Perspectives of Urban Growth Management and Sustainable Development In West Bank, Hebron District as a case Study

The main objective of this PhD research study is to provide a perspective on the urban growth management and sustainable development in Palestine, and more specifically in Hebron district as a case study. Hebron is located 36 km south of Jerusalem, with an overall population size of around 600,000 people living in a total area around1246km2. Hebron is the biggest Palestinian district that has 16 municipalities and 154 localities. The research discusses and analyzes the urban planning system, economical and environmental policies and the solution required to manage and integrate the development elements to develop a sustainable development plan for Hebron. The research provides answers for fundamental questions such as what kind and definition of sustainable development are applicable to the Palestinian case?. What are the sustainability problems there and how the Israeli occupation and unstable political condition affect the sustainable development in Palestine? What are the urban growth management and sustainability policies and actions required from government, public and privets sector in Palestine? The fast urban growth in Palestine is facing many problems and challenges due to the increase in the population size and the resulting impact of this increase including, but not limited to, the demand of new houses, need for more infrastructure services, demands on new industrial, commercial, educational and health projects, which in turn reduces the area of agricultural lands and threatens the natural resources and environment. There are also other associated sustainability problems like the absence of effective plans or regulations that control urban expansion, the absence of sufficient sustainable development plans at the national levels for the district, new job requirements, Israeli restrictions and occupation for more than 60 years, existence of construction factories near residential areas, poor public awareness and poor governmental funds for service projects and development plans. The study consists of nine chapters. Chapter One includes an introduction, study objectives, problems and justifications, while Chapter Two has a theoretical background on sustainability topic and definitions of sustainability. The Palestinian urban planning laws and local government systems are discussed in Chapter Three and the methodology of research is detailed in Chapter Four. As for Chapter Five, it provides a general background on Hebron District including demographical and economical profiles, along with recommendations related to sustainable development for each profile Chapter Six addresses the urban environment, sustainability priorities and policies required. Chapter Seven discusses and analyzes infrastructure services including transportation, water and wastewater. As for Chapter Eight, it addresses the land use, housing and urban expansion beside the cultural heritage, natural heritage with relevant sustainable development polices and recommendations. Finally, Chapter Nine includes a conclusion and comprehensive recommendations integrating all of urban and sustainability event in one map. Hebron has a deep history including a rich cultural heritage aged by thousands of years, with 47% of Hebron district population under 14 years old. Being the biggest Palestinian district, Hebron has thousands of industrial and economical organizations beside a large agricultural sector at Palestine level. This gives Hebron a potential to play major roles in developing a national sustainability plan, as the current urban planning system in Palestine needs urgent reform and development to fulfill the sustainability requirement. The municipalities and ministers should find permanent financial aid for urban planning and development studies so as to face future challenges. The Palestinian government can benefit from available local human resources in development projects; hence Palestinian people have sufficient qualifications in most sectors. The Palestinian people also can invest in the privet sector in Palestine in case businessmen have been encouraged and clear investment laws and plans have been developed. The study provides recommendations associated to the sustainable development in Palestine in general and Hebron, as a case study, in specific. Recommendations include increasing the privet sector as well as the public involvement in urban growth management, and stopping unplanned urban expansion, subjecting granting building permits of new projects to the no-harm environmental impact assessment, increasing the coordination and cooperation between localities and central bodies, protection and renovation of old cites and green areas, increasing the quality and quantity of infrastructure services, establishing district urban planning department to coordinate and organize urban planning and sustainable development activities. Also, among recommendations come dividing Hebron into three planning and administrative areas (north, central and south), and dividing the sustainable development and implementation period (2010 to 2025) into three main phases. Finally, the study strongly recommends benefiting from the same urban development plans in similar districts at national and international levels, also to use new technologies and information systems in urban planning process.

Cleanliness versus cow comfort – an insolvable problem?

Cubicle should provide good resting comfort as well as clean udders. Dairy cows in cubicle houses often face a restrictive environment with regard to resting behaviour, whereas cleanliness may still be impaired. This study aimed to determine reliable behavioural measures regarding resting comfort applicable in on-farm welfare assessments. Furthermore, relationships between cubicle design, cow sizes, management factors and udder cleanliness (namely teats and teat tips) were investigated. Altogether 15 resting measures were examined in terms of feasibility, inter-observer reliability (IOR) and consistency of results per farm over time. They were recorded during three farm visits on farms in Germany and Austria with cubicle, deep litter and tie stall systems. Seven measures occurred to infrequently to allow reliable recording within a limited observation time. IOR was generally acceptable to excellent except for 'collisions during lying down', which only showed good IOR after improvement of the definition. Only three measures were acceptably repeatable over time: 'duration of lying down', 'percentage of collisions during lying down' and 'percentage of cows lying partly or completely outside lying area'. These measures were evaluated as suitable animal based welfare measures regarding resting behaviour in the framework of an on-farm welfare assessment protocol. The second part of the thesis comprises a cross-sectional study on resting comfort and cow cleanliness including 23 Holstein Friesian dairy herds with very low within-farm variation in cubicle measures. Height at withers, shoulder width and diagonal body length were measured in 79-100 % of the cows (herd size 30 to115 cows). Based on the 25 % largest animals, compliance with recommendations for cubicle measures was calculated. Cleanliness of different body parts, the udder, teats and teat tips was assessed for each cow in the herd prior to morning milking. No significant correlation was found between udder soiling and teat or teat tip soiling on herd level. The final model of a stepwise regression regarding the percentage of dirty teats per farm explained 58.5 % the variance and contained four factors. Teat dipping after milking which might be associated with an overall clean and accurate management style, deep bedded cubicles, increasing cubicle maintenance times and decreasing compliance concerning total cubicle length predicted lower teat soiling. The final model concerning teat tip soiling explained 46.0 % of the variance and contained three factors. Increasing litter height in the rear part of the cubicle and increased alley soiling which is difficult to explain, predicted for less soiled teat tips, whereas increasing compliance concerning resting length was associated with higher percentages of dirty teat tips. The dependent variable ‘duration of lying down’ was analysed using again stepwise regression. The final model explained 54.8 % of the total variance. Lying down duration was significantly shorter in deep bedded cubicles. Further explanatory though not significant factors in the model were neck-rail height, deep bedding or comfort mattresses versus concrete floor or rubber mats and clearance height of side partitions. In the attempt to create a more comprehensive lying down measure, another analysis was carried out with percentage of ‘impaired lying down’ (i.e. events exceeding 6.3 seconds, with collisions or being interrupted) as dependent variable. The explanatory value of this final model was 41.3 %. An increase in partition length, in compliance concerning cubicle width and the presence of straw within bedding predicted a lower proportion of impaired lying down. The effect of partition length is difficult to interpret, but partition length and height were positively correlated on the study farms, possibly leading to a bigger zone of clear space for pelvis freedom. No associations could be found between impaired lying down and teat or teat tip soiling. Altogether, in agreement with earlier studies it was found that cubicle dimensions in practice are often inadequate with regard to the body dimensions of the cows, leading to high proportions of impaired lying down behaviour, whereas teat cleanliness is still unsatisfactory. Connections between cleanliness and cow comfort are far from simplistic. Especially the relationship between cubicle characteristics and lying down behaviour apparently is very complex, so that it is difficult to identify single influential factors that are valid for all farm situations. However, based on the results of the present study the use of deep bedded cubicles can be recommended as well as improved management with special regard to cubicle and litter maintenance in order to achieve both better resting comfort and teat cleanliness.

Effects of red brick production on land use, household income, and greenhouse gas emissions in Khartoum, Sudan

In Khartoum (Sudan) a particular factor shaping urban land use is the rapid expansion of red brick making (BM) for the construction of houses which occurs on the most fertile agricultural Gerif soils along the Nile banks. The objectives of this study were to assess the profitability of BM, to explore the income distribution among farmers and kiln owners, to measure the dry matter (DM), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and organic carbon (C_org) in cow dung used for BM, and to estimate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from burned biomass fuel (cow dung and fuel wood). About 49 kiln owners were interviewed in 2009 using a semi-structured questionnaire that allowed to record socio-economic and variable cost data for budget calculations, and determination of Gini coefficients. Samples of cow dung were collected directly from the kilns and analyzed for their nutrients concentrations. To estimate GHG emissions a modified approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was used. The land rental value from red brick kilns was estimated at 5-fold the rental value from agriculture and the land rent to total cost ratio was 29% for urban farms compared to 6% for BM. The Gini coefficients indicated that income distribution among kiln owners was more equal than among urban farmers. Using IPCC default values the 475, 381, and 36 t DM of loose dung, compacted dung, and fuel wood used for BM emit annually 688, 548, and 60 t of GHGs, respectively.

The Architect's Collaborator: Toward Intelligent Tools for Conceptual Design

In early stages of architectural design, as in other design domains, the language used is often very abstract. In architectural design, for example, architects and their clients use experiential terms such as "private" or "open" to describe spaces. If we are to build programs that can help designers during this early-stage design, we must give those programs the capability to deal with concepts on the level of such abstractions. The work reported in this thesis sought to do that, focusing on two key questions: How are abstract terms such as "private" and "open" translated into physical form? How might one build a tool to assist designers with this process? The Architect's Collaborator (TAC) was built to explore these issues. It is a design assistant that supports iterative design refinement, and that represents and reasons about how experiential qualities are manifested in physical form. Given a starting design and a set of design goals, TAC explores the space of possible designs in search of solutions that satisfy the goals. It employs a strategy we've called dependency-directed redesign: it evaluates a design with respect to a set of goals, then uses an explanation of the evaluation to guide proposal and refinement of repair suggestions; it then carries out the repair suggestions to create new designs. A series of experiments was run to study TAC's behavior. Issues of control structure, goal set size, goal order, and modification operator capabilities were explored. In addition, TAC's use as a design assistant was studied in an experiment using a house in the process of being redesigned. TAC's use as an analysis tool was studied in an experiment using Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses.

Learning Three-Dimensional Shape Models for Sketch Recognition

Artifacts made by humans, such as items of furniture and houses, exhibit an enormous amount of variability in shape. In this paper, we concentrate on models of the shapes of objects that are made up of fixed collections of sub-parts whose dimensions and spatial arrangement exhibit variation. Our goals are: to learn these models from data and to use them for recognition. Our emphasis is on learning and recognition from three-dimensional data, to test the basic shape-modeling methodology. In this paper we also demonstrate how to use models learned in three dimensions for recognition of two-dimensional sketches of objects.

Predicting random level and seasonality of hotel prices. A structural equation growth curve approach

This article examines the effect on price of different characteristics of holiday hotels in the sun-and-beach segment, under the hedonic function perspective. Monthly prices of the majority of hotels in the Spanish continental Mediterranean coast are gathered from May to October 1999 from the tour operator catalogues. Hedonic functions are specified as random-effect models and parametrized as structural equation models with two latent variables, a random peak season price and a random width of seasonal fluctuations. Characteristics of the hotel and the region where they are located are used as predictors of both latent variables. Besides hotel category, region, distance to the beach, availability of parking place and room equipment have an effect on peak price and also on seasonality. 3- star hotels have the highest seasonality and hotels located in the southern regions the lowest, which could be explained by a warmer climate in autumn

Desenvolupament d'un sistema d'avaluació de les tecnologies segures que s'apliquen en les indústries càrniques

La finalitat del projecte és crear un sistema d’avaluació dels equips de treball usats en un escorxador des del punt de vista de la prevenció de riscos laborals, per tal de facilitar la tasca d’elecció d’una eina o màquina per a un lloc de treball determinat, garantint la seguretat i la salut del treballador que l’ha d’emprar

Definición de una estrategia de servicio para los adultos mayores en la modalidad de club: Club para Adultos Mayores de Bogotá "Porque tienes más de 60 razones para empezar a disfrutar"

El desarrollo de este trabajo busca la definición y presentación de la mejor estrategia de servicio en la modalidad de club exclusivo y de esparcimiento para a adultos mayores de la ciudad de Bogotá y potencialmente la de todo el país. Con el propósito de definir la mejor estrategia para logar un proyecto exitoso, y de esta manera cumplir con el objetivo propuesto, el trabajo fue estructurado de la siguiente manera: primero definió, conceptualizo y caracterizo la población objetivo; segundo, formuló una estrategia de servicio para esta población en orden de brindar una solución al problema de: “escasez de instituciones integrales y diferentes a casas u hogares geriátricos y que cumplan con los parámetros legales e instituidos para el cuidado y la distracción de los adultos mayores” guiada por la teoría de la estrategia competitiva, enfoque y posición estratégica de Michael Porter, tercero intentó validar dicha estrategia a través de la aplicación de dos herramientas: panorama competitivo y análisis de fuerzas del mercado pertenecientes a la teoría de análisis estructurales de sectores estratégicos, cuarto presentó y evaluó como posible barrera de entrada un marco legal para el proyecto, y por ultimo realizo una proyección financiera para el mismo, mostrando su viabilidad y reafirmando que la estrategia presentada realmente puede hacer de este proyecto una empresa perdurable y rentable.

Bajo Fondo

¿Porqué esperar a tocar fondo? ¿hay redención para los drogadictos? ¿en el proceso, sirven las casa de rehabilitación?. Estas son algunas de las incógnitas que intenta descifrar Bajo Fondo, un documental realizado con el objetivo de mostrar a la sociedad otra cara de una enfermedad conocida como drogadicción.

Posicionando Digital.CSIC como un elemento clave en el Sistema de Gestión de la Información Científica del CSIC

Primera conferencia. Bibliotecas y Repositorios Digitales: Gestión del Conocimiento, Acceso Abierto y Visibilidad Latinoamericana. (BIREDIAL) Mayo 9 al 11 de 2011. Bogotá, Colombia.

Biderman 2013 Chapter 12

A chapter looking at the coffee houses of the 18th century.

Actions of resiliencia opposite to the housing policies in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina: the social organizations, the institutions, and the massive evictions

The current housing problems in the city of Buenos Aires revolves around two phenomena, the precariousness and the evictions, in a context that is conceived like housing emergency. In response to this situation, some institutional organisms and certain social organizations with territorial roots in the south of the city, began to take forward actions of resilience opposing to the massive evictions, which take place as consequence of the real-estate pressure, and were concerning to the hotels, pensions, tenancies, and usurped houses of this zone of the city. It will be analyzed the actions of resilience displayed by them in their individual and collective dimensions and their relation to housing policies.

Efectividad del uso de los conceptos y estrategias comunitarias en empresas del sector de servicios sociales y de salud.

Este estudio analiza la existencia de conceptos y estrategias comunitarias en relación de cómo una empresa en el sector de servicios sociales y salud entienden las estrategias de mercadeo y la influencia en el desempeño que pueden tener en su relación con el entorno. Para esto, se utilizo un enfoque de estudio de caso seleccionando un caso representativo con una empresa dentro del sector. Se definieron proposiciones y protocolos. Varias fuentes de evidencia fueron utilizadas como documentos, reportes de desempeño financiero y otra información de diferentes sectores relacionados; los mismos fueron analizados en el marco de la evidencia lógica. Se concluye que la empresa en el sector de servicios sociales y salud no utilizan conceptos ni estrategias comunitarias y que se podrían beneficiar del uso apropiado de estrategias comunitarias en su relación con la comunidad.

La importancia estratégica de los Altos del Golán en el conflicto Sirio-israelí y su incidencia en la comunidad Drusa Siria (1967-1981)

El presente estudio de caso es un análisis sobre el conflicto entre Siria e Israel a partir de la disputa por los Altos del Golán, luego de la ocupación por parte de Israel al finalizar la Guerra de los Seis Días. A diferencia de la mayoría de los trabajos que se realizan sobre Medio Oriente, este trabajo busca diferenciarse de los estudios sobre el conflicto árabe-israelí, enfocándose en el conflicto sirio-israelí. Adicionalmente, se trata un tema poco común como son las implicaciones que este conflicto ha tenido sobre la comunidad drusa siria, población que quedó en medio de las disputas por los Altos del Golán. Teniendo en cuenta lo anterior, se hará un análisis a partir del Interés Nacional que motiva tanto a Siria como a Israel y a la comunidad drusa que ahí habita a seguir en la disputas por este territorio, que gracias a sus características geográficas representa un punto estratégico en la región.

El poder colombiano, los piratas del siglo XXI

El galeón español San José, que se hundió en 1708 en la bahía de Cartagena, Colombia, es la nave más pretendida en la actualidad por los cinco mil millones de dólares que alberga. Cuando el expresidente de Colombia Belisario Betancur se enteró de su valor, en 1982, se inició una fiebre de corrupción entre figuras de poder colombiano y los cazatesoros por rescatar el gran botín. En 2013 el presidente de Colombia Juan Manuel Santos sancionó la Ley 1675 con el objetivo de proteger y regular la protección al patrimonio cultural sumergido. Sin embargo, como varias fuentes lo evidencian, esto es solo la luz verde que esperaron los ambiciosos durante décadas para poder obtener beneficios personales con el patrimonio de la Nación.