Terrorism as a crime under international law The purpose of this thesis is to assess the possibility of prosecuting terrorist attacks as crimes under international law and analyse the feasibility of their prosecution before the International Criminal Court. The reason for this research is is twofold. First, compared to the international academic scene, Czech research related to this topic is relatively sparse. Second, the international terrorism has grown into a massive issue of international significance and its global aspects leave the traditional national judicial mechanisms somewhat lacking with regards to the efficiency in its prosecution. The author has therefore attempted to examine the possibility of using the only permanent global judicial body available in today's world, the International Criminal Court. The thesis is composed of six chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of prosecuting the terrorism as an international crime. Chapter One is introductory and defines basic thoughts upon which this thesis builds. It also presents the structure of the thesis with regards to possible issues which may arise during its course. It also explains the reasons for said research as described in the first paragraph of this abstract. Chapter Two is concerned with the term terror and...

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / While several interventions have been implemented over the past decade to combat child mortality, under-five mortality remains a challenge especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Global-ly, child mortality has decreased to half from 12.7 million in 1990 to 5.9 million per year in 2015. Despite these remarkable gains, more than 16,000 children are dying daily in the world (World Health Organisation, 2015). Previous studies on child survival have examined the contributing factors of child deaths and HIV/AIDS epidemic and socio-economic differentials such as the level of education, type of place of residence,and mother’s occupational status were identified as the contributing factor towards the high rate of under-five mortality. How-ever, there is a paucity of studies focusing on the impact of socio-economic and demographic factors on under-five mortality. Hence this study aims to explore the impact of socio-economic and demographic factors on under-five mortality in South Africa. There are underlying factors or background determinants (including direct and indirect) of under-five mortality. These factors influence under-five mortality in South Africa, and the direct causes are called proximate determinants or demographic factors. The conceptual framework of Mosley and Chen (1984) was adopted to explore the ways of influence of the underlying factors on under-five mortality in their study of determinants of child survival.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / South Africa is committed to accelerating the roll-out of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support development at all levels. E-inclusion intermediaries (e-IIs) are used in the country to bridge the digital divide and to create equal opportunities for citizens to benefit from using ICTs. E-IIs are established mainly in under-resourced communities by private, public and third-sector organisations to provide physical access to ICT services for free or at a very low cost. The aim of e-IIs is to make ICT services affordable for and accessible to marginalised and poor community members, who can use the ICT to support community development. The debate is ongoing regarding the contribution of e-IIs towards community development due to, in part, the lack of quantifiable evidence to support the impact that the e-IIs have on development in the communities. Furthermore, despite the existence of e-IIs in communities, there still are community members who do not use the e-IIs. This has been attributed to the lack of awareness of the e-IIs and the services they provide. This lack of awareness is often blamed on the ineffective communication strategies of e-IIs. E-IIs are accused of relying heavily on traditional communication channels and conventional mass media, which do not share information and create awareness effectively in the communities. The increased uptake of modern technologies, such as the Internet and mobile devices, in South Africa has created new opportunities to communicate with community members to share information and create awareness. Social media, for instance, which are mostly accessed through mobile devices, have made communication more accessible and inexpensive for community members with limited skills and resources. Social media have also become popular among development actors in their attempt to direct policy, create awareness and garner community members’ support for development interventions. Arguably, e-IIs could also benefit from using social media, which have become popular in some communities, to communicate with community members in order to create awareness of the e-IIs, the services they provide and the benefits of using ICTs to support community development. The investigation undertaken in this study was twofold. Firstly, the quick-scan analysis method was used to analyse fifty e-IIs. Using this method it was possible to explore the services that are provided by e-IIs as well as how e-IIs communicate with community members and other development actors. Secondly, using six in-depth case studies this study further investigated how e-IIs’ services support community development and how the e-IIs communicate for development, paying special attention to their use of social media.

Student Number : 0419886N - MA research report - School of Politics - Faculty of Arts / “The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of enclosure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational as capital. Because enclosure takes myriad forms, so shall resistance to it.” - Iain A Boal, First World, Ha Ha Ha!, City Lights, 1995 Boal’s description captures the exuberance, hope and confidence of today’s social movements. That there is something irresistible about autonomous, grassroots and subaltern movements in their anti-systemic alternatives to capitalism has become a notion which has gained considerable currency in recent years.1 Formations of these groups (the Zapatistas being the oft cited example) are seen to mirror theories of the most utopian and radical forms of democracy. In Part 1 we seek to examine a range of critical historiography in exploring the features of what is ‘new’ in today’s social movements, using Zapatista style organization and discourse as the prototype. This definition will be moulded with the elements of critical theory which have at their core a radical transformative function of social movements. For example Castells’ work on urban movements pictures: “collective conscious action aimed at the transformation of the institutionalized urban meaning against the logic, interest and values of the dominant class.”2 We will draw from Murray’s assumption that such movements “actively contest the prevailing forms of political representation and the legitimacy of political rule.”3 New social movements (NSM) will be seen within the context of anti-normative approaches to democracy. An alternative pole of reference will emerge in contrast to what we will term low intensity, liberal, parliamentary or bourgeois forms of democracy. All this will be lodged in an understanding of old social movements. We hold these to be single issue movements that fail to forge links to other sites of oppression and exploitation, or movements which take on a narrow class composition and understanding of change. Implicit in moving on from narrow, and or,Marxist-Leninist positions over class, is the multiplicity of relations humans have within the social body. This refutes crude economism conceptions regarding the make-up of the working class.4 However, capitalism and our relations to production, still remain central in understanding the relationship of the subject to the social body. We suggest recent crisis points and weaknesses in capitalism (detected as neo-liberal trends) provide plenty of scope for weaving an historical dialectic back in. Evidence for this comes from critical theory which claims, perhaps falsely, to be founded on anti-essentialism.5 We argue that it is commodification which breeds this resistance against the totalizing effect of capitalism at every level of the structure. Thus neo-liberalism embodies for much of this critical thought the subject of a “Fourth World War” fought by the multitude. 6 The mobile nature of contemporary capital and the immaterial essence of its production to define the multitude – essentially disenfranchised and disaffected subjects – has led to an expanded definition of the old working class.7 The multitude is the reinvention of some social subject invested in an historical project. This multitude has taken on a particular guise, moving away from traditional conceptions of a revolutionary class. As Negri and Hardt note: “The closer we look at the lives and activity of the poor, the more we see how enormously creative and powerful they are”.8 The poor embody the ontological condition not only of resistance but also of productive life itself.9 However, we will also attempt to locate moments within the subject that go beyond the indeterminacies and moments of rupture within the structure. Careful attention will be paid to Zizek’s subject of lack, in assessing the carnivalesque and irrational moments of today’s movements and the role of what we will view as a renewed sense of voluntarism. We remain conscious that we are forging a vision of new social movements which forges an at times uneasy alliance across a variety of groups who challenge dominant structures at different times, spaces and ways. It is sometimes tempting to lump various “anti-globalisation” groups together, without grasping the intricacies and nuances that bind as well as divide them. Ultimately, we accept some of the essentialist critique that can be levelled at NSM theory, recognizing a trope of romanticism around struggle is deliberately and necessarily invented. This will be fully discussed in the controversial claim that some movements and elements of civil society have more validity than others. It will be considered in claiming that moments of oppression, subordination and exploitation require articulation and don’t erupt into historical trajectories of struggle. This requires the development and expression of relative rather than fixed universals (e.g. around democracy, right to water, right to land). It is commodification and neo-liberalism that provides the stimulus for such relative universals. We shall see that they revolve around issues that are real to subjects in the narratives of their struggles and lives.11 Finding some fixity of meaning and experience ensures our analysis is not post-structuralist. Post-structuralism has fostered awkward relationships with truths which have, as Mamdani has noted, not always led to a basis of a “healthy humanism”.12 It leads to a universalized aestheticization whereby truth, reduced to merely a style effect of discursive articulation, forges an endless spectrum of interpretation/re-interpretation. 13 Moreover, it can be utilized to create legitimacy for fascist, colonialist and imperialist discourses. Part 1 attempts to provide the basis for the rest of the work by developing an understanding of the historicity of new social movements and what makes them different to other forms of political and social organisation. This is critical for later discussion which will draw upon the experiences of South Africa. In Part 2 we seek to build from the radical civil society theory and tease out features and characteristics of it within anti-apartheid social movements. This will involve an exploration around township civics which were and are often bundled under the umbrella of the United Democratic Front (UDF). Many of these were built around notions of People’s Power, economic transformation and social justice. We will consider the ideology present in these movements and how it played out in realities, acknowledging the highly repressive scenario of the apartheid state. Within these movements we will flesh out radical spaces and visions which appeared to have dissipated in the ANC hegemony over the decolonisation process and subsequent “transformation” project. We will not shy away from advocating that there were features within such radical spaces, such as Charterist, and or, unity projects, which emerged at various times to create implicitly anti-democratic politics. 14 Such problems as we will see went to the core of the UDF and also into the geo-polities of South Africa which became “ungovernable” in the 1980s. Depoliticization was not just a performative effect of ANC strength or “Stalinism” as often narrated by the left, but a weakness in the structure and formation of civil society. 15 We explore whether it was not just the ANC that “demobilized” the grassroots, but that the form and functioning of civil society that contributed to the conditions in which movements’ own radical notions of People’s Power and direct democracy dissipated. Part 3 will look at this demobilization within the context of the transition to democracy during the negotiated settlement.16 We scrutinize the nature of the period from apartheid to liberal democracy, noting trajectories of struggle which mark both eras. We argue that elements and goals in the struggle that sought a very different democracy to that gained at the CODESA talks have re-emerged in the deepening disillusionment of the ANC project after ten years of governance. This has within some discourse included the ability of the nation-state generally, within neo-liberalism, to bring about social justice. Yet, the suggestion that this is the period of “economic” rather than “racial” apartheid will need to be carefully explored in the context of Fanon’s characterization of national liberation elites.17 While noting the benefit an economic approach has in distinguishing the role of dominant classes, we suggest it can overshadow explicit structures of racism that penetrate to the core of South African society. They are brought out for example by grassroots movements such as the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), in their campaign that equated landlessness with racism. Finally Part 4 examines the extent characteristics we ascribe to the new social movements of South Africa correspond with the features of anti-apartheid struggles of the 1980s. Moreover, it requires us to assess the critical theory developed in Part 1 in terms of realities in post-Apartheid South Africa. We note the apprehension in considering parallels between anti-apartheid struggles and current rights based struggles. While there have been a few attempts to make links within a continuation of struggle from apartheid to neo-liberalism18, all too often, the anti-apartheid struggles that invoked notions of People’s Power have been dismissed as undemocratic, authoritarian and reactionary.19 While an attempt to wipe the slate clean might be useful in carving out a fresh and dynamic image for contemporary social movements, it perhaps ignores that there are similar issues, rhetoric and ideologies being played out today. We will explore whether the historiography simply seeks to justify and re-create contemporary social movements to create ammunition for particular strands of political theory judged to be liberationist and correct within the current historical juncture. Are we carving out a fictional historicity within the identity of struggle that doesn’t exist? Are narratives created more for attachments to a belief in certain “historical” processes than less sharply defined realities? Is the multitude, merely Marx’s 19th century industrial working class, vested with an imaginary historical project? Noting the background of many individuals involved within the APF (trade union, SACP), we need to discuss how they have been placed on a new trajectory of thought given the features which define today’s subjects in NSM compared to orthodox Marxist-Leninist thought around the revolutionary subject. We hope a sketch of the past and an analysis of the present may contribute in the current debates within the social movements during a critical time for anti-capitalist struggles in South Africa. This work is not concerned with producing exhaustive lists of repressive acts conducted by the state, the brutality of private security firms, or broken election promises, but in uncovering the structure of the post-apartheid state and how social movements respond and re-create themselves. Despite their youth, they represent the first serious contestation of ANC hegemony in terms of an alternative discourse around democracy, social justice and transformation. This work has been made possible through regular contact with social movements in Gauteng. Informal participatory discussions with various activists and communities within these struggles have been invaluable and enlightening. Such first hand experience has provided an insight into the operative nature and democratic functioning of a variety of movements including the role of vanguards and leadership. My attendance at various forums and discussions, such as the Social Movements Indaba (SMI), has also been vital. Fundamentally, the work hinges upon a critical exploration from three areas. Firstly, in the discussion necessary to establish a historicity of new social movements which will point to their methodological and epistemic construction. Secondly, upon an understanding of the South African experience that can cover an immense ground from apartheid into liberal-democracy which is aware and responsive to a wide range of historiography. Thirdly, a series of interviews and personal reflections from discussions with various activists across South Africa. Some are well known leaders. Others form part of the collective multitudes beginning to emerge and speak through the fissures of South African society. Relationships that I have made, as well as recent political events, culminated in the choices of the Khayelitsha township of Cape Town, Alexandra in Johannesburg and Harrismith in the Free State as the sites for this part of the research.21 The methodology hinges upon an accurate reflection and assessment of contemporary social movements from the people who participate and function within them, together with an historiographical account of social movements in the South African experience. Limitations here are perhaps obvious. Interviewees may have the tendency to be modest or emphasize their own personal role in struggles. Attendance of community meetings and forums is hoped to counter-balance this together with the use of contemporary subject work. However, there can be no objective yardstick by which to judge the contributions found in this paper. Furthermore, the lack of rigour within the methodology would alarm the majority of modernist and positivist historians and commentators. Yet, it is with this aim that the work attempts to accept the criticisms of romanticism, myth, euphoria and narratives in seeking to forge the very conditions outlined by Boal in which we might find the same “imagined meeting place” and discussion of freedom.

M.A. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities (Population Studies), 2012 / This study is based on secondary data analysis of the 1998 South African Demographic and Health Survey (SADHS) data set. The aim of the study was to identify socio-demographic, socio-economic and environmental variables that affect the survival of South African children under the age of five years. Descriptive analyses, frequency tables, Pearson’s chi-square tests of association and binary logistic regression analysis were used for data analysis in this study. Mothers who lost an under-five child were predominantly Black and rural. Such mothers were characterized by rural residential areas, relatively large family sizes, relatively poorer socioeconomic status, relatively poorer access to basic health services, relatively more child deliveries at home, and low level of education. The study showed that 269 of the 5, 066 children in the study died before celebrating their fifth birthday (5.31%). At the 5% level of significance, the survival of under-five children is significantly influenced by 2 of the 11 predictor variables found to be significantly associated in the univariate analysis and therefore included in the logistic regression analysis. These 2 predictor variables were: place of delivery of child [OR=0.97; P=0.000; CI = (0.96, 0.98)], and use of modern contraceptives by the mother [OR=0.73; P=0.002; CI = (0.59, 0.89)]. The study found that not using modern contraceptives gives a lower chance on death of a child under 5 as well as delivering at home, in the absence of a trained birth attendant. These findings are unexpected and contrary to what was found in the univariate analysis. No real explanation can be given for these findings and it would be interesting to see if the same results are found with more recent data. In order for the South African National Department of Health to fulfil its United Nations Millennium Development Goals, rural mothers and their under-five children must be provided with improved health as well as socioeconomic services.

Atualmente é bem conhecido que o uso de dispositivos passivos de dissipação de energia, tais como amortecedores por atrito, reduzem consideravelmente a resposta dinâmica de estruturas. Entretanto, os melhores parâmetros de cada amortecedor e também a melhor posição para instalá-los dentro da estrutura permanecem difíceis de serem estabelecidas. Assim, a otimização de amortecedores é uma área que vem sendo estudada de forma crescente nos últimos anos, tendo grande impacto no projeto ótimo de dispositivos para o controle de vibrações de estruturas, possibilitando obter soluções seguras e ao mesmo tempo econômicas. Contudo, apesar dos amortecedores de vibração por atrito possuírem algumas vantagens em relação a outros dispositivos passivos, poucos trabalhos são encontrados sobre a otimização de seus parâmetros ou sobre a sua melhor posição dentro de uma estrutura, devido à maior dificuldade de se calcular sistemas que envolvem atrito, por este ser não-linear. Entretanto, é interessante se levar em conta as incertezas presentes nas propriedades estruturais e/ou na excitação dinâmica no processo de otimização, o que leva a um problema de otimização sob incerteza, como otimização robusta e otimização baseada em confiabilidade. Assim, nesta Tese é proposta uma metodologia para a otimização simultânea dos parâmetros e das posições de amortecedores de vibração por atrito a serem instalados em edifícios submetidos à excitação sísmica levando em conta as incertezas presentes tanto nas propriedades estruturais quanto no carregamento sísmico, assim como nas forças de atrito dos amortecedores. A fim de ilustrar a metodologia, dois exemplos de aplicação são apresentados, sendo o primeiro sobre otimização robusta e o segundo sobre otimização baseada em confiabilidade. Os resultados mostraram, em ambos os exemplos, que o método proposto obteve sucesso, melhorando consideravelmente o comportamento dinâmico dos edifícios estudados, mesmo para um número limitado de dispositivos instalados. Portanto, acredita-se que a metodologia de otimização desenvolvida constitui uma ferramenta eficaz para o projeto ótimo de amortecedores por atrito. / Nowadays it is well known that the use of passive energy dissipation devices, such as friction dampers, considerably reduces the dynamic response of structures. However, the best parameters of each damper and also the best position to install them within the structure remain difficult to be determined. Thus, optimization of dampers is an area that has been increasingly studied in recent years, having a big impact in the optimal design of devices for the vibration control of structures, allowing to obtain safe and at the same time economic solutions. However, although friction dampers have some advantages over other passive devices, few contributions are found on optimization of their parameters or on their optimal position within a structure. This fact can be explained due to the greater difficulty in determining the response of systems involving friction, because their nonlinear behavior. In addition to the lack of studies on optimization of friction dampers, the few studies found in the literature consider the problem in a deterministic way. However, the uncertainties present in the structural properties and/or in the dynamic excitation can alter the optimal solution. Thus, it is important to take into account these uncertainties in the optimization process, which leads to an optimization problem under uncertainty, such as robust optimization and reliability-based optimization. Thus, in this Thesis, a methodology is proposed for the simultaneous optimization of parameters and positions of friction dampers to be installed in buildings subjected to seismic excitation taking into account uncertainties present in both the structural properties and the seismic load, as well as in the friction forces of the dampers. In order to illustrate the approach, two examples are presented, the first one on robust optimization and the second on reliabilitybased optimization. The results show, in both examples, that the proposed method considerably improves the dynamic behavior of the studied buildings, even for a limited number of installed devices. Therefore, it was shown that the proposed procedure is an effective tool for the optimum design of friction dampers.

O presente trabalho tem por finalidade apresentar e discutir os resultados encontrados para o coeficiente de atrito de três tipos de diferentes chapas utilizadas em processos de estampagem na indústria automotiva. O método adotado para determinação do coeficiente de atrito foi o dobramento sob tensão, método este que tem por finalidade simular as condições de uma operação de embutimento. Os resultados apresentados demonstram que diferentes chapas em aço NBR 5915 EM e EMS ME 1508 EM, com ou sem proteção galvânica, apresentam diferentes condições tribológicas determinadas através do ensaio. Coeficientes de atrito que variam desde 0,103 até 0,151 foram determinados, considerando condições de lubrificação e de ferramenta constantes. A influência do coeficiente de atrito no processo é exemplificada através do cálculo da força máxima de estampagem, sendo que para as mesmas condições de propriedades mecânicas a variação do coeficiente de atrito provocou um aumento de 7,6% na força máxima. Através do cálculo determinou-se também a influência do coeficiente de atrito nas forças de atrito do processo. Para as condições apresentadas, a influência do coeficiente de atrito no prensa chapas na força máxima de estampagem é 20x menor em relação à influência do coeficiente de atrito no raio da matriz. / This research aims to show and discuss the friction coefficient of three different kinds of sheet metal used in sheet metal forming processes of automotive industry. The methodology for the determination of the coefficient of friction was the bending under tension, that purpose to simulate the deep drawing conditions. The results show different kinds of sheets metals, as NBR 5915 EM and EMS ME 1508 EM, with or not galvanized protection, show different tribological conditions by the tests. Friction coefficients from 0,103 to 0,151 were founded, considering invariable lubrication and tool conditions. The influence of friction coefficient in the stamping process is exemplified by the maximum stamping strength. For these tests conditions, the coefficient of friction caused an increase of 7.6% in the maximum stamping strength. The influence of the friction coefficient on the friction strengths of the process was determined. For these conditions, the influence of the friction coefficient in the friction strength of the blank holder is 20x smaller than in the friction strength of die's radius.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T10:54:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JULIANA BURGO GODOI ALVES.pdf: 1597816 bytes, checksum: 7f1036ba03256b326d5472277da7165e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-07 / Shelters offer protection for children and adolescents that are relived from family care. These institutions are legally authorized to foster the children and adolescents that have been placed in their care. Typically, adolescents experienced traumatic experiences, be it through the separation from their family, the loss of their parents, having suffered abuse and the resulting lack of affective support. Receptive attitudes and affective support can help overcome the psychological and physical sequels of the traumatic experiences. The shelter must be able to work with the losses due to abandon, ruptures, violence and with the perspective that the stay in the safe environment is only temporary. This study focuses the ways the adolescent develops to overcome trauma. A Grounded Theory analysis was chosen to examine lived experience from the point of view of the youths. The data were gathered in two institutions in the state of Goiás. During the analysis it became clear that the reported experiences reflected a pathway, constructed by each participant that could be described through five categories, starting with his or removal from his or her environment, his or her arrival at the shelter and his or her perspective to leave. The pathway includes: removal from an intolerable environment (with the subcategories Family and Youth); Protection and Resources (with the subcategories Protection against aggression, drugs and games; Material resources; Reception, welcoming and entertainment; Mobilization of religious sentiment; Sampling better life); Opportunities for development (with the subcategories, The value of studying; Involvement in sports, culture and arts); Affective bonds (with as subcategories, Influence from the foster family; Construction of a bond with the school or the employees; Construction of affective ties; Maintaining the ties with the family of origin) and Possibilities to surmount (with the subcategories, Daily activities promote maturity; Affective context promotes reevaluation of family ties; Shelter provides a new perspective). These categories are superposed and interlinked at various moments. The analysis of the data shows that the adolescents value the shelter and consider it a welcoming environment, that can provide new possibilities and that the institutions provide ways to catch up with their families. The protection and resources offered, the opportunities for development and the affective bonds that are offered to the adolescent in the institutional contexts where this study was done, can be seen as many protective factors for the development of placed adolescents. / O abrigo, lar provisório, garante proteção às crianças e aos adolescentes impedidos de conviver com seus familiares. A função de acolher crianças e adolescentes tem sido transferida a estas instituições. O adolescente acolhido vivenciou situações traumáticas, seja por separação de sua família, perda de pai ou mãe, por espancamentos e abusos, que resultaram em momentos sem sustentação afetiva. Atitudes acolhedoras podem auxiliá-los, sendo essencial que as pessoas próximas possam dar sustentação afetiva, pois as vivencias traumáticas podem deixar sequelas psicológicas e, mesmo físico-biológicas. O abrigo deve ser capaz de trabalhar as perdas, abandono, rupturas, violência e com o fato de que poderá ficar apenas por um tempo na casa de acolhimento. Este estudo buscou identificar e analisar recursos de superação desenvolvidos pelo jovem diante da vivencia de momentos traumáticos. A Teoria Fundamentada nos Dados foi escolhida por permitir a extração de informações da realidade vivida do ponto de vista do participante, buscando descobrir o que ocorre nos ambientes de pesquisa e como é a vida dos participantes. Os dados foram coletados em duas instituições no estado de Goiás, durante a análise, percebeu-se que as vivências relatadas refletiam um percurso percorrido por cada jovem, descrito em cinco categorias, desde a retirada do seu ambiente de origem, sua chegada ao abrigo, até as possibilidades após sua saída, sendo, Retirada de ambiente intolerável (com as subcategorias, A Família e O Jovem); Proteção e Recursos (com as subcategorias, Proteção contra agressões, drogas e jogos em rede; Recursos materiais; Acolhimento convívio e diversão; Mobilização de sentimento religioso; Propicia vida melhor); Oportunidade de Desenvolvimento (com as subcategorias, O valor do estudo; Envolvimento esportivo, cultural e artístico); Vínculos afetivos (com as subcategorias, Influência da família de passagem/provisória; Construção de vínculo com a escola e funcionários; Construção de laços afetivos; Manutenção de laços com a família de origem) e Possibilidade de Superação (com as subcategorias, Atividades cotidianas promovem amadurecimento; Contexto afetivo promove revisão dos vínculos com a família; Abrigo gera uma nova perspectiva de superação). Estas categorias estão sobrepostas e interligadas em vários momentos. A perspectiva que se impôs na análise dos dados mostra que os jovens valorizam e consideram que o abrigo é um ambiente acolhedor, capaz de proporcionar novas possibilidades e que as instituições proporcionam o contato com a família. Evidenciou-se que a proteção e os recursos, a oportunidade de desenvolvimento e os vínculos afetivos oferecidos ao jovem presente no contexto institucional estudado podem se configurar como tantos fatores de proteção para o desenvolvimento de adolescentes institucionalizados.

Este trabalho ocupa-se das áreas inferiores de viadutos, os chamados baixios. Tratados quase sempre pelo poder público e pela literatura acadêmica como espaços residuais,os baixios de viadutos não foram considerados historicamente como recursos territoriais passíveis de utilização pública. Mas, como na metrópole não existem espaços inteiramente desocupados, os baixios exibem usos e ocupações, ainda que pautados na informalidade. Diversos grupos fazem desses territórios locais de encontros e de atividades no curso diário de suas vidas, dotando-os, ao transgredir seu uso original, de qualidades não previstas.Ao analisar os usos e as ocupações nos baixios dos viadutos Alcântara Machado e do Glicério, em São Paulo, esta dissertação procura mostrar a complexidade de territórios que, justamente por serem intersticiais, constituíram-se como oportunidades para atuações espontâneas promovidas por atores sociais. Ao inserir e manter iniciativas nos baixios, esses atores conseguiram estabelecer ali espaços públicos. A literatura acadêmica tem demonstrado que a apropriação do espaço público pode gerar um senso de coletividade a partir de sua gestão, caso ela seja compartilhada. Esta dissertação contrastou as iniciativas de uso dos baixios com a conceituação de \"commons\" presente no debate contemporâneo sobre o assunto, em que a ação voluntária e a autoresponsabilização permitem a mobilização de recursos para a ocupação. A escolha dos baixios, áreas da cidade onde a ocupação espontânea é relativamente antiga, teve como objetivo gerar subsídios para a compreensão de10processos mais recentes de qualificação e de ativação dos espaços públicos, ou \"comuns urbanos\", apoiados no ideal do \"bem comum\". Esses processos ainda são vistos como fenômenos precários e/ou transitórios, embora tenham potencial para gerar possibilidades efetivas de uso e para tornar seus promotores agentes aptos a exercer papel mais ativo na ordenação do espaço urbano. / The present study focuses on the residual areas under viaducts. Often seen by city councils and academic literature only as residual spaces, these areas have not been historically considered as resources suitable for public use. Nonetheless, as there is no such a thing as completely vacant land in the metropolis, the residual area bellow viaducts do show some use and occupations, even though non formal; different groups use such territories as places for gathering and other activities. By subverting their purported use (or non-use), they fill them with unexpected qualities. By analyzing uses and occupations in the areas bellow Alcântara Machado and Glicério viaducts in the city of São Paulo, this dissertation aims at demonstrating the complexity of these portions of the municipality territory which, for the very reason of being interstitial, became opportunities for spontaneous actions and projects developed by different social stakeholders. By introducing and maintaining initiatives in these \"baixios\" (as such spaces are called in Brazil) these social stakeholders were able to stablish public spaces on them. The academic literature has demonstrated that this kind of appropriation of common but non-used space in the city can generate a sense of community deriving from its management, provided it is performed in a collective manner. The present work analyzed such initiatives by confronting them with the concept of \"commons\" applied in recent studies about this subject in which spontaneous and self-12responsible action enabled the mobilization of such territories resources into urban occupations. The \"baixios\" where chosen for investigation as they have been historically occupied in as spontaneous fashion in São Paulo. For this reason, they have the potential to illuminate more recent processes of public space qualification and activation aiming at the common good.

Planejamento sob incerteza vem sendo cada vez mais requisitado em aplicações práticas de diversas áreas que eequerem soluções confiáveis para metas complexas. Em vista disso, nos últimos anos, algumas abordagens baseadas no uso de métodos formais para síntese automática de planos têm sido propostas na área de Planejamento em Inteligência Artificial. Entre essas abordagens, planejamento baseado em verificação de modelos tem se mostrado uma opção bastante promissora; entretanto, conforme observamos, a maioria dos trabalhos dentro dessa abordagem baseia-se em CTL e trata apenas problemas de planejamento para metas de alcançabilidade simples (como aquelas consideradas no planejamento clássico). Nessa tese, introduzimos uma classe de metas de planejamento mais expressivas (metas de alcançabilidade estendidas) e mostramos que, para essa classe de metas, a semântica de CTL não é adequada para formalizar algoritmos de síntese (ou validação) de planos. Como forma de contornar essa limitação, propomos uma nova versão de CTL, que denominamos alpha-CTL. Então, a partir da semântica dessa nova lógica, implementamos um verificador de modelos (Vactl), com base no qual implementamos também um planejador (Pactl) capaz de resolver problemas de planejamento para metas de alcançabilidade estendidas, em ambientes não-determinísticos com observabilidade completa. Finalmente, discutimos como garantir a qualidade das soluções quando dispomos de um modelo de ambiente onde as probabilidades das transições causadas pela execução das ações são conhecidas. / Planning under uncertainty has being increasingly demanded for practical applications in several areas that require reliable solutions for complex goals. In sight of this, in the last few years, some approaches based on formal methods for automatic synthesis of plans have been proposed in the area of Planning in Artificial Intelligence. Among these approaches, planning based on model checking seems to be a very attractive one; however, as we observe, the majority of the works in this approach are mainly based on CTL and deals only with planning problems for simple reachability goals (as those considered in classical planning). In this thesis, we introduce a more expressive class of planning goals (extended reachability goals) and show that, for this class of goals, the CTL\'s semantics is not adequate to formalize algorithms for synthesis (or validation) of plans. As a way to overcome this limitation, we propose a new version of CTL, called alpha-CTL. Then, based on the semantics of this new logic, we implement a model checker (Vactl), based on which we also implement a planner (Pactl) capable of solving planning problems for extended reachability goals, in nondeterministic planning environments with complete observability. Finally, we discuss how to guarantee the quality of the solutions when we have an environment model where the actions transitions probabilities are known.