Solidarity and Social Justice in Promoting Mental Health and Wellness among Impoverished People: Looking from Mercy and Liberation

This paper reflects on issues of justice and mental health from a theological approach that intends to show an ethics of social responsibility and caring ground on a new social Samaritan paradigm. It has the Brazilian context of public health as the starting point for its analysis and an example to support a theological perspective that stresses the crucial importance of a community-based approach able to integrate patient, family, ecclesial community, and society in order to shape public policies that respond to mental health demands and challenges. In addition, this paper suggests an ethics of personal, communal, and social responsibility to avoid marginalization of the mentally ill and enable them to live a healthy sociability according to their limitation and vulnerability. It urges for an ecclesial role in pastoral care for these people and public advocacy for their rights. It shows the Brazilian experience of Pastoral Healthcare in caring for the mentally ill and in advocating for their dignity and rights by its organization in three dimensions: caring – communitarian – sociopolitical

Mulching and soil tillage influence on the thermal behaviour of a Luvisol surface layer

Important energy exchanges at soil surface regulate the thermal environment within top soil layer and the boundary layer above it. By this reason, the application of mulches or the modelling of micro relief by soil tillage are common practises to modify the thermal regime of a soil. The aim of this study is to compare the effect on thermal behaviour of a Luvisol resulting of soil tillage and the application of stubble mulch and, different amounts of straw mulch. For this purpose, experiments were performed from January to May 2007 in a field sowed with winter wheat. Temperatures were measured with copper-constantan (Type T) thermocouples placed over straw and over stubble, at soil surface and at 2, 4 and 8 cm depth. Temperatures above canopy were also recorded. Daily mean temperatures and thermal amplitudes in the top soil layer covered by straw mulch were smaller than those verified either by stubble mulch or with soil tillage. Daily minimum temperatures in mobilized plots or covered by stubble mulch were smaller than those verified in plots covered by straw mulch, therefore being the former treatments more susceptible to frost than the later ones. Thermal differences between the four plots decreased significantly with wheat growth. Implications of these techniques of soil temperature control for crop growth are also discussed

Mulching and soil tillage influence on the thermal behaviour of a Luvisol surfacel layer

Important energy exchanges at soil surface regulate the thermal environment within top soil layer and the boundary layer above it. By this reason, the application of mulches or the modelling of micro relief by soil tillage are common practises to modify the thermal regime of a soil. The aim of this study is to compare the effect on thermal behaviour of a Luvisol resulting of soil tillage and the application of stubble mulch and, different amounts of straw mulch. For this purpose, experiments were performed from January to May 2007 in a field sowed with winter wheat. Temperatures were measured with copper-constantan (Type T) thermocouples placed over straw and over stubble, at soil surface and at 2, 4 and 8 cm depth. Temperatures above canopy were also recorded. Daily mean temperatures and temperature amplitudes in the top soil layer covered by straw mulch were smaller than those verified either by stubble mulch or with soil tillage. Daily minimum temperatures in mobilized plots or covered by stubble mulch were smaller than those verified in plots covered by straw mulch, therefore being the former treatments more susceptible to frost than the later ones. Thermal differences between the four plots decreased significantly with wheat growth. Implications of these techniques of soil temperature control for crop growth are also discussed

Avaliação do conhecimento sobre aleitamento materno entre os alunos do último período dos cursos da área da saúde na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Curso de Medicina. Departamento de Pediatria

\u3cem\u3eLaudato si’: \u3c/em\u3eIntegral Ecology and Preferential Option for the Poor

This essay examines Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ from a Latin American perspective and its reception in this part of the world, especially in Brazil. It focuses on two aspects of Laudato si’: its dialogical approach, and the connection it makes between ecological issues and poverty. These two aspects allow us to understand Francis’s proposal of integral ecology and how the preferential option for the poor becomes central to his perspective. In addition, this essay explains how Latin American theology and pastoral experience are present in Pope Francis’s thought

Simone Weil’s Radical Ontology of Rootedness: Natural and Supernatural Justices

This paper argues that Simone Weil developed an anthropology of the human condition that is a radical ontology of the human spirit rooted in reality. Weil begins her account from the real, but this real is not only the historical or social reality. It is also what is true about the human person as a created being in connection with the transcendent reality. She believes that affliction reveals the human condition and provides an openness to transcendence in which the individual finds the meaning of the human operation of spirit. Therefore, Weil’s radical ontology is based on a philosophy of the human being as an agent rooted in the world. In order to be rooted, a human being needs decreation (the creation of a new human) and incarnation (cross and love in the world). In her radical ontology derived from attention to the real, Weil argues for an active incarnation in social reality that recognizes others, especially the unfortunates, for the purpose of empowering them and promoting their dignity. Her radical ontology incarnates the human in the world between necessity and good, that is, between the natural and the supernatural

From Vatican II to Amoris Laetitia: The Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics Division and A Way of Ecclesial Interconnection

This paper navigates the development of ethical issues during Vatican II and the impulse to develop a new moral theology just after the Council. This paper argues, on one hand, that Gaudium et Spes develops a new moral theology based on the imperative of conscience mediated by faith in issues of social ethics. On the other hand, the old moral orientation was preserved on sexual ethics. After the council, these two moral faces have led magisterial teaching to two different paths that can be seen chronologically in approaches used for issues of social and sexual ethics. Vatican II encouraged a new moral theology, visible in social ethics in the years immediately following the Council. But the same spirit was not embraced by the Magisterium on issues of sexuality until the publication of Amoris Laetitia with its ecclesiology of pastoral discernment

The Leftist Political Parties in Light of Simone Weil\u27s Criticism: The Workers\u27 Party Case

Given the socio-political context of Latin American countries and their leftist and center-leftist parties that had governed some countries since the beginning of the 2000’s, this essay will present Simone Weil’s anthropology of a rooted people towards social justice guided by a spirituality of supernatural justice. This anthropology supports her criticism of political parties that this essay will use to examine the Brazilian context and its Workers’ Party that gov­erned the country for over thirteen years and ended its tenure after a process of impeachment. Although Simone Weil seems to be pessimistic as to whether multiparty or monoparty political systems are able to promote and maintain a social order able to lead people to find their rootedness, she develops a critical anthropology that allows us to understand when a political party abandons its commitment to develop social policies for the poor and working class. Conse­quently, the political party assumes an agenda of maintaining power, no matter the means that must be used to achieve this goal

Relief and sea proximity effects on crop reference evapotranspiration in the irrigation área of Roxo

O conhecimento da evapotranspiração de referência (ET0) é essencial para um adequado planeamento da rega. O seu cálculo requer dados climáticos não raras vezes insuficientes em quantidade ou com cobertura inadequada nas áreas sob estudo. O sistema de informação geográfico SAGA disponibiliza um conjunto de algoritmos que foram usados no cálculo da ET0 (a partir da fórmula de Hargreaves aplicada a um modelo digital do terreno com células de 25x25 m), no Perímetro de Rega do Roxo (8250 ha), distribuído pelos concelhos de Aljustrel, Ferreira do Alentejo e Santiago do Cacém. As estações meteorológicas da Barragem do Roxo (a leste do perímetro) e de Alvalade do Sado (a oeste) foram usadas como referência. As diferenças entre as ET0 mensais obtidas no perí- metro atingiram apenas 3 mm numa parte considerável do ano, mas foram superiores a 6 mm em Dezembro, reflectindo,em qualquer caso, as pequenas variações da topografia e do relevo, influentes factores climáticos no Alentejo. A duplicação de valores de ET0 decorrente do uso de duas estações meteorológicas revelou a influência da proximidade do mar na distribuição da ET0. O “factor oásis” resultante das superfícies aquáticas presentes no perímetro de rega não foi considerado, pelo que os resultados obtidos deverão ser corrigidos através de alterações nos algoritmos que permitam tê-lo em conta