Different levels of policy change: A comparison between the public discussion on social security in Sweden and in Finland

The deep economic recession that hit Sweden and Finland at the beginning of the 90s, and the fall in public revenues and rapidly growing public debts that followed on it, triggered a development of cutbacks and restructuring measures which has resulted in a scientific debate over what this has meant for these countries’ systems of social policy, traditionally resting on the Nordic welfare state paradigm. In this connection, questions of to what extent changes made can be ascribed mainly to the economic constraints posed by the recession at all, or rather, to other more long-term societal trends or phenomena, including globalisation, European integration and/or ideational or ideological shifts among influential (elite) groups, have often been touched upon. Applying an ideas-centred approach, this paper attempts to contribute to the knowledge on the reasoning of influential elite societal groups in social policy issues before, during and after the 90’s recession, by empirically analysing their statements on social security made in the press. A distinction is made between three different levels of proposed policy changes, reaching from minor alterations of single programs to changes of the policy paradigm. Results show that the 1990s did not only mean the emergence of suggestions for minor cutbacks in and alterations of prevailing programmes. The share of suggestions implying de facto a (further) departure from the basic features of the social security system also showed that the model was under continuous pressure throughout the 90s. However, many of the changes suggested were not justified by any clear references to a policy paradigm in either country (or not justified at all). Instead, references to “purely” structural justifications did become more common over time. In this respect, as regards social security, our results cannot confirm the fairly popular notion among many researchers of a clearly ideological attack on the welfare state. However, it remains uncertain whether and to what extent the increased proportion of references to “structural realities” in the 90s should be interpreted as an indication of a change in the idea of what the welfare state is and what the goals behind it are. Results further show that the patterns of the discussion in the two countries studied bore a remarkable resemblance at a general level, whereas there are indications of differences in the driving forces behind suggestions for similar reforms in these two countries.

Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual acts of terrorism. For this reason, most definitions of terrorism include the threat of violent political acts against civilians. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated how actual and mass-mediated threat messages by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted states. This paper fills the gap providing evidence that who conveys such messages matters and that mass-mediated threat messages by al Qaeda leaders and announced alerts and threat assessments by U.S. administration officials had a significant impact on the American public’s threat perceptions in the post-9/11 years.

Runaway and Throwaway Youth: Time for Policy Changes and Public Responsibility

The traditional American dream of owning a home, obtaining a college education, and working at a good, paying job is only that, a dream, for scores of homeless youth in America today. There is a growing street population of young people who have been thrown out of their homes by their caretakers or their families, and who face life-threatening situations each day. For these youth, the furthest thing in their lives is reaching the so-called “American Dream;” and their most immediate need is survival, simply living out the day in front of them. They have few options that lead to a decent and safe living environment. Their age, lack of work experience, and absence of a high school diploma make it most difficult to find a job. As a result, they turn to other means for survival; runaways and throwaways are most vulnerable to falling prey to the sex trade, selling drugs, or being lured into human trafficking, and some steal or panhandle. Street youth end up spending their nights in bus stations or finding a room in an abandoned building or an empty stairwell to sleep. Attempting to identify a specific number of homeless youth is difficult at best, but what is even more perplexing is our continued inability to effectively protect our children. We are left with a basic question framed by the fundamental tenets of justice: what is a community’s responsibility to its youth who, for whatever reason, end up living on the streets or in unsafe, abusive environments? The purpose of this paper is to briefly outline the characteristics of homeless youth, in particular differentiating between throwaways and runaways; explore the current federal response to homeless youth; and finally, address the nagging question that swirls around all children: can we aggressively aspire to be a community where every child is healthy and safe, and able to realize his or her fullest potential?

Realizing public announcements by justifications

Modal public announcement logics study how beliefs change after public announcements. However, these logics cannot express the reason for a new belief. Justification logics fill this gap since they can formally represent evidence and justifications for an agent's belief. We present OPAL(K) and JPAL(K) , two alternative justification counterparts of Gerbrandy–Groeneveld's public announcement logic PAL(K) . We show that PAL(K) is the forgetful projection of both OPAL(K) and JPAL(K) . We also establish that JPAL(K) partially realizes PAL(K) . The question whether a similar result holds for OPAL(K) is still open.

Hand in hand: public endorsement of climate change mitigation and adaptation

This research investigated how an individual’s endorsements of mitigation and adaptation relate to each other, and how well each of these can be accounted for by relevant social psychological factors. Based on survey data from two European convenience samples (N = 616 / 309) we found that public endorsements of mitigation and adaptation are strongly associated: Someone who is willing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) is also willing to prepare for climate change impacts (adaptation). Moreover, people endorsed the two response strategies for similar reasons: People who believe that climate change is real and dangerous, who have positive attitudes about protecting the environment and the climate, and who perceive climate change as a risk, are willing to respond to climate change. Furthermore, distinguishing between (spatially) proximal and distant risk perceptions suggested that the idea of portraying climate change as a proximal (i.e., local) threat might indeed be effective in promoting personal actions. However, to gain endorsement of broader societal initiatives such as policy support, it seems advisable to turn to the distant risks of climate change. The notion that “localising” climate change might not be the panacea for engaging people in this domain is discussed in regard to previous theory and research.

The SanaViz: Human Centered Geovisualization to facilitate visual exploration of Public Health data

These three manuscripts are presented as a PhD dissertation for the study of using GeoVis application to evaluate telehealth programs. The primary reason of this research was to understand how the GeoVis applications can be designed and developed using combined approaches of HC approach and cognitive fit theory and in terms utilized to evaluate telehealth program in Brazil. First manuscript The first manuscript in this dissertation presented a background about the use of GeoVisualization to facilitate visual exploration of public health data. The manuscript covered the existing challenges that were associated with an adoption of existing GeoVis applications. The manuscript combines the principles of Human Centered approach and Cognitive Fit Theory and a framework using a combination of these approaches is developed that lays the foundation of this research. The framework is then utilized to propose the design, development and evaluation of “the SanaViz” to evaluate telehealth data in Brazil, as a proof of concept. Second manuscript The second manuscript is a methods paper that describes the approaches that can be employed to design and develop “the SanaViz” based on the proposed framework. By defining the various elements of the HC approach and CFT, a mixed methods approach is utilized for the card sorting and sketching techniques. A representative sample of 20 study participants currently involved in the telehealth program at the NUTES telehealth center at UFPE, Recife, Brazil was enrolled. The findings of this manuscript helped us understand the needs of the diverse group of telehealth users, the tasks that they perform and helped us determine the essential features that might be necessary to be included in the proposed GeoVis application “the SanaViz”. Third manuscript The third manuscript involved mix- methods approach to compare the effectiveness and usefulness of the HC GeoVis application “the SanaViz” against a conventional GeoVis application “Instant Atlas”. The same group of 20 study participants who had earlier participated during Aim 2 was enrolled and a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments was done. Effectiveness was gauged by the time that the participants took to complete the tasks using both the GeoVis applications, the ease with which they completed the tasks and the number of attempts that were taken to complete each task. Usefulness was assessed by System Usability Scale (SUS), a validated questionnaire tested in prior studies. In-depth interviews were conducted to gather opinions about both the GeoVis applications. This manuscript helped us in the demonstration of the usefulness and effectiveness of HC GeoVis applications to facilitate visual exploration of telehealth data, as a proof of concept. Together, these three manuscripts represent challenges of combining principles of Human Centered approach, Cognitive Fit Theory to design and develop GeoVis applications as a method to evaluate Telehealth data. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the usefulness and effectiveness of GeoVis to facilitate visual exploration of telehealth data. The results of the research enabled us to develop a framework for the design and development of GeoVis applications related to the areas of public health and especially telehealth. The results of our study showed that the varied users were involved with the telehealth program and the tasks that they performed. Further it enabled us to identify the components that might be essential to be included in these GeoVis applications. The results of our research answered the following questions; (a) Telehealth users vary in their level of understanding about GeoVis (b) Interaction features such as zooming, sorting, and linking and multiple views and representation features such as bar chart and choropleth maps were considered the most essential features of the GeoVis applications. (c) Comparing and sorting were two important tasks that the telehealth users would perform for exploratory data analysis. (d) A HC GeoVis prototype application is more effective and useful for exploration of telehealth data than a conventional GeoVis application. Future studies should be done to incorporate the proposed HC GeoVis framework to enable comprehensive assessment of the users and the tasks they perform to identify the features that might be necessary to be a part of the GeoVis applications. The results of this study demonstrate a novel approach to comprehensively and systematically enhance the evaluation of telehealth programs using the proposed GeoVis Framework.

Organizaciones vecinales en municipios de Mendoza : Potencialidad para generar prácticas sociales con inteligencia territorial

The idea of Territorial Intelligence emphasizes the participation of different types from actors in the decisions that concern to the local territory. Between the communitarian actors, the ocal organizations are fundamental because they have an existential knowledge of the geographic space who share the neighbors. That knowledge, is focused generally in the deficiencies of the district or of the district and it is constituted in its reason of being, like average for the defense as opposed to the authority of the local government. This so shared in common function is left lamentably to a quite traditional relation like intermediary between municipality and community annotated. A special case constitutes the cooperative calls of rural services or vicinal organizations that are in charge to administer the service of potable water, those that are generally led by people greater or small proprietors of traditional agriculture. A strong territorial identity can be observed that, as opposed to the transformations and modernization of the field, subsists exactly by that feeling of root. In the province of Mendoza, the importance of the ocal organizations was increased during the decade of the' 90 with the decentralization processes, to canalize house policies, some public works and services in the districts. From a perspective of associated management, projects of economic, cultural, environmental development would have to revitalize their function like organizations able to also agglutinate not only demands but that they promote to the local territory from other dimensions. With these motivations and the purpose of proposing strategies to induce practices of ocal work with territorial intelligence, a set of reflections that allow to compare the space distribution and the characteristics of these organizations between 90 years' and the present time, in some departments of the province of Mendoza appears. The most important result is expressed in a tipología of ocal unions, with a cartography that ties feasible territory and social actors to collaborate to generate transformations social, specially in rural areas

Organizaciones vecinales en municipios de Mendoza : Potencialidad para generar prácticas sociales con inteligencia territorial

The idea of Territorial Intelligence emphasizes the participation of different types from actors in the decisions that concern to the local territory. Between the communitarian actors, the ocal organizations are fundamental because they have an existential knowledge of the geographic space who share the neighbors. That knowledge, is focused generally in the deficiencies of the district or of the district and it is constituted in its reason of being, like average for the defense as opposed to the authority of the local government. This so shared in common function is left lamentably to a quite traditional relation like intermediary between municipality and community annotated. A special case constitutes the cooperative calls of rural services or vicinal organizations that are in charge to administer the service of potable water, those that are generally led by people greater or small proprietors of traditional agriculture. A strong territorial identity can be observed that, as opposed to the transformations and modernization of the field, subsists exactly by that feeling of root. In the province of Mendoza, the importance of the ocal organizations was increased during the decade of the' 90 with the decentralization processes, to canalize house policies, some public works and services in the districts. From a perspective of associated management, projects of economic, cultural, environmental development would have to revitalize their function like organizations able to also agglutinate not only demands but that they promote to the local territory from other dimensions. With these motivations and the purpose of proposing strategies to induce practices of ocal work with territorial intelligence, a set of reflections that allow to compare the space distribution and the characteristics of these organizations between 90 years' and the present time, in some departments of the province of Mendoza appears. The most important result is expressed in a tipología of ocal unions, with a cartography that ties feasible territory and social actors to collaborate to generate transformations social, specially in rural areas

Organizaciones vecinales en municipios de Mendoza : Potencialidad para generar prácticas sociales con inteligencia territorial

The idea of Territorial Intelligence emphasizes the participation of different types from actors in the decisions that concern to the local territory. Between the communitarian actors, the ocal organizations are fundamental because they have an existential knowledge of the geographic space who share the neighbors. That knowledge, is focused generally in the deficiencies of the district or of the district and it is constituted in its reason of being, like average for the defense as opposed to the authority of the local government. This so shared in common function is left lamentably to a quite traditional relation like intermediary between municipality and community annotated. A special case constitutes the cooperative calls of rural services or vicinal organizations that are in charge to administer the service of potable water, those that are generally led by people greater or small proprietors of traditional agriculture. A strong territorial identity can be observed that, as opposed to the transformations and modernization of the field, subsists exactly by that feeling of root. In the province of Mendoza, the importance of the ocal organizations was increased during the decade of the' 90 with the decentralization processes, to canalize house policies, some public works and services in the districts. From a perspective of associated management, projects of economic, cultural, environmental development would have to revitalize their function like organizations able to also agglutinate not only demands but that they promote to the local territory from other dimensions. With these motivations and the purpose of proposing strategies to induce practices of ocal work with territorial intelligence, a set of reflections that allow to compare the space distribution and the characteristics of these organizations between 90 years' and the present time, in some departments of the province of Mendoza appears. The most important result is expressed in a tipología of ocal unions, with a cartography that ties feasible territory and social actors to collaborate to generate transformations social, specially in rural areas

Exploiting Structured Linked Data in Enterprise Knowledge Management Systems: An Idea Management Case Study

In parallel to the effort of creating Open Linked Data for the World Wide Web there is a number of projects aimed for developing the same technologies but in the context of their usage in closed environments such as private enterprises. In the paper, we present results of research on interlinking structured data for use in Idea Management Systems - a still rare breed of knowledge management systems dedicated to innovation management. In our study, we show the process of extending an ontology that initially covers only the Idea Management System structure towards the concept of linking with distributed enterprise data and public data using Semantic Web technologies. Furthermore we point out how the established links can help to solve the key problems of contemporary Idea Management Systems

Idea exemplar de prelados delineada en la vida y virtudes del... señor D.Iuan de Ribera... arzobispo de Valencia...

Port. con orla tip

Idea de un principe politico christiano

Tít. en antep.: "Empresas políticas de Saabedra"

Idea de un principe politico christiano

Tít. en anteport. : "Empresas políticas de Saabedra"

Specimen bibliothecae hispano-maiansianae sive idea noui catalogi critici operum scriptorum hispanorum quae habet in sua bibliotheca Gregorius Maiansius ...

Contiene: Indice a dos col., p. Y-Z4, 2A2