OBJECTIVE To evaluate Brazil's public health surveillance system (HSS), identifying its core capacities, shortcomings, and limitations in dealing with public health emergencies, within the context of the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005). METHODS In 2008-2009 an evaluative cross-sectional study was conducted using semistructured questionnaires administered to key informants (municip...

The document was made possible through support provided by the United States Agency for international Development (USAID), under the terms of cooperative agreement number 391‐A‐00‐05‐01037‐00 and sub‐agreement number 36098‐02 for PAIMAN. The Pakistan initiative for Mothers and Newborns (PAIMAN) is a 6‐year USAID funded project designed to reduce country's maternal and neonatal mortality by maki...

The authors present a cyber-physical systems study on the estimation of driver behavior in autonomous vehicles and vehicle safety systems. Extending upon previous work, the approach described is suitable for the long term estimation and tracking of autonomous vehicle behavior. The proposed system makes use of a previously defined Hybrid State System and Hidden Markov Model (HSS+HMM) system whic...

This paper presents a residential hybrid thermal/electrical grid-connected home energy system (HES), including a fuel-cell with combined heat and power and a battery-based energy storage system. The minimum operation cost of this integrated energy system is achieved by proper scheduling of different energy resources, found by applying a new powerful optimization algorithm, the Hyper-Spherical S...

Background Over the last decade, Ethiopia has made impressive national improvements in health outcomes, including reductions in maternal, neonatal, infant, and child mortality attributed in large part to their Health Extension Program (HEP). As this program continues to evolve and improve, understanding the unit cost of health extension worker (HEW) services is fundamental to planning for futur...