Awareness and Learning in Participatory Noise Sensing

The development of ICT infrastructures has facilitated the emergence of new paradigms for looking at society and the environment over the last few years. Participatory environmental sensing, i.e. directly involving citizens in environmental monitoring, is one example, which is hoped to encourage learning and enhance awareness of environmental issues. In this paper, an analysis of the behaviour of individuals involved in noise sensing is presented. Citizens have been involved in noise measuring activities through the WideNoise smartphone application. This application has been designed to record both objective (noise samples) and subjective (opinions, feelings) data. The application has been open to be used freely by anyone and has been widely employed worldwide. In addition, several test cases have been organised in European countries. Based on the information submitted by users, an analysis of emerging awareness and learning is performed. The data show that changes in the way the environment is perceived after repeated usage of the application do appear. Specifically, users learn how to recognise different noise levels they are exposed to. Additionally, the subjective data collected indicate an increased user involvement in time and a categorisation effect between pleasant and less pleasant environments.

Socio-economic processes on Lake Kyoga: potentials for participatory management and poverty eradication

The purpose of this paper is to review selected socio-economic aspects of the Kyoga basin lakes with a view to assessing, the potehtials within the fishing communities for participatory management and poverty eradication. This paper is based on information obtained from three categories of activities. First a review of existing data and reports was undertaken to establish existing knowledge on the subject and identify the gaps.

Towards participatory political theology: democratic consolidation in Southeastern Europe and the role of Eastern Christianity in the process

This thesis defends the position that the Eastern Orthodoxy has the potential to develop, on the basis of its core concepts and doctrines, a new political theology that is participatory, personalist and universalist. This participatory political theology, as I name it, endorses modern democracy and the values of civic engagement. It enhances the process of democracy-building and consolidation in the SEE countries through cultivating the ethos of participation and concern with the common good among and the recognition of the dignity and freedom of the person. This political-theological model is developed while analyzing critically the traditional models of church-state relations (the symphonia model corresponding to the medieval empire and the Christian nation model corresponding to the nation-state) as being instrumentalized to serve the political goals of non-democratic regimes. The participatory political-theological model is seen as corresponding to the conditions of the constitutional democratic state. The research is justified by the fact the Eastern Orthodoxy has been a dominant religiouscultural force in the European South East for centuries, thus playing a significant role in the process of creation of the medieval and modern statehood of the SEE countries. The analysis employs comparative constitutional perspectives on democratic transition and consolidation in the SEE region with the theoretical approaches of political theology and Eastern Orthodox theology. The conceptual basis for the political-theological synthesis is found in the concept and doctrines of the Eastern Orthodoxy (theosis and synergy, ecclesia and Eucharist, conciliarity and catholicity, economy and eschatology) which emphasize the participatory, personalist and communal dimensions of the Orthodox faith and practice. The paradigms of revealing the political-theological potential of these concepts are the Eucharistic ecclesiology and the concept of divine-human communion as defining the body of Orthodox theology. The thesis argues that with its ethos of openness and engagement the participatory political theology presupposes political systems that are democratic, inclusive, and participatory, respecting the rights and the dignity of the person. The political theology developed here calls for a transformation and change of democratic systems towards better realization of their personalist and participatory commitments. In the context of the SEE countries the participatory political theology addresses the challenges posed by alternative authoritarian political theologies practiced in neighboring regions.

Tapes, Transgression and Mundanity: the participatory engenderment of death metal and grindcore

Since its origins in the early 1980s, the popular rise of extreme metal throughout the globe has been phenomenal. The emergence of extreme metal's most sonically transgressive subgenres of death metal and grindcore between the mid 1980s and the early 1990s, however, was not an easy one. Indeed, during this period, the only way for globally dispersed extreme metal fans and unsigned extreme metal bands to stay musically connected was via the underground practice of tape-trading. The aim of this study is to illuminate the impact of tape-trading upon the global spread of extreme metal. The study will situate the historical context of extreme metal tape-trading by exploring how it emerged, and why it was necessary in the first place. Utilising the concept of 'extreme metal scene', the study will focus on the central scenic discourse of transgression and explore how this was negotiated into the mundane scenic practice of tape-trading. In relation to this, and utilising the concept of participatory culture, the study will further explore how the music arose and spread throughout the globe via the socially networked practice of both musician and non-musician tape-traders in relation to the tape cassette technology itself. Ethnographic interviews were undertaken with both types of traders in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon in question. The research concludes that the tape-traders were able to challenge the status quo of record company gatekeepers, by facilitating the engenderment and global distribution (including the later commercial distribution) of death metal and grindcore. Such powerfully affective music via its continual global spread, offers as it did for the original tape-traders, a pleasurable and empowering communal/personal space for disempowered people throughout the globe. Further research into extreme metal tape-trading would require deeper exploration into other extreme metal subgenres, especially black metal, tape-traders situated outside of North America and Europe, women tape-traders as well as exploration of the phenomenon after the early 1990s.

PARTICIPATORY PLANNING PILOT CASE STUDY IN CHINA: REALITY, CHALLENGES & LESSONS LEARNED FROM US

Urban planning in China is in a period of change, where participatory planning may supplement the traditional planning system. Since the beginning of the 21st century, several pilot participatory planning projects have responded to the new challenge. The author collected eight cases from the Chinese planning institution to explore the possible models of and barriers to participatory planning. On the other hand, public participation has been a concrete component of planning and implementation process in the United States. The author will also elaborate on one practical case of the planning process in the United States to compare the two countries on planning methods and barriers.

Tapes, Transgression and Mundanity: the participatory engenderment of death metal and grindcore

Since its origins in the early 1980s, the popular rise of extreme metal throughout the globe has been phenomenal. The emergence of extreme metal's most sonically transgressive subgenres of death metal and grindcore between the mid 1980s and the early 1990s, however, was not an easy one. Indeed, during this period, the only way for globally dispersed extreme metal fans and unsigned extreme metal bands to stay musically connected was via the underground practice of tape-trading. The aim of this study is to illuminate the impact of tape-trading upon the global spread of extreme metal. The study will situate the historical context of extreme metal tape-trading by exploring how it emerged, and why it was necessary in the first place. Utilising the concept of 'extreme metal scene', the study will focus on the central scenic discourse of transgression and explore how this was negotiated into the mundane scenic practice of tape-trading. In relation to this, and utilising the concept of participatory culture, the study will further explore how the music arose and spread throughout the globe via the socially networked practice of both musician and non-musician tape-traders in relation to the tape cassette technology itself. Ethnographic interviews were undertaken with both types of traders in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon in question. The research concludes that the tape-traders were able to challenge the status quo of record company gatekeepers, by facilitating the engenderment and global distribution (including the later commercial distribution) of death metal and grindcore. Such powerfully affective music via its continual global spread, offers as it did for the original tape-traders, a pleasurable and empowering communal/personal space for disempowered people throughout the globe. Further research into extreme metal tape-trading would require deeper exploration into other extreme metal subgenres, especially black metal, tape-traders situated outside of North America and Europe, women tape-traders as well as exploration of the phenomenon after the early 1990s.

Optimal resource allocation and budgeting in libraries

Libraries since their inception 4000 years ago have been in a process of constant change. Although, changes were in slow motion for centuries, in the last decades, academic libraries have been continuously striving to adapt their services to the ever-changing user needs of students and academic staff. In addition, e-content revolution, technological advances, and ever-shrinking budgets have obliged libraries to efficiently allocate their limited resources among collection and services. Unfortunately, this resource allocation is a complex process due to the diversity of data sources and formats required to be analyzed prior to decision-making, as well as the lack of efficient integration methods. The main purpose of this study is to develop an integrated model that supports libraries in making optimal budgeting and resource allocation decisions among their services and collection by means of a holistic analysis. To this end, a combination of several methodologies and structured approaches is conducted. Firstly, a holistic structure and the required toolset to holistically assess academic libraries are proposed to collect and organize the data from an economic point of view. A four-pronged theoretical framework is used in which the library system and collection are analyzed from the perspective of users and internal stakeholders. The first quadrant corresponds to the internal perspective of the library system that is to analyze the library performance, and costs incurred and resources consumed by library services. The second quadrant evaluates the external perspective of the library system; user’s perception about services quality is judged in this quadrant. The third quadrant analyses the external perspective of the library collection that is to evaluate the impact of the current library collection on its users. Eventually, the fourth quadrant evaluates the internal perspective of the library collection; the usage patterns followed to manipulate the library collection are analyzed. With a complete framework for data collection, these data coming from multiple sources and therefore with different formats, need to be integrated and stored in an adequate scheme for decision support. A data warehousing approach is secondly designed and implemented to integrate, process, and store the holistic-based collected data. Ultimately, strategic data stored in the data warehouse are analyzed and implemented for different purposes including the following: 1) Data visualization and reporting is proposed to allow library managers to publish library indicators in a simple and quick manner by using online reporting tools. 2) Sophisticated data analysis is recommended through the use of data mining tools; three data mining techniques are examined in this research study: regression, clustering and classification. These data mining techniques have been applied to the case study in the following manner: predicting the future investment in library development; finding clusters of users that share common interests and similar profiles, but belong to different faculties; and predicting library factors that affect student academic performance by analyzing possible correlations of library usage and academic performance. 3) Input for optimization models, early experiences of developing an optimal resource allocation model to distribute resources among the different processes of a library system are documented in this study. Specifically, the problem of allocating funds for digital collection among divisions of an academic library is addressed. An optimization model for the problem is defined with the objective of maximizing the usage of the digital collection over-all library divisions subject to a single collection budget. By proposing this holistic approach, the research study contributes to knowledge by providing an integrated solution to assist library managers to make economic decisions based on an “as realistic as possible” perspective of the library situation.

Collective actions for environmental monitoring and conservation: citizen science, informal environmental education, and participatory approach

This PhD was driven by an interest for inclusive and participatory approaches. The methodology that bridges science and society is known as 'citizen science' and is experiencing a huge upsurge worldwide, in the scientific and humanities fields. In this thesis, I have focused on three topics: i) assessing the reliability of data collected by volunteers; ii) evaluating the impact of environmental education activities in tourist facilities; and iii) monitoring marine biodiversity through citizen science. In addition to these topics, during my research stay abroad, I developed a questionnaire to investigate people's perceptions of natural areas to promote the implementation of co-management. The results showed that volunteers are not only able to collect sufficiently reliable data, but that during their participation in this type of project, they can also increase their knowledge of marine biology and ecology and their awareness of the impact of human behaviour on the environment. The short-term analysis has shown that volunteers are able to retain what they have learned. In the long term, knowledge is usually forgotten, but awareness is retained. Increased awareness could lead to a change in behaviour and in this case a more environmentally friendly attitude. This aspect could be of interest for the development of environmental education projects in tourism facilities to reduce the impact of tourism on the environment while adding a valuable service to the tourism offer. We also found that nature experiences in childhood are important to connect to nature in adulthood. The results also suggest that membership or volunteering in an environmental education association could be a predictor of people's interest in more participatory approaches to nature management. In most cases, the COVID -19 pandemic had not changed participants' perceptions of the natural environment.

Construction Of A Manual Of Work Processes And Techniques From Centro De Dispensação De Medicamentos De Alto Custo (cedmac), Hospital De Clínicas, Unicamp.

The Centers for High Cost Medication (Centros de Medicação de Alto Custo, CEDMAC), Health Department, São Paulo were instituted by project in partnership with the Clinical Hospital of the Faculty of Medicine, USP, sponsored by the Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, FAPESP) aimed at the formation of a statewide network for comprehensive care of patients referred for use of immunobiological agents in rheumatological diseases. The CEDMAC of Hospital de Clínicas, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (HC-Unicamp), implemented by the Division of Rheumatology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, identified the need for standardization of the multidisciplinary team conducts, in face of the specificity of care conducts, verifying the importance of describing, in manual format, their operational and technical processes. The aim of this study is to present the methodology applied to the elaboration of the CEDMAC/HC-Unicamp Manual as an institutional tool, with the aim of offering the best assistance and administrative quality. In the methodology for preparing the manuals at HC-Unicamp since 2008, the premise was to obtain a document that is participatory, multidisciplinary, focused on work processes integrated with institutional rules, with objective and didactic descriptions, in a standardized format and with electronic dissemination. The CEDMAC/HC-Unicamp Manual was elaborated in 10 months, with involvement of the entire multidisciplinary team, with 19 chapters on work processes and techniques, in addition to those concerning the organizational structure and its annexes. Published in the electronic portal of HC Manuals in July 2012 as an e-Book (ISBN 978-85-63274-17-5), the manual has been a valuable instrument in guiding professionals in healthcare, teaching and research activities.

Educação fisica, saude coletiva e a luta do MST : reconstruindo relações a partir das violencias

Universidade Estadual de Campinas . Faculdade de Educação Física

Considerações sobre o papel da comunicação científica na educação em química

In the present work, we provide some considerations about the role of scientific communication in Chemistry Education. Such considerations may subsidize the development of communication in scientific language by Chemistry students. These considerations are based on information collected during a participatory research for the production of didactic material about scientific communication. The meetings were audio recorded and the contents of the participants' speeches were divided into categories. The category analysis supported the elaboration of the considerations.

Participação comunitária em um programa de intervenção em área de proteção ambiental

Este artigo discute os conceitos de participação e empowerment em Promoção da Saúde e Desenvolvimento Sustentável, considerando as agendas de implementação local, Municípios/Cidades Saudáveis e Agenda 21, e a importância dos processos de avaliação nesse contexto, por meio da análise de uma intervenção em área de mananciais - o Programa Bairro Ecológico (PBE), desenvolvido em 51 bairros do município de São Bernardo do Campo, Estado de São Paulo, Brasil. O estudo teve por objetivo avaliar os processos de participação e empowerment da comunidade, a partir das ações desencadeadas pelo PBE. Foram aplicados questionários e realizados grupos focais com moradores de bairros que sofreram a intervenção. Também foram realizadas entrevistas individuais com gestores do programa e do poder judiciário. Os resultados indicaram que a participação na implementação do PBE favoreceu o empowerment individual e grupal, presente nas duas comunidades estudadas. As comunidades tornaram-se mais organizadas. Há indícios de que os processos de tomada de decisões são centralizados. Apesar disso, as comunidades entendem que sua participação no programa lhes traz muitas coisas boas. Houve um processo participativo no desenvolvimento do programa, ainda que alguns relatos apontem para o caráter obrigatório da participação. Deve-se destacar o impacto do envolvimento e fortalecimento das lideranças na implementação e sustentabilidade do programa. No que diz respeito a esta última, verificou-se que a sensibilização ambiental tem sido fator determinante para a execução e manutenção das ações ao longo do tempo.

A incorporação da avaliação da atenção básica no nível estadual do Sistema Único de Saúde através de processos participativos de ensino-aprendizagem-trabalho

OBJETIVOS: desenvolver uma metodologia de intervenção e aplicá-la às equipes das Secretarias Estaduais de Saúde (SES) objetivando incorporar a prática de monitoramento e avaliação da atenção básica através de processo de capacitação e realização de atividade real de planejamento e programação em saúde. MÉTODOS: foi desenvolvido um processo de ensino-aprendizagem-trabalho que incorporou ao processo de capacitação uma atividade de planejamento em saúde. A qualidade dos dois processos é assegurada através do estabelecimento de princípios e critérios para a organização da capacitação, para a elaboração da proposta metodológica de monitoramento e avaliação e para a condução didático-pedagógica do curso. RESULTADOS: a metodologia foi aplicada nos Estados de Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), Tocantins (TO) e Amazonas (AM), respeitando as particularidades locais em termos de organização da SES e da qualificação e capacidade dos técnicos responsáveis pela atenção básica. Foram produzidas propostas metodológicas estruturalmente semelhantes, mas diferentes nas suas prioridades e propostas de desenvolvimento. Dois anos após o término da intervenção, efeitos desse trabalho ainda estão sendo identificados. CONCLUSÕES: os resultados obtidos em MS, TO e AM revelam a capacidade que a abordagem baseada na tríade ensino-aprendizagem-trabalho possui para a institucionalização de novas práticas de trabalho nos serviços de saúde.

Controle social e gestão participativa em saúde pública em unidades de saúde do município de Campo Grande, MS, 1994-2002

A participação social no Brasil evoluiu de movimento operário e de sindicatos, culminando na institucionalização através de Conselhos. Na área da saúde, foi legalizada pela Lei 8142/90. O objetivo deste estudo é conhecer a prática do controle social exercida em Conselhos de Unidades e sua influência nas políticas de saúde do município de Campo Grande, MS. Foram feitos cinco estudos de caso, tendo como fonte principal as atas de reuniões e como referencial de análise um documento do Ilpes/Claps (1975). Os Conselhos organizam-se em plenário, com coordenador, secretário, composição hoje paritária, representatividade reduzida e periodicidade mensal. O processo decisório contempla principalmente elementos técnico-administrativos e técnico-operacionais. No período 1998-2002, o controle social fortaleceu-se por encaminhamentos mais concretos, mas a capacidade de deliberação precisa ser fortalecida por uma capacitação que inclua elementos técnicos, políticos e administrativos, representatividade, fortalecimento da cidadania, divulgação intensa das atividades dos Conselhos, inclusive na mídia, maior mobilização social e articulação entre os vários Conselhos e instâncias municipais que fazem interface com o setor de saúde.

The bubbles or the boiling pot?: an ecosystemic approach to culture, environment and quality of life

For the diagnosis and prognosis of the problems of quality of life, a multidisciplinary ecosystemic approach encompasses four dimensions of being-in-the-world, as donors and recipients: intimate, interactive, social and biophysical. Social, cultural and environmental vulnerabilities are understood and dealt with, in different circumstances of space and time, as the conjugated effect of all dimensions of being-in-the-world, as they induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and contribute for change. Instead of fragmented and reduced representations of reality, diagnosis and prognosis of cultural, educational, environmental and health problems considers the connections (assets) and ruptures (deficits) between the different dimensions, providing a planning model to develop and evaluate research, teaching programmes, public policies and field projects. The methodology is participatory, experiential and reflexive; heuristic-hermeneutic processes unveil cultural and epistemic paradigms that orient subject-object relationships; giving people the opportunity to reflect on their own realities, engage in new experiences and find new ways to live better in a better world. The proposal is a creative model for thought and practice, providing many opportunities for discussion, debate and development of holistic projects integrating different scientific domains (social sciences, psychology, education, philosophy, etc.)