What Are The Implications of The Global Crisis and its Aftermath for Developing Countries, 2010-2020?

Some major ?game changers? beyond the recent economic crisis and food/fuel crisis will have an impact on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to 2015 and afterwards. ?Future-proofing? the MDGs is about thinking how future(s) might impact the Goals, MDG gains, costs, strategies and opportunities for faster progress on poverty reduction. Scenarios?multiple coherent and plausible futures?are a vehicle both for acting on possible future(s) and interpreting their implications. This paper explores the implications for growth and poverty reduction in developing countries of four futures scenarios to address the following question: ?What are the implications of the global financial crisis and its aftermath, regionally and globally, for developing countries, taking a 5?10 year view? The scenarios and modelling were developed through interviews and workshops with a range of stakeholders in the United Kingdom, India and Kenya. This paper takes a structured approach to reviewing outcomes for growth, poverty reduction and the MDGs for different developing economies, against the background of the post-crisis context. The scenarios were developed using a version of the morphological scenarios approach, field anomaly relaxation (FAR). This creates a backdrop of internally consistent futures for policy formation and decision making by identifying and analysing the most significant drivers of change in the global financial and political systems. The scenarios are closely connected to a ?soft? model that identifies possible pathways, causal linkages and transmission variables between the scenarios and associated levels of economic growth and poverty reduction via key economic variables. This permits more granular interpretation of the scenario outcomes than conventional scenario-analysis techniques. The work was financed by Britain?s Department for International Development (DFID). (...)What Are The Implications of The Global Crisis and its Aftermath for Developing Countries, 2010-2020?

Modelling charge across pH and the isoelectric point of bovine collagen during leather manufacture

Content: Many areas of leather production rely heavily on the manipulation of acidic and basic residues within the primary collagen structure to vary the overall charge of the substrate. For example, it is the basis which enables swelling during liming, deswelling during deliming, penetration of chromium after addition of chrome tanning salts and the fixing of chrome to carboxylate residues during basification. Manipulation of the charge on collagen is readily achieved through the addition of acids or bases into the float which may react with these residues to alter the charge. Often, the increase in anionic charge and reduction in cationic charge with increasing pH are shown to happen concurrently and linearly with the iso-electric point (IEP) given as the point at which the positive and negative charges present on the collagen are equal. However, the pH at which carboxylate/acid groups undergo protonation/deprotonation is significantly lower than that at which an amine/ammonium is protonated/deprotonated, meaning the linear model described above is not a true representation of charge of collagen at varying pH. Here we model the charge of a collagen substrate based off the amino acid profile of bovine skin, considering their relative levels within the collagen and concentrations within a water/collagen matrix, representative for collagen saturated with water. Models are presented for raw and limed bovine hides. This broader approach enables greater understanding of the influence of charge on the collagen substrate compared to IEP on its own, revealing contrasting charge profiles in acidic and alkaline regions of raw collagen, providing greater understanding of their differing behaviour during alkali swelling

Graphite core brick crack detection through automated load trace analysis

This presentation looks at graphite core brick crack detection through automated load trace analysi

New polysaccharide-based materials

There is provided a plastic or gel material comprising a mixture of: (a) a compound of formula (I) or a mixture of two or more compounds of formula (I), (R−)n(Xn−) (I) or a hydrate thereof, wherein n, R+ and Xn− have meanings given in the description; (b) one or more uncharged organic compounds, each of which compounds comprises at least one oxygen atom and at least one hydrogen atom that is capable of forming a hydrogen bond with Xn−; and (c) one or more polysaccharides, wherein each polysaccharide is a polymer of pyranose monomers, at least 30% of which monomers are in the α-anomeric conformation. There is also provided articles formed from such materials, uses of such materials and processes for forming such materials

A narrative of the Peninsular War : in two volumes

Copia digital. Madrid : Ministerio de Cultura. Subdirección General de Coordinación Bibliotecaria, 2007Colofón al final de cada t.Vol. I. (XVI, [2], 314 p.) -- vol. II. (VIII, [2], 298 p., [21] h. de grab.)Las h. de grab. calc. incluyen vistas de Salamanca, Vitoria, Pamplona etc.: "Eng[rave]d by W.H. Lizars

Sulfide unhairing: rethinking the received wisdom

Content: The removal of hair from a hide or skin by dissolving it with a mixture of lime and sulfide is a fundamentally understood feature of leather technology. Or is it? For a long time, it has been accepted within the leather literature that, in water, sulfide may be present as either hydrogen sulfide (H2S), hydrosulfide (HS-) or sulfide (S2-), depending on the pH. pH 12 H2S(aq) ⇌ HS-(aq) ⇌ S2-(aq) The generally accepted mechanism of hair burning is sulfide attack at the cystine disulfide linkages in keratin. Also, it is believed that the unhairing reaction only proceeds at an appreciable rate in the presence of the dianionic S2- species, because that fits with the technological observation that unhairing reactions only proceed at pH greater than 12. However, recent publications have provided substantive proof that the S2- species does not exist in aqueous media at any pH: researchers were unable to observe any evidence of the S2- species in a solution of Na2S dissolved in hyper-concentrated NaOH and CsOH using Raman spectroscopy. The assigned second pKa for removal of the second proton has now been estimated to be 19, making the concentration of S2-(see below) vanishingly small. HS- ⇋ S2- + H+ There is a clear contradiction between the currently accepted mechanism for sulfide unhairing with the evidenced speciation of sulfide species in aqueous environment. Here the implications for this important process are discussed and possible alternative mechanisms postulated that fit with the new knowledge. Take-Away: It is a truism that we must understand the mechanistic principles of a process in order to control it. Here, we have a big change in thinking for ‘sulfide unhairing’, so it is vital that we understand the implications for leather science and leather technology of that change