Contested terrain: gender, labor and religious dynamics in horticultural exporting, Meru District, Kenya

This seminar will provide an overview of 18 months of Ph.D dissertation research on the interplay of gender and horticultural production in Meru District, Kenya. The significance of this project is that horticulture "traditionally" the domain of women, has become rapidly intensified and commercialized for export production. My research examines the implications of horticultural exports for women's rights to land and labor by focusing on the district's most important horticultural export crop, French beans. While French beans remain widely grown throughout the District, both production and sales have dropped dramatically since 1993. Thus, this project explores how the fluctuation of multinational capital is restructuring social life, transforming domestic relations and precipitating new class configurations. My tentative findings include a host of social crises: a staggering population growth rate (3.9 percent) that has incited acute pressures on constricting land resources and catalyzed an escalation of clan and court cases related to land disputes; an exacerbation of domestic violence and deviant social behavior such as prostitution, rape and incest; ubiquitous occurrences of alcohol abuse; and finally, the transformation of French bean market centers into loci of corruption and duplicity. These social dynamics underscore the tensions that emanate in an atmosphere of financial disintegration that is coupled with an absence of prospects for economic amelioration. As the panacea of French bean wanes women have turned to Christ to cope with the economic plights of their households. The omnipresence of Christianity powerfully shapes all aspects of social change, as the convictions of female submission and male dominance are propagated through variant Christian ideologies and men face the backlash of such indoctrination by women bewitching or poisoning them. Thus the material and ideational reconstruction that has taken root invokes significant queries on the gender dimensions of power and raises important questions for the gen

Divergent selection on 63-day body weight in the rabbit: response on growth, carcass and muscle traits

The effects of selection for growth rate on weights and qualitative carcass and muscle traits were assessed by comparing two lines selected for live body weight at 63 days of age and a cryopreserved control population raised contemporaneously with generation 5 selected rabbits. The animals were divergently selected for five generations for either a high (H line) or a low (L line) body weight, based on their BLUP breeding value. Heritability (h2) was 0.22 for 63-d body weight (N = 4754). Growth performance and quantitative carcass traits in the C group were intermediate between the H and L lines (N = 390). Perirenal fat proportion (h2 = 0.64) and dressing out percentage (h2 = 0.55) ranked in the order L < H = C (from high to low). The weight and cross-sectional area of the Semitendinosus muscle, and the mean diameter of the constitutive myofibres were reduced in the L line only (N = 140). In the Longissimus muscle (N = 180), the ultimate pH (h2 = 0.16) and the maximum shear force reached in the Warner-Braztler test (h2 = 0.57) were slightly modified by selection

Picture This: Developing a Model for the Analysis of Visual Metadiscourse

© The Author(s) 2015. Corporate documents increasingly rely on visual rhetoric to complement text. Although previous studies have indicated that companies’ local culture may be reflected in the images they employ, scholars have never systematically investigated the use of visual rhetoric as it is used across different business cultures. This study analyzes visual rhetoric using a new model of visual metadiscourse—a set of devices that designers use to convey meaning in order to influence the audience’s interpretation of the text. The study compares the visual metadiscourse in photos used in English management statements in the annual reports of Dutch and U.K. companies. The results show that metadiscourse is inherent not only in the written text of a corporate document but also in the visuals that a design team chooses to include. The results also indicate that despite some similarities, Dutch-based and U.K.-based statements contain differences in their use of visual metadiscourse. Several of these differences can be attributed to cultural differences between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The study underlines the applicability of the new model and warns international text designers not to overlook cultural differences in visual metadiscourse

Multiobjective waste management optimization strategy coupling life cycle assessment and genetic algorithms: application to PET bottles

A mathematical model based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) results is developed to assess the environmental efficiency of the end-of-life management of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles. For this purpose, multiobjective optimization and decision support tools are used to define optimal targets for efficient waste management. The global environmental impacts associated with the treatment of PET bottles from their cradle to their ultimate graves (incineration, landfill, recycling by mechanical, chemical or thermal processes) are computed in function of the flow of bottles in the different valorization paths. They are based on the calculation of the impacts involved in each elementary process with a LCA software tool, using the CML impact assessment method. The model takes into account the fraction λ of PET regenerated into bottles that can be further recycled, the global impacts being the cumulative impacts corresponding to each "end-of-life". A nonlinear model for the bottle waste collection stage is considered, reflecting that the more diffuse the flow of bottles is, the more difficult it is to collect and consequently, the more environmentally impacting. The resulting multiobjective problem is to find the allocation of bottles between valorization paths that minimizes the environmental impacts of bottle end-of-lives. It is solved using a genetic algorithm, and the trade-off between environmental impacts is illustrated through Pareto curves. A decision support tool then determines the best compromise among the set of solutions. The model is applied to the case of France in 2010. The variables that minimize simultaneously abiotic depletion, acidification and global warming potential are determined, in particular the number of recycling loops. The approach can be easily adapted to any specific product like bio-based plastics or organic wastes to find the optimal allocation between valorization paths

An Octopus and a circle at the basis of a framework for the evaluation of sustainable mobility

Worldwide, transportation authorities are keen to implement sustainable development measures and to move toward a more sustainable mobility for people and goods. However, this implementation entails a rise in the need for a sustainable development assessment framework for mobility, in order to compare different projects or to monitor a given area. This paper addresses the issue of conceptualization and standardization of the evaluation of sustainable development in transportation, by proposing a framework, which seeks to meet the various needs of transportation planners. This framework aims to provide an exhaustive view of the sustainability features (through its three main dimensions), as well as to clarify the concept of sustainability in transportation by embedding links between actions and impacts. This paper presents the basis of the framework developed as an interactive tool: (1) a representation named ‘Octopus’ categorizing the impact of mobility on the three dimensions of sustainable development and (2) a circular representation, named ‘Causal circle’, which integrates causal links between actions and impacts on these same dimensions. First published online 29 March 201

What Are Consumers Looking For In Dark Chocolate?

In this paper, we conduct a conjoint analysis to measure the relative importance of attributes of dark chocolate brand, country of origin, certification, cacao content in the formation of consumers preferences. Results show that the cacao content is the most important attribute