Girls’ and women’s education within Unesco and the World Bank, 1945–2000

By 2000, girls’ and women’s education was a priority for international development organisations. While studies have examined the impact of recent campaigns and programmes, there has been less exploration of ideas about girls’ and women’s education within development thought in the immediate post?colonial period, and the political mechanisms through which this came to be a global concern. Through a study of policy documents, this paper investigates how the education of girls and women came to be prioritised within the two principle UN agencies involved with education since 1945, the World Bank and Unesco. A shift in priorities is evident, from ensuring formal rights and improving the status of women, to expanding the productive capacities of women, fertility control and poverty reduction. While the ascendance of human capital theory provided a space for a new perception of the role of women’s education in development, in other policy arenas women’s education was central to exploring more substantive, rights?based notions of gender equality. Ultimately, the goal of improving girls’ and women’s education fitted into diverse development agendas, paving the way for it to become a global development priority

A Stated Preference Investigation into the Chinese Demand for Farmed vs. Wild Bear Bile

Farming of animals and plants has recently been considered not merely as a more efficient and plentiful supply of their products but also as a means of protecting wild populations from that trade. Amongst these nascent farming products might be listed bear bile. Bear bile has been exploited by traditional Chinese medicinalists for millennia. Since the 1980s consumers have had the options of: illegal wild gall bladders, bile extracted from caged live bears or the acid synthesised chemically. Despite these alternatives bears continue to be harvested from the wild. In this paper we use stated preference techniques using a random sample of the Chinese population to estimate demand functions for wild bear bile with and without competition from farmed bear bile. We find a willingness to pay considerably more for wild bear bile than farmed. Wild bear bile has low own price elasticity and cross price elasticity with farmed bear bile. The ability of farmed bear bile to reduce demand for wild bear bile is at best limited and, at prevailing prices, may be close to zero or have the opposite effect. The demand functions estimated suggest that the own price elasticity of wild bear bile is lower when competing with farmed bear bile than when it is the only option available. This means that the incumbent product may actually sell more items at a higher price when competing than when alone in the market. This finding may be of broader interest to behavioural economists as we argue that one explanation may be that as product choice increases price has less impact on decision making. For the wildlife farming debate this indicates that at some prices the introduction of farmed competition might increase the demand for the wild product

Perspectives on Disconnects Between Scientific Information and Management Decisions on Post-fire Recovery in Western US

Environmental regulations frequently mandate the use of "best available" science, but ensuring that it is used in decisions around the use and protection of natural resources is often challenging. In the Western US, this relationship between science and management is at the forefront of post-fire land management decisions. Recent fires, post-fire threats (e.g. flooding, erosion), and the role of fire in ecosystem health combine to make post-fire management highly visible and often controversial. This paper uses post-fire management to present a framework for understanding why disconnects between science and management decisions may occur. We argue that attributes of agencies, such as their political or financial incentives, can limit how effectively science is incorporated into decision-making. At the other end of the spectrum, the lack of synthesis or limited data in science can result in disconnects between science-based analysis of post-fire effects and agency policy and decisions. Disconnects also occur because of the interaction between the attributes of agencies and the attributes of science, such as their different spatial and temporal scales of interest. After offering examples of these disconnects in post-fire treatment, the paper concludes with recommendations to reduce disconnects by improving monitoring, increasing synthesis of scientific findings, and directing social-science research toward identifying and deepening understanding of these disconnects

Drying colloidal systems: laboratory models for a wide range of applications

The drying of complex fluids provides a powerful insight into phenomena that take place on time and length scales not normally accessible. An important feature of complex fluids, colloidal dispersions and polymer solutions is their high sensitivity to weak external actions. Thus, the drying of complex fluids involves a large number of physical and chemical processes. The scope of this review is the capacity to tune such systems to reproduce and explore specific properties in a physics laboratory. A wide variety of systems are presented, ranging from functional coatings, food science, cosmetology, medical diagnostics and forensics to geophysics and art

Matrix Metalloproteinases and TIMP-1 production by peripheral blood granulocytes from COPD patients and asthmatics

Both asthmatic and COPD patients were found to have increased amounts of granulocytes and matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) in their sputum. The present study was conducted to investigate whether the elevated amounts of MMP-9 and TIMP-1 found in such patients' airways may be linked to an enhanced secretion by granulocytes. Blood granulocytes from asthmatics (n = 10), COPD patients (n = 11), and healthy controls (n = 11) were isolated and cultured under basal conditions or after stimulation by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) or N-formyl-L-methionyl-L-leucyl-L-phenylalanine (fMLP). MMP-9 activity was detected by zymography while MMP-8 and TIMP-1 levels were measured by ELISA. In zymography, pro- and activated forms of MMP-9 were present in each group (healthy subjects, asthmatics, and COPD patients). Spontaneous release was not different between the three groups. Stimulation by fMLP and PMA increased to a similar extent the release of MMP-9 by granulocytes in all the three groups. TIMP-1 levels were also increased after stimulation by PMA and fMLP only in healthy subjects and COPD patients. MMP-8 levels were barely detectable. We conclude that circulating granulocytes from COPD patients and asthmatics do not display an abnormal secretion of MMP-9, and that granulocytes from asthmatics have an impaired ability to release TIMP-1 upon stimulation

Deep sequencing of plant and animal DNA contained within traditional Chinese medicines reveals legality issues and health safety concerns

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been practiced for thousands of years, but only within the last few decades has its use become more widespread outside of Asia. Concerns continue to be raised about the efficacy, legality, and safety of many popular complementary alternative medicines, including TCMs. Ingredients of some TCMs are known to include derivatives of endangered, trade-restricted species of plants and animals, and therefore contravene the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) legislation. Chromatographic studies have detected the presence of heavy metals and plant toxins within some TCMs, and there are numerous cases of adverse reactions. It is in the interests of both biodiversity conservation and public safety that techniques are developed to screen medicinals like TCMs. Targeting both the p-loop region of the plastid trnL gene and the mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA gene, over 49,000 amplicon sequence reads were generated from 15 TCM samples presented in the form of powders, tablets, capsules, bile flakes, and herbal teas. Here we show that second-generation, high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of DNA represents an effective means to genetically audit organic ingredients within complex TCMs. Comparison of DNA sequence data to reference databases revealed the presence of 68 different plant families and included genera, such as Ephedra and Asarum, that are potentially toxic. Similarly, animal families were identified that include genera that are classified as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered, including Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica). Bovidae, Cervidae, and Bufonidae DNA were also detected in many of the TCM samples and were rarely declared on the product packaging. This study demonstrates that deep sequencing via HTS is an efficient and cost-effective way to audit highly processed TCM products and will assist in monitoring their legality and safety especially when plant reference databases become better established

An earthquake sequence in the Sierra Nevada-Great Basin boundary zone: Diamond valley

abstractThe Diamond Valley, California, earthquakes of September 1978 occurred near the southern termination of the north-striking, east-dipping Genoa Fault, a major normal fault exhibiting cumulative Holocene offsets of up to 10 meters along the eastern margin of the Carson Range. Master-event location of the 14 largest events (ML ≧ 3.0), using two close-in temporary stations for control, revealed a tight cluster 2 km in extent. P-wave first motions for the main shock (ML = 5.0) resolve a strike-slip mechanism with an east-west axis of minimum compressive stress. Faulting (right-lateral) was assigned to the southeast-striking plane on the basis of aftershock migration in that direction. This style of faulting partially accommodates the regional stress field in zones separating left-stepping normal faults of the Sierra Nevada-Great Basin boundary zone. Seismic moments, Wood-Anderson magnitudes, and stress drops were computed for aftershocks using close-in digital seismograms; stress drops were higher than those found by Douglas and Ryall (1972) for aftershocks of the 1954 Fairview Peak earthquake some 130 km to the east. One identifiable characteristic of this sequence is that the ratio of P-to S-wave spectral corner frequencies is considerably greater (2.5) than unity.</jats:p