The Regional Concentration of Industries and the Performance of Firms: A Multilevel Approach

This paper presents the results of a study whose objective was to understand how location within industrial concentrations, like clusters or industrial districts, affects the financial performance of firms. In its theoretical framework, this paper attempts to introduce the reasons behind the alleged superior performance of firms located in these concentrations, the base of the hypothesis formulated in this study. Analysis from a three-level hierarchical linear model applied to a sample of 509 companies located in the state of São Paulo found no evidence that industrial concentrations provide firms with superior performance, contradicting expectations generated by the theory. The decomposition of the variance of performance indicated that the location of the firms and the form with which a city interacts with an industry exerts significant influence on how they will perform. In short, location matters to the future of firms. This finding underlines the need to understand how characteristics of cities or regions can promote or retard the performance of firms

Gestão da atenção básica em saúde bucal no Município de Fortaleza, Ceará, entre 1999 e 2006

This study assessed the degree of adequacy of Primary Care management in oral health in the city of Fortaleza, state of Ceará, Brazil, between 1999 and 2006. The employed methodology was based on a matrix of analysis including five dimensions: Planning and Programming, Management Support to Primary Care Professionals and Practices, Dental Assistance Offered, Health Services Utilization and Integrality of Care. The information was obtained from municipal health plans, management reports and analysis of secondary data from Sistema de Informação Ambulatorial (SIA-SUS - Outpatient Clinic Information System of Brazil's National Health System) and from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). In addition, health indicators from the Primary Health Pact (2006) and information from oral health managers were analyzed. An improvement was observed in the first four dimensions of the matrix of analysis and only the dimension related to health services utilization declined during the period of the study. The trend of the oral health indicators was heterogeneous. While the oral health indicator "Coverage of the First Dental Consultation" decreased, the "Proportion of Specialized Dental Procedures in Relation to Individual Actions in Primary Care" showed a slight increase. It was concluded that the Primary Care management in oral health in the city of Fortaleza became adequate to the health surveillance model between 1999 and 2006. However, the decline in dental health services utilization, associated with the stability of the indicators of dental coverage and assistance, suggest the need to systematize the activities of planning and assessment of oral health actions in Primary Care in Fortaleza.Este estudo analisou o grau de adequação da gestão da Atenção Básica (AB) em saúde bucal no município de Fortaleza, Ceará, entre 1999 e 2006. A metodologia empregada teve como base uma matriz de análise de cinco dimensões: Planejamento e Programação, Suporte da Gestão aos Profissionais e às Práticas na AB, Oferta de Assistência Odontológica, Utilização de Serviços e Integralidade da Atenção. As informações foram obtidas de planos municipais de saúde, de relatórios de gestão e análise de dados secundários do Sistema de Informação Ambulatorial (SIA-SUS) e do IBGE. De maneira complementar, a partir da análise dos indicadores do Pacto da AB (2006), obtiveram-se informações com gestores de saúde bucal. Observou-se uma melhora nas quatro primeiras dimensões da matriz de análise, e apenas a dimensão relativa à utilização de serviços declinou no período. A tendência dos indicadores de saúde bucal foi heterogênea. Enquanto a "Cobertura de Primeira Consulta odontológica" reduziu, a "Proporção de procedimentos odontológicos especializados em relação às ações individuais da AB" apresentou discreto aumento. Concluiu-se que o município de Fortaleza apresentou adequação da gestão da AB em saúde bucal ao modelo de vigilância em saúde, entre 1999 e 2006. Entretanto, o declínio na utilização de serviços odontológicos associado à estabilidade dos indicadores de cobertura e assistência odontológica sugere a necessidade de sistematizar atividades de planejamento e avaliação das ações de saúde bucal na AB em Fortaleza

Risk of osteoporotic fracture in women using the FRAX tool with and without bone mineral density score in patients followed at a tertiary outpatient clinic ‒ An observational study

Objectives: Fragility fractures increase morbidity and mortality. Adding assessment of clinical risk factors independently or as a previous step to Bone Densitometry (BD) should provide better accuracy in fracture risk prediction. FRAX tool might be used to stratify patients in order to rationalize the need for BD and risk classification. The primary objective of this study is to describe and perform comparisons between the estimated risk of fractures in 10 years using the FRAX calculator based on clinical factors with and without BD results for women aged 40 or more with clinical diseases monitored in tertiary care service in internal medicine. Methods: Cross-sectional. Women over 40 years with BD in the previous year. After medical chart review, identification of risk factors and risk estimations using FRAX-BRAZIL with (FRAX BDI) and without (FRAX BDNI) the inclusion of T-score. Results: 239 women. Age 65 ± 10.35 years. BMI 29.68 ± 6.27kg/m2. Risk factors: 32(13.4%) previous fractures; 23 (9.6%) current smoking; 78 (32.6%) corticosteroids use; 44 (18.4%) rheumatoid arthritis; 38 (15.9%) secondary causes; FRAX scores were higher when BD was not included. Spearman correlation coefficients between FRAX BDNI and FRAX BDI for major fractures r = 0.793 (95% CI 0.7388‒0.836). For hip fractures r = 0.6922 (95% CI 0.6174‒0.75446) Conclusion: Using FRAX to estimate 10-year fracture risk without BD data might be a reliable tool for screening, even for patients with a high prevalence of risk factors, improving accessibility and equity in health systems. The present study's data suggest an overestimation of fracture risk with FRAX BDNI, suggesting that it is safe to be widely used as a screening tool

Application of a blind person strategy for obstacle avoidance with the use of potential fields

This paper proposes a new obstacle avoidance algorithm for the CONTROLAB AGV which uses a similar strategy adopted by a blind person to avoid obstacles while walking. The AGV moves within an office environment with a known floorplan and uses an "electronic stick" consisting of infraredsensors to detect unknown obstacles. Initially a global potential field function is defined for each floorplan room. While the AGV is moving, the original potential function is modified each time an obstacle is detected by the infrared sensors. This modification is simply performed by the addition of previously calculated potentlal field values on a grid which represents the room working area. The interestlng aspects of the proposed approach are that the potential function adaptation involves very low computational burden, the algorithm is free from local minima, the obstacles can have any shape and low cost sensors can be used to detect obstacles

Irrigation water salinity and silicon negatively interfere with the physiology and delay the flowering of ornamental sunflowers

Although silicon is considered a non-essential element for plants, its application can mitigate the harmful effects of salt stress. In this sense, the objective was to evaluate the physiological and flowering responses of ornamentalsunflower depending on the application of silicon and irrigation with saline water. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse in a completely randomized design with six replications, in a 4 x 5 factorial scheme, referring to four electrical conductivities of irrigation water (ECw): 0.5; 1.5; 2.5 and 3.5 dS m-1 and silicon doses: 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 mg L-1, with potassium silicate as the source. The following were evaluated: internal carbon concentration, transpiration, rate of liquid photosynthesis, instant efficiency of carboxylation, leaf indexes of chlorophyll a, b, chlorophyll a/b ratio, total chlorophyll, external and internal diameter of the chapter, number of petals, appearance of floral bud, beginning of flowering and full opening of the floral bud. Salinity negatively affects photosynthetic activity and flowering of ornamental sunflower plants, so that plants irrigated with saline water (3.5 dS m-1) delayed the appearance of the flower bud, the flowering index and the total opening of the floral button. The application of silicon in ornamental sunflower plants is not effective to mitigate the deleterious effects of salinity on the plant’s physiology. In addition, the addition of silicon is also not able to repair the losses in terms of flowering caused by salt stress in the species.Although silicon is considered a non-essential element for plants, its application can mitigate the harmful effects of salt stress. In this sense, the objective was to evaluate the physiological and flowering responses of ornamentalsunflower depending on the application of silicon and irrigation with saline water. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse in a completely randomized design with six replications, in a 4 x 5 factorial scheme, referring to four electrical conductivities of irrigation water (ECw): 0.5; 1.5; 2.5 and 3.5 dS m-1 and silicon doses: 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 mg L-1, with potassium silicate as the source. The following were evaluated: internal carbon concentration, transpiration, rate of liquid photosynthesis, instant efficiency of carboxylation, leaf indexes of chlorophyll a, b, chlorophyll a/b ratio, total chlorophyll, external and internal diameter of the chapter, number of petals, appearance of floral bud, beginning of flowering and full opening of the floral bud. Salinity negatively affects photosynthetic activity and flowering of ornamental sunflower plants, so that plants irrigated with saline water (3.5 dS m-1) delayed the appearance of the flower bud, the flowering index and the total opening of the floral button. The application of silicon in ornamental sunflower plants is not effective to mitigate the deleterious effects of salinity on the plant’s physiology. In addition, the addition of silicon is also not able to repair the losses in terms of flowering caused by salt stress in the species

CONTROLAB MUFA: a multi-level fusion architecture for intelligent navigation of a telerobot

This paper proposes a MUlti-level Fusion Architecture (MUFA) for controlling the navigation of a tele-commanded Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV). The architecture combines ideas derived from the fundamental concepts of sensor fusion and distributed intelligence. The focus of the work is the development of an intelligent navigation system for a tricycle drive AGV with the ability to move autonomously within any office enviromnent, following instructions issued by client stations connected to the office network and reacting accordingly to different situations found in the real world. The modules which integrate the MUFA architecture are discussed and results of some simulation experiments are presented

Door crossing and state identification using robotic vision

This project is aimed at the implementation of an autonomous vehicle guide (AGV) to navigate in internal environments, such as hospitals, offices, residences and so on. The work presents a new 3D algorithm for robotic vision, used for automatic identification of the state of doors, without any previous information about the environment, such as maps, location of obstacles, illumination and the like. The characteristics of the doors that would influence the decision of the robot on the identification of its state, also not ignored, such as texture, color, dimensions. Published in the 8th IFAC International Sysmposium on Robot Control (SYROCO 2006), this work presented the application of the Hougth Transform in images captured by the robotic vision. The coordinates of Hougth then presented the location of the edges of the doors and the analysis of cross-corelation of the found ones, gave us the configuration of the state of the door (open, closed, half open). With the results obtained, the navigation of the autonomous robot became more secure, since the risks of collision were minimized. Navigation using 3D vision, with real-time processing, also reduced the risk of collision with objects dynamically positioned in the environment. In the first part of this document, we present the article published in (SYROCO 2006). In the second part, we present some of the experimental results obtained during the project.O presente relatório técnico trata de um dos projetos realizados no Laboratório de Controle – CONTROLAB do Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica – NCE da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ, nos anos de 2004 e 2005. Este projeto é voltado para a implementação de um robô autônomo AGV (Autonomous Vehicle Guide) para navegar em ambientes internos, tais como hospitais, escritórios, residências e etc. Especializado na área de visão computacional, O trabalho apresenta um novo algoritmo 3D para visão robótica, utilizado para identificação automática do estado de portas, sem quaisquer informações prévias sobre o ambiente, tais como mapas, localização de obstáculos, iluminação e etc. As próprias características das portas que influenciariam na decisão do robô sobre a identificação de seu estado, também não ignoradas, tais como textura, cor, dimensões. Publicado no 8th IFAC International Sysmposium on Robot Control (SYROCO 2006), o trabalho apresentou a aplicação da Transformada de Hougth em imagens capturada pela visão robótica. As coordenadas de Hougth apresentavam então a localização das arestas das portas e a análise de corelação cruzada das quinas encontradas, nos davam a configuração do estado da porta (aberta, fechada, entre-aberta). Com os resultados obtidos, a navegação do robô autônomo se tornava mais segura, vez que os riscos de colisão eram minimizados. A navegação utilizando visão 3D, com processamento em tempo real, também reduzia o risco de colisão com objetos dinamicamente posicionados no ambiente. Na primeira parte deste documento, apresentamos o artigo publicado em (SYROCO 2006). Na segunda parte, apresentamos alguns dos resultados experimentais obtidos durante a realização do projeto