“Can my mother come?” Asylum interviews with unaccompanied and separated children seeking asylum in the Netherlands

Introduction: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) accords children the right to give their views on all important decisions in their life (art.12 CRC). In the past decades increased awareness has risen among professionals who work with children in judicial and administrative proceedings, to hear their voices. The key question guiding this research was whether refugee children have the possibility to meaningfully participate in asylum proceedings, as required by international children's rights law and standards? Asylum application procedures are highly complex administrative procedures, that are often not adapted to the capacities and level of maturity of children. Recent studies suggest that the right to participation and information is insufficiently safeguarded for children involved in asylum procedures. Unaccompanied children seeking asylum as young as 6 years of age have to go through the asylum procedure in the Netherlands. Efforts have been put in making this procedure more child-friendly, by designing a child-friendly interview room and training immigration officers. The aim of this study was to explore to what extent the immigration authority takes into account children's voice, age and development, in line with international children's rights.Methods: Observations have been conducted of first instance asylum application interviews with children held by immigration officers. In total 13 interviews with children aged 7–11 have been observed, that were held between 2012 and 2019.Results: The results show that child-friendly conversation techniques and tools are used to some extent, however, immigration officers should be trained more extensively in order to enhance the effective participation of young children.Discussion: It is concluded that interviews with children could be improved by giving children more information and using techniques to communicate with young children. In order to truly hear the child's voice the interviews should be better adapted to the age and level of development of unaccompanied children

The Hydraulic Mission and the Mexican Hydrocracy: Regulating and Reforming the Flows of Water and Power

In Mexico, the hydraulic mission, the centralisation of water control, and the growth of the federal hydraulic bureaucracy (hydrocracy) recursively shaped and reinforced each other during the 20th century. The hydraulic mission entails that the state, embodied in an autonomous hydrocracy, takes the lead in water resources development to capture as much water as possible for human uses. The hydraulic mission was central to the formation of Mexico’s hydrocracy, which highly prized its autonomy. Bureaucratic rivals, political transitions, and economic developments recurrently challenged the hydrocracy’s degree of autonomy. However, driven by the argument that a single water authority should regulate and control the nation’s waters, the hydrocracy consistently managed to renew its, always precarious, autonomy at different political moments in the country’s history. The legacy of the hydraulic mission continues to inform water reforms in Mexico, and largely explains the strong resilience of the Mexican hydrocracy to "deep" institutional change and political transitions. While the emphasis on infrastructure construction has lessened, the hydrocracy has actively renewed its control over water decisions and budgets and has played a remarkably constant, hegemonic role in defining and shaping Mexico’s water laws, policies and institutions

The leidenfrost phenomenon on structured surfaces

This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.The lifetime of a droplet released on a hot plate decreases when the temperature of the plate increases. But above some critical value of the temperature, the lifetime suddenly increases. This is due to the formation of a thin layer of vapour between the droplet and the substrate. This layer plays a double role: first it thermally isolates the droplet from the plate and second it allows the droplet to “levitate.” This effect was discovered by Leidenfrost in 1756, but remains an active field of research nowadays, motivated by a wide range of applications. The Leidenfrost point is affected by the roughness or microstructure of the surface. In this work, a silicon surface with different micro-structured regions of square-pillars was prepared such that there is a sharp transition (boundary) between areas of different pillar spacing. The Leidenfrost point was identified in experiments using water drops ranging in average size from 8 μL to 24 μL and the behaviour of the droplets was recorded using a high-speed digital camera. We show that the Leidenfrost point can vary by up to 120 °C for pillar spacings varying from 10 microns to 100 microns. If the drop is placed on the boundary between structured sections, the drop becomes asymmetric. Drop motion may also be observed and some occurrences of drop spinning have been seen. In this paper we present experimental data on Leidenfrost behaviour of drops placed structured surfaces and on the boundary between surfaces with different micro-structures

Importance of tropospheric volcanic aerosol for indirect radiative forcing of climate

Observations and models have shown that continuously degassing volcanoes have a potentially large effect on the natural background aerosol loading and the radiative state of the atmosphere. We use a global aerosol microphysics model to quantify the impact of these volcanic emissions on the cloud albedo radiative forcing under pre-industrial (PI) and present-day (PD) conditions. We find that volcanic degassing increases global annual mean cloud droplet number concentrations by 40% under PI conditions, but by only 10% under PD conditions. Consequently, volcanic degassing causes a global annual mean cloud albedo effect of −1.06 W m−2 in the PI era but only −0.56 W m−2 in the PD era. This non-equal effect is explained partly by the lower background aerosol concentrations in the PI era, but also because more aerosol particles are produced per unit of volcanic sulphur emission in the PI atmosphere. The higher sensitivity of the PI atmosphere to volcanic emissions has an important consequence for the anthropogenic cloud radiative forcing because the large uncertainty in volcanic emissions translates into an uncertainty in the PI baseline cloud radiative state. Assuming a −50/+100% uncertainty range in the volcanic sulphur flux, we estimate the annual mean anthropogenic cloud albedo forcing to lie between −1.16 W m−2 and −0.86 W m−2. Therefore, the volcanically induced uncertainty in the PI baseline cloud radiative state substantially adds to the already large uncertainty in the magnitude of the indirect radiative forcing of climate

Enfermedades poco comunes: una prioridad de los sistemas de salud

Las enfermedades poco comunes, incluidas las de origen genético, son aquellas enfermedades que tienen una prevalencia baja, menor de 5 casos por cada 10.000 habitantes en la comunidad, según la definición de la Unión Europea. Estas enfermedades tienen ciertas características comunes. Son, en su mayor parte, degenerativas y constituyen una prioridad de los sistemas de salud