Media Coverage and Charitable Giving After the 2004 Tsunami

Media coverage of humanitarian crises is widely believed to influence charitable giving, yet this assertion has received little empirical scrutiny. Using Internet donations after the 2004 tsunami as a case study in a tobit framework, we show that media coverage of disasters increases charitable donations, with an additional minute of nightly news coverage increasing donations by 0.036 standard deviations from the mean. We repeat the analysis using instrumental variables in a tobit model to account for endogeneity, and the estimates are unchanged. We also show that the magnitude and sign of media impact vary by news source and relief agency.

Demographics of Natural Disaster Hotspots in Maine

Natural disasters can cause extensive damage to communities and infrastructure. The state of Maine is fairly lucky because natural disasters are relatively infrequent. Maine does, however, experience earthquakes, flooding, hurricanes, and landslides. Certain areas of the state are more prone to experience natural disaster than others. Using GIS analysis, we are analyzing natural disaster hotspots in Maine to determine if there is a statistically significant relationship between natural disaster susceptibility and socioeconomic variables including income and population.

November 2003: Disaster Planning Makes a Difference

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March 2010: Haiti Disaster and Response

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Bordering on Disaster?

Borders, the bookstore, provides us with an instructive case study regarding our collective futures. While Amazon and Barnes & Noble made changes that both streamlined and changed their services, Borders followed the “business as usual” model. That led to Chapter 11, the closing of nearly a third of their stores, and a complete restructuring of all that’s left. Not many industry analysts think even this will be enough to keep the company afloat.

Tourism and poverty relief

This paper examines the issue of how tourism affects poverty in the context of the effects of tourism on an economy as a whole and on particular sectors within it. A framework for analysing the channels through which tourism affects different households is developed, and a computable general equilibrium model of the Brazilian economy is used to examine the economic impact and distributional effects of tourism in Brazil. It is shown that the effects on all income groups are positive. The lowest income households benefit from tourism but by less than some higher income groups. Policies that could redistribute greater shares of the revenue to the poor are considered.

Interactive interface for stress relief

Every time more we hear in our everyday statements like "I'm stressed!", "Don´t worry me more than I am." But in what sense can we use technology to combat these congestions that we deal with daily? Well, one way would be to use technology to create objects, systems or applications that can spoil us and preferably be imperceptible by the user and, for this we have the ubiquitous computing and nurturant technologies. The ubiquitous computing is increasingly discussed as well as ways to make your computer more subtle in the view of the user, which is subject of research and development. The use of technology as a source of relaxation and spoil us is a strand that is being explored in the context of nurturant technologies. Accordingly, this thesis is focused on the development of an object and several applications with which we can interact. The object and applications have the purpose to spoil us and help us relax after a long day at work or in some situation more stressful. The object developed employs technologies like the use of accelerometers and the applications developed employs communications between computers and Web cameras. This thesis begins with a brief introduction to the areas of research and others that we can include in this thesis, such as ubiquitous computing and the nurturant technologies, providing yet general information on stress and ways to mitigate it. Later is described some of the work already done and that influenced this thesis as well as the prototypes developed and the experiences performed, ending with a general conclusion and future work.

Applicability of non-pharmacological strategies for pain relief in parturient: integrative review

MORAES, Maísa Suares Teixeira; ROLIM, Lariane Thays Albuquerque; ENDERS, Bertha Cruz; FARIAS, Glaucea Maciel de; DAVIM, Rejane Marie Barbosa. Applicability of non-pharmacological strategies for pain relief in parturient: integrative review. Revista de Enfermagem UFPE on line, v.4, n.especial, p.131-136, May/June 2010. Disponivel em:< http://www.ufpe.br/revistaenfermagem/index.php/revista/>.

Small relief shape variations influence spatial variability of soil chemical attributes

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Relief influence on tree species richness in secondary forest fragments of Atlantic Forest, SE, Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Reactive Control for Transmission Overload Relief Based on Sensitivity Analysis and Cooperative Game Theory

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Soil profile, relief features and their relation to structure and distribution of Brazilian Atlantic rain forest trees

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Measurement of phase differences between the diffracted orders of deep relief gratings

Measurement of the phase difference between the 0th and the 1st transmitted diffraction orders of a symmetrical surface-relief grating recorded on a photoresist film is carried out by replacement of the grating in the same setup with which it was recorded. The measurement does not depend on lateral shifts of the replaced grating relative to the interference pattern, on environmental phase perturbations or on the wave-front quality of the interfering beams. The experimental data agree rather well with theoretical results calculated for sinusoidal profiled gratings. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.

Relief grating induced by photo-expansion in Ga-Ge-S and Ga-Ge-As-S glasses

We report the fabrication of relief diffraction gratings recorded on a surface of photosensitive Ga10Ge25S65 and Ga5Ge25As5S65 glasses by means of interference of two UV laser beams at 351 nm. The diffraction efficiency (eta) of first diffraction order was measured. Atomic-force-microscope (AFM) was used to perform a 3D imaging analysis of the sample surface topography that shows the superposition of an imprinted grating over the topography of the glass. The change in the absorption edge and the refractive index has been evaluated and a structural approach of the relief grating on the glass surface has been discussed.