International Climate Finance from a Global Perspective

The Paris Agreement reaffirmed the commitment to provide USD 100 billion in international climate finance to developing countries by 2020. This Working Paper delves into the history and challenges of international climate finance. We emphasize the complexities tied to diverse definitions and accounting practices, leading to disputes over climate finance figures, as well as the struggle of developed countries to meet the USD 100 billion annual target. With the need to mobilize finance for addressing loss and damage (L&D) gaining traction in UN climate negotiations, we examine how similar challenges may hinder progress on the L&D agenda. Furthermore, we stress the importance of fostering trust between donor and recipient countries in the context of financial support pledges under the Paris Agreement. We identify how key negotiation processes, like the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCGG), have the potential to change the status quo

A MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON ICONOGRAPHIC EUROCENTRISM AMONG THE YOUTH IN KENYAN UNIVERSITIES

Recent years have witnessed the youth immerse themselves in the consumption of media for various uses and gratifications. Icons (celebrities) have continued to dominate the pages of magazines and newspapers. This study introduces print media consumption amongst the youth as a predictor of celebrity content in their consumer activities. The youth have unwittingly accommodated and imitated these icons. Considering the growing interest of youth in the magazines and newspaper features, it becomes necessary to examine how these celebrities influence the choices the youth make. The principle questions this article addresses is whether icons’ presence in the media fosters a new dependency, in other words diversifies dependency among the youth. This article is premised on the uses and gratifications theory, the use of dependency and reception theories in understanding the youth’s choices. The article is organized as follows; - firstly, I focus on the uses and gratifications and the dependency theory, which postulates dependency relations between individuals and media based consumerism. Secondly, I explore related literature on iconography. Succeeding sections of the article develop the research method, present the findings and discussion, the conclusion and, lastly, the recommendations. The results show the existence of Eurocentric implications and a negation of Afrocentrism. The study employed a desktop systematic paper review method.  Article visualizations

INFLUENCE OF PART–TIME LECTURING ON RESEARCH AMONG UNIVERSITIES’ ACADEMIC STAFF IN KENYA

It is evident that Kenya has reached the golden age, where student enrollments have outstripped universities' capacities. This paper highlights the importance of research amongst part time faculty, and seeks to lead to awareness about their professional responsibility. The paper gives a background to the concept of research among non-tenure track faculty members. The statement of the problem under consideration is raised as well as the research questions that will need answers as it progresses. The paper then delves into the literature review to support the subject premise. Finally, conclusions and recommendations will be drawn. The findings of the paper will confirm the need for universities to invest in research amongst both tenure and non-tenure-track faculty in order to increase their presence amongst other universities and as well their faculty base.  Article visualizations

Patterns of sensitization to food and inhalant allergens amongst children in Kenya

Background: Allergic disease is preceded by development of a sensitized state against allergens, characterized by production of allergen-specific immunoglobulin (sIgE) in serum.Objectives: To determine the frequency and patterns of sensitivity to food and inhalant allergens among children.Methods: A retrospective study conducted at Gertrudes Children’s Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Laboratory data for sIgE antibodies for the period between January 2014 and December 2017 were retrieved and analysed. Serum sIgE ≥0.35 kU/L indicated sensitization. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize continuous data as median (interquartile range), and categorical data as absolute and relative (%) numbers.Results: 642 sIgE test results were retrieved; 509 (79.3%) against food allergens and 133 (20.7%) against inhalant allergens. Median age of patients evaluated for food allergen sensitization was 3.0 (1 – 6) years; approximately half (50.7%) were males. 242 children (47.5%) were sensitized to at least one food allergen. The most frequently sensitizing foods were milk (17.5%), wheat flour (14.7%) and potato (12.6%). Median age of patients evaluated for inhalant allergen sensitization was 4.0 (2 – 8) years, with a slight preponderance of males (51.1%). 64 children (48.1%) were sensitized to at least one aeroallergen. The most frequently sensitizing aeroallergens were Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (30.8%), Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (24.8%) and grass pollen (12.8%).Conclusions: Milk, wheat, potato, house dust mites and grass pollen were the most common food and aeroallergens encountered among children at a private children’s hospital in Kenya. Further studies are needed to clarify the relationship between serum sIgE levels and clinical manifestations of allergic disease locally

International climate finance from a global perspective

The Paris Agreement reaffirmed the commitment to provide USD 100 billion in international climate finance to developing countries by 2020. This Working Paper delves into the history and challenges of international climate finance. We emphasize the complexities tied to diverse definitions and accounting practices, leading to disputes over climate finance figures, as well as the struggle of developed countries to meet the USD 100 billion annual target. With the need to mobilize finance for addressing loss and damage (L&D) gaining traction in UN climate negotiations, we examine how similar challenges may hinder progress on the L&D agenda. Furthermore, we stress the importance of fostering trust between donor and recipient countries in the context of financial support pledges under the Paris Agreement. We identify how key negotiation processes, like the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCGG), have the potential to change the status quo

Expanding a multilingual media monitoring and information extraction tool to a new language: Swahili

The Europe Media Monitor (EMM) family of applications is a set of multilingual tools that gather, cluster and classify news in currently fifty languages and that extract named entities and quotations (reported speech) from twenty languages. In this paper, we describe the recent effort of adding the African Bantu language Swahili to EMM. EMM is designed in an entirely modular way, allowing plugging in a new language by providing the language-specific resources for that language. We thus describe the type of language-specific resources needed, the effort involved, and ways of boot-strapping the generation of these resources in order to keep the effort of adding a new language to a minimum. The text analysis applications pursued in our efforts include clustering, classification, recognition and disambiguation of named entities (persons, organisations and locations), recognition and normalisation of date expressions, as well as the identification of reported speech quotations by and about people.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen