Scaling Greenpeace: From Local Activism to Global Governance

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Initially, it was a small anti-nuclear protest group composed of Americans and Canadians, peaceniks and hippies, World War II veterans and people barely out of high school. Twenty years later, it was the world’s largest environmental NGO, with headquarters in Amsterdam, branches in over forty nations, and a regular presence at international environmental meetings throughout the world. This article will chart Greenpeace’s growth throughout its first two decades, in the process examining how the organization became influential at several levels: in local politics in places like Vancouver; at the national level in countries such as Canada, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany; and at global forums such as the International Whaling Commission and various UN-sponsored environmental meetings. It will analyze the combination of activist agency and political op-portunity structures that enabled Greenpeace to gain political influence. I argue that Greenpeace’s influence largely stemmed from its engagement with what political scientist Paul Wapner calls “world civic politics,” which in this case involves the dissemination of an ecological sensibility that indirectly influences behavior at multiple scales, from individuals, to governments, to multi-lateral organizations. Only in this way could a group with relatively limited resources hope to influence millions of individuals and powerful governments

Making Greenpeace: The development of direct action environmentalism in British Columbia

British Columbia seems an unlikely birthplace for a radical new form of environmentalism. However, by the late 1960s, a series of events--many of them distant and having no direct connection to life in British Columbia--had helped prepare a small patch of ground that gave root to a new movement combining ecology, radical pacifism, and non-violent direct action. Zelko details the founding of Greenpeace, one of the earliest, most long-lived, and influential direct action environmental organization, and examines the location from which many of Greenpeace's ideas--and several of its founders--emerged

Academic Underachievement in Children with Active Epilepsy

Investigators from Lingfield, Surrey, UK; University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, UK, and other centers, conducted psychological assessment including measures of IQ, working memory and processing speed in 85 (74%) of 115 school aged children with active epilepsy (a seizure in the past year and/or on AEDs) from a population-based sample, without exclusion for intellectual deficiency

Feasibility of a mobile cognitive intervention in childhood absence epilepsy

Children with childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) frequently present with cognitive comorbidities and school performance concerns. The present study evaluated the feasibility of an intervention for such comorbidities using a mobile cognitive therapy application on an iPad. Eight children with CAE and school concerns aged 7-11 participated in a four-week intervention. They were asked to use the application for 80 minutes per week (20 minutes/day, 4 times/week). Parents and children completed satisfaction surveys regarding the application. Participants were evaluated before and after the intervention using the Cognitive Domain of the NIH Toolbox and by parental completion of the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF). All eight patients completed the study, using the iPad for an average of 78 minutes/week. Children and parents reported high satisfaction with the application. Though a demonstration of efficacy was not the focus of the study, performance improvements were noted on a processing speed task and on a measure of fluid intelligence. An iPad based cognitive therapy was found to be a feasible intervention for children with CAE

Improvement in specific aspects of neurocognitive performance in children after renal transplantation

Improvement in specific aspects of neurocognitive performance in children after renal transplantation.BackgroundChronic renal failure in childhood is considered to affect neurocognitive function adversely, and kidney transplantation may ameliorate the deficits. However, previous studies have suffered from the use of poorly matched control groups, comparison of transplant with uncorrected uremia, lack of standardization of dialysis, and insufficiently sensitive neuropsychological tests.MethodsWe studied nine medically stable children and adolescents age 14.2 ± 3.5 years with end-stage renal disease prior to and again one year after successful renal transplant. At baseline, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III) or the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) was performed. Repeatable tests used before and after transplant included the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) or the Children’s Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (CHIPASAT), the Stroop Color-Word Naming Test, the Buschke Selective Reminding Test, the Meier Visual Discrimination Test, the Grooved Pegboard Test, the WISC-III or the WAIS-R Coding subtests and the Trailmaking Test. Computer-based measures of mental processing speed, reaction time, and discrimination sensitivity included the Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) and the Connors Continuous Performance Test (CPT). Formal kinetic modeling of dialysis delivery ensured adequate renal replacement therapy. Transplant function was good on stable doses of immunosuppressives, without recent rejections at the time of testing.ResultsWithin-subject comparison showed statistically significant improvement in mental processing speed by CAT, reaction time and discrimination sensitivity by CPT, and working memory by PASAT/CHIPASAT after renal transplant. Other measures were unchanged.ConclusionMental processing speed and sustained attention improved in children after renal transplantation in a carefully controlled prospective cross-over study