Gender and Development Cooperation: Scaling up Work with Men and Boys

Work with men and boys for gender equality and women and girls' empowerment has reached a stage of critical mass within development cooperation. Efforts are now needed to scale up interventions and to embed them in policy and practice. The article is written from the perspective of development bureaucracy and examines the background and the current contexts for work with men and boys and suggests main entry points for future developments

Royal Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy: Ferrante d’Aragona (1458–1494) and his Ambassadors

This article examines the diplomatic challenges faced by the king of Naples, Ferrante d\u27Aragona (1458-1494) and the activity of his ambassadors in meeting those challenges. It identifies Rome, Florence and Milan as the three most important nodes of Ferrante\u27s diplomacy and looks in detail at the activity of the ambassadors who served in these postings. In the area of diplomatic praxis, Ferrante enthusiastically embraced changes pioneered by Francesco Sforza, the Duke of Milan (1450-1466), including the use of permanent resident ambassadors and diplomatic chanceries. This was very much in keeping with Ferrante\u27s pragmatic approach to statecraft and counters the widely held view of Naples as a state out of step with the innovations of the Renaissance period

Evaluating the impact of individual leaf traits on atmospheric particulate matter accumulation using natural and synthetic leaves

The ability of vegetation to capture and retain atmospheric Particulate Matter (PM) is directly dependent on the interactions between PM and plant surfaces. However, the impact of individual leaf traits in this respect is still under debate due to variations in published findings. This study employed standardised experimental designs with natural and synthetic leaves in three experiments to explore the impact of individual leaf traits on traffic-generated PM accumulation whilst other influential variables were controlled. The impact of leaf size on PM deposition was explored using synthetic leaves of different sizes (small, medium and large) but with the same shape and surface characteristics (n = 20 for each category). The impact of leaf shape was examined using another set of synthetic leaves of different shape (elliptical, palmately-lobed and linear) but with the same surface area and the same surface characteristics (n = 20 for each category). PM accumulation (PM1, PM2.5 and PM10) on these leaves was quantified using an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) and ImageJ software. Any differences in PM capture levels due to leaf size and leaf shape were identified using one-way Anova and Tukey’s pairwise comparison. In a subsequent experiment, equal-sized, square-shaped leaf sections obtained from four plant species (n = 20 for each species) with different micromorphology were exposed to traffic-generated pollution and any PM capture differences due to leaf micromorphology identified employing the same SEM/ImageJ and statistical approach. The results of all three experiments showed significant differences in PM accumulation between different leaf sizes (p < 0.001), between different leaf shapes (p < 0.001) and between different leaf micromorphology (p < 0.001) suggesting that all these characters are influential in the capture and retention of PM on leaves. Smaller leaves and complex leaf shapes (lobed leaves) showed a greater potential to capture and retain PM. Leaf surfaces with hair/trichomes, epicuticular wax, and surface-ridges accumulated more PM compared to smooth surfaces; of these characters, leaf hairiness/presence of trichomes was found to be the most important. Species sharing most of these important leaf traits are recommended as effective PM filters

Particulate matter pollution capture by leaves of seventeen living wall species with special reference to rail-traffic at a metropolitan station

Atmospheric Particulate Matter (PM) constitutes a considerable fraction of urban air pollution, and urban greening is a potential method of mitigating this pollution. The value of living wall systems has received scant attention in this respect. This study examined the inter-species variation of particulate capture by leaves of seventeen plant species present in a living wall at New Street railway station, Birmingham, UK. The densities of different size fractions of particulate pollutants (PM1, PM2.5 and PM10) on 20 leaves per species were quantified using an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) and ImageJ image-analysis software. The overall ability of plant leaves to remove PM from air was quantified using PM density and LAI (Leaf Area Index); any inter-species variations were identified using one-way Anova followed by Tukey’s pairwise comparison. This study demonstrates a considerable potential for living wall plants to remove particulate pollutants from the atmosphere. PM capture levels on leaves of different plant species were significantly different for all particle size fractions (P < 0.001). Smaller-leaved Buxus sempervirens L., Hebe albicans Cockayne, Thymus vulgaris L. and Hebe x youngii Metcalf showed significantly higher capture levels for all PM size fractions. PM densities on adaxial surfaces of the leaves were significantly higher compared to abaxial surfaces in the majority of the species studied (t-test, P < 0.05). According to EDX (Energy Dispersive X-ray) analysis, a wide spectrum of elements were captured by the leaves of the living wall plants, which were mainly typical railway exhaust particles and soil dust. Smaller leaves, and hairy and waxy leaf surfaces, appear to be leaf traits facilitating removal of PM from the air, and hence a collection of species which share these characters would probably optimize the benefit of living wall systems as atmospheric PM filters

The impact of rainfall in remobilising particulate matter accumulated on leaves of four evergreen species grown on a green screen and a living wall

Green walls have recently been identified as a green infrastructure (GI) solution to the problem of particulate matter (PM) air pollution. Green wall systems mostly use evergreen plants as the leaves are retained throughout the year; however, researchers have argued that evergreen foliage becomes saturated with PM and fails to capture more due to a long retention time on the leaves. This study evaluated the potential of (simulated) rainfall to remobilise these captured PM and renew the capture ability of the leaf surfaces of four evergreen species (Heuchera villosa Michx, Helleborus × sternii Turrill, Bergenia cordifolia (Haw.) Sternb., Hedera helix L.) used in a living wall and a green screen located along a busy road in Stoke-on-Trent, UK. The approach used compared PM densities on pre- and post-rain exposed leaf surfaces (using leaf halves of the same leaf) and using a paired t-test to identify any significant reduction in PM due to the rainfall. An Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) and ImageJ image analysis software were employed to quantify the PM densities on leaves. The reduction of PM on leaves, following exposure to 16 mm.hr-1 simulated rain in six different rainfall durations was estimated in all four species in order to evaluate any variable impact of rainfall on different species of plants. PM wash-off levels on leaves of H. helix by 41 mm.hr-1 rain was also evaluated, using the same rainfall durations, to assess any differential impact of rainfall intensity on PM wash-off. This study revealed a significant impact of rainfall in washing the particles off the leaves in all rainfall durations used. A one-way Anova in a General Linear Model showed a differential impact of rainfall in remobilising PM on different species of plants. The rainfall with higher intensity (41 mm.hr-1) showed a significantly higher impact on PM wash-off compared to 16 mm.hr-1 rain. The results of this study demonstrated the potential of green walls to act as good PM traps throughout the year by recycling their capture surfaces

Close-to-threshold Meson Production in Hadronic Interactions

Studies of meson production at threshold in the hadron--hadron interaction began in the fifties when sufficient energies of accelerated protons were available. A strong interdependence between developments in accelerator physics, detector performance and theoretical understanding led to a unique vivid field of physics. Early experiments performed with bubble chambers revealed already typical ingredients of threshold studies, which were superseded by more complete meson production investigations at the nucleon beam facilities TRIUMF, LAMPF, PSI, LEAR and SATURNE. Currently, with the advent of the new cooler rings as IUCF, CELSIUS and COSY the field is entering a new domain of precision and the next step of further progress. The analysis of this new data in the short range limit permits a more fundamental consideration and a quantitative comparison of the production processes for different mesons in the few--body final states. The interpretation of the data take advantage of the fact that production reactions close-to-threshold are characterized by only a few degrees of freedom between a well defined combination of initial and exit channels. Deviations from predictions of phase-space controlled one-meson-exchange models are indications of new and exciting physics. Precision data on differential cross sections, isospin and spin observables -- partly but by no means adequately available -- are presently turning up on the horizon. There is work for the next years and excitement of the physics expected. Here we try to give a brief and at the same time comprehensive overview of this field of hadronic threshold production studies.Comment: 100 pages, Review article to be published in Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. Vol. 49, issue 1 (2002

7/7: A reflexive re-evaluation of journalistic practice

The suicide bombings of 7 July 2005 remain the most serious terror attacks in the United Kingdom to date in the so-called ‘war on terror’. Much has been published on the war on terror but few journalists have reflected on their practice post 9/11 and none on their domestic coverage of the 7/7 attacks. This article is written by a journalist who covered the London bombings for a UK national newspaper and more recently is a practitioner-academic. Using academic texts focusing on the domestic reporting of the war on terror as stimuli for scholarly reflection, this article reviews the author’s own coverage using reflexive practice and content analysis. This article places 7/7 in the continuum of reporting subsequent to 11 September 2001 (9/11) and issues discussed. Some 63 authored articles were considered from the period. Scholarly texts have proposed a range of concepts to analyse coverage from including political ritual, trauma, national wound and hegemony. This article concludes by noting that while many academic texts see coverage of terrorism as an elite discourse, dominated by political economy drivers and responding to events in a homogeneous reactivity, in practice, news organisations can have complex responses and journalists, agency in their coverage of major terrorism events