ABSTRACT
Participatory research involves working "with" rather than "on" communities. This chapter provides a case study to provide illustration of how effective partnerships can improve health outcomes within community settings. The partnership described in this chapter was developed between the Pasifika community living across Sydney and a university-based research team. The primary aim of this partnership was to work collaboratively on strategies to prevent diabetes and its harms through churches. This partnership was also available to help expedite COVID-19 awareness through this at-risk community, as well as other health initiatives. The chapter illustrates how participatory research frameworks guided the development and maintenance of the relationship with the community throughout the research program and beyond. In particular, the chapter focuses on the church setting and how this came to be identified as being the best setting to reach the Sydney Pasifika community. It also describes the initial steps in the relationship building with key community leaders and the planning of a church-based program to reduce the impact of diabetes in Pasifika communities, guided by a Pasifika community reference group. Last, the chapter explains how a long-term relationship has been maintained with the community to deliver an effective program together, and how further opportunities have been established for the research team to support the Pasifika community outside of the primary research program. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
In spite of the significant number of studies focused on the 1755 earthquake and tsunami, there are still many unknowns regarding this event in Lisbon, Portugal. Thus, in this research the authors compiled historical documents, including some that had never been analyzed, complemented with a field survey and tsunami numerical modeling at the historical civil parish of Santo Estevão, Lisbon. It was possible to identify 13 buildings, including three religious buildings and five palaces. Furthermore, the new data showed that contradicting the general idea, the earthquake caused significant damage to the selected territory because the number of households decreased by 52%. The number of residents decreased to about 51%, and in 1756, 1041 residents were still living in 297 temporary shelters. There were more than 44 dead and 1122 residents were unaccounted for. The fire did not hit the area, and the tsunami numerical model results were validated by the historical accounts and cartography, which indicate that the coastal area of the studied area was not significantly inundated by the tsunami. The consultation of historical documents that had never been analyzed by contemporary researchers provides a breakthrough in the knowledge of the event since it allowed a very detailed analysis of the disaster impact.
ABSTRACT
The study presents fundamental theoretical and methodological information on individual sacral tourism as a suitable type of tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual (virtual) tourism on the example of the Koscelisko locality in Radoľa municipality (northwestern part of Slovakia) in the area of the extinct medieval sacral landscape, thanks to modern technologies, represents a relatively modern segment of the alternative - modern types of tourism. In the first step, a bibliometric method combined with content analysis of literary and archival sources was used to process the study. It was followed by a comprehensive method of historical-geographical research and field research, which generate a database of information to create a 3D model of the defunct church Koscelisko. The outputs processed in this way are available online to potential tourists via smartphones on the platform called Multimedia Guide to Geotourism (https://www.montanistika.eu).
ABSTRACT
This study intends to define communication science, specifically two-way communication performed by the church through pastors when worship is held online using the digital platforms YouTube and Facebook. Although social media platforms which offer numerous functions and alters the communication style of communicators and communicants has been widely applied in online worship service, however, from available published literature, we still have considerable of unanswered concerns regarding the adaptation of religious institutions during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Therefore, this study aims to discover answers about the question 'How does the Church as a Christian service institution implement two-way communication using the YouTube and Facebook during the Covid-19 Pandemic Period?' using a qualitative technique as well as a literature review. According to the findings of this study, there is a difference in the communication style of the Church to the congregation when they participate in online worship, particularly through digital platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Day-ahead energy forecasting systems struggle to provide accurate demand predictions due to pandemic mitigation measures. Decomposition-Residuals Deep Neural Networks (DR-DNN) are hybrid point-forecasting models that can provide more accurate electricity demand predictions than single models within the COVID-19 era. DR-DNN is a novel two-layer hybrid architecture with: a decomposition and a nonlinear layer. Based on statistical tests, decomposition applies robust signal extraction and filtering of input data into: trend, seasonal and residuals signals. Utilizing calendar information, temporal signals are added: sinusoidal day/night cycles, weekend/weekday, etc. The nonlinear layer learns unknown complex patterns from all those signals, with the usage of well-established deep neural networks. DR-DNN outperformed baselines and state-of-the-art deep neural networks on next-day electricity forecasts within the COVID-19 era (from September 2020 to February 2021), both with fixed and Bayesian optimized hyperparameters. Additionally, model interpretability is improved, by indicating which endogenous or exogenous inputs contribute the most to specific hour-ahead forecasts. Residual signals are very important on the first hour ahead, whereas seasonal patterns on the 24th. Some calendar features also ranked high: whether it is day or night, weekend or weekday and the hour of the day. Temperature was the most important exogenous factor. Author