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This article looks at the community participation of recent Latina immigrant mothers and their children in a neighborhood advocacy group near the US-Mexico border. It documents the work that women and children do as they struggle to become involved in their new community and improve their quality of life - despite legal, social, economic and cultural obstacles. Local context, family and ethnic networks, gendered patterns of women's experiences as immigrants and children participation in 'adult' decision-making are hugely important in understanding their community engagement. The article reflects on the advocacy work that women and children perform through a neighborhood group to argue for a difference-centered perspective on citizenship that is inspired by feminist thinking. Such a perspective makes sense in light of the ironic tensions within neo-liberal policies that, on the one hand, burden people with more responsibilities while, on the other hand, legislating against their freedom to pursue those responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text mining (TM) discovers unseen patterns in textual databases. But these discoveries are useless unless they contribute valuable knowledge for users who make strategic decisions. Confronting this issue can lead to knowledge discovery from texts (KDT), a complicated activity that involves both discovering unseen knowledge, though TM, and evaluating this potentially valuable knowledge, KDT can benefit from techniques that have been useful in data mining or knowledge discovery from databases. However, you cannot immediately apply data mining techniques to text data for TM because they assume a structure in the source data that is not in free text.

Applies the technique of auto-photography to the study of children-environment transactions. Children's photo-journey of their local residential environment; Leitmotif code representing an aggregation of the children's photographs; Speculations on the social and physical contexts of child-environment transactions encountered.

Questions arise concerning the nature and organization of residents' perceptual responses to neighborhood change. Transactionalism, with its focus on context and change, provides a theoretical basis for an empirical study that attempts to identify and evaluate the human dimensions of change within the context of an inner-city neighborhood of San Diego, California. Using quasi-nonmetric weighted multi-dimensional scaling (WMDS), I analyzed similarity matrices, which are derived from asking a sample of residents to respond to different neighborhood contexts. The WMDS suggests that residents place great importance on neighborhood stability. A modified form of repertory grid analysis provides insight into how individuals respond to specific neighborhood changes. Residential and commercial establishments that had disappeared from the area are, on the whole, preferred. Residents dislike large new developments, finding them cold, mass-produced and impersonal. A non-metric classic multi-dimensional scaling (CMDS) of selected data from the repertory grids produces an indifference surface that describes perceived effects of specific changes. Large proximate changes stimulate greater response than those in more remote locations. A transactional model is suggested as a basis for studying local evaluations of neighborhood change and for contributing to knowledge and application in microlevel research in general.

This article reports on the twentieth anniversary of the Environmental Design Research Association held at Black Mountains, North Carolina, from March 29 to April 2, 1989. The conference was endorsed by the International Association for the Study of People and their Physical Surroundings from Europe. The Man Environment Research Association from Japan and People and Physical Environment Research from Australia. The theme of EDRA-20, "Changing Paradigms," reflects a 20-year struggle to form paradigmatic questions. EDRA's intellectual origins recognize the inseparability of environment, behavior and design. and express dissatisfaction with the orientations and intents of parent disciplines.

Focuses on teen violence related to schoolyard shootings in the United States. Discussions on poverty, sexism, racism and adult violence; Views of President George W. Bush on teenage violence; Role of families in the prevention of youth violence.