Official Networks Research Articles

Democratizing air: A co-created citizen science approach to indoor air quality monitoring

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is crucial for public health, yet many remain unaware of indoor pollutants. Although Citizen Science has enhanced outdoor air quality understanding, its application to IAQ remains underexplored. This study introduces a new co-creation methodology that addresses key limitations in existing IAQ monitoring practices by integrating value-sensitive design principles and a ‘facilitated emergence’ paradigm. Through three co-creation workshops, we engaged multiple stakeholders in every stage, from problem definition to data interpretation. We employed adaptive facilitation strategies to effectively balance power dynamics among stakeholders, ensuring inclusive decision-making and mitigating potential biases. Our 30-day data collection campaign provided real-time measurements of Particulate Matter (PM) concentrations. Analysis revealed several locations with Indoor/Outdoor (I/O) PM2.5 ratios close to or above 1, uncovering hidden IAQ complexities and emphasizing the need for localized monitoring. We showed how citizen-generated data can improve spatial resolution, detecting local variations missed by official networks. Feedback from the co-creation workshops demonstrated shifts in participants’ perceptions regarding IAQ, accountability, and their role in environmental decision-making, moving from passive awareness to active engagement. Our findings demonstrate how this value-sensitive and community-driven bottom-up approach can enhance air quality assessment, inform targeted IAQ management strategies, and empower citizens in environmental health decisions.

Towards integration of LOTOS-EUROS high resolution simulations and heterogenous low-cost sensor observations

Official air quality monitoring networks are often scarce and unevenly spatially distributed. In recent years, the use of low-cost sensors next to official networks is increasing. These additional networks provide measurements of high spatial and temporal resolution and potentially reveal patterns and emissions sources that are hard to detect with conventional methods. In this work, the data assimilation method implemented around the LOTOS-EUROS chemistry transport model is employed to assimilate measurements from heterogenous low-cost sensor networks around the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands in November 2021. Three data assimilation experiments are performed and evaluated against a free run of the model. In the first one, measurements from the low-cost Innovatief Lucht Meetsysteem (ILM) network are exploited. In the second one, the citizen science network SamenMeten is used and in the third one, a combination of both datasets is applied. In the assimilation experiments at a domain around the city of Eindhoven, it is shown to be essential to use boundary conditions from an assimilation on a larger domain to account for the variability in pollution that originates from sources outside the domain of interest. Such an improvement in boundary conditions counts for a decrease in the initial free run negative biases of 45% for PM10 and 23% for PM2.5 in the city of Eindhoven. The assimilation of low-cost measurements in the region after the correction of the boundary conditions decreases the absolute PM10 biases in the 3 independent official stations over the city of Eindhoven further from −4.4 μg m−3 to about 0.8 μg m−3 averaged over the three experiments. Also, the correlation coefficient is increased from 0.75 to 0.89 and the normalized root mean square is decreased from 0.47 to 0.25. We conclude that the improved boundary conditions and assimilation of observations from dense low-cost networks are able to improve the LOTOS-EUROS simulations at urban scale.

Sub-hourly resolution quality control of rain-gauge data significantly improves regional sub-daily return level estimates.

This research demonstrates how the use of high-resolution rain-gauge data for quality control (QC) significantly changes extreme rainfall estimates, with implications in scientific, meteorological and engineering applications. Current open QC algorithms only consider data at hourly or daily accumulations. Here we present the first open QC algorithm utilising sub-hourly rain-gauge data from official networks at a national, multi-decade scale. We use data from 1,301 rain-gauges in Great Britain (GB) to develop a threshold-based methodology for sub-hourly QC that can be used to complement existing, freely available hourly QC methods by developing an algorithm for sub-hourly QC that uses monthly thresholds for 1 hr, 15 min and 1 min rainfall totals. We then evaluated the effect of combining these QC procedures on rainfall distributions using graphical and statistical methods, with an emphasis on extreme value analysis. We demonstrate that the additional information in sub-hourly rainfall allows our new QC to remove spuriously large values undetected by existing methods which generate errors in extreme rainfall estimates. This results in statistically significant differences between extreme rainfall estimates for 15 min and 1 hr accumulations, with smaller differences found for 6 and 24 hr totals. We also find that extremes in the distributions of 15 min and 1 hr rainfall accumulations tend to grow more rapidly with return period than for longer accumulation periods. We observe similarities between the shape parameter populations for 15 min and 1 hr rainfall accumulations, suggesting that hourly records may be used to improve shape parameter estimates for extreme sub-hourly rainfall in GB. Sub-hourly QC moderates unrealistically large return level estimates for short-duration rainfall, with beneficial impacts on data required for the design of urban drainage infrastructure and the validation of high-resolution climate models.

Role of laparoscopy in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia: LATAM experience

Objectives: research what is the actual role of the laparoscopic approach in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia, in daily practice of Latin American urologists. Materials and methods: an online survey was conducted during the period June - September 202, send to all members of the Confederación Americana de Urología, through its official networks. Results: laparoscopic adenomectomy is not the preferred approach for the treatment of prostates larger than 100g (4% vs 76% for open adenomectomy), most respondents never performed this technique (76%), however, urologists recognize that the laparoscopic approach has benefits over the open approach (64%). Conclusions: although the laparoscopic approach has shown clear benefits in terms of surgical morbidity compared to the open approach, for most Latin American urologists, the technique has not yet been implemented in routine daily practice, being an unknown technique for most of respondents.

Meteonetwork: An Open Crowdsourced Weather Data System

Citizen science has shown great potential for bringing large groups of people closer to science, thanks in part to cooperation with universities and research centers. In this context, amateur weather networks played a major role in the last few decades thanks to a constant growth in technology. An example is given by the Meteonetwork association, born in 2002, and mainly composed by atmospheric science enthusiasts, who built up in time a huge weather station network in Italy. In recent years, they have enlarged their horizons over Europe, displaying real time observations and daily maps coming from both personal weather stations and official networks. This study described how Meteonetwork has set up an open crowdsourced weather data system, how data are validated, and which products are generated and freely accessible for scientists and stakeholders for their own purposes. Two concrete use cases were described as examples: the Weatherness Project, which selects a subnet of Meteonetwork data for biometeorological and health purposes and the data assimilation process implemented to improve the initial conditions into the WRF meteorological model for daily weather forecasts.

Analysis of Sponsorships in Clubs Participating in NBB 2020-2021

The lack of data on sports sponsorship and on the segments that invest the most in this practice, combined with the scarce academic literature on the subject, the lack of professionalism of a large portion of sports managers in Brazil and the lack of knowledge of sponsors about the benefits of sports sponsorship motivated the carrying out of this study, which aimed to analyze the number of sponsors of clubs participating in the NBB 2020-2021, identify the area of activity of their sponsors and which areas were predominant. The research had an exploratory and descriptive nature and used a documental procedure and quantitative analysis. Sponsor data was collected from the official websites and social networks of the 16 clubs participating in the NBB 2020- 2021 season. The data showed a total of 163 sponsoring/supporting companies in total, that is, each team, on average, had 10.2 sponsoring companies. Two diametrically opposite ways emerged for clubs to relate to their sponsors. On the one hand, some teams show a significantly higher number than the average, in the case of Franca (27 companies), Bauru (23), Campo Mourão (21) and Unifacisa (16), and on the opposite side, some teams showed a good number of commercial partners. below average, such as: Corinthians (no company), Pinheiros (2), Paulistano and Minas Tênis (3). These results show heterogeneity in the strategy of clubs participating in the NBB 2020-2021 to relate to this form of revenue. While most basketball clubs have pulverized their partnerships, data show that socio-sports clubs and football clubs are more restrictive when carrying out their commercial partnerships related to sponsorship. The results can be useful for club directors to understand which segments have the greatest potential for interest in the sport, such as the retail trade, health, financial services and education sectors. The results may also indicate to some economic segments that basketball teams are potential possibilities for publicizing the company, given the existence of a significant number of companies in their area among the current sponsors, that is, companies belonging to the areas mentioned above should be on the lookout for opportunities to connect with sports sponsorship through basketball, as your competitors appeared more frequently in this survey.

Reduction in Non-Revenue Water in Water Distribution System

Water is the world’s most critical natural resource. Rapid population growth and economic development have led to higher demand for water worldwide whereas on the supply side, natural sources of water have become less reliable. This demand-supply imbalance in the water sector calls for more innovative water management practices and suitable technologies. Utilities cannot afford the water loss because of poor operation and maintenance of water distribution infrastructure facilities. The terms theft, smuggling and leakages are most common sources of generation of Non- revenue water (NRW). Newspaper articles around the world, particularly in countries experiencing intense drought and water shortages, are highlighting water theft as a growing problem. Analysis of various city development plans in India shows that water leakages, theft and unauthorized water connections gives rise to a high level of unaccounted water. A recent study on Water Governance (2013) reveals that unaccounted water in Delhi amounts to around 50% of the total water pumped into the system, whereas it is 35-40% in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The World Bank in its report, ‘The Challenge of Reducing Non-Revenue Water in Developing Countries’, reveals that 48 million cubic meters of drinkable water escape daily from official supply networks, which is enough to provide water for 200 million people. The same report on India had clearly highlighted that 40-60% of water in Mumbai is lost through illegal diversion. In This paper we have made an attempt to analyze the current methods, their drawbacks and we have provided solution in the form of software-based approach (using Bentley Watergems) which is more relevant as compared to the current field method.

Curating and Visualizing Dense Networks of Monsoon Precipitation Data: Integrating Computer Science Into Forward Looking Climate Services Development

Monsoon precipitation demonstrates a wide range of spatial and temporal variability in the U.S. Southwest. A variety of precipitation monitoring networks, including official networks, municipal flood control districts, and citizen science observers, can help improve our characterization and understanding of the monsoon. The data management challenges of integrating these diverse data sources can be formidable. Computer science and data management techniques provide a pathway for the design of forward looking climate services, especially those developed in collaboration with experts in this field. In this paper we present such a collaboration, integrating natural, social and computer science expertise. We document how we identified data networks and their sources and the computer science and data management workflow we employed to integrate and curate these data. We also present the web based data visualization tool and API that we developed as part of this process (monsoon.environment.arizona.edu). We use case study examples from the Tucson, AZ region to demonstrate the visualizer. We also discuss how this type of collaboration could be extended to existing or potential stakeholder collaborations, as we facilitate access to a curated set of data that gives an increasingly granular perspective on monsoon precipitation variability. We also discuss what this collaborative approach integrating natural, social and computer science perspectives can add to the evolution of climate services.

THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNICATIONS: a case study on vaccination against covid-19 in Brazil

This study aimed to examine the role of music in public service communications directed at health vaccination COVID-19 in Brazil in the perception of advertising receptors. Content analysis of cultural texts from official social networks and manifestations of society and semi-structured interviews with residents of each region of the country were carried out. Music was highlighted as an effective tool for advertising public health services, influencing Brazilians of different ages, facilitating the transmission of the message, fighting fear and misinformation.

Instagram as a tool for disseminating sustainable practices: an experience report

The social isolation promoted by COVID-19 impacts the routine and habits of families with a reflection on the characteristics and generation of solid waste and consumption of natural resources. This situation has been identified as an opportunity for educational institutions to promote awareness actions with their internal and external community as a contribution to reduce such effects. In order to disseminate sustainable practices related to the daily life of the pandemic and to evaluate responses, the group of teachers and students developed activities which contributed to minimize the effects of the pandemic. The ease and speed of social media was used as a tool for actions. The methodological steps were: survey of the existing contents in the official networks of the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo related to the topic of interest, the definition of the InstagramTM social network, profile creation for the Ifes Biotechnology and Sustainability Laboratory (Labiotecs), increase of followers, creation and dissemination of content and publications analysis. The work is based on the Deming Cycle methodology in order to optimize its planning and execution. Among the results, 179 followers on the profile were reached, 10 posts were shared in the feed, 4 questionnaires and 5 polls applied until 06/17/2020. The effectiveness of the work was shown through the reach of publications and public acceptance. Also, the Deming cycle proved to be adequate and capable of being replicated.

THE HISTORY OF THE COVERAGE OF INTERETHNIC RELATIONS IN THE MEDIA OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC (1990-2010)

The article highlights the current problems of the history of Kyrgyzstan in the difficult period of inter-ethnic relations in the period 1990-2010. The article is actively involved materials of domestic and foreign media. The article analyzes the technology of the impact of publications in the media on the consciousness of ethnic groups living in the territory of Kyrgyzstan and on citizens of the countries of the near and far abroad The article focuses on the events that took place in Kyrgyzstan in 1990. and 2010. Also, the article analyzes the problems and difficulties in covering events during inter-ethnic conflicts; position of official media and social networks. The article also uses as an example his own contribution to the coverage of interethnic relations in the Kyrgyz Republic. The author of the article gives a brief analysis of the author's television project "The Fifth Column", broadcast on the domestic TV channel NBT.

Foreign Population: Guidelines for Studying Migration in Thailand

This article aims to explain the migration factors of the foreign population in Thailand. The migration concepts and the approach of studying the foreign population in the present Thai society found that the migration factors consisted of the need for economic security, life, good quality of life for oneself and one's own family, marriage with a foreign spouse, leisure travel, safety in life and property, seeking business opportunities, access to property and property owners, changing lifestyle, and extending savings for investment funds. As for the guidelines for studying the foreign population, there are three frameworks to consider, which include: (1) the origin, (2) the way to the destination, and (3) the destination. The origin is the study of migration decisions, factors, and objectives. The way to the destination considers the travel process, facilitating travel according to the legal system of the origin country, and labor export policies. Finally, the destination is the study of personal and official networks, relational and contact mechanisms of the community, and lifestyle of the people in the community, including the local impact of the destination country.

The impact of social capital on the market access of coffee farmer house holds in Lam Dong province

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of social capital and other factors that affect the market access of coffee farmer households. The study synthesized theories, as well as previous studies, to provide criteria for measuring social capital of coffee farmers' households: including formal social networks, informal social networks, and trust. Besides, the study uses descriptive statistics, logistic regression, two t-average tests to analyze and assess the difference in social capital between poor and non-poor households of 235 coffee farmer households in Lam Dong Province. The results show that Agricultural Extension Associations, Association Organizations (proxy for official social networks), Agents at all levels, Colleagues - Friends (informal social networks), age, years of living in the locality, and labor have an impact on the market access of coffee farmer households. Some recommendations to improve market access of coffee farmers in the province have been proposed, based on the previous theories as well as the results of the research model The research, however, is yet to clarify the impact of social capital on each market of finance, land, labor, extension services, material, and output markets.

An Italian interdisciplinary citizen observatory for the protection and promotion of night skies on year 12 of its evolution: challenges and opportunities from a Digital Earth perspective

Citizen observatories are community-based systems that can complement official networks for environmental data collection. This study proposes the case of a Citizen Observatory on light pollution, developed in Tuscany since 2008. Starting from the collection of measurement by volunteers, the observatory is now composed by a heterogeneous array of subjects (two research institutions, two rural communities, a rock-blues band, and a professional photographer) operating from local to international level through its connection with the international scientific community. This collaboration produced several outcomes: light pollution monitoring campaigns, numerous outreach events for raising citizen awareness on light pollution and its consequences and for the promotion of dark sky areas, input to global level position papers and scientific publications, the organization of an international Symposium on promotion and protection of the night sky.

Le rôle des réseaux culturels officiels au sein de la diplomatie culturelle française à Banyumas

Since the 12th century, French culture has been important to the world because of its excellence, particularly with its influence on language, literature, philosophy and streams of thought. It represents an art of living, marked by traditional values, among which is the highly appreciated gastronomy, and a constant recognition of its haute couture. It plays a role only in French diplomacy that involves political, economic, and cultural action. This action is historically started by the Dutch colonial regime and is fundamentally reinforced today through official cultural networks. In this case, the problematic focus of their functions and their actions in the face of the Banyumas community as a new relationship that is confronted with geographical, social, and cultural conditions. Referring to French cultural diplomacy in this region, this research focuses on the qualitative descriptive method of describing and analyzing data with the objective of explaining diplomatic action through the French culture.

Impact of social capital on access to formal credits of shrimp households in the coastal districts of Ben Tre

The study was conducted in Ben Tre’s three coastal districts, namely Binh Dai, Ba Tri and Thanh Phu, with the aim to identify the structure and quality of social capital as well as its impact on the access to formal credits of 172 shrimp households. Using descriptive statistics, Logistic regression and multivariate regression, the results show that official social networks (i.e. associations and organizations), informal social networks (farming management, credit officers, family - . friends – colleagues), age, experience, number of years living in the locality and education level are determinants of the access to formal credits and credit amounts. In addition, the study also proposed a number of measures to expand the social capital and enhance the accessibility to formal credits of shrimp households.

China’s minority language translation policies (1949–present)

ABSTRACTCurrent studies on translation policy towards minority languages are largely confined to the Western context. This paper aims to investigate translation policy in modern China (1949–present) to cast a critical eye on its experiences in policy making, using examples from official regulations, existing studies, and personal networks. It is found that modern China’s translation policy during the Hanyu monolingual period (1957–1977) is characterized by monolingualism and assimilationism, whereas translation policies during the first and second multilingual phases (1949–1957 and 1978–present) are featured by multilingualism both nationally and regionally. However, China’s multilingualism emphasizes the promotion of Mandarin Chinese. It also reveals that discrepancies exist between translation management and practices. This descriptive study from a Chinese perspective will provide examples of translation policies in a cultural and linguistic context that is different from most Eurocentric studies, which helps to identify the regularities of translation policy in different contexts and contributes to the formulation of guidelines on a fair and sustainable translation policy. It is suggested that future translation policy studies should be conducted on an interdisciplinary basis, drawing upon both familiar subfields, such as translation theory and audiovisual translation studies, and other fields, such as political science, sociolinguistics, and anthropology.

Agrometeorologia operacional no estado do Paraná

O Estado do Paraná acumulou nas últimas décadas um grande volume de dados co­letados em diversas instituições. A implantação de redes oficiais de estações me­teorológicas pelo IAPAR, INMET e Instituto das Águas do Paraná possibilitou organizar registros históricos importantes para estudos de climatologia e zoneamento de risco climático. A implantação do SIMEPAR – Sistema Meteorológico do Paraná – representou um marco na disponibilização de previsões e informações meteoro­lógicas que possibilitaram orientar as atividades agrícolas com maior agilidade e precisão. Além disso, instituições do setor cooperativo como a Fundação ABC têm investido com grande competência na coleta e disseminação de informações agro­meteorológicas aos produtores. A partir desta base de dados e informações geradas tem sido possível disponibilizar produtos de grande interesse para a agricultura paranaense.

“Home Allies”: Female Networks, Tensions, and Conflicted Loyalties in India and Van Diemen’s Land, 1826–1849

Using two women and their private social networks as a case study, this article expands the scope of the well-established field of Anglophone networks by considering the role women played in forming and operating within them. The reasons for including and excluding others in and from these networks illuminate these women’s highly personalized and politicized ideas about belonging, loyalty, and affiliation to home. Ultimately, this article suggests that while they operated alongside—but outside—of male-centered official and elite networks, these women and their networks still played a role in strengthening or severing particular discourses, connections, and alliances at the local and global level and that they did so in a way that warrants further attention from scholars of the British world and beyond.

Assessing responses of cardiovascular mortality to particulate matter air pollution for pre-, during- and post-2008 Olympics periods

BackgroundThe link between particulate air pollution and cardiovascular (CVD) mortality has been investigated. However, there is little direct evidence that reduction measures which decrease particulate air pollution would lead to a reduction in CVD mortality. ObjectivesIn Beijing, China, air quality improvement strategies were developed and actions were taken before and during the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the aim of the study was to assess the effects of changes in particulate air pollution before (May 20–July 20, 2008), during (August 1–September 20, 2008) and after (October 1–December 1, 2008) the Olympics period. MethodsConcentrations of air pollution, meteorology and CVD death counts were obtained from official networks and monitoring sites located on the Peking University campus. Air pollution effects with lags of 0–4 days as well as of the 5-day average on cause-specific CVD mortality were investigated for the complete study period (May 20–December 1, 2008) using Quasi-Poisson regression models. Different gender and age subgroups were taken into account. Additionally, effect modification by air mass origin was investigated. In a second step, air pollution effects were estimated for the three specific periods by including an interaction term in the models. ResultsWe observed large concentration decreases in all measured air pollutants during the unique pollution intervention for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. For the whole period, adverse effects of particulate air pollution were observed on CVD mortality with a 1-day delay as well as for the 5-day average exposure, e.g. an 8.8% (95%CI: 2.7–15.2%) increase in CVD mortality with an interquartile range increase in ultrafine particles. The effects were more pronounced in females, the elderly and for cerebrovascular deaths, but not modified by air mass origin. The specific sub-period analysis results suggested that the risks of CVD mortality were lowest during the Olympic Games where strongest reduction measures have been applied. ConclusionsThe results indicated that the reduction of air pollution due to air quality control measures led to a decreased risk of CVD mortality in Beijing. Our findings provide new insight into efforts to reduce ambient air pollution.