Tuberculosis care: an evaluability study

OBJECTIVE: to verify whether the tuberculosis control program (TCP) is evaluable and to examine the feasibility of building an evaluation model in apriority municipality for the control of tuberculosis.METHOD: this evaluability study was conducted in a municipality in northeastern Brazil. For data collection, documental analysis and interviews with key informants were performed. For indicator validation, the nominal group technique was adopted.RESULTS: the details of TCP were described, and both the logical model and the classification framework for indicators were developed and agreed up on, with the goal of characterizing the structural elements of the program, defining the structure and process indicators, and formulating the evaluation questions.CONCLUSION: TCP is evaluable. Based on logical operational analysis, it was possible to evaluate the adequacy of the program goals for the control of tuberculosis. Therefore, the performance of a summative evaluation is recommended, with a focus on the analysis of the effects of tuberculosis control interventions on decreasing morbidity and mortality

How non-native English-speaking staff are evaluated in linguistically diverse organizations: A sociolinguistic perspective

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of evaluations of non-native speaking staff?s spoken English in international business settings. We adopt a sociolinguistic perspective on power and inequalities in linguistically diverse organizations in an Anglophone environment. The interpretive qualitative study draws on 54 interviews with non-native English-speaking staff in 19 UK business schools. We analyze, along the dimensions of status, solidarity and dynamism, the ways in which non-native speakers, on the basis of their spoken English, are evaluated by themselves and by listeners. We show how such evaluations refer to issues beyond the speaker?s linguistic fluency, and have consequences for her or his actions. The study contributes to the literature on language and power in international business through offering fine-grained insights into and elucidating how the interconnected evaluative processes impact the formation and perpetuation of organizational power relations and inequalities. It also puts forward implications for managing the officially monolingual, yet linguistically diverse organizations

Paleogeographic evolution of the Southern Pannonian Basin: 40Ar/39Ar age constraints on the Miocene continental series of notthern Croatia

The Pannonian Basin, originating during the Early Miocene, is a large extensional basin incorporated between Alpine, Carpathian and Dinaride fold-thrust belts. Back-arc extensional tectonics triggered deposition of up to 500-m-thick continental fluvio-lacustrine deposits distributed in numerous sub-basins of the Southern Pannonian Basin. Extensive andesitic and dacitic volcanism accompanied the syn-rift deposition and caused a number of pyroclastic intercalations. Here, we analyze two volcanic ash layers located at the base and top of the continental series. The lowermost ash from Mt. Kalnik yielded an 40Ar/39Ar age of 18.07 ± 0.07 Ma. This indicates that the marine-continental transition in the Slovenia-Zagorje Basin, coinciding with the onset of rifting tectonics in the Southern Pannonian Basin, occurs roughly at the Eggenburgian/ Ottnangian boundary of the regional Paratethys time scale. This age proves the synchronicity of initial rifting in the Southern Pannonian Basin with the beginning of sedimentation in the Dinaride Lake System. Beside geodynamic evolution, the two regions also share a biotic evolutionary history: both belong to the same ecoregion, which we designate here as the Illyrian Bioprovince. The youngest volcanic ash level is sampled at the Glina and Karlovac sub-depressions, and both sites yield the same 40Ar/39Ar age of 15.91 ± 0.06 and 16.03 ± 0.06 Ma, respectively. This indicates that lacustrine sedimentation in the Southern Pannonian Basin continued at least until the earliest Badenian. The present results provide not only important bench marks on duration of initial synrift in the Pannonian Basin System, but also deliver substantial backbone data for paleogeographic reconstructions in Central and Southeastern Europe around the Early–Middle Miocene transition

Stabilisation of intertidal cobbles and gravels by Goniastrea aspera: an analogue for substrate colonisation during marine transgressions?

There is a widespread perception that coral larvae require stable (lithified) rock substrates to settle during reef initiation, and that these substrates are typically carbonate. However, reef core data show that reef establishment can also occur directly above a wide range of unlithified, non-carbonate sediment substrates, including relict alluvial sands and gravels. The mechanisms by which these lithic substrates are colonised and stabilised are not, however, well documented. Here, we describe such processes from an intertidal setting on the inner-shelf of the Great Barrier Reef, in a setting directly analogous to that which would have existed around many inner-shelf high islands during the post-glacial marine transgression when mid-Holocene reef initiation was taking place

Web-based decision support system for orders planning

Competition in the global economy is intensifying the implementation of the mass customization paradigm. This requires a substantial increase in the personalized interaction between client and producer. Agility in the order-production-delivery cycle optimization is a key element for industrial enterprises as a means to meet requirements of this paradigm. The use of agile methodologies for this purpose requires improving processes of product specification and product data management. Under today’s technology this tends to be predominantly carried out with the aid of the Internet using mostly web services. For a company, this also requires better integration of front-office processes (interaction with the outside) and back office (including production processes). Mass Customization scenarios are characterized by large product variety dependent on product specific requirements of individual customers. In this process there is a need to provide the customer with tools for easy product specification, selection or configuration. Web-based configurators can provide an opportunity to both producer and customer, through an interactive process, for a more formal, faster, effective and better product and orders specification. In this paper, we propose an architecture and describe functionalities of a web-based system for interactive products and customer orders configuration. The proposed system can also be a valuable tool to support production and delivery.This work was developed under the scope of project PEst-OE/EME/UI0252/2011, financed by The Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT

Insight into the development of a carbonate platform through a multi-disciplinary approach - A case study from the Upper Devonian slope deposits of Mount Freikofel (Carnic Alps, Austria/Italy)

The development and behavior of Million year-scaled depositional sequences recorded within Palaeozoic carbonate platform has remained poorly examined. Therefore, the understanding of palaeoenvironmental changes that occur in geological past is still limited. We herein undertake a multi-disciplinary approach (sedimentology, conodont biostratigraphy, magnetic susceptibility and geochemistry) of a long-term succession in the Carnic Alps which offers new insights into the peculiar evolution of one of the best example of Palaeozoic carbonate platform in Europe. The Freikofel section, located in the central part of the Carnic Alps represents an outstanding succession in a fore-reef setting, extending from the latest Givetian (indet. falsiovalis conodont Zones) to the early Famennian (Lower crepida conodont Zone). Sedimentological analysis allowed to propose a sedimentary model dominated by distal slope and fore-reef slope deposits. The most distal setting is characterized by an autochthonous pelagic sedimentation showing local occurrence of thin-bedded turbiditic deposits. In the fore-reef slope, in a more proximal setting, there is an accumulation of various autochthonous and allochthonous fine- to coarse-grained sediments originated from the interplay of gravity-flow currents derived from the shallow-water and deeper-water area. The temporal evolution of microfacies in the Freikofel section evolves in two main steps corresponding to the Freikofel (Unit 1) and the Pal (Unit 2) Limestones. Distal slope to fore-reef lithologies and associate changes are from base to top of the section: (U1) thick bedded litho- and bioclastic breccia beds with local fining upward sequence and fine-grained mudstone intercalations corresponding, in the fore-reef setting, to the dismantlement of the Eifelian – Frasnian carbonate platform during the early to late Frasnian time (falsiovalis to rhenana superzones) with one of the causes being the Late Givetian major rift pulse; (U2) occurrence of thin-bedded red nodular and cephalopod-bearing limestones with local lithoclastic grainstone intercalations corresponding to a significant deepening of the area and the progressive withdrawal of sedimentary influxes toward the basin, in relation with late Frasnian sea-level rise. Magnetic susceptibility and geochemical analyses were also performed along the Freikofel section and demonstrate the inherent-parallel link existing between variation in magnetic susceptibility values and proxy for terrestrial input. Interpretation of magnetic susceptibility in term of palaeoenvironmental processes reflect that even though distality remains the major parameter influencing magnetic susceptibility values, carbonate production and water agitation also play an important role.Grants IGCP 580 and NAP0017 (DP, ACDS), the FWF P 23775-B17 (TS and EK