Nutritient flow scenarios for sustainable smallholder faming systems in southwestern Burkino Faso : food security and better livelihoods for rural dryland communities

The report presents a study on nutrient flows of agricultural livelihood systems dominated by smallholder farms in South-western Burkina Faso. The material flow analysis of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium provides a detailed picture of current nutrient flows within, in to, and out of smallholder farms. Such a picture allows quantifying material potentials for sustainable intensification, that is, increasing the ratio of crop yield to mineral fertilizer inputs. Finally, in the pursuit of indicators for sustainable intensification, we propose combining indicators derived from material flow analysis with indicators of socio-economic nature to move from material potential assessments to sustainability assessments. The combination is informed by the criticality concept, a concept which denotes how important a specific material resource is to an anthropogenic system. Based on an existing criticality determination methodology for metals, we sketch the criticality indicator set for the case of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and smallholder farms. Further research should include increasing temporal boundaries to capture cycles longer than a year, the applied temporal boundary in this study. A multi-scale study including villages and landscapes could provide additional insights on the role of water bodies or future .industrial activities in nutrient cycling. In turn, the multi-scale MFAs would provide the necessary indicator values to assess nutrient criticality not only at the smallholder farm level, but also at the village and landscape level. Finally, the material flows could be further characterized with respect to gender, cost/benefits, etc

The use of learning management platforms in school context - a national study

This report results from a national study carried out under the Project “Educational application of learning management platforms”, supported and funded by the Computers, Networks, and Internet in Schools department of the Portuguese Ministry of Education- General Directorate for Innovation and Educational Development. This report has been developed by the ICT Competence Centre of the Faculty of Sciences- University of Lisbon, during the school year 2007/2008

From RSSE to BotSE: Potentials and Challenges Revisited after 15 Years

Both recommender systems and bots should proactively and smartly answer the questions of software developers or other project stakeholders to assist them in performing their tasks more efficiently. This paper reflects on the achievements from the more mature area of Recommendation Systems in Software Engineering (RSSE) as well as the rising area of Bots in Software Engineering (BotSE). We discuss the similarities and differences, briefly review current state of the art, and highlight three particular areas, in which the full potential is yet to be tapped: a more socio-technical context awareness, assisting knowledge sharing in addition to knowledge access, as well as covering repetitive or stimulative scenarios related to requirements and user-developer interaction

Assessment of a urban sustainability and life quality index for elderly

The research here presented originates from some of the ongoing challenges of our society: the demographic changes and the high share of population living in urban areas. The aim of the research is the definition of an index of sustainability and quality of life for elderly at suburban scale, not only able to outline aspects related to the local territorial context but also to represent the neighbourhood level. This would provide significant added value to existing indicators that represent the quality of life for much larger areas as cities, regions and nations. Indeed, it is universally recognised that the quality of life varies quite considerably depending on whether you live in different neighbourhoods or urban areas. The index proposed with the research is elaborated on the base of objective and subjective indicators integrated with the judgment of experts, in order to give an accurate and truthful weight to each indicator. Moreover, it has been elaborated for microscale analysis, dividing urban areas into cells, in order to highlight more in detail the real needs of each specific zone. As a result, the elaborated index would be an available tool to be provided to the local public administration to facilitate and optimise the urban planning and management, prioritizing interventions on the base of the sustainability principles and subjective needs of the population, in particular of elderly

Facilitating Mobile Music Sharing and Social Interaction with Push!Music

Push!Music is a novel mobile music listening and sharing system, where users automatically receive songs that have autonomously recommended themselves from nearby players depending on similar listening behaviour and music history. Push!Music also enables users to wirelessly send songs between each other as personal recommendations. We conducted a two-week preliminary user study of Push!Music, where a group of five friends used the application in their everyday life. We learned for example that the shared music in Push!Music became a start for social interaction and that received songs in general were highly appreciated and could be looked upon as ‘treats’