'We Have the Internet in Our Hands’: Bangladeshi College Students’ Use of ICTs For Health Information

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) which enable people to access, use and promote health information through digital technology, promise important health systems innovations which can challenge gatekeepers’ control of information, through processes of disintermediation. College students, in pursuit of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information, are particularly affected by gatekeeping as strong social and cultural norms restrict their access to information and services. This paper examines mobile phone usage for obtaining health information in Mirzapur, Bangladesh. It contrasts college students’ usage with that of the general population, asks whether students are using digital technologies for health information in innovative ways, and examines how gender affects this

Social navigation

In this chapter we present one of the pioneer approaches in supporting users in navigating the complex information spaces, social navigation support. Social navigation support is inspired by natural tendencies of individuals to follow traces of each other in exploring the world, especially when dealing with uncertainties. In this chapter, we cover details on various approaches in implementing social navigation support in the information space as we also connect the concept to supporting theories. The first part of this chapter reviews related theories and introduces the design space of social navigation support through a series of example applications. The second part of the chapter discusses the common challenges in design and implementation of social navigation support, demonstrates how these challenges have been addressed, and reviews more recent direction of social navigation support. Furthermore, as social navigation support has been an inspirational approach to various other social information access approaches we discuss how social navigation support can be integrated with those approaches. We conclude with a review of evaluation methods for social navigation support and remarks about its current state

Climate analysis as a basis for a sustainable water management at the Lusatian Neisse

Current and future climate conditions and their impact on water balance, ecosystems, air quality and bio and agro-climatology were investigated in the region of the Lusatian Neisse within the two EU -projects – NEYMO and KLAPS. This work focuses on the climate analysis of the region at the German-Polish border as a preliminary step for a hydrological analysis of current and future conditions. Observed climatological data were processed and analysed using the indicators air temperature, precipitation, sunshine duration, potential evapotranspiration and the climatic water balance (CWB). The latter defines the difference between precipitation and potential evapotranspiration and is a measure for the climatological water availability in the region. Observations were used to statistically downscale data from Global Circulation Models under various scenarios regarding greenhouse gas emissions (A1B, RCP 2.6, RCP 8.5) and applying the WETTREG-method for regionalization. In total, 50 climate projections for periods up until the end of the 21st century were analysed, with the application of the mentioned indicators. For the period 1971-2010, increasing trends of temperature, precipitation, sunshine duration and potential evapotranspiration were found. This leads to a reduced CWB in the summer half-year (SHY), which could be partly compensated by an increase in the winter half-year (WHY). Trends of temperature, sunshine duration and potential evapotranspiration remain positive for the far future (2071-2100), but precipitation decreases. These climatic conditions aggravate water availability, especially in the SHY. Impacts on water management are very probable and were therefore further investigated in the NEY MO project that applied hydrological models