Re-member: rehabilitation, reintegration and reconciliation of war-affected children

Reseña a cargo de uno de los co-editores,Prof. Dra. Cindy Mels.   Departamento de Psicología del Desarrollo y Educación Facultad de Psicología. Universidad Católica del Uruguay

Low impact urban design by closing the urban water cycle

Abstract Current fast urbanization and increasing quality of life result in increments on resources’ demand. Increasing resources demand implies as well increments on waste production. However, limited availability of resources such us: oil, fresh water, phosphorus, metals (Boyle et al., 2010, Gordon et al., 2006; Rockström et al., 2009) and limited earth’s productive and carrying capacity (Rees, 1999) are potential restrictions to urban growth and urban sustainability. These pressures, however, are drivers towards more efficient resource use. In a world of cities, urban systems play a key role to find solutions for these global pollution and depletion problems (Xu et al., 2010). To alleviate these pressures, it is needed to minimize demand and to shift from linear to circular metabolism, in which recycling and reusing are key activities (Girardet, 2003)

Expanding the exergy concept to the urban water cycle

The world is urbanizing fast and this increases the pressure on available resources. In a world of cities, it is therefore crucial to take a new look at the way urban systems function: where do the resources come from and where do the wastes end up? It is essential to find ways to minimize urban impacts on resource depletion and environmental impacts and also to improve cycles within the systems. Energy and water cycles are vital to support urban life. Over the last decades, important advances have been made separately in the field of integrated water management and energy efficiency in urban areas. However, for urban planning purposes a shared framework is required that allows planners to model and understand the dynamics of the broader system to achieve an integrated management of the resources. Natural energy and water cycles are modified by metabolic profiles of the cities. The metabolic profile varies with the local resource availability and the level of technological development. To cope with this complexity, the concept of Exergy, based on Thermodynamic laws, and defined as the non-used fraction of energy, has been used to understand the energy cycle in the built environment. This will lead to new approaches towards urban planning and better resources use. This paper aims to find out if the exergy concept can be expanded to the water cycle defined as the use of the non-used water(-fraction). This way the cycle can be optimized and closed at a high efficiency level. In order to achieve this, we want to study to what extend the energy and water cycles are comparable, and how they can learn from each other in order to optimize their management

Waste water as a source for secondary resources and linkage to other urban systems

Urban metabolism studies have shown that, in terms of sheer mass, water is the largest and the most vital component. Population growth and higher living standards will cause ever increasing demands for good quality municipal and industrial water, and ever increasing sewage flows within a limited area. Within this paper we will address the question whether there are better ways of meeting the various qualities and consequently reduce our water needs. The quantitative assessment of water quality and its relationships with management activities is a necessary step in efficient water resources managemen

Water en nutriënten in de Kringloop

Zonder tegenmaatregelen zullen in 2050 gebruik en verspilling van zoet water op wereldschaal minstens drie keer groter zijn dan nu. Het watertekort op de planeet beperkt dan de voedselvoorziening en brengt nog meer schade toe aan ecosystemen. Er moet sterk worden ingezet op hergebruik van water, door het sluiten van kringlopen. Hier wordt een start gegeven vanuit de Millieu- en Watertechnologie. Wie reikt de technologen de hand vanuit Landinrichting en Planning, om een geïntegreerde aanpak te helpen ontwikkelen?

The pragmatic proof: hypermedia API composition and execution

Machine clients are increasingly making use of the Web to perform tasks. While Web services traditionally mimic remote procedure calling interfaces, a new generation of so-called hypermedia APIs works through hyperlinks and forms, in a way similar to how people browse the Web. This means that existing composition techniques, which determine a procedural plan upfront, are not sufficient to consume hypermedia APIs, which need to be navigated at runtime. Clients instead need a more dynamic plan that allows them to follow hyperlinks and use forms with a preset goal. Therefore, in this paper, we show how compositions of hypermedia APIs can be created by generic Semantic Web reasoners. This is achieved through the generation of a proof based on semantic descriptions of the APIs' functionality. To pragmatically verify the applicability of compositions, we introduce the notion of pre-execution and post-execution proofs. The runtime interaction between a client and a server is guided by proofs but driven by hypermedia, allowing the client to react to the application's actual state indicated by the server's response. We describe how to generate compositions from descriptions, discuss a computer-assisted process to generate descriptions, and verify reasoner performance on various composition tasks using a benchmark suite. The experimental results lead to the conclusion that proof-based consumption of hypermedia APIs is a feasible strategy at Web scale.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Community violence in socioeconomically disadvantaged adolescents: Exposure, perceived impact, and psychological consequences

La violencia comunitaria forma parte de la vida cotidiana de cada vez más niños y jóvenes, particularmente en las grandes ciudades. La exposición a este tipo de violencia ha sido asociada con el desarrollo de varios problemas conductuales y emocionales, tales como conductas agresivas y delincuentes, ansiedad y depresión. Este estudio pretende explorar la exposición de adolescentes uruguayos en situación de vulnerabilidad socioeconómica a la violencia comunitaria y su impacto percibido, e investigar su relación con problemas internalizantes y externalizantes reportados por ellos. Se consiguió una muestra de 101 adolescentes de 13 a 18 años en la ciudad de Montevideo, pertenecientes a tres centros socioeducativos seleccionados deliberadamente y por conglomerado. Se administró el Hopkins Symptom Checklist para adolescentes, la Escala de Violencia Comunitaria y un cuestionario sociodemográfico. Se encontró que el 84,2% de la muestra había sido expuesto a la violencia comunitaria. El impacto percibido de la violencia apareció como predictor de problemas internalizantes, junto a la variable edad. Los resultados sugieren que diferentes mecanismos explican los distintos tipos de problemas psicológicos investigados. Se discuten las implicaciones para la intervención y la prevención.    Community violence increasingly forms part of the daily lives of children and youth, particularly in large cities. Exposure to this type of violence has been associated with the development of various behavioral and emotional problems, such as aggressive and delinquent behaviors, anxiety and depression. This study aims to explore the exposure of socioeconomically vulnerable Uruguayan adolescents to community violence and its perceived impact, and investigate its relationship with internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. We obtained a sample of 101 adolescents aged 13 to 18 years, residing in the city of Montevideo, attending to 3 socio-educational centers purposefully selected and clustered. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist for adolescents, a scale for community violence and a sociodemographic questionnaire were administered. We found that 84.2% of our sample had been exposed to community violence. The perceived impact of exposure appeared as a predictor of psychological problems, together with the variable age. The results suggest that several mechanisms explain the different kinds of psychological problems investigated. Implications for intervention and prevention were discussed.   &nbsp

Beyond academics : dropout prevention summer school programs in the transition to secondary education

Educational transitions, for example from primary to secondary school, have been associated with school drop-outs, particularly for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. As a response, some educational systems have implemented summer programs, although with mixed results. Yet, these evaluations mostly assess programs' quantitative impact on academic outcomes. This article therefore aims at an in-depth exploration of the benefits and challenges of a Uruguayan summer school program for preventing dropout in the transition to secondary school. Results underpin summer peer interactions, teacher-student relations and extra-curricular activities shape positive pre-entry expectations of at-risk students, which secondary schools cannot always fulfill