What is the Internet doing to local community? Analysts have debated about whether the Internet is weakening community by leading people away from meaningful in-person contact; transforming community by creating new forms of community online; or enhancing community by adding a new means of connecting with existing relationships. They have been especially concerned that the globe-spanning capabi...

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of a pilot community-mobilization program on maternal and perinatal mortality and obstetric fistula in Niger. METHODS In the program, village volunteers identify and evacuate women with protracted labor, provide education, and collect data on pregnancies, births, and deaths. These data were used to calculate the reduction in maternal mortality, perinatal mortali...

OBJECTIVE To compare the performance of students selected for midwifery education by three methods: community mobilization in rural Afghanistan, a regional examination by the Institute of Health Sciences (IHS), and the National University Entrance Examination (NUEE). METHODS A retrospective survey was conducted in January 2009 on academic records of 178 midwives trained at the IHS in Herat, i...

My thesis pursues the development of a tool to empower designers and non-designers to better understand humor's function in design and to encourage the use of humor as a rhetorical device to undertake social problems. Humor research is a field that is largely based on linguistic studies, but because of its multidisciplinary stretch in the past decade has displayed a broad rhetorical influence; ...

This study explores community life on a black social network site, BlackPlanet, to see whether and how participants engage in public discussions; if these discussions center on issues considered to be critical to the black community; and if so, the extent to which participants’ online networks are used to foster some level of civic engagement. Participation analysis, content analysis, and a the...

This paper reports the results of an investigation into the life cycle model needed to develop information systems for group of people with fluid requirements. For this purpose, we developed a modified spiral model and applied to the analysis, design and implementation of a virtual community for a group of researchers and organizations that collaborated in a research project and had changing sy...

Zymomonas mobilis is a natural ethanologen with many desirable industrial biocatalyst characteristics. In this review, we will discuss work to develop Z. mobilis as a model system for biofuel production from the perspectives of substrate utilization, development for industrial robustness, potential product spectrum, strain evaluation and fermentation strategies. This review also encompasses per...

Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health is an Ontariobased community based participatory action research project devoted to developing, pilot testing, and evaluating mental health service models grounded in the concept of “cultural empowerment.” In order to stimulate knowledge mobilization efforts among partners, to clarify expectations held by members of the diverse groups particip...