Randomized Trial for a Mobile Health Approach to Increase Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening in Tanzania

Background: Largely due to low availability and uptake of screening in low- and middle-income countries, cervical cancer is the second ranked cancer among women in these countries. This is a tragedy because cervical cancer is one of the most preventable carcinomas. This thesis will investigate behaviour change methods, which capitalize on the recent exponential increase in ownership of mobile phones in Tanzania, to increase uptake of cervical cancer screening (CCS) in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Objectives: 1) To evaluate the effectiveness of behaviour change messages delivered via short message service (SMS) on the uptake of CCS in the Kilimanjaro region; 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of a transportation eVoucher on the uptake of CCS in the Kilimanjaro region; 3) to explore characteristics associated with CCS uptake in the Kilimanjaro region; and 4) to determine the attitudes towards and perceived benefit of behaviour change SMS messages and eVouchers intended to increase uptake of CCS. Methods: In the Kilimanjaro Region, 853 women participated in a randomized controlled trial. Baseline data was collected through self-report through systematic stratified random sampling. Participants were randomized to one of three groups: a control group, a group receiving behaviour change messages delivered via SMS, or a group receiving a travel eVoucher and identical SMS as the SMS group. A fieldworker recorded participants attending screening at the CCS clinics and administered a post-screening survey. The follow-up period was two months from the time of the participant’s enrolment. Logistic regression (both for the combined and stratified data sets) was used to determine associations between the behaviour change interventions, baseline characteristics and cervical cancer screening uptake. Results: All participants receiving SMS messages (SMS or eVoucher group) were more likely to attend cervical cancer screening in comparison with the control group. 83% of participants who attended screening shared the information contained in the messages with others. Conclusions: Behaviour change messages delivered via SMS and transportation eVouchers have the potential to increase uptake of cervical cancer screening in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Harnessing this potential will require implementing these interventions alongside other methods to achieve maximum impact.

The impacts of telecommuting in Dublin

Telecommuting has been perceived as an effective means of reducing commuter related trips, travel time and emissions. Previously, the lack of access to broadband Internet connection and teleconferencing software from home has acted as a barrier to telecommuting regularly or at all. However, with advances in information and communication technology in recent years telecommuting is becoming a viable option for employers and employees to undertake. This paper examines the current trends of full day and part day telecommuting in the Greater Dublin Area (GDA), and attempts to ascertain the most influential drivers and constraints related to telecommuting. The research presented estimates of the environmental benefits from individuals that telecommute. Finally, this paper seeks to determine the magnitude of carbon emissions savings from individuals adopting telecommuting and provides a social cost of carbon saving value. The survey results presented suggest that approximately 44% of the population of the GDA telecommute at least once a month. The findings also indicate that needing contact with colleagues is the most influential constraint to telecommuting, while greater flexibility and avoiding travelling in peak periods are the most important drivers in the propensity to telecommute. Finally, this study shows that there are substantial carbon reductions and social cost of carbon savings. Thus illustrating how telecommuting can be a viable and sustainable policy in the GDA or in other similar sized regions.

La dimensión mítica de los personajes vanguardistas. Una reflexión en torno a la teoría de Ortega y Gasset

En el realismo de finales del XIX se consolida el desarrollo de los personajes novelescos, pero muy poco tiempo después se produce un giro en la narrativa hacia la abstracción que induce a Ortega y Gasset a reflexionar sobre cuáles son las características que definen un personaje literario. En Meditaciones del Quijote (1914), La deshumanización del arte e Ideas sobre la novela (ambos de 1925) hace un análisis histórico que concluye ofreciendo un diagnóstico de la literatura contemporánea. Muchos de los narradores vanguardistas, formados a su sombra, tienen en cuenta sus escritos y experimentan con sus propuestas. En este proceso el mito juega un papel principal, como sustancia de lo poético y como sustrato cultural de muchos de los protagonistas de la novela experimental de los años 20.

The gift of the ungiven: Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness facing Levinas’ “there is”

Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of giveness constitutes one of the most outstanding attempts to set up a universal theory of the phenomenologically given as a whole within the framework of contemporary philosophical thought. The aim of the present study is to apply the main categories of this phenomenological theory concerning gift to the singular type of phenomenon represented by the pure indeterminate and anonymous being to which Emmanuel Levinas refers by the name of il y a (“there is”) in his early writings (and also subsequently). Therefore, this concerns examining the multiple specific modes of giveness proper to the impersonal “there is” and also its paradoxical relationship both with the donor and with the receiver of such gift in order to show the possibility of a “third way” of phenomenological investigation. This is a way equally distant from the western traditional concept of Being as “stable presence” and from Levinas’ proposal geared to substitute ontology for ethics as “first philosophy”.

Commentary on Copinger's Law of Copyright (1870)

A landmark treatise on the law of copyright, establishing a body of work that still has great relevance for professionals and academics today.
The commentary situates the publication of the treatise in the context of the emerging trends in legal publishing in the mid- to late nineteenth century. It considers Copinger's theoretical approach to the subject of copyright, and explores the significance of the writings and work of two American jurists George Ticknor Curtis and Justice Joseph Story in shaping Copinger's attitude and approach to the copyright regime.

La praxis dans le Marx de Michel Henry

Si le Marx de Michel Henry reconduit plusieurs thèses développées dans les écrits antérieurs et anticipe celles de « la trilogie » sur le christianisme, le dialogue qu’il instaure autour du thème de la praxis lui confère un statut singulier dans l’ensemble de l’oeuvre. Parce que Marx attribue à la pratique de l’individu et aux rapports réels entre les pratiques le pouvoir de créer les idéalités, notamment celle de la valeur, Henry est lui-même conduit à déplacer le champ d’immanence qu’il avait jusque-là situé du côté de l’ego et du corps vers la pratique et le système du travail vivant aux prises avec le monde objectif. Or du point de vue d’une phénoménologie matérielle, pour autant qu’il renvoie à un point de vue extérieur à la stricte immanence, le seul usage de la notion d’« individu » manifeste déjà une prise en compte de « la transcendance », poussant Henry à suspendre pour une part l’approche phénoménologique. Même si l’acosmisme de L’essence de la manifestation transparait encore dans le Marx, il est mis en tension extrême avec le monde des déterminations sociales et économiques et contraint l’auteur à développer la thèse de l’enracinement de ces déterminations dans l’immanence de la vie et de la praxis. C’est en même temps ce qui fait la force et l’originalité de la lecture henryenne de Marx. D’un autre côté, quand bien même elle hérite d’une éthique de la praxis, la trilogie semble perdre de vue la stricte individualité de la praxis qui apparaît dans le Marx. C’est ainsi que le concept de Vie Absolue qu’elle promeut est associé à une exigence d’universel que Henry avait préalablement disqualifiée, notamment à travers sa critique de Hegel. La thèse qu’on va lire cherche ainsi à rendre compte de l’originalité absolue du Marx dans l’oeuvre du phénoménologue français.

2000 Seat Belt Usage Survey, September 13, 2001

The good news is that safety belt usage on municipal road systems (city streets) increased 1.07 percent. This is encouraging since more than 45 percent of all motor vehicle crashes occur on city streets, and usage on the municipal road system has consistently been the lowest of the road systems studied. In communities where usage is good, enforcement and public education must be maintained in order to improve usage further; in communities where usage is still low, enforcement and public education must both be increased. Usage on the primary system (U.S. or state highways) rose 1.01 percent from the previous year. This is also welcome news because almost half of all fatalities (49 percent) occur on the primary road system. There was a decline in interstate belt use (-1.45 percent). Despite this decrease interstate usage is still traditionally the highest of all roadway categories presumably because the longer trips, higher travel speeds and large number of vehicles cause drivers to assume there is greater risk.

Iowa Motor Vehicle Fuel Reduction Program, 1989

This report documents the results of a three million dollar traffic signal improvement demonstration program, known as the Iowa Motor Vehicle Fuel Reduction Program (the program). The program was funded with the use of oil overcharge funds and administered by the Iowa Departments of Natural Resources and Transportation. The objective of the program was to provide restitution to overcharged motorists by improving the efficiency of traffic signals. More efficient traffic signals reduce fuel consumption, delay, travel time, and automobile pollution while improving traffic safety. The program demonstrated the effectiveness of improving traffic signals and resulted in a 14.20-to-1 benefit-to-cost ratio.

Influência dos intermediários de distribuição de produtos turísticos no processo de decisão do meio de hospedagem pelo consumidor

This study examines the complex hotel buyer decision process in front of the tourism distribution channels. Its objective is to describe the influence level of the tourism marketing intermediaries, mainly the travel agents and tour operators, over the hotel decision process by the buyer-tourist. The data collection process was done trough a survey with three hundred brazilian tourists hosted in nineteen hotels of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The data analysis was done using some multivariate statistic techniques as correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, factor analysis and multiple discriminant analysis. The research characterizes the hotel services consumers profile and his trip, and identifying the distribution channels used by them. Furthermore, the research verifies the intermediaries influence exercised over hotel buyer decision process, looking for identify causality relations between the influence level and the buyer profile. Verifies that information about hotels available on internet reduces the probability that this influence can be practiced; however it was possible identifying those consumers considers this information complementary and non-substitutes than the information from intermediaries. The characteristics of the data do not allow indentifying the factors that constraint the intermediaries influence neither identifying discriminant functions of the specific distribution channel choice by consumers. The study concludes that consumers don t agree in have been influenced by intermediaries or don t know if they have, still considering important to consult them and internet doesn t substitute their function as information source

Produção textual de adolescentes acerca da saúde sexual e reprodutiva: subsídios para atuação de enfermagem

Trata-se de um estudo exploratório-descritivo, com abordagem qualitativa, que teve por objetivo analisar as mensagens, acerca da promoção da saúde sexual e reprodutiva, produzidas por adolescentes de escolas públicas e particulares da cidade do Rio Grande, num concurso de redação e música promovido pelo Grupo Gestor Municipal (GGM) do Projeto Saúde e Prevenção nas Escolas (SPE), nos anos de 2007 e 2008. Após autorização pelo GGM para realização deste estudo, foram disponibilizadas para reprodução, via xérox, as 29 redações e as três letras de músicas inscritas nos concursos. Para o tratamento dos dados utilizou-se a técnica de análise de conteúdo na modalidade temática. Participaram 35 adolescentes, sendo 25 moças e dez rapazes, com idades entre onze e dezessete anos. Quanto à escolaridade, dois frequentavam a quinta série; doze a sexta, doze a sétima e nove a oitava. Apreendeu-se que, em sua produção textual, os(as) adolescentes revelaram as vulnerabilidades e fortalezas referentes à saúde sexual e reprodutiva. Entre os inúmeros fatores que aumentam a vulnerabilidade individual, social e programática, discorreram sobre a carência de informações, a dificuldade para transformar o conhecimento em prática, a sensação de imunidade, a violência familiar, a conduta repressora de pais e mães, as mensagens de cunho sexual veiculadas pela mídia, a necessidade de serem aceitos(as) pelo grupo, preconceitos, e falta de ações governamentais direcionadas a adolescentes. No que se refere às fortalezas, sabem que a informação é uma importante aliada para a promoção da saúde sexual e reprodutiva citando, entre as fontes acessíveis, os serviços públicos de saúde, a família e a escola. Demonstraram conhecimento acerca da alarmante propagação da epidemia da AIDS entre jovens, conhecendo os sinais e sintomas das DSTs mais comuns e as formas de prevenção. As moças enfatizaram a necessidade de compartilhar a responsabilidade preventiva com os rapazes, bem como de amor próprio e respeito mútuo. O acesso aos serviços de saúde também foi apresentado como indispensável ao adolescer saudável. Os(as) jovens demonstraram conhecimento sobre drogas seus efeitos e consequências. Referem-se à adolescência como um período gostoso, repleto de dúvidas, mas também cheio de potencialidades. Assim, os mesmos componentes apresentados como desencadeadores de vulnerabilidade podem torná-los(as) fortes e capazes de superar os desafios comuns a essa etapa da vida. Para que tal superação ocorra, é necessário que tenham acesso à informação e a problematizem; que sejam capazes de incorporá-las ao cotidiano, adotando práticas protegidas e protetoras; que haja diálogo, despido de tabus, censuras e preconceitos no ambiente familiar; que as escolas adotem de forma transversalizada temáticas referentes à saúde sexual e reprodutiva; que os serviços de saúde tenham infraestrutura para assegurar os direitos contidos no Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente; entre outras estratégias fortalecedoras.

Transfrontalité et perméabilité dans les genres de non-fiction : l’essai et la chronique

Partiendo de la noción de literatura de pensamiento, como conjunto heterogéneo y complejo de formas literarias con vocación argumentativa, el estudio que sigue pretende mostrar a la vez el valor paradigmático del ensayo, en el marco de estas escrituras, y la naturaleza transfronteriza de los géneros de no-ficción, entre los cuales el ensayo y la crónica periodística constituyen dos de las formas más próximas. En un primer momento, se analizan los rasgos característicos del ensayo, tal como Montaigne lo concibió, con el fin de determinar las líneas de fuerza de esta forma matricial, de la que procede hasta hoy toda una tradición de escritos asistemáticos y porosos de naturaleza personal y reflexiva. En un segundo momento, se estudian los rasgos específicos de la crónica periodística contemporánea, a la luz del modelo canónico, poniendo el énfasis en la perspectiva subjetiva de la mirada y en la noción de actualidad, como principales indicadores de la dimensión permeable e híbrida de este género.

A "Greater Britain": colonial kin in fictions of settlement, 1850-1890

This dissertation traces the ways in which nineteenth-century fictional narratives of white settlement represent “family” as, on the one hand, an abstract theoretical model for a unified and relatively homogenous British settler empire and on the other, a fundamental challenge to ideas about imperial integrity and transnational Anglo-Saxon racial identification. I argue that representations of transoceanic white families in nineteenth-century fictions about Australian settler colonialism negotiate the tension between the bounded domesticity of an insular English nation and the kind of kinship that spans oceans and continents as a result of mass emigration from the British isles to the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the Australian colonies. As such, these fictions construct productive analogies between the familial metaphors and affective language in the political discourse of “Greater Britain”—-a transoceanic imagined community of British settler colonies and their “mother country” united by race and language—-and ideas of family, gender, and domesticity as they operate within specific bourgeois families. Concerns over the disruption of transoceanic families bear testament to contradictions between the idea of a unified imperial identity (both British and Anglo-Saxon), the proliferation of fractured local identities (such as settlers’ English, Irish Catholic, and Australian nationalisms), and the conspicuous absence of indigenous families from narratives of settlement. I intervene at the intersection of postcolonial literary criticism and gender theory by examining the strategic deployments of heteronormative kinship metaphors and metonymies in the rhetorical consolidation of settler colonial space. Settler colonialism was distinct from the “civilizing” domination of subject peoples in South Asia in that it depended on the rhetorical construction of colonial territory as empty space or as land occupied by nearly extinct “primitive” races. This dissertation argues that political rhetoric, travel narratives, and fiction used the image of white female bourgeois reproductive power and sentimental attachment as a technology for settler colonial success, embodying this technology both in the benevolent figure of the metropolitan “mother country” (the paternalistic female counter to the material realities of patriarchal and violent settler colonial practices) and in fictional juxtapositions of happy white settler fecund families with the solitary self-extinguishing figure of the black aboriginal “savage.” Yet even in the narratives where the continuity and coherence of families across imperial space is questioned—-and “Greater Britain” itself—-domesticity and heteronormative familial relations effectively rewrite settler space as white, Anglo-Saxon and bourgeois, and the sentimentalism of troubled European families masks the presence and genocide of indigenous aboriginal peoples. I analyze a range of novels and political texts, canonical and non-canonical, metropolitan and colonial. My introductory first chapter examines the discourse on a “Greater Britain” in the travel narratives of J.A. Froude, Charles Wentworth Dilke, and Anthony Trollope and in the Oxbridge lectures of Herman Merivale and J.R. Seeley. These writers make arguments for an imperial economy of affect circulating between Britain and the settler colonies that reinforces political connections, and at times surpasses the limits of political possibility by relying on the language of sentiment and feeling to build a transoceanic “Greater British” community. Subsequent chapters show how metropolitan and colonial fiction writers, including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Marcus Clarke, Henry Kingsley, and Catherine Helen Spence, test the viability of this “Greater British” economy of affect by presenting transoceanic family connections and structures straining under the weight of forces including the vast distances between colonies and the “mother country,” settler violence, and the transportation system.

Influência dos intermediários de distribuição de produtos turísticos no processo de decisão do meio de hospedagem pelo consumidor

This study examines the complex hotel buyer decision process in front of the tourism distribution channels. Its objective is to describe the influence level of the tourism marketing intermediaries, mainly the travel agents and tour operators, over the hotel decision process by the buyer-tourist. The data collection process was done trough a survey with three hundred brazilian tourists hosted in nineteen hotels of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The data analysis was done using some multivariate statistic techniques as correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, factor analysis and multiple discriminant analysis. The research characterizes the hotel services consumers profile and his trip, and identifying the distribution channels used by them. Furthermore, the research verifies the intermediaries influence exercised over hotel buyer decision process, looking for identify causality relations between the influence level and the buyer profile. Verifies that information about hotels available on internet reduces the probability that this influence can be practiced; however it was possible identifying those consumers considers this information complementary and non-substitutes than the information from intermediaries. The characteristics of the data do not allow indentifying the factors that constraint the intermediaries influence neither identifying discriminant functions of the specific distribution channel choice by consumers. The study concludes that consumers don t agree in have been influenced by intermediaries or don t know if they have, still considering important to consult them and internet doesn t substitute their function as information source

Procedimento para estudo da escolha modal em viagens realizadas por estudantes de instituições de ensino médio, mediado pela psicologia social

Tese (doutorado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental, 2016.

Análisis, dignóstico y propuesta para fomentar el destino turístico Bolivia enfocado al turismo emisivo de la ciudad de Cuenca, con la ruta que efrece LAN hacia La Paz y Santa Cruz 2015-2016

El presente trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo conocer la oferta y demanda del mercado turístico emisivo hacia Bolivia desde la ciudad de Cuenca, con la finalidad de fomentar el turismo hacia nuevos destinos, enfocado principalmente en las ciudades de: La Paz y Santa Cruz de la Sierra, con la ruta que ofrece la aerolínea LAN hacia estos destinos. Para el desarrollo de la tesis se investigó el comportamiento de los pasajeros que deciden comprar los boletos en las oficinas de LAN, y las particularidades de las agencias de viajes que tienen convenio con la mencionada aerolínea, con la finalidad de determinar si existe un potencial mercado emisivo en la ciudad de Cuenca que esté dispuesto a visitar Bolivia; los resultados que se obtuvieron en este análisis definenprincipalmente la oferta y la demanda actual; adicionalmente se obtuvo la información necesaria de las agencias de viajes para informar y capacitar a los agentes de viajes, sobre los diferentes atractivos turísticos y sitios de interés con los que cuenta Bolivia; en base de toda ésta información, se propone la creación de diferentes paquetes con alternativas de turismo para los pasajeros en la ciudad de Cuenca. El aporte que se suministra con el desarrollo de ésta investigación, principalmente a las agencias de viajes y promotores turísticos es el de demostrar que se pueden ofertar lugares nuevos, que aún no han sido explotados en el mercado emisivo de la ciudad de Cuenca, para que no se limiten únicamente a competir por los productos de siempre previamente estructurados y saturados.