Since the beginning of the early 20th century bed rugs have been interesting research objects, but only in passing researchers have paid attention to rugs woven with rags. Noone has taken a closer look upon the reasons why people have woven these rugs. What does the materials of the rag – like recycled garments and interior textiles in the form of clothing rags – have to tell about the times when these rugs were woven? Did the rag rugs have any specific function or were the materials available and therefore used? The main sources of information are 21 rag rugs from Roslagen in Uppland, with a varied amount of rags. They were woven during the latter half of 19th century, and estate inventories from Väddö- and Häverö Ship District have altogether given some answers to the primary question of this paper: in wich way can the examined bed rugs bear witness to the use and value of recycled textile materials and the view of these in the context of the community where they were manufactured and used? This research doesn´t give an answer to whether these rugs have any particular function or not. Instead these rag rugs can be looked upon as representing a general development of the society towards an increasing amount of textiles surplus material. This being due an increasing consumption of factory-made clothing and textiles, manufactured in factories, as well as the paper mills development from producing paper made of cellulose rather than textile waste. To this we can add a principle lingering on from the 19th century, of domestic production and a thrift of resources. This resulted in an obvious recycling of discarded textiles. The home weaving of interior textiles was still strong by the end of the 19th century, and in Rosagen there was also a long tradition of weaving and of using rugs in the beds. At the same time there was, in the coastal regions of Roslagen, a local need for warming covers in boats and boat houses. This demand was related to the shooting of seals and other hunting in the coastal areas, as well as in the fishing- and maritime trades.

No description available.

No description available.

The environmental impact of consumer goods is becoming a growing concern in the modern world. With the increasing awareness of our daily impact and our effects on such crises as global warming, there has been a recent push to develop better environmental strategies and new industries focused on sustainability and the recycling of a variety of post-consumer goods. In other words, there is a shift towards turning waste into money in the name of the environment. Urban regions provide the perfect setting for such development. The concentration of post-consumer waste makes the mining of recyclable materials economical and the availability of labor needed to support the emerging sustainable industries sets the stage for social, economic and environmental benefits. There are currently several end-of-life (EOL) options for post-consumer products. EOL scenarios include secondary material reclamation, material reclamation, repurpose material reclamation, and waste disposal. Within each of these EOL scenarios exists a myriad of process permutations ranging from various collection schemes and modes of transportation to material processing standards and new recycled product industries. Due to the variety of EOL options for post-consumer products, there is no straight-forward answer to the question Which EOL option is preferred? Thus, under the guidelines of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in ISO14040, with the inclusion of social and economic requirements as well, the various EOL scenarios are compared in several impact categories including energy use, greenhouse emissions, waste generation, social implications and economic viability. The results of this comparative analysis provide insight into the potential of a more sustainable urban environment, which is part of a much larger goal of reducing our daily impact on the world around us. One industry sector that contributes to a rather large amount of post-consumer trash each year, nearly 4.7 billion tons, is the carpet industry. Carpet thus occupies a great percentage of overall dedicated waste space according to product density. Within an urban environment, the burden of such a bulky waste product is more evident; thus carpet is used here as a case study for the social, economic and environmental impacts of material mining in urban regions for the improvement of overall industrial sustainability. A comparative EOL study is conducted comparing the social, economic and environmental effects of secondary material reclamation, material reclamation, repurpose material reclamation, and waste disposal of post-consumer carpet (PCC) within the thirteen county urban region of Atlanta, GA.

Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Bras, Bert; Committee Member: Paredis, Chris; Committee Member: Realff, Matthew.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Freie Universität Berlin, 2002.

This dissertation is a social and material cultural history of the handicraft carpet industry in the late Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. It examines how the carpet handicraft associated with the Islamic East entered the vocabulary of the Soviet state, despite its emphasis on heavy industrial development. Woven mostly by women and girls in village and pastoral nomadic contexts, the so-called Oriental carpets of the Russian Empire became sought-after items within the global carpet trade in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The research explores how the Soviet state replaced and replicated business networks that had sprung up during the carpet boom starting in the 1870s, consolidating them into state structures of trade, industry, and national heritage. Despite the rhetoric of socialist modernization of the Soviet Union, carpets continued to be knotted and woven by hand through the end of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the women’s bodies, skills, and the products of their labor were categorized and understood in different ways. The dissertation uses handicraft carpets to reframe our understanding of how the Soviet Union incorporated peripheral regions such as the Caucasus into the cultural, social, and economic landscape of the Soviet Union. Moving beyond frameworks of the center and periphery that has characterized previous scholarship of the region, the dissertation foregrounds the Caucasus as a nexus of networks that connected the Soviet Union to Europe, Americas, and the Near East. It provides an alternative reading of Soviet national cultures as rooted not so much in top-down or bottom-up negotiations within the cultural or political spheres but in the cross-fertilizations through local, regional, and international networks. The work looks past national narratives to emphasize the role that merchants, weavers, and artists played in shaping the trajectory of handicraft carpet weaving in the Soviet Caucasus. Drawing on a close study of objects, visual material, oral history, and institutional records, the dissertation shows how the construction of Soviet national cultural heritage in the Caucasus was born out attempts reshape the relationship between the practitioner and the craft.

jn4.gesture is an interactive multimedia composition for dancer and computer designed to extend the possibilities of artistic expression through the use of contemporary technology. The software produces the audiovisual materials, which are controlled by the movement of the dancer on a custom rug sensor. The software that produces the graphic and sonic material is created using a modular design. During run-time, the software's modules are directed by a scripting language developed to control and adjust the audiovisual production through time. The visual material provides the only illumination of the performer, and the projections follow the performer's movements. The human form is isolated in darkness and it remains the focal point in the visual environment. These same movements are used to create the sonic material and control the diffusion of sound in an eight channel sound system. The video recording of the performance was made on April 22, 2002. The work was produced in a specialized performance space using two computer projectors and a state of the art sound system. Arleen Sugano designed the costumes, choreographed and performed the composition in the Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theatre (MEIT) at the University of North Texas. The paper focuses on the design of the program that controls the production of the audiovisual environment. This is achieved with a discussion of background issues associated with gesture capture. A brief discussion of human-computer interface and its relationship with the arts provides an overview to the software design and mapping scenarios used to create the composition. The design of the score, a graphical user interface, is discussed as the element that synchronizes the media creation in "scenes" of the composition. This score delivers a hybrid script to the modules that controls the production of audiovisual elements. Particular modules are discussed and related to sensor mapping routines that give multiple mapping control to computer function enabling a single gesture o have multiple outcomes.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A comparative study between a Dutch postcolonial novel, Een vlek op de rug (1963) by J. van de Walle and an Afrikaans post-apartheid novel, Foxtrot van die Vleiseters (1993) by Eben Venter, produces fascinating results. Despite dissimilarities, e.g. the almost thirty years that separate these two texts and the fact that the stories take place in different centuries on different continents, there is an unmistakable unity of intention that binds them together. The similarities are most clearly seen in the criticism of two discriminatory policies, namely that of colonialism and apartheid (which can also be seen as a form of colonialism) respectively. In both novels the narrator attempts to come to terms with the past and his own feelings of guilt. Both narrators write from a socio-politically advantaged position with on the one hand mixed feelings of empathy with the suppressed other and problematic identification with their own group on the other hand. This study investigates ways in which these feelings of guilt manifest and how the storyteller deals with his conflicting emotions through the therapeutic process of telling the story. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ’n Vergelykende studie tussen ’n Nederlandse postkoloniale roman, Een vlek op de rug (1963) deur J. van de Walle en ’n Afrikaanse post-apartheid roman Foxtrot van die Vleiseters (1993) deur Eben Venter, lewer boeiende resultate. Ten spyte van verskille soos die tydsgaping van 30 jaar tussen die verskyning van die twee romans en die feit dat die verhale afspeel op twee verskillende kontinente, in twee verskillende eeue, is daar tog sterk ooreenkomste wat ’n vergelykende studie tussen hierdie twee tekste sinvol maak. Die parallel is daarin gelee dat beide romans kritiek wil lewer op ’n onderdrukkende sisteem, hetsy kolonialisme of apartheid (wat ook gesien kan word as ’n vorm van kolonialisme). Die vertellers in beide verhale probeer om, vanuit ’n posisie van sosio-politiese bevoorregting, skuldgevoelens oor die verlede te verwerk. In beide gevalle vertoon die verteller empatie met die onderdrukte ander, maar ’n onoorbrugbare afstand bly enersyds bestaan. Andersyds is daar sprake van ’n problematiese identifisering met die eie groep omdal die verteller homself nie ten voile met hulle kan assosieer nie. In hierdie studie word onder meer aandag bestee aan die wyse waarop hierdie konflikterende skuldgevoelens na vore kom en hoe die onderskeie vertellers probeer om ’n mate van terapie te verkry deur middel van die vertelling.

A Estratégia de Saúde da Família (ESF) tem apresentado bons resultados em saúde e pode ser um instrumento importante para a efetivação do Uso Racional de Medicamentos (URM). A prescrição medicamentosa é um componente fundamental para a promoção do URM, portanto a ESF precisa ter uma abordagem diferenciada também em relação ao processo de prescrição. Este estudo transversal visa analisar comparativamente as prescrições provenientes do serviço de atendimento médico básico tradicional com aquelas provindas da ESF, assim como avaliar a compreensão dos pacientes sobre estas prescrições, no município de Ribeirão Preto- SP. Este estudo incluiu 1.053 participantes, os quais foram alocados em dois grupos: 932 usuários provenientes do modelo de atendimento básico tradicional (Grupo A - GA) e 121 usuários provenientes da ESF (Grupo B - GB). Foram coletados dados sociodemográficos e aplicou-se um instrumento para analisar a compreensão do usuário sobre a sua receita de medicamentos. As prescrições foram ainda copiadas e posteriormente analisadas de acordo com: conformidade com os itens exigidos por lei; indicadores de qualidade da prescrição propostos pela OMS; complexidade farmacoterapêutica; presença de interações medicamentosas. A maioria dos participantes era do sexo feminino (77,5%), possuía renda per capita de até um salário mínimo (67,2%) e a escolaridade correspondente ao ensino fundamental completo ou não (63,4%). A média de idade foi de 53,9 anos (DP= 17,5). Quanto à compreensão do paciente sobre a prescrição, 63,3% dos usuários do GA apresentaram compreensão insuficiente, no GB esta frequência foi de apenas 18,2%. As prescrições da ESF também se mostraram estatisticamente superiores quanto ao cumprimento dos aspectos legais: presença da forma farmacêutica (70,7% GA; 80,2% GB), dose (70,9% GA; 79,3% GB), posologia completa (63% GA; 75,2% GB), via de administração (58,3% GA; 83,5% GB), duração do tratamento (76,9% GA; 92,6% GB), endereço do prescritor (82,6% GA; 96,7% GB) e ausência de rasuras (90,3% GA; 96,7% GB). A média de medicamentos prescritos foi de 3,9 no GA (DP= 2,8) e 3,5 no GB (DP = 2,4). Em ambos os grupos cerca de 92% dos medicamentos foram prescritos pela denominação oficial, aproximadamente 91% constavam na lista de medicamentos essenciais do município. 11% das prescrições continham ao menos uma indicação de antibiótico. Medicamentos injetáveis constavam em 9,7% das prescrições do GA e 3,3% das do GB. A média de complexidade foi de 12,6 pontos no GA (DP= 9,4) e 11,8 pontos no GB (DP= 8,3). Em relação à presença de interações medicamentosas potencias, no GA a média de interações por prescrição foi de 2,5 (DP = 3,9), no GB o valor foi de 1,9 (DP= 2,6). Em conclusão, os resultados revelam práticas inapropriadas na prescrição de medicamentos em ambas as modalidades de atendimento primário, entretanto, os prescritores da ESF parecem estar mais preparados para realizar a prescrição racional de medicamentos, ainda que não estejam no padrão ideal. / The Family Health Strategy (FHS) has shown good results in health and it is argued that this strategy can be an important tool for ensuring the Rational Use of Drugs (RUD). The rational prescription of drugs is a key component to promote RUD, thus the FHS must have a differential approach regarding drug prescription process too. This cross-sectional research aims to compare drug prescriptions derived from the traditional basic medical care service with those from the FHS, as well as to measure patients\' knowledge about these prescriptions, in Ribeirão Preto- SP. This study includes 1.053 participants, which were separated into two groups: 932 individuals coming from the traditional basic medical care service (Group A - GA) and 121 individuals from the FHS (Group B - GB). Sociodemographic data was collected and an instrument to analyze patient\'s knowledge about their prescription was applied. Prescriptions were also copied and analyzed according to: compliance with prescription standards demanded by the law; prescription quality indicators proposed by WHO; pharmacotherapeutic complexity; presence of drug interactions. Most participants were female (77.5%) had per capita income up to minimum wage (67.2%) and level of education corresponding to elementary school, complete or not (63.4%). The average age was 53.9 years (SD= 17.5). Regarding patient\'s knowledge about their prescriptions, 63.3% of GA individuals had insufficient knowledge; in GB this rate was only 18.2%. Furthermore, prescriptions from FHS also show statistically superior results about compliance with standards demanded by the law, such as: the presence of the pharmaceutical form (70.7% GA; 80.2% GB), dose (70.9% GA; 79.3% GB), comprehensive posology (63% GA; 75.2% GB), administration route (GA 58.3%; 83.5% GB), time of therapy (76.9% GA; 92.6% GB) prescriber\'s address(82.6% GA; GB 96.7%) and absence of erasures (90.3% GA; GB 96.7%). The average number of prescribed drugs was 3.9 in GA (SD = 2.8) and 3.5 in GB (SD = 2.4). In both groups about 92% of the drugs were prescribed by the official nomination, approximately 91% of prescribed drugs were listed on the Essential Medications List of the city and 11% of prescriptions had at least one antibiotic prescribed. Injectable drugs were prescribed in 9.7% of prescriptions from GA and 3.3% from GB. The average complexity was 12.6 points in GA (SD = 9.4) and 11.8 points in GB (SD = 8.3). About the existence of potential drug interactions, the average drug interactions by prescriptions in GA was 2.5 (SD = 3.9), in GB it was 1.9 (SD = 2.6). All things considered, the results reveal inappropriate practices in drug prescription in both modalities of Primary Health Care, nonetheless, prescribers from FHS seem to be more prepared to make rational drug prescription, although they are not still in the ideal pattern.