Personal values and political activism: A cross-national study

Using data from 28 countries in four continents, the present research addresses the question of how basic values may account for political activism. Study 1 (N = 35,116) analyses data from representative samples in 20 countries that responded to the 21-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-21) in the European Social Survey. Study 2 (N = 7,773) analyses data from adult samples in six of the same countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Poland, and United Kingdom) and eight other countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, and United States) that completed the full 40-item PVQ. Across both studies, political activism relates positively to self-transcendence and openness to change values, especially to universalism and autonomy of thought, a subtype of self-direction. Political activism relates negatively to conservation values, especially to conformity and personal security. National differences in the strength of the associations between individual values and political activism are linked to level of democratization.

Transit System Security Program planning guide. Final report.

Federal Transit Administration, Washington, D.C.

Two-factor data security protection mechanism for cloud storage system

In this paper, we propose a two-factor data security protection mechanism with factor revocability for cloud storage system. Our system allows a sender to send an encrypted message to a receiver through a cloud storage server. The sender only needs to know the identity of the receiver but no other information (such as its public key or its certificate). The receiver needs to possess two things in order to decrypt the ciphertext. The first thing is his/her secret key stored in the computer. The second thing is a unique personal security device which connects to the computer. It is impossible to decrypt the ciphertext without either piece. More importantly, once the security device is stolen or lost, this device is revoked. It cannot be used to decrypt any ciphertext. This can be done by the cloud server which will immediately execute some algorithms to change the existing ciphertext to be un-decryptable by this device. This process is completely transparent to the sender. Furthermore, the cloud server cannot decrypt any ciphertext at any time. The security and efficiency analysis show that our system is not only secure but also practical.

Integrating Poverty and Gender into Health Programmes : a Source Book for Health Professionals : Module on Curricular Integration

Over the past two to three decades, our understanding of poverty has broadened from a narrow focus on income and consumption to a multidimensional notion of education, health, social and political 1 participation, personal security and freedom and environmental quality. Thus, it encompasses not just low income, but lack of access to services, resources and skills; vulnerability; insecurity; and voicelessness and powerlessness. Multidimensional poverty is a determinant of health risks, health seeking behaviour, health care access and health outcomes. As analysis of health outcomes becomes more refined, it is increasingly apparent that the impressive gains in health experienced over recent decades are unevenly distributed. Aggregate indicators, whether at the global, regional or national level, often tend to mask striking variations in health outcomes between men and women, rich and poor, both across and within countries...

COMP1205 2012-13 Student Presentations: Slot 1

Slides on presentations on the following topics: 1.1 Virtuality 1.2 New Business Models 1.3 Privacy and Personal Security see http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk/10709/ for detailed briefs

Obstacle avoidance routing scheme through optimal sink movement for home monitoring and mobile robotic consumer devices

In recent years, ZigBee has been proven to be an excellent solution to create scalable and flexible home automation networks. In a home automation network, consumer devices typically collect data from a home monitoring environment and then transmit the data to an end user through multi-hop communication without the need for any human intervention. However, due to the presence of typical obstacles in a home environment, error-free reception may not be possible, particularly for power constrained devices. A mobile sink based data transmission scheme can be one solution but obstacles create significant complexities for the sink movement path determination process. Therefore, an obstacle avoidance data routing scheme is of vital importance to the design of an efficient home automation system. This paper presents a mobile sink based obstacle avoidance routing scheme for a home monitoring system. The mobile sink collects data by traversing through the obstacle avoidance path. Through ZigBee based hardware implementation and verification, the proposed scheme successfully transmits data through the obstacle avoidance path to improve network performance in terms of life span, energy consumption and reliability. The application of this work can be applied to a wide range of intelligent pervasive consumer products and services including robotic vacuum cleaners and personal security robots1.

Ecosystems and human well-being

■ Human well-being has several key components: the basic material needs for a good life, freedom and choice, health, good social relations, and personal security. Well-being exists on a continuum with poverty, which has been defined as"pronounced deprivation in well-being."
■ How well-being and ill-being, or poverty, are expressed and experienced is context- and situation-dependent, reflecting local social and personal factors such as geography, ecology, age, gender,and culture.These concepts are complex and value-laden.
■ Ecosystems are essential for human well-being through their provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. Evidence in recent decades of escalating human impacts. on ecological systems worldwide raises concerns about the consequences of ecosystem changes for human well-being.
■ Human well-being can be enhanced through sustainable human interaction with ecosystems with the support of appropriate instruments, institutions, organizations, and technology. creation of these through participation and transparency may contribute to people's freedoms and choices and to increased economic, social,and ecological security.
■ Some believe that the problems from the depletion and degradation of ecological capital can be largely overcome by the substitution of physical and human capital. Others believe that there are more significant limits to such substitutions.The scope for substitutions varies by socioeconomic status.
■ We identify direct and indirect pathways between ecosystem change and human well-being,whether it be positive or negative.lndirect effects are characterized by more complex webs of causation, involving social, economic, and political threads. Threshold points exist beyond which rapid changes to human well-being can occur.
■ Indigent poorly resourced, and otherwise disadvantaged communities are generally the most vulnerable to adverse ecosystem change. Spirals, both positive and negative, can occur for any population, but the poor are more vulnerable.      
■ Functioning institutions are vital to enable equitable access to ecosystem services. lnstitutions sometimes fail or remain undeveloped because of powerful individuals or groups. Bodies that mediate the distribution of goods and services may also be appropriated for the benefit of powerful minorities.
■ For poor people, the greatest gains in well-being will occur through more equitable and secure access to ecosystem services. In the long run, the rich can contribute greatly to human well-being by reducing their substantial impacts on ecosystems and by facilitating greater access to ecosystem services by the poor.
■ We argue ecological security warrants recognition as a sixth freedom of equal weight with participative freedom, economic   facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and protective security.

Análise da viabilidade técnica e ambiental de vias cicláveis na cidade de Presidente Epitácio-SP

Pós-graduação em Engenharia Civil - FEIS

How Insecurity impacts on school attendance and school drop out among urban slum children in Nairobi

This paper discusses how perceptions of personal security can impact on school enrolment and attendance. It mainly focuses on threats to physical harm, crime, community and domestic violence. These security fears can include insecurity that children suffer from as they go to school, maybe through the use of unsafe routes; insecurity that children feel at school; and the insecurity they suffer from in their homes. Although poverty is an indicator of insecurity, this paper does not focus solely on poverty as it is well covered elsewhere in the literature. The paper relies on qualitative data collected in Korogocho and Viwandani slum areas in Nairobi, Kenya between October and November 2004. The paper analyses data from individual interviews and focus group interviews and focuses on the narrative of slum dwellers on how insecurity impacts on educational attainment. The conclusion in this paper is that insecure neighbourhoods may have a negative impact on schooling. As a result policies that address insecurity in slum neighbourhoods can also improve school attendance and performance.

Tactile warnings to promote safety in the vicinity of transit platform edges. Final report.

Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Washington, D.C.

Workshop on Methodology for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Transit Crime Reduction Measures in Automated Guideway Transit Systems. Proceedings. Final report.

Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Washington, D.C.

Análisis de preferencias del paisaje urbano entre barrios compactos y barrios postindustriales en Vitoria-Gasteiz. Implicaciones en la planificación urbana

Las características urbanísticas de las expansiones urbanas postindustriales desarrolladas en las últimas décadas en numerosas ciudades españolas presentan diferencias notables con las de barrios centrales y pericentrales más compactos preexistentes. Con el fin de estudiar cómo son percibidas por los ciudadanos de Vitoria-Gasteiz dichas diferencias urbanísticas, se realizaron 250 encuestas a residentes en los barrios compactos de la ciudad sobre sus preferencias entre el paisaje urbano de su barrio y el de los barrios postindustriales. Se observó que la gran mayoría de los encuestados prefirieron su compacto barrio en aspectos de sociabilidad, accesibilidad a servicios y bienestar global. Los resultados obtenidos se contrastaron con los de un estudio previo en el que una encuesta similar fue realizada a residentes en un barrio postindustrial. Se discuten las implicaciones de los resultados para desarrollar una práctica urbanística más sostenible y que integre la percepción de los usuarios de la ciudad.

La progresividad del artículo 1° de la Declaración Americana de los Derechos y Deberes: el aporte del desarrollo de los derechos reproductivos en América Latina

 Resumen  El desarrollo progresivo del derecho a la vida, la libertad y la seguridad personal se han visto enriquecidos con la lucha y posterior positivación de los derechos reproductivos, en tanto estos han generado una ampliación de los criterios sobre los cuales se basa la obligación del Estado respecto de los derechos humanos en general, y en particular de aquellos consagrados en el primer artículo de la Declaración Americana de Derechos y Deberes. Los países de América Latina, en el marco de dicha obligación, han adoptado posturas diversas frente a los derechos reproductivos, específicamente en lo que refiere a la despenalización del aborto consolidando tres grandes tendencias regionales que muestran aciertos y desaciertos. El presente artículo que surge como reflexión personal propuesta como aporte académico en el marco de los debates jurídicos llevados a cabo durante el I Congreso Latinoamericano Jurídico sobre Derechos Reproductivos, tiene como objetivo realizar una mirada a dichas tendencias con el fin de dar un panorama general de la situación de América Latina y su deuda frente a los derechos reproductivos y de esta manera pensar propuestas más holísticas para alcanzar la realización de dichos derechos, y consecuentemente seguir promoviendo progresivamente el desarrollo del derecho a la vida, la libertad y la seguridad personal.Palabras clave: derechos reproductivos, vida, libertad personal, progresividad.AbstractThe progressive development of the right to life, liberty and personal security has been enriched by the struggle for and subsequent onset of reproductive rights, in as much as they have widened the State’s obligations towards the respect of human rights and in particular those enumerated in the first article of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties. Latin American countries, within these requirements, have taken diverse stances towards reproductive rights, specifically with regards to the decriminalization of abortion, which can be reduced into three major trends representing successes as well as errors. This article comes as a personal reflection, and proposed as an academic contribution, in the context of legal debates held during the First Latin American Congress on Reproductive Rights Law. It is aimed at taking a look at these trends in order to give an overview on the situation in Latin America and its debt to reproductive rights, and, in this way, to ponder about more holistic proposals to achieve their fulfillment, hence progressively promoting the development of the right to life, to liberty and to personal security. Keywords: Reproductive rights, life, personal liberty, progressiveness.

Preventative detention and the right of personal liberty and security under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966

Preventive detention enables a person to be deprived of liberty, by executive determination, for the purposes of safeguarding national security or public order without that person being charged or brought to trial. This paper examines Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 to assess whether preventive detention is prohibited by the phrase 'arbitrary arrest and detention '. To analyse this Article, this paper uses a textual and structural analysis of the Article, as well as reference to the travaux preparatoires and case law of the Human Rights Committee. This paper argues that preventive detention is not explicitly prohibited by Article 9(1) ofthe International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966. If preventive detention is 'arbitrary', within the wide interpretation of that term as argued in this paper, it will be a permissible deprivation of personal liberty under Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966. Preventive detention will, however, always be considered 'arbitrary' if sajeguards for those arrested and detained are not complied with, in particular the right to judicial review of the lawfulness of detention.