LABOUR AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION: TOWARDS A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE LINKAGE DISCOURSE

[As the World Trade Organization approaches its ten-year anniversary, the long-discussed issue of linking the right to trade with the enforcement of cer- tain labour standards continues to persist. However, the discourse on the is- sue has hit a stalemate of late. In the hope of overcoming the stalemate and moving toward effective solutions on the issue, this paper explains and ex- amines four types of “conceptual differentiations” that currently underpin a significant portion of the labour linkage discourse. The “conceptual differ- entiations” examined are trade/non-trade; north/south; liberalisa- tion/protectionism; economic development/poverty; consumption/ production; universalist/relativist; WTO/ILO; and sanctions/welfare. A pol- icy proposal for further discussion on the issue is then presented, based on a re-conceptualisation of the “conceptual differentiations” discussed.]

Postcards from Nowhere

Socially constructed western hegemonic masculinities define man’s role in our culture. They become visually apparent in the way men dress and adorn themselves. The hegemonic male’s fashion is ‘generic’ in appearance, paralleling their social stereotype. These stereotypes are accentuated within magazines, also popular culture (music, film, entertainment etc), creating an idolised archetype. In consequence, these stereotypes create restrictions, limiting the choice and design of jewellery available to the hegemonic male. A consistent characteristic of the hegemonic male is the avoidance of beautiful things, in this case jewellery, due to its feminine connotations. This paper will analyse sub-cultures and their dress codes to develop an understanding of how and where men’s fashion jewellery fits in with western hegemonic masculinity. Through investigating three specific subcultures, hip-hop, punk and drag, the circumstance of men wearing and using jewellery is explored in conjunction with how these men represent their different ideal masculinities. This exploration raises points regarding the influences socially constructed norms have on jewellery design and how overt masculine personas seem to obtain the right to wear unconventional amounts of jewellery. My jewellery series, Artefacts From 3 Sites in Nowhere, reiterates the above research using it as a starting point to develop a collection of jewellery for men. The individual pieces are consciously designed to explore the boundaries of what is conventional and what is progressive in the fashion jewellery market. More specifically it aims to create an alternative choice for men who are willing to break social norms and decorate and beautify themselves

The 10kTrees Website: A New Online Resource for Primate Phylogeny

The comparative method plays a central role in efforts to uncover the adaptive basis for primate behaviors, morphological traits, and cognitive abilities.[1-4] The comparative method has been used, for example, to infer that living in a larger group selects for a larger neocortex,[5][6] that primate territoriality favors a longer day range relative to home range size,[7] and that sperm competition can account for the evolution of primate testes size.[8][9] Comparison is fundamental for reconstructing behavioral traits in the fossil record, for example, in studies of locomotion and diet.[10-13] Recent advances in comparative methods require phylogenetic information,[2][14-16] but our knowledge of phylogenetic information is imperfect. In the face of uncertainty about evolutionary relationships, which phylogeny should one use? Here we provide a new resource for comparative studies of primates that enables users to run comparative analyses on multiple primate phylogenies Importantly, the 10,000 trees that we provide are not random, but instead use recent systematic methods to create a plausible set of topologies that reflect our certainty about some nodes on the tree and uncertainty about other nodes, given the dataset. The trees also reflect uncertainty about branch lengths.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Primate Extinction Risk and Historical Patterns of Speciation and Extinction in Relation to Body Mass

Body mass is thought to influence diversification rates, but previous studies have produced ambiguous results. We investigated patterns of diversification across 100 trees obtained from a new Bayesian inference of primate phylogeny that sampled trees in proportion to their posterior probabilities. First, we used simulations to assess the validity of previous studies that used linear models to investigate the links between IUCN Red List status and body mass. These analyses support the use of linear models for ordinal ranked data on threat status, and phylogenetic generalized linear models revealed a significant positive correlation between current extinction risk and body mass across our tree block. We then investigated historical patterns of speciation and extinction rates using a recently developed maximum-likelihood method. Specifically, we predicted that body mass correlates positively with extinction rate because larger bodied organisms reproduce more slowly, and body mass correlates negatively with speciation rate because smaller bodied organisms are better able to partition niche space. We failed to find evidence that extinction rates covary with body mass across primate phylogeny. Similarly, the speciation rate was generally unrelated to body mass, except in some tests that indicated an increase in the speciation rate with increasing body mass. Importantly, we discovered that our data violated a key assumption of sample randomness with respect to body mass. After correcting for this bias, we found no association between diversification rates and mass.Human Evolutionary Biolog

YouthBuild Providence: Public Relations Plan

We are targeting small local businesses because our survey showed us that they are the best source to solicit donations from. Small businesses also tend to care about their image within the community they operate in. If a business decides to donate to YouthBuild, they will be perceived as caring and philanthropic within the community. This action makes people feel more comfortable with their organization and therefore more willing to choose their business over their competition that may not give back. Due to that reasoning, businesses tend to look for charitable organizations to donate to. Small businesses also often times feel a sense of responsibility towards the communities they are a part of, making them more prone to return the wealth

Urban Design of Bristol Waterfront, Lower Thames Street

The marketplace is going to be one of the highlights on Thames Street, serving as a destination for leisure, shopping and dining. The concept of the project is to have indoor space continue out to the water, providing an outdoor space for dining and leisure, but also giving the boardwalk a resting point. The building is planned as two floors, with the fish market and multipurpose area on the first and an eatery, sitting area, balcony and facilities on the second. The building will be made of a light metal frame with panels to enclose the space and is designed with a folded glass panel that can be opened up to the outside, yet decrease wind pressure in a storm

Press Reports of Animal Hoarding

This article explores how the press reports nonhuman animal hoarding and hoarders. It discusses how 100 articles from 1995 to the present were content analyzed. Analysis revealed five emotional themes that include drama, revulsion, sympathy, indignation, and humor. While these themes draw readers\u27 attention and make disparate facts behind cases understandable by packaging them in familiar formats, they also present an inconsistent picture of animal hoarding that can confuse readers about the nature and significance of this behavior as well as animal abuse, more generally

Sensitivity of air pollution exposure and disease burden to emission changes in China using machine learning emulation

Machine learning models can emulate chemical transport models, reducing computational costs and enabling more experimentation. We developed emulators to predict annual−mean fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) and ozone (O(3)) concentrations and their associated chronic health impacts from changes in five major emission sectors (residential, industrial, land transport, agriculture, and power generation) in China. The emulators predicted 99.9% of the variance in PM(2.5) and O(3) concentrations. We used these emulators to estimate how emission reductions can attain air quality targets. In 2015, we estimate that PM(2.5) exposure was 47.4 μg m(−3) and O(3) exposure was 43.8 ppb, associated with 2,189,700 (95% uncertainty interval, 95UI: 1,948,000–2,427,300) premature deaths per year, primarily from PM(2.5) exposure (98%). PM(2.5) exposure and the associated disease burden were most sensitive to industry and residential emissions. We explore the sensitivity of exposure and health to different combinations of emission reductions. The National Air Quality Target (35 μg m(−3)) for PM(2.5) concentrations can be attained nationally with emission reductions of 72% in industrial, 57% in residential, 36% in land transport, 35% in agricultural, and 33% in power generation emissions. We show that complete removal of emissions from these five sectors does not enable the attainment of the WHO Annual Guideline (5 μg m(−3)) due to remaining air pollution from other sources. Our work provides the first assessment of how air pollution exposure and disease burden in China varies as emissions change across these five sectors and highlights the value of emulators in air quality research