural history within the imperial period. These laws are printed, therefore, readable, and easily accessible through the digital web portal Acervo Histórico da Assembleia Legislativa do Estado de São Paulo Historical Collection of the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly]. They detail the origins and destinations of public resources, municipality by municipality, allowing the researcher to reconstruct the financial life of municipalities, identifying changes in time and space of the fortunes of the 19th-century São Paulo state communities. However, may we really trust these budgets? Conversations and collaborations between two researchers showed that these accessible, readable, and abundant sources are not as appropriate as they seem at first glance. This article reports our troubled and even contradictory journey into the world of municipal public accounting, in order to detail our findings and provide a warning on these sources. A comparative methodology between budget laws and handwritten balance sheets was used at time intervals of 1, 2, and 3 years, in search of correlations and adjustment patterns between budgeted and spent amounts of money. Our experience has shown that budget laws do not have much in common with the actual financial experience of municipalities within the imperial period, therefore, they are not the most appropriate sources to know the financial daily life in the 19th-century São Paulo state villages

Contaminação fúngica em colmeias de abelhas de regiões afetadas pela cria ensacada brasileira

Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-21T17:25:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 1914 bytes, checksum: 7d48279ffeed55da8dfe2f8e81f3b81f (MD5) om_barth_etal_IOC_2014.pdf: 391091 bytes, checksum: 2d26380988923b29a645e6b6ee1d1fd8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - UFMG. Escola de Veterinária. Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil.Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro - UFRRJ. Seropédica, RJ, Brasil.Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro - PUC-Rio. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.Fundação Oswaldo Cruz. Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro - UFRRJ. Seropédica, RJ, Brasil.A cria ensacada brasileira é uma doença que afeta apiários de colmeias de abelhas africanizadas no Brasil, tornando-os suscetíveis a perdas elevadas. Este estudo investigou a patogenicidade de fungos entomopatogênicos em colmeias de abelhas africanizadas de uma região endêmica de cria ensacada brasileira. O grau de contaminação fúngica, a presença de micotoxinas em elementos colmeia e a vulnerabilidade das colmeias saudáveis em ambientes sujeitos e não sujeitos à doença foram investigados. A partir da carga fúngica contaminante, espécies produtoras de micotoxinas e patogênicas, que provocam a mortalidade de abelhas, foram isoladas. A análise do pólen e do pão de abelha não demonstrou a presença do pólen tóxico de Stryphnodendron (Fabaceae), que tem sido apontado como agente causador da mortalidade de larvas em fase de pré-pupa. No entanto, o pão de abelha foi o substrato mais correlacionado com a contaminação fúngica.The Brazilian Sac Brood is a disease that affects apiaries of Africanized bee hives in Brazil, thereby making them susceptible to high losses. This study investigated the pathogenicity of Africanized bee hives by the entomopathogenic fungi in a Brazilian Sac Brood endemic region. The degree of fungal contamination, presence of mycotoxins in beehive elements, and vulnerability of healthy beehives in environments subjected and not subjected to the disease were investigated. From the contaminating fungal load, species that are mycotoxin producers and pathogenic causing mortality in the bees have been isolated. The analysis of bee pollen and bee bread samples did not show the presence of the toxic pollen of Stryphnodendron (Fabaceae), which has been indicated as the causative agent of mortality in pre-pupal stage larvae. However, bee bread showed the highest correlation between substrate and fungal contamination