Ephemeral and Ludic Strategies of Remembering in the Streets: A Springboard for Public Memory in Chile

This article examines a profound turn in the commemoration and representations of the dictatorial past in Chile (1973–1990), where young people who did not experience firsthand the authoritarian order are publicly creating fleeting images, practices, and objects to remember the military dictatorship. These are urban ephemeral and ludic mnemonic assemblages (Freeman, Nienass, and Daniell 2015) that connect past and present events and demand new ways of talking, acting, and thinking about the past, thereby appropriating the public space. The participants in these actions stress the original, carnivalesque, and public dimensions of their practices, challenging the official politics of memory that has focused on the recognition of victims within the walls of museums or memorials. The following question guides this article: How do new public, ludic, and ephemeral strategies interact with and potentially change official ways of narrating the past? How do they create the space for political participation in postconflict societies? Drawing upon a qualitative and multimethod study that combines 60 in‐depth interviews, participant observations, and archival work, I maintain that, although this blossoming of the Chilean public memory has opened up new territories for activating memory, it has a transient temporality and, consequently, may have transitory political potential.     

The conception of fashion products for children: reflections on safety parameters

The purpose of this study is to reflect on safety requirements for children's clothing, based on the standardization proposed by the ABNT (Technical Standardization Brazilian Association). Bibliographic research and case studies were considered on writing this work. We also discuss the importance of adding other safety requirements to the current standardization, as well as the increasing of the actual age range specified by the ABNT, following the children's clothing safety standardizations in Portugal and the United States, also stated here.     

Work ability among nursing personnel in public hospitals and health centers in Campinas--Brazil

Nursing personnel is essential in hospital, health centers and enterprises and is the large work force in health system. A cross-sectional study was conducted in a large city in two public hospitals and five health centre with the objective of to evaluate the work ability and health aspects of nursing staff. The sample was composed by 570 workers. The Work Ability Index - WAI and a questionnaire with socio-demographic, health and life style data was applied. The majority of workers was women (83%), married (50.4%), and was working in night shift work (65.6%); 61.4% was auxiliary nursing, 22.3% was registered nurses (RN). The average age was 38.9 years (SD 7.8) and the Body Mass Index mean was 25.8 (SD 5.3). Only 17.2% referred to practice at least 150 minutes of physical exercise five times per week or more. 26.8% had a second job. The work ability mean was 39.3 (SD 5.3) points. Age had a negative correlation with WAI (p=0.0052). Public hospital and health centre workers had poor work ability score when compared with workers from another branches. Public policies related to workplace health promotion need to be implemented in public hospital and health centre to improve the work ability.     

Exercise and health in frail elderly people: a review of randomized controlled trials

Frailty is a physiological syndrome that increases the risk of poor health. Although some research has been conducted to study the benefits of physical exercise in frail elderly populations, different operational definitions of frailty have been used, and this makes the studies difficult to compare. The present review was aimed at examining the influence of exercise on health in frail older adults. Studies using randomized controlled trials that administered an exercise program to a frail elderly population and that had an operational definition of frailty were selected from publications between January 2000 and October 2008. Information about the study population, frailty criteria, exercise program, principles of exercise training, randomization procedures, main and secondary outcome measures, study follow-up, and control group characteristics was taken from these studies, and the results from a final sample of 28 articles are discussed. Exercise training seems to be a safe and effective tool for promoting and maintaining optimal health levels in a wide variety of vulnerable older adults. However, the lack of studies on a well-defined frail older adult sample with selection procedures based on current knowledge in this field does not allow us, at the present time, to conclude that exercise influences health in this population. Further research is needed to confirm the benefits of exercise on health in frail older adults. The study population must be selected based on current knowledge in the area of frailty, and the design of the exercise program must be based on principles of training.     

The Internetization of International Migration

The Internet has revolutionized our economies, societies, and everyday lives. Many social phenomena are no longer the same as they were in the pre‐Internet era: they have been “Internetized.” We define the Internetization of international migration, and we investigate it by exploring the links between the Internet and migration outcomes all along the migration path, from migration intentions to actual migration. Our analyses leverage a number of sources, both at the micro‐ and the macro‐level, including the Gallup World Poll, the Arab Barometer, data from the International Telecommunication Union, the Italian population register, and unique register data from a migrant reception center in Southern Italy. We also distinguish between economic migrants—those who leave their country of origin with the aim of seeking better economic opportunities elsewhere—and political migrants—those who are forced to leave their countries of origin for political or conflict‐related reasons. Our findings point to a consistently positive relationship between the diffusion of the Internet, migration intentions, and migration behaviors, supporting the idea that the Internet is not necessarily a driving force of migration per se, but rather an enabling “supportive agent.” These associations are particularly relevant for economic migrants, at least for migration intentions. Further analyses underscore the importance of the Internet in providing a key informational channel which helps to define clearer migration trajectories.     

Inter‐organizational Cooperation and Environmental Change: Moderating Effects between Flexibility and Innovation Performance

The paper investigates the moderator effect of inter‐organizational cooperation in the relationship between workplace flexibility and innovation performance. This research question is important because innovation is dependent on the strategic integration of technological knowledge, requiring organizations to acquire new capabilities rapidly or to ensure the presence of knowledge that may be beyond existing internal capabilities. Inter‐organizational cooperation constitutes a relevant mechanism for a firm to increase its knowledge base concerning new products and processes. High‐cooperation firms may have more opportunities to take advantage of flexibility for innovation performance because it facilitates the access and dispersion of knowledge within the firm. We test the research hypotheses in a sample of manufacturing and service firms. The results contribute to the literature on flexibility and innovation because they demonstrate that inter‐organizational cooperation moderates the relationship between flexibility and innovation performance. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and managerial practice.     

Determinants of Unemployment Duration for Displaced Workers

ABSTRACT: In this paper we use survival analysis to estimate a reduced form model of the determinants of unemployment and unemployment registration durations. The variables considered in the analysis include personal characteristics, local demand conditions, unemployment income, and the time spent unemployed. The data set was collected both through personal interviews and Employment Service files and includes information on the individual history of a sample of displaced workers who were laid off during 1983 because of plant closings and job cuts in some industrial districts of the metropolitan area of Milan. The parametric models included in the analysis are based on the Weibull, Log-logistic and Log-normal distributions. The results do not show the existence of negative time dependence.