How health organizations can apply scenario based planning and analytic technologies to make strategic consequential decisions in a time of uncertainty

The magnitude of the cervical cancer problem, coupled with the potential for prevention with recent technological advances, made it imperative to step back and reassess strategic options for dealing with cervical cancer screening in Kenya. The purpose of this qualitative study was: 1) to explore the extent to which the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology and the Scenario Based Planning (SBP) method, with the application of analytics, could enable strategic, consequential, informed decision making, and 2) to determine how influential Kenyan decision makers could apply SBP with analytic tools and techniques to make strategic, consequential decisions regarding the implementation of a Cervical Self Sampling Program (CSSP) in both urban and rural settings. The theoretical paradigm for this study was action research; it was experiential, practical, and action oriented, and resulted in co-created knowledge that influenced study participants’ decision making. Action Africa Help International (AAHI) and Brock University collaborated with Local Decision Influencing Participants (LDIP’s) to develop innovative strategies on how to implement the CSSP. SBP tools, along with traditional approaches to data collection and analysis, were applied to collect, visualize and analyze predominately qualitative data. Outputs from the study included: a) a generic implementation scenario for a CSSP (along with scenarios unique to urban and rural settings), and b) 10 strategic directions and 22 supporting implementation strategies that address the variables of: 1) technical viability, 2) political support, 3) affordability, 4) logistical feasibility, 5) social acceptability, and 6) transformation/sustainability. In addition, study participants’ capacity to effectively engage in predictive/prescriptive strategic decision making was strengthened.

Planification en contexte mégaévénementiel et reconversion urbaine : le cas du Green Point Urban Park à Cape Town en Afrique du Sud


Depuis les années 2000, nous observons de plus en plus de pays en développement (PED) hôtes de mégaévénements. En accueillant un mégaévénement en leur sol, les PED espèrent améliorer leur cadre urbain et attirer des investissements étrangers. Ceci étant dit, les retards en termes d’infrastructures et d’équipements que connaissent ces pays et les stricts cadres normatifs imposés par des organismes internationaux comme la FIFA, nous amènent à questionner la possibilité d’intégrer les aménagements mégaévénementiels, à leur contexte local. En ce sens, le processus de planification, dans lequel les cadres normatifs externes et locaux sont négociés, peut être vu comme un moment charnière ayant une incidence sur le potentiel de reconversion. Dans le cadre de ce mémoire, nous avons entamé une réflexion à ce sujet en examinant le processus de planification d’un aménagement mégaévénementiel, le Green Point Urban Park (GPUP) à Cape Town, et son incidence sur son potentiel de reconversion. Plus précisément, nous allons, en premier lieu, décrire le processus de planification du site, nous allons par la suite évaluer son potentiel de reconversion, puis nous allons faire ressortir des liens entre le processus de planification et le potentiel de reconversion des aménagements mégaévénementiels. En somme, notre travail met en évidence une relation entre, d’une part, la prépondérance du cadre normatif imposé par l’organisme international et la dynamique du système d’acteurs au moment de la planification du GPUP et, d’autre part, la difficile reconversion de ce dernier après la Coupe du monde de 2010.

The exploration of mixed-use principle as an ingredient to improve the viability and vitality of town centres in Mauritius

This thesis has been realised through a scholarship offered by the Government of Canada to the Government of the Republic of Mauritius under the Programme Canadien de Bourses de la Francophonie

Buyer information and brand Choice behavior in markets with asymmetries

This thesis Entitled Buyer information and brand choice behaviour in markets with asymmetries.The period of transition set in by globalization and liberalization has ensued a onsiderable degree of homogeneity with western societies with respect to quantity and quality of goods and services.The study is aimed at finding out how the buyers adapt to the prevalent complex and dynamic market configuration by taking an archetypical situation of information gathering and brand- choice decision of select household consumer durables.The study was based on a set of 301 sample respondents who were either first time purchasers or repeat purchasers for household use, of the items under study in the sample area comprising of rural, urban and semi-urban areas. Data were collected using interview schedule and analysis of the same was done with standard statistical computer programs.Buyer confidence as perceived by buyers with respect to information acquisition and brand-choice represents the felt competence to effectively function in the market.In general, lower levels of education, income and occupation showed lower levels of search. The oldest were also low searchers. The repeat purchasers of the product searched less than the first purchasers. The most important source of information was word of mouth or information from others followed by television advertisements. The least important source of information was billboards, displays and similar forms of advertisements.The second factor is characterized by items representing ‘social attributes’ like, use by many others, use by peers, recommendation by significant others and reputation of the brand. The third factor represents ‘susceptibility to incentives and promotions’.

Pharmaceutical consumption and residuals potentially relevant to nutrient cycling in Greater Accra, Ghana

Recycling nutrients form sanitary wastes back into agricultural ecosystems offers an option to alleviate soil depletion in regions where the use of mineral fertiliser is limited. Exemplary nutrient and water cycling approaches, including collection, treatment and use of human urine, are established at Valley View University (VVU) in Greater Accra, Ghana. Concerns have been recently raised in regard to fate and impact of pharmaceutical residues in soils and interlinked environment. To evaluate in how far emerging knowledge can be transposed onto VVU, urban and rural environments in Greater Accra, spatial disease occurrence and drug consumption patterns were studied. Malaria has been found to represent the most severe health burden in Ghana, but there is also a high prevalence of infectious diseases. Drugs consumed in great quantities and in respect to their residual loads potentially problematic in the environment belong to therapeutic groups of: antibiotics, analgesics, drugs for diabetes, antimalarials, cardiovascular drugs and anthelmintics. Drug consumption revealed to be highest in urban and lowest in rural areas. At VVU the range of consumed drugs is comparable to urban areas except for the negligible use of diabetes and cardiovascular medication as well as contraceptives.

The incidents of housing policies in the process of nesting the urban space (Buenos Aires, 1870-1999)

This article describes the housing policies displayed historically in B.A. that affected the processes of configuration and of giving hierarchy to the urban space. Since the process of modernization of B.A., at the end of the XIXth century, housing measures, urbanistic projects and political decisions have influenced the building of the city and the space distribution of their inhabitants: in this way, they have integrated some people and excluded others. No wonder, that, historically, popular sectors have established themselves in the South of the city (and in outskirt villages). These zones have been disregarded by the state, which has invested less in these areas. We will see how the connection between state housing policies and the population redistribution in the city, confirms the persistence of a strong process of urban and residential segregation that tends to expel the inhabitants of popular sectors and to attract the ones of the middle-class and high class sectors.

Informal access to urban land. Housing policies devoted to vulnerable sectors implemented in Cordoba-Argentina

The urban growth in Latino American cities, in a neoliberal context, has led to several population groups to having no possibilities to the access to urban land. Informal and irregular urban settlements increase, requiring attention from local governments, with actions and strategies in order to achieve both the regularization of such situation and further prevention. In the city of Córdoba different informal and irregular operations have taken place promoted by different actors. Furthermore, policies focused on regularization which have been promoted, have few intervention mechanisms, a fact that becomes critical, especially for the urban problems it causes. The main aim of this article is to present a classification over different modes of urban land acquirement taking place out of both urban and civil legislations. Afterwards, different informal settlement typologies are described, as well as the policies focused on them, together with their respective effects and impacts.

Building the Directorate General for Urban Affairs in European Union. A proposal for the European Commission

The present documents get together reflection elements that allow sustaining the irreversibility of the process that leads to the creation of a Directorate General for Urban AffairsThe irreversibility of this process results of the assumed necessity to implement the cooperation between Member-States in respect to the urban and territorial development policy. It is time, with vision, to assume the urgency to create, as well, in this area an European joint policy and which are the necessary structures for its definition and implementation within the EU framework. O Directorate General for Urban Affairs deverá articular-se em particular com o Comité Económico e Social e com o Comité das RegiõesThe present text is based essentially on political documents on urban and territorial affairs elaborated in the extent of the EU and in the general guideline documents produced by the EU, which favor social, economic and territorial integration.

Understanding Demographic and Behavioral Mechanisms that Guide Responses of Neotropical Migratory Birds to Urbanization: a Simulation Approach

Although studies often report that densities of many forest birds are negatively related to urbanization, the mechanisms guiding this pattern are poorly understood. Our objective was to use a population simulation to examine the relative influence of six demographic and behavioral processes on patterns of avian abundance in urbanizing landscapes. We constructed an individual-based population simulation model representing the annual cycle of a Neotropical migratory songbird. Each simulation was performed under two landscape scenarios. The first scenario had similar proportions of high- and low-quality habitat across the urban to rural gradient. Under the first scenario, avian density was negatively related to urbanization only when rural habitats were perceived to be of higher quality than they actually were. The second landscape scenario had declining proportions of high-quality habitat as urbanization increased. Under the second scenario, each mechanism generated a negative relationship between density and urbanization. The strongest effect on density resulted when birds preferentially selected habitats in landscapes from which they fledged or were constrained from dispersing. The next strongest patterns occurred when birds directly evaluated habitat quality and accurately selected the highest-quality available territories. When birds selected habitats based on the presence of conspecifics, the density–urbanization relationship was only one-third the strength of other habitat selection mechanisms and only occurred under certain levels of population survival. Although differences in adult or nest survival in the face of random habitat selection still elicited reduced densities in urban landscapes, the relationships between urbanization and density were weaker than those produced by the conspecific attraction mechanism. Results from our study identify key predictions and areas for future research, including assessing habitat quality in urban and rural areas in order to determine if habitats in urban areas are underutilized.

Imagining migration: Placing children's understanding of 'moving house' in Malawi and Lesotho

Research pertaining to children's geographies has mainly focused on children's physical experiences of space, with their 'imagined geographies' receiving far less attention. The few studies of children's imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children's national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children's lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children's images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed. Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding 'moving house, produced by children aged 10-17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children's representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process.. rarely including micro -migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children's images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations and whether house moves take place locally or over longer distances. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children's contemporary migration experiences, particularly in light of changing family structures due to the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandernic. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Brief and precarious lives: Infant mortality in contrasting sites from medieval and post-medieval England (AD 850-1859)

This study compares the infant mortality profiles of 128 infants from two urban and two rural cemetery sites in medieval England. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of urbanization and industrialization in terms of endogenous or exogenous causes of death. In order to undertake this analysis, two different methods of estimating gestational age from long bone lengths were used: a traditional regression method and a Bayesian method. The regression method tended to produce more marked peaks at 38 weeks, while the Bayesian method produced a broader range of ages and were more comparable with the expected "natural" mortality profiles. At all the sites, neonatal mortality (28-40 weeks) outweighed post-neonatal mortality (41-48 weeks) with rural Raunds Furnells in Northamptonshire, showing the highest number of neonatal deaths and post-medieval Spitalfields, London, showing a greater proportion of deaths due to exogenous or environmental factors. Of the four sites under study, Wharram Percy in Yorkshire showed the most convincing "natural" infant mortality profile, suggesting the inclusion of all births (i.e., stillbirths and unbaptised infants).

Water quality and ecology of the River Lee: mass balance and a review of temporal and spatial data

A regional overview of the water quality and ecology of the River Lee catchment is presented. Specifically, data describing the chemical, microbiological and macrobiological water quality and fisheries communities have been analysed, based on a division into river, sewage treatment works, fish-farm, lake and industrial samples. Nutrient enrichment and the highest concentrations of metals and micro-organics were found in the urbanised, lower reaches of the Lee and in the Lee Navigation. Average annual concentrations of metals were generally within environmental quality standards although, oil many occasions, concentrations of cadmium, copper, lead, mercury and zinc were in excess of the standards. Various organic substances (used as herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, chlorination by-products and industrial solvents) were widely detected in the Lee system. Concentrations of ten micro-organic substances were observed in excess of their environmental quality standards, though not in terms of annual averages. Sewage treatment works were the principal point source input of nutrients. metals and micro-organic determinands to the catchment. Diffuse nitrogen sources contributed approximately 60% and 27% of the in-stream load in the upper and lower Lee respectively, whereas approximately 60% and 20% of the in-stream phosphorus load was derived from diffuse sources in the upper and lower Lee. For metals, the most significant source was the urban runoff from North London. In reaches less affected by effluent discharges, diffuse runoff from urban and agricultural areas dominated trends. Flig-h microbiological content, observed in the River Lee particularly in urbanised reaches, was far in excess of the EC Bathing Water Directive standards. Water quality issues and degraded habitat in the lower reaches of the Lee have led to impoverished aquatic fauna but, within the mid-catchment reaches and upper agricultural tributaries, less nutrient enrichment and channel alteration has permitted more diverse aquatic fauna.

Imagining migration: Placing children's understanding of 'moving house' in Malawi and Lesotho

Research pertaining to children's geographies has mainly focused on children's physical experiences of space, with their 'imagined geographies' receiving far less attention. The few studies of children's imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children's national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children's lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children's images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed. Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding 'moving house, produced by children aged 10-17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children's representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process.. rarely including micro -migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children's images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations and whether house moves take place locally or over longer distances. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children's contemporary migration experiences, particularly in light of changing family structures due to the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandernic. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Landscape context and habitat type as drivers of bee diversity in European annual crops

To better understand the dynamics of bee populations in crops, we assessed the effect of landscape context and habitat type on bee communities in annual entomophilous crops in Europe. We quantified bee communities in five pairs of crop-country: buckwheat in Poland, cantaloupe in France, field beans in the UK, spring oilseed rape in Sweden, and strawberries in Germany. For each country, 7-10 study fields were sampled over a gradient of increasing proportion of semi-natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. The CORINE land cover classification was used to characterize the landscape over a 3 km radius around each study field and we used multivariate and regression analyses to quantify the impact of landscape features on bee abundance and diversity at the sub-generic taxonomic level. Neither overall wild bee abundance nor diversity, taken as the number of sub-genera. was significantly affected by the proportion of semi-natural habitat. Therefore, we used the most precise level of the CORINE classification to examine the possible links between specific landscape features and wild bee communities. Bee community composition fell into three distinct groups across Europe: group I included Poland, Germany, and Sweden, group 2 the UK, and group 3 France. Among all three groups, wild bee abundance and sub-generic diversity were affected by 17 landscape elements including some semi-natural habitats (e.g., transitional wood land-shrub), some urban habitats (e.g., sport and leisure facilities) and some crop habitats (e.g., non-irrigated arable land). Some bee taxa were positively affected by urban habitats only, others by semi-natural habitats only, and others by a combination of semi-natural, urban and crop habitats. Bee sub-genera favoured by urban and crop habitats were more resistant to landscape change than those favoured only by semi-natural habitats. In agroecosystems, the agricultural intensification defined as the loss of semi-natural habitats does not necessarily cause a decline in evenness at the local level, but can change community composition towards a bee fauna dominated by common taxa. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Truth - the essential dimension of ethics in scholarship, teaching, learning and research

The introduction of metrics, league tables, performance targets, research assessment exercises and a range of other pressures placed by society, funding bodies and employers on scholars, teachers and students have resulted in diminished value being placed on the essential ethical criterion of truth. The impact of reduced valuation for truth has a huge impact on the standing of science and not least horticultural science in the eyes of the general public at a time when this should be a primary concern. This contribution discusses examples of the impact of diminished valuation of truth, the causes of this phenomenon, the results that come from this situation and remedies that are needed.