Ach Brito - sell or not sell?

This case study is based on a real family business, Ach Brito. The company has more than 100 years of history and is in its 4th Generation. It is a well-known Portuguese firm that has had a stable growth and sells in more than 50 countries. The main focus of this case is on participation selling in a family business context. The case intends to: illustrate how family companies can surpass obstacles and return to a stable path; leading to a discussion regarding capital selling in a family business context; family business decision-making complexity and emotional value impact. Ach Brito’s case is a basis for discussion of family business theoretical content. The case includes a teaching note to beacon the lecture of the case in classroom context. Complementary readings and discussion questions with suggested answers are available with the objective of enhancing the learning process

A Clinical Management Centre Value in Triage of COPD Telemonitoring Patients

Telemonitoring is the systematic collection of clinical data from the patient’s home and its examination by a healthcare team. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD exacerbations contribute to disease progression and worse prognosis. Aim: to determine the benefits achieved by early detection of acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) by telemonitoring, describing the experience of a specialised clinical management centre (CMC) which triaged the received alerts, confirmed the AECOPD, stratified them according to their level of severity and notified the doctors. Methods: 15 male COPD patients, all “C” and “D” GOLD groups were monitored of spO­2, heart rate, blood pressure and skin temperature. For each patient, individual clinical alert thresholds were defined and calculated. Clinical alerts resulted in the CMC phoning the patient, completing a clinical questionnaire and confirming the presence of AECOPD and stratifying its severity. Only true positives were referred to a doctor. Results: During 18 months, 1,137 clinical alerts were detected but only 4.3% were true positives. Of these, 55.1% were level I, 36.7% level II and 8.2% level III. Conclusion: The study demonstrates the essential  role  of  a  clinical  management  centre  in  identifying,  categorising  and  appropriately  acting  upon  only  real  alerts  to  ensure  that  patients  with  AECOPD  receive  the  right  treatment  as  quickly  and  efficiently as possible

Deposição por CVD (Chemical Vapour Deposition) de filmes de sílica amorfa (SiO2) protetores contra carburização de aços inoxidável [sic]

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Addressing the non-linearity and singularity phenomena of stress-based optimal design of material microstructures

Material design is an active research field since composites have met increasingly interest, for instance, in lightweight construction as it happens in aerospace industry. One assumes in the present work a given macroscopic stress or strain field (one that may occur at a certain point of a macro-structure) and computes through homogenization the micro-stress distribution across the two (weaker and stronger) composite constituents mixed in a unit-cell domain which is representative of a periodic heterogeneous material. Stress gradients depend a lot of design details but typically the stress field is highly non-linear. In the frame of finite element models for material microstructures one pursues here an investigation about mesh convergence. Since stress distribution is strongly design dependent, that motivates one to pursue optimal design of the material microstructure to comply with admissible stress criteria. The inverse homogenization method using density-based topology optimization is applied here for such purpose. This is quite a challenge not only because of the aforementioned non-linearity of the stress field but also due to the singularity phenomena which one overcomes using standard relaxation techniques. Some preliminary results are obtained in order to get some insight into the fine structure of composite materials and the influence of the stresses therein

Produção enxuta em organizações da saúde: um mapeamento do fluxo de valor em um banco de sangue

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Sócio Econômico, Curso de Administração.Os serviços de saúde no Brasil enfrentam grandes dificuldades por conta do baixo investimento, processos inadequados, bem como por desperdícios não observados. Este artigo apresenta o Mapeamento do Fluxo de Valor, uma ferramenta de Lean Production, de forma didática para ser implementado em organizações da saúde e explica como pode trazer resultados positivos, através da diminuição de desperdícios e maximização da eficiência do processo produtivo. A aplicação prática foi feita no banco de sangue do Hospital Universitário da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (HU-UFSC) e, como resultado deste exercício, através das sugestões formuladas a partir do mapeamento, o aproveitamento completo das bolsas de sangue passará de aproximadamente 30% para 100% das bolsas coletadas, além de reduzir o tempo de não agregação de valor em aproximadamente 60% e reduzir o tempo efetivo de operação em aproximadamente 40% no processo de fracionamento do sangue. Tais implementações resultam em melhorias significativas no serviço prestado à sociedade.Health services in Brazil face great difficulties due to low investment, inadequate processes and unnoticed waste of resources. This article presents Value Stream Mapping, a Lean Production tool, in a didactic manner for its implementation in health organizations and explains how to bring about positive results, through the elimination of wastage and maximization of the productive process's efficiency. The practical application was carried out at the Federal University of Santa Catarina's Hospital (HU-UFSC), and, as a result of the suggestions formulated from the mapping data, the full use of the blood bags will go from approximately 30% to 100% of the collected bags, in addition to reducing lead time by approximately 60% and the effective operation time by approximately 40% in the blood fractionation process. Such implementations resulted in significant improvements to the services rendered to society

Enhancement of the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of porphyran through chemical modification with tyrosine derivatives

The chemical modification of porphyran hydrocolloid is attempted, with the objective of enhancing its antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. Sulfated galactan porphyran is obtained from commercial samples of the red algae Porphyra dioica using Soxhlet extraction with water at 100ºC and precipitation with isopropyl alcohol. The extracted porphyran is then treated with modified L-tyrosines in aqueous medium in the presence of NaOH, at ca. 70ºC. The modified tyrosines L1 and L2 are prepared through a Mannich reaction with either thymol or 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol, respectively. While the reaction with 2,4-di-tert-butylphenol yields the expected tyrosine derivative, a mixture of products is obtained with thymol. The resulting polysaccharides are structurally characterized and the respective antioxidant and antimicrobial activities are determined. Porphyran treated with the N-(2-hydroxy-3,5-di-tert-butyl-benzyl)-L-tyrosine derivative, POR-L2, presents a noticeable superior radical scavenging and antioxidant activity compared to native porphyran, POR. Furthermore, it exhibited some antimicrobial activity against S. aureus. The surface morphology of films prepared by casting with native and modified porphyrans is studied by SEM/EDS. Both POR and POR-L2 present potential applicability in the production of films and washable coatings for food packaging with improved protecting characteristics.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mitochondrial dynamics and quality control in Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder caused by polyglutamine expansion mutations in the huntingtin protein. Despite its ubiquitous distribution, expression of mutant huntingtin (mHtt) is particularly detrimental to medium spiny neurons within the striatum. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been associated with HD pathogenesis. Here we review the current evidence for mHtt-induced abnormalities in mitochondrial dynamics and quality control, with a particular focus on brain and neuronal data pertaining to striatal vulnerability. We address mHtt effects on mitochondrial biogenesis, protein import, complex assembly, fission and fusion, mitochondrial transport, and on the degradation of damaged mitochondria via autophagy (mitophagy). For an integrated perspective on potentially converging pathogenic mechanisms, we also address impaired autophagosomal transport and abnormal mHtt proteostasis in HD

Coronary X-ray angiography segmentation using Artificial Intelligence: a multicentric validation study of a deep learning model

© The Author(s) 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/.Introduction: We previously developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model for automatic coronary angiography (CAG) segmentation, using deep learning. To validate this approach, the model was applied to a new dataset and results are reported. Methods: Retrospective selection of patients undergoing CAG and percutaneous coronary intervention or invasive physiology assessment over a one month period from four centers. A single frame was selected from images containing a lesion with a 50-99% stenosis (visual estimation). Automatic Quantitative Coronary Analysis (QCA) was performed with a validated software. Images were then segmented by the AI model. Lesion diameters, area overlap [based on true positive (TP) and true negative (TN) pixels] and a global segmentation score (GSS - 0 -100 points) - previously developed and published - were measured. Results: 123 regions of interest from 117 images across 90 patients were included. There were no significant differences between lesion diameter, percentage diameter stenosis and distal border diameter between the original/segmented images. There was a statistically significant albeit minor difference [0,19 mm (0,09-0,28)] regarding proximal border diameter. Overlap accuracy ((TP + TN)/(TP + TN + FP + FN)), sensitivity (TP / (TP + FN)) and Dice Score (2TP / (2TP + FN + FP)) between original/segmented images was 99,9%, 95,1% and 94,8%, respectively. The GSS was 92 (87-96), similar to the previously obtained value in the training dataset. Conclusion: the AI model was capable of accurate CAG segmentation across multiple performance metrics, when applied to a multicentric validation dataset. This paves the way for future research on its clinical uses.Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on). Cardiovascular Center of the University of Lisbon, INESC-ID / Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio