Equality and Non-discrimination (EQND) in Sanitation Programmes at Scale (Part 1)

A well-facilitated Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme that pro-actively considers and involves people who might be disadvantaged has been shown to have many benefits. A lack of this can and will often have negative impacts and make programmes and ODF unsustainable.This issue of Frontiers of CLTS looks at who should be considered potentially disadvantaged, how they can effectively participate and what may be needed to address diverse needs in order to make processes and outcomes sustainable and inclusive. Using a range of examples from GSF programmes that were part of a recent study on Equality and Non-Discrimination, it explores the challenges that may occur and concludes with suggested good practices that will strengthen the processes to the benefit of all

Agroecology and ecological engineering for pest management. Cotton protection as a case study

This synthesis provides an annotated guide to the thinking and publications behind the evolution of concepts in cotton pest management over the last fifty years. The first movement was from the concepts of Pest Control to those of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It was soon appreciated that advantage needed to be taken of the beneficial aspects of agro-ecological biodiversity, leading to concepts of Agro-Ecological Engineering. This required action beyond the immediate cotton field and of many players other than the recommending scientist. Area-wide and Community-based management, incorporating the lessons learnt from Farmer Field Schools (FFS) made this a more genuinely participatory process. It soon became apparent that biodiversity in itself does not deliver improved pest management and the practice of Landscape Farming came to involve the manipulation of spatio-temporal crop geometries, in turn leading to Better Cotton Management Practices (BMPs) aiming to capitalise on functionally useful biocomplexity rather than simple biodiversity as such and explicitly incorporating wider environmental concerns. More recent developments along this pest management continuum include the idea of New Cotton Cultivation (NCC) emphasising the interactions between the plant, the technical context and the natural and sociological environment of particular cultivators. With improvements in our understanding of the scale and complexity of the practices required to optimise cotton production systems we will continue to move towards more genuinely sustainable and lower physical-input systems. (Résumé d'auteur

Dynamic transition in Landau-Zener-St\"uckelberg interferometry of dissipative systems: the case of the flux qubit

We study Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg (LZS) interferometry in multilevel systems coupled to an Ohmic quantum bath. We consider the case of superconducting flux qubits driven by a dc+ac magnetic fields, but our results can apply to other similar systems. We find a dynamic transition manifested by a symmetry change in the structure of the LZS interference pattern, plotted as a function of ac amplitude and dc detuning. The dynamic transition is from a LZS pattern with nearly symmetric multiphoton resonances to antisymmetric multiphoton resonances at long times (above the relaxation time). We also show that the presence of a resonant mode in the quantum bath can impede the dynamic transition when the resonant frequency is of the order of the qubit gap. Our results are obtained by a numerical calculation of the finite time and the asymptotic stationary population of the qubit states, using the Floquet-Markov approach to solve a realistic model of the flux qubit considering up to 10 energy levels.Comment: One new figure added. Final version to be published in PR

Dix lettres de Jacques Ferron à Pierre Vadeboncoeur

Dix Lettres de Jacques Ferron à Pierre Vadeboncoeu

Reversible Ion Induced Modification of Consequent Secondary Electron Emission in Porous Silicon

We report measurements of secondary electron emission (SEE) induced by electron and ion bombardment on porous silicon (PS). We found that electron induced emission is strongly reduced by ion bombardment, and that this reduction is reversible. The reduction effect is large even for ion fluxes much lower compared to that of the electron beam.We attribute this effect to changes in the charge distribution of the surface dipole originated in the difference between ion and electron charge deposition depths. The nanostructure of PS plays an important role in this effect as well as in the reversibility of the process. We think that this effect could be useful in the dynamic centering and monitoring of ion and electron beams in electron spectroscopy.Fil: Ruano Sandoval, Gustavo Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Ferron, Julio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Koropecki, Roberto Roman. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; Argentin

Secret professionnel et signalement de situations de compromission chez l'enfant : un dilemme à résoudre

La loi oblige toute personne, même liée par le secret professionnel, à signaler au directeur de la protection de la jeunesse la situation d'un enfant victime d'abus sexuels ou de mauvais traitements physiques. Dans les autres cas où la sécurité ou le développement d'un enfant est ou peut être considéré comme compromis, le signalement est facultatif, sauf à l'égard de certains professionnels qui ont toujours l'obligation de faire le signalement. L'analyse qui est faite dans la présente étude conduit au constat que les dimensions légales, déontologiques et éthiques du double devoir de signalement et de respect du secret professionnel ne concordent pas. Ayant soulevé la possible invalidité du devoir de signalement imposé aux professionnels par l'article 39 de la Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse, l'auteur conclut en faisant appel au législateur pour modifier cette disposition.Under the law, anyone, including a person bound by professional secrecy, must notify the Youth Protection Director regarding a child who is a victim of sexual abuse or abusive physical treatment. In other cases in which the child's safety or development is or may be considered compromised, notification is optional, excepting for certain professionals who are always bound to make such notification. The analysis performed in this study leads to the conclusion that the legal, professional and ethical dimensions of the double duty involving notification and respect for professional secrecy are not consistent with one another. By raising the possibility that the duty to notify imposed on professionals under section 39 of the Youth Protection Act could be struck down, the author winds up by petitioning the legislator to amend this provision