Search

Nas últimas décadas, a visão tradicional do projeto de drenagem vem sendo modificada por uma abordagem integrada de manejo sustentável das águas pluviais e planejamento urbano. Os sistemas de espaços livres surgem como atores de integração do ambiente, configurando oportunidades de criação de projetos multifuncionais, por exemplo, acumulando funções para soluções de drenagem, organização do crescimento urbano e união de áreas fragmentadas. O presente trabalho tem como objeto de estudo a praça Xavier de Brito, localizada no bairro Tijuca, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Após reconhecimento do seu entorno e análise das áreas mais afetadas por inundações, optou-se por formalizar um percurso ao longo do Rio Maracanã, buscando melhorar a relação entre o espaço urbano e o rio, e estabelecer a integração dos espaços livres, conectando a praça Xavier de Brito às demais praças adjacentes. Além disso, foram propostas medidas de drenagem urbana sustentável ao longo do percurso escolhido, como a utilização de pavimentos permeáveis, jardins de chuva e bacias de detenção, por exemplo. A partir de modelagem matemática, foi analisada a resposta da região às inundações com a aplicação das medidas propostas.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to analyze the impact of community service on the mental health of medical students through their perception of stress. METHODS The 10-item Perceived Stress Scale was used to measure the stress levels of 82 medical students over a 3-month period. Additional survey questions gauged students’ weekly volunteer experiences in clinical and nonclinical settings and their perceived effects on stress and quality of life. RESULTS Results found an inverse relationship between the number of clinical volunteer hours and perceived stress ( P = .0497). Nonclinical and total volunteer hours were correlated with both reduced perceived stress levels (nonclinical P = .0095, total P = .0052) and better quality of life (nonclinical P = .0301, total P = .0136). All individual perceived stress scores fell into the low or moderate stress ranges of the Perceived Stress Scale per the week-to-week analysis. CONCLUSION The preliminary results raised important research questions about the impact of volunteering on medical student perceived stress. As medical students face higher levels of stress in comparison to the general population, it is exceedingly important to determine methods to decrease their risk of compromising their mental health. This study may aid in decision-making and research in favor of or against offering community service opportunities as part of the core medical education curriculum.

Urban areas are major consumers of environmental resources and thus often place unsustainable demands on natural resources. As half of the world’s population (55%) lives in urban areas, the environmental degradation produced by cities threatens the health and quality of life of a fair share of the world’s population. For these reasons, progress towards sustainable urban development must be monitored and measured through suitable indicators. With reference to the assessment of air quality as a specific dimension of environmental quality in urban areas, existing studies have introduced various methodologies that mostly focus on objective measures (typically, exposure to outdoor air pollutants) while neglecting measures based on individual perceptions. Our goal is to contribute to filling this gap. To this end, we explore the relationship between objective and subjective measures of urban air quality in European countries. While the objective indicator is based on concentrations of PM2.5, our subjective indicator is reconstructed from individual perceptions collected through the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) sample survey. Finally, through a cluster analysis, we classify the countries into homogeneous groups based on the values of these indicators. Our analysis reveals several differences in the country rankings according to the two indicators. For one group of countries, both approaches converge, thus leading to more definitive conclusions. For other countries, the mismatch between the two indicators suggests that either approach alone is not able to capture the full picture on air quality in urban environments.