TEOLOGIA E TRADIÇÃO NO CONTEXTO DAS RELIGIÕES DE UMBANDA: UMA ANÁLISE DO CONFLITO ENTRE CULTURA ACADÊMICA E POPULAR

A religião de Umbanda ocupa grande espaço na vida e no imaginário religioso brasileiro, e adota as lendas, mitos e folclore da cultura popular brasileira. Desprovida de texto sagrado, a Umbanda rejeita a ideia do entendimento de uma literatura sagrada como pressuposto para uma ligação com o divino, sendo mais preocupada com a experiência religiosa e do sagrado, como ponte entre a dimensão humana e divina. Embora de comum acordo sobre a importância da prática na religião de Umbanda, existe um forte debate teológico na questão do valor principal para as práticas e vida religiosa do filho de santo. De um lado, temos a Doutrina Esotérica que aposta na produção textual e teórica e, de outro, temos a Umbanda de popular, que aposta na experiência pessoal do filho de santo com a tradição oral e as práticas religiosas. De sua fundação até a presente data, a Umbanda Esotérica tem apostado na formação acadêmica como base principal para a instrumentalização do filho de santo para a prática no terreiro, assim como publicação de textos, livros, artigos, oferecimento de cursos e a criação da primeira instituição especializada de ensino, a Faculdade de Teologia Umbandista. Se por um lado, para alguns, isso possa parecer uma abertura para a modernização e melhor aceitação das práticas de origem africanas, para outros, representa uma limitação na prática e na experiência do filho de santo devido à racionalidade do espaço acadêmico. Desse modo, pretendo investigar esse conflito no discurso e nas suas especificidades, estudando literatura especializada e orgânica, tendo como eixo de investigação a seguinte questão: O que é mais importante para as práticas religiosas em Umbanda, a formação prática ou a acadêmica?

Palavra, a herança de um povo – o encontro Intergeracional através da Literatura Popular

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Educação: área de especialização em Animação da Leitura RENATES TID 201003139

Ontology forecasting in scientific literature:semantic concepts prediction based on innovation-adoption priors

The ontology engineering research community has focused for many years on supporting the creation, development and evolution of ontologies. Ontology forecasting, which aims at predicting semantic changes in an ontology, represents instead a new challenge. In this paper, we want to give a contribution to this novel endeavour by focusing on the task of forecasting semantic concepts in the research domain. Indeed, ontologies representing scientific disciplines contain only research topics that are already popular enough to be selected by human experts or automatic algorithms. They are thus unfit to support tasks which require the ability of describing and exploring the forefront of research, such as trend detection and horizon scanning. We address this issue by introducing the Semantic Innovation Forecast (SIF) model, which predicts new concepts of an ontology at time t + 1, using only data available at time t. Our approach relies on lexical innovation and adoption information extracted from historical data. We evaluated the SIF model on a very large dataset consisting of over one million scientific papers belonging to the Computer Science domain: the outcomes show that the proposed approach offers a competitive boost in mean average precision-at-ten compared to the baselines when forecasting over 5 years.

Literature review and update of lower limb neural mobilization

Summarize the available literature descriptions of neural mobilization (NM) techniques and neural provocation tests (NPT) for the Lower Limb (LL). Compilation of data was performed in May 2016 using MEDLINE data base, Google Scholar and the library of the European University of Madrid. After application of inclusion/exclusion criterions 5 books and 14 journal publications where found to be of interest and used during data extraction.Results: a list of 8 different LLNM techniques are applied in a rhythmic alternating oscillatory cycle fashion, starting in the initial position from where the therapist proceeds to move the limb in order to achieve a final position. LL NPTs are useful tools for differential diagnose and selecting the proper LLNM procedure. There is no consensus about the time frame of repetition intervals or amount of tensile strength during NPT never the less it is found to normally be performed at a rate of 2-4 seconds per complete cycle of movement, during 1-5 minutes, 3-5 times a week. LLNM treatment techniques all thou increasingly popular in clinical practice are found to be frugally described and lack proper standardization in regards to therapeutic dosification.

Australian waterfalls as tourism attractions

For a largely arid country with generally low relief, Australia has a remarkably large number and variety of waterfalls. Found mainly near the coast, close to where most of the population lives and near the major tourist resort areas, these landscape features have long been popular scenic attractions. As sights to see and places to enjoy a variety of recreational activities, waterfalls continue to play an important role in Australia’s tourism, even in seaside resort areas where the main attractions are sunshine, sandy beaches and surf. The aesthetic appeal of waterfalls and their value as recreational resources are recognized by the inclusion of many in national parks. Even here, demands of visitors and pressures from developers raise serious problems. This paper examines the way in which waterfalls have been developed and promoted as tourist attractions, demonstrating their importance to Australian tourism. It considers threats to the sustainable use of waterfall resources posed by power schemes and, particularly, by the tourist industry itself. Queensland’s Gold Coast is selected as a case study, and comparisons are made with other areas in which waterfalls have played important roles as tourist attractions, especially the Yorkshire coast of northeast England. The discussion draws largely on an examination of tourist literature from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, including holiday brochures and guide books, as well as other published sources, together with field observation in various parts of the world

Enterprise resources planning systems impacts: A Delphi study of Australian public sector

The business value of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP systems), and in general large software implementations, has been extensively debated in both popular press and in the academic literature for over two decades. Organisations invest enormous sums of money and resources in Enterprise Resource Planning systems (and related infrastructure), presumably expecting positive impacts to the organisation and its functions. Some studies have reported large productivity improvements and substantial benefits from ERP systems, while others have reported that ERP systems have not had any bottom-line impact. This paper discusses initial findings from a study that focuses on identifying and assessing important ERP impacts in 23 Australian public sector organizations.

Survey design: Insights from a public sector ERP success story

Research on the impact of Information Systems (IS) reported in both academic literature and popular press has reported confounding results. Some studies have reported encouraging results of IS, while others have reported nil or detrimental results. The contradictory results of these research studies can be partially attributed to the weaknesses in survey instruments. In an attempt to increase the validity of conclusions of IS assessment studies, survey instrument design should follow a rigorous and scientific procedure. This paper illustrates key validity and reliability issues in measuring Information Systems performance, using examples from a study designed to assess Enterprise Resource Planning systems success. The article emphasizes on the importance of the survey method and the theoretical considerations of item derivation, scale development and item evaluation. Examples are provided from the ERP assessment study to supplement the readers understanding of the theoretical concepts of survey design.

Testing a framework for the quality of process models: A case study

Process modeling can be regarded as the currently most popular form of conceptual modeling. Research evidence illustrates how process modeling is applied across the different information system life cycle phases for a range of different applications, such as configuration of Enterprise Systems, workflow management, or software development. However, a detailed discussion of critical factors of the quality of process models is still missing. This paper proposes a framework consisting of six quality factors, which is derived from a comprehensive literature review. It then presents in a case study, a utility provider, who had designed various business process models for the selection of an Enterprise System. The paper summarizes potential means of conducting a successful process modeling initiative and evaluates the described modeling approach within the Guidelines of Modeling (GoM) framework. An outlook shows the potential lessons learnt, and concludes with insights to the next phases of this study.

Knowledge management for ERP success

The business value of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and in general large software implementations has been extensively debated in both popular press and academic literature for over three decades. Despite the positive motives for adoption, various organizations have reported negative impacts from these large investments. This ‘disconnect’ between large IS investments and firms’ organizational performance may be attributable to the economic transition from an era of competitive advantage based on information to one that is based on Knowledge. This paper discusses the initial findings of a two-phased study that focuses on empirically assessing the impact of knowledge management on the success of Enterprise Resource Planning systems. The research study uses information gathered from twenty-seven public sector organizations in Queensland, Australia. Validation of the a priori model constructs through factor analysis identified two dimensions of knowledge management. Further analysis assessed the comparative differences in perceptions of knowledge management in ERP, across four employment cohorts.

Perceptions of Integration: What the Literature Says and What Stakeholders See

This paper compares perceptions of integrated marketing communication (IMC) to establish whether consumers perceive integration in the same way as the literature. It begins by reviewing the literature to identify shared assumptions about integration and factors thought to contribute to the integration of marketing communication and, in an experiment, compares these with the perceptions of consumers. Many of the shared assumptions in the literature have been supported by the findings of this study. Integration has been demonstrated to be both a strategy and a tactic. The strategic side is part of a management process and is unable to be observed by consumers from the marketing communication output. Consumers can, however, identify the tactics and are able to recall a number of integration factors such as logo, corporate colours and image. Consumers in the total message integration groups perceived the messages they received as more integrated than those in partial integration or no integration groups.

How does ‘Newstainment’ actually work? : ethnographic research methods and contemporary popular news

Much debate has taken place recently over the potential for entertainment genres and unorthodox forms of news to provide legitimate – indeed democratized – in-roads into the public sphere. Amidst these discussions, however, little thought has been paid to the audiences for programs of this sort, and (even when viewers are considered) the research can too easily treat audiences in homogenous terms and therefore replicate the very dichotomies these television shows directly challenge. This paper is a critical reflection on an audience study into the Australian morning “newstainment” program Sunrise. After examining the show and exploring how it is ‘used’ as a news source, this paper will promote the use of ethnographic study to better conceptualize how citizens integrate and connect the increasingly fragmented and multifarious forms of postmodern political communication available in their everyday lives.