Evaluating the Impact of Community-Based Health Interventions: Evidence from Brazil's Family Health Program

This paper analyzes the direct and indirect impacts of Brazil's Family Health Program. We estimate the effects of the program on mortality and on household behavior related to child labor and schooling, employment of adults, and fertility. We find consistent effects of the program on reductions in mortality throughout the age distribution, but mainly at earlier ages. Municipalities in the poorest regions of the country benefit particularly from the program. For these regions, implementation of the program is also robustly associated with increased labor supply of adults, reduced fertility, and increased schooling. Evidence suggests that the Family Health Program is a highly cost-effective tool for improving health in poor areas.family health program, mortality, household behavior, impact evaluation, Brazil

Diseño [de] base de datos para gestión de catálogo de especies amenazadas

El trabajo sobre el que trata este documento, forma parte de un proyecto más grande, constituido por un entorno completo de gestión del catálogo de especies amenazadas. Este documento se centra en la parte del diseño y construcción de la base de datos necesaria para poder gestionar los datos que manejara la aplicación. En el primer capítulo se introduce el proyecto desarrollado exponiendo las líneas generales de éste, las motivaciones que han llevado a realizarlo y los objetivos que persigue. El segundo capítulo trata todos los aspectos referentes a la planificación, gestión del proyecto así como información referente al sistema gestor de bases de datos adoptado. Contiene fases como los estudios preliminares, gestión de plazos, seguimiento, etc. El capítulo tercero describe todo lo referente acerca de la base de datos desarrollada, la cual es el objeto de este documento. En el cuarto capítulo se ofrece una explicación de los resultados obtenidos al final de la implementación. Trata sobre el funcionamiento de la aplicación una vez desarrollada en su totalidad y de la conformidad con los requisitos iniciales propuestos por el cliente. En el capítulo seis podemos encontrar las conclusiones obtenidas de la realización del trabajo así como un apartado acerca de las posibles líneas futuras del proyecto. La bibliografía y las referencias Web consultadas junto con los anexos, se suman al resto de secciones mencionadas, para conformar este documento.Ingeniería Técnica en Informática de Gestió

Particle in a Box Revisited

Treball Final de Grau en Química. Codi: QU0943. Curs acadèmic: 2017/2018Some important concepts will be introduced on quantum chemistry such as symmetry labels of molecular states by dwelling on the “particle in a box” model. The mathematical models introduced allow understanding orthogonality relationships, expansion of an orbital in a complete set of basis functions, perturbation theory of nondegenerate energy levels, and transition probabilities with some attention to selection rules. This project is developed by means of Mathematica and COMSOL codes in an experimental laborator

Language vitality among school students in Ayutla Mixe

In this paper I will show the results of three tasks for assessing the vitality of Ayutla Mixe (AyMi), a Mixe-Zoque language spoken in Southern Mexico. Particularly, it discusses the vitality among primary and secondary school students. According to the official numbers, as of 2010, there were around 136,736 Mixe speakers in Mexico. However, this number refers to a subgroup of languages as diverse as Romance; the number of speakers for each Mixe language is smaller. Just taking into account the absolute number of speakers can be misleading (Dwyer 2011). Most importantly, the Mexican Government does not have a reliable method for obtaining information about the number of speakers of indigenous languages. Also, it does not say anything regarding the speakers’ proficiency or the domains in which the language is used. As will be shown, taking into account the UNESCO’s nine factors in language vitality (UNESCO 2003), AyMi is endangered. Since intergenerational transmission of the language is not uniform (Grenoble & Whaley 2006), a growing number of families are favoring Spanish over Mixe. AyMi is between the level 6 and 7 on Fishman’s (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale. This paper focuses on the vitality of the language among primary and secondary school students in order to have a better understanding of the vitality of the language in the “next generation”. The data for this paper comes from three different sources: a questionnaire, a picture elicitation task and a set of instructions and interactions in Mixe. Some methodological issues will be discussed. The number of Spanish monolingual speakers among those kids is higher than the census reports. Many kids learned Spanish in their homes and do not speak Mixe to parents or grand parents. Even those who can speak Mixe only use Spanish to communicate with friends. I discuss the relationship between language assessment, documentation and revitalization, since the vitality of the language should be linked to the production of materials derived from documentation projects. Particularly, it is used to determine whether a monolingual or a bilingual dictionary is needed. One of the reasons why the assessment was focused on students is because schools could be a natural environment where people would use a dictionary. This paper is among the first ones that focus on assessing the vitality of any Mixe language. References Dwyer, Arienne M. 2011. Tools and techniques for endangered-language assessment and revitalization. In Vitality and Viability of Minority Languages. New York: Trace Foundation Lecture Series Proceedings. Fisherman, Joshua. 1991. Reversing Language shift. Clevendon: Multilingual Matters. Grenoble, Lenore & Lindsay Whaley. 2006. Saving Languages. An Introduction to Language Revitalization. Cambridge: CUP. UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages. 2003. Language vitality and endangerment. Document submitted to the International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages, Paris, 10-12 March 2003

Comunicación e intercambio con redes sociales en la educación universitaria: caso estudiantes de Administración e Informática

El uso de las redes sociales entre estudiantes se ha extendido a partir del abaratamiento de los costos, el uso de la telefonía celular y el efecto viral de las plataformas de Twitter y Facebook a escala mundial. Sin embargo, apenas se comienza a estudiar su impacto tanto en los procesos de aprendizaje como en los mecanismos de comunicación entre los alumnos. Esta investigación se centra en esta segunda opción, intentando respon - der la interrogante: ¿cómo usan los estudiantes universitarios las redes sociales para mejorar su comunicación e intercambiar conocimientos? A partir de la aplicación de dos encuestas en línea aplicadas en 2010 y 2012, tanto a estudiantes de Informática Administrativa como de Administración, se logró observar que los alumnos de Admi - nistración son los que más utilizan estas plataformas para intercambiar información y que, en un par de años, el uso de estas herramientas ha cambiado drásticamente entre los estudiantes universitarios

Successful medical management of an epidural abscess in a dog

A seven-month-old entire male dobermann presented with acute onset neck pain and left thoracic limb lameness. The dog had a similar episode eight weeks before presentation that responded to meloxicam. A cervical spinal epidural abscess secondary to Staphylococcus pseudintermedius bacteraemia was diagnosed following investigations, including MRI of the cervical vertebral column and blood cultures. Treatment with cephalexin, gabapentin and meloxicam was started. The dog was doing clinically well one month later. A control MRI and radiographs of the cervical vertebral column showed evidence of discospondylitis and resolution of the primary lesion, therefore the treatment course with cephalexin was continued. Three months after initial presentation the clinical signs had resolved, radiographs showed improvement of the discospondylitis and antibiotics were stopped. Seven months later the dog continued doing well with no relapse

Towards Analyzing the Effect of Interference Monitoring in GNSS Scintillation

Ionospheric Scintillation Monitoring Receivers (ISMR) are specialized GNSS receivers able to track and monitor scintillations in order to collect data that can be used to model the phenomenon, study its affects at receiver level and possibly predict its occurrence in the future. Such receivers are able to measure the amount of scintillation affecting a satellite signal in both amplitude and phase by making use of correlation data from the tracking processing blocks. This is normally done by computing two indices: the S4 for amplitude scintillation and the phase deviation due to scintillations [3]. However, as more telecommunication systems are likely to work in frequency bands close to GNSS signals in the next years, monitoring of scintillation activity might be threatened by the presence of Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) in the operation area. It is of interest to study the effects these systems may have on the estimation of scintillation indices due to unintentional leakages of power out of their allocated bandwidth [4]. Robust tracking of GNSS signals under such conditions must be guaranteed and it must also be ensured as best as possible that the typical scintillation indices are not affected by the additional error sourc

La tecnologia en el gobierno: estudio explotario de portales de transacciones en México

Los gobiernos locales han utilizado las tecnologías de la información y comunicación (TICs) en diversos campos tanto para la comunicación interna como externa hacia los ciudadanos; sin embargo poco se ha hecho en el uso en transacciones electrónicas, principalmente en lo que se refiere a impuestos y servicios prestados a la ciudadanía por medio de los portales de gobierno. En función de ello, el objetivo de este artículo es comprender cómo se están utilizando las nuevas tecnologías de información y comunicación en los procesos de gestión de finanzas públicas, particularmente en el caso de cobro de impuestos pero también hacia los servicios públicos. Para ello se realizó un análisis exploratorio que analizó los 32 sitios web estatales de México, aplicando un modelo de análisis diseñado para esta investigación. Los resultados demuestran que las TICs, son usadas principalmente para dar información mientras los portales electrónicos carecen de posibilidades para hacer transacciones orientadas al ciudadano, específicamente en la atención al pago de impuestos. Se concluye mediante la generación de aportes al área de finanzas en los portales electrónicos mexicanos como contribución para la mejora de los portales de transacciones en particular

Performance of merging lines with uneven buffer capacity allocation: the effects of unreliability under different inventory-related costs

This simulation study investigates whether machine efficiency, mean time to failure (MTTF) and mean time to repair (MTTR) significantly affect the performance of uneven buffer capacity allocation patterns for merging lines. Also studied is the trade-off between increasing throughput via bigger buffers and their associated inventory-related costs, since previous studies have shown that higher overall buffer capacity and higher average inventory content result in higher throughput. Results suggest that an ascending buffer allocation pattern (concentrating buffer capacity towards the end of the line) produces higher throughput in shorter, more unreliable lines; whereas the balanced pattern shows better performance in longer, more reliable lines. Increasing average buffer capacity per station and/or having higher average buffer content was found to be more cost-effective in lines with lower machine inefficiency, shorter MTTF and MTTR, and longer lines. Results differed between reliable and unreliable lines since reliable lines were particularly penalised by buffer capacity investiment/maintenance costs due to a relatively low increase in throughput resulting from the addition of extra buffer capacity