Journal articles on the topic 'Private tender procedure'

The aim of this paper is to identify the difference between the prices achieved in public procurement by public and private bodies. The analysis exploits the fact that European legislation forced to follow the Public Procurement Act not only public sector but also private companies working in the position of local monopolies (gas supply, water supply, public transport, etc.).The analysis is based on data from the Information System of Public Procurement in the Czech Republic. The data set is created by more than 500 observations containing information about the large construction contracts from the years 2006–2011. Details of these contracts were analysed using regressions. As a dependent variable were used price achieved (in the first model) and the number of bids (in second model). As explained variables were the numbers of bids (only in the first model), type of tender, the contract size, etc. The methodology is based on foreign papers, which are dealing with the issue of competitive effects.The results show that the public sector bodies obtain in their tenders on average more bids than private firms, but their realized prices are higher. Another finding is the influence of the type of procurement procedure. In the public sector are the best rates achieved with open procedures, while in the case of private entities was not identified the influence of procurement procedures.

Introduction. The main purpose of the public procurement system is determined by the need to ensure efficient use of budget funds in the development of competition, transparency and openness of the procurement process organization. The purpose of the research is to conduct the process analysis of contesting the public procurement procedure by tenderers. Results. The authors argue that evaluating the dispute resolution effectiveness between the complainant and the customer on the basis of the balance of rights, interests, and objectives of the procurement law is, in practice, an extremely difficult issue that must be resolved in each individual case. The specifics of determining the procurement subject by the customer are highlighted in such a way as to preserve the right to choose the product that suits him best and not to buy the cheapest existing product on the market, such as paper according to certain parameters of density and level of linen. But if the customer has already defined in the tender documentation technical and the qualitative characteristics of the procurement subject, he has no right to further deviate from them when selecting the winner. It is proved that the appeal procedure is created specifically to ensure a quick and professional settlement of conflicts between the participant or potential participant of the procurement procedure and the customer regarding the actions of the customer, which violate the right of such participant in the procurement procedure and the conclusion of the contract with the customer. Attention is drawn to the appeal terms of the tender documentation claim being challenged and the possible addition of justification for the need to amend the conditions of the tender documentation with the opportunity to give additional evidence. Conclusions. From the moment of the procurement contract conclusion between the state customer and the successful tenderer, classic private legal relations emerge, and consequently, after the conclusion of the procurement contract for public funds, which is the final stage of the procurement procedures, civil rights and obligations arise between the parties, and consequently civil rights and obligations arise to appeal the procurement procedure. Keywords: public procurement; body of appeal; tender documentation; the subject of the appeal; legislation on public procurement.

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in Malaysia have been inundated by various controversies and criticisms from the very beginning. Many of the constraints that occur in PPP projects is due to the failure in tendering stage. Bidding or tender for a PPP project is usually much more complex than a traditional public-sector project involving the appointment of top advisers and designers at a great fee in the preparation of detailed design, comprehensive planning, extensive bid documentation, and lengthy clarifications. These problems as being the reason behind several high-profile withdrawals during the early PPP tenders, resulting in some preferred bidders being selected by defaults as other competitors withdrew. Base on the above premise, this study attempts to propose PPP tendering process improvement in Malaysian construction industry. This paper aims at providing an overview about literature on tendering process in PPP/PFI. The objectives of the research are to identify and understand the PPP implementation practices in Malaysia; to determine issues and challenges in PPP tendering stage; and to propose PPP tendering improvement. The approach is based on the analysis of the pertinent publications on the theme. Three main interest areas can be found in the literature which is; tendering procedure, issues and challenges, and strategies that could be enhance PPP tendering process in the Malaysian construction industry.

Tender evaluation is the procedure of choosing the best contractor for a particular project from many applicants. Although rational and logical methods can be used for bidding strategies, bid evaluation remains a skill for which an engineer’s verdict is crucial. Contractors commonly witness that tender selection is not an easy job, and the lowest bid does not necessarily win the contract. The tender decision mainly depends on quantifiable measures such as financial costs and paybacks, and qualitative or invisible factors like administrative security accountability, aptitude, and the proficiency of the contractors. Moreover, Bid evaluation is a decision-making procedure that incorporates an extensive criteria range for which the information is not accordingly. Hence, ambiguity linked to such information is not appropriate for this study. This paper aims to evaluate innovation during the bid evaluation process in the road industry. The research results indicate that the private and public sectors in Australia offer innovative products and work methods, given the chance. Therefore, innovation during the bid evaluation process is welcomed and sometimes strongly encouraged. Further, it is important to have strong research in to how to effectively determine value for money in the context of developing suitable and quality roads. Therefore, this research is useful in the context of evaluating factors that help to understand value for money in the road sector in context of bid evaluation process. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091676 Full Text: PDF

A competent construction contractor is one of the indispensable conditions of a proper process and completion of a construction project. The article presents analysis results of the main criteria considered by Polish public clients in contractor competence evaluation. Research was carried out on the basis of demands stated by clients in restricted tenders announced in 2007. The author also presents research results of the methods and criteria for construction contractor selection, used by Polish private clients. To carry out the research a questionnaire was sent to 27 private clients at the turn of 2006/2007. The results of the research show that public clients in most of the restricted tenders use just one of the criteria used to qualify a candidate to the second stage of tender procedure and it is usually the contractor's experience. Generally, it is characterised by the number of realised projects similar to the ordered one. For private clients, in contractor competence evaluation, technical possibilities of a contractor are especially valued. Experience in similar investments realisation, their quality, the equipment owned, and the staff are the top qualities in the rankings. Appreciated, although to a smaller extent, is also financial reliability of a contractor. Yet, criteria connected with project management are those which are the least valued ones. Santrauka Statybos rangovo kompetencija - viena iš privalomu salygu tinkamai vykdyti statybos projekta ir užtikrinti, kad jis bus užbaigtas. Straipsnyje pristatyta Lenkijos viešojo sektoriaus klientu nustatytu svarbiausiu rodikliu rangovo kompetencijos vertinimo analize. Tyrimo metu buvo remtasi klientu reikalavimais, nustatytais uždaru konkursu, vykusiu 2007 m., metu. Autore taip pat pristato Lenkijos viešojo sektoriaus taikomu metodu ir rodikliu statybos rangovu atrankai tyrimu rezultatus. Tyrimo metu klausimynas buvo išsiustas 27 klientams. Tyrimu rezultatai parode, kad viešojo sektoriaus užsakovai daugumoje uždaru konkursu pirmame etape kandidatui vertinti naudoja tik viena rodikli ir tai dažniausia yra rangovo patirtis. Bendruoju atveju vertinama pagal igyvendintu projektu, panašiu i konkursini, skaičiu. Privačiame sektoriuje vertinant rangovo kompetencija ypatingas demesys kreipiamas i technines rangovo galimybes. Panašiu investiciniu projektu vykdymo patirtis, darbu kokybe, turima iranga ir personalas yra pagrindiniai atrankos rodikliai. Finansinis rangovo patikimumas vertinamas, bet rečiau. Rodikliai, susije su projektu valdymu, vertinami labai retai.

The issues of land legislation in the field of regulation of land relations have been identified. It was determined that pre-reform period was characterized by the planned development of economy, on-farm land management design was mandatory and was of a directive nature. The author notes that the Rules for Rational Use of Agricultural Lands establish the existence of onfarm land management projects aimed at their rational use. The results of the analysis showed that currently in the land legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan there are no clear requirements for drafting projects in the system of measures on land use regulation. Therefore, in practice, they are developed by only a small part of economic entities, which leads to deterioration in reclamation state of agricultural land, decrease in fertility level, contamination of crops with weeds, spread of various diseases and plant pests, degradation of forage lands (pastures, hayfields), etc. All this is the result of underdeveloped land legislation, weak implementation of public control over the use and protection of land. The existing structure of on-farm land management projects has been analyzed. The conclusion on the need for their development, as well as methodological instructions based on new approaches and innovative technologies was done. It is noted that in 2018 at the legislative level, amendments were made to the Land Code, regulating the procedure and features of the provision of State-owned agricultural land for peasant or private farm operations, agricultural production through tender commission. Owners or land users were invited to develop on-farm land management projects at their own expense.

The article presents findings of research on e‑health development in four European Union (EU) Member States in the context of public procurement of innovation (PPI). EU policies attempt to make public procurement leverage for innovation by introducing a number of new tender procedures. Policies and practices in PPI, including e‑health, were investigated for Denmark, Great Britain, Spain and Poland. For various reasons, all four countries struggle with the introduction of the European PPI procedures, and with making a transition to outcome‑based tenders. Though they all introduced policies implementing these procedures, Denmark and Great Britain seem to have achieved better results, having well‑established public‑private collaboration. This correlates with a more efficient adoption of e‑health solutions in those countries. With some minor successes, Spain, and particularly Poland, display attachment to traditional procedures despite changes in the public procurement regulations.

In today's economic system, the state has to make some purchases of goods and services to produce and offer the services of the public system formed by local administrations and other administrations. These purchases are the purchases that the public deems necessary through the private sector within the framework of investment programs and budget. Although annual growth and the tranches of spending items in investment programs change every year within the framework of the country's growth, purchases in the public system necessarily occur depending on these rates. Regulations and improvements on this subject; will not only affect the current levels of economic and social welfare, but will also increase the welfare levels of future generations and will support economic sustainability. The issue of public purchases regulated by law, which has become more important especially with its wide coverage in the Eleventh Development Plan, continues to contribute to economic sustainability with its value that directs the country's economy. In the study, literature reviews of public procurements, tender laws and related regulations which have a direct effect on the country's economy were conducted as method; and changes in the public procurements, tender laws and relevant legislation have been aimed to be revealed. Since the first law of 1925, in the four law amendments, some regulations have been made abiding by the main principles and the arrangements required by the country have been made. While the names of the procurement procedures change in the laws are partial, the main contents are preserved. The study examines the four procurement laws that have changed in this way; aiming to provide information on the subject and to address the forecasts that are realized with the support of the country's economy and sustainable development. Keywords: Tender law, public procurement legislation, economic sustainability, sustainable development, procurement procedures and implementing regulations

We show how institutional and procedural characteristics affect the final price in public procurement. In order to obtain comparable unit prices, our analysis examined public procurement of homogeneous goods only. We examined two Czech commodity markets: electricity and natural gas, which enabled us to use a private market price as a benchmark metric. The regression analysis is based on the standard ordinary least squares method. On a dataset of 277 tenders, we found that the final unit price of the procurement is sensitive to movements in both commodity market price and price estimated ex ante by the procurer. Moreover, we identified that the final price is reduced when the procurer uses an open procedure, an electronic auction, or attracts more competitors.

In all the cities of Serbia that have organized systems of public mass passenger transport (PMPT), over the past several years more and more private transport companies are being included in the network of city and suburban transportation lines. The inclusion of private transport companies in the PMPT system via public tenders should be preceded by the procedure of calculation of the realistic income and system functioning expenses in order to establish possible balances of needs for City Budget subsidies, as well as the elements on Contract of entrusting this vital communal activity of every city. The new principle for determining the total cost of PMPT system functioning, based on line difficulty ranking, has been presented in this paper. KEY WORDS: expenditure model, price, PMPT system, line, exploitation parameters, evaluation, line rank

Abstract The diffusion of new technology is significantly affected by coverage and reimbursement decisions. A variety of agencies (public and private) make decisions as to which technologies or treatments will be covered and what the levels of reimbursement will be. Recently, these agencies' coverage decisions have tended to be strongly affected by whether a technology is cost raising or cost reducing. Historically, a common effect of medical innovation has been improved quality of health care but with a corresponding increase in cost of delivery. The Medicare program has significant influence on the coverage policies of public and private third-party payers. This influence is especially visible in coverage and reimbursement decisions for cancer-related diagnostic procedures and systems. Coverage for these procedures and systems is not widespread because payers have not been convinced of the clinical usefulness of the assays. The industry must take the responsibility of working through the issues surrounding coverage and reimbursement of cancer-related diagnostic procedures with the payers. The ability to successfully negotiate payment for assays requires knowledge of Medicare coverage policies and a grasp of the reimbursement system.

ABSTRACT The movement and spreading of the oil from the tanker Exxon Valdez accident was a vital issue in the massive response activities launched by industry, private groups, state governments and the federal government. To address this issue, a number of observational and forecast programs were carried out. These accumulated an unprecedented amount of observational data ranging from visual and remote-sensing distribution information to fairly complex adaptations of standard trajectory analysis routines. This paper reports on a hindcast study that used observational data and computational procedures to provide a quantitative estimate of the oil distribution over time. The major difficulty in doing this work was associated with the fact that both the observational and computational data had errors. Typically, the observational distribution data were nonquantitative and tended to have a number of false positives, while the wind and current data used in the computational procedure lacked detail or were improperly scaled. To reconcile these difficulties, a statistical procedure was developed that helped identify various types of errors. This procedure was used to produce an observationally corrected, mass-balanced trajectory hindcast model. The results of the hindcast model are available in a variety of formats and indicate the following general conclusions: by the end of the second week of April, approximately 30 percent of the spilled oil may have been lost to weathering processes, 40 percent beached within Prince William Sound, 25 percent exited Prince William Sound, and about 5 percent remained floating within Prince William Sound. Further analysis indicates that, of the oil leaving the Prince William Sound system, approximately 10 percent traveled beyond Gore Point, and about 2 percent got as far as Shelikof Strait.

Procurement is the most important part of the pharmaceutical logistic cycle. It is the process of acquiring supplies after a properly selected list of products. The procurement system or model depends on the type of organization weather it is governmental or private, centralized or decentralized, autonomous or semiautonomous. The objectives of procurement system is to make available the right drug in an appropriate quantities of adequate quality from a reliable supplier at the right time with the lowest possible prices through an ethical and legal procedures. Prequalification of suppliers is the successful quality assurance activity. Needs and funds can be reconciled and a rational cut can be done by using ABC- VAN matrix technique. Purchasing should be by transparent competition through open tender, restrictive tender, restricted competition or in certain cases by direct negotiation by transparent committee leading to transparent contract. One of the most important procurement practice for the system to succeed is the reliable payment and efficient financial management and monitoring the supplier performance. The system should have an efficient quality assurance program with annual auditing and regular reports.

The article considers the issue of public policy formation in terms of state private partnership development as the most efficient form of interaction between public authorities, private business and science implemented on the principles of equality.The study defines the essence of the concept of ‘state private partnership (SPP), its purpose, forms, areas of implementation and characteristics from the standpoint of institutional theory and identifies the benefits of state private partnership. The partnership comprises the possibility of attracting additional financial resources that can be used for community development, the possibility to restore infrastructure, to receive quality services and socio-economic benefits and additional jobs; business and the state share the risks.The study investigates the state of public and private partnership realization in Ukraine and the leading countries and defines risks for public authorities and the private investor as well as factors constraining this process in Ukraine. These include imperfect regulatory and institutional support, lack of political will; lack of standard, simple and transparent tender procedures for SPP projects and defined priority areas for their implementation, unstable legislation on attracting foreign direct investment.The study examines the current state of legal regulation state private partnership in Ukraine and justifies the need to improve the institutional support of this process in terms of forming public policy to involve regional higher education institutions into examination of innovative projects and the staff training.The expediency of introduction of state private partnership relations as a form of cooperation between public administration bodies and private economic entities for the purpose of sustainable rural development in the conditions of decentralization of power is substantiated. In order to ensure the effective implementation of state private partnership projects, public authorities should pay attention to creating a number of mandatory general prerequisites and ensure a proper examination of documents provided by potential private partners to make sure they show the real situation through involving scientists in this process.

Background: Access to health care services is a critical component of health care reform and may differ among patients with different types of insurance. Hypothesis/Purpose: The purpose was to compare adolescents with private and public insurance undergoing surgery for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and/or meniscal tears. We hypothesized that patients with public insurance would have a delayed presentation from the time of injury and therefore would have a higher incidence of chondral injuries and irreparable meniscal tears and lower preoperative International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scores than patients with private insurance. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: This was a retrospective study of patients under 21 years of age undergoing ACL reconstruction and/or meniscal repair or debridement from January 2013 to March 2016 at a single pediatric sports medicine center. Patients were identified by a search of Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes. A chart review was performed for insurance type; preoperative diagnosis; date of injury, initial office visit, and surgery; preoperative IKDC score; intraoperative findings; and procedures. Results: The study group consisted of 119 patients (mean age, 15.0 ± 1.7 years). Forty-one percent of patients had private insurance, while 59% had public insurance. There were 27 patients with isolated meniscal tears, 59 with combined meniscal and ACL tears, and 33 with isolated ACL tears. The mean time from injury to presentation was 56 days (range, 0-457 days) in patients with private insurance and 136 days (range, 0-1120 days) in patients with public insurance ( P = .02). Surgery occurred, on average, 35 days after the initial office visit in both groups. The mean preoperative IKDC score was 53 in both groups. Patients with meniscal tears with public insurance were more likely to require meniscal debridement than patients with private insurance (risk ratio [RR], 2.3; 95% CI, 1.7-3.1; P = .02). Patients with public insurance were more likely to have chondral injuries of grade 2 or higher (RR, 4.4; 95% CI, 3.9-5.0; P = .02). Conclusion: In adolescent patients with ACL or meniscal tears, patients with public insurance had a more delayed presentation than those with private insurance. They also tended to have more moderate-to-severe chondral injuries and meniscal tears, if present, that required debridement rather than repair. More rapid access to care might improve the prognosis of young patients with ACL and meniscal injuries with public insurance.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the economic and legal rationale for the use of the competitive dialogue in complex procurement. The authors use the data set of public contracts awarded by European Union (EU) member states between 2010 and 2017 to analyse its usage patterns. In particular, the authors identify the types of contracting authorities that mainly use the procedure, the sectors and contract characteristics and the role of institutional factors related to the country’s perceived corruption and level of innovativeness. Design/methodology/approach The authors discuss economic and legal issues in the use of the competitive dialogue. The authors use a data set of public contracts awarded by EU member states, published on the EU’s public procurement portal Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) to analyse usage patterns and explore the types of contracting authorities that use the procedure, the sectors and type of tenders. The data covers a sample of 1.242.090 observations, which relates to all the contract award notices published on TED in the period 2010-2017 for all the 28 European member states. A probit model is used as a methodology. Findings The empirical analysis reveals that the use of competitive value is greater for larger value contracts, for national rather than local authorities, for the supply of other manufactured products and machinery; for research and development and business, as well as information technology services; and for construction works. The level of perceived corruption and the gross domestic product/capita do not have explanatory power in the use of the procedure, whilst a country’s degree of innovativeness, as measured by the global innovation index, positively affects the probability of adopting the procedure. A decreasing trend in the use of competitive dialogue over time is observed. Research limitations/implications In conclusion, the countries examined benefited from a long tradition of public–private partnerships (PPPs) and from a transposition of the 2004 directive, able to provide an inclusive interpretation of complexity, and therefore, stimulate the adoption of the competitive dialogue in different sectors. Conversely, the countries, which postponed a concrete transposition and the overcoming of the confusing concept of complexity, limited the scope for the application of competitive dialogue, relying on the easier alternative: the negotiated procedure. Those circumstances lead to visible difficulties in stimulating the adoption of the procedure even in the traditional sectors; indeed, only with the new directive’s provisions a slight change in the trend can be seen. Practical implications To foster the use of the competitive dialogue in countries that have so far used it to a limited extent is important to improve upon the definition of complexity and learn from the experience of the top usage countries, as identified in the analysis. Social implications Helping the use of the procedure may facilitate the procurement of complex contracts such as PPPs, and thus, ease the building and management of public infrastructures for the provision of public services. Originality/value The authors are not aware of previous studies that have used the TED data set and studied the law in a number of European countries so as to understand the usage patterns for the competitive dialogue.

This article discusses the development and implementation of anti-corruption ethics and compliance programme in the African business environment. In the past decade, an international legal framework has been developed to tackle corruption both in public and private sectors. This framework includes the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), which entered into force in 2005, and the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, which entered into force in 1999. These instruments mandate that State Parties must criminalise and punish a variety of corrupt practices. Relevant domestic laws have a direct impact on business, especially in States Parties instruments that require the establishment of liability of legal persons for corrupt acts. The African Union Convention also requires States Parties to establish mechanisms to encourage participation by the private sector in the fight against unfair competition, respect of the tender procedures and property rights. The paper details various steps needed to efficiently and effectively implement anti-corruption ethics and compliance programme in the African context. The first part of the paper develops the primary objective of the corruption risk assessment which is to better understand the risk exposure so that informed risk management decisions may be taken. A structured approach for how enterprises could conduct an anti-corruption risk assessment will be outlined in this first section. The author argued in this same first section that each enterprise’s own risk assessment exercise is unique, depending on that enterprise’s industry, size, location, and other factors inherent to that organisation. The second part of the paper drafts the development and the implementation of an anti-corruption programme. The paper concludes by stating that an anti-corruption and compliance programme is not a panacea for fighting all the ills on corruption and fraud problems that a certain country or company is facing.

The article examines the relationship between government officials and entrepreneurs with the emphasis on reducing administrative barriers, strengthening the rule of law in the economy, and increasing the activity of the business community. The article describes multi-circuit system of central and regional republican bodies responsible for regulating economic processes. Special attention is paid to the role of the non-state sector in establishing constructive cooperation between private firms and state-funded organizations. This work provides comprehensive analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the fight against corruption offenses and manifestations of unfair competition. The article describes measures to overcome discretionary decisions, streamline the implementation and control of tax audits. It also provides examples of the abuse of power by government officials when working with businessmen. The article evaluates the effectiveness of electronic portals that helped to resist such attempts. In addition, this work analyzes state’s efforts to streamline and simplify customs procedures. It talks about measures to simplify access of enterprises of various forms of ownership to participate in tenders for public procurement. This article provides comprehensive recommendations on the reduction of criminal activity among entrepreneurs and government officials.

Ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) is a serious iatrogenic complication of luteal phase or early pregnancy, occurring in up to 5% of women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intrauterine insemination (IUI) procedures. A 19-year-old nulligravida married for six months presented with complaint of lower abdominal pain and lump abdomen for three days. Ovulation induction was started by a private practitioner with Clomiphene citrate (50mg OD, day3 to day 7 of menstrual cycle) followed by Human Menopausal Gonadotropin (HMG) on day10, 11, 12 and Human Chorionic Gonadotropin(HCG) on day 15 of the same cycle. Her symptoms started 14 days following injection of HCG. Abdominal examination demonstrated pelvic abdominal mass up to the level of umbilicus corresponding to 24 weeks’ size, tense, non-tender, mobile and of cystic consistency. Ultrasonograph of abdomen revealed uterus of normal size, endometrial thickness-20mm, right ovary of size 81x95x119mm with multiple cysts and left ovary of size 65x61x66mm with mild ascites. She was managed conservatively with bed rest, abdominal girth measurement, oral analgesics, intake output charting with plenty oral fluids and gentle leg exercises. Within two weeks of admission, pain was relieved and serial hematological and biochemical parameters remained normal. Repeat ultrasonography confirmed the presence of intrauterine live pregnancy and she was discharged. All gynecologists must know when, how and where to treat cases of infertility in order to prevent OHSS and its complications like renal failure, ARDS,thromboembolism,ovarian torsion and intra peritoneal hemorrhage.

AbstractObjectiveTo describe changes in total and central adiposity and body fat distribution in children over a 5-year period by investigating variations in BMI, waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and skinfold thicknesses (SFT).DesignA school-based sample of children from 2nd to 5th grades of elementary schools participated in two cross-sectional studies in 2002 (n 2936) and 2007 (n 1232).SettingPublic and private schools of Florianopolis, Brazil.SubjectsSchoolchildren aged 7–10 years had their weight, height, WC and SFT measured according to standard procedures. Body fat distribution was assessed by triceps, subscapular, suprailiac and medial calf skinfold measurements. Changes in BMI, WC, WHtR and SFT were analysed, adjusting for type of school and monthly family income.ResultsAdjusted mean differences between 2002 and 2007 for BMI and WC were always positive and of similar magnitude between boys and girls. However, a statistically significant increase was observed only for BMI (raw and Z-score values) in boys. WHtR remained stable in both sexes. Adjusted median values for SFT also increased in boys and girls, except for triceps skinfold. BMI, WC and SFT tended to increase across age classes in both sexes. The relative change observed for the median central skinfolds (subscapular and suprailiac) was greater than that of peripheral skinfolds (triceps and medial calf).ConclusionsThe subcutaneous adipose tissue (SFT) appeared to increase at a faster rate than total adiposity (BMI). The increase in central SFT indicates that the relative change is due primarily to a rise in central adiposity.

Category: Ankle Introduction/Purpose: Superficial peroneal nerve entrapment (SPNE) is an uncommon and often misdiagnosed condition which can lead to pain or paresthesia of a patient’s distal anterolateral leg and dorsal foot. A past medical history of an ankle sprain, specifically an inversion sprain, places SPNE on the differential diagnosis. Mismanagement of SPNE may result in continued lower leg dysfunction, unnecessary medical procedures, increased medical costs, and patient frustration. The purpose of our study was to describe an alternative diagnostic technique for SPNE and clinical outcomes following surgical decompression. Methods: Using ICD-9/10 and CPT codes, we identified 46 patients in the private practice of a single foot and ankle orthopaedic surgeon who underwent a SPN surgical decompression between 2012 and 2017. A thorough chart review confirmed all patients underwent an SPN decompression. Additionally, the primary author compiled our variables of interest (mechanism of injury, prior medical management of ankle pain, physical exam findings, diagnostic testing, intraoperative findings, and resolution of pain or paresthesia) from this chart review. Results: 46 patients (40.1 ± 14.6 years of age; 11 males and 35 females) underwent a decompression of the SPN. Average time to evaluation was 2.8 ± 5.9 years (range: 0 - 25). Ten of 46 patients (22%) reported a history of inversion ankle sprain. Positive exam findings were: tender to palpation at the fascial exit point 40/46 (87%) and positive Tinel’s sign 38/46 (84%). Pre-operative SPN diagnostic nerve block at point of maximum tenderness was performed in 44/46 patients (96%). 31/44 (70%) patients reported complete pain relief after diagnostic block. Of the 31 patients, 26 (84%) reported post-operative pain improvement. When cases were isolated to SPN entrapment with complete pre-operative pain relief following diagnostic nerve block, 18/19 (95%) experienced complete post-operative pain relief. Conclusion: A thorough examination of the foot and lower leg can appropriately diagnose SPNE using palpation of fascial exit point and a positive Tinel’s sign. Additionally, a nerve block proved clinically useful as an effective technique for SPNE diagnosis. Patients undergoing an isolated SPN decompression experienced pain improvement at higher rates compared to patients with concomitant surgical procedures. Future work is needed to determine if a positive diagnostic nerve block is a predictor of post- operative pain improvement. Further, while preliminary evidence is encouraging, larger cohorts across various patient populations are needed.

The article analyses legal rules of public procurement having a direct impact or possibly influencing the quality of architecture of buildings built using state or municipality funds. Also relevant questions of construction regulation, bounding public clients as builders when organizing public tenders related to design of buildings and implementing solutions of the design, are discussed herein. The main attention is paid to the most frequently disputed problems – the architect selection procedure and setting down of requirements for the architectural design. Based on the research of the legal acts and other related sources the conclusions in this article reveal the shortcomings of the current construction and public procurement regulations preventing the effective reaching of the goals declared by national and EU legal acts in order to secure the quality architecture, being one of the subjects of public matter. Santrauka Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos viešųjų pirkimų teisinio reguliavimo nuostatos, darančios ar galinčios daryti įtaką valstybės, savivaldybių biudžetų ar Europos Sąjungos struktūrinių fondų lėšomis statomų statinių architektūros kokybės užtikrinimui, taip pat aptariami aktualūs statinių statybos teisinio reguliavimo klausimai, kuriais vadovautis privalo ir statytojo statusą įgyjančios perkančiosios organizacijos, vykdydamos viešuosius pirkimus statinių projektavimo srityje bei įgyvendindamos projektinius sprendinius. Pagrindinis dėmesys straipsnyje skiriamas dažniausiai minimoms projektuotojo parinkimo bei architektūrinių projekto sprendinių reikalavimų nustatymo problemoms. Remiantis atliktu teisės aktų ir kitų šaltinių nuostatų tyrimu, formuluojamos išvados, atskleidžiančios esamo statybos bei viešųjų pirkimų teisinio reguliavimo ydas, trukdančias efektyviai įgyvendinti tiek mūsų šalies, tiek Europos Sąjungos dokumentuose keliamus tikslus užtikrinti architektūros, kaip viešojo intereso dalyko, kokybę.

CONTEXT: Hyperphosphatemia has an important role in the development of bone and mineral abnormalities in end-stage renal disease (ESRD). OBJECTIVE: To compare the phosphorus binding power and the hypercalcemic effect of calcium acetate and calcium carbonate in hemodialysis patients. TYPE OF STUDY: Crossover, randomized, double-blind study. PLACE: A private hospital dialysis center. PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-two patients who were undergoing regular hemodialysis three times a week ([Ca++] dialysate = 3.5 mEq/L). PROCEDURES: Half of the patients were started on 5.6 g/day of calcium acetate and, after a 2 week washout period, received 6.2 g/day of calcium carbonate. The other half followed an inverse protocol. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: Clinical interviews were conducted 3 times a week to monitor for side effects. Determinations of serum urea, calcium, phosphorus, hematocrit, Kt/V and blood gas analysis were obtained before and after each treatment. RESULTS: Twenty-three patients completed the study. A significant increase in calcium plasma levels was only observed after treatment with calcium carbonate [9.34 mg/dl (SD 0.91) vs. 9.91 mg/dl (SD 0.79), P < 0.01]. The drop in phosphorus levels was substantial and significant for both salts [5.64 mg/dl (SD 1.54) vs. 4.60 mg/dl (SD 1.32), P < 0.01 and 5.89 mg/dl (SD 1.71) vs. 4.56 mg/dl (SD 1.57), P < 0.01, for calcium acetate and calcium carbonate respectively]. The percentage reduction in serum phosphorus (at the end of the study) per milliequivalent of salt administered per day tended to be higher with calcium acetate but statistical significance was not found. CONCLUSION: Calcium acetate can be a good alternative to calcium carbonate in the handling of hyperphosphatemia in ESRD patients. When calcium acetate is used, control of hyperphosphatemia can be achieved with a lower administration of calcium, perhaps with a lower risk of hypercalcemia.

Abstract The emergence of professions in Upper Canada has yet to be the subject of detailed examination or in-depth comparative analysis. Work so far has tended to be biograph- ical, institutional or functional in orientation. Thus the emergence of a professional consciousness in the colony is even less well-researched than the whole context of professionalization. A preliminary reconstruction of the self-image of members of the Bar, and their perceptions of such concepts as privilege, destiny and responsibility, is attempted through an examination of the early records of the Juvenile Advocate Society. This organization of law students was active in York (Toronto) roughly between 1821 and 1826. Since legal culture - the rhetoric, concepts and self-perceptions of members of the professional community - both reflects and generates social order, the debates of this society offer a suggestive entrée to an emergent professional consciousness. The Juvenile Advocate Society offered a unique opportunity for senior members of the Bar to inculcate the values which underlay the colony's legal system to its members. Its participants included senior barristers of varied political persuasions, like William Warren Baldwin and Henry John Boulton. The organization was the first of several ambitious attempts to socialize law students, part of an attempt to replicate and expand their highly valued provincial aristocracy. As an informal schoolroom for the colony's self-proclaimed elite, the Juvenile Advocate Society aped the structures as well as the values of the provincial adminis- tration. Topics for discussion and the rules of procedure underlined the society's role in teaching law students "proper" values. These extended beyond the traditional realm of politics to include the relationship of culture to the constitution, of private and public spheres of activity, and secular social structures to sacredly ordained order. Whether this training was a passport to authority, status and gentility is uncertain, but the efforts to ensure the continuance of this group of ideas in new generations suggest that members of the elite thought it worth the attempt.

The article substantiates the relevance of the topic, taking into account the global areas of work designated by the President of the Russian Federation. The special role of regional authorities in creating conditions for a favorable investment climate was noted. The analysis of the current state of the Tomsk region’s investment attractiveness is carried out; the potentials and risks of the region are determined. We have identified the “weaknesses” or the risks for attracting investment to the Tomsk region, namely: - infrastructural risk: low density of transport infrastructure, uneven development of communication infrastructure, deterioration of the communal infrastructure; and also the small volume of the intraregional market. The legal support of investment activity is considered in detail, including federal and regional aspects. The characteristic of the “basic” and “special” regional laws, regulating investment activities in the region, is given. The forms and mechanisms of state support for investors in the Tomsk region are presented, including subsidies and tax incentives for investors, the provision of land plots with infrastructure for the placement of investment projects, the functioning of the infrastructure for supporting entrepreneurship, a simplified form of land provision (for rent without tenders), the procedure for assessing the regulatory impact of regulatory legal acts affecting business issues, etc. The directions for the development of federal and regional legislation in order to improve the investment climate are outlined, including decriminalization of certain acts; systematization and consolidation of uniform rules for the introduction, change and collection of non-tax payments from entrepreneurs; “prevention, not punishment”; introduction of long-term tariff setting; simplification of the PPP (public-private partnership) mechanism and concessions for infrastructure projects; formation of legislation for the “digital Economy”; formation of legislation for development in the areas of the National Technology Initiative. At the end of the article, well-founded conclusions are made and proposals are made to increase the investment potential and reduce investment risks.

AbstractObjectivesThe objective of this study is to describe the Longitudinal Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) Attributes and Demographic Study (LEADS) design, instrument development, pilot testing, sampling procedures, and data collection methodology. Response rates are provided, along with results of follow-up surveys of non-responders (NRs) and a special survey of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) professionals who were not nationally certified.MethodsAnnual surveys from 1999 to 2008 were mailed out to a random, stratified sample of nationally registered EMT-Basics and Paramedics. Survey weights were developed to reflect each respondent’s probability of selection. A special survey of NRs was mailed out to individuals who did not respond to the annual survey to estimate the probable extent and direction of response bias. Individuals who indicated they were no longer in the profession were mailed a special exit survey to determine their reasons for leaving EMS.ResultsGiven the large number of comparisons between NR and regular (annual) survey respondents, it is not surprising that some statistically significant differences were found. In general, there were few differences. However, NRs tended to report higher annual EMS incomes, were younger, healthier, more physically fit, and were more likely to report that they were not practicing EMS. Comparisons of the nationally certified EMS professionals with EMS professionals who were not nationally certified indicated that nationally certified EMS providers were younger, had less EMS experiences, earned less, were more likely to be female and work for private EMS services, and less likely to work for fire-based services. These differences may reflect state and local policy and practice, since many states and local agencies do not require maintenance of national certification as a requirement to practice. When these differences were controlled for statistically, there were few systematic differences between non-nationally certified and nationally certified EMS professionals.ConclusionsThe LEADS study is the only national, randomized, and longitudinal data source for studying EMS professionals in the United States. Although not without flaws, this study remains an excellent source of information about EMS provider demographics, attributes, attitudes, workplace issues and concerns, and how the profession has changed from 1999 to 2008.LevineR. Longitudinal Emergency Medical Technician Attributes and Demographic Study (LEADS) design and methodology. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2016;31(Suppl. 1):s7–s17.

Abstract L’economia tedesca è sempre stata caratterizzata da una struttura molto concentrata, in cui le imprese facevano frequente ricorso ai cartelli. Alia fine dell’ultima guerra, gli alleati (ed in particolare gli Stati Uniti) hanno insistito perché la concentrazione fosse ridotta ed i cartelli fossero eliminati, introducendo cosi la libera concorrenza nell’economia.La legge ha introdotto un generale divieto di cartellizzazione, con alcune esenzioni legali che consentono specifiche intese.L’applicazione della legge attraverso un organismo indipendente, l’Ufficio Federale dei Cartelli, si è basata esclusivamente sugli aspetti concorrenziali, con esclusione quindi degli aspetti di «interesse pubblico». L’unica eccezione è costituita dal potere di autorizzazione di cartelli e concentrazioni da parte del Ministro, che tuttavia vi ha fatto ricorso molto raramente.Nell’ambito di applicazione della legge sono rientrate non soltanto le attività dirette a limitare la concorrenza da parte dei privati, ma anche le distorsioni del mercato prodotte da interventi pubblici, come regolamentazione, sussidi e protezionismo. Negli anni più recenti, in particolare, la politica della concorrenza si è ispirata all’idea di modificare l’equilibrio tra settore privato e settore pubblico, riducendo quest’ultimo mediante deregolamentazione e privatizzazione.La legge tedesca riguarda essenzialmente quattro gruppi di limitazioni della concorrenza: accordi orizzontali, restrizioni verticali, abuso del potere di mercato e concentrazioni.Gli accordi orizzontali sono proibiti e, di conseguenza, nulli. Coloro che vi abbiano preso parte sono passibili di una multa che può giungere fino ad un ammontare pari a tre volte il valore degli utili così conseguiti. Si tratta, peraltro, di un criterio di difficile applicazione, essendo molto ardua la determinazione dell’incremento di utili ottenuto con un accordo.Una lacuna del sistema era costituita dal fatto di escludere alcune forme di collusione che a stretto rigore non rientravano nella categoria degli «accordi». È stato necessario emendare la legge, includendovi esplicitamente le «azioni concertate».Un secondo problema riguarda l’inclusione o meno nel concetto di «restrizione della concorrenza” dell’obbligo per le parti dell’accordo di mettere in atto comportamenti contrari alla concorrenza. Secondo l’interpretazione degli organi giudiziari tale obbligo si deve presumere.Per quanto riguarda le deroghe, l’Ufficio Federale dei Cartelli tende ad essere alquanto rigido.Per gli «accordi verticali», la legge tedesca, in contrasto con l’art. 85 del Trattato CEE e con la legge italiana, introduce specifiche regole. Essi sono, in genere, legali, con la sola eccezione degli accordi per la determinazione del prezzo, che sono proibiti di per sé, a meno che non riguardino il settore dell’editoria.Gli interventi per accordi verticali sono stati poco frequenti e, a quanto sembra, nella maggior parte dei casi tali accordi non dovrebbero essere stati influenzati dalla legislazione sulla concorrenza.Per quanto riguarda l’abuso di potere di mercato, il vecchio adagio statunitense vale anche per la Germania: le dimensioni non danno luogo, di per sé, ad un pericolo. Analogamente, una posizione dominante, come tale, non può essere ritenuta dannosa, anche se è ampiamente diffusa l’opinione secondo cui non debba essere consentito l’abuso di posizione dominante.Sotto il profilo applicativo, peraltro, bisogna identificare due fondamentali presupposti: una «posizione dominante” e un «comportamento abusivo».Il controllo del comportamento abusivo persegue, sia in Germania che in Italia, due obiettivi: impedire alle imprese dominanti di stabilire prezzi troppo elevati, realizzando profitti monopolistici (abuso di prezzi), e proteggere la libertà di competere delle altre imprese (pratiche restrittive).Per quanto riguarda l’abuso di prezzi, l’esperienza tedesca non è stata molto incoraggiante, soprattutto per la ben nota difficoltà nella definizione del «giusto prezzo».Hanno avuto maggiore successo, invece, i procedimenti nei riguardi di pratiche restrittive. Anche in questo caso non e facile applicare la normativa concorrenziale, specie per quanto riguarda i casi «marginali», come i casi di collegamenti tra imprese che non sembrano evidenziare comportamenti anti-competitivi.L’introduzione della regolamentazione delle concentrazioni è avvenuta in Germania soprattutto per le difficoltà nel perseguire gli abusi di posizione dominante. Diversamente dalla legge italiana, il sistema tedesco non prevede un minimo fatturato nazionale, ma fa riferimento al valore del fatturato nel suo complesso, dovunque sia stato conseguito.Notevoli difficoltà potranno derivare dalla definizione del concetto di «controllo». Dal punto di vista pratico sembra conveniente combinare le caratteristiche di flessibilità e certezza giuridica con una definizione generale che specifichi il maggior numero possibile di fattispecie.Le caratteristiche più significative dell’attività di controllo delle concentrazioni svolta in Germania sono l’effetto sospensivo della notificazione che precede la concentrazione e un criterio strettamente concorrenziale. L’esperienza dimostra che è molto difficile far venir meno una concentrazione, una volta che sia stata effettuata. Per questo motivo si richiede che le concentrazioni che eccedono una determinata soglia siano comunicate in anticipo.Sebbene l’Ufficio Federale dei Cartelli abbia a disposizione quattro mesi per completare la sua investigazione, circa i tre quarti delle procedure sono completate entro quattro settimane.Vi è una netta distinzione di compiti tra l’Ufficio Federale dei Cartelli e il Ministro dell’Economia. Il primo si occupa degli aspetti strettamente inerenti alla concorrenza, senza tener conto degli altri benefici che possono derivare dalla concentrazione. Il Ministro, invece, per considerazioni d’interesse pubblico, può autorizzare una concentrazione che l’Ufficio Federale dei Cartelli aveva bloccato. Sino ad ora (dal 1973) soltanto sei autorizzazioni sono state concesse dal Ministro e non sembra che esse abbiano dato luogo ai risultati positivi che erano attesi.

Abstract [Backgrounds] Genetic abnormalities in B-cell lymphoma (BCL) have been analyzed by using tumor cell-derived DNA (tDNA) obtained from biopsy samples at diagnosis, while the amount of available samples is often limited due to the advance in diagnostic technique. Furthermore since repetitive biopsies during the clinical course are not generally acceptable, sequential analysis of tumor samples is difficult. The peripheral blood circulating cell-free DNA (PB-cfDNA), which is detected in human plasma or serum, has been shown to be a possible alternative source for DNA mutation analysis and an indicator for monitoring disease status especially in solid tumors. PB-cfDNA, if available, should be quite beneficial for lymphoma practice in terms of invasiveness and accessibility compared to the conventional biopsies, however the role of PB-cfDNA in BCL remains unknown. We thus investigate the feasibility of PB-cfDNA in diagnosing and monitoring disease status of BCLs. [Aims] To uncover the role of PB-cfDNA in BCLs, we evaluated the clinical and molecular features and the association with lymphoma status, and further investigated the usefulness for global genetic analyses. [Patients and Methods] The study population included 38 BCLs patients (diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), n=27; follicular lymphoma (FL), n=10; nodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma (NMZL), n=1) diagnosed at Nagoya University Hospital and affiliated hospitals. Plasma separated from PB and tumor cells from biopsy samples were collected at diagnosis and during their clinical course with written informed consent. PB-cfDNA and tDNA were extracted from plasma (n=107) and tumor samples, respectively. The concentration and quality of PB-cfDNA were analyzed by the gel electrophoresis and BioAnalyzer (Agilent Technologies, Inc.). For genetic analyses, the Sanger sequencing and whole-exome sequencing (WES) using HiSeq 2000 (Illumina) were performed. PB mononuclear cells from each patient were used as the matched germline control. The profiles of genetic mutations of PB-cfDNA and tDNA were analyzed. [Results] In 31 of 38 (81%) patients (DLBCL, n=24; FL, n=6; NZML, n=1), PB-cfDNA was successfully obtained from plasma samples at diagnosis. The median PB-cfDNA concentrations in DLBCL and FL patients were 58.3 ng/mL (range, 1.4-8754.5) and 15.5 ng/mL (0.1-164.9), respectively (p=0.2127). Intriguingly, the concentration of PB-cfDNA in a specific subtype of DLBCL was much higher (median, 631.9 ng/mL; range, 70.4-1109.5). LDH and CRP were significantly correlated with the PB-cfDNA concentration (correlation coefficient, r = 0.9582 and 0.8023, respectively, n=38). The PB-cfDNA concentration in patients with B-symptom was significantly higher than that in patients without B-symptom (p=0.011) and tended to be higher in patients with advanced clinical stages and bone marrow invasion, although not statistically significant. In the time course analyses, the concentration of PB-cfDNA increased immediately after the commencement of chemotherapy and rapidly decreased within a week after the beginning of treatment, probably reflecting the release of PB-cfDNA after the collapse of tumor cells due to chemotherapy. When analyzed by WES, PB-cfDNA and tDNA were shown to have discrete sets of mutations; a set of mutations were shared by both samples and tended to have higher variant allele frequencies, whereas others were private to an either sample, suggestive of the presence of regional tumor heterogeneity. In a specific BCL subtype, WES easily detected mutations in PB-cfDNA, even though mutations were hardly detected in tDNA because of a relatively lower tumor content. [Discussion and conclusions] PB-cfDNA could be detected in high proportion of BCL patients. Considering the correlation coefficient with clinical indicators and detection of mutations, PB-cfDNA in BCL should be mainly originated from lymphoma cells and closely associated with tumor aggressiveness and disease progression. Moreover, we could successfully perform WES analyses using PB-cfDNA, indicating that PB-cfDNA was an alternate source for detecting lymphoma specific genetic abnormalities. PB-cfDNA might be a novel diagnostic tool for patients in whom sufficient tumor samples are not obtained by conventional diagnostic procedure. Disclosures Kiyoi: Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma: Research Funding; Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co. LTD.: Research Funding; Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. LTD.: Research Funding; Bristol-Myers Squibb: Research Funding; Zenyaku Kogyo: Research Funding; FUJIFILM Corporation: Research Funding.

Background School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemiological means of understanding youth risk behaviors. They can be used to monitor national trends and provide data, in aggregate, to schools, communities, and states for the purposes of funding allocation, prevention programming, and other supportive infrastructure. However, such surveys sometimes are targeted by public criticism, and even legal action, often in response to a lack of perceived appropriateness. The ubiquity of social media has added the risk of potential online firestorms, or digital outrage events, to the hazards to be considered when administering such a survey. Little research has investigated the influence of online firestorms on public health survey administration, and no research has analyzed the content of such an occurrence. Analyzing this content will facilitate insights as to how practitioners can minimize the risk of generating outrage when conducting such surveys. Objective This study aimed to identify common themes within social media comments comprising an online firestorm that erupted in response to a school-based ATOD survey in order to inform risk-reduction strategies. Methods Data were collected by archiving all public comments made in response to a news study about a school-based ATOD survey that was featured on a common social networking platform. Using the general inductive approach and elements of thematic analysis, two researchers followed a multi-step protocol to clean, categorize, and consolidate data, generating codes for all 207 responses. Results In total, 133 comments were coded as oppositional to the survey and 74 were coded as supportive. Among the former, comments tended to reflect government-related concerns, conspiratorial or irrational thinking, issues of parental autonomy and privacy, fear of child protective services or police, issues with survey mechanisms, and reasoned disagreement. Among the latter, responses showed that posters perceived the ability to prevent abuse and neglect and support holistic health, surmised that opponents were hiding something, expressed reasoned support, or made factual statements about the survey. Consistent with research on moral outrage and digital firestorms, few comments (<10%) contained factual information about the survey; nearly half of the comments, both supportive and oppositional, were coded in categories that presupposed misinformation. Conclusions The components of even a small online firestorm targeting a school-based ATOD survey are nuanced and complex. It is likely impossible to be fully insulated against the risk of outrage in response to this type of public health work; however, careful articulation of procedures, anticipating specific concerns, and two-way community-based interaction may reduce risk.

Este trabalho centra-se na análise do papel da Inspetoria da Instrução Pública no Maranhão, principal órgãode regulação e controle do ensino nas escolas públicas e particulares, resgatando o processo de escolarização formuladopelos legisladores, focalizando as políticas públicas de controle e regulação sobre quem e o que era ensinado nasescolas. A partir do levantamento e análise da documentação oficial, formulada pelos funcionários provinciais foi possívelidentificar os diferentes níveis de instrução formal; as intencionalidades impostas na província; a percepção de umaeducação primária baseada na carência de materiais da cultura escolar, os vencimentos que obrigavam os docentesa terem outras ocupações e a falta de espaços apropriados para as aulas, a grande maioria, funcionando na casa dosprofessores. Fica claro, ainda, a necessidade de se estabelecer novas modalidades de controle ou cerceamento à circulaçãode ideias que, porventura, questionassem os pilares da sociedade cristã/católica, motivando uma reformulaçãodos modelos censores para procederem com maior eficácia um patrulhamento ideológico sob alguns indivíduos.Palavras-chave: Inspetoria Pública. Regulação do Ensino. Maranhão Imperial. INSPECTION OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND TEACHING PROFESSION IN MARANHÃO EMPIREAbstract: This paper focuses on analyzing the role of the Inspectorate of Public Instruction in Maranhão, the mainorgan for the regulation and control of education in public and private schools, bringing out the schooling process formulatedby legislators, focusing on regulatory and control public policy about who and what was taught in schools. From thesurvey and analysis of official documentation, formulated by provincial officials, it was possible to identify different levelsof formal education; the intentionalities that occurred in the province of Maranhão; the perception of a primary educationbased on lack of material of the school culture, the salaries that forced teachers to have other occupations and the lack ofappropriate spaces for classes, the vast majority of teachers worked at home. It’s clear the need to establish new forms ofcontrol or restriction to the flow of ideas, which, perhaps, questions the pillars of the Christian / Catholic society, promptinga redesign of the censors models to proceed more effectively with an ideological patrol about some individuals.Keywords: Public Inspection. Regulation of Education. Maranhão Imperial Age. INSPECTORIA DE LA INSTRUCCIÓN PÚBLICA Y LA PROFESIÓN DOCENTE ENMARANHÃO IMPÉRIOResumen: Este trabajo se centra en el análisis del papel de la Inspectoría de la Instrucción Pública en Maranhão,principal órgano de regulación y control de la enseñanza en las escuelas públicas y particulares, rescatando el procesode escolarización formulado por los legisladores, con foco en las políticas públicas de control y de la regulación sobrequién y sobre qué, se enseñaba en las escuelas. A partir del levantamiento y del análisis de la documentación oficial,formulada por los funcionarios provinciales, fue posible identificar los diferentes niveles de instrucción formal; las intencionalidadesimpuestas en la provincia; la percepción de una educación primaria basada en la carencia de materiales dela cultura escolar, los salarios que obligaban a los docentes a tener otras ocupaciones y la falta de espacios apropiadospara las clases, la gran mayoría, funcionaba en la casa de los profesores. Queda evidente, aún, la necesidad de establecersenuevas modalidades de control o de regulación a la circulación de ideas que, pudieran cuestionar los pilares dela sociedad cristiana/católica, motivando una reformulación de los modelos censores, para que procediesen con mayoreficacia, a un patrullamiento ideológico sobre algunos individuos.Palabras clave: Instrucción Pública. Regulación de la Educación. Maranhão Imperial.

<p>La auditoría un tema abordado y aplicado en las Empresas Públicas y Privadas, grandes o pequeñas reguladas y no por órganos de control en la República del Ecuador. Las Pequeñas y Mediana Empresas (PyMEs) al no ser obligadas, no aplican, porque un gran porcentaje de ellas son empresas personales, familiares o societarias, no cuentan con una estructura organizacional, contable y procedimientos adecuados de control financiero y administrativo. La investigación tiene el objetivo de identificar cuáles son los factores que determinan la aplicación de la auditoría en las MyPEs a partir de la determinación de la demanda voluntaria de una auditoría. Se usa el método descriptivo, analítico y estadístico, a través de la revisión bibliográfica y la regresión lineal binaria a datos de la última Encuesta Nacional a Empresas con sus establecimientos y Microempresa. Se demuestra que H1. La aplicación de una auditoría financiera y de gestión, está medida por la obligatoriedad de llevar contabilidad y viene asociada a la naturaleza jurídica y al costo del servicio de una auditoría; y, H2. Si la auditoría no es obligatoria entonces es necesario que las instituciones reguladoras y la universidad jueguen el papel motivador. Se concluye, que existe la probabilidad de contratación de servicios de auditoría voluntariamente porque ayuda al logro de los objetivos y sirve como un elemento importante para el administrador en la toma de decisiones y tener la certeza de la situación financiera y la realidad del negocio, basados en las conclusiones y recomendaciones del informe de auditoría con base en los hallazgos y juicios de valor que emite el profesional auditor.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Descriptores claves:</strong> <em>Control interno, gestión, hallazgos, juicios de valor, medidas correctivas</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p align="center"><strong>ABSTRAC</strong></p><p>The audit is an issue addressed and applied in Public and Private Enterprises, large or small regulated and not by control bodies in the Republic of Ecuador. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are not obliged, do not apply, because a large percentage of them are personal, family or corporate companies, do not have an organizational structure, accounting and adequate procedures for financial and administrative control. The objective of the research is to identify the factors that determine the application of the audit in the MSEs from the determination of the voluntary demand for an audit. The descriptive, analytical and statistical method is used, through the bibliographic review and the binary linear regression to data of the last National Survey to Companies with their establishments and Microenterprise. It is shown that H1. The application of a financial and management audit is measured by the obligation to keep accounting and is associated with the legal nature and cost of the service of an audit; Y, H2. If the audit is not mandatory then it is necessary that the regulatory institutions and the university play the motivating role. It is concluded that there is a probability of hiring audit services voluntarily because it helps the achievement of the objectives and serves as an important element for the manager in making decisions and having the certainty of the financial situation and the reality of the business based In the conclusions and recommendations of the audit report based on the findings and value judgments issued by the auditor.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Keywords:</em></strong><em> internal control, management, findings, value judgments, corrective measures</em></p>

In this issue of Journal of Disaster Research, we introduce nine papers on societal responses to recent catastrophic disasters with special focus on long-term recovery processes in Japan and the United States. As disaster impacts increase, we also find that recovery times take longer and the processes for recovery become more complicated. On January 17th of 1995, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit the Hanshin and Awaji regions of Japan, resulting in the largest disaster in Japan in 50 years. In this disaster which we call the Kobe earthquake hereafter, over 6,000 people were killed and the damage and losses totaled more than 100 billion US dollars. The long-term recovery from the Kobe earthquake disaster took more than ten years to complete. One of the most important responsibilities of disaster researchers has been to scientifically monitor and record the long-term recovery process following this unprecedented disaster and discern the lessons that can be applied to future disasters. The first seven papers in this issue present some of the key lessons our research team learned from the studying the long-term recovery following the Kobe earthquake disaster. We have two additional papers that deal with two recent disasters in the United States – the terrorist attacks on World Trade Center in New York on September 11 of 2001 and the devastation of New Orleans by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures. These disasters have raised a number of new research questions about long-term recovery that US researchers are studying because of the unprecedented size and nature of these disasters’ impacts. Mr. Mammen’s paper reviews the long-term recovery processes observed at and around the World Trade Center site over the last six years. Ms. Johnson’s paper provides a detailed account of the protracted reconstruction planning efforts in the city of New Orleans to illustrate a set of sufficient and necessary conditions for successful recovery. All nine papers in this issue share a theoretical framework for long-term recovery processes which we developed based first upon the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake and later expanded through observations made following other recent disasters in the world. The following sections provide a brief description of each paper as an introduction to this special issue. 1. The Need for Multiple Recovery Goals After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the long-term recovery process began with the formulation of disaster recovery plans by the City of Kobe – the most severely impacted municipality – and an overarching plan by Hyogo Prefecture which coordinated 20 impacted municipalities; this planning effort took six months. Before the Kobe earthquake, as indicated in Mr. Maki’s paper in this issue, Japanese theories about, and approaches to, recovery focused mainly on physical recovery, particularly: the redevelopment plans for destroyed areas; the location and standards for housing and building reconstruction; and, the repair and rehabilitation of utility systems. But the lingering problems of some of the recent catastrophes in Japan and elsewhere indicate that there are multiple dimensions of recovery that must be considered. We propose that two other key dimensions are economic recovery and life recovery. The goal of economic recovery is the revitalization of the local disaster impacted economy, including both major industries and small businesses. The goal of life recovery is the restoration of the livelihoods of disaster victims. The recovery plans formulated following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, including the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s plans, all stressed these two dimensions in addition to physical recovery. The basic structure of both the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s recovery plans are summarized in Fig. 1. Each plan has three elements that work simultaneously. The first and most basic element of recovery is the restoration of damaged infrastructure. This helps both physical recovery and economic recovery. Once homes and work places are recovered, Life recovery of the impacted people can be achieved as the final goal of recovery. Figure 2 provides a “recovery report card” of the progress made by 2006 – 11 years into Kobe’s recovery. Infrastructure was restored in two years, which was probably the fastest infrastructure restoration ever, after such a major disaster; it astonished the world. Within five years, more than 140,000 housing units were constructed using a variety of financial means and ownership patterns, and exceeding the number of demolished housing units. Governments at all levels – municipal, prefectural, and national – provided affordable public rental apartments. Private developers, both local and national, also built condominiums and apartments. Disaster victims themselves also invested a lot to reconstruct their homes. Eleven major redevelopment projects were undertaken and all were completed in 10 years. In sum, the physical recovery following the 1995 Kobe earthquake was extensive and has been viewed as a major success. In contrast, economic recovery and life recovery are still underway more than 13 years later. Before the Kobe earthquake, Japan’s policy approaches to recovery assumed that economic recovery and life recovery would be achieved by infusing ample amounts of public funding for physical recovery into the disaster area. Even though the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s recovery plans set economic recovery and life recovery as key goals, there was not clear policy guidance to accomplish them. Without a clear articulation of the desired end-state, economic recovery programs for both large and small businesses were ill-timed and ill-matched to the needs of these businesses trying to recover amidst a prolonged slump in the overall Japanese economy that began in 1997. “Life recovery” programs implemented as part of Kobe’s recovery were essentially social welfare programs for low-income and/or senior citizens. 2. Requirements for Successful Physical Recovery Why was the physical recovery following the 1995 Kobe earthquake so successful in terms of infrastructure restoration, the replacement of damaged housing units, and completion of urban redevelopment projects? There are at least three key success factors that can be applied to other disaster recovery efforts: 1) citizen participation in recovery planning efforts, 2) strong local leadership, and 3) the establishment of numerical targets for recovery. Citizen participation As pointed out in the three papers on recovery planning processes by Mr. Maki, Mr. Mammen, and Ms. Johnson, citizen participation is one of the indispensable factors for successful recovery plans. Thousands of citizens participated in planning workshops organized by America Speaks as part of both the World Trade Center and City of New Orleans recovery planning efforts. Although no such workshops were held as part of the City of Kobe’s recovery planning process, citizen participation had been part of the City of Kobe’s general plan update that had occurred shortly before the earthquake. The City of Kobe’s recovery plan is, in large part, an adaptation of the 1995-2005 general plan. On January 13 of 1995, the City of Kobe formally approved its new, 1995-2005 general plan which had been developed over the course of three years with full of citizen participation. City officials, responsible for drafting the City of Kobe’s recovery plan, have later admitted that they were able to prepare the city’s recovery plan in six months because they had the preceding three years of planning for the new general plan with citizen participation. Based on this lesson, Odiya City compiled its recovery plan based on the recommendations obtained from a series of five stakeholder workshops after the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake. <strong>Fig. 1. </strong> Basic structure of recovery plans from the 1995 Kobe earthquake. <strong>Fig. 2. </strong> “Disaster recovery report card” of the progress made by 2006. Strong leadership In the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, local leadership had a defining role in the recovery process. Kobe’s former Mayor, Mr. Yukitoshi Sasayama, was hired to work in Kobe City government as an urban planner, rebuilding Kobe following World War II. He knew the city intimately. When he saw damage in one area on his way to the City Hall right after the earthquake, he knew what levels of damage to expect in other parts of the city. It was he who called for the two-month moratorium on rebuilding in Kobe city on the day of the earthquake. The moratorium provided time for the city to formulate a vision and policies to guide the various levels of government, private investors, and residents in rebuilding. It was a quite unpopular policy when Mayor Sasayama announced it. Citizens expected the city to be focusing on shelters and mass care, not a ban on reconstruction. Based on his experience in rebuilding Kobe following WWII, he was determined not to allow haphazard reconstruction in the city. It took several years before Kobe citizens appreciated the moratorium. Numerical targets Former Governor Mr. Toshitami Kaihara provided some key numerical targets for recovery which were announced in the prefecture and municipal recovery plans. They were: 1) Hyogo Prefecture would rebuild all the damaged housing units in three years, 2) all the temporary housing would be removed within five years, and 3) physical recovery would be completed in ten years. All of these numerical targets were achieved. Having numerical targets was critical to directing and motivating all the stakeholders including the national government’s investment, and it proved to be the foundation for Japan’s fundamental approach to recovery following the 1995 earthquake. 3. Economic Recovery as the Prime Goal of Disaster Recovery In Japan, it is the responsibility of the national government to supply the financial support to restore damaged infrastructure and public facilities in the impacted area as soon as possible. The long-term recovery following the Kobe earthquake is the first time, in Japan’s modern history, that a major rebuilding effort occurred during a time when there was not also strong national economic growth. In contrast, between 1945 and 1990, Japan enjoyed a high level of national economic growth which helped facilitate the recoveries following WWII and other large fires. In the first year after the Kobe earthquake, Japan’s national government invested more than US$ 80 billion in recovery. These funds went mainly towards the repair and reconstruction of infrastructure and public facilities. Now, looking back, we can also see that these investments also nearly crushed the local economy. Too much money flowed into the local economy over too short a period of time and it also did not have the “trickle-down” effect that might have been intended. To accomplish numerical targets for physical recovery, the national government awarded contracts to large companies from Osaka and Tokyo. But, these large out-of-town contractors also tended to have their own labor and supply chains already intact, and did not use local resources and labor, as might have been expected. Essentially, ten years of housing supply was completed in less than three years, which led to a significant local economic slump. Large amounts of public investment for recovery are not necessarily a panacea for local businesses, and local economic recovery, as shown in the following two examples from the Kobe earthquake. A significant national investment was made to rebuild the Port of Kobe to a higher seismic standard, but both its foreign export and import trade never recovered to pre-disaster levels. While the Kobe Port was out of business, both the Yokohama Port and the Osaka Port increased their business, even though many economists initially predicted that the Kaohsiung Port in Chinese Taipei or the Pusan Port in Korea would capture this business. Business stayed at all of these ports even after the reopening of the Kobe Port. Similarly, the Hanshin Railway was severely damaged and it took half a year to resume its operation, but it never regained its pre-disaster readership. In this case, two other local railway services, the JR and Hankyu lines, maintained their increased readership even after the Hanshin railway resumed operation. As illustrated by these examples, pre-disaster customers who relied on previous economic output could not necessarily afford to wait for local industries to recover and may have had to take their business elsewhere. Our research suggests that the significant recovery investment made by Japan’s national government may have been a disincentive for new economic development in the impacted area. Government may have been the only significant financial risk-taker in the impacted area during the national economic slow-down. But, its focus was on restoring what had been lost rather than promoting new or emerging economic development. Thus, there may have been a missed opportunity to provide incentives or put pressure on major businesses and industries to develop new businesses and attract new customers in return for the public investment. The significant recovery investment by Japan’s national government may have also created an over-reliance of individuals on public spending and government support. As indicated in Ms. Karatani’s paper, individual savings of Kobe’s residents has continued to rise since the earthquake and the number of individuals on social welfare has also decreased below pre-disaster levels. Based on our research on economic recovery from the Kobe earthquake, at least two lessons emerge: 1) Successful economic recovery requires coordination among all three recovery goals – Economic, Physical and Life Recovery, and 2) “Recovery indices” are needed to better chart recovery progress in real-time and help ensure that the recovery investments are being used effectively. Economic recovery as the prime goal of recovery Physical recovery, especially the restoration of infrastructure and public facilities, may be the most direct and socially accepted provision of outside financial assistance into an impacted area. However, lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake suggest that the sheer amount of such assistance may not be effective as it should be. Thus, as shown in Fig. 3, economic recovery should be the top priority goal for recovery among the three goals and serve as a guiding force for physical recovery and life recovery. Physical recovery can be a powerful facilitator of post-disaster economic development by upgrading social infrastructure and public facilities in compliance with economic recovery plans. In this way, it is possible to turn a disaster into an opportunity for future sustainable development. Life recovery may also be achieved with a healthy economic recovery that increases tax revenue in the impacted area. In order to achieve this coordination among all three recovery goals, municipalities in the impacted areas should have access to flexible forms of post-disaster financing. The community development block grant program that has been used after several large disasters in the United States, provide impacted municipalities with a more flexible form of funding and the ability to better determine what to do and when. The participation of key stakeholders is also an indispensable element of success that enables block grant programs to transform local needs into concrete businesses. In sum, an effective economic recovery combines good coordination of national support to restore infrastructure and public facilities and local initiatives that promote community recovery. Developing Recovery Indices Long-term recovery takes time. As Mr. Tatsuki’s paper explains, periodical social survey data indicates that it took ten years before the initial impacts of the Kobe earthquake were no longer affecting the well-being of disaster victims and the recovery was completed. In order to manage this long-term recovery process effectively, it is important to have some indices to visualize the recovery processes. In this issue, three papers by Mr. Takashima, Ms. Karatani, and Mr. Kimura define three different kinds of recovery indices that can be used to continually monitor the progress of the recovery. Mr. Takashima focuses on electric power consumption in the impacted area as an index for impact and recovery. Chronological change in electric power consumption can be obtained from the monthly reports of power company branches. Daily estimates can also be made by tracking changes in city lights using a satellite called DMSP. Changes in city lights can be a very useful recovery measure especially at the early stages since it can be updated daily for anywhere in the world. Ms. Karatani focuses on the chronological patterns of monthly macro-statistics that prefecture and city governments collect as part of their routine monitoring of services and operations. For researchers, it is extremely costly and virtually impossible to launch post-disaster projects that collect recovery data continuously for ten years. It is more practical for researchers to utilize data that is already being collected by local governments or other agencies and use this data to create disaster impact and recovery indices. Ms. Karatani found three basic patterns of disaster impact and recovery in the local government data that she studied: 1) Some activities increased soon after the disaster event and then slumped, such as housing construction; 2) Some activities reduced sharply for a period of time after the disaster and then rebounded to previous levels, such as grocery consumption; and 3) Some activities reduced sharply for a while and never returned to previous levels, such as the Kobe Port and Hanshin Railway. Mr. Kimura focuses on the psychology of disaster victims. He developed a “recovery and reconstruction calendar” that clarifies the process that disaster victims undergo in rebuilding their shattered lives. His work is based on the results of random surveys. Despite differences in disaster size and locality, survey data from the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake indicate that the recovery and reconstruction calendar is highly reliable and stable in clarifying the recovery and reconstruction process. <strong>Fig. 3.</strong> Integrated plan of disaster recovery. 4. Life Recovery as the Ultimate Goal of Disaster Recovery Life recovery starts with the identification of the disaster victims. In Japan, local governments in the impacted area issue a “damage certificate” to disaster victims by household, recording the extent of each victim’s housing damage. After the Kobe earthquake, a total of 500,000 certificates were issued. These certificates, in turn, were used by both public and private organizations to determine victim’s eligibility for individual assistance programs. However, about 30% of those victims who received certificates after the Kobe earthquake were dissatisfied with the results of assessment. This caused long and severe disputes for more than three years. Based on the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake, Mr. Horie’s paper presents (1) a standardized procedure for building damage assessment and (2) an inspector training system. This system has been adopted as the official building damage assessment system for issuing damage certificates to victims of the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake, the 2007 Noto-Peninsula earthquake, and the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Oki earthquake. Personal and family recovery, which we term life recovery, was one of the explicit goals of the recovery plan from the Kobe earthquake, but it was unclear in both recovery theory and practice as to how this would be measured and accomplished. Now, after studying the recovery in Kobe and other regions, Ms. Tamura’s paper proposes that there are seven elements that define the meaning of life recovery for disaster victims. She recently tested this model in a workshop with Kobe disaster victims. The seven elements and victims’ rankings are shown in Fig. 4. Regaining housing and restoring social networks were, by far, the top recovery indicators for victims. Restoration of neighborhood character ranked third. Demographic shifts and redevelopment plans implemented following the Kobe earthquake forced significant neighborhood changes upon many victims. Next in line were: having a sense of being better prepared and reducing their vulnerability to future disasters; regaining their physical and mental health; and restoration of their income, job, and the economy. The provision of government assistance also provided victims with a sense of life recovery. Mr. Tatsuki’s paper summarizes the results of four random-sample surveys of residents within the most severely impacted areas of Hyogo Prefecture. These surveys were conducted biannually since 1999,. Based on the results of survey data from 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005, it is our conclusion that life recovery took ten years for victims in the area impacted significantly by the Kobe earthquake. Fig. 5 shows that by comparing the two structural equation models of disaster recovery (from 2003 and 2005), damage caused by the Kobe earthquake was no longer a determinant of life recovery in the 2005 model. It was still one of the major determinants in the 2003 model as it was in 1999 and 2001. This is the first time in the history of disaster research that the entire recovery process has been scientifically described. It can be utilized as a resource and provide benchmarks for monitoring the recovery from future disasters. <strong>Fig. 4.</strong> Ethnographical meaning of “life recovery” obtained from the 5th year review of the Kobe earthquake by the City of Kobe. <strong>Fig. 5.</strong> Life recovery models of 2003 and 2005. 6. The Need for an Integrated Recovery Plan The recovery lessons from Kobe and other regions suggest that we need more integrated recovery plans that use physical recovery as a tool for economic recovery, which in turn helps disaster victims. Furthermore, we believe that economic recovery should be the top priority for recovery, and physical recovery should be regarded as a tool for stimulating economic recovery and upgrading social infrastructure (as shown in Fig. 6). With this approach, disaster recovery can help build the foundation for a long-lasting and sustainable community. Figure 6 proposes a more detailed model for a more holistic recovery process. The ultimate goal of any recovery process should be achieving life recovery for all disaster victims. We believe that to get there, both direct and indirect approaches must be taken. Direct approaches include: the provision of funds and goods for victims, for physical and mental health care, and for housing reconstruction. Indirect approaches for life recovery are those which facilitate economic recovery, which also has both direct and indirect approaches. Direct approaches to economic recovery include: subsidies, loans, and tax exemptions. Indirect approaches to economic recovery include, most significantly, the direct projects to restore infrastructure and public buildings. More subtle approaches include: setting new regulations or deregulations, providing technical support, and creating new businesses. A holistic recovery process needs to strategically combine all of these approaches, and there must be collaborative implementation by all the key stakeholders, including local governments, non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NPOs and NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and the private sector. Therefore, community and stakeholder participation in the planning process is essential to achieve buy-in for the vision and desired outcomes of the recovery plan. Securing the required financial resources is also critical to successful implementation. In thinking of stakeholders, it is important to differentiate between supporting entities and operating agencies. Supporting entities are those organizations that supply the necessary funding for recovery. Both Japan’s national government and the federal government in the U.S. are the prime supporting entities in the recovery from the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2001 World Trade Center recovery. In Taiwan, the Buddhist organization and the national government of Taiwan were major supporting entities in the recovery from the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. Operating agencies are those organizations that implement various recovery measures. In Japan, local governments in the impacted area are operating agencies, while the national government is a supporting entity. In the United States, community development block grants provide an opportunity for many operating agencies to implement various recovery measures. As Mr. Mammen’ paper describes, many NPOs, NGOs, and/or CBOs in addition to local governments have had major roles in implementing various kinds programs funded by block grants as part of the World Trade Center recovery. No one, single organization can provide effective help for all kinds of disaster victims individually or collectively. The needs of disaster victims may be conflicting with each other because of their diversity. Their divergent needs can be successfully met by the diversity of operating agencies that have responsibility for implementing recovery measures. In a similar context, block grants made to individual households, such as microfinance, has been a vital recovery mechanism for victims in Thailand who suffered from the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami disaster. Both disaster victims and government officers at all levels strongly supported the microfinance so that disaster victims themselves would become operating agencies for recovery. Empowering individuals in sustainable life recovery is indeed the ultimate goal of recovery. <strong>Fig. 6.</strong> A holistic recovery policy model.

The widespread claims that PPPs are more effective, that they redistribute the risks between the public and private parties and, as a result, provide the best «Value for Money» (VfM) are not always supported by appropriate evidence. This study is a theoretical review, which aims to demonstrate the potential risks associated with the use of PPP, and help us better understand this concept. Among the negative effects identified are the following: 1) restriction on competition and the development of small and medium-sized businesses,; 2) the predominance of economic projects objectives over socially important ones; 3) rising unemployment; 4) relatively greater increase in direct budget spending; 5) side effects related to creation of institutional environment; 6) relatively large costs of developing and carrying out tender procedures; 7) high costs of legal support; 8) corruption; 9) «hidden» increase of state budget debt. As a result, those negative consequences of PPPs are inextricably linked with the quality of their structuring at the stages of initiation and tender documentation preparation.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of public procurement's directions in Ukraine from the point of view of the main subjects of procurement. The analysis was performed by aggregate units of CPV (The Common Procurement Vocabulary) as a whole on the public procurement system ProZorro and for the most used procurement procedures (sub-threshold procurements, contract reporting, open tenders, open tenders with English-language publication) in two dimensions – for all suppliers and separately – for private entrepreneurs. Private entrepreneurs were selected as typical representatives of small and medium-sized business in Ukraine. For the analysis we closed the dimension of «contract», i.e. the final stage of the procurement process, because it more clearly presents the real state of economic relations between the government entities and the supplier of goods / services. The main stages of this study were as follows. At the first step, data were collected about the concluded contracts in terms of aggregated divisions of the CPV lot. Next, we calculated the specific weights for each of the divisions and chose the three largest categories in each of them according to parameters of the number of contracts and their current value. In the third step, the obtained data were collected in a common space for all suppliers and separately for private entrepreneurs and calculated the «rating» of particular divisions of the CPV lot by their presence in the top three in terms of the number of contracts and their value. The purpose of this step was to identify those items of procurement that are perspective in terms of enhancement the participation of private entrepreneurs as suppliers of government entities. We addressed the question – do private entrepreneurs follow the general trends of participation of businesses in government procurement, for which procurement items does it make sense to follow the general trend, and which procurement items are of specific for procurement by private entrepreneurs? We considered the most specific procurement items that private individuals are able to procure to the government entities, as well as those CPV divisions that have the potential to enhance the private entrepreneurs's participation in public procurement.

Abstract Surveys (2008-2018) carried out by the Local Health Agency of Trieste (ASUITS) in local collective catering (CC) services of schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and workplaces (25.000 daily meals) have shown some non - adherence to healthier food choices, food standards, procedures and green and social procurement as recommended by the WHO, FAO, UE, Ministry of Health and of Environment. The purpose of this project is to support local public and private organizations in transforming the national and regional catering services food standards related to health, nutrition, environment and social criteria into food procurement and food contracts specifications. This has been done by compiling the major obstacles to improved standards observed during surveys, and by sharing critical and relevant examples with major public contractors across local, regional and national level. The guidelines (GL) for public procurement of CC consist of five chapters: the elaboration of specifications; a response module to present the offer of services; selection and award criteria, an evaluation system of offers, and the technical specifications attached. Technical information fixes the constituent elements of the service in order to have similar and directly comparable offers. GL cover both the purchasing of food and the contracting of catering services. In this way public or private institutions are able to prepare tender documents suitable to respond to health, economic needs and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The development of the GL has increased the awareness and real potential that local organizations have in enhancing the strategic use of purchasers to boost food qualification, jobs, growth and investment. As well as to create a more innovative economy, to be resource and energy efficient, and to be socially-inclusive. To meet population nutrient intake goals and SDGs it is necessary to increase co-operation and the sharing of the objectives of ’Health in All Policies’. Key messages Contractors need practical tools to apply sustainable development goals criteria in collective catering. The integrated collective catering guide is a key to improving capacity building in institutions.

The spread of the new coronavirus in the world, including in Georgia, had a significant negative impact on both public and private organizations, which has affected the public procurement process in the country. Georgia has spent a large amount of money to deal with the virus. As a result, administrative costs have been reduced in order to finance the 2020 state budget deficit - 57 million GEL for labor costs and 107 million GEL for goods and services. It should be noted that 195 million GEL is used on arranging quarantine spaces and other additional health care costs while 1.31 billion GEL is provided for goods and services. During the pandemic, demand from the state increased significantly in the health sector, while declining in other areas, many planned purchases were canceled, tenders were not held, were suspended or their announcement was delayed. This has affected companies whose major activities include state orders. Also rising inflation and currency devaluation have made goods and services more expensive. Consequently, complex problems arose for the entities participating in public procurement, namely: - From the moment the first case of the virus was reported in Georgia, it became mandatory for public and private organizations to follow the recommendations of the World Health Organization and the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health. So, large amount of money was spent on hygiene, disinfection and other means of protecting against the virus to ensure the safety of customers and employees. - Some public and private organizations continued to work remotely, for which they incurred additional costs for equipping employees at home (with computer or other technological resources). Other organizations, which were not prohibited the operation, funded the transportation of staff to the workplace, because of emergency was declared and public transport was restricted. - In order to free up financial resources, procurement organizations have restricted the announcement of planned tenders. Even the winner had already been identified or the bidder had been invited to sign the contract. At the same time, according to the Unified Public Procurement Electronic System a number of tenders have been suspended, including largescale infrastructure projects, most of which were in the selection stage or successful bidder was revealed and invited to sign the contract. - Due to the global pandemic, most companies failed to meet their contractual obligations on time. Contract authorities change the terms of the contract, including increased delivery time and services. In the case of infrastructure projects, based on the decree of the Government of Georgia, contract authorities were given the right to increase the contract value by 10% -20% in order to finance the increase of supplier costs on construction materials - Amendments were made to the legislation governing public procurement. For example, Procurement of goods and services under the many of CPV codes were restricted to contract authorities without the consent of the Government of Georgia. In the original version of the resolution, only 30 out of 200 codes were restricted, and from April 1, 2020, the number of restricted CPV codes has increased to 160. There are number of classified goods and services, whose purchase does not require government consent: agricultural and food products, outerwear, pharmaceutical products, miscellaneous transport equipment and spare parts, Works for complete or part construction and civil engineering work, laboratory services, refuse and waste related services. Because agreement with the government and electronic procedures takes a long time, procurement organizations were forced to purchase goods and services through a simplified procurement in the case of urgent necessity. This means that in accordance with the law, the contract authorities directly signed a contract with the company and after agreed with the State Procurement Agency. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the additional costs incurred in the field of public procurement due to the coronavirus to make predictions about the procurement process for the next year.

School-based relationship education programs offer an opportunity to identify youth who are experiencing teen dating violence (TDV), support their safety, and connect them with individualized services or referrals. However, no research has tested the feasibility or accuracy of approaches to create opportunities for TDV disclosure in the context of school-based programs. The current study presents the results of a field test comparing three tools used to provide opportunities for TDV disclosure (two questionnaire-style tools and one universal education discussion guide). High school students from two federally funded healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) program sites ( N = 648) were offered the three tools in random order over the course of the HMRE program, which lasted between 3 weeks and 3 months and took place during the school day. Onsite qualitative interviews with HMRE program staff and their local domestic violence program partners assessed how service providers saw the tools and the process of implementing them. Latent class models examined the accuracy of the tools in identifying TDV. Sensitivities of the tools were low and specificities were high; the questionnaire-style tools tended to have higher sensitivities and fewer classification errors than the universal education tool. Several three-item combinations from across the tools performed better than any intact tool, suggesting that shorter assessments may be effective, provided they include items on sexual coercion and physical violence. Qualitative findings suggested that implementation of TDV assessment and universal education in school settings is a viable strategy, provided programs are able to gain support from school staff, adapt to tight time constraints, and plan procedures for protecting student privacy and confidentiality.

ABSTRACT BackgroundElectronic administrative data exist in several domains which, if linked, are potentially useful for research. However, benefits from data linkage should be considered alongside risks such as the threat to privacy. Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a birth cohort study. The Project to Enhance ALSPAC through Record Linkage (PEARL) was established to enrich the ALSPAC resource through linkage between ALSPAC participants and routine sources of health and social data. Qualitative research was incorporated in the PEARL study to examine participants’ views about data linkage and inform approaches to information. This paper focusses on issues of consent. MethodsDigitally recorded interviews were conducted with 55 participants aged 17-19 years. Terms and processes relating to consent, anonymization and data linkage were explained to interviewees. Scenarios were used to prompt consideration of linking different sources of data, and whether consent should be requested. Interview recordings were fully transcribed. Thematic analysis was undertaken using the Framework approach. ResultsParticipant views on data linkage appeared to be most influenced by: considerations around the social sensitivity of the research question, and; the possibility of tangible health benefits in the public interest. Some participants appeared unsure about the effectiveness of anonymization, or did not always view effective anonymization as making consent unnecessary. This was related to notions of ownership of personal information and etiquette around asking permission for secondary use. Despite different consent procedures being explained, participants tended to equate consent with ‘opt-in’ consent through which participants are ‘asked’ if their data can be used for a specific study. Participants raising similar concerns came to differing conclusions about whether consent was needed. Views changed when presented with different scenarios, and were sometimes inconsistent. ConclusionsFindings from this study question the validity of ‘informed consent’ as a cornerstone of good governance, and the extent to which potential research participants understand different types of consent and what they are consenting, or not consenting, to. Pragmatic, imaginative and flexible approaches are needed if research using data linkage is to successfully realise its potential for public good without undermining public trust in the research process.

Prevalencia y evolución de la apendicitis aguda en pacientes del Hospital Belén de Trujillo Prevalence and evolution of the acute appendicitis in the La Libertad in the years 2011 to 2015 in HBT Elizabeth Aguirre1ª, Cecilia Cabanillas2ª, Esteban Vergara3ª 1 Hospital Belén de Trujillo, joeliah@hotmail.com 2 Clínica Peruano Americana - Trujillo, cecilia.cabanillas.l@outlook.com 3 Hospital Regional Docente de Trujillo, esivero@hotmail.com ª Maestría de la Universidad Privada Antenor Orrego DOI: https://doi.org/10.33017/RevECIPeru2016.0006/ Resumen La apendicitis aguda es la emergencia quirúrgica más común en todo el mundo, y por eso la apendicectomía es uno de los procedimientos quirúrgicos más comunes. La incidencia máxima es entre la segunda y las terceras décadas de la vida. Aunque la mayoría de los pacientes con apendicitis aguda tiene enfermedad no complicada, la apendicitis complicada es relativamente común con una incidencia similar para todos los grupos de edad. Hemos encontrado que personas de edad avanzada cada vez más están siendo diagnosticados con apendicitis aguda, aunque ya en una etapa posterior de enfermedad. Algunos autores han sugerido que la apendicitis en el anciano es comúnmente asociada con un retraso en el diagnóstico y una alta tasa de complicaciones. En nuestro estudio encontramos que el sexo masculino fue predominante, así mismo la mayor frecuencia se encontró en Trujillo, teniendo el 2012 el año de mayor número de casos. El propósito del estudio fue determinar la prevalencia y la evolución de la apendicitis aguda en los pacientes del Hospital Belén de Trujillo, procedentes del departamento La Libertad, con datos tomados del archivo del Hospital Belén de Trujillo, durante el quinquenio 2011-2015, para poder tener una visión de la realidad de esta patología tan frecuente, pero en nuestra región. Descriptores: apendicitis, prevalencia, evolución. Abstract Acute appendicitis is the most common surgical emergency around the world, and that appendectomy is one of the most common surgical procedures. The peak incidence is between the second and the third decade of life. Although the majority of patients with acute appendicitis has uncomplicated illness, complicated appendicitis is relatively common with an incidence similar for all age groups. We have found that more and more elderly people are being diagnosed with appendicitis, although in a later stage of disease. Some authors have suggested that the appendicitis in the elderly is commonly associated with a delay in the diagnosis and a high rate of complications. We also found that within the Department La Libertad, the patients from nearby provinces attend is with more incidence geographically, although we also found very remote places patients who often are the complicated. The purpose of the study is intended to determine the prevalence and evolution of the acute appendicitis in the La Libertad Department, with data taken from the archive of the Hospital Belen of Trujillo, during the five-year period 2011-2015, in order to have a glimpse of the reality of this disease so prevalent, but in our region. Keywords: appendicitis, prevalence, evolution.

Historians have often been compared with detectives; searching for clues as evidence of a mystery they are seeking to solve. I would prefer an association with food, making history like a trained cook who blends particular ingredients, some fresh, some traditional, using specific methods to create an object that is consumed. There are primary sources, fresh and raw ingredients that you often have to go to great lengths to procure, and secondary sources, prepared initially by someone else. The same recipe may yield different meals, the same meal may provoke different responses. On a continuum of approaches to history and food, there are those who approach both as a scientific endeavour and, at the other end of the spectrum, those who make history and food as art. Brought together, it is possible to see cookbooks as history in at least two important ways; they give meaning to the past by representing culinary heritage and they are in themselves sources of history as documents and blueprints for experiences that can be interpreted to represent the past. Many people read cookbooks and histories with no intention of preparing the meal or becoming a historian. I do a little of both. I enjoy reading history and cookbooks for pleasure but, as a historian, I also read them interchangeably; histories to understand cookbooks and cookbooks to find out more about the past. History and the past are different of course, despite their use in the English language. It is not possible to relive the past, we can only interpret it through the traces that remain. Even if a reader had an exact recipe and an antique stove, vegetables grown from heritage seeds in similar conditions, eggs and grains from the same region and employed the techniques his or her grandparents used, they could not replicate their experience of a meal. Undertaking those activities though would give a reader a sense of that experience. Active examination of the past is possible through the processes of research and writing, but it will always be an interpretation and not a reproduction of the past itself. Nevertheless, like other histories, cookbooks can convey a sense of what was important in a culture, and what contemporaries might draw on that can resonate a cultural past and make the food palatable. The way people eat relates to how they apply ideas and influences to the material resources and knowledge they have. Used in this way, cookbooks provide a rich and valuable way to look at the past. Histories, like cookbooks, are written in the present, inspired and conditioned by contemporary issues and attitudes and values. Major shifts in interpretation or new directions in historical studies have more often arisen from changes in political or theoretical preoccupations, generated by contemporary social events, rather than the recovery of new information. Likewise, the introduction of new ingredients or methods rely on contemporary acceptance, as well as familiarity. How particular versions of history and new recipes promote both the past and present is the concern of this paper. My focus below will be on the nineteenth century, although a much larger study would reveal the circumstances that separated that period from the changes that followed. Until the late nineteenth century Australians largely relied on cookbooks that were brought with them from England and on their own private recipe collection, and that influenced to a large extent the sort of food that they ate, although of course they had to improvise by supplementing with local ingredients. In the first book of recipes that was published in Australia, The English and Australian Cookery Book that appeared in 1864, Edward Abbott evoked the ‘roast beef of old England Oh’ (Bannerman, Dictionary). The use of such a potent symbol of English identity in the nineteenth century may seem inevitable, and colonists who could afford them tended to use their English cookbooks and the ingredients for many years, even after Abbott’s publication. New ingredients, however, were often adapted to fit in with familiar culinary expectations in the new setting. Abbott often drew on native and exotic ingredients to produce very familiar dishes that used English methods and principles: things like kangaroo stuffed with beef suet, breadcrumbs, parsley, shallots, marjoram, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, salt, cayenne, and egg. It was not until the 1890s that a much larger body of Australian cookbooks became available, but by this time the food supply was widely held to be secure and abundant and the cultivation of exotic foods in Australia like wheat and sheep and cattle had established a long and familiar food supply for English colonists. Abbott’s cookbook provides a record of the culinary heritage settlers brought with them to Australia and the contemporary circumstances they had to adapt to. Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Book and Household Guide is an example of the popularity of British cookbooks in Australia. Beeton’s Kangaroo Tail Curry was included in the Australian cooking section of her household management (2860). In terms of structure it is important for historians as one of the first times, because Beeton started writing in the 1860s, that ingredients were clearly distinguished from the method. This actually still presents considerable problems for publishers. There is debate about whether that should necessarily be the case, because it takes up so much space on the page. Kangaroo Tail CurryIngredients:1 tail2 oz. Butter1 tablespoon of flour1 tablespoon of curry2 onions sliced1 sour apple cut into dice1 desert spoon of lemon juice3/4 pint of stocksaltMethod:Wash, blanch and dry the tail thoroughly and divide it at the joints. Fry the tail in hot butter, take it up, put it in the sliced onions, and fry them for 3 or 4 minutes without browning. Sprinkle in the flour and curry powder, and cook gently for at least 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the stock, apple, salt to taste, bring to the boil, stirring meanwhile, and replace the tail in the stew pan. Cover closely, and cook gently until tender, then add the lemon juice and more seasoning if necessary. Arrange the pieces of tail on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, and serve with boiled rice.Time: 2-3 hoursSufficient for 1 large dish. Although the steps are not clearly distinguished from each other the method is more systematic than earlier recipes. Within the one sentence, however, there are still two or three different sorts of tasks. The recipe also requires to some extent a degree of discretion, knowledge and experience of cooking. Beeton suggests adding things to taste, cooking something until it is tender, so experience or knowledge is necessary to fulfil the recipe. The meal also takes between two and three hours, which would be quite prohibitive for a lot of contemporary cooks. New recipes, like those produced in Delicious have recipes that you can do in ten minutes or half an hour. Historically, that is a new development that reveals a lot about contemporary conditions. By 1900, Australian interest in native food had pretty much dissolved from the record of cookbooks, although this would remain a feature of books for the English public who did not need to distinguish themselves from Indigenous people. Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Book and Household Guide gave a selection of Australian recipes but they were primarily for the British public rather than the assumption that they were being cooked in Australia: kangaroo tail soup was cooked in the same way as ox tail soup; roast wallaby was compared to hare. The ingredients were wallaby, veal, milk and butter; and parrot pie was said to be not unlike one made of pigeons. The novelty value of such ingredients may have been of interest, rather than their practical use. However, they are all prepared in ways that would make them fairly familiar to European tastes. Introducing something new with the same sorts of ingredients could therefore proliferate the spread of other foods. The means by which ingredients were introduced to different regions reflects cultural exchanges, historical processes and the local environment. The adaptation of recipes to incorporate local ingredients likewise provides information about local traditions and contemporary conditions. Starting to see those ingredients as a two-way movement between looking at what might have been familiar to people and what might have been something that they had to do make do with because of what was necessarily available to them at that time tells us about their past as well as the times they are living in. Differences in the level of practical cooking knowledge also have a vital role to play in cookbook literature. Colin Bannerman has suggested that the shortage of domestic labour in Australia an important factor in supporting the growth of the cookbook industry in the late nineteenth century. The poor quality of Australian cooking was also an occasional theme in the press during the same time. The message was generally the same: bad food affected Australians’ physical, domestic, social and moral well-being and impeded progress towards civilisation and higher culture. The idea was really that Australians had to learn how to cook. Colin Bannerman (Acquired Tastes 19) explains the rise of domestic science in Australia as a product of growing interest in Australian cultural development and the curse of bad cookery, which encouraged support for teaching girls and women how to cook. Domestic Economy was integrated into the Victorian and New South Wales curriculum by the end of the nineteenth century. Australian women have faced constant criticism of their cooking skills but the decision to teach cooking shouldn’t necessarily be used to support that judgement. Placed in a broader framework is possible to see the support for a modern, scientific approach to food preparation as part of both the elevation of science and systematic knowledge in society more generally, and a transnational movement to raise the status of women’s role in society. It would also be misleading not to consider the transnational context. Australia’s first cookery teachers were from Britain. The domestic-science movement there can be traced to the congress on domestic economy held in Manchester in 1878, at roughly the same time as the movement was gaining strength in Australia. By the 1890s domestic economy was widely taught in both British and Australian schools, without British women facing the same denigration of their cooking skills. Other comparisons with Britain also resulted from Australia’s colonial heritage. People often commented on the quality of the ingredients in Australia and said they were more widely available than they were in England but much poorer in quality. Cookbooks emerged as a way of teaching people. Among the first to teach cookery skills was Mina Rawson, author of The Antipodean Cookery Book and the Kitchen Companion first published in 1885. The book was a compilation of her own recipes and remedies, and it organised and simplified food preparation for the ordinary housewife. But the book also included directions and guidance on things like household tasks and how to cure diseases. Cookbooks therefore were not completely distinct from other aspects of everyday life. They offered much more than culinary advice on how to cook a particular meal and can similarly be used by historians to comment on more than food. Mrs Rawson also knew that people had to make do. She included a lot of bush foods that you still do not get in a lot of Australian meals, ingredients that people could substitute for the English ones they were used to like pig weed. By the end of the nineteenth century cooking had become a recognised classroom subject, providing early training in domestic service, and textbooks teaching Australians how to cook also flourished. Measurements became much more uniform, the layout of cookbooks became more standardised and the procedure was clearly spelled out. This allowed companies to be able to sell their foods because it also meant that you could duplicate the recipes and they could potentially taste the same. It made cookbooks easier to use. The audience for these cookbooks were mostly young women directed to cooking as a way of encouraging social harmony. Cooking was elevated in lots of ways at this stage as a social responsibility. Cookbooks can also be seen as a representation of domestic life, and historically this prescribed the activities of men and women as being distinct The dominance of women in cookbooks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attested to the strength of that idea of separate spheres. The consequences of this though has been debated by historians: whether having that particular kind of market and the identification that women were making with each other also provided a forum for women’s voices and so became quite significant in women’s politics at a later date. Cookbooks have been a strategic marketing device for products and appliances. By the beginning of the twentieth century food companies began to print recipes on their packets and to release their own cookbooks to promote their products. Davis Gelatine produced its first free booklet in 1904 and other companies followed suit (1937). The largest gelatine factory was in New South Wales and according to Davis: ‘It bathed in sunshine and freshened with the light breezes of Botany all year round.’ These were the first lavishly illustrated Australian cookbooks. Such books were an attempt to promote new foods and also to sell local foods, many of which were overproduced – such as milk, and dried fruits – which provides insights into the supply chain. Cookbooks in some ways reflected the changing tastes of the public, their ideas, what they were doing and their own lifestyle. But they also helped to promote some of those sorts of changes too. Explaining the reason for cooking, Isabella Beeton put forward an historical account of the shift towards increasing enjoyment of it. She wrote: "In the past, only to live has been the greatest object of mankind, but by and by comforts are multiplied and accumulating riches create new wants. The object then is to not only live but to live economically, agreeably, tastefully and well. Accordingly the art of cookery commences and although the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field and the fish of the sea are still the only food of mankind, yet these are so prepared, improved and dressed by skill and ingenuity that they are the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyment. Everything that is edible and passes under the hands of cooks is more or less changed and assumes new forms, hence the influence of that functionary is immense upon the happiness of the household" (1249). Beeton anticipates a growing trend not just towards cooking and eating but an interest in what sustains cooking as a form of recreation. The history of cookbook publishing provides a glimpse into some of those things. The points that I have raised provide a means for historians to use cookbooks. Cookbooks can be considered in terms of what was eaten, by whom and how: who prepared the food, so to whom the books were actually directed? Clever books like Isabella Beeton’s were directed at both domestic servants and at wives, which gave them quite a big market. There are also changes in the inclusion of themes. Economy and frugality becomes quite significant, as do organisation and management at different times. Changes in the extent of detail, changes in authorship, whether it is women, men, doctors, health professionals, home economists and so on all reflect contemporary concerns. Many books had particular purposes as well, used to fund raise or promote a particular perspective, relate food reform and civic life which gives them a political agenda. Promotional literature produced by food and kitchen equipment companies were a form of advertising and quite significant to the history of cookbook publishing in Australia. Other themes include the influence of cookery school and home economics movements; advice on etiquette and entertaining; the influence of immigration and travel; the creation of culinary stars and authors of which we are all fairly familiar. Further themes include changes in ingredients, changes in advice about health and domestic medicine, and the impact of changes in social consciousness. It is necessary to place those changes in a more general historical context, but for a long time cookbooks have been ignored as a source of information in their own right about the period in which they were published and the kinds of social and political changes that we can see coming through. More than this active process of cooking with the books as well becomes a way of imagining the past in quite different ways than historians are often used to. Cookbooks are not just sources for historians, they are histories in themselves. The privileging of written and visual texts in postcolonial studies has meant other senses, taste and smell, are frequently neglected; and yet the cooking from historical cookbooks can provide an embodied, sensorial image of the past. From nineteenth century cookbooks it is possible to see that British foods were central to the colonial identity project in Australia, but the fact that “British” culinary culture was locally produced, challenges the idea of an “authentic” British cuisine which the colonies tried to replicate. By the time Abbot was advocating rabbit curry as an Australian family meal, back “at home” in England, it was not authentic Indian food but the British invention of curry power that was being incorporated into English cuisine culture. More than cooks, cookbook authors told a narrative that forged connections and disconnections with the past. They reflected the contemporary period and resonated with the culinary heritage of their readers. Cookbooks make history in multiple ways; by producing change, as the raw materials for making history and as historical narratives. References Abbott, Edward. The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, as well as the Upper Ten Thousand. London: Sampson Low, Son & Marston, 1864. Bannerman, Colin. Acquired Tastes: Celebrating Australia’s Culinary History. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1998. Bannerman, Colin. "Abbott, Edward (1801–1869)." Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 21 May 2013. . Beeton, Isabella. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. New Ed. London and Melbourne: Ward, Lock and Co. Ltd., n.d. (c. 1909). Davis Gelatine. Davis Dainty Dishes. Rev ed. Sydney: Davis Gelatine Organization, 1937. Rawson, Lance Mrs. The Antipodean Cookery Book and Kitchen Companion. Melbourne: George Robertson & Co., 1897.

Newspapers and the 7:15 Showing Cinemagoing involves planning. Even in the most impromptu instances, one has to consider meeting places, line-ups and competing responsibilities. One arranges child care, postpones household chores, or rushes to finish meals. One must organise transportation and think about routes, traffic, parking or public transit. And during the course of making plans for a trip to the cinema, whether alone or in the company of others, typically one turns to locate a recent newspaper. Consulting its printed page lets us ascertain locations, a selection of film titles and their corresponding show times. In preparing to feed a cinema craving, we burrow through a newspaper to an entertainment section, finding a tableau of information and promotional appeals. Such sections compile the mini-posters of movie advertisements, with their truncated credits, as well as various reviews and entertainment news. We see names of shopping malls doubling as names of theatres. We read celebrity gossip that may or may not pertain to the film selected for that occasion. We informally rank viewing priorities ranging from essential theatrical experiences to those that can wait for the videotape release. We attempt to assess our own mood and the taste of our filmgoing companions, matching up what we suppose are appropriate selections. Certainly, other media vie to supplant the newspaper's role in cinemagoing; many now access on-line sources and telephone services that offer the crucial details about start times. Nonetheless, as a campaign by the Newspaper Association of America in Variety aimed to remind film marketers, 80% of cinemagoers refer to newspaper listings for times and locations before heading out. The accuracy of that association's statistics notwithstanding, for the moment, the local daily or weekly newspaper has a secure place in the routines of cinematic life. A basic impetus for the newspaper's role is its presentation of a schedule of show times. Whatever the venue -- published, phone or on-line -- it strikes me as especially telling that schedules are part of the ordinariness of cinemagoing. To be sure, there are those who decide what film to see on site. Anecdotally, I have had several people comment recently that they no longer decide what movie to see, but where to see a (any) movie. Regardless, the schedule, coupled with the theatre's location, figures as a point of coordination for travel through community space to a site of film consumption. The choice of show time is governed by countless demands of everyday life. How often has the timing of a film -- not the film itself, the theatre at which it's playing, nor one's financial situation --determined one's attendance? How familiar is the assessment that show times are such that one cannot make it, that the film begins a bit too earlier, that it will run too late for whatever reason, and that other tasks intervene to take precedence? I want to make several observations related to the scheduling of film exhibition. Most generally, it makes manifest that cinemagoing involves an exercise in the application of cinema knowledge -- that is, minute, everyday facilities and familiarities that help orchestrate the ordinariness of cultural life. Such knowledge informs what Michel de Certeau characterises as "the procedures of everyday creativity" (xiv). Far from random, the unexceptional decisions and actions involved with cinemagoing bear an ordering and a predictability. Novelty in audience activity appears, but it is alongside fairly exact expectations about the event. The schedule of start times is essential to the routinisation of filmgoing. Displaying a Fordist logic of streamlining commodity distribution and the time management of consumption, audiences circulate through a machine that shapes their constituency, providing a set time for seating, departure, snack purchases and socialising. Even with the staggered times offered by multiplex cinemas, schedules still lay down a fixed template around which other activities have to be arrayed by the patron. As audiences move to and through the theatre, the schedule endeavours to regulate practice, making us the subjects of a temporal grid, a city context, a cinema space, as well as of the film itself. To be sure, one can arrive late and leave early, confounding the schedule's disciplining force. Most importantly, with or without such forms of evasion, it channels the actions of audiences in ways that consideration of the gaze cannot address. Taking account of the scheduling of cinema culture, and its implication of adjunct procedures of everyday life, points to dimensions of subjectivity neglected by dominant theories of spectatorship. To be the subject of a cinema schedule is to understand one assemblage of the parameters of everyday creativity. It would be foolish to see cinema audiences as cattle, herded and processed alone, in some crude Gustave LeBon fashion. It would be equally foolish not to recognise the manner in which film distribution and exhibition operates precisely by constructing images of the activity of people as demographic clusters and generalised cultural consumers. The ordinary tactics of filmgoing are supplemental to, and run alongside, a set of industrial structures and practices. While there is a correlation between a culture industry's imagined audience and the life that ensues around its offerings, we cannot neglect that, as attention to film scheduling alerts us, audiences are subjects of an institutional apparatus, brought into being for the reproduction of an industrial edifice. Streamline Audiences In this, film is no different from any culture industry. Film exhibition and distribution relies on an understanding of both the market and the product or service being sold at any given point in time. Operations respond to economic conditions, competing companies, and alternative activities. Economic rationality in this strategic process, however, only explains so much. This is especially true for an industry that must continually predict, and arguably give shape to, the "mood" and predilections of disparate and distant audiences. Producers, distributors and exhibitors assess which films will "work", to whom they will be marketed, as well as establish the very terms of success. Without a doubt, much of the film industry's attentions act to reduce this uncertainty; here, one need only think of the various forms of textual continuity (genre films, star performances, etc.) and the economies of mass advertising as ways to ensure box office receipts. Yet, at the core of the operations of film exhibition remains a number of flexible assumptions about audience activity, taste and desire. These assumptions emerge from a variety of sources to form a brand of temporary industry "commonsense", and as such are harbingers of an industrial logic. Ien Ang has usefully pursued this view in her comparative analysis of three national television structures and their operating assumptions about audiences. Broadcasters streamline and discipline audiences as part of their organisational procedures, with the consequence of shaping ideas about consumers as well as assuring the reproduction of the industrial structure itself. She writes, "institutional knowledge is driven toward making the audience visible in such a way that it helps the institutions to increase their power to get their relationship with the audience under control, and this can only be done by symbolically constructing 'television audience' as an objectified category of others that can be controlled, that is, contained in the interest of a predetermined institutional goal" (7). Ang demonstrates, in particular, how various industrially sanctioned programming strategies (programme strips, "hammocking" new shows between successful ones, and counter-programming to a competitor's strengths) and modes of audience measurement grow out of, and invariably support, those institutional goals. And, most crucially, her approach is not an effort to ascertain the empirical certainty of "actual" audiences; instead, it charts the discursive terrain in which the abstract concept of audience becomes material for the continuation of industry practices. Ang's work tenders special insight to film culture. In fact, television scholarship has taken full advantage of exploring the routine nature of that medium, the best of which deploys its findings to lay bare configurations of power in domestic contexts. One aspect has been television time and schedules. For example, David Morley points to the role of television in structuring everyday life, discussing a range of research that emphasises the temporal dimension. Alerting us to the non- necessary determination of television's temporal structure, he comments that we "need to maintain a sensitivity to these micro-levels of division and differentiation while we attend to the macro-questions of the media's own role in the social structuring of time" (265). As such, the negotiation of temporal structures implies that schedules are not monolithic impositions of order. Indeed, as Morley puts it, they "must be seen as both entering into already constructed, historically specific divisions of space and time, and also as transforming those pre-existing division" (266). Television's temporal grid has been address by others as well. Paddy Scannell characterises scheduling and continuity techniques, which link programmes, as a standardisation of use, making radio and television predictable, 'user friendly' media (9). John Caughie refers to the organization of flow as a way to talk about the national particularities of British and American television (49-50). All, while making their own contributions, appeal to a detailing of viewing context as part of any study of audience, consumption or experience; uncovering the practices of television programmers as they attempt to apprehend and create viewing conditions for their audiences is a first step in this detailing. Why has a similar conceptual framework not been applied with the same rigour to film? Certainly the history of film and television's association with different, at times divergent, disciplinary formations helps us appreciate such theoretical disparities. I would like to mention one less conspicuous explanation. It occurs to me that one frequently sees a collapse in the distinction between the everyday and the domestic; in much scholarship, the latter term appears as a powerful trope of the former. The consequence has been the absenting of a myriad of other -- if you will, non-domestic -- manifestations of everyday-ness, unfortunately encouraging a rather literal understanding of the everyday. The impression is that the abstractions of the everyday are reduced to daily occurrences. Simply put, my minor appeal is for the extension of this vein of television scholarship to out-of-home technologies and cultural forms, that is, other sites and locations of the everyday. In so doing, we pay attention to extra-textual structures of cinematic life; other regimes of knowledge, power, subjectivity and practice appear. Film audiences require a discussion about the ordinary, the calculated and the casual practices of cinematic engagement. Such a discussion would chart institutional knowledge, identifying operating strategies and recognising the creativity and multidimensionality of cinemagoing. What are the discursive parameters in which the film industry imagines cinema audiences? What are the related implications for the structures in which the practice of cinemagoing occurs? Vectors of Exhibition Time One set of those structures of audience and industry practice involves the temporal dimension of film exhibition. In what follows, I want to speculate on three vectors of the temporality of cinema spaces (meaning that I will not address issues of diegetic time). Note further that my observations emerge from a close study of industrial discourse in the U.S. and Canada. I would be interested to hear how they are manifest in other continental contexts. First, the running times of films encourage turnovers of the audience during the course of a single day at each screen. The special event of lengthy anomalies has helped mark the epic, and the historic, from standard fare. As discussed above, show times coordinate cinemagoing and regulate leisure time. Knowing the codes of screenings means participating in an extension of the industrial model of labour and service management. Running times incorporate more texts than the feature presentation alone. Besides the history of double features, there are now advertisements, trailers for coming attractions, trailers for films now playing in neighbouring auditoriums, promotional shorts demonstrating new sound systems, public service announcements, reminders to turn off cell phones and pagers, and the exhibitor's own signature clips. A growing focal point for filmgoing, these introductory texts received a boost in 1990, when the Motion Picture Association of America changed its standards for the length of trailers, boosting it from 90 seconds to a full two minutes (Brookman). This intertextuality needs to be supplemented by a consideration of inter- media appeals. For example, advertisements for television began appearing in theatres in the 1990s. And many lobbies of multiplex cinemas now offer a range of media forms, including video previews, magazines, arcades and virtual reality games. Implied here is that motion pictures are not the only media audiences experience in cinemas and that there is an explicit attempt to integrate a cinema's texts with those at other sites and locations. Thus, an exhibitor's schedule accommodates an intertextual strip, offering a limited parallel to Raymond Williams's concept of "flow", which he characterised by stating -- quite erroneously -- "in all communication systems before broadcasting the essential items were discrete" (86-7). Certainly, the flow between trailers, advertisements and feature presentations is not identical to that of the endless, ongoing text of television. There are not the same possibilities for "interruption" that Williams emphasises with respect to broadcasting flow. Further, in theatrical exhibition, there is an end-time, a time at which there is a public acknowledgement of the completion of the projected performance, one that necessitates vacating the cinema. This end-time is a moment at which the "rental" of the space has come due; and it harkens a return to the street, to the negotiation of city space, to modes of public transit and the mobile privatisation of cars. Nonetheless, a schedule constructs a temporal boundary in which audiences encounter a range of texts and media in what might be seen as limited flow. Second, the ephemerality of audiences -- moving to the cinema, consuming its texts, then passing the seat on to someone else -- is matched by the ephemerality of the features themselves. Distributors' demand for increasing numbers of screens necessary for massive, saturation openings has meant that films now replace one another more rapidly than in the past. Films that may have run for months now expect weeks, with fewer exceptions. Wider openings and shorter runs have created a cinemagoing culture characterised by flux. The acceleration of the turnover of films has been made possible by the expansion of various secondary markets for distribution, most importantly videotape, splintering where we might find audiences and multiplying viewing contexts. Speeding up the popular in this fashion means that the influence of individual texts can only be truly gauged via cross-media scrutiny. Short theatrical runs are not axiomatically designed for cinemagoers anymore; they can also be intended to attract the attention of video renters, purchasers and retailers. Independent video distributors, especially, "view theatrical release as a marketing expense, not a profit center" (Hindes & Roman 16). In this respect, we might think of such theatrical runs as "trailers" or "loss leaders" for the video release, with selected locations for a film's release potentially providing visibility, even prestige, in certain city markets or neighbourhoods. Distributors are able to count on some promotion through popular consumer- guide reviews, usually accompanying theatrical release as opposed to the passing critical attention given to video release. Consequently, this shapes the kinds of uses an assessment of the current cinema is put to; acknowledging that new releases function as a resource for cinema knowledge highlights the way audiences choose between and determine big screen and small screen films. Taken in this manner, popular audiences see the current cinema as largely a rough catalogue to future cultural consumption. Third, motion picture release is part of the structure of memories and activities over the course of a year. New films appear in an informal and ever-fluctuating structure of seasons. The concepts of summer movies and Christmas films, or the opening weekends that are marked by a holiday, sets up a fit between cinemagoing and other activities -- family gatherings, celebrations, etc. Further, this fit is presumably resonant for both the industry and popular audiences alike, though certainly for different reasons. The concentration of new films around visible holiday periods results in a temporally defined dearth of cinemas; an inordinate focus upon three periods in the year in the U.S. and Canada -- the last weekend in May, June/July/August and December -- creates seasonal shortages of screens (Rice-Barker 20). In fact, the boom in theatre construction through the latter half of the 1990s was, in part, to deal with those short-term shortages and not some year-round inadequate seating. Configurations of releasing colour a calendar with the tactical manoeuvres of distributors and exhibitors. Releasing provides a particular shape to the "current cinema", a term I employ to refer to a temporally designated slate of cinematic texts characterised most prominently by their newness. Television arranges programmes to capitalise on flow, to carry forward audiences and to counter-programme competitors' simultaneous offerings. Similarly, distributors jostle with each other, with their films and with certain key dates, for the limited weekends available, hoping to match a competitor's film intended for one audience with one intended for another. Industry reporter Leonard Klady sketched some of the contemporary truisms of releasing based upon the experience of 1997. He remarks upon the success of moving Liar, Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997) to a March opening and the early May openings of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997), generally seen as not desirable times of the year for premieres. He cautions against opening two films the same weekend, and thus competing with yourself, using the example of Fox's Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997). While distributors seek out weekends clear of films that would threaten to overshadow their own, Klady points to the exception of two hits opening on the same date of December 19, 1997 -- Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Though but a single opinion, Klady's observations are a peek into a conventional strain of strategising among distributors and exhibitors. Such planning for the timing and appearance of films is akin to the programming decisions of network executives. And I would hazard to say that digital cinema, reportedly -- though unlikely -- just on the horizon and in which texts will be beamed to cinemas via satellite rather than circulated in prints, will only augment this comparison; releasing will become that much more like programming, or at least will be conceptualised as such. To summarize, the first vector of exhibition temporality is the scheduling and running time; the second is the theatrical run; the third is the idea of seasons and the "programming" of openings. These are just some of the forces streamlining filmgoers; the temporal structuring of screenings, runs and film seasons provides a material contour to the abstraction of audience. Here, what I have delineated are components of an industrial logic about popular and public entertainment, one that offers a certain controlled knowledge about and for cinemagoing audiences. Shifting Conceptual Frameworks A note of caution is in order. I emphatically resist an interpretation that we are witnessing the becoming-film of television and the becoming-tv of film. Underneath the "inversion" argument is a weak brand of technological determinism, as though each asserts its own essential qualities. Such a pat declaration seems more in line with the mythos of convergence, and its quasi-Darwinian "natural" collapse of technologies. Instead, my point here is quite the opposite, that there is nothing essential or unique about the scheduling or flow of television; indeed, one does not have to look far to find examples of less schedule-dependent television. What I want to highlight is that application of any term of distinction -- event/flow, gaze/glance, public/private, and so on -- has more to do with our thinking, with the core discursive arrangements that have made film and television, and their audiences, available to us as knowable and different. So, using empirical evidence to slide one term over to the other is a strategy intended to supplement and destabilise the manner in which we draw conclusions, and even pose questions, of each. What this proposes is, again following the contributions of Ien Ang, that we need to see cinemagoing in its institutional formation, rather than some stable technological, textual or experiential apparatus. The activity is not only a function of a constraining industrial practice or of wildly creative patrons, but of a complex inter-determination between the two. Cinemagoing is an organisational entity harbouring, reviving and constituting knowledge and commonsense about film commodities, audiences and everyday life. An event of cinema begins well before the dimming of an auditorium's lights. The moment a newspaper is consulted, with its local representation of an internationally circulating current cinema, its listings belie a scheduling, an orderliness, to the possible projections in a given location. As audiences are formed as subjects of the current cinema, we are also agents in the continuation of a set of institutions as well. References Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991. Brookman, Faye. "Trailers: The Big Business of Drawing Crowds." Variety 13 June 1990: 48. Caughie, John. "Playing at Being American: Games and Tactics." Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Hindes, Andrew, and Monica Roman. "Video Titles Do Pitstops on Screens." Variety 16-22 Sep. 1996: 11+. Klady, Leonard. "Hitting and Missing the Market: Studios Show Savvy -- or Just Luck -- with Pic Release Strategies." Variety 19-25 Jan. 1998: 18. Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Newspaper Association of America. "Before They See It Here..." Advertisement. Variety 22-28 Nov. 1999: 38. Rice-Barker, Leo. "Industry Banks on New Technology, Expanded Slates." Playback 6 May 1996: 19-20. Scannell, Paddy. Radio, Television and Modern Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1975. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Acland. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php>. Chicago style: Charles Acland, "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Acland. (2000) Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]).