Anvisa's Prior Consent as a Contribution to Global Health and the One Health System

The participation of the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) in the granting of patents for pharmaceutical products and processes in Brazil took place since 2001, giving this sector of the Ministry of Health unprecedented legal competence, until then exclusive to the entity of the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). This chapter proposes to analyze the technical and legal aspects inherent to patenting combined with the ability to make political decisions in favor of implementing flexibilities in the patent examination of medicines that may be favorable to public health. John Kingdon's Multiple Flows Model was the methodology chosen to understand the most relevant factors that influenced the government's agenda for the creation of Anvisa's prior consent. The results allowed to outline the political window that materialized the formulation of the public policy in question, as well as to call attention to the fundamental importance for the protection of the current needs of humanity and of its future generations inserted in the concept of One Health.

Spatial Patterns of the Urban Agglomeration of the Yellow River Ji-Shaped Bend Based on Space of Multiple Flows

Previous studies on the space of flows have mainly focused on a single flow element and have given less consideration to the joint effect of complex correlations among multiple flows. To fill this gap, in the context of the coordinated development of the urban agglomeration of the Yellow River Ji-shaped bend (UAYB), in this study, three flows, namely population flow, logistics flow, and information flow, are selected to research the spatial patterns of the UAYB. The results show the following: (1) The information flow among cities in the UAYB is the strongest, followed by logistics flow and population flow. (2) Hohhot, Ordos, Yinchuan, and Taiyuan are the core cities and have attracted more flows to converge there; different flows have formed different central features. (3) Regarding the correlation of the three flows, information flow has a strong correlation with the other two flows. (4) From the perspective of the joint effects of the three flows considered, the hierarchy of UAYB is dominated by Hohhot and Taiyuan and sub-dominated by Yinchuan and Ordos; four prominent city groups have been formed with these four cities as the center. On the basis of our results, we put forward some recommendations on the integrated development of cities at various levels within the UAYB to provide a reference for its spatial optimization strategy.

TSCH Multiflow Scheduling with QoS Guarantees: A Comparison of SDN with Common Schedulers

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSN) are becoming increasingly popular in production environments due to their ease of deployment, low cost and energy efficiency. However, the complexity and accuracy demanded by these environments requires that IWSN implement quality of service mechanisms that allow them to operate with high determinism. For this reason, the IEEE 802.15.4e standard incorporates the Time Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) protocol which reduces interference and increases the reliability of transmissions. This standard does not specify how time resources are allocated in TSCH scheduling, leading to multiple scheduling solutions. Schedulers can be classified as autonomous, distributed and centralised. The first two have prevailed over the centralised ones because they do not require high signalling, along with the advantages of ease of deployment and high performance. However, the increased QoS requirements and the diversity of traffic flows that circulate through the network in today’s Industry 4.0 environment require strict, dynamic control to guarantee parameters such as delay, packet loss and deadline, independently for each flow. That cannot always be achieved with distributed or autonomous schedulers. For this reason, it is necessary to use centralised protocols with a disruptive approach, such as Software Defined Networks (SDN). In these, not only is the control of the MAC layer centralised, but all the decisions of the nodes that make up the network are configured by the controller based on a global vision of the topology and resources, which allows optimal decisions to be made. In this work, a comparative analysis is made through simulation and a testbed of the different schedulers to demonstrate the benefits of a fully centralized approach such as SDN. The results obtained show that with SDN it is possible to simplify the management of multiple flows, without the problems of centralised schedulers. SDN maintains the Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) levels of other distributed solutions, but in addition, it achieves greater determinism with bounded end-to-end delays and Deadline Satisfaction Ratio (DSR) at the cost of increased power consumption.

Research of Determining Low-Reliability Elements of Multiple-Flows Compressed Air Braking System Based on Goal-Oriented (GO) Methodology

The multi-flows pneumatic braking system is one of the modern braking systems equipped with truck vehicles which is a very complex system consisting of many elements connected in series or parallel. The reliability of the braking system has a significant influence on safety and the ability to manoeuvre. The study of identifying low-reliability elements in the brake system is of great significance to improve the efficiency of maintenance and repair. This article shows the research results that determine low-reliability elements of the multi-flows pneumatic brake system based on GO methodology, and allow to examine each element's reliability and the complex system. The reliability assessment model is built based on GO theory and statistics data collected at the used units about the frequency of damage, ability, and time to repair and restore the assemblies in the brake system. By using this model, the reliability of the assemblies and the whole system can be determined at any point in time relative to the actual operating time of the brake system. The article's research results can be applied for surveying other components’ reliability and complex systems such as steering or suspension systems.

IMRP: interference-aware multicasting for multiple flows in WMNs.

Multicast is an important routing service for many of fundamental applications such as Webcasting, Video Streaming or Conferencing, Online Games. On the other hand, as much as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are growing and become more complex, the need for modification of Multicast Routing for WMNs with different constraints are increased as well. Therefor Researches on multicasting in WMN is still in initial stage. We focused on Multicasting over Single Channel WMNs with multiple group flows scenario. The main challenge on this scenario is the impact of interference between multiple flows on the performance of multicast flows. By increasing number of receiver nodes in a single channel area, the interference caused by multiple simultaneous flows in the network cannot be fully avoidable, but implementing a proper routing helps to improve the performance of the flows. In this research, we develop a new interference-aware routing metrics and implement it in our purposed routing scheme (IMRP) for multicasting multiple flows in WMNs. Our purposed metrics takes some new defined attributes of routing path into account. The purposed scheme is evaluated by simulating on Riverbed Modeller 17.5. Simulation and testbed experiments show that our proposed routing significantly improves the total Throughput as well as total Packet Delivery Ratio of multicast flows compared to existing standards.

IMRP: interference-aware multicasting for multiple flows in WMNs.

Multicast is an important routing service for many of fundamental applications such as Webcasting, Video Streaming or Conferencing, Online Games. On the other hand, as much as Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are growing and become more complex, the need for modification of Multicast Routing for WMNs with different constraints are increased as well. Therefor Researches on multicasting in WMN is still in initial stage. We focused on Multicasting over Single Channel WMNs with multiple group flows scenario. The main challenge on this scenario is the impact of interference between multiple flows on the performance of multicast flows. By increasing number of receiver nodes in a single channel area, the interference caused by multiple simultaneous flows in the network cannot be fully avoidable, but implementing a proper routing helps to improve the performance of the flows. In this research, we develop a new interference-aware routing metrics and implement it in our purposed routing scheme (IMRP) for multicasting multiple flows in WMNs. Our purposed metrics takes some new defined attributes of routing path into account. The purposed scheme is evaluated by simulating on Riverbed Modeller 17.5. Simulation and testbed experiments show that our proposed routing significantly improves the total Throughput as well as total Packet Delivery Ratio of multicast flows compared to existing standards.

Exergy analysis for sustainable inventory and logistics systems

Inventory systems may be modelled analogously to thermal systems involving multiple flows of capital, labour, energy, and materials among the members of a supply chain. The laws of thermodynamics can be employed to analyze the efficiency of such physical systems by implementing “Exergy Analysis,” a powerful technique which can be used to assess and improve the efficiency of a process, device, and system and to enhance their environmental and economic performance. Traditional exergy analysis methods may not be sufficient for the analysis of certain systems because they do not account for the non-energetic factors such as capital, labour, and environment protection. Extended exergy analysis assigns exergetic equivalents to such non-energetic externalities. Sustainable development is about securing the requirements of today while guarding the needs of future generations. Its target is the improvement of the living styles of humans by protecting their health and environment, and the efficient resources’ consumption while advancing long-term economic growth. In other words, it is the integration of social, environmental, and economic aspects into regulations and policies, which requires actions from everyone on this planet. The production, inventory and logistics of goods have contributed, among other things, towards making our world less sustainable. This thesis, therefore, aims to provide models, methods and decision support tools that can assist in achieving a better level of sustainability through the whole processes of inventory systems. The overall objectives are to analyze the importance of the wise consumptions of physical and human resources in inventory systems. The results of this thesis have significant implications in shifting the “classical” paradigm of inventory systems that are based on the economic performance, which can be measured with financial criteria, such as total costs and profit, to the “non-classical” paradigm that considers the three pillars of sustainable development. The results showed the importance of accounting for the consumed exergy rather than just considering the values in term of monetary units. Computing the exergetic costs can provide more flexibility for managers of supply chains to compute the quantity based on the available resources and not confining this to the capital only.

Exergy analysis for sustainable inventory and logistics systems

Inventory systems may be modelled analogously to thermal systems involving multiple flows of capital, labour, energy, and materials among the members of a supply chain. The laws of thermodynamics can be employed to analyze the efficiency of such physical systems by implementing “Exergy Analysis,” a powerful technique which can be used to assess and improve the efficiency of a process, device, and system and to enhance their environmental and economic performance. Traditional exergy analysis methods may not be sufficient for the analysis of certain systems because they do not account for the non-energetic factors such as capital, labour, and environment protection. Extended exergy analysis assigns exergetic equivalents to such non-energetic externalities. Sustainable development is about securing the requirements of today while guarding the needs of future generations. Its target is the improvement of the living styles of humans by protecting their health and environment, and the efficient resources’ consumption while advancing long-term economic growth. In other words, it is the integration of social, environmental, and economic aspects into regulations and policies, which requires actions from everyone on this planet. The production, inventory and logistics of goods have contributed, among other things, towards making our world less sustainable. This thesis, therefore, aims to provide models, methods and decision support tools that can assist in achieving a better level of sustainability through the whole processes of inventory systems. The overall objectives are to analyze the importance of the wise consumptions of physical and human resources in inventory systems. The results of this thesis have significant implications in shifting the “classical” paradigm of inventory systems that are based on the economic performance, which can be measured with financial criteria, such as total costs and profit, to the “non-classical” paradigm that considers the three pillars of sustainable development. The results showed the importance of accounting for the consumed exergy rather than just considering the values in term of monetary units. Computing the exergetic costs can provide more flexibility for managers of supply chains to compute the quantity based on the available resources and not confining this to the capital only.

Beyond “Transborder”: Tawada Yōko’s Vision of Another World Literature

This article presents a critical examination of “transborder” literary approaches that seek to renegotiate the position of Japanese fiction within the world. The concept of transborder fiction has emerged in recent decades as a means of breaking down the boundaries of Japanese literature that assume agreement between the nationality of a writer and the language of her text. However, as it takes its cues from David Damrosch’s influential study of 2003, What is World Literature?, which suggests that literature gains in value in translation, transborder literature betrays its desires to promote Japan’s national literature in a globalising literary context. This more critical view reveals that despite their calls for greater literary diversity, transborder approaches exhibit problematic tendencies that threaten to erase the multiple flows of language and intertextuality already extant within modern Japanese fiction and turn its eye away from history. This critique is focalised through the writing of Tawada Yōko, whose prolific output of literary works and essays in Japanese and German appear to epitomise the image of transborder writing, and yet which frequently challenge these assumptions. Both the book-length essay Exophony (2003) and the Japanese novel Tabi o suru hadaka no me (2004) offer prescient critiques rooted in history that expose moments of rupture, asymmetry and untranslatability, which an emphasis on border crossings threatens to overlook. However, by choosing to peer through those gaps, guided by the latter’s Vietnamese narrator, these texts also incite hitherto unseen connections between Tawada’s Japanese fiction and the world.