Population ageing in the Caribbean: An inventory of policies, programmes and future challenges

“We must be fully aware that while the developed countries became rich before they became old, the developing countries will become old before they become rich”. This statement made by Gro Harlem Brundtland, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, at the World Assembly on Ageing in 2002 in Madrid, reflects the challenges that the developing world is facing in the twentieth century. Population ageing is a global phenomenon, which is having and will have major implications on all aspects of human life in every society. This process is enduring and irreversible, as observed from differing patterns and distinct paces in various regions and countries all over the world. The United Nations has undertaken various efforts to repeatedly draw governments’ attention to the growing demand for answers to these encompassing and profound demographic changes. Various initiatives on the global as well as on the regional and subregional level have been undertaken to highlight the pressing need for concerted action. Of importance in this regard are the numerous agreements reached at the global conferences on social development, population and women orchestrated by the United Nations in the 1990s, which all refer to ageing as an issue of particular concern. The year 1999 was proclaimed by the General Assembly1 of the United Nations as the Year of Older Persons to recognize ageing as one of the major achievements but, at the same time, as one of the major challenges all populations have to cope with in the twentieth century. This continuous call for action culminated in the Second World Assembly on Ageing, which was held in Madrid 2002, where governments agreed to the implementation of a global action plan. This new Plan of Action focuses both on political priorities such as improvements in living conditions of older persons, combating poverty, social inclusion, individual self-fulfilment, human rights and gender equality. To an increasing degree attention is also devoted to such holistic and overarching themes as intergenerational solidarity, employment, social security, health and well-being. Mandated by the Second World Assembly on Ageing, the Population Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC/CELADE) has convened the Regional Intergovernmental Conference on Ageing in November 2003 in Santiago, where a regional strategy for the implementation (ECLAC, 2003b) of the commitments reached in Madrid has been adopted. Further, a background document (ECLAC 2003a) on the situation of the elderly in the Latin American and Caribbean region, of which this document is a substantive part, has been presented to the meeting. Participating government officials formally committed themselves to work on a national follow-up strategy and to report on the progress made in the implementation of their commitments to the Ad hoc Committee on Population and Development to be convened in 2004.

Inclusive social development: The next generation of policies for overcoming poverty and reducing inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean

Foreword by Alicia Bárcena

Impact of the timing and duration of weed control on the establishment of a rubber tree plantation

A produção da seringueira é reduzida pelas plantas daninhas que competem por recursos ambientais; portanto, a época e duração do controle de plantas daninhas influencia a interferência das plantas daninhas. Os objetivos deste estudo foram: avaliar o crescimento de plantas de seringueira (Hevea brasiliensis), determinar o período crítico para controle das plantas daninhas e avaliar a recuperação do crescimento das seringueiras que conviveram com plantas daninhas por diferentes períodos de tempo após o plantio. Dois grupos de tratamentos foram estabelecidos em condições de campo, no primeiro ano de investigação: um grupo conteve períodos crescentes de infestação de plantas daninhas, enquanto o outro conteve períodos crescentes de controle das plantas daninhas, também incluindo uma testemunha livre de plantas daninhas e uma testemunha com infestação total de plantas daninhas. No segundo ano da investigação, as plantas daninhas foram totalmente controladas. Urochloa decumbens foi a planta daninha dominante (mais de 90% de cobertura). O crescimento da cultura foi grandemente reduzido devido à interferência de plantas daninhas. A altura de plantas decresceu mais rapidamente que qualquer outra característica. Altura de planta, massa seca de folhas e área foliar decresceram em 99%, 97% e 96%, respectivamente, e foram as características mais reduzidas. A altura de plantas também se recuperou mais rapidamente que qualquer outra característica quando o período de controle das plantas daninhas foi entendido. Contudo, a massa seca do caule aumentou em 750%, fazendo desta a característica mais recuperada. O período crítico para o controle de plantas daninhas foi entre 4 e 9½ meses após o plantio, no primeiro ano; contudo, as seringueiras mostraram expressiva recuperação do crescimento quando as plantas daninhas foram controladas ao longo do segundo ano.

Impact strength and abrasion resistance of high strength concrete with rice husk ash and rubber tires

The paper discusses the application of High Strength Concrete (HSC) technology for concrete production with the incorporation of Rice Husk Ash (RHA) residues by replacing a bulk of the material caking and rubber tires with partial aggregate volume, assessing their influence on the mechanical properties and durability. For concrete with RHA and rubber, it was possible to reduce the brittleness by increasing the energy absorbing capacity. With respect to abrasion, the RHA and rubber concretes showed lower mass loss than the concrete without residues, indicating that this material is attractive to be used in paving. It is thus hoped that these residues may represent a technological and ecological alternative for the production of concrete in construction works.

Media Education and Brazilian Educational Policies for the Enhancement of Learning

As media education concepts and practices have been disseminated and strengthened in European countries and Americas, the policies responsible for that expansion remain little known, particularly in countries where the achievements have been recently noted. That is the case for Brazil, where there have been new opportunities for media education, considered as a valuable resource to help accomplish goals of the educational system. This paper looks into the contribution of media education to the enhancement of teaching and learning in the context of innovations brought by recent policies of the Brazilian Ministry of Education. After educational reform programmes which brought the opportunity for emerging fields such as media education, we produced teaching material and conducted a series of workshops with students and teachers from state secondary schools. By reading and producing multimedia information about local public services available to young people, pupils learned about democracy, citizenship, civic engagement, media language, and identity. Lessons from our experiment are discussed against the backdrop of education policies being implemented to ameliorate harsh conditions resulting from the recent economic crisis. We suggest that media education can help by creating a learning environment in which the students become aware of the value of educational attainments.

Psychometric Properties of the Oral Health Impact Profile and New Methodological Approach

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

A Multivariate Calibration Procedure for UV/VIS Spectrometric Monitoring of BHK-21 Cell Metabolism and Growth

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

Tool Condition Monitoring of Single-Point Dresser Using Acoustic Emission and Neural Networks Models

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

Monitoring of diclofenac with biomimetic sensor in batch and FIA systems

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

DEVELOPMENT OF A BIOMIMETIC SENSOR MODIFIED WITH HEMIN AND GRAPHENE OXIDE FOR MONITORING OF CARBOFURAN IN FOOD

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

Construction of a chamber for in situ monitoring of the drying process of gels and porous solids

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

Quality of life and socio-dental impact among underprivileged brazilian adolescents

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

Design and implementation of wireless sensor networks for impedance-based structural health monitoring using ZigBee and Global System for Mobile Communications

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Tool condition monitoring of aluminum oxide grinding wheel in dressing operation using acoustic emission and neural networks

The grinding operation gives workpieces their final finish, minimizing surface roughness through the interaction between the abrasive grains of a tool (grinding wheel) and the workpiece. However, excessive grinding wheel wear due to friction renders the tool unsuitable for further use, thus requiring the dressing operation to remove and/or sharpen the cutting edges of the worn grains to render them reusable. The purpose of this study was to monitor the dressing operation using the acoustic emission (AE) signal and statistics derived from this signal, classifying the grinding wheel as sharp or dull by means of artificial neural networks. An aluminum oxide wheel installed on a surface grinding machine, a signal acquisition system, and a single-point dresser were used in the experiments. Tests were performed varying overlap ratios and dressing depths. The root mean square values and two additional statistics were calculated based on the raw AE data. A multilayer perceptron neural network was used with the Levenberg-Marquardt learning algorithm, whose inputs were the aforementioned statistics. The results indicate that this method was successful in classifying the conditions of the grinding wheel in the dressing process, identifying the tool as "sharp''(with cutting capacity) or "dull''(with loss of cutting capacity), thus reducing the time and cost of the operation and minimizing excessive removal of abrasive material from the grinding wheel.