Orientador: Regina Célia Baptista Belluzzo / Resumo: As organizações estão inseridas em um contexto extremamente competitivo com grandes transformações de ordem produtivas, tecnológicas, sociais e econômicas, que emergiram das revoluções industriais. Dessa maneira, a criação de valor, depende impreterivelmente de se ter disponíveis ferramentas informacionais e profissionais capacitados e competentes em informação dentro do contexto organizacional. Nessa perspectiva, as organizações prestadoras de serviços, necessitam adquirir e desenvolver essa competência e oferecer serviços que proporcionem diferenciais competitivos para tomadas de decisão e agregação de valor. Parte-se do pressuposto que os gestores Competentes em Informação constroem conhecimento individual e o compartilham ao coletivo organizacional, uma vez que dominam o acesso, a busca, o uso e a disseminação da informação, apoiados na competência em informação que se constitui uma ferramenta estratégica para que os gestores possam tomar decisões assertivas e possam agregar valor aos serviços prestados aos clientes. Assim, a seguinte questão central é indicada: os gestores que atuam em organizações de serviço possuem competência em Informação para acessar, buscar, analisar e usar a informação, a fim de construir conhecimento e aplicá-lo na agregação de valor para atender as demandas dos clientes? O objetivo geral fundamenta-se em analisar a inter-relação entre a Competência em Informação e a construção de conhecimento para gerar agregação de valor ao processo decisório c... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Organizations are in a competitive context based on productive, technological, social and economical transformations emerged by the industrial revolution. Value creation depends on the availability of information tools and skilled professionals which are information literates. Therefore, service provider organizations need to acquire and develop this literacy to offer services based on information literate professionals. These professionals influence competitive advantage, decision-making and added value. Information literate professionals construct individual knowledge and share it collectively, since they are skilled to access, evaluate, use and disseminate information. Information literacy is a strategic tool, so managers can make effective decisions and add value in the services provided to the customers. The following research question is proposed: Do managers who work for service organizations have skills to access, seek, analyze and use information to construct knowledge and add value to meet customer demands? The main purpose is to analyze the connection between information literacy and knowledge construction to add value to the decision process as a competitive advantage to service organizations. The focus is to analyze this literacy and knowledge in 10 businesses, which are part of the selected sample of a case study in Sao Paulo State. Information literacy and knowledge construction can influence competitive advantage to service provider organizations. A literature... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Background: To allow an immediate treatment of an infection with suitable antibiotics and bactericides or fungicides, there is an urgent need for fast and precise identification of the causative human pathogens. Methods based on DNA sequence comparison like 16S rRNA analysis have become standard tools for pathogen verification. However, the distinction of closely related organisms remains a challenging task. To overcome such limitations, we identified a new genomic target sequence located in the single copy gene for tRNA nucleotidyltransferase fulfilling the requirements for a ubiquitous, yet highly specific DNA marker. In the present study, we demonstrate that this sequence marker has a higher discriminating potential than commonly used genotyping markers in pro- as well as eukaryotes, underscoring its applicability as an excellent diagnostic tool in infectology. Results: Based on phylogenetic analyses, a region within the gene for tRNA nucleotidyltransferase (CCA-adding enzyme) was identified as highly heterogeneous. As prominent examples for pro- and eukaryotic pathogens, several Vibrio and Aspergillus species were used for genotyping and identification in a multiplex PCR approach followed by gel electrophoresis and fluorescence-based product detection. Compared to rRNA analysis, the selected gene region of the tRNA nucleotidyltransferase revealed a seven to 30-fold higher distinction potential between closely related Vibrio or Aspergillus species, respectively. The obtained data exhibit a superb genome specificity in the diagnostic analysis. Even in the presence of a 1,000-fold excess of human genomic DNA, no unspecific amplicons were produced. Conclusions: These results indicate that a relatively short segment of the coding region for tRNA nucleotidyltransferase has a higher discriminatory potential than most established diagnostic DNA markers. Besides identifying microbial pathogens in infections, further possible applications of this new marker are food hygiene controls or metagenome analyses.

Background: The literature on lean service and practical implementation of lean service is very thin, as the use of lean as a tool in service-oriented companies is not as well established as in the industrial and manufacturing sectors. This has created an interest in us to investigate how lean service and lean tools can be adapted to be used in the construction industry. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify non-value adding activities and problem areas to provide suggestions regarding leantools that can help to improve the carpentryproject process from beginning to end. Methodology: To answer the question of which non-value adding activities arise in carpentry-projects and which activities and areas in the carpentry processes that could be improved through leantools, have been studied as a case study in a medium-sized construction company. A total of four interviews were conducted, in an early stage a pilot interview with the group manager was conducted to form an idea of the current situation in the case company. Thereafter three semi-structured interviews were conducted with the company's board member, group manager and an employed carpenter. The Lean tools 5S and Muda sets the theme of the interviews and addresses issues related to waste, nonvalue adding activities and work routines. The material gathered from the interviews is set against the theoretical frame of reference and forms the basis for the analysis and discussion of this study. Results: The interviews revealed that mistakes, rework, unnecessary movements and waiting times are common. Usually in the form of incorrect drawings, poor conditions in workplaces or inadequate planning before carrying out the work in the delimited area of wall-projects. The case company recognizes that a development should take place in certain areas, but that inefficiency is not only due to them, but also to external circumstances. Contributions: Modifications to the original eight waste categories have been made to more accurately represent wastes that arise in service-oriented professions. Problems that arise in connection with non-value-creating activities are largely due to a lack of communication, unengaged employees, and inadequate planning. The results of this study validate previous research in the area of lean service and contributes with a unique perspective, as the construction industry is difficult to define as it can neither be defined as manufacturing, production oriented nor service oriented. / Bakgrund: Litteraturen kring lean service och praktisk implementation av lean service är väldigt tunn, då användningen av lean som ett verktyg inom serviceinriktade företag inte är lika väl etablerat som inom industri- och tillverkningssektorn. Detta har skapat ett intresse hos oss till att undersöka hur lean service och leanverktyg kan anpassas till att användas inom byggbranschen. Syfte: Syftet med detta arbete är att identifiera icke-värdeskapande aktiviteter och problemområden för att kunna ge förslag på leanverktyg som kan användas för att förbättra processen från att ett finsnickeriprojekt påbörjas till att det slutförs. Metod: För att svara på frågan om vilka icke-värdeskapande aktiviteter som uppstår inom finsnickeriprojekt samt vilka aktiviteter och områden i finsnickeri processen som skulle kunna förbättras med leanverktyg har undersökning skett som en fallstudie i ett medelstort snickeriföretag. I detta arbete så har totalt fyra intervjuer genomförts, i tidigt skede så genomfördes en pilotintervju med gruppchefen för att bilda en uppfattning om nuläget i fallföretaget. Därefter genomfördes tre semistrukturerade intervjuer med företagets styrelseledamot, gruppchef och en anställd snickare. Leanverktygen 5S och Muda utgjorde temat för intervjuns riktning och behandlar frågor gällande slöseri, ickevärdeskapande aktiviteter och arbetsrutiner. Underlaget från intervjuerna ställs mot den teoretiska referensramen och utgör grunden för analysen och diskussionen. Resultat: Intervjuerna visade att misstag, omarbete, onödiga rörelser och väntetider är vanligt förekommande. Vanligtvis i form av felaktiga ritningar, dåliga förutsättningar i arbetsplatsen eller brist på god planering inför arbetet inom det avgränsade området väggprojekt. Fallföretaget inser att en utveckling bör ske inom vissa områden, men att ineffektivitet inte endast beror på dem, utan även av externa förhållanden. Bidrag: Modifikationer av de ursprungliga åtta slöserikategorierna genomförts för att mer precist representera slöserier som uppstår inom serviceinriktade yrkesområden. Problemområden som uppstår i samband med icke-värdeskapande aktiviteter beror till stor del på bristande kommunikation, oengagerade medarbetare och otillräcklig planering. Resultatet från arbetet styrker tidigare forskning inom området för lean service och bidrar med ett unikt perspektiv då byggbranschen är svårdefinierad då det varken kan definieras som fullt tillverkande, produktionsorienterat eller serviceinriktat

Studien genomförs i form av en fallstudie, på företaget KraftPowercon. I dagens industrier är det viktigt att alltid sträva efter att effektivisera, en kortare genomloppstid leder till ökad konkurrenskraft och flexibilitet i snabba ändringar i efterfrågan och kundkrav. Syftet är att undersöka sambandet mellan icke- värdeskapande aktiviteter och den totala genomloppstiden hos en produkt. Målet är sedan att skapa ett underlag som skall användas vid framtida effektiviseringsåtgärder på fallföretaget. Resultaten visas i form av en värdeflödesanalys och ett sambandsdiagram där två fabrikslayouter har tagits fram utifrån detta diagram. / This is a case study, at KraftPowercon. It is important to always become more efficiency, to survive the competition in the industry and to profit.Shorter throughput time will result in a greater competitiveness and higher flexibility regarding quick changes in demands. The purpose with the study is to examine the relation between non-value-adding activities and the throughput time for a specific product. The objective is to generate a material that will be used as ground in future changes, regarding the effectivity at the company. The results are presented in a value-map and a relation diagram, where two alternative plant layouts have been generated.

No description available.

Background: Based on previous research, conventional mammography screening has been found to be ineffective for women at high risk, mainly because high-risk women have high breast density and a fast progression rate of breast cancer. Recently, MRI screening was proposed as an additional complementary screening for high-risk women in Ottawa. The addition of MRI to mammography to screen the high-risk population is worth exploring as it may well address the limitations of mammography, especially since MRI has higher sensitivity. Purpose: The goal of this study is to assess the cost-effectiveness off adding MRI to mammography screening for early detection among women of the high-risk population in Ottawa by using conventional values for the society’s/government’s willingness to pay for one life year gained (US$ 50,000). Methods: A discrete-event simulation model was developed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of adding MRI screening to mammography for high risk women breast screening in Ottawa. Three risk groups were considered; BRCA1, BRCA2 and other high risk. Based on breast annual incidence, screening features, breast cancer progression among high-risk women, treatment and breast cancer survival rates, the model simulates a hypothetical cohort consisting of 5000 women progressing from age 30 to 100 (or to natural death) and calculates the accumulated life years and costs in order to predict the cost of one life year gained by each screening strategy. Univariate sensitivity analysis was performed on the key parameters to determine the robustness of the simulation outcomes. Paired t-tests were used to determine whether the parameters’ variations are statistically significant or not. Results: In the base-case scenario, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of mammography compared to both screening was CAN$30,043.48 /life year gained (95%CI ±2524.40) which means the addition of MRI to mammography is a cost-effective intervention according to the commonly used willingness-to-pay threshold of US$50,000 per life-year gained. The findings of the sensitivity analysis indicate that the cost-effectiveness of adding MRI screening is statistically significant for most of the parameter variations, however, the degree of change in the ICER is not hugely impactful as in all cases the ICER remained well below the commonly used willingness-to-pay threshold per life year gained. Conclusion: Study results suggested that the addition of MRI has an important role in improving high risk women screening in terms of increasing life years gained compared to receiving mammography screening only. The results of this study support the recommendations of Cancer Care Ontario and the Ontario Health Technology Advisory Committee guidelines of expanding the Ontario Screening Program to integrate MRI with mammography screening for high risk women aged 30 to 69 years.

Un des thèmes pratiques, mais hautement sensibles, est le problème de sondage dans les réseaux sociaux où le caractère secret des informations sélectionnées et la réputation de l’utilisateur sont très critiques. En effet, les utilisateurs désirent préserver la confidentialité de leurs votes et dissimuler, le cas échéant, leurs mauvais comportements. Récemment, Guerraoui et al. ont propose des protocoles de sondage basés sur la partage de secret et ne nécessitant aucune infrastructure cryptographique. Néanmoins, ces protocoles ne sont applicables que si le graphe social a une structure d’anneau et le nombre d’utilisateurs est un carré parfait. Dans cette thèse, nous traitons, d’une part, du problème du déploiement décentralisé des protocoles de sondage qui sont basés sur des graphes sociaux ayant des structures générales, et d’autre part, du problème de transformation des graphes sociaux pour augmenter les propriétés de vie privée et de précision, nécessaires au déroulement sûr et rentable du sondage décentralisé. Premièrement, nous proposons trois protocoles décentralisés qui s’appuient sur l’état originel (sans transformation) des graphes sociaux. Les deux premiers protocoles utilisent respectivement des modèles de communication synchrone et asynchrone, et manipulent des procédures de vérification pour détecter les utilisateurs malhonnêtes. Quant au troisième protocole, il est asynchrone et ne nécessite pas de procédures de vérification. Pour que ce protocole permette une diffusion efficace de messages, nous avons défini une propriété sur les graphes sociaux, appelée “m-broadcasting”. Dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, nous formalisons le problème de “l’ajout des amis” qui consiste à trouver une transformation optimale des graphes sociaux pour les adapter au partage de secret. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous présentons deux algorithmes selon deux approches différentes: centralisée et décentralisée. Une évaluation expérimentale montre que nos protocoles sont précis et restreints aux bornes théoriques / One of the current practical, useful but sensitive topic in social networks is polling problem where the privacy of exchanged information and user reputation are very critical. Indeed, users want to preserve the confidentiality of their votes and to hide, if any, their misbehaviors. Recently, Guerraoui et al. proposed polling protocols based on simple secret sharing scheme and without requiring any central authority or cryptography system. However these protocols can be deployed safely and efficiently provided that the social graph structure should be transformed into a ring structure-based overlay and the number of participating users is perfect square. In this thesis, we address the problem of deploying decentralized polling protocols for general social graphs and how to transform these graphs in order to increase the privacy and/or accuracy properties. First, we propose three simple decentralized polling protocols that rely on the current state of social graphs. The two first protocols use synchronous and asynchronous models and verification procedures to detect the misbehaving users. The third protocol is an asynchronous one that does not require any verification procedures and contains a method for efficiently broadcasting message under a family of social graphs satisfying what we call the “m-broadcasting” property. Second, we formalize the “adding friends” problem such that we can reuse the social graphs after some minimum structural modifications consisting in adding new friendship relations. We also devise algorithms for solving this problem in centralized and decentralized networks. We validate our solutions with some performance evaluations which show that our protocols are accurate, and inside the theoretical bounds

While varies of supply chains are working on moving products towardsthe end consumers, there is also an increasing amount of productsbeing sent back. This has meant an increasing importance of the returnmanagement process. As many businesses have realized that the returnprocess has little connection with their core value, the idea ofoutsourcing return management crossed the mind of many companies.Third-party logistics (3PL) provider have also sensed the opportunityand begun to explore the possibility of providing such services forcompanies in need.

[pt] Sintetizar Bi-2223 por decomposição peritética com posterior recristalização para estudar a cristalinidade e o efeito da fase líquida na formação de amorfo é de suma importância em pesquisas de fitas supercondutoras 1G (1ª geração) de Bi-2223. Tal rota de tratamento de fitas 1G de fase Bi-2223 já foi demonstrada, mas ainda há desafios devido à sua estreita região de estabilidade, lenta formação e a volatilização de chumbo durante a decomposição. No presente trabalho, amostras de (Bi, Pb)-2223 com 6 porcento de fração de PbO (adicionados aos reagentes) foram aquecidas a temperaturas acima da decomposição peritética e resfriadas lentamente. Empregaram-se análises de DTA/TGA, MEV/EDS, DRX e Análise quantitativa (com uso do método de Rietveld, V(I) e R(T). Os resultados mostram que o balanço de fases e a microestrutura dependem da temperatura de decomposição para fita comercial e caseira e da fração de PbO somente para a fita caseira. Uma investigação sistemática por DRX foi realizada, a fim de elucidar tal processo. Foi observada uma recuperação parcial de Bi-2223 nas fitas estudadas e os resultados indicaram que a decomposição e a recristalização da fase Bi-2223, fase amorfa e fases secundárias geraram mudanças na microestrutura e nas propriedades elétricas da fita 1G seja monofilamentar ou multifilamentar. / [en] Synthesize Bi-2223 by peritectic decomposition with subsequent recrystallization to study the crystallinity and the effect of the liquid phase in the formation of amorphous is very important in research of superconducting tapes 1G Bi-2223. Such a route of treatment tapes 1G phase Bi-2223 has been demonstrated, but there are still challenges due to its narrow region of stability, and slow formation of lead volatilization during decomposition. In this work, samples of (Bi, Pb) -2223 with 6 percent PbO fraction (added to the reactants) were heated to temperatures above the peritectic decomposition and cooled slowly. Analyzes were employed DTA / TGA, SEM / EDS and DRX Quantitative analysis (using the Rietveld method, V (I) and R (T). Results show that the balance of phases and microstructure depend on the decomposition temperature for commercial and homemade ribbon and the fraction of PbO only homemade tape. a systematic investigation by DRX was performed in order to elucidate this process. was observed a partial recovery of Bi-2223 and studied the tapes results indicate that the decomposition and recrystallization of the phase Bi-2223 phase amorphous and secondary phases generate changes in microstructure and electrical properties of the tape 1G be monofilament or multifilament.

The master´s thesis deals with the issue of setting transfer prices for management services between associated enterprises. The thesis contains a theoretical definition of basic concepts and analysis of legislation. The content of the analytical part of the thesis is the analysis of the current state and analysis of case law. The theoretical background is applied in the practical part to a model example which is determined by setting transfer price for management services between internal associated enterprises.