Redes para la recepción y asistencia a los exiliados argentinos y uruguayos en las posdictaduras

En el marco de los procesos de democratización política del Cono Sur, los exiliados políticos argentinos y uruguayos iniciaron gradualmente los retornos hacia sus países de origen. Como parte de ese proceso, y sobre todo entre 1983 y 1986, en Argentina y en Uruguay comenzaron a germinar distintas organizaciones sociales que se preocuparon por responder a esos regresos y ayudar a los exiliados en su reinserción en el país. Este artículo indaga en las respuestas de ambas sociedades en dos claves vinculadas. En primer lugar, recupera en el proceso de formulación de ciertas medidas y programas para la reinserción de retornados un fuerte intercambio de conocimientos, inquietudes y modos de trabajo entre las organizaciones sociales argentinas y las uruguayas. Así, este trabajo rompe con las comparaciones en sentido estricto para detenerse a explorar la formación de una red de trabajo asistencial entre distintos actores de ambas orillas. En segundo lugar, este trabajo se detiene a reflexionar sobre una tensión que se desprende de la red: a pesar de las mutuas influencias, los programas de asistencia tuvieron diferencias importantes entre ambos casos. En consecuencia, este artículo ofrece algunas interpretaciones posibles sobre estas diferencias que se insertan en el marco de las "transiciones democráticas" de cada país y, especialmente, de los lugares que el tema del retorno tuvo en cada agenda posdictadura

Redes para la recepción y asistencia a los exiliados argentinos y uruguayos en las posdictaduras

En el marco de los procesos de democratización política del Cono Sur, los exiliados políticos argentinos y uruguayos iniciaron gradualmente los retornos hacia sus países de origen. Como parte de ese proceso, y sobre todo entre 1983 y 1986, en Argentina y en Uruguay comenzaron a germinar distintas organizaciones sociales que se preocuparon por responder a esos regresos y ayudar a los exiliados en su reinserción en el país. Este artículo indaga en las respuestas de ambas sociedades en dos claves vinculadas. En primer lugar, recupera en el proceso de formulación de ciertas medidas y programas para la reinserción de retornados un fuerte intercambio de conocimientos, inquietudes y modos de trabajo entre las organizaciones sociales argentinas y las uruguayas. Así, este trabajo rompe con las comparaciones en sentido estricto para detenerse a explorar la formación de una red de trabajo asistencial entre distintos actores de ambas orillas. En segundo lugar, este trabajo se detiene a reflexionar sobre una tensión que se desprende de la red: a pesar de las mutuas influencias, los programas de asistencia tuvieron diferencias importantes entre ambos casos. En consecuencia, este artículo ofrece algunas interpretaciones posibles sobre estas diferencias que se insertan en el marco de las "transiciones democráticas" de cada país y, especialmente, de los lugares que el tema del retorno tuvo en cada agenda posdictadura

Redes para la recepción y asistencia a los exiliados argentinos y uruguayos en las posdictaduras

En el marco de los procesos de democratización política del Cono Sur, los exiliados políticos argentinos y uruguayos iniciaron gradualmente los retornos hacia sus países de origen. Como parte de ese proceso, y sobre todo entre 1983 y 1986, en Argentina y en Uruguay comenzaron a germinar distintas organizaciones sociales que se preocuparon por responder a esos regresos y ayudar a los exiliados en su reinserción en el país. Este artículo indaga en las respuestas de ambas sociedades en dos claves vinculadas. En primer lugar, recupera en el proceso de formulación de ciertas medidas y programas para la reinserción de retornados un fuerte intercambio de conocimientos, inquietudes y modos de trabajo entre las organizaciones sociales argentinas y las uruguayas. Así, este trabajo rompe con las comparaciones en sentido estricto para detenerse a explorar la formación de una red de trabajo asistencial entre distintos actores de ambas orillas. En segundo lugar, este trabajo se detiene a reflexionar sobre una tensión que se desprende de la red: a pesar de las mutuas influencias, los programas de asistencia tuvieron diferencias importantes entre ambos casos. En consecuencia, este artículo ofrece algunas interpretaciones posibles sobre estas diferencias que se insertan en el marco de las "transiciones democráticas" de cada país y, especialmente, de los lugares que el tema del retorno tuvo en cada agenda posdictadura

Redes para la recepción y asistencia a los exiliados argentinos y uruguayos en las posdictaduras

En el marco de los procesos de democratización política del Cono Sur, los exiliados políticos argentinos y uruguayos iniciaron gradualmente los retornos hacia sus países de origen. Como parte de ese proceso, y sobre todo entre 1983 y 1986, en Argentina y en Uruguay comenzaron a germinar distintas organizaciones sociales que se preocuparon por responder a esos regresos y ayudar a los exiliados en su reinserción en el país. Este artículo indaga en las respuestas de ambas sociedades en dos claves vinculadas. En primer lugar, recupera en el proceso de formulación de ciertas medidas y programas para la reinserción de retornados un fuerte intercambio de conocimientos, inquietudes y modos de trabajo entre las organizaciones sociales argentinas y las uruguayas. Así, este trabajo rompe con las comparaciones en sentido estricto para detenerse a explorar la formación de una red de trabajo asistencial entre distintos actores de ambas orillas. En segundo lugar, este trabajo se detiene a reflexionar sobre una tensión que se desprende de la red: a pesar de las mutuas influencias, los programas de asistencia tuvieron diferencias importantes entre ambos casos. En consecuencia, este artículo ofrece algunas interpretaciones posibles sobre estas diferencias que se insertan en el marco de las "transiciones democráticas" de cada país y, especialmente, de los lugares que el tema del retorno tuvo en cada agenda posdictadura

Serviços-escola de psicologia do Rio Grande do Norte: formação profissional e política pública de saúde em debate

The Psychology University Services is stablished normatively as an indispensable equipment to the recognition of the graduation courses of psychologists by the Brazilian Education Ministery. The Public Healthcare Policies (Universal Health System/SUS) constitutes itself as a input field of the professional category, but shows huge challenges in the formation of these professionals. The objective of this work is to analyse the functioning of the Psychology University Services (SEP) and the Superior Educational Institutions from Natal, understood as important formation devices to attend the actual demands of the psychologist's work on SUS. For this, it sought a) characterize the psychological practices developed in the SEP; b) relate the National Curricular Lines of Direction of the psychology courses to the skills and competences developed in the SEP to the performance on the public healthcare policies; c) mapping ways of including the SEP in the network designed by the healthcare policy. Interviews were performed with 13 academic supervisors, 8 field supervisors and technicians of superior level (TNC), along with 9 managers, being for of the Psychology University Services and 5 of the graduation programs. Questionnaires were also applied to 57 interns and 24 graduates. Besides that, two conversation circles were performed with the faculty and technician members from two of the Educational Institutions that were participating of the research, as well as a workshop with students and psychologists, promoted by the CRP 17. We observed that most part of the faculty members and managers know the DCN and comprehend that the formation is in process of change in what concerns to the extension of the formation to the performance of the psychologists in various contexts. However, most part of the TNC don't know about them. Moreover, the results point to the predominance of the assisting model based on the traditional clinic psychology, although the articulation with the public healthcare and social assistance networks can already be timidly visualized. Different modalities of practices in theses Psychology University Services were also detected, such as conversation groups, thematic workshops, organizational consultancies, team meetings with the interns and TNS in a daily basis, matriciament in mental health, therapeutic monitoring, among others. Yet, the SEP in Rio Grande do Norte are still isolated from the other courses that perform in the healthcare area and also from the services that compose the public healthcare and public policies.

Project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on project performance

The research on project learning has recognised the significance of knowledge transfer in project based organisations (PBOs). Effective knowledge transfer across projects avoids reinventions, enhances knowledge creation and saves lots of time that is crucial in project environment. In order to facilitate knowledge transfer, many PBOs have invested lots of financial and human resources to implement IT-based knowledge repository. However, some empirical studies found that employees would rather turn for knowledge to colleagues despite their ready access to IT-based knowledge repository. Therefore, it is apparent that social networks play a pivotal role in the knowledge transfer across projects. Some scholars attempt to explore the effect of network structure on knowledge transfer and performance, however, focused only on egocentric networks and the groups’ internal social networks. It has been found that the project’s external social network is also critical, in that the team members can not handle critical situations and accomplish the projects on time without the assistance and knowledge from external sources. To date, the influence of the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks on project performance, and the interrelation between both networks are barely known. In order to obtain such knowledge, this paper explores the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks, and their effect on the project team’s performance. Data is gathered through survey questionnaire distributed online to respondents. Collected data is analysed applying social network analysis (SNA) tools and SPSS. The theoretical contribution of this paper is the knowledge of the interrelation between the structure of a project team’s internal and external social networks and their influence on the project team’s performance. The practical contribution lies in the guideline to be proposed for constructing the structure of project team’s internal and external social networks.

Working together-apart : exploring the relationships between formal and informal care networks for people dying at home

Introduction Informal caring networks contribute significantly to end-of-life (EOL) care in the community. However, to ensure that these networks are sustainable, and unpaid carers are not exploited, primary carers need permission and practical assistance to gather networks together and negotiate the help they need. Our aim in this study was to develop an understanding of how formal and informal carers work together when care is being provided in a dying person's home. We were particularly interested in formal providers’ perceptions and knowledge of informal networks of care and in identifying barriers to the networks working together. Methods Qualitative methods, informed by an interpretive approach, were used. In February-July 2012, 10 focus groups were conducted in urban, regional, and rural Australia comprising 88 participants. Findings Our findings show that formal providers are aware, and supportive, of the vital role informal networks play in the care of the dying at home. A number of barriers to formal and informal networks working together more effectively were identified. In particular, we found that the Australian policy of health-promoting palliative is not substantially translating to practice. Conclusion Combinations of formal and informal caring networks are essential to support people and their primary carers. Formal service providers do little to establish, support, or maintain the informal networks although there is much goodwill and scope for them to do so. Further re-orientation towards a health-promoting palliative care and community capacity building approach is suggested.

The role of innovation intermediaries in collaborative networks of small and medium-sized enterprises

The major challenge of European Union’s agricultural industry is to ensure sustainable supply of quality food that meets the demands of a rapidly growing population, changing dietary patterns, increased competition for land use, and environmental concerns. Investments in research and innovation, which facilitate integration of external knowledge in food chain operations, are crucial to undertaking such challenges. This paper addresses how SMEs successfully innovate within collaborative networks with the assistance of innovation intermediaries. In particular, we explore the roles of innovation intermediaries in knowledge acquisition, knowledge assimilation, knowledge, transformation, and knowledge exploitation in open innovation initiatives from the wine industry through the theoretical lens of absorptive capacity. Based on two case studies from the wine industry, we identified seven key activities performed by innovation intermediaries that complement SMEs’ ability to successfully leverage external sources of knowledge for innovation purposes. These activities are articulation of knowledge needs and innovation capabilities, facilitation of social interactions, establishment of complementary links, implementation of governance structures, conflict management, enhancement of transparency, and mediation of communication. Our in-depth qualitative study of two innovation intermediaries in the wine industry has several important implications that contribute to research and practice.

Social networks and use of social supports of minority elders in East Harlem

Considerable empirical research substantiates the importance of social networks on health and well-being in later life. A study of ethnic minority elders living in two low income public housing buildings in East Harlem was undertaken to gain an understanding of the relationship between their health status and social networks. Findings demonstrate that elders with supportive housing had better psychological outcomes and used significantly more informal supports when in need. However, elders with serious health problems had poorer outcomes regardless of their level of social support. This study highlights the potential of supportive living environments to foster social integration and to optimise formal and informal networks.

Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia

My doctoral dissertation in sociology and Russian studies, Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, employs a "micro" or "grassroots" perspective on the transition. The study is a collection of articles detailing social networks in five different contexts. The first article examines Russian birthdays from a network perspective. The second takes a look at health care to see whether networks have become obsolete in a sector that is still overwhelmingly public, but increasingly being monetarised. The third article investigates neighbourhood relations. The fourth details relationships at work, particularly from the vantage point of internal migration. The fifth explores housing and the role of networks and money both in the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The study is based on qualitative social network and interview data gathered among three groups, teachers, doctors and factory workers, in St. Petersburg during 1993-2000. Methodologically it builds on a qualitative social network approach. The study adds a critical element to the discussion on networks in post-socialism. A considerable consensus exists that social networks were vital in state socialist societies and were used to bypass various difficulties caused by endemic shortages and bureaucratic rigidities, but a more debated issue has been their role in post-socialism. Some scholars have argued that the importance of networks has been dramatically reduced in the new market economy, whereas others have stressed their continuing importance. If a common denominator in both has been a focus on networks in relation to the past, a more overlooked aspect has been the question of inequality. To what extent is access to networks unequally distributed? What are the limits and consequences of networks, for those who have access, those outside networks or society at large? My study provides some evidence about inequalities. It shows that some groups are privileged over others, for instance, middle-class people in informal access to health care. Moreover, analysing the formation of networks sheds additional light on inequalities, as it highlights the importance of migration as a mechanism of inequality, for example. The five articles focus on how networks are actually used in everyday life. The article on health care, for instance, shows that personal connections are still important and popular in post-Soviet Russia, despite the growing importance of money and the emergence of "fee for service" medicine. Fifteen of twenty teachers were involved in informal medical exchange during a two-week study period, so that they used their networks to bypass the formal market mechanisms or official procedures. Medicines were obtained through personal connections because some were unavailable at local pharmacies or because these connections could provide medicines for a cheaper price or even for free. The article on neighbours shows that "mutual help" was the central feature of neighbouring, so that the exchange of goods, services and information covered almost half the contacts with neighbours reported. Neighbours did not provide merely small-scale help but were often exchange partners because they possessed important professional qualities, had access to workplace resources, or knew somebody useful. The article on the Russian work collective details workplace-related relationships in a tractor factory and shows that interaction with and assistance from one's co-workers remains important. The most interesting finding was that co-workers were even more important to those who had migrated to the city than to those who were born there, which is explained by the specifics of Soviet migration. As a result, the workplace heavily influenced or absorbed contexts for the worker migrants to establish relationships whereas many meeting-places commonly available in Western countries were largely absent or at least did not function as trusted public meeting places to initiate relationships. More results are to be found from my dissertation: Anna-Maria Salmi: Social Networks and Everyday Practices in Russia, Kikimora Publications, 2006, see www.kikimora-publications.com.

Multiuser Cognitive Relay Networks: Joint Impact of Direct and Relay Communications

In this paper, we propose a multiuser cognitive relay network, where multiple secondary sources communicate with a secondary destination through the assistance of a secondary relay in the presence of secondary direct links and multiple primary receivers. We consider the two relaying protocols of amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF), and take into account the availability of direct links from the secondary sources to the secondary destination. With this in mind, we propose an optimal solution for cognitive multiuser scheduling by selecting the optimal secondary source, which maximizes the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the secondary destination using maximal ratio combining. This is done by taking into account both the direct link and the relay link in the multiuser selection criterion. For both AF and DF relaying protocols, we first derive closed-form expressions for the outage probability and then provide the asymptotic outage probability, which determines the diversity behavior of the multiuser cognitive relay network. Finally, this paper is corroborated by representative numerical examples.

Le support de VoIP dans les réseaux maillés sans fil WiMAX en utilisant une approche de contrôle et d'assistance au niveau MAC

Les réseaux maillés sans fil (RMSF), grâce à leurs caractéristiques avantageuses, sont considérés comme une solution efficace pour le support des services de voix, vidéo et de données dans les réseaux de prochaine génération. Le standard IEEE 802.16-d a spécifié pour les RMSF, à travers son mode maillé, deux mécanismes de planifications de transmission de données; à savoir la planification centralisée et la planification distribuée. Dans ce travail, on a évalué le support de la qualité de service (QdS) du standard en se focalisant sur la planification distribuée. Les problèmes du système dans le support du trafic de voix ont été identifiés. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, on a proposé un protocole pour le support de VoIP (AVSP) en tant qu’extension au standard original pour permettre le support de QdS au VoIP. Nos résultats préliminaires de simulation montrent qu’AVSP offre une bonne amélioration au support de VoIP.

Safe Distributed Coordination of Heterogeneous Robots through Dynamic Simple Temporal Networks

Research on autonomous intelligent systems has focused on how robots can robustly carry out missions in uncertain and harsh environments with very little or no human intervention. Robotic execution languages such as RAPs, ESL, and TDL improve robustness by managing functionally redundant procedures for achieving goals. The model-based programming approach extends this by guaranteeing correctness of execution through pre-planning of non-deterministic timed threads of activities. Executing model-based programs effectively on distributed autonomous platforms requires distributing this pre-planning process. This thesis presents a distributed planner for modelbased programs whose planning and execution is distributed among agents with widely varying levels of processor power and memory resources. We make two key contributions. First, we reformulate a model-based program, which describes cooperative activities, into a hierarchical dynamic simple temporal network. This enables efficient distributed coordination of robots and supports deployment on heterogeneous robots. Second, we introduce a distributed temporal planner, called DTP, which solves hierarchical dynamic simple temporal networks with the assistance of the distributed Bellman-Ford shortest path algorithm. The implementation of DTP has been demonstrated successfully on a wide range of randomly generated examples and on a pursuer-evader challenge problem in simulation.

Uptake pathways: the potential of Bayesian belief networks to assist the management, monitoring and evaluation of development-orientated research

The effectiveness of development assistance has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years. In an era of growing economic liberalisation, research organisations are increasingly being asked to account for the use of public funds by demonstrating achievements. However, in the natural resources (NR) research field, conventional economic assessment techniques have focused on quantifying the impact achieved rather understanding the process that delivered it. As a result, they provide limited guidance for planners and researchers charged with selecting and implementing future research. In response, “pathways” or logic models have attracted increased interest in recent years as a remedy to this shortcoming. However, as commonly applied these suffer from two key limitations in their ability to incorporate risk and assess variance from plan. The paper reports the results of a case study that used a Bayesian belief network approach to address these limitations and outlines its potential value as a tool to assist the planning, monitoring and evaluation of development-orientated research.

MACHINE VISION FOR AUTOMATICVISUAL INSPECTION OF WOODENRAILWAY SLEEPERS USING UNSUPERVISED NEURAL NETWORKS

The motivation for this thesis work is the need for improving reliability of equipment and quality of service to railway passengers as well as a requirement for cost-effective and efficient condition maintenance management for rail transportation. This thesis work develops a fusion of various machine vision analysis methods to achieve high performance in automation of wooden rail track inspection.The condition monitoring in rail transport is done manually by a human operator where people rely on inference systems and assumptions to develop conclusions. The use of conditional monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to avoid the consequences of failure, before the failure occurs. Manual or automated condition monitoring of materials in fields of public transportation like railway, aerial navigation, traffic safety, etc, where safety is of prior importance needs non-destructive testing (NDT).In general, wooden railway sleeper inspection is done manually by a human operator, by moving along the rail sleeper and gathering information by visual and sound analysis for examining the presence of cracks. Human inspectors working on lines visually inspect wooden rails to judge the quality of rail sleeper. In this project work the machine vision system is developed based on the manual visual analysis system, which uses digital cameras and image processing software to perform similar manual inspections. As the manual inspection requires much effort and is expected to be error prone sometimes and also appears difficult to discriminate even for a human operator by the frequent changes in inspected material. The machine vision system developed classifies the condition of material by examining individual pixels of images, processing them and attempting to develop conclusions with the assistance of knowledge bases and features.A pattern recognition approach is developed based on the methodological knowledge from manual procedure. The pattern recognition approach for this thesis work was developed and achieved by a non destructive testing method to identify the flaws in manually done condition monitoring of sleepers.In this method, a test vehicle is designed to capture sleeper images similar to visual inspection by human operator and the raw data for pattern recognition approach is provided from the captured images of the wooden sleepers. The data from the NDT method were further processed and appropriate features were extracted.The collection of data by the NDT method is to achieve high accuracy in reliable classification results. A key idea is to use the non supervised classifier based on the features extracted from the method to discriminate the condition of wooden sleepers in to either good or bad. Self organising map is used as classifier for the wooden sleeper classification.In order to achieve greater integration, the data collected by the machine vision system was made to interface with one another by a strategy called fusion. Data fusion was looked in at two different levels namely sensor-level fusion, feature- level fusion. As the goal was to reduce the accuracy of the human error on the rail sleeper classification as good or bad the results obtained by the feature-level fusion compared to that of the results of actual classification were satisfactory.