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Objective: To assess the quality of services offered by health service providers, according to the perception of consumers., Methods: A cross-sectional study with 360 consumers from seven health service providers in the metropolitan area of Curitiba, PR, in 2008, was performed. An individual questionnaire measuring the consumers' preferences in relation to six attributes (location of service points; effectiveness of doctors, clinics and hospitals; promptness and kindness when caring for patients and family members; ease of access to the authorization forms for consultations; price; diversity of available doctors, clinics and hospitals) for each one of the analyzed health service providers was carried out. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multiple criteria tool for decision analysis and planning, was used to analyze the responses., Results: The attribute most valued by the consumers was "price". The companies were grouped into two sets, regarding the mentioned attributes: two had lower preference (between 19% and 23%) and five, higher preference (around 10% each)., Conclusions: With this type of research, health service providers could reshape their structures, processes, prices and accredited networks, in order to improve their market strategy.

In this work low temperature conversion (LTC) process was applied in a dried sludge from a petrochemical industry wastewater treatment station located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The process was performed in two modes: continuous and batch-scale. This process produced a pyrolysis oil (continuous 14%; batch-scale 40% yield); pyrolytic char (continuous 46%; batch-scale 56% yield); gas and water. Pyrolysis oil fraction was analyzed by gas chromatographic mass spectrometry (GCMS) and the main components identified were toluene, ethylbenzene, styrene, isopropyl benzene, alpha-methylstyrene, butanenitrile and 1,3- biphenyl propane. Metals content, sulfur content and calorific value have been determined for the pyrolysis oil fraction. The results showed that the pyrolysis oil obtained could be used for industrial purposes and/or as energetic matrix.