Developing a gender and mobility policy assessment tool: south africa as a pilot country

Meaningfully addressing women's mobility needs is essential for enhancing women’s access to transport options, access to economic opportunities and services, and boosting economic development in general in a country. Transportation must consider the views and needs of the 50% of the population that are women, whether these women are transport workers, transport users, or transport decision-makers. South Africa is no exception. Transport that is not fit for purpose matters for all residents, but it matters differently for women. In South Africa, lack of access to transport and mobility resources entrenches existing gender inequity and hinders women’s development. While inadequate access to health, restricted social engagement, and poor education, are among other outcomes of transport poverty experienced by both men and women, women already start at lower levels in all these poverty dimensions. This paper reports on a novel mobility gender policy and gap analysis and its first test application in South Africa, and includes an overview of the method, main findings, and recommended actions. To ensure replicability outside the pilot country, the assessment relies mostly on desk research, including existing literature and online data and information, complemented by stakeholder engagement. The assessment was developed at the request of the Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) partnership, with financial support from the World Bank Group and Michelin Corporate Foundation. This work informs a broader sustainable mobility diagnostic being carried out in South Africa by the World Bank, at the request of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).Papers presented at the 40th International Southern African Transport Conference on 04 -08 July 202

Mapping the absence : A theological critique of posthumanist influences in marketing and consumer research

In this study, we critically examine the ongoing adoption of various posthumanist influences into the fields of marketing and consumer research from a theological perspective. By conducting a theological-historical assessment, we propose that it is not posthuman notions of human/technology relations, nor their broader context in the emerging non-representational paradigms, that mark radically new disruptions in the continuing restructuring of the disciplines of marketing and consumer research. Instead, we argue that what is taking place is an implicit adherence to a contemporary form of age-old Christian dogma. As a radical conjecture, we thus propose that an identification of certain similarities between Christian dogma and the grounds for various posthumanist frameworks suggest that posthuman thought may well herald the global dissemination of a far more elusive, authoritarian, and hegemonic system than that which posthumanists typically claim to have abandoned. Consequently, we elaborate on implications to developments in marketing thought.Peer reviewe

Southern African Large Telescope Spectroscopy of BL Lacs for the CTA project

In the last two decades, very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy has reached maturity: over 200 sources have been detected, both Galactic and extragalactic, by ground-based experiments. At present, Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) make up about 40% of the more than 200 sources detected at very high energies with ground-based telescopes, the majority of which are blazars, i.e. their jets are closely aligned with the line of sight to Earth and three quarters of which are classified as high-frequency peaked BL Lac objects. One challenge to studies of the cosmological evolution of BL Lacs is the difficulty of obtaining redshifts from their nearly featureless, continuum-dominated spectra. It is expected that a significant fraction of the AGN to be detected with the future Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory will have no spectroscopic redshifts, compromising the reliability of BL Lac population studies, particularly of their cosmic evolution. We started an effort in 2019 to measure the redshifts of a large fraction of the AGN that are likely to be detected with CTA, using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). In this contribution, we present two results from an on-going SALT program focused on the determination of BL Lac object redshifts that will be relevant for the CTA observatory

Evaluation of Ebselen-azadioxatriangulenium as redox-sensitive fluorescent intracellular probe and as indicator within a planar redox optode

Redox homeostasis is essential for cellular survival and is therefore tightly regulated. Visualizing changes in the local redox state is essential for detecting oxidative stress, especially with the help of red, long emission lifetime probes. We synthesized a new reversible, redox-sensitive fluorescent probe, ebselen-azadioxatriangulenium (Ebselen-ADOTA), and characterized its potential use for intra- and extracellular redox sensing. The probe consists of a photostable triangulenium-based fluorophore (emission maximum at 564 nm) modulated by a redox-active ebselen motif. The reduced form only shows around 1/10 of the emission intensity of the oxidized form. The Ebselen-ADOTA probe exhibited reversible oxidation and reduction in solution under extracellular conditions. In addition, Ebselen-ADOTA can visualize an increase in oxidative stress within anaerobic bacteria when exposing them to air, the probe did not readily respond to changes in the redox environment inside mammalian cells, probably due to unfavorable localization, aggregation or binding to cysteine containing proteins. When incorporated inside a polymer matrix (hydrogel D4 mixed with poly(acrylic acid)), the probe showed a rapid and fully reversible response to redox changes, thus enabling the preparation of a redox-sensitive optode