Girls in Mining: Research Findings from Ghana, Niger, Peru, and United Republic of Tanzania

[Excerpt] Research carried out by the International Labour Organization’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO–IPEC) between April and December 2006 has produced evidence that girls as well as boys are involved in hazardous work in the small-scale mining industry. Due to the fact that boys are statistically more likely to be involved in hazardous child labour than girls, 1 the appalling work of girls is often overlooked. In the small-scale mining industry especially, little is understood about the roles and activities of girls and the effect that this has on their lives and livelihoods. Not much is known of the dynamics that brought them into this type of employment and consequently what could lead them out of it. The issue of girl child labour in mining is largely unknown, it is often not fully recognized by the law, and missed by the intervention services and the media. New evidence presented in this paper challenges the general understanding of gender roles in small-scale mining communities. It forces us to acknowledge a more intricate reality for boys and girls as the evidence shows that the involvement of girl child labour in mining is much more frequent and far-reaching than was previously recognized. The assumption that girls are only involved in prostitution and domestic work is incorrect; girls are involved in tasks related to the extraction, transportation and processing stages of mining as well as in other mining-related jobs such as selling food and supplies to the miners. The gender balance appears to be shifting. Girls are involved in more and more hazardous occupations deeper into the interiors of the mine, but at the same time they are also upheld to their traditional female responsibilities in the home. The result is that girls in mining communities are forced to juggle their domestic tasks with other paid or non-paid work. Often, girls are performing just as hazardous tasks as boys, working longer hours, with a greater workload and often have a lesser chance of schooling, withdrawal or rehabilitation

Realizing the Smartness in Robot-Assisted Risky Intervention, Search, Rescue and Environmental Surveillance: a Feasibility Study on Firefighting

Urbanisation and Changes in modern infrastructure have introduced new challenges to firefighting practices. The current manual operations and training including fire investigation, hazardous chemicals detection, fire and rescue are insufficient to protect the firefighter’s safety and life. The firefighting and rescue functions of the existing equipment and apparatus and their dexterity are limited, particularly in the harsh firefighting environments. We aim to innovate a smart robot-assisted firefighting platform in smart firefighting to perform searching and rescuing practice in the fire ground, and to facilitate the efficient decision makings. Concerning harsh environments for the complex fire ground (including chemical plants and other venues), we investigate, study, and innovate information acquisition (sensing and visioning technology), transmission (ultra-remote signal transmission) and processing (multi-sensor fusion technology), instrumentation (actuating technology, robotics thermal protection technology), control (multi-degree of freedom mobile and operating robot control methods, obstacle avoidance and sweeping, Decision Support Systems (DSS)) and communication (Human-Robot (H2R) interaction systems, Machine-to-Machine (M2M))

Delayed Germination of Seeds: A Look at the Effects of Adult Longevity, the Timing of Reproduction, and Population Age/Stage Structure

The effects of adult longevity, the timing of reproduction, and population age/stage structure on the evolution of seed dormancy are explored in both constant and variable environment models. In the constant environment models complete germination is the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) regardless of adult longevity. Incorporating a cost of reproduction on subsequent survival does not alter this result. In contrast, in a variable environment changes in adult longevity can exert a strong selection pressure against seed dormancy. Incorporating a cost of reproduction for iteroparous species reduces adult longevity, which selects for more seed dormancy. The magnitude of the change in ESS germination probability depends on several factors, including which life-history stage is variable (e.g., fecundity, seedling survival), whether seeds can detect favorable sites for establishment, and the age/stage structure of the population. In general, increases in adult longevity select against seed dormancy, but exceptions to this pattern are discussed. The idea that established plant traits are uncoupled from those of the regenerative phase, as assumed by J. P. Grime's competition-stress-ruderal model, is considered critically

Food discovery is associated with different reliance on social learning and lower cognitive flexibility across environments in a food-caching bird

Social learning is a primary mechanism for information acquisition in social species. Despite many benefits, social learning may be disadvantageous when independent learning is more efficient. For example, searching independently may be more advantageous when food sources are ephemeral and unpredictable. Individual differences in cognitive abilities can also be expected to influence social information use. Specifically, better spatial memory can make a given environment more predictable for an individual by allowing it to better track food sources. We investigated how resident food-caching chickadees discovered multiple novel food sources in both harsher, less predictable high elevation and milder, more predictable low elevation winter environments. Chickadees at high elevation were faster at discovering multiple novel food sources and discovered more food sources than birds at low elevation. While birds at both elevations used social information, the contribution of social learning to food discovery was significantly lower at high elevation. At both elevations, chickadees with better spatial cognitive flexibility were slower at discovering food sources, likely because birds with lower spatial cognitive flexibility are worse at tracking natural resources and therefore spend more time exploring. Overall, our study supported the prediction that harsh environments should favour less reliance on social learning

Multimodal interactions in insect navigation

Animals travelling through the world receive input from multiple sensory modalities that could be important for the guidance of their journeys. Given the availability of a rich array of cues, from idiothetic information to input from sky compasses and visual information through to olfactory and other cues (e.g. gustatory, magnetic, anemotactic or thermal) it is no surprise to see multimodality in most aspects of navigation. In this review, we present the current knowledge of multimodal cue use during orientation and navigation in insects. Multimodal cue use is adapted to a species’ sensory ecology and shapes navigation behaviour both during the learning of environmental cues and when performing complex foraging journeys. The simultaneous use of multiple cues is beneficial because it provides redundant navigational information, and in general, multimodality increases robustness, accuracy and overall foraging success. We use examples from sensorimotor behaviours in mosquitoes and flies as well as from large scale navigation in ants, bees and insects that migrate seasonally over large distances, asking at each stage how multiple cues are combined behaviourally and what insects gain from using different modalities

Electrical properties of teflon and ceramic capacitors at high temperatures

Space power systems and components are often required to operate efficiently and reliably in harsh environments where stresses, such as high temperature, are encountered. These systems must, therefore, withstand exposure to high temperature while still providing good electrical and other functional properties. Experiments were carried out to evaluate Teflon and ceramic capacitors for potential use in high temperature applications. The capacitors were characterized in terms of their capacitance and dielectric loss as a function of temperature, up to 200 C. At a given temperature, these properties were obtained in a frequency range of 50 Hz to 100 kHz. DC leakage current measurements were also performed in a temperature range from 25 to 200 C. The results obtained are discussed and conclusions are made concerning the suitability of the capacitors studied for high temperature applications

Demonstrated survivability of a high temperature optical fiber cable on a 1500 pound thrust rocket chamber

A demonstration of the ability of an existing optical fiber cable to survive the harsh environment of a rocket engine was performed at the NASA Lewis Research Center. The intent of this demonstration was to prove the feasibility of applying fiber optic technology to rocket engine instrumentation systems. Extreme thermal transient tests were achieved by wrapping a high temperature optical fiber, which was cablized for mechanical robustness, around the combustion chamber outside wall of a 1500 lb Hydrogen-Oxygen rocket engine. Additionally, the fiber was wrapped around coolant inlet pipes which were subject to near liquid hydrogen temperatures. Light from an LED was sent through the multimode fiber, and output power was monitored as a function of time while the engine was fired. The fiber showed no mechanical damage after 419 firings during which it was subject to transients from 30 K to 350 K, and total exposure time to near liquid hydrogen temperatures in excess of 990 seconds. These extreme temperatures did cause attenuation greater than 3 dB, but the signal was fully recovered at room temperature. This experiment demonstrates that commercially available optical fiber cables can survive the environment seen by a typical rocket engine instrumentation system, and disclose a temperature-dependent attenuation observed during exposure to near liquid hydrogen temperatures