Public narratives and the construction of memory among European Muslims

This chapter draws on group and individual interviews with 735 European Muslims in 5 European countries and explores some key aspects of the politics of memory that form an inextricable component of European Muslim self-definitions, discourses and narratives deployed in the attempt to negotiate their inclusion in European societies.

Students' collective knowledge construction in the virtual learning environment ""ToLigado - your school interactive newspaper""

Introduction. The ToLigado Project - Your School Interactive Newspaper is an interactive virtual learning environment conceived, developed, implemented and supported by researchers at the School of the Future Research Laboratory of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Method. This virtual learning environment aims to motivate trans-disciplinary research among public school students and teachers in 2,931 schools equipped with Internet-access computer rooms. Within this virtual community, students produce collective multimedia research documents that are immediately published in the portal. The project also aims to increase students' autonomy for research, collaborative work and Web authorship. Main sections of the portal are presented and described. Results. Partial results of the first two years' implementation are presented and indicate a strong motivation among students to produce knowledge despite the fragile hardware and software infrastructure at the time. Discussion. In this new environment, students should be seen as 'knowledge architects' and teachers as facilitators, or 'curiosity managers'. The ToLigado portal may constitute a repository for future studies regarding student attitudes in virtual learning environments, students' behaviour as 'authors', Web authorship involving collective knowledge production, teachers' behaviour as facilitators, and virtual learning environments as digital repositories of students' knowledge construction and social capital in virtual learning communities.

Concretes and mortars recycled with water treatment sludge and construction and demolition rubble

There are about 7500 water treatment plants in Brazil. The wastes these plants generate in their decantation tanks and filters are discharged directly into the same brooks and rivers that supply water for treatment. Another serious environmental problem is the unregulated disposal of construction and demolition rubble, which increases the expenditure of public resources by degrading the urban environment and contributing to aggravate flooding and the proliferation of vectors harmful to public health. In this study, an evaluation was made of the possibility of recycling water treatment sludge in construction and demolition waste recycling plants. The axial compressive strength and water absorption of concretes and mortars produced with the exclusive and joint addition of these two types of waste was also determined. The ecoefficiency of this recycling was evaluated by determining the concentration of aluminum in the leached extract resulting from the solubilization of the recycled products. The production of concretes and mortars with the joint addition of water treatment sludge and recycled concrete rubble aggregates proved to be a viable recycling alternative from the standpoint of axial compression strength, modulus of elasticity, water absorption and tensile strength by the Brazilian test method. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Persisting problems related to race and ethnicity in public health and epidemiology research

A recent and comprehensive review of the use of race and ethnicity in research that address health disparities in epidemiology and public health is provided. First it is described the theoretical basis upon which race and ethnicity differ drawing from previous work in anthropology, social science and public health. Second, it is presented a review of 280 articles published in high impacts factor journals in regards to public health and epidemiology from 2009-2011. An analytical grid enabled the examination of conceptual, theoretical and methodological questions related to the use of both concepts. The majority of articles reviewed were grounded in a theoretical framework and provided interpretations from various models. However, key problems identified include a) a failure from researchers to differentiate between the concepts of race and ethnicity; b) an inappropriate use of racial categories to ascribe ethnicity; c) a lack of transparency in the methods used to assess both concepts; and d) failure to address limits associated with the construction of racial or ethnic taxonomies and their use. In conclusion, future studies examining health disparities should clearly establish the distinction between race and ethnicity, develop theoretically driven research and address specific questions about the relationships between race, ethnicity and health. One argue that one way to think about ethnicity, race and health is to dichotomize research into two sets of questions about the relationship between human diversity and health.

Environmental performance policy indicators for the public sector: The case of the defence sector

Journal of Environmental Management, nº 82 p. 410–432

Lean construction and sustainability - complementary paradigms - a case study

Proceedings IGLC-19, July 2011, Lima, Perú

An Exploratory Study Of Lean Construction in Portugal – Owners and Designers`Perspectives

21th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 21), July 2013, Fortaleza, Brazil

BIM-lean synergies in the management on MEP works in public facilities of intensive use – a case study

21st Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction – IGLC 21 – Fortaleza, Brazil

Visual politics of the estado novo realized on the Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques in Lisbon – the construction of ideal citizenship?

The stylistic categorization of the Estado Novo has been intensely discussed by Portuguese art historians. The square Alameda Dom Afonso Henriques in Lisbon (Alameda) can be seen as paradigmatic for the architecture of power of the Estado Novo. The Alameda forms a gardened valley between two hills. There you find two prominent and highly propagandist buildings: The Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and the Fonte Luminosa are dedicated to modern sciences and respectively to the harmonious contribution of nature to the city. The iconography of the Alameda as well as its incorporation into the propagandist use of urban planning in the 1930s and 1940s exemplify the visual politics during Salazarism. Urban planning programs intended to create cities that would preserve the character of a traditional catholic society and at the same time answer to the need to modernize the country and evoke the image of a progressive state. Thus, public buildings and urban squares such as the Alameda contributed to design a corporate image and to the ‘spirit’ of the regime.

Public Sector Pay in Finland

This study analyses the forces determining public and private sector pay in Finland. The data used is a 7 per cent sample taken from the Finnish 2001 census. It contains information on 42 680 male workers, of which 8 759 are employed in public and 33 921 in the private sector. The study documents and describes data by education, occupation and industry. We estimate earnings equations for the whole sample as well as for four industries (construction, real estate, transportation and health) that provide an adequate mix of both public and sector workers. The results suggest that the private-public sector pay gap of about one per cent can be accounted for by differences in observable characteristics between the sectors (3.4 per cent) and lower returns from these characteristics (-2.3 per cent). However, the industry-level analysis indicates that the earnings gaps vary across industries, and are negative in some cases. These inter-industry differences in public-private gaps persist even when the usual controls are introduced. This suggests that public sector wage setters need greater local flexibility, which should result in less uniform wages within the public sector.

La participation des consommateurs à la construction de l'autorité des normes internationales : vers une économie politique internationale de la traduction

Cette thèse explore les implications politiques de la montée en puissance des normes internationales sur nos sociétés contemporaines et pose la problématique des dynamiques participatives des représentants des consommateurs au sein des formes de pouvoir non étatique à l'aide du cas de l'Organisation internationale de normalisation (ISO). Le renforcement du pouvoir des normes internationales et autres spécifications techniques soulève d'importants enjeux démocratiques qui portent aussi bien sur la représentativité des acteurs qui les élaborent, sur l'articulation des prérogatives publiques et privées dans la gouvernance de la mondialisation, que sur le rôle de l'expertise dans la reconnaissance de ces nouvelles formes de pouvoir. La participation du monde associatif intervient sur ces différents enjeux de manière complexe. Cette recherche s'inscrit à la suite des études en relations internationales/économie politique internationale sur les formes d'autorité non étatique et s'inspire du concept de traduction issu de la sociologie des sciences et techniques pour mettre en lumière le rôle des spécifications techniques dans la construction d'une société de consommation centrée sur la liberté de choix et la façon dont les associations de consommateurs se saisissent des arènes de normalisation pour y faire valoir des préoccupations collectives, leur expertise et leur identité. Cette thèse défend l'idée que les consommateurs participent à la construction de l'autorité des normes internationales par leur rôle dans la traduction qui permet de relier les spécifications techniques au fonctionnement des marchés, au cadre réglementaire de la loi et aux préoccupations sociétales. L'analyse repose sur une observation ethnographique des délibérations d'un comité technique de l'ISO, une recherche-­‐action, la réalisation d'entretiens et la consultation de documents d'archives de l'ISO. -- This thesis explores the political significance of the rise of international standards on contemporary societies and questions the participatory dynamics of consumers' representatives within nonstate forms of power, using the case of the International organization for standardization (ISO). The power granted to international standards and other technical specifications raises important democratic issues regarding the representativity of standard-­‐ writers, the public-­‐private relationships involved in this form of governance or the expertise sustaining the recognition of such new forms of power. The participation of civil society associations affect such issues in complex ways. This research relies on international relations/international political economy approaches of nonstate authority and takes inspiration from the concept of translation developed by science and technology studies to highlight the crucial role played by technical specifications in building a consumer society based on the freedom of choice as well as how consumers' associations take stock of standardization arenas to promote collective issues and claim their expertise and identity. This thesis argues that consumers contribute to the construction of the authority of international standards through their role in the translation that links international standards to the market society, the regulatory state as well as to societal preoccupation. The analysis is based on an ethnographic observation of deliberations within an ISO technical committee, a research-­‐action, interviews as well as on the consultation of ISO archives.

Indoor air quality in a public building following smoking bans

Introduction: Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a major environmental risk factor. Indoor contaminants come from a variety of sources, which can include inadequate ventilation, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), biological agents, combustion products, and ETS. Because ETS is one of the most frequent causes of IAQ complaints as well as the high mortality of passive smoking, in June 2004 the University of Geneva made the decision to ban smoking inside the so called "Uni-Mail" building, the biggest Swiss University human science building of recent construction, and the ordinance was applied beginning in October 2004. This report presents the finding related to the IAQ of the "Uni-Mail" building before and after smoking bans using nicotine, suspended dust, condensate and PAHs level in air as tracers to perform an assessment of passive tobacco exposure for non-smokers inside the building. Methods: Respirable particles (RSP) A real time aerosol monitor (model DataRAM)was place at sampling post 1, level ground floor. Condensate It consists in extracting any organic matter taken on the glass fibre filters by MeOH, and then measuring the total absorbent of the MeOH extract to the UV wavelength of 447 nm. Nicotine Nicotine was taken by means of cartridges containing of XAD-4 to the fixed flow of 0.5 L/min. The analytical method used for the determination of nicotine is based on gas chromatography with Nitrogen selective detector GC-NPD. Results: Figure 1 shows the box plot density display of 3 parameters before and after smoking bans for all 7 sampling posts: dust, condensate and nicotine in air in μg/m3. Conclusion: Before the smoking ban, the level of the concentrations of respirable particles (RSP) is raised more, average of the day 320 μg/m3, with peaks of more than 1000 μg/m3, compared with the values of the surrounding air between 22 and 30 μg/m3. The nicotine level is definitely more important (average 5.53 μg/m3, field 1.5 to 17.9 μg/m3). Once the smoking bans inside the building were applied, one notes a clear improvement in terms of concentrations of pollutants. For dust, the concentration fell by 3 times (average: 130 μg/m3, range: 40 to 160 μg/m3) and that of nicotine by 10 times (average: 0.53 μg/m3, range: 0 to 1.69 μg/m3) compared to that found before smoking bans. The outdoor air RSP concentration was 22 μg/m3 or 10 times lower. Nicotine seems to be the best tracer for ETS free of interference, independent of location or season.

D'Eusèbe de Césarée à Athanase d'Alexandrie en passant par Cyrille de Jérusalem : de la construction savante du Nouveau Testament à la clôture ecclésiastique du canon

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) Comment, dans les premiers siècles de l'histoire du christianisme, se sont formés les livres du Nouveau Testament ? Une dizaine de spécialistes européens et américains abordent ce problème majeur avec un double souci : présenter au public francophone un état de la recherche et faire progresser les études par le recours à l'histoire sociale et à l'histoire des controverses. Une attention particulière est portée à des sources habituellement négligées parce qu'elles sont d'un accès difficile| il s'agit en particulier de textes orientaux (coptes, syriaques, arméniens) qui montrent que le Nouveau Testament est loin de s'être constitué de manière strictement uniforme au cours des cinq premiers siècles.