Local health policy development processes in the Netherlands: an expanded toolbox for health promotion

Although much research has been done on the existence and formation of risk and issue based health policies, there is only little insight in health policy development processes in a broader context. This hampers intervention in these policy processes to adequately develop integrated and effective health policies.

Legislation in the Netherlands requires municipalities to develop and implement local health policies. These policies are supposed to aim at the promotion of health across sectors and with a strong community involvement. Health policy development processes have been studied in four Dutch municipalities. For each case, we identified a range of stakeholders and monitored the change or stability of their characteristics over 3 years. In addition, for each case, three overlaying maps of networks were made addressing communication and collaboration actions within the defined set of stakeholders. We point out a number of barriers which impede integrated policy development at the local level: the importance given to local health policy, the medical approach to health development, the organizational self-interest rather than public health concern, the absence of policy entrepreneurial activity.

Furthermore, this article advocates the use of complementary theoretical frameworks and the expansion of the methodological toolbox for health promotion. The value of stakeholder and network analysis in the health promotion domain, at this stage, is two-fold. First, mapping relevant actors, their positions and connections in networks provides us with insight into their capacity to participate and contribute to health policy development. Second, these new tools contribute to a further understanding of policy entrepreneurial roles to be taken up by health promotion professionals and health authorities in favour of the socio-environmental approach to health.

Notwithstanding the value of this first step, more research is required into both the practical application as well as in the theoretical connections with, for example, Multiple Streams theory.

Thinking about thinking : innovative pedagogy designed to foster thinking skills in junior primary classrooms

This article reports on the collaborative initiative of two primary school teachers who created and implemented innovative pedagogy in order to foster a culture of thinking in their classrooms. The paper outlines teaching strategies that were used with the intent of making students mindful of themselves as learners and thinkers. A 'Toolbox', inspired by 'Habits of Mind' and the Visible Thinking approach to teaching and learning, is described in narrative form by one of the teachers. The Toolbox aims to equip students with the thinking tools to make their thinking visible to themselves, their peers and their teachers.

The metabolic syndrome: in need of a global mission statement

Aims The value of clinical definitions of the metabolic syndrome has been questioned, with confusion surrounding their intended use and purpose. Our aim was to construct a mission statement that outlines the value of the metabolic syndrome in clinical and public health settings.

Methods Case studies have been used to demonstrate three key points.

Results We argue here for recognition of obesity as being a crucial element within the metabolic syndrome but perhaps even more important before its development. We also contend that the concept does indeed have a role as a risk prediction tool, and that it could provide a useful metric for the scale and progress of the looming global epidemic of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Conclusions Through appreciation of its purpose, and recognition of both its limitations and those attributes that make it unique and valuable, we believe we have demonstrated here that the metabolic syndrome deserves its place in the global toolbox of diabetes and CVD prevention.

Aplicacao do geoprocessamento no estudo da impermeabilidade urbana

The environmental impact of urbanization due to the surface impervious growing and inadequacy of urban occupation induces to a significant increase of inundation events in every urban center. Hence, this paper focuses the concept of impervious surface as an indicator of environment impact, expressed through the changing of pervious areas in impervious areas by paving cover or building occupation. It is taken as a case study 13 areas pertaining to Canoas City, Rio Grande do Sul – Metropolitan area of Porto Alegre, Brazil. The main goal of the methodology process is to achieve information about types of land cover for studying the association with urban impermeability level. Therefore, the manipulation of municipal digital cartographic base of Canoas City with aerial photographs, through the geoprocessing applied in geographic information system toolbox (GIS), allows this research to produce data about of urban impervious areas generation. These results could help the urban settlement planning to reduce the impervious cover and the hydrological impact in its implementation.

Deleuze : 'Had I not done philosophy I would have done law'

For those too few of us who carry a flame for an idea or shape of community and if necessary law to come Deleuze provides us with some useful signposts and overall a working toolbox with which to tackle both the micro and macro of our daily encounters. The whole package of Deleuzian machines and assemblages can be taken up as an abstract discourse which too outsiders might appear devoid of any linkage to reality. The whole notion of Deleuzian lawyers is one that can easily raise a chuckle, but nevertheless some of us seem to persevere with playing with the law with this toolbox.

The performing frame

This project explores the ways that creative practices—improvised movement, choreographed dance, and digital video—produce new knowledge about the sociability of public space. In other words, it uses various theoretical concepts and practical strategies to document and analyse the ways people inhabit and sometimes subvert public spaces — such as plazas, malls and piazzas — as part of their everyday experience. Drawing on concepts developed within the fields of performance theory, spatial history, cultural geography and social theory, the project will build a methodological toolbox for understanding the relationships between the diverse groups that use public spaces in Melbourne, Australia. This ‘toolbox’ will subsequently be used to understand analogous public spaces in other parts of the world to generate comparative data about spatial sociability. The research will enable an innovative way of mapping social, civic and political relations in space through a series of creative interventions, and will reveal the politics of everyday movement while exposing tensions between the spaces of public culture — those framed and legitimated by state institutions — and what Michael Warner calls ‘Counter-Publics.’ That is, those oppositional groups who actively seek to use public space in subversive or unauthorised ways.

This project documents a series of performative interventions designed to harness the untapped potential of various forms of street performance genres to function as tools that can produce new ways of understanding the politics of movement in public space. These ‘interventions’ will be generated through a series of practical performance and movement workshops that will draw on street theatre techniques, contact improvisation, Laban movement analysis and contemporary dance choreography. The project will focus on a series of dyadic relationships: self and other, inside and outside, centre and periphery that are relevant to human interaction in public space.
Street performers — musicians, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, mimes and so on — seek public spaces with high volumes of pedestrian traffic in order to maximise their ability to draw an audience and make a living. These performers who create temporary performance zones alter the flow and intensity of movement around them, thereby transforming the plazas, piazzas, town squares and subways favoured by buskers. Some of these performers interact with their audience more than others, and are potentially capable of telling us something about the politics of space. The practice of ‘shadowing’ the movements of passers-by is an increasingly popular form of public entertainment around the world.

Exponential stabilization for state and input delay systems via output feedback

This paper considers the exponential stabilization problem via static and dynamic output feedback controllers of linear systems with a time delay in both the state and input. By using a change of the state variable and combining with the Lyapunov-Krasovskii method, new sufficient conditions for exponential stabilization via static and dynamic output feedback controllers are proposed. The conditions are expressed in terms of matrix inequalities but with only one parameter needs to be tuned and therefore can be efficiently solved by incorporating an one-dimensional search method into the Matlab’s LMI toolbox. Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the obtained results.

The use of metabolomics in the study of metals in biological systems

Metabolomics may be defined as the comprehensive quantitative and/or qualitative analysis of all metabolites present in a bio-fluid, cell, tissue, or organism. It is essentially the study of biochemical phenotypes (or metabotypes). Metabolic profiles are context dependent, and vary in response to a variety of factors including environment and environmental stimuli, health status, disease and a myriad of other factors; as such, metabolomics has been applied to a wide range of fields and has been increasingly utilised to the study of the roles played by metals in a range of biological systems as well as, encouragingly, in understanding the underlying biochemical mechanisms. The role of metals (and metalloids) in biological organisms is complex and the majority of studies in this area have been performed in plants but the fields of natural product chemistry, human health and even bacterial corrosion of water distribution systems have been investigated using this technique. In this review some of the novel approaches in which the metabolomics toolbox has been used to unravel the roles of metals and metalloids in a range of biological systems are discussed and suggestions made for future research.

A practical guide to the application of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems criteria

The newly developed IUCN Red List of Ecosystems is part of a growing toolbox for assessing risks to biodiversity, which addresses ecosystems and their functioning. The Red List of Ecosystems standard allows systematic assessment of all freshwater, marine, terrestrial and subterranean ecosystem types in terms of their global risk of collapse. In addition, the Red List of Ecosystems categories and criteria provide a technical base for assessments of ecosystem status at the regional, national, or subnational level. While the Red List of Ecosystems criteria were designed to be widely applicable by scientists and practitioners, guidelines are needed to ensure they are implemented in a standardized manner to reduce epistemic uncertainties and allow robust comparisons among ecosystems and over time. We review the intended application of the Red List of Ecosystems assessment process, summarize 'best-practice' methods for ecosystem assessments and outline approaches to ensure operational rigour of assessments. The Red List of Ecosystems will inform priority setting for ecosystem types worldwide, and strengthen capacity to report on progress towards the Aichi Targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. When integrated with other IUCN knowledge products, such as the World Database of Protected Areas/Protected Planet, Key Biodiversity Areas and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the Red List of Ecosystems will contribute to providing the most complete global measure of the status of biodiversity yet achieved.

Utility of biological sensor tags in animal conservation

Electronic tags (both biotelemetry and biologging platforms) have informed conservation and resource management policy and practice by providing vital information on the spatial ecology of animals and their environments. However, the extent of the contribution of biological sensors (within electronic tags) that measure an animal's state (e.g., heart rate, body temperature, and details of locomotion and energetics) is less clear. A literature review revealed that, despite a growing number of commercially available state sensor tags and enormous application potential for such devices in animal biology, there are relatively few examples of their application to conservation. Existing applications fell under 4 main themes: quantifying disturbance (e.g., ecotourism, vehicular and aircraft traffic), examining the effects of environmental change (e.g., climate change), understanding the consequences of habitat use and selection, and estimating energy expenditure. We also identified several other ways in which sensor tags could benefit conservation, such as determining the potential efficacy of management interventions. With increasing sensor diversity of commercially available platforms, less invasive attachment techniques, smaller device sizes, and more researchers embracing such technology, we suggest that biological sensor tags be considered a part of the necessary toolbox for conservation. This approach can measure (in real time) the state of free-ranging animals and thus provide managers with objective, timely, relevant, and accurate data to inform policy and decision making.