Educating for earthquake science and risk in a tectonically slowly deforming region

Over the past decade, scientists have been called to participate more actively in public education and outreach (E&O). This is particularly true in fields of significant societal impact, such as earthquake science. Local earthquake risk culture plays a role in the way that the public engages in educational efforts. In this article, we describe an adapted E&O program for earthquake science and risk. The program is tailored for a region of slow tectonic deformation, where large earthquakes are extreme events that occur with long return periods. The adapted program has two main goals: (1) to increase the awareness and preparedness of the population to earthquake and related risks (tsunami, liquefaction, fires, etc.), and (2) to increase the quality of earthquake science education, so as to attract talented students to geosciences. Our integrated program relies on activities tuned for different population groups who have different interests and abilities, namely young children, teenagers, young adults, and professionals.

Competências a potenciar: novas formas de agir na construção do conhecimento

No âmbito duma investigação que cruza a área científica da Ciência da Informação com a Educação, elegendo como objeto de estudo a Literacia da Informação (LI), selecionaram-se um conjunto de competências de LI, reconhecidas como mais importantes e mencionadas em vasta literatura sobre o tema, com destaque para alguns Referenciais internacionais. Pretende-se averiguar qual o papel da formação ministrada em diferentes licenciaturas de uma escola de ensino superior politécnico e refletir sobre que competências são mais desenvolvidas nos estudantes de diferentes cursos, comparando aqueles que iniciam e os que terminam a sua formação. Para além dos estudantes, destaca-se, neste estudo, a intervenção dos professores das referidas licenciaturas, ambos os grupos inquiridos através de questionários online. Também os elementos responsáveis pela coordenação dos oito cursos de primeiro ciclo em análise e a bibliotecária da instituição são envolvidos, neste caso, através de entrevistas semidirigidas, contribuindo para uma investigação que se pretende o mais completa possível e com a robustez decorrente do cruzamento de vários dados. Recorrendo a uma abordagem metodológica quantitativa e qualitativa, num interessante jogo de perceções consonantes ou divergentes entre estes atores cruciais do processo educativo, os resultados e a sua interpretação permitem refletir sobre a necessidade de adotar novas posturas e atuações no complexo processo de formação e de desenvolvimento de competências de LI. Estas devem ser adequadas aos perfis desejáveis dos diplomados do ensino superior, profissionais e cidadãos que se pretende que obtenham sucesso nas diferentes áreas da sua vida, revelando-se, em suma, indivíduos infoincluídos, ativos e participativos face às mudanças, desafios e crises do século XXI.

Public Participation geographic information systems in developing countries: lessons from Uganda on the impacts of interactive screens PPGIS and community perceptions of space

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Walking Through the Revolution: A Spatial Reading of Literary Echoes

This paper presents an embryo of a literary guide on the Carnation Revolution to be explored for educational historical excursions other than leisure and tourism. We propose a historical trail through the centre of Lisbon, city of the Carnation Revolution, called Walk through the Revolution. The trail aims to reinforce collective memory about the major events that occurred in the early moments leading to the coup. The trail is made up by nine places of rememberance, for which literary excerpts are suggested and which are supported by a digital research procedure. A set of seven fixed and observer-independent categories are used to analyse the literary contents of 23 literary works published up to 2013. These literary works refer to events that happened between the eve of April 25 and May 1, 1974. At the same time, literary descriptions are explored using a spatial approach in order to define the literary geography of the most iconic military actions and popular demonstrations that occurred in Lisbon and the surroundings. The literary geography and the cartography of the historical events are then compared. Data analysis and visualization benefit from the use of standardised and quantitative methods, including basic statistics and geographic information systems.

Promoción de la salud bucodental en el ámbito escolar : "programa aprende a sonreír" : propuesta didáctica

En port.: Secretaría General de Salud Pública y Participación. Consejería de Salud. Dirección General de Innovación Educativa. Consejería de Educación. Publicado en la página web de la Consejería de Salud: www.juntadeandalucia.es/salud (Consejería de Salud / Ciudadanía / Nuestra Salud / Vida sana / Salud bucodental / Materiales para la Salud Bucodental Infantil)

Tabla de equivalencias entre la Organización Diagnóstica de Atención Temprana (ODAT) y la Clasificación Internacional de Enfermedades (CIE) [Recurso electrónico]

Publicado en la página web de la Consejería de Salud y Bienestar Social: www.juntadeandalucia.es/salud (Consejería de Salud y Bienestar Social/ Profesionales / Salud Pública /Prevención / Atención Temprana /)

Frecuencia de la cesárea en Andalucía: relación con factores sociales, clínicos y de los servicios sanitarios (2007-2009).

BACKGROUND Increasing trend and geographical variations in the use of caesarean section suggest the influence of non-clinical factors. The objective was to describe the use of caesarean section in the Andalusian region in Spain by exploring the role of social, clinical, and health services variables. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out using vital statistics. It involves all births occurred in Andalusia during the period of 2007-2009. The dependent variable was the use of caesarean section and the set of covariates were classified into three groups: those with a clinical meaning, those related to the health services organization, and those with a social significance. Multivariate logistic regressions were used. RESULTS In the data set of 293,558 births, the prevalence of caesarean delivery was 24.8%. The multivariate analysis highlights the labour complications as the clinical variable with the highest odds ratio (OR=19.36). Regarding the health services variables, the odds of experiencing a caesarean delivery were 55% higher on weekdays than on weekends. Cádiz was the province with the highest OR for caesarean section (comparison between Cádiz and Almería: OR=1,21) where the ratio between births in public and private hospitals was 3.7. The frequency of caesarean section was 34% higher in women with third level education than those with no education. CONCLUSIONS Labour complication is the most influential variable for caesarean section. Caesarean birth rate is above the accepted standards for all social classes and increases with educational level. Inter-provincial differences reflect different patterns with regard to the use of private medicine.

Andalusian Health Repository: Promoting the scientific health output among professionals and providing citizens with quality health information

The Andalusian Public Health System (Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía -SSPA) Repository is the open environment where all the scientific output generated by the SSPA professionals, resulting from their medical care, research and administrative activities, is comprehensively collected and managed. This repository possesses special features which determined its development: the SSPA organization and its purpose as a health institution, the specific sets of documents that it generates and the stakeholders involved in it. The repository uses DSpace 1.6.2, to which several changes were implemented in order to achieve the SSPA initial goals and requirements. The main changes were: the addition of specific qualifiers to the Metadata Dublin Core scheme, the modification of the submission form, the integration of the MeSH Thesaurus as controlled vocabulary and the optimization of the advanced search tool. Another key point during the setting up of the repository was the initial batch ingest of the documents.

Perspectives for the treatment of brucellosis in the 21st century: the Ioannina recommendations

Summary Points Brucellosis remains the commonest anthropozoonosis worldwide, and its treatment remains complex, requiring protracted administration of more than one antibiotic. In November 2006, a consensus meeting aimed at reaching a common specialist statement on the treatment of brucellosis was held in Ioannina, Greece under the auspices of the International Society of Chemotherapy and the Institute of Continuing Medical Education of Ioannina. The author panel suggests that the optimal treatment of uncomplicated brucellosis should be based on a six-week regimen of doxycycline combined either with streptomycin for 2–3 weeks, or rifampicin for six weeks. Gentamicin may be considered an acceptable alternative to streptomycin, while all other regimens/combinations should be considered second-line. The development of a common global therapeutic language for human brucellosis, and future, properly conducted clinical trials would definitely solve controversies regarding the disease.

Effective diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease by means of large margin-based methodology.

BACKGROUND Functional brain images such as Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have been widely used to guide the clinicians in the Alzheimer's Disease (AD) diagnosis. However, the subjectivity involved in their evaluation has favoured the development of Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) Systems. METHODS It is proposed a novel combination of feature extraction techniques to improve the diagnosis of AD. Firstly, Regions of Interest (ROIs) are selected by means of a t-test carried out on 3D Normalised Mean Square Error (NMSE) features restricted to be located within a predefined brain activation mask. In order to address the small sample-size problem, the dimension of the feature space was further reduced by: Large Margin Nearest Neighbours using a rectangular matrix (LMNN-RECT), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or Partial Least Squares (PLS) (the two latter also analysed with a LMNN transformation). Regarding the classifiers, kernel Support Vector Machines (SVMs) and LMNN using Euclidean, Mahalanobis and Energy-based metrics were compared. RESULTS Several experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the proposed LMNN-based feature extraction algorithms and its benefits as: i) linear transformation of the PLS or PCA reduced data, ii) feature reduction technique, and iii) classifier (with Euclidean, Mahalanobis or Energy-based methodology). The system was evaluated by means of k-fold cross-validation yielding accuracy, sensitivity and specificity values of 92.78%, 91.07% and 95.12% (for SPECT) and 90.67%, 88% and 93.33% (for PET), respectively, when a NMSE-PLS-LMNN feature extraction method was used in combination with a SVM classifier, thus outperforming recently reported baseline methods. CONCLUSIONS All the proposed methods turned out to be a valid solution for the presented problem. One of the advances is the robustness of the LMNN algorithm that not only provides higher separation rate between the classes but it also makes (in combination with NMSE and PLS) this rate variation more stable. In addition, their generalization ability is another advance since several experiments were performed on two image modalities (SPECT and PET).

Digital inmigrants and digital natives expectation collection in the Andalusian Public Health System Virtual Library: communication with our users

The Andalusian Public Health System Virtual Library (Biblioteca Virtual del Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía, BV-SSPA) provides access to health information resources and services to healthcare professionals through its Website. This virtual environment demands higher users’ knowledge in order to satisfy of the need of information of our users, as digital natives as digital immigrants, improving at the same time the communication with all of them. 1. To collect clients' views and expectations according to their nature of digital natives and immigrants. 2. To know our online reputation. A Collecting User Expectation Questionnaire will be built, taking into account the segmentation of the BV-SSPA users’ professional groups of the Andalusian Public Health System. A pilot test will be run to check the survey dimensions and items about practices, attitudes and knowledge of our users. Two Quality Function Deployment (QFD) matrices will enable the BV-SSPA services to be targeted to our digital natives or digital immigrants, according to their nature, finding the best way to satisfy their information needs. We provide feedback on BV-SSPA: users can have the opportunity to post feedback about the site via the 'Contact us' section and comment about their experience. And Web 2.0 is a shop window, providing the opportunity to show the comments; and through time, our online reputation will be built, but the BV-SSPA must manage its own personal branding. Web 2.0 tools are a driver of improvement, because they provide a key source of insight into people's attitudes. Besides, the BV-SSPA digital identity will be analyzed through indicators like major search engine referrals breakdown, top referring sites (non search engines), or top search engine referral phrases, among others. Definition of digital native and digital immigrant profiles of the BV-SSPA, and their difference, will be explained by their expectations. The design of the two QFD matrices will illustrate in just one graph the requirements of both groups for tackling digital abilities and inequalities. The BV-SSPA could deliver information and services through alternative channels. On the other hand, we are developing a strategy to identify, to measure and to manage a digital identity through communication with the user and to find out our online reputation. With the use of different tools from quantitative and qualitative methodology, and the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 tools, the BV-SSPA will know the expectations of their users as a first step to satisfy their necessities. Personalization is pivotal to the success of the Site, delivering tailored content to individuals based on their recorded preferences. The valuable user research can be used during new product development and redesign. Besides positive interaction let us build trust, show authenticity, and foster loyalty: we improve with effort, communication and show.

Programa de promoción de la salud bucodental + propuesta didáctica : Aprende a sonreír

Publicado en la página web de la Consejería de Igualdad, Salud y Políticas Sociales: www.juntadeandalucia.es/salud (Consejería de Igualdad, Salud y Políticas Sociales / Ciudadanía / Salud Pública / .Esta publicación es una actualización de los contenidos de la "Propuesta didáctica. Promoción de la salud bucodental en el ámbito escolar. Programa Aprende a sonreír" (2003)

Bibliotecas Virtuales de Salud: experiencias y buenas prácticas

Information Technologies and Documentation made the foundation of virtual libraries possible anywhere in the world, being the universities the institutions where the evolution towards the online supply of services for their users has evolved in a most important way. In Europe, the convergence in the European Higher Education Area, has forced university libraries to adapt to the functions that were assigned to them by the Declaration of Bologna. In Europe it is necessary to overcome some resistance to the necessary change. Besides the active participation of the librarians and information retrieval professionals, it is necessary to have information professionals that exert the necessary leadership and assure that to coordinate access to core health information delivery to health professionals and researchers efficiently and more cost-effectively through the implementation of novel technologies should be a major aim.