Urban Gardening: Cultivating More Than Just Produce

Report: iv, 15 pp.; ill., digital fileThe two sustainable development goals of high-density development and urban gardening have conflicted with each other in recent decades. When land is available, particularly in the inner-city, a choice must often be made between using it for housing or other development and using it for community gardens. When viewed merely in economic terms, community gardens appear to have little value compared to residential development. When viewed in terms of educational, economic, social, health and ecological benefits, the multi-faceted, linked values of urban gardening become evident. Th is paper explores these benefits, the conflict between development and urban gardening, the validity of each argument and, finally, how the conflict can be resolved while still achieving more sustainable development.Institute of Urban Studie

Civil Society, Good Governance and the News Media: A case study of civil society inclusion in Winnipeg Free Press coverage of Lake Winnipeg nutrient loading

Governance and participatory democracy theory suggest that strong policy can stem from the inclusion of all societal voices in discussion of options, and that the public must have a strong base of information in order to participate fully in democracy. The news media can be an important vehicle for these voices and a central source of information. However, academic literature has recorded that “elite” sources, such as government, dominate news coverage to the disadvantage of “non-elite” sources, such as civil society groups and citizens, a situation that results in imbalanced information in the news. This thesis examines patterns of civil society inclusion in Winnipeg Free Press coverage of Lake Winnipeg water quality, and discusses the implications of findings for good governance. Three methods of inquiry are used: 1) a literature review, 2) a quantitative content analysis of newspaper articles published in the Winnipeg Free Press from August 1991 through December 2008, and 3) interviews with civil society members with an interest in Lake Winnipeg water quality. Content analysis findings indicate that civil society sources generally received less coverage than “elite” sources, were used less frequently, were given lower prominence within articles, had fewer chances to “define” coverage and were less often used in “hard” news compared to opinion sections. Interview findings challenge the dominant view within media literature that journalists are fully responsible for “elite” source dominance due to journalist bias in source selection, the “beat system” of journalism that focuses on governmental institutions, decisions made by editors and corporate or political preferences of news entities. While journalism practices are undoubtedly a factor, this study finds that there are also shortcomings within civil society organizations and the framework within which they operate that limit their engagement with the media. Four key factors are identified. Registered charities are often hesitant to speak with the media due to real and perceived legal restraints on their communications activities under Canada’s Income Tax Act. Many organizations are apprehensive about voicing concerns in the media for fear of losing funding. Few organizations have communications staff, or even staff members trained in media outreach, resulting in a passive approach to communications. And few organizations have the capacity to deal with media requests for information within journalism deadlines. In addition, the interview data indicate that those organizations actively pursuing media coverage are focusing attention on smaller newspapers, alternative media and self-published pieces, which suggests that the mainstream news media are perhaps of less importance to such organizations than in the past. Alternatively, it is possible that organizations are finding access to the mainstream media effectively cut off. Finally, recommendations are made to civil society organizations on how they can increase their prominence in the news and conquer their reluctance to deal with the media, and to the media on how to improve attention to civil society voices. For the latter, ideas are drawn from public journalism, a journalism movement which emphasizes citizens as sources

Data for hand training using Przypominajka v2 device

This is data containing validation and training datasets (5-fold cross validation) for replicating the results presented in the paper "Sensing System for Plegic or Paretic Hands Self-Training Motivation" for using deep learning models for categorizing data (anomaly, category) while healthy participants were using Przypominajka devic

Intuitive User Interfaces for Mobile Manipulation Tasks

This article describes interactive methods that can ease difficult manipulation tasks in Search & Rescue operations. We discuss the requirements that are necessary for a telemanipulation system to be successfully used. These include not just correctness of generated motion but also ergonomy, mobility and interactivity of the operator’s interface. We show that grippers with one or more degrees of freedom can be intuitively controlled by different interface mechanisms, supported by 3D vision systems. Tests are performed both in the simulation environment and with real grippers. A practical pipeline for a direct control and learning the system is also presented