An Evaluation of the Impacts of Bolsa Família on Schooling

Conditional cash transfer programs have been proven effective when aiming to decrease poverty and increase school enrollment among poor. The Brazilian conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família is the largest program in the developing world and affect 13 million families in their everyday life. One of the long-term aims of Bolsa Família is to increase school enrollment in Brazil, which also is the focus of this thesis. With human capital theory as the foundation and with data from the Brazilian household survey PNAD2011, a regression discontinuity design is carried out in order to evaluate the impacts of Bolsa Família on school enrollment. As a complement to this analysis, semi-structured interviews with ten beneficiaries are conducted. The main result from the evaluation is that Bolsa Família does not increase school enrollment but appear to provide help for the children in poor and extremely poor families to assimilate education

Being There No Matter What: Working in Publicly Provided Homecare Services

The aim of this article is to critically explore how formal and informal work practices interplay with gender in the shaping of homecare service’s work environments. An ethnomethodological view on doing gender is applied in combination with theories about challenges in relational work.The material is drawn from two projects represented by (i) a cooperative inquiry about Swedish homecare service’s work environments, with homecare service workers and first-line mangers (seven included in this article) and (ii) six semi-structured interviews with employees from a national work environment authority. The analytic procedure was qualitatively based using an abductive approach when looking for cohesive themes. Gendered organizational shortcomings that interplayed with the shaping of the work environments were lack of clear work descriptions, boundaries for work, resources for embodied work, and limited knowledge about risk assessment in relational work

Planering av grönstruktur

Grönstrukturens utrymme i svenska städers planering har inte alltid varit självklar, vilket den idag kan anses vara i varierad utsträckning. I takt med en ökad urbanisering ställs växande krav på stadsplaneringen och städers mål för utnyttjande av mark och vatten. Att se tillbaka på planeringshistoria ger en inblick i de trender och förändringar som städer genomgått och hur de har påverkat planeringen av grönstrukturen. Syftet för uppsatsen var att undersöka hur stadsplaneringen, med avseende på grönstrukturen, förändrats sedan 1940-talet till idag i Norrköping och Västerås. Målet var även att studera hur grönstruktur har definierats, vilka ställningstaganden som ligger till grund för dagens grönstruktur samt om planeringen i Norrköping och Västerås skiljer sig åt eller är likvärdig. Metoden för uppsatsen har varit planstudier. Huvudlitteratur har varit de plandokument som legat till grund för vidare planering och beslut i de båda städerna har studerats utifrån aspekterna bebyggelseutveckling, trafikstruktur och grönstruktur. Resultatet är en sammanställning av grönstrukturens utveckling i de båda städerna där framförallt förändring i utformning och funktion framhävs. Till skillnad mot bebyggelsestruktur och trafikstruktur som är prioriterade och självklara i alla studerade plandokument, har grönstrukturens utrymme och aktualitet varierat mycket. Definitionen av vad som klassas som en del av grönstrukturen samt hur den används har förändrats. Från att de har fyllt en mängd funktioner såsom friluftsliv och rekreation, till gröna lungor som mötesplatser samt för att tillgodose biologisk mångfald. Att planera långsiktigt handlar enligt oss om att lära sig av tidigare beslut och ställningstaganden. Genom att lära av tidigare erfarenheter kan hållbara planeringsverktyg för städers grönstrukturer utvecklas.The space of green structure in Swedish urban planning has not always been obvious, as it today can be considered to a varied extent. Increased urbanization leads to growing demands on urban planning and the cities visions for the use of land and water. Looking back at the planning history provides an insight into the trends and changes that cities have undergone and how they have influenced the planning of green structures. The aim of the paper was to examine how urban planning, with emphasize on the green structure, has changed since the 1940s until today in Norrköping and Västerås. How has green structure been defined and which positions have formed the basis of today's green structure? Does the planning of green structure in Norrköping and Västerås divide from each other or not? The method of the paper has been to study city plans. Planning documents that has formed the basis for further planning and decision-making in the two cities has been studied from the viewpoint of block structure, traffic structure and green structure. The result is a compilation of the green structures development in the two cities, where the particular change in design and function is emphasized. Unlike the built environment and traffic structure that is prioritized and obvious in all studied plan documents, the green structures space and timeliness have varied widely. The definition of what is classified as green structure and how it is used has changed from a variety of features, such as outdoor recreation to green spaces as meeting places and to secure biodiversity. For us, long-term planning is about to looking at historical standpoints in order to develop future sustainable planning

Från Eden till Damavdelningen : studier om kvinnan i litteraturen : en vänbok till Christina Sjöblad

Under den vida rubriken Från Eden till Damavdelningen har uppsatser om kvinnan som författare, som huvudkaraktär, som objekt, som samhällshot, som mor och maka, som ung flicka, som offer, som bohem, som resenär och som naturskildrare samlats. Variationerna av uppsatsernas innehåll är stora. Som titeln antyder sträcker sig ämnena tidsmässigt från den paradisiska till den moderna tiden. Med boken vill författarna hylla Christina Sjöblad som genom åren inspirerat många studenter och doktorander inom framför allt den feministiska litteraturvetenskapliga forskningsinriktningen

Diet in 1-year-old farm and control children

BACKGROUND: A farming environment confers strong protection against allergy development. We have previously shown that farming mothers consume more full-fat dairy than control mothers, who instead consume more low-fat dairy, margarine, and oils; margarine and oil intake was associated with increased risk of allergy development in their children. OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to investigate the differences in diet between children in farming and control families at 1 year of age, to investigate the relation between the diets of the mothers and their children, and to relate the children's diet to allergy development. DESIGN: The diet of 1-year-old children from dairy farming families (n=28) and from control families in the same rural area (n=37) was assessed by 24-h dietary recalls, followed by 24-h food diaries. Allergy was diagnosed by pediatricians at 3 years of age using strict predefined criteria. RESULTS: Farm children had a higher intake of farm milk, whole cream, cholesterol, saturated fat, and fat in total and tended to eat more butter, while controls consumed more carbohydrates and poultry and tended to eat more margarine. Farm children also had higher intakes of homemade porridge/gruel, oily fish, and iodine. The intake of butter and whole milk in children and mothers correlated significantly in farm families but not in controls. A weak negative association was found between seafood intake and allergy development, while allergy was positively associated with the intake of pork as well as zinc in the control group; these intakes also correlated with each other. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with mothers in farming families, the children consumed more full-fat dairy and saturated fat than did controls, but this could not be linked to the low risk of allergy in the farming group. Seafood intake might protect against allergy development, in accordance with earlier findings

Роль кафедры акушерства и гинекологии ФПК и ПК в подготовке врачей-интернов

ИНТЕРНАТУРА И РЕЗИДЕНТУРААКУШЕРСТВОГИНЕКОЛОГИЯМЕДИЦИНСКОЙ ПРАКТИКИ МЕНЕДЖМЕНТОБРАЗОВАНИЕ МЕДИЦИНСКО

Global Air Quality and COVID-19 Pandemic : Do We Breathe Cleaner Air?

The global spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has challenged most countries worldwide. It was quickly recognized that reduced activities (lockdowns) during the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic produced major changes in air quality. Our objective was to assess the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns on groundlevel PM2.5, NO2, and O-3 concentrations on a global scale. We obtained data from 34 countries, 141 cities, and 458 air monitoring stations on 5 continents (few data from Africa). On a global average basis, a 34.0% reduction in NO2 concentration and a 15.0% reduction in PM2.5 were estimated during the strict lockdown period (until April 30, 2020). Global average O-3 concentration increased by 86.0% during this same period. Individual country and continent-wise comparisons have been made between lockdown and business-as-usual periods. Universally, NO2 was the pollutant most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. These effects were likely because its emissions were from sources that were typically restricted (i.e., surface traffic and non-essential industries) by the lockdowns and its short lifetime in the atmosphere. Our results indicate that lockdown measures and resulting reduced emissions reduced exposure to most harmful pollutants and could provide global-scale health benefits. However, the increased O-3 may have substantially reduced those benefits and more detailed health assessments are required to accurately quantify the health gains. At the same, these restrictions were obtained at substantial economic costs and with other health issues (depression, suicide, spousal abuse, drug overdoses, etc.). Thus, any similar reductions in air pollution would need to be obtained without these extensive economic and other consequences produced by the imposed activity reductions.Peer reviewe

Child studies multiple – collaborative play for thinking through theories and methods

This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions