45 research outputs found
Challenging empowerment: AIDS-affected southern African children and the need for a multi-level relational approach
Critics of empowerment have highlighted the concept's mutability, focus on individual transformation, one-dimensionality and challenges of operationalisation. Relating these critiques to children's empowerment raises new challenges. Drawing on scholarship on children's subjecthood and exercise of power, alongside empirical research with children affected by AIDS, I argue that empowerment envisaged as individual self-transformation and increased capacity to act independently offers little basis for progressive change. Rather it is essential to adopt a relational approach that recognises the need to transform power relationships at multiple levels. This analysis has implications for our wider understanding of empowerment in the 21st century. © The Author(s) 2013.This research was funded by DFID
Macroscopic Equations of Motion for Two Phase Flow in Porous Media
The established macroscopic equations of motion for two phase immiscible
displacement in porous media are known to be physically incomplete because they
do not contain the surface tension and surface areas governing capillary
phenomena. Therefore a more general system of macroscopic equations is derived
here which incorporates the spatiotemporal variation of interfacial energies.
These equations are based on the theory of mixtures in macroscopic continuum
mechanics. They include wetting phenomena through surface tensions instead of
the traditional use of capillary pressure functions. Relative permeabilities
can be identified in this approach which exhibit a complex dependence on the
state variables. A capillary pressure function can be identified in equilibrium
which shows the qualitative saturation dependence known from experiment. In
addition the new equations allow to describe the spatiotemporal changes of
residual saturations during immiscible displacement.Comment: 15 pages, Phys. Rev. E (1998), in prin
Percolation thresholds in chemical disordered excitable media
The behavior of chemical waves advancing through a disordered excitable medium is investigated in terms of percolation theory and autowave properties in the framework of the light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. By controlling the number of sites with a given illumination, different percolation thresholds for propagation are observed, which depend on the relative wave transmittances of the two-state medium considered