Luís Silva

Bio: Luís Silva is an academic researcher from University of Lisbon. The author has contributed to research in topics: Rural tourism & Tourism. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 67 publications receiving 690 citations. Previous affiliations of Luís Silva include Universidade Nova de Lisboa & ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon.

Community perceptions of renewable energies in Portugal: Impacts on environment, landscape and local development

Abstract: This article aims to contribute to the debate on energy transitions in Europe, by focusing on community perceptions in a southern European country marked by a significant development of renewable energy in recent years, Portugal. Three main dimensions of community perceptions of the impact, both positive and negative, of renewables are addressed: environmental, landscape and socioeconomic. The article is based on case studies of communities living in the vicinities of three wind farms and a solar power plant. The results show that not only community perceptions are heterogeneous but also that, in order to better understand the factors for social acceptance, it is crucial to examine perceptions not just at the planning stage but also once the energy infrastructures are constructed and functioning.

A multi-touch tabletop for robust multimedia interaction in museums

Abstract: The introduction of interaction technology in museum settings requires special care in different aspects including the relations with the different participants (public, artists, and curators), and the ability of the technology to provide rewarding experiences over extended periods of time for a demanding audience. This paper describes a hardware and software multi-touch table deployed in a contemporary art exhibition with many visitors. The design requirements are discussed and presented along with the development process. The paper also focuses on the different interaction and navigation mechanisms available and how they are used by the visitors and participants.

Impact of Aging on Endurance and Neuromuscular Physical Performance: The Role of Vascular Senescence

Abstract: The portion of society aged ≥60 years is the fastest growing population in the Western hemisphere. Aging is associated with numerous changes to systemic physiology that affect physical function and performance. We present a narrative review of the literature aimed at discussing the age-related changes in various metrics of physical performance (exercise economy, anaerobic threshold, peak oxygen uptake, muscle strength, and power). It also explores aging exercise physiology as it relates to global physical performance. Finally, this review examines the vascular contributions to aging exercise physiology. Numerous studies have shown that older adults exhibit substantial reductions in physical performance. The process of decline in endurance capacity is particularly insidious over the age of 60 years and varies considerably as a function of sex, task specificity, and individual training status. Starting at the age of 50 years, aging also implicates an impressive deterioration of neuromuscular function, affecting muscle strength and power. Muscle atrophy, together with minor deficits in the structure and function of the nervous system and/or impairments in intrinsic muscle quality, plays an important role in the development of neuromotor senescence. Large artery stiffness increases as a function of age, thus triggering subsequent changes in pulsatile hemodynamics and systemic endothelial dysfunction. For this reason, we propose that vascular senescence has a negative impact on cerebral, cardiac, and neuromuscular structure and function, detrimentally affecting physical performance.

How ecotourism works at the community-level: the case of whale-watching in the Azores

Abstract: Whale-watching is one of the fastest growing tourism industries worldwide, often viewed as a sustainable, non-consumptive strategy for the benefits of cetacean conservation and the coastal communities, alternative to and incompatible with whaling. Yet, there is paucity of research on how things actually work out at the community-level. Drawing on the research literature and my own ethnographic fieldwork, this article bridges a knowledge gap in this field while examining an Azorean context where tourism has brought a re-commodification of the whale for the community (observing wildlife as opposed to harpooning it) in the last 20 years. The analysis is focused on four main community-level implications: governance of common maritime resources, and tourism's contribution to economic sustainability, cultural identity and social relations. It is shown that whale-watching, as any other form of community-based ecotourism, is not a panacea that always promotes biodiversity conservation and economic and sociocultur...

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

Abstract: Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. By Bruno Latour. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004; pp. x + 307. $55.00 cloth; $24.95 paper. The academic study of environmental ethics, particularly of "deep ecology," has generated extensive scholarly discussion in recent years. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy, by French author Bruno Latour, brings a fascinating and bold new twist to contemporary discussions about the nature of "nature." Latour proposes a radical shift in current conceptions of "political ecology," arguing that mainstream environmental movements are doomed to fail so long as they envision political ecology as inextricably tied to the protection and management of nature through political methodologies and policies. Instead, political ecology should abandon socially constructed representations of nature as an uncontrollable monolith. The former perspective is dangerous, Latour argues, because it enables science to silence public deliberation about ecological issues and close off options to prevent pending environmental crises. The rhetoric of science, whose credibility emanates from the dual sources of indisputable expertise and dire warnings, paralyzes the polis. Unable to contest scientific fact, and faced with pending environmental cataclysm, public and political discussion centered on the inevitable question of "What next?" becomes stagnant and devoid of solutions. In the first chapter, Latour argues that "nature is the chief obstacle that has hampered the development of public discourse" (9). Nature, or at least the agreed-upon external reality that is often represented as nature, allows science to render the public sphere voiceless. Unqualified to objectively test and observe natural facts, the polis is relegated to the sidelines, and engages in endless quibbling about matters of value which are a rung lower on the hierarchy of social concerns. The hegemony of science and the god-like status of the scientist, who is the only legitimate liaison between the natural world and the public, render meaningful political discourse impotent. "[T]he Scientist can go back and forth from one world to the other no matter what: the passageway closed to all others is open to him alone" (11). Latour concludes this chapter by examining how Western societies, particularly the United States, use nature to order and organize political life. Uncontestable facts of nature, and rhetoric that represents nature as something to be controlled, protected, or managed, permeate everyday political discourse and decision-making to a degree not seen in other cultures. Having thrown off the yoke of nature, Latour sketches one precondition for a more communal and sustainable political ecology in chapter 2. Here, a critique of anthropocentrism is used to cast off false, socially constructed distinctions between human and nonhuman, including animals and inanimate objects like rocks and trees. Of particular interest to rhetorical scholars, Latour also criticizes at length the modernist belief that speech and the capacity for rational thought distinguish humans from nonhumans. Instead, he posits that political ecology must be recast as a collective of beings both human and nonhuman, both capable of speech and mute: "a slight displacement of our attention suffices to show that nonhumans, too, are implicated in a great number of speech impedimenta" (62-63). This rethinking of the public collective is necessary to prevent scientists from imposing the idea that they definitively represent and speak for nature (the mute objects that they seek so earnestly to protect). …