An Exploratory Study of Collaboration between Youth and Local Organizations working on Sustainable Development Projects in Canada

The international community recognizes the importance of partnerships and collaboration across multiple institutions and stakeholders to implement sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDGs are a global framework of targets adopted by 193 countries in September 2015 within the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development to attain a sustainable future for all by 2030. Canada is committed to the implementation of SDGs and is currently ranked 21 on the SDG index. Canada’s National strategy of implementing the SDGs is “Moving Forward Together” by involving all levels of government, municipalities, civil society, the public and private sectors. Youth and local organizations are recognized as important stakeholders in the implementation of SDGs. Youth are important actors for their implementation as well as the impacted. Young people are referenced in more than one-third of SDG targets. According to the United Nations, youth play vital roles as critical thinkers, change-makers, innovators, communicators & leaders in the implementation and success of the SDGs. Literature in the field of sustainable development has captured the capacity of youth to strongly contribute to various SDGs in various roles across different parts of the world . Apart from youth, local organizations also play important roles in the implementation of the SDGs by promoting sustainable development at the local level. Some key areas include mobilizing resources, generating and interpreting specific local knowledge, local monitoring, forming community norms and common expectations. Strong local organizations are needed to mobilize people to utilize technologies for innovation that increase productivity and sustainability of resources. Locally centered sustainable development thus is recognized as a key developmental opportunity for the implementation of the SDGs by the United Nations. Since research on the SDGs is relatively recent, specific literature on the collaboration between youth and local organizations working on sustainable development projects is lacking. Though collaboration is an extensively researched topic across multiple disciplines and situations, it has not been studied in the context of sustainable development, especially the intergenerational collaboration between adult organizational staff and the youth who are not employed by the collaborating organizations. The aim of this study is to explore the attributes of such intergenerational collaboration on projects aiming to have a positive impact on SDGs, their positive elements, challenges, and perceived success factors. The study is qualitative in nature and uses a grounded theory approach. Data are collected through semi-structured key informant interviews (KIIs) and analyzed using NVIVO software. This study contributes to both practitioner and academic literature on collaboration between youth and local organizations working on the SDGs. Theoretically, the study contributes to the broader literature on collaboration by exploring specific intergenerational collaboration attributes, challenges, and impacts on projects carried out by local organizations in collaboration with youth. Practically, the study contributes to the literature on sustainability development by exploring intergenerational collaboration between local organizations and youth who serve as external stakeholders of the former on projects achieving SDGs. The insights can be useful for designing more effective projects involving youth and local organizations collaborating on projects that intend to have a positive effect on sustainable development goals

Biophysical characterization of the plakin family

The desmosome is an inter-cellular complex required for strong cell-cell adhesion in skin and heart tissue. The plakin family of proteins is important to the desmosome as their main function is to act as linkers between the cell surface and cytoskeleton. The structures, dynamics, impact of heart disease causing mutations and interactions of these component domains have remained largely unknown. In order to better understand this, biophysical techniques were used to shed light into the specific effects of pathological mutations using complementary techniques including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, small angle X-ray scattering and X-ray crystallography. Novel insights included the modular organization and flexibility of serial spectrin repeat constructs in the N-terminal plakin domain was established. Biophysical characterization of a variety of plakin family C-terminal tail constructs was successfully conducted in addition to understanding the molecular consequences of disease causing point mutations linked to Arryhthmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy. Together this provides a better understanding of the specific roles of the plakin family’s N- and C- termini in linking the desmosomal machinery on the cell membrane to the intermediate filaments

The Role of GSK3 alpha and beta in Embryonic Craniofacial Development

Background: The GSK-3 genes (Gsk3a and Gsk3b) have been known to affect many cellular processes and signaling pathways some of which are implicated in the growth and development of the craniofacial skeleton. Aim: The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of chondrocyte-specific deletion of Gsk3a and Gsk3b on the size of the mandible and craniofacial skeleton in embryonic mice. Materials & Methods: Mice were bred to generate cartilage-specific Gsk3a and Gsk3b KO mice. On embryonic day 18.5 (E18.5) the offspring were gathered by caesarian section. Whole mount skeletal staining was completed on the specimens using Alcian blue and Alizarin red. The antero-posterior (AP) dimension of the entire craniofacial skeleton and the mandible was measured, along with the transverse dimension of the cranial vault and the intramandibular angle for each embryo. The investigator was blind to the genotype of embryos in each trial group. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect and localize three proteins, Sox9, Beta-catenin, and Osteocalcin, in the bone and cartilage of E16 mouse skulls. Results: The specific removal of both Gsk3a and Gsk3b in prenatal cartilage of mice leads to a significant reduction in the antero-posterior length of the total craniofacial skeleton and mandible when compared to wildtype mice. Cartilage-specific Gsk3a/Gsk3b KO mouse embryo display no significant change in the transverse width of the cranial vault. A significant increase in the intramandibular angle is seen in the KO mice when compared to the wild type mice. Conclusions: Loss of both GSK-3 isoforms in prenatal mice results in significant changes to the size and shape of the facial skeleton and cranium

KFAED

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2005."September 2005."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-150).This thesis examines the record of the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in light of changing fashions regarding the proper role and management of such funds in the development finance process. The key questions addressed are whether its concessional aid is allocated according to Donor Interest (DI) or Recipient Needs (RN), what precisely is the grant element in KFAED loans, whether this grant allocation is consistent with the fund's stated policy and if it is linked to one or more of the currently held views regarding how aid should be allocated in order to be most effective - to overcome the "two gaps," to strengthen institutions and governance or to reward/incentivize effective macroeconomic management. The KFAED is an interesting and important subject of study for many reasons. After Saudi Arabia, Kuwait is the second largest Arab aid donor, having contributed a total of more than $18.5 billion between 1960 and 2002. It was the first to officially establish a bilateral aid institution: KFAED, which purports to be free of mercantilist motives as its aid is not tied to procurement, as is the case with most developed countries' aid institutions. The thesis consists of three mutually dependent sections. The first surveys the domain of theoretical and empirical development economics since World War II. It reviews its evolution over time, linking successes and failures in development aid to the refinement of macroeconomic points of view among various schools of thought. Since the implementation of any economic policy is highly sensitive to the political goals of the policy makers, we show that the evolution of macroeconomic theory is not, in itself, able to account for Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of the Science's partial funding of this research, under grant 2005-12-01, is acknowledged. changes in the pattern of development aid. "Fashions" in such aid reflect not only the past history of aid itself, but also the histories of the donor nations or their multi-lateral vehicles. Our specific interest in regional Arab geopolitical development is contextualized in order to trace the effects of development theory evolution on the Middle Eastern region.(cont.) The second section studies the aid allocation of the KFAED. It seeks to determine, among other things, whether the allocation of aid reflects recipient needs or donor interest. We modeled the allocation decision as a two-stage process: selection and allocation. The empirical analysis demonstrates that income, ethnicity, religion and politics are all factors in the selection stage. Arab, Muslims countries and more populous countries receive a higher share of the total aid allocated (allocation stage). The third section extends the second by adding the third stage: grant element determination. It addresses two questions: how grant element is calculated and what factors influence its allocations. In addressing the first question, we offer a rationale for an adjusted discount rate in calculating grant element--the percentages of subsidy embedded in the loan. When this rate is applied, the results point to consistent overestimation of the traditionally published grant element statistics. We then examine the grant element allocation. We find that the actual allocation is quite different than that implied by the stated policy of the KFAED. Chief among the sources of variation are political factors, income and sectors. Finally, we test to see if the current grant element allocation is in line with any of the three views regarding how aid should be allocated: the two gap, macroeconomic management, and governance and institutions building. We find that it is weakly related to the two-gap view, but appears to bear no relation to the other two.by Sulaiman Ahmed Al-Jassar.Ph.D

Assessment of quality of information available over the internet about vegan diet

Purpose – This paper aims to assess the quality of health information available to patients seeking online advice about the vegan diet. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional sample of patient-oriented websites was selected by searching for “Vegan diet” in the 3 most popular search engines. The first 50 websites from each search were examined. Quality of information was assessed using the DISCERN instrument, a questionnaire tool designed to judge the quality of written information on treatment choices. Readability was determined with the Flesch Reading Ease score (FRES) and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL). Relevance to health and disease was assessed by counting the appearances of 10 related keywords, generated by searching the query term “Vegan diet” into PubMed and recording the top 10 health-related words. Findings – Of 150 websites retrieved, 67 (44.7%) met inclusion criteria. Of these, 42 (62.7%) were non-pharmaceutical commercial, 7 (10.4%) institutional, 6 (9.0%) magazines or newspapers, 4 (6.0%) support websites, 4 (6.0%) charitable websites, 2 (3.0%) encyclopedias, and 2 (3.0%) personal blogs. The overall DISCERN rating of the websites was fair (mean 41.6±15.4 on an 80-point scale), but nearly half (31/67) of the websites were assessed as having ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ quality of information. FRES and FKGL readability indices met the recommended standards on average (means 63.3±9.6 and 6.6±1.7, respectively), but did not correlate with high DISCERN ratings. Analysis of variance on DISCERN scores (F(6,60)=6.536, P<0.001) and FRES (F(6,60)=2.733, p=0.021) yielded significant variation according to website source type. Originality/value – Quality standards of health information available on the Internet about the Vegan diet vary greatly. Patients are at risk of exposure to low quality and potentially misleading information over the Internet and should be consulting dietitians or physicians to avoid being misled

Theory And Practice In Capital Budgeting: Evidence From Kuwait

Capital budgeting is an important tool in corporate finance, which is supported with numerous methods. Previous researches in this field shows that simple methods of capital budgeting are preferred over complex methods. With an objective to adopt relevant modification in the academic sector this paper evaluates the preferred capital budgeting practices in Kuwait, one of the strongest economy in the world, through a structured questionnaire distributed among 100 firms. The study also reveals the significance of demographic factors on real life capital budgeting practices as well as it probes in to the significance of the subjects; introductory finance, financial management and risk management. The results of the study are consistent with the previous researches in this field, that majority of the respondents use the NPV.  Furthermore, age, educational qualification, managerial levels, years of experience, company size, among others all have significant effects on most capital budgeting methods

Numerical And Approximate- Analytical Solution Of Fuzzy Initial Value Problems

Persamaan pembezaan kabur ( FDEs ) digunakan untuk memodel masalah tertentu dalam bidang sains dan kejuruteraan dan telah dikaji oleh ramai penyelidik . Masalah tertentu memerlukan penyelesaian FDEs yang memenuhi keadaan awal kabur menimbulkan masalah awal kabur ( FIVPs ). Contoh masalah seperti ini boleh didapati dalam fizik, kejuruteraan, model penduduk, dinamik reaktor nuklear, masalah perubatan, rangkaian neural dan teori kawalan. Walau bagaimanapun, kebanyakan masalah nilai awal kabur tidak boleh diselesaikan dengan tepat. Tambahan pula, penyelesaian analisis tepat yang diperoleh juga mungkin begitu sukar untuk dinilai dan oleh itu kaedah berangka dan analisis hampiran perlu untuk memperoleh penyelesaian. Fuzzy differential equations (FDEs) are used for the modeling of some problems in science and engineering and have been studied by many researchers. Certain problems require the solution of FDEs which satisfy fuzzy initial conditions giving rise to fuzzy initial problems (FIVPs). Examples of such problems can be found in physics, engineering, population models, nuclear reactor dynamics, medical problems, neural networks and control theory. However, most fuzzy initial value problems cannot be solved exactly. Furthermore, exact analytical solutions obtained may also be so difficult to evaluate and therefore numerical and approximate- analytical methods may be necessary to evaluate the solution

Treatment of Heyde’s Syndrome by Aortic Valve Replacement

Heyde’s syndrome is the association between calcific aortic stenosis and gastrointestinal bleeding due to angiodysplasia. Alterations in von Willebrand factor due to turbulence across the diseased aortic valve have been incriminated in the pathophysiology of this syndrome. Replacement of the aortic valve has been reported to stop the bleeding, but this is debatable. Along with a review of the relevant medical literature, we hereby report a 68 year old patient with aortic stenosis and severe recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding that completely subsided following aortic valve replacement

Cosmic ray short burst observed with the Global Muon Detector Network (GMDN) on June 22, 2015

We analyze the short cosmic ray intensity increase ("cosmic ray burst": CRB) on June 22, 2015 utilizing a global network of muon detectors and derive the global anisotropy of cosmic ray intensity and the density (i.e. the omnidirectional intensity) with 10-minute time resolution. We find that the CRB was caused by a local density maximum and an enhanced anisotropy of cosmic rays both of which appeared in association with Earth's crossing of the heliospheric current sheet (HCS). This enhanced anisotropy was normal to the HCS and consistent with a diamagnetic drift arising from the spatial gradient of cosmic ray density, which indicates that cosmic rays were drifting along the HCS from the north of Earth. We also find a significant anisotropy along the HCS, lasting a few hours after the HCS crossing, indicating that cosmic rays penetrated into the inner heliosphere along the HCS. Based on the latest geomagnetic field model, we quantitatively evaluate the reduction of the geomagnetic cut-off rigidity and the variation of the asymptotic viewing direction of cosmic rays due to a major geomagnetic storm which occurred during the CRB and conclude that the CRB is not caused by the geomagnetic storm, but by a rapid change in the cosmic ray anisotropy and density outside the magnetosphere.Comment: accepted for the publication in the Astrophysical Journa